Rudolph Reindeer Cupcakes

Cupcakes aren't really my forte, largely because I'm not very good at piping, but after the success of the snowmen cupcakes last week I decided to try making some reindeer cupcakes this week.

I used this recipe (it's gorgeous, try it, you won't regret it!), a small amount of white and black fondant (for the eyes), 8 glace cherries, mini pretzels and amaretti biscuits. You don't have to use amaretti, not everyone is a fan of their almond flavour, you can use any sort of mini biscuit/cookie that you fancy. I halved the glace cherries and glued them onto the biscuits with a tiny amount of melted chocolate.

They take minutes to assemble and look pretty good for minimal effort!

Christmas Tree Giant Cupcake and Snowman Cupcakes

Today it is the Christmas bazaar at my kids' school. They asked for home baking donations for their cake stall and I was happy to oblige.

These were all wonderfully easy to do and I had them completed within a few hours yesterday afternoon. 

I have absolutely fallen involve with PME lustre spray (see I don't hate the company despite the awful experiences I had with their Release-A-Cake). I used it to get the nice shine on the baubles for the Christmas tree. The silver baubles are left-over metallic smarties from the Darlek cake I made back in the summer (yes I grossly over-estimated how many of those I would need. I still have an enormous bag of them). The snowmen are buttercream icing and marshmallow with fondant accents. 

Grand Theft Auto 5

I think this cake suffered a bit from a lack of planning on my part. In hindsight if I was doing it again I would have just put the GTA logo on the top of the cake instead of the icing cake topper. I think it would have looked much cleaner and more effective.

I am absolutely loving the silhouettes around the sides though. I did those by printing them out and cutting around them, placing them on black fondant and cutting around them again with a scalpel. I let the silhouettes sit for a few minutes to dry a little before applying them to the cake.

Unfortunately I didn't have my dad to take pictures this time, so I only have the ones I snapped with my phone.

Starburst Cake

Really pleased with how this one turned out. Think I got fantastic edges. It's taking a while but practise, practise, practise really does make all the difference.

Burger Cake & Gingerbread Glasses.

My cousin turned 21 last week. It's freaking me out a little. I remember when he was born, I was the age my eldest daughter is now and it really doesn't seem like it was 21 years ago. Anyway, for reasons unknown to me he no longer goes by the name that it took my aunt a week to decide on (Michael), and is now known as "Burger". also he wears glasses.

Makes perfect sense, no? 

The glasses were made from gingerbread (I cut them free-hand, thus why they are a bit shonky looking). The arms are attached with a small amount of melted chocolate. 

To get the glass effect for the lenses I put a handful of Foxes Glacier mints into my food processor and whizzed them until they were broken into small crystals. I put the cooked gingerbread specs onto a tray lined with greaseproof paper and filled in the holes with the crystals. It then went back into the oven at around 170oC for about 5 minutes until the sweets had melted. I then let them cool on the tray for a good half an hour before moving to a rack. 

Doc McStuffins Clinic Cake

I try to put a lot of energy into doing really ambitious cakes for my kids' own birthdays. This weekend we were celebrating my daughter Darcy's 4th birthday. She's a big, big fan of Doc McStuffins and asked for a Doc McStuffins' themed cake. I decided to attempt to make her clinic.

Sadly this is one of the occasions where I was really disappointed with the result, though it took me about six solid hours of work to do the thing. I think I just came out looking a bit sloppy and not at all how I envisioned. Lucky for me she is four and easily impressed.

A little side note: For a while now I've been using Dr Oetker cake release spray. I think this stuff is brilliant, my cakes don't stick at all, they come out of the tin like a dream. My local tesco appears to have stopped stocking it so I ordered some from The Craft Company. Now there is a bit of a post-office mix up which involved the Craft Company's customer service doing their absolute best and Royal Mail blowing up a parcel, but long story short I had cakes to make and no cake release spray yet. I got the husband to call into the craft store in town to see if they sold it. They didn't but they did stock PME Release a Cake. Now maybe I was doing something wrong but I found this stuff to be absolutely dreadful. Two cakes in a row ended up with half of stuck to the bottom of the tin so when I turned them out great hulking wedges of cake were torn from the centre. I was NOT impressed. Thankfully a day later the Dr Oetker spray arrived and balance was restored to the universe, and the PME Release-a-Cake swiftly went into the bin. 

