Mindfulness Workshops:

Did you know that cake decorating is a mindful activity?

All food preparation is a mindful activity and provides a chance to slow down and appreciate the many sensations that food creates.

Mindfulness is a state of being completely focused on the present moment, without dwelling on or reacting to your thoughts.

In a Cookie Girl workshop…

1. You will focus on the task in hand and disconnect from the every day rush.

2. You will feel the benefits of a break from your phone, and all technology.

3. Being creative, frees the mind of stressful thoughts and enhances well-being.

4. You will learn techniques of piping and other icing styles, to express your artistic self. 

5. You will experience a post activity lift to your mental wellbeing.

6. You will also experience the additional mood boost of showing and sharing your cakes that you take home to your loved ones.

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Mindful activities experienced on a regular basis  have been shown to:

1. Increase staff productivity.

2. Reduce sick days due to stress.

3. Give employees a sense of happiness in their jobs by increasing opportunities for ‘play’

4. Generally increase well-being created by the team bonding experience.

The best thing about our Cookie Girl workshops is that the mindful benefits are all part of a light-hearted and joyful treat for participants, provided by their company. Mindfulness Workshops:

Cake Making Class - Unicorn Cake

We used a mould to make the horn, ears and eyelashes using sugarpaste. This meant it was easier to achieve a professional finish than if we’d rolled the horn by hand, which can inadvertently lead to a rather inappropriate end result! I was very impressed by how well the students did with all of them getting fantastic results in the cake class. The vanilla sponge cakes they baked in the cake baking lesson were just delicious. They did a great job using a palette knife to get a smooth finish with the delicious buttercream, and they created the swirling rainbow unicorn mane by piping buttercream swirls and roses - this gave them the opportunity to get lots of practice with their buttercream piping techniques. By the end of the 3.5hr cake making class they were amazed by what they had been able to create. They went home really excited to share their Unicorn Cakes with their families.

Team Bonding at CAA

A great time was had by all at CAA at their team bonding workshop. We did a bit of a different cake making event on this occasion. They particularly wanted to get their hands on some fondant icing (or edible Play Doh, as I like to think of it) and create some Christmas themed cakes. They had a great time making, snow men, elves, Christmas trees and even Father Christmas. But the winning cupcake was actually a beautiful and original snow leopard. The girl who made it was thrilled to take home her very own, personalised copy of my best selling recipe book! They were a great group who really put 100% into what they were doing and it seemed to be a lovely place to work. The group seemed really close, more like family than co-workers. And their boss seemed astonishingly young (unless it’s just a sign of me getting older!). We really loved working with them and are looking forward to doing more events there in the future.

Christmas Biscuit Family Day

We were approached by an events company to create a fun gingerbread man decorating class for a pre Christmas event. It was for a law firms family day and it needed to be a simple workshop that event the little ones would be able to create. We made clothes and accessories out of rolled fondant. This allowed the kids to make really impressive father Christmas’, snowmen and elves without too much adult intervention. The kids were absolutely thrilled with their creations which we gift wrapped in red and green striped bags and cellophane for them to take home.

New Events Venue in White City

Introducing our fantastic new bright, light West London venue. It is a fantastic place for hen parties, birthday parties and cake classes. Basically here we can cover all your cake making and cupcake decorating needs. It is also a great environment for conference activities, team building and client events. So whatever your cake making related needs we are pretty sure that this is the ideal venue for us to host it in. We are also now offering cocktail making workshops alongside our cake making classes which have proved really popular with our hen parties and we plan to begin offering them to our corporate clients for their company events.

Cupcake Decorating Class At Our New Venue

Here is our first cake making class at our new venue in White City. When we decided to move back to our own flat for various reasons we knew that we would not have space to have anything other than small private lessons there. Initially, we put all our group cake decorating classes on hold. I really wasn’t sure what we would do with regards to a location. Then I remembered that when we had left the area 8 yrs ago the company that were building the Imperial College building at the end of our road, offered to build us a community centre. I went to have a look at it and I couldn’t believe how perfect it was for our fun filled cake making hen parties, team building events and cake classes. Now that we have done a few events there they seem very keen for us to book in as many cake workshops as possible. Also, because it seats up to 80 and even has a projector screen (perfect for powerpoint) it is ideal for conferences, networking and client events. I look forward to sharing lots more images of the various cake classes and workshops that we have planned there.

