As you can see by Little Mr IM’s face, we took this photo at the end of our cooking session! LMIM was most taken with it and we had to make a recipe from it that very afternoon – we chose chocolate fudge as we were a little short of time and ingredients! Whilst this recipe is super sweet, it does have a fudgy texture and it’s great to make with little ones as you don’t have to go through the whole boiling sugar stage! The pecans were an addition I made to attempt to counteract some of the sweetness and add in at least some nutrients!

Ingredients:

50g Plain Chocolate
50g Chopped Pecans
25g Margarine
200g Icing Sugar
1 Tablespoon Milk
1/4 Teaspoon of vanilla extract

Method:

Break up the chocolate into a small saucepan and add the butter. Melt over a very low heat then stir in the milk and vanilla extract. Stir in the chopped nuts.

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl then pour the chocolate mixture over and mix well. It gets very stiff so you might need to add a little extra milk at this point.

Press the mixture into a small shallow flan dish or baking tin, there’s no need to line it as it won’t stick. We both had a fit of the giggles at this point as LMIM made some unsavoury comments about what the fudge resembles at this stage

Pop the fudge in the fridge to set, not forgetting the all important stage of licking the spoon.

Once set, chop the fudge in to squares. This recipe is seriously sweet and is definately more about the experience of having fun in the kitchen together and less about producing a top quality fudge. We found as long as we rationed it to one square a day nobody went into sugar shock!!

Tada!! Quick and easy and good for a giggle – try it out with your little one and let us know how you get on

This was definately the case with this fantastically fun kids birthday cake. One minute a scrummy lemon sponge cake, the next a cheeky little monkey swinging in a tree   We hope that little Bobi loved him as much as we did!

I love the texture of this piece – so clever how they have made the sugar look like crudely carved wood. I love the little dog

Steam Punk is on my list of cake designs I absolutely must try! I love the modelling on this, the faces are so expressive – especially the little dog.

I really like the choice of colours here, the bow on the top hat looks so soft and sumptuous as does the voluptuous lady. It’s no mean feat getting such a statuesque sugar figure to sit still and behave herself!

I remember these little guys very fondly and they have been captured perfectly here.

I’m not usually in to sugarcraft for it’s own sake as for me, it’s all about the cake. But this display piece was just amazing! Check out the tiny little pieces of jewellery in the dressing table and the fact there is rubbish in the bin and water in the dog bowl. Outstanding

The black sugarpaste on this cake has a lovely soft sheen and the delicate white blossoms and offset square tiers stop the look becoming too heavy. The black also makes the perfect foil for the bride and groom topper, letting your little mini-me cake topper be the star of the show.

I like this shot – it looks like they just got down off the cake for a little stroll

The cake top featured the iconic Sea Harrier jump jet

The finished cake ties together nicely with the red, white and blue colour scheme

The white ensign and rope border on the bottom tier represent the Royal Navy