Ah the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd! Here’s my latest creation, a musical themed birthday cake for my friends step daughter. It’s chocolate sponge with vanilla buttercream. The billboards are printed sugarpaste with sprinkles used for the lightbulbs. They took aaaages to put on!
Thanks for reading!
This month I was asked to make a christening cake for a family friend. They wanted a special cake for their four year old grand daughter. Initially they wanted a bike or a slide on the top of the cake, but I had to point out that my skills in sugarpaste are still a bit limited! So I suggested perhaps a favourite animal for the theme and that’s when we agreed on the two pet cats in sugarpaste for the cake. I really liked making the cats they were fairly straightforward to make, and are entirely edible except for the whiskers, which are made of wire. The cake is vanilla with vanilla buttercream.
Although this cake is very cute and girly I did enjoy making it. Just not as much as the star wars one!
Last week I made wedding cupcakes for a colleague. I had made a test run a few weeks ago and had got the thumbs up, so the day before the wedding I spent all day in the kitchen baking! I made over a hundred cakes in total so as you can image my kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it! I made the cakes in several batches, a mixture of vanilla and chocolate cupcakes. The icing was vanilla buttercream for all the cakes, and as with the cupcakes I had to make it in batches. Each time I made a batch of buttercream a fine layer of icing sugar dust was deposited all over my kitchen!
It took a while to set it up at the wedding venue but it was worth it to see my friends face she was really happy with the cakes and it was a pleasure to be able to contribute to her big day.
Anyhows, enough of my ramblings, here are the cakes!
Thanks for reading!
I cannot believe this day has come round so quickly – I have been blogging for one whole year!
It’s been an exciting year of baking, I’ve made a variety of cakes for friends and family, some have been more of a challenge than others but all are ultimately worth when I get the message that the cake was very tasty!
So what’s in store for my upcoming year of blogging? Well, firstly I want to learn more about blogging and setting up my site, there is still lots to learn about networking with the baking blogger community, and I want to post more step by step recipes to share my tasty finds!
So thanks for reading and I look forward to you visiting the site in the coming year!
Well it’s May the 4th and what better day to share with you my latest birthday cake creation!
This cake was made for a young man who is obsessed with both Lego and star wars! He was very happy with his birthday cake.
Happy Star Wars day!
Well it’s Easter Sunday and I couldn’t resist making a huge chocolate cake!
I used a recipe from the hummingbird bakery book for Brooklyn blackout cake. It’s a fairly basic chocolate sponge but the filling is a thickened chocolate syrup which is like an eggless custard. It was quite difficult to make the filling as there were quite a few lumps of cornflour in it! So i had to spend a while checking the mixture and removing the lumps! I think next time I would use an electric hand held mixer to ensure it was really smooth. The recipe calls for a crumbled cake coating but I went for crushed flake bars instead and topped with a mix of chocolate eggs.
I’m looking forward to devouring a slice this afternoon with my family. Here’s wishing you a great Easter break.
This week I did a test run for wedding cupcakes that I am making for a friend in May. The bride to be wanted purple anemones and red roses. I decided on chocolate sponge for the anemone topped cakes and classic vanilla sponge for the rose topped ones. I didn’t have any red cases so I decided to use fancy striped ones for the test cakes. They are fab but perhaps a bit too funky for a wedding so we are going to have red plain cases for all the cakes on the big day.
I really enjoy making the flowers, it’s a very calm and focused process and very satisfying too. I have made anemones before but this was the first time I didn’t use wire for the stamens, as the flowers need to be completely edible. Luckily it’s not that tricky to make the centres from flower paste and I actually prefer them! I also tried a new technique for the roses, using a scalloped border cutter which made them come together very quickly.
So I’m looking forward to making a hundred of these very soon!
Thanks for reading!
Okay I know it’s lame to go on about ‘the best this’ and ‘the best that’, but I truly have discovered the most wonderful chocolate cake recipe. It’s a rich, moist and dark sponge recipe that’s not too sweet, a proper ‘grown up’ flavour that’s a million miles away from the usual sickly sweet chocolate cupcakes. I found this recipe on the very wonderful site bakingdom.com, courtesy of Darla.
Having tested the recipe three times now, I’m sharing it with you!
Chocolate cupcakes
Makes 16 to 18 standard cupcakes
Ingredients
1/2 cup (8 ounces or 250 ml) strong brewed coffee, hot
1/2 cup (8 ounces or 250 ml) hot water *a cup of coffee and water made 400ml not 500ml!
1/2 cup (28 grams) cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups (191 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick or 113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup (200 grams) sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract
In a medium bowl, or a two cup measuring cup, stir the cocoa powder into the hot coffee until dissolved. Set aside until cooled to room temperature, or place in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.
Once the cocoa/coffee mixture has cooled, preheat oven to 350 degrees (180 C). Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners; set aside.
In a medium bowl sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
In a large bowl, or the bowl of a standing mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix until combined; stir in the vanilla. Sprinkle 1/3 of the flour mixture over the bowl and mix until just combined. Add 1/2 of the chocolate mixture, mixing again until just combined. Repeat with reamining flour and chocolate mixtures, ending with flour. Mix only until flour is just incorporated. Do not over mix.
Place 2 tablespoons of batter in each cupcake liner. *i filled them 3/4 full using my ice cream scoop. Bake for 20-23 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with just a few crumbs clinging to it. Allow to cool completely before frosting..
As these cupcakes are not too sweet they work very well with chocolate and vanilla buttercream.
Thanks for reading!
Hello blog readers!
This weekend I made a cake based on the video game “Halo” for a family member. It was his 17th birthday. My auntie asked me to make this cake at pretty short notice so I had to think of something effective but straightforward. I was amazed at all the creative things people have done based on this video game, I had no idea it was so popular! But then again I’ve always been totally rubbish at computer games so no surprises there! People had customised their Xbox consoles to look like the game, made their own costumes and there were some excellent cakes out on the web too. My original idea was to make a carved cake in the shape of the helmet from the main character in the game, but I soon realised that I didn’t really have enough time to do it justice.
So I decided to put my photoshop skills to use by designing a custom cover for the halo Xbox game, replacing the game name with the birthday boys name. I also designed a custom CD as well. The artworks are printed onto sugar paper and the game cover was placed on a block of green sugarpaste to look like the game box. The cake is a simple chocolate Madeira cake with chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream and chocolate sugarpaste covering.
here you can see more detailed pics of the artwork;
I really enjoyed doing this cake – it was nice to use my computer design skills as well as baking!
Thanks for reading!
…..Batmaaan! Okay, I know no one under 40 is going to get that joke! This weekend I had the great pleasure of making a special birthday cake;
…it was the birthday boys request as he loves Lego especially Batman Lego.
The cake is chocolate with chocolate buttercream. I used chocolate mini rolls to make the arms.
Okay so who is your favourite superhero? And what flavour would they be in cake?
Thanks for reading!
follow: RSS