Chelsea FC Cake

Sometimes you are asked to do a cake and you end up scratching your head wondering.... how the heck am I going to manage this? My aunt asked me to make a Chelsea FC cake for my cousin's birthday and I looked at the logo (easy to do as the husband is a devoted Chelsea fan) and thought I can't model this!

eBay came to the rescue. On a few occasions now I have ordered printed icing sheets from there. They are fairly cheap and very easy to use and give a lovely professional looking finish to cakes. I really recommend these over toppers printed onto rice paper as I think they tend to look really faded out and a bit rubbish.

I actually love getting to do the occasional cake like this but they look great but take about half an hour to assemble so are hugely relaxing to do. 

Minion Cake

Last weekend when I friend asked me to make a cake for her little boy's birthday I was quite pleased at the vote of confidence, but I was also ridiculously pushed for time because it was also my daughter's 4th birthday and she was looking for a quite complicated cake herself. 

Luckily, pinterest came to the rescue once again and I got the design for this very simple and incredibly easy Minion cake. It was the work of minutes with my round cutters and some silver metallic food paint to create this. 

Fire Engine Minion Cake

Two year olds love Fire Engines and Minions apparently, so that was the brief for this creation.

Minions are great fun to make, and very easy, though it did take me two attempts as I made the head on the first one too small and had to start over. The sirens on the minion's head were made with halved glace cherries.

Golden Anniversary Cake

This cake broke my heart. I had so many issues trying to get the roses to sit nicely on the top, can someone please tell me how to do it? so they sit all nicely together in a bunch? I'm thinking maybe I need to trim back the wires and sit them on instead of trying to insert the wires (safely tucked inside a straw) into the cake?

And sadly there were some other mishaps, some of the petals and lettering were damaged in transport. I am gutted as I really wanted this to be special, but on the plus side I am very pleased with how the quilting turned out.

I'm off now to google placing fondant roses on a cake to see if someone out there can help me.

Tinker Bell Cake

My cousin asked me to make this for her daughter's 5th birthday. I made the stem of the mushroom using the bottom of a giant cupcake mould and the top was baked in a 1lt pyrex bowl. I think if I was doing this again I would use a bigger bowl but I was worried that if the top overhung too much it wouldn't be stable.

I found smoothing the buttercream on the dome was quite difficult. Initially I tried bending my scraper so that it matched the curve, but I found it very hard to keep a consistent angle and pressure. In the end, I stuck the cake in the fridge to firm up and then smoothed it by placing a paper towel on the top and using a cake smoother.

The flowers etc. are all fondant. The grass was made using royal icing and a grass piping tip.

I bought a Bully Land Tinker Bell topper from Amazon.

Marshmallow Fondant & Swiss Meringue Buttercream

I had nothing on this week so I decided to do a bit of experimenting. I tried making macaroons (my 2nd attempt) and it was as successful as my 1st attempt i.e. an unmitigated disaster.

So I set my sights somewhere else and have my first go at making Swiss Meringue buttercream. I used this tutorial, and it's great, really clear instructions and I was very pleased with the result, but I think next time I make it I might use a better quality butter like Lurpak as I found my SMBC was a little yellow. The taste is very different to the buttercreams I usually make, it's not as sweet and it's very light, more like whipped cream than anything.

Having made the SMBC, I covered a four layer sponge cake in it and then decided to try my hand at making marshmallow fondant. I can't say that it works out any cheaper than buying plain white pre-made fondant but the difference in taste is incredibly. I mean I could actually imagine myself eating the fondant on the cake instead of picking it off like I usually do. I used the wilton recipe and this excellent tutorial on youtube for making it in a mixer. In the past I have been put off the idea of making MMF because of the kneading and mess involved but in the mixer it was very easy. I think I added too much icing sugar (I added a little more than the recipe because I found it was still sticky, perhaps I should have just mixed it for longer instead?) when it came to rolling it out it was a bit dry and crumbly. I kneaded in some crisco and gave it a few blasts for 10 seconds on 50% in the microwave and it became much more workable. I think I will need to try again as when I laid it on the cake it was a little pitted around the edge, but given the difference in taste I think it is worth persevering.

