Day of the dead cakes

Sarah From Kiss and Bake Up

To celebrate Halloween I'm delighted to have a guest post by the amazing Sarah from Devon based bakery Kiss and Bake Up.

Ive been a fan of KABU for a while. There cakes are always creative, experimental and unique and its no surprise to discover they regularly collaborate with the sensational Kinky & Quirky Burlesque event.
Established for 4 years Kinky and Quirky are Devon's only dedicated burlesque event and were noted by The Burlesque Bible as Devon's top providers of BurlyQ 

Some Sugar Skulls-yummy cakes never looked so spooky

Here's Sarah telling us all about this weeks event "Flowers Of The Dead"

Hello all! Lets start out with a bit of an introduction. My name is Sarah. I am the one woman army behind Kiss & Bake Up, my Devon based rock and fun bakery. I specialise in small to gigantic spreads of lots of assorted bakes and sweets with themes – oh I do love a theme! Bright colours, styles and daring skills to experiment with is a constant in my line of work if I have anything to do with it, and I spend all week, all year doing vintage, offbeat or quirky weddings, parties, functions, fairs and events. I'm rarely without an apron on, and on the rare occasions when I am not busy making something, I'm armed with my sketch book, bringing together ideas for events and bookings upcoming!

Almost every month I set up Pop Up Shop beside the stage at Kinky and Quirky and provide sugar rushes to the glamorous guests at this amazing event.

 Octobers theme on Saturday night was Flowers Of The Dead, with performers Penny Bizarre, Sandy Sure, Missy Malone and Luna Rosa with the band The Bare Bones Trio kicking up the heat while the crowds got their dance on! 

I put together a menu of classic favourites and boozy bad boys, and threw some magic at them!

Our cupcakes were my best selling Caramel Filled Banoffee, Carrot & Orange, Caramel Filled Dark Chocolate, Double Rum Swizzle and Tia Maria & Orange! We also had my most in demand Baileys Cream Cheese Buttercream Filled Zested Gingerbread Cookie Stacks, Browned Butter Belgian Chocolate Chip Cookies, Almond & Raspberry Oatmeal Crumble Bars, Cookie Dough Chocolate Monster Whoopie Pies and of course, some of my chocolate sugar skulls, free hand painted iced gingerbread cookies and cake pops.

KABU is known for our cake pops and pop sculptures with our hand-painted, modelled and carved style, and my sugar skull designs let no one down! All sold out before the band hit their final number! One particular familiar face was most pleased with her skully man pop!

The delcious Misy malone enjoying her Kiss and Bake up  Cake Pop

Dia De Los Muertos is such a vibrant, garish-but-in-a-good-way theme, fabulous bright colours ranging from marigolds yellows, oranges, and flaming reds to exotic hot pinks, purples and blues and all pulled together with folk style art and bursting with flair! Despite having a huge amount of other themes to work with over the last few months ranging from steampunk, victoriana and  floral elegance to 50s retro (flamingos and cupcakes, there is little better!) and of course our classic Christmas collection, this was without a doubt my favourite and got a lot of attention in the design process!

Our customers on the night loved their goodies and we loved their costumes! Look at our beautiful bunch and their cakey delights!

I'll be back at Kinky & Quirky (www.kinkyandquirky.com) in December with a feast of festive bakes and sculptures at their Christmas Crackers night and many other events besides! You can follow us over on facebook at www.facebook,com/kissandbakeup – we're a very interactive bunch and all our art pieces get previewed there before going on sale! Fly my pretties! Fly! And have a wonderful week with your loved ones!

 

Check out my Plus size Teeshirt Range at Nicky Rockets where my Betty Pamper Tee  is available in sizes Small-5XL 

Only £15,designed and made in the UK my tee shirts are  a celebration of the power of the curvy woman.Available in sizes small-5XL in a range of cuts and styles Shop here

All content (text, photos and other) are the property of Betty Pamper (aka Perelandra Beedles) unless otherwise stated. Please refrain from copying any material without recognition of the author and a link to the source on this blog

Halloween Party Ideas

I absolutely love Halloween and always go quite mad with decorations and costumes. This year was no different and because my little girl is also now beginning to appreciate the fun that this spooky time of year brings we decided to throw a big party for her and her friends.

Welcome To Halloween At Betty Bee Towers

I love to devise new games for parties so decided to create a spooky treasure hunt in our garden. Using large blocks of polystyrene which I brought from a DIY store I cut out headstone shapes and carved silly names into them. A quick spray of black paint and they turned my garden into a graveyard.

These Polystyrene Headstones Looked Great And Took No Time To Make

No Halloween celebration would be complete without plenty of pumpkins so I carved lots of them in various designs so I could have them inside the house, in the garden and of course one by the front door. I used a simple pumpkin carving set which I brought from pound land. Seeing some orange flowers in the supermarket gave me the idea of using a pumpkin as a make shift vase. I also stuck fake vampire teeth in a few as well which looked very comical.

