Pretty In Pink

I am practising flowers!  I have a wedding coming up next month and I need to do a lot of flowers!!  Currently this petunia cutter is my favourite....

Giant Cupcake

I have had one of those giant cupcake silicone moulds for a while now yet have never gotten round to trying it.  Well this weekend was the weekend for it.....OH's family were visiting us from the States and were here from Friday until Monday and as it was Lucy's (youngest niece) birthday on Wednesday, I decided I was going to make her the giant cupcake as a surprise cake.

She unwittingly helped me make her own cake as she was hanging around the kitchen whilst I was baking .....so she chose the icing colour, the flowers, where to put them etc all the while me telling her it was an order for someone else's birthday (cruel aunt!!) so it was nice to see her face when we brought the cake out and she realised it was for her and that she'd help to do it.

It was a basic vanilla sponge and took about 1 & 1/2 hours to bake.  I expected it to take longer and I suppose for the sponge to be a bit denser but I have to say it was a bit tricky getting it out of the mould.  I would suggest you grease it well to help it.  I had sprayed it with my usual spray that I use when doing ordinary cakes, but I think it could have done with a thicker covering of it.

I also got to try our my new flower cutter / mould which I have got for wedding cupcakes.  It was quite expensive for a cutter....£9......FOR ONE CUTTER!!! But it came with the mould and the flowers are lovely once done.  I think I will get my money's worth from it.

I ordered the giant cupcake box on-line and I think it made it look really special when done and even though they were damn expensive for a box, they are worth it for a special occasion and if you look after the box it should last a while (these boxes will definitely have to be returned in good order if someone wants one of these doing!!).  So all in all, it was a success!  I am thinking of doing one for Niece Chloe for her birthday next week in fact

Ingredients
360g plain flour
1 tablespoon baking power
360g butter, softened
360g caster sugar
6 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

Cream sugar and butter together until light, fluffy & pale in colour.  Add eggs, one at a time giving a good mix in between (if the mixture looks like its curdling, just add a spoonful of flour to the mix).  Once all eggs are in, slowly add the flour & baking powder.  Mix until combined.

Fill the tubs 3/4 way up

Place in oven at 180°C (I do 170°C as my oven is 'hot' fan oven)

Check after 1 hour.  If the top if browning too much, don't worry as you will invarably be cutting this bit off anyway to make the flat top.

once cooled, cover in buttercream or fondant...your choice.  I used buttercream, vanilla on top and chocolate on the bottom and i sandwiched the two halves of the cake together with buttercream and then decorated with sugarpaste flowers and glitter......Do not forget the glitter!

NB, the colours of the flowers were in fact much paler than the photographs suggest....they were white, lilac, hot pink & pink with lime green butterfly's

 the box had another 'cupcake window' that was on the top side of the box when shut so you could pear into the box

 Instagram picture

Mum's Birthday Art Class Treat

As part of her birthday present I made my mum some cupcakes to take to her art class that she goes to each week.  36 various flower design cupcakes were made.  It was a good job that I made too many flowers when I was doing the 80th Birthday Cake as these spare ones came in very hand to just pop in the top of these vanilla cupcakes saving me a lot of time!

80th Birthday Cake

I think this has been my most ambitious cake yet.  A two tiered birthday cake decorated with lots and lots of tiny flowers in a swag effect around both tiers along with butterflies on wires coming out of the middle of the top tier.

It turned out very well and I was very pleased with it.  It was for my friends mum whose birthday it was and they all loved it and apparently it all got eaten which is always a good sign!

I started making the flowers on Sunday evening and had 3 foam sheets worth of them done, far too many for the cake, but just in case any broke as they can be  very delicate when set and easily snap.  Each one was cut out and then a tiny 'pearl' was set into the middle of each flower.  Each butterfly was also painted with edible glitter down the centre of the body.  To say it was time consuming is a slight understatement!!

The bottom tier was baked on and iced separately in order to give the icing time to set.  The top tier again was done separately.  I got some strange looks when I explained that there were actually straws in the middle of the bottom tier but these make great support structures for when you have a heavy second cake layer to put on top.  Just insert them and simply snip to the right height.

All the flowers were glued on by hand and each one had to be pressed gently in place until the edible glue slightly set them.  The swags were done by marking off a cross vertically and horizontally on the cake so you got 4 points.  I put a pin on each marker point and then with a long necklace pinned a link and then draped the chain to meet the next pin and then pinned the link etc.  Once done I traced round the swag with a scriber tool to give me the outline to following with the flowers.

The butterflies on the topper I cut a little thicker out of sugarpaste so I could insert a wire dipped in edible food glue in the body post.  These were then set in a food grade food post that you insert into the cake.

I took quite a few pics!!!

Birthday Blossom Cupcakes

My latest new cutter is a lovely blossom one.  These cupcakes have the medium sized cutter placed on top.  I put a pattern to the icing and dusted with lustre dust so it picked it up more to make them stand out a bit more.  I used a mix of two shades of pink for the icing, one light and one dark to give a bit of contract.

These were for my friend's mum Mary as it was her birthday at the weekend.

Silver Anniversary Cake Ideas & New Baby Boy Cakes

Have been putting together a Silver Wedding Anniversary cake for Ve for this weekend.... a few shots of the work in progress to follow.... basically is going to be a round white plain iced cake and I have a nice silver ribbon to go round the outside, placed on a silver board with 3 white roses which have 'diamond' dew drops in the petals and sprinkled with iridescent glitter and 3 silver leaves, one of which has silver glitter on and then scattered around the cake will be white and silver hearts with the words Happy Anniversary 'painted' on the cake with silver lustre dust and two red hearts near the words.  Does that sound ok?!

Little blue bootees to go on top of some cupcakes for some friends who had twin boys last week and their initials V & F

Flower Cake

I saw a beautiful sugarpaste flower the other day when I was reading the Cake Journal blog (www.cakejournal.com) and I thought I would have a go.  I couldn't find a flower cutter big enough to create the petals so I decided to improvise and use what I had to hand which turned out to be leaf cutters!!  I think it turned out quite well and decided to use it on a birthday cake I was doing for one of the Other Half's colleagues' who wanted a cake for his mum's birthday.

The first cake base I did turned out a bit rubbish (Rachel Allen was put back on the shelf) and Lorraine Pascale replaced her!  Lorraine's recipe gives a lighter sponge yet its still hardy enough to hold up the icing.

So this week I have done 2 birthday cakes and at 8.30pm on Wednesday night I was dragging my OH away from watching sport on the tv to ferry me quickly to Hobbycraft and as it turned out, Sainsbury's as well (because Hobbycraft was shut even thought the retail park stays open till 9pm, grrrrr!!) to buy cake bases as I had misjudged the size of the ones I had and they didn't fit in the boxes I had specifically bought to put the birthday cakes in.  AND whilst I am on about supermarkets, why does nowhere sell Dr Oetker food colouring???  I needed the red for my Red Velvets I am making at the weekend and couldn't find any anywhere....had to buy triple the amount of Asda's food colouring which will no doubt not be the same....double grrrrr!!!

I have a weekend full of cupcake baking, red velvets, chocolate and vanilla ones.  My neighbour was concerned that there wouldn't be any cupcakes at a party we are going to at the weekend, but its all in hand, so don't worry Jess, you will be able to have a cupcake on Saturday night!!

Joyce's 83rd Birthday

Yesterday saw my aunt reach her 83rd birthday.  So a cake was made in her honour.....if truth be told, it was a trial run chocolate cake for the christening cake I am doing in a few weeks time.  The results were good!!

Flowers dusted with lustre dust