So here's the little practise cake I made. It's been donated to my mum so my extended family can devour it and give me their feedback.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream:

194g of egg whites

218g caster sugar

Pinch of salt

500g of very soft unsalted butter

2 tsp of vanilla extract 

Take a large pot and bring about a inch or so of water to the boil in it. Place the egg whites, caster sugar and salt in your mixer bowl and put that on top of the boiling pot (don't let the water touch the bottom). Mix by hand with a balloon whisk until the egg whites reach 160oC. Remove from the heat and put the bowl on the mixer stand, beat with the whisk attachment until stiff peaks form (about 10 minutes) and the bowl is cool to touch. Add the butter and vanilla to the meringue and switch to the beater attachment. Beat on the lowest speed until the mixture comes together and you have a smooth and thick buttercream. 

Marshmallow Fondant: 

454g of white mini marshmallows

4 tbsps of water

1kg of icing sugar, shifted

2 tsps vanilla extract

Crisco or trex for greasing. 

Grease the inside of a large microwave safe bowl. Add the marshmallows and the water and heat on full in bursts of 30 seconds until the marshmallow is melted. If you are going to colour your fondant all one colour, add it to the marshmallow now.

Liberally grease your mixer bowl, dough hook and spatula. Place about 3/4 of the icing sugar into the bowl and add the melted marshmallow and vanilla. Mix on a low speed until the fondant is firm and no longer sticky. Add as much of the remaining icing sugar as you need to achieve this. Put onto a well greased surface, thoroughly grease your hands and knead for a few minutes, tightly wrap in clingfilm and allow to rest for a few hours before using. 

One Direction Cake

It turns out the most amusing way to wind up an 11 year old is to deliberately and repeatedly get the names of One Direction wrong. I think they're called Finbar, Nigel, Trevor, Tarquin and Jimmy?

*cough*

Anyhew.... this week's cake is One Direction in fondant form. I hope the recipient is happy, personally I think my Harry Styles looks an awful lot like Chunk from The Goonies.

The lesson I have learned from this? Stick with cartoon characters! They are much easier to do!

Hey at least it looks much better than this picture of One Direction without teeth or eyebrows.

I did one of those weird snorting laughs for about ten minutes after seeing this. 

Diabetic Cake

A year ago today my eldest was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Coming from a science background, I knew the score with it (or at least I thought I did), but something that has amazed me over the past year if the lack of understanding the general public seems to have about it.

Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disorder, your body begins to attack and destroy the cells in your pancreas that produce insulin. Because your body no longer produces insulin you need to inject insulin to keep your blood glucose levels normal. It is not caused by bad diet, or a lack of exercise. There is nothing you could have done to avoid it,

AND

Diabetics CAN HAVE CAKE. They can have cake just as much as anyone else, which is to say, they, me and you probably shouldn't eat it too often. All a type 1 diabetic needs to do is calculate the carbohydrate load of their portion and inject the appropriate amount of insulin to cover it (and as our specialist nurse would remind us, preferably take it as part of a meal with some slow releasing carbohydrate). Actually cake isn't that bad, because the high fat content slows the rate at which insulin is released into the blood. Just you know, don't go crazy on it....

With that in mind I baked my weirdest cake ever. My daughter asked for a cake to commemorate her "diaversary" as she likes to call it. I based this one on the cuddly pancreas produced by the awesome toy company I Heart Guts.

Gotta say I am quite proud of the amazing sense of humour she has kept about all of this.

Oh and if you're ever looking for a good cause to donate to, can I recommend JDRF and Diabetes UK?

Adventure Time cake

Well this wasn't without it's mishaps. Maybe I shouldn't be spending my time pointing out what went wrong... but here goes.

I had issues covering the top tier, the fondant ripped in a few places and I had to do a bit of patch job. Lady Rainicorn broke slightly on getting moved (and was hastily glued back together), the boy broke the plaque with his name on it while attempting to play with it as it was drying (and I didn't have time to redo it), and poor Marceline the Vampire Queen didn't survive being transferred from the spot where she was drying onto the cake. She was beyond rescue, RIP Marceline.

