Part of my Woman behind the business blog series Why I started the business I have baked cakes for as long as I can ever remember and in 1993 completed a Christmas cake decorating course which I loved. This was one of my first cakes using Royal icing as the main medium. Many Christmas cakes were made with royal icing but done as a snow scene with plastic novelty figures of snowmen and Santa stuck into the icing whilst it was still wet. I am sure many children had great pleasure waiting for those same ornaments to come out year upon year. In our house we took it in turns to put the figures on and over the years a...
Why everyone needs a chicken in their life I love chickens! At Cookie Doodle Doo I like to use locally sourced ingredients where possible especially free range eggs. There has been lots of campaigning in recent years about the plight of caged hens headed up by top chefs such as Jamie Oliver and this got me to thinking how nice it would be to rescue a few hens and have them in my vegetable patch. The thought of rescuing hens gave me a great sense of excitement. I contacted the British Hen Welfare Trust (at the time they were known as the Battery Hen Welfare Trust) to find out where the local collection venues were. I found one at Wragby...
Ancient Beginnings The custom of sending greeting cards has been traced back to the ancient Chinese, who exchanged messages of goodwill to celebrate the New Year and to the early Egyptians, who conveyed their greetings on papyrus scrolls. Handmade paper greeting cards were being exchanged in Europe during the early 15th century with the Germans printing New Year's greetings from woodcuts as early as 1400 and it is known that paper Valentines were being exchanged here too Industrial Revolution By the 1850s, the greeting card had been transformed from a relatively expensive, handmade and hand-delivered gift to a popular and affordable means of personal communication, due largely to advances in printing, mechanisation, and a reduction in postal rates with the introduction...
