‘It was so beautiful, Gabrielle could hardly bear to cut into it at first. But by the end of her party, she was sharing it with all her friends,' Clair adds. ‘The wonderful thing about Baking A Smile is that it understands that siblings are just as deserving as their disabled brothers and sisters.'
The diagnosis was devastating - ‘I thought my world was ending,' Sophie admits - and inevitably life-changing, but remarkably, in the battle to stabilise her health, she has found a different way to bring untold pleasure to those who deserve it most.
‘There is nothing more uplifting than the look of pure delight on someone's face when they set eyes on a cake made just for them,' said Sophie Ford who started cake-baking business Sophie's Delights four years ago
At last, I was blindingly sure of what I wanted to do: I was going to become a cook. Easier said than done: at 20, one of the few things I'd ever made was a Christmas cake with concrete icing that had shattered Dad's bone-handled carving knife when he tried to use it as a chisel.
The consequence of Sophie's relentless activity was a relapse of the MS by October 2012 (85 per cent of cases of MS are of ‘relapsing remitting' type - patients have distinct attacks of symptoms, which then fade and return at a later date).
Dressed in a bright pink coat, a matching hat with a floral trim and sporting a slick of pink lipstick, the Queen beamed as she got out of her car at the delivery office to be warmly welcomed by dozens of well-wishers
But the little prince, and the stack of foam pads he was pictured standing, on also caught the attention of numerous internet pranksters, who created a series of memes in homage of the portrait which were widely shared on Twitter.
He said of the royal visit: 'I think for the staff it's recognition of the great work they do and the majority of them live in the local area - and this is one of the best things that's ever happened to me.'
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toddler lunch ideas for daycare (no reheat) is a child aged 1 to 3.
Whether I really deserve to be sitting in judgment on great chefs is debatable. I was never the chef at Leith's restaurant; I've never been a fanatical foodie; and I've always been perfectly happy to nick ideas from other chefs.
‘That was when I first admitted that something had to give - and that something was going to be my business, because my arms had become so weak I could no longer roll out the cake icing,' she says. ‘And the most important thing was preserving my stamina for Benji and Millie.'
There is no cure for MS but treatments are increasingly effective and Sophie's response to the drugs she was prescribed was so positive that within weeks she was feeling better, ‘which further enabled me to convince myself that there wasn't anything wrong'.
The Queen received an early birthday present ahead of turning 90 tomorrow when she was handed a bouquet of flowers by a young well-wisher who bore an uncanny resemblance to her great-grandson, Prince George.
That evening, I watched Madame make the children's supper: everyone from the toddler upwards got exactly the same thing — tiny rare steaks, salad with French dressing, boiled potatoes, followed by a sliver of apple pie. It was all fresh and made from scratch by a woman who knew what she was doing.
The Queen kicked off her 90th birthday celebrations a day early today and was greeted with cheers as she arrived to meet long-serving postmen and women at a Royal Mail delivery office near her Windsor Castle home
I was saved by the head butler, Declan. First, he failed to announce dinner, so drinks over-ran by half an hour. Then, when the guests were seated, he had his waiters spin out every action to funeral tempo.
A series of events will be staged, from a St Paul's Cathedral service of thanksgiving to the traditional Trooping the Colour ceremony, and a sit-down celebration for 10,000 people on The Mall called the Patron's Lunch.
Charlie Capper, who at 18-months-old is around a year younger than the toddler prince, beamed as he handed the smiling monarch the blooms, which he had brought with him from his home in Horley, Sussex, during her visit to the Windsor Royal Mail delivery office.
Her mission statement - ‘Making a child smile is a piece of cake' - has captured the imagination of thousands of followers, as well as the attention of the Women of the Year lunch organisers who chose Sophie as an inspiring guest at their most recent awards ceremony.
My first real job was cooking three days a week for the law firm McKenna and Partners in Whitehall. Intent on developing my skills, I set about cooking my way through the 1,200-plus pages of the Constance Spry cookery book. The partners were extraordinarily good about it. When I got to the chicken chapter, they ate chicken, in different guises, for weeks on end.
Tyler Abbott, ten, from St Austell, Cornwall, has epilepsy, dyspraxia and speech delay. His mother Lesley, 28, heard about Baking A Smile through a friend. Within days of requesting a cake for Tyler, she was put in touch with local baker Sammy Hawke, of Sammy's Cakes Serendipity, who agreed to make a Transformers Bumblebee cake.