All in all though I am very pleased, but most importantly the boy is thrilled with his birthday cake, and that is the most important thing. I really hope when he's older he bugs his wife by saying "my mammy made the best birthday cakes" (just as my husband did with me).

Happy birthday Ethan!

What time is it?

My baby boy turns five next week. Five! Where is the time going? It doesn't seem like that long ago since he made his debut appearance on my living room floor, or even that long since he kicked off my baking habit when I decided to try and make a Lego cake for him for his third birthday. He has very specific instructions about what he wants for his birthday cake this year (really shouldn't have let him take a poke around Pinterest for ideas).

This year he is all about Adventure Time (and so I am, I love Lumpy Space Princess). I've got six days to go until his party so I've started making cake toppers. This is my first attempt to do a standing fondant figure. I managed to find an excellent tutorial last night on making Woody from Toy Story, Woody of the spindly legs so I could apply that to Finn. Unfortunately the tutorial was in Spanish, but it had step by step photographs so I was able to work it out. It has involved the use of skewers and florist wire, so sadly Finn and his friends cannot be eaten, but the mammoth cake they will be plonked on should hopefully make up for that. So here's a sneak peek at a few of the characters I made last night.

Gunter, Flame Princess and Finn the human

I love Gunter. He is so cute, even if he is cold hearted and evil. 

Marceline the Vampire Queen & Jake the dog

Lady Rainicorn

Lumpy Space Princess

I'm doing a bit of guess work here with how to put this together, namely by pre-making Lady Rainicorn and allowing her to dry out on half a cake dummy the same size as my bottom tier. I hope when the time comes to actually put her on the cake that she doesn't break. My thinking behind doing it this way is that if she was freshly formed she'd be too soft to hold her shape when it came to placing her on the cake. I hope my logic isn't flawed...

Five days to go until the party and I still have a Princess Bubblegum, Beemo, Ice King and Peppermint Butler to make. I'm starting to run out of space to leave these things to dry.

UPDATE:

Well I am out of time and out of energy to do anything more so here are the final characters, Beemo and the Ice King. Guess this cake shall have to be Princess Bubblegum and Earl of Lemongrab-less (UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!)

I will post a picture of the completed cake on Saturday. 

Shoe Cake

So I recently had my first attempt at making a fondant shoe. I was attempting to recreate an Irregular Choice shoe (I love these shoes so much. I want a closet full of them!), well what with being a first attempt and all let's just say it was "inspired" by an Irregular Choice shoe.

There are a lot of tutorials available online to show you how to make a shoe out of gumpaste (or in my case a fondant tylo mix), and you can download templates that you cut out and use to get the shapes. I believe there is also a kit you can buy, but I wouldn't bother personally. I reckon you can do it with cardboard, clingfilm, a block of florists oasis (covered in tin foil or clingfilm), some skewers and a quilting tool. Also start well in advance of when you actually need it, as you need to give it all time to dry out so it doesn't fall apart on you.

I also attempted to do a quilting pattern on fondant for the first time. I'll admit I kind of messed that one up, the angle of my guide was too steep so I ended up with huge diamonds instead of the neat little ones I had been aiming for, but overall it doesn't ruin the look of the thing, it just didn't end up looking how I'd envisioned. But hey, you live and learn.

I covered in cake in Renshaws navy sugarpaste. I'm not sure if this is an issue specific to Renshaws but once the cake was covered the fondant got very wet and sticky. I did a bit of googling and it was suggested that it might be condensation because my cake had just come out of the fridge before it was covered. There are two ways to deal with this, one is to let the cake up to room temperature before covering (not a fan of this plan as I find them much easier to cover when the buttercream is cold and firm), I dealt with it the second way. I turned on a fan and sat it in front of the cake, I didn't touch it, but left it an hour or so until the condensation had evaporated and the fondant was dry enough to work with.

Well this is the result and I am quite happy with it for a first attempt. I'm certainly learning by doing!

Christening Cake

I really enjoyed making this cake, especially as I could do all the little fondant bits and pieces in advance so decorating the cake was the work of minutes (the time spent on making the fondant figures is another matter!). I have switched from tappits to clikstixs for lettering, but I'm still doing something wrong (fondant too thick or too thin?) I end up with some weird indenting on some letters. or maybe they are supposed to look that way?

