Holly Bell's Creatures and Flowers Cupcake Course

Normal Mum, Holly Bell, kindly invited me to her Creatures and Flowers Cupcake Course yesterday.

Look! I made these:

If Holly's name sounds familiar, it may be because she reached the final of the BBC's Great British Bake Off earlier this year.

Holly is a patient and natural teacher. She was happy to share all her tips and tricks. She was friendly and down to earth.

We started with the basics, the cake batter:

We then moved on to working with fondant icing; making flowers, ladybirds, tortoises, snails and Christmassy robins:

After a gorgeous lunch, we moved on to assembling our cakes. We learnt how to buff fondant discs and turned chocolate icing into bricks and bark.

Then we moved on to butter cream and the dreaded piping bag. We practised on greaseproof paper before icing our cakes, learning three techniques; the flower, Mr Whippy and ribbons (I'm not sure how many of these were technical terms):

We left with a dozen fabulous cupcakes, a few new friends and huge amounts of pride and confidence.

Fact and Figures:

Each course lasts a full day - 9am to 5.15pm
Breakfast, lunch and refreshments are provided
You just bring yourself
You take home 12 cupcakes, decorated by you, and a manual of full step-by-step instructions
Course dates are here
Location: Bridge 67 Cookery School in rural Leicestershire
Cost: £125



The Baby Baby Verdict:

I absolutely adored this course. Holly is genuinely lovely and full of Bake-Off anecdotes (in a nice, un-starry, way). I am confident I could replicate each of the designs, in fact one of my friends has asked me to make cupcakes for her children's birthday parties. You know what? I'm going to do it too.

*Sandy adds a KitchenAid to her xmas list*

I had a whole day to myself, learning how to make something with my hands. This course would make a wonderful treat for you, it would also make a fabulous present too.


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