Pumpkins Galore

Pumpkin Vases
As regular readers of my blog will know I made my Halloween bunting and Halloween tree decorations a few weeks ago so they ensured the inside of the house looked suitably creepy yet festive.

The Halloween Tree

Skelebob Bunting

I also love these Pumpkin lanterns. They look fab blowing from the trees in the garden and I also used one as a Halloween pinata which the kids seemed to particularly enjoy.

Pumpkin Lanterns

Preparing Halloween party food is just such good fun. Anything goes. I recently picked up an old copy of Family Circle magazine from 1968 and the recipes were hilarious. I followed a few for this party including the egg witches with salami hats and olive eyes.

Hard Boiled Witch egg Anyone? Anyone..

I also made Spider biscuits using Oreos covered in black icing with liquorice legs and fried egg sweets as eyes

Spider Cookies
And Dracula Cupcakes which were just simple sponge cupcakes covered in icing with fang sweets and fried egg sweets which I coloured with red food dye.

Dracula Cupcakes

Kids always go mad for jelly so a nice slime green one with an eyeball centre piece seemed to go down well.

Green Slime Jelly

Add plenty of sweets (I'm particularly fond of the chocolate dead men's fingers) and away you go.

Deadmens Fingers-Yum

I also made a lovely punch using apple juice, Cinnamon, oranges, lemons and a great punch herb mix which I brought from the supermarket and which came in a teabag. For the adults I added pear cider (well children's party's go so much easier with a glass in your hand)

The Spooky Table
For costumes this year I went for a Katy Perry inspired witch (any excuse for a purple wig) Nicky Rockets was a bequiffed werewolf and Baba was Dracula's Bride.

The Bee's Ready To Do The Monster Mash

Happy Halloween. May your night be fun, spooky and involve eating many sweeties.

Limited Edition Killer Curves Tee Shirts (including the brand new Curverella and the zombies design) Now On Sale

My brand new Killer Curve tee Shirts cost £13 and are available to buy from here having curves never looked so good!

All content (text, photos and other) are the property of Betty Pamper (aka Perelandra Beedles) unless otherwise stated. Please refrain from copying any material without recognition of the author and a link to the source on this blog

I love to read your comments. Im not always the quickest at replying to them but rest assured I read every one. For quick responses twitter and facebook are probably better.Thanks so much for checking in. It makes my day.

halloween nail art tutorial

When it comes to nail art there is no one who does it better than my friend Lisa Duffy. I spied her Halloween themed nails a few days ago and just had to share with you how spectacular they are. Lisa has very kindly agreed to be today's guest blogger. Take it away Ms D.

Thanks to Betty for asking me to do a guest spot on her fabalicious blog.

A little about me – I love taking photos, Morrissey, gin, zombies, Reeses peanut butter cups and nail geekery.

That’s all you need to know for now.

As it’s my favourite time of year – Halloween (and Dia de Los Muertos just a couple of days after) – I thought i’d share my ‘Halloween Nails’ with you.

I did a bit of research by looking at youtube videos and picked the designs that I thought were most ‘do-able’ on my at-the-moment-shortish nails and designs that are manageable with my left hand!

I have many, many polishes and items of nail paraphernalia – about 600 polishes, but don’t tell a soul. My favourite brands are OPI, China Glaze, Nails Inc and Orly – but if I like a colour and the polish is good quality I will buy it – a good brush is everything!

(Maybe i’ll do a general nail item at a later date if Betty will let me ;) )

So I wrote down the colours needed for the designs I had chosen and lined ‘em up. I like to get everything ready before I start so that I don’t get a ‘boo boo’ on a nail searching for something i’ve forgotten!

I’ve taken photos of the polishes i’ve used. I buy nail wheels – about £2 for 10 from Ebay – and like to test out polishes/designs on there first – see photos.

First – I decided which designs i’d put on each nail and painted the base accordingly.

I have an assortment of fine brushes – these can be bought from art supply shops or Ebay, and also a few ‘spriper polishes’ – from Ebay too – Ebay is a fantastic source of nail supplies – and really good value too.

There are some step by step photos for you to have a look at and also some snaps of the finished designs.

Of course, the ones on the nail wheel turned out a little more polished – i’m not ambidextrous and had to pick out the more simple designs for my right hand!

Right – i’m off – a friend bought me a genuine Mexican Dia de Los Muertos skull from her recent travels and I need to put it onto my little Halloween display!

Happy Halloween and, just two days later, Happy Dia de Los Muertos to one and all – eat, drink and remember lost loved ones with a smile!!

 

Check out my Plus size Teeshirt Range at Nicky Rockets where my Betty Pamper Tee  is available in sizes Small-5XL 

Only £15,designed and made in the UK my tee shirts are  a celebration of the power of the curvy woman.Available in sizes small-5XL in a range of cuts and styles Shop here

All content (text, photos and other) are the property of Betty Pamper (aka Perelandra Beedles) unless otherwise stated. Please refrain from copying any material without recognition of the author and a link to the source on this blog