It's unavoidable - Christmas is coming! We're looking forward to it! A time for tradition, though not so much with the cake we find. There aren't too many traditional fruit cakes ordered from us, perhaps folks still enjoy making them at home, but the Happyhills contribution tends to be the chocolate version. It lasts really well over the festive season and is a nice but still indulgent change from rich fruit. (it also makes a great pudding if slightly warmed with cream or ice cream :)). But there are other flavours too that are well suited to the winter - black forest, white chocolate & cranberry, black bottom, sticky toffee, maple & peacan ... mmmm! Another viewpoint could be that this is a perfect time to have something very light and fresh, perhaps lemon based, to contrast with all the rich Christmas food? To summarise..Christmas needs cake whatever way you look at it!! :D
We are really lucky to have a fab Yuletide night in West Kilbride - the whole town comes out for Santa's parade, fairground rides and late night shopping in the local shops and craft studios - it may be a little weather dependant but it really is a Christmassy occasion. We are really pleased to be able to borrow some space in Happyhills Studios to have some of our Christmas cakes and little cakes to sell and will be sharing some space (and party atmosphere!) with Chookiebirdie and Knit1Girl1. And how nice to have the word Happyhills in the location! - if you are from the town it's a familiar street name and Emily lived there when she started the business, otherwise it may just sound like a happy wee name :D

It was quite lucky with the timing of a cake we had made recently that it could be entered into a competition for Black & White cakes online. Going through this process opened our eyes to a whole online community that we hadn’t previously fully appreciated – such diverse and talented professionals from all over the world that we can follow, talk to and be inspired by. It’s hard to imagine how we could be exposed to such work if it weren’t for the wonders of the internet. We have always been especially keen on contemporary design and while we can get loads of non-cake design inspiration from all around, it is sometimes the case that the cakers from other parts of the world have the edge when it comes to modern trends for wedding cakes. Having access to visuals of what’s happening across the globe is really exciting for us, it’s a privilege to see some of the work of the big hitters in the world of cake design on a daily basis, and it’s equally interesting to see the work of smaller businesses and individuals who like us wouldn’t be in a geographically obvious location!

As with many professions it seems a good idea to bring an element of competition to the workplace from time to time. It’s really important to us to keep looking forward and finding ways to get better and better at what we do. It was fortunate to be able to enter the Black and White Beaded cake to an online international competition as it had been such a labour of love (which at times felt like madness) and it was such a relief for it to be so well received. Another form of competition is at the big cake shows across the world, the UK has a few – Cake International is coming up shortly in Birmingham and we were so disappointed that a Glasgow version of the show was cancelled earlier this year. We are so keen to see the competition entries at shows like this and would really love to enter ourselves – such a great opportunity for entrants to show work at the top of their game and come up with ideas that are more elaborate than regular orders allow. Funds wont allow us to go this time round, but we can’t wait til we can!

Some points of interest we have found online Cakesdecor.com, Cake Central, Cake Masters, Cake Geek, Royal Bakery, Cakes by Raewyn, Callicious Cakes – to name a very very few..