Hobbycraft are helping us get in the Christmas Spirit with their 12 Makes of Christmas. They are hosting festive demos and sharing a range of inspiring makes and project guides to help those looking to create a handmade Christmas. This week I will be sharing some baking ideas with you.

Each week (apart from this week) I’ll be making the projects and featuring them on my blog to give you some inspiration. So, with the help of Hobbycraft I’m hoping inspire you. This week we’re talking baking. Now I’m not the best baker in the world, and the guys at Hobbycraft were worried about getting things to me with them being perishable, that or they saw my baking attempts on Instagram and thought better of it 😉

If you fancy having a go yourself then head to the Hobbycraft blog from 1st December for some extra inspiration.

Big or Small

I think the trick with baking, especially when it’s for other people, is to stick within your limitations.

Now I can bake a sponge, it’s one of the few things I’m pretty good at. Decorating is another thing altogether though! So I like to go for smaller cupcakes, I find the size easier to work with. Plus if I make a mistake I  have plenty of other back up cakes, I can just eat the one(s) I went wrong with and no one will know.

I did learn how to ice with a quick lesson at this years Handmade Fair, which has given me a lot more confidence. The bags and nozzles you can get from Handmade Fair are fabulous.

Easy Cheats

Each year I make L’s birthday cake. He picks a theme and I run with it. The year he picked Thomas the Tank Engine and I tried to make one from icing wasn’t the best, but when he wanted diggers and I put actual digger toys on top of the cake was great. This year he wanted Paw Patrol, so there I was raiding the toy cupboard again.

This is so easy to do for Christmas as there are loads of amazing festive toppers available, that and icing sugar makes the best snow ever.

Another trick I quite like is drawing shapes with chocolate. If you fill a piping bag with molten chocolate, you can pipe some really rather intricate pictures onto a flat silicone sheet and after an hour or so in the fridge you can peel them off to add to your cake.

Don’t Even Bake

Grab yourself a good sized jar and the dry ingredients for gingerbread, cookies or cake.

Layer the ingredients in the jar. Write the recipe onto a label and tie with ribbon round the jar.

Add a cookie cutter to decorate and you have a lovely gift that you don’t have to worry about baking!

 

Be Brave

If you’ve seen an idea you love, just go for it. What’s the worst that will happen? You have a cake you eat in private with no one watching. Well, surely that’s a win!

I think everyone loves a cake and appreciates the effort you go to. I’ve made some little baked goods over the years. I’ve made some truly embarrassing ones too, but at the end of the day, other than a very bad batch of cookies that got binned, everything has been edible.

To view The 12 Makes of Christmas visit the Hobbycraft Blog or visit www.hobbycraft.co.uk to see when your local store will be demoing each make. Next week we’ll be making Christmas Hampers.

Disclosure – I have received the products to make these crafts and a few extras for my craft stash in exchange for sharing the 12 Makes of Christmas for Hobbycraft