Sugar and spice, and all that's nice, that's what little girls are made of

I'm sheepish to admit, but I get way too pysched about baking for little girls - you can't exactly festoon a locomotive or football field shaped confection with sugarpaste roses or tint it pink. What a treat, then, it was when some of my favourite people in the world celebrated the birthdays of their little princesses the week just past, relishing the excuse to indulge in fashioning flora and fauna figurines in an ultra-girly pastel palette for topping the fondant fancies. As is evident, I have a weakness (and a huge one at that) for the very twee and over-the-top.

Ups-A-Daisy

A mix of rolled fondant daisies and sweet little bows. The "pollen" is actually coloured sanding sugar.

Hugs-and-Stitches

Designed to match the plates my friend bought for her party, the fondant cut-outs are finished with details piped in coloured royal icing. The quilted effect on the letters is created with a stitching tool.

Butterflyaways

A butterfly farm's worth of pretty flitting little things. The wings, which are royal icing runouts, are pieced together with stiff royal icing, which is also used for pressure piping the bodies and feelers.

Dragonflyaways

My mother worried for the longest time I would never outgrow my tomboy phase; ironically, as a little girl, I was always - to quote from that nursery rhyme - more about slugs and snails then sugar and spice. So while these are no less pretty than the Butterflyaways, I like to imagine it's Roald Dahl-esque that these came to life and escaped from an Art Nouveau stained glass window only to get trapped in wet, sticky sugar.

More cake-shaped cookie favours below. For anybody who loves decorating cakes, these decorated cookies are instant gratification - all the pleasure of dreaming up new ideas and rendering a design in royal icing work, but condensed into a tiny four-by-three space and sans the long waiting times, sometimes weeks, it can take to finish a tiered cake. Faced with a blank cookie canvas, however, I sometimes draw a blank - I find it helps tremendously to sketch my ideas out on paper first before actually wielding the piping bag, especially when creating collections unified by a theme.

Lace & Swags

Vintage Chintz

Prepster

Tiaras & Pearls

Daisy Chain