Conference Activity & Inspirational Speech

I was really excited to be invited by Amiculum to give an inspirational speech as well as a cupcake making conference activity. They wanted me to tell my ‘Start Up’ story which is the easiest speech I can give as i know it so well! They even prepared me slides to illustrate my story (me on my cookie rounds, on my cake stall on Portobello, my cakes and cookies being sold in Selfridges and my recipe book) so I could give a power point presentation. I wasn’t sure whether to use a mike or not to teach the cake decorating workshop as it would have been impossible to hold it whilst i was demonstrating. Luckily one of the delegates stepped in and held it for me so I could concentrate on the cake class. There were 90 participants none of whom had done cake decorating before. Although I’m not sure if I believe that as the general standard of their cake making was so high. Everyone learnt 3 different piping techniques during their conference activity. They then voted for each tables best cupcake. Then they brought all of them to my table and i picked the three winning cupcakes. One of them won a signed copy of my book and 2 of them won a Cookie Girl decorating kit. I really loved working with this company and think they did a great job in their cake making conference activity.

Hawaiian 8th Birthday Party

I’d had the idea ages ago to do a Hawaiian themed party for Cosy Mae’s 8th birthday party. The combination of palm trees, pineapples and Hula girls just seemed like an inspiring combination for a cake table. Also, being June I thought we were pretty much guaranteed sunshine- ha! In the lead up to the forecast every report I read predicted rain all day which was hardly surprising as it had pretty much rained every day leading up to the party. By some miracle the sun came out and we were blessed with blue sky and temperate weather. It was a big relief as we had 20 kids coming and had recently moved out of a house and into a flat with a huge communal garden. It would have been really depressing (and very claustrophobic) if we’d been rained off and had to be inside. We had some brilliant games; limbo, hula dancing statues, Hawaiian treasure hunt and of course parcel parcel, as my kids call it (when will they grow out of it?!). As usual, like a nutter, I spent weeks planning the cake table and then a couple of weeks prepping and making the contents for the cake table. On it we had; Hula Girl Birthday Cake (Oreo flavour), Tropical flower cupcakes, iced biscuits (Palm tree, Pineapple, Mermaid and Ice cream), Hawaiian Hula Bark, Tiki Cake Pops, Sea and Starfish Meringues. I used an orange cotton fabric to make a sunset colour back drop and table cloth (I finally got a piece of foam board to use as a backdrop base.) I was pretty pleased with the over all effect although I do always wish there was a professional photographer on hand to capture my hard work before it is all devoured and demolished by ravenous kids.

Intermediate Cupcake Class

This group of students did a fantastic job at their cupcake decorating class. They had all taken part in the beginners cake making class and now wanted to improve their cake icing skills. This class is great for preparing you to tackle the more advanced cake icing techniques as it begins to get you to work on a smaller scale with greater detailing. As long as you are able to pipe an icing rose then you will be able to manage the content in this 2hr workshop. You will focus on flat icing the cupcakes with a palette knife before going on to pipe miniature roses and rosette designs on top. I then show you a fantastic and deceptively simple technique for piping on leaves without using a nozzle. It is just created by cutting the piping bag in a particular way. These girls had all mastered the techniques during the intermediate cake decorating class and are planning to attend our advanced cupcake decorating class soon. We are also really pleased to be able to offer these classes to our corporate clients for their team building, networking and client events.

Nike Training Day Activity

There is nothing I like better than a challenge so I was thrilled to hear from Nik who wanted something unique. He told me he worked for a company called nike. ‘Ah yes, I’ve heard of them’, I replied. He wanted a bespoke event created that would stimulate some great brainstorming. This gave me the chance to create some fab edible trainers (Nike obvs), football kits and world cups. They would use the cakes instead of a mood board and then pitch their concept. The themes they were given were; ‘Woman’s World Cup’, ‘London Marathon’ & ‘Nike Air’. Let’s just say that some of the deliveries were more successful than others and the stand out pitch was not for the winning presentation. But the first pic below shows the winning teams brilliantly executed design. They showed great focus and team work as well as an impressive technical ability with the actual piping and decorating. For me there design stood out as cohesive and well realised. The girls were thrilled with their prizes of Cookie Girl cake decorating kits.