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.