Giant Chocolate Cupcake with Salted Caramel Buttercream & White Chocolate Ganache

This was another cake that I made just for the hell of it and to try. I got my dad to take some pictures for me, so it's much better than the ones I usually just snap with my phone.

See?

Ingredients:
4 Eggs (weigh them in shells)
Equal weight of sugar
Equal weight of butter
Equal weight of flour minus 40g
40g of cocoa powder
1 tsp of ground coffee powder

For Chocolate Shell:
200g of 74% cocoa plain chocolate

For the salted caramel buttercream:
3 tbsp of caramel sauce
125g of room temperature unsalted butter
300g of Icing Sugar
Pinch of maldon sea salt.

For the White Chocolate Ganache:
100ml of double cream
300g of good quality white chocolate

Pre-heat the oven to 170C. Grease a silicon giant cupcake mould.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until combined. Sift in the flour, cocoa and coffee a little at a time and mix until just combined. Pour two thirds of the mixture in the cupcake base and the remaining third into the top. Place on a baking sheet and bake for around 25-35 minutes for the top, and 35-45 minutes for the base (it really depends on the size of your eggs and how much batter you have ended up with). It's done when an inserted skewer comes away cleanly. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for around 10 minutes in the cases before turning out.

Wash the base of the mould and dry thoroughly. Melt 100g of the dark chocolate in a bowl over simmering water (do not allow the water to touch the bowl). Paint the inside of the mould with the chocolate using a silicon pastry brush. Hold it up to the light to see any bits you have missed. Put in the fridge until it sets. Then repeat the process again with the other 100g.

Chop the white chocolate very finely and add to a pan with the double cream. Put it over a low heat and allow to melt. Mix with a rubber spatula until smooth. Decant into a bowl, cover and leave for a few hours to thicken.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter, sugar, and caramel sauce together. Add salt to taste.

When the case is set, very carefully peel back to release it from the mould. Place it back into the mould to assemble.

Level the cakes, and trim around 2cm from the sides of the bottom piece of the giant cupcake. Torte the bottom of the cupcake into two layers. Use a rubber spatula to coat the inside of the chocolate case with buttercream. Fill the bottom of the cupcake with buttercream and sandwich together, then pop inside the case. Then put another layer of buttercream on and place the top piece. Give that a light crumb coat of buttercream and then carefully peel back the silicon mould again to release the cake inside the case. Carefully move it a turntable.

When the ganache has reached the consistency of butter it's ready to use. Put in a piping bag and decorate the top of the cupcake however you like. Add any sweets or fondant decorations that you fancy. I made fondant flowers and painted the centres of them with metallic gold food paint.

Star burst birthday cake.

I really enjoyed making the stars on this cake, it was probably the only thing that was very straight forward. I had some issues with the top tier, not least the fact that my daughter stuck her thumb in the buttercream and didn't tell me until it had crusted. I tried adding more buttercream but when it came to putting the fondant on the buttercream was too thick and everything went horribly wrong.

I think I'm a little hormonal at the moment. I did a HULK SMASH! on the cake and hurled it across the table in frustration.

I decided then that I would make a white chocolate ganache for the top tier instead of using buttercream. I sent the husband to get some chocolate and he came back with cooking chocolate. You cannot make ganache with cooking chocolate, I suspect as much but I thought I would try. It was a hideous oily mess. I sent the husband to the shop again this time with the instruction to buy white CHOCOLATE. 

So onto the stars... very simple. I added a little tylose powder to the fondant and let it rest for a few minutes (wrapped in cling film). Then I rolled it out, cut out twice as many star shapes as I needed and let them dry for a few minutes before moving them. I lay one star down on the mat, brushed it with a little edible glue and placed a piece of florist's wire on top. I then covered that with another star and gently pressed them together. and hung them to dry. They looked very effective on the top of the cake. A word about inserting wire into cake - don't do it. I pushed a straw into the centre of the cake, covered the hole with a blob of fondant and then pressed the wires down into that so that they didn't actually touch the cake.