Treaty Towers

Mmmmmmm check out this tower of goodies!!

Rather than a smaller, fiddlier or more time consuming project, for my boyfriend's brother, I thought I would go large quantity of super tasty treats.  A good choice as it turned out.

I made a variety of treats: Red velvet cupcakes, chocolate and walnut brownies, millionaire's shortbread, chocolate peanut butter swirly cookies and maple and pecan flapjack.

The stand pictured is designed for birthday/wedding cupcake towers, and was a brilliant way to get a huge amount of baked treats out and on display all at once.  I got mine on ebay last week, but they are also available from wedding cake companies etc.  I totally should have thought to count how many items I managed to get up there, what an oversight.

After a fantastic buffet style meal made by my boyfriend's Mum, we all swarmed on the cakes with gusto, and are all happily enjoying the left overs still 

:D 

I love cake!

A Different Kind of Cupcake

Not  my usual kind of cupcake creation, but I thought I would share this one anyway!

Crochet is a relatively new hobby for me, one which I was introduced to by a friend who is fantastic at creating all sorts of things, just take a look at her crochet coral paradise on my crochet coral reef cake post.

With my love of all things cake, once I had stumbled on a pattern to make crochet cupcakes I knew it was only a matter of time (I  found this pattern yesteday, I made half of it last night, and got up at 6:30 am to finish it before work this morning.... dedication bordering on obsession) before I was making some.  

Although I had a bit of a false start with this - somehow finding myself with 50 odd stitches when I was supposed to have 27 - once I had turned the TV off, and the light on, my second attempt went just fine.  I would definitely recommend actually counting stitches as you go, if you are as new to this as I am!

I made this as part of a slightly larger project (to follow...) but it is so cute on it's own that I wanted to put it up whilst I am waiting on photos of the full cake and crochet ensemble.

I am enjoying my new hobby, it is a lovely sociable thing to do (well it is in our office, where we have had a lunch time crochet club started), and a good way to keep your hands busy and productive whilst chatting, or watching TV etc.  Well usually that is, evidently that didn't work out for the above!  But, I am in the middle of making a bag at the moment, using some very thick wool, which means it has whacking great stitches that I can't miss!

I hope my post brings inspiration to any closet creative people, or a bit of interest for anyone else looking for something fun to make.  Thanks for reading.

Crochet Coral Reef Cake

Not one of mine, but this wonderful cake had to be shared.

My friend Esther is incredible with a crochet hook, this is the awesome Coral reef cake she made for our friend Coral (see what she did there!? hehe) for her birthday. 

I am still reeling from the creative genius of this!  (The extended reeling period may partially be because I am such a marine geek).

The cake itself was carrot cake, with a lovely cream cheese frosting on top.  This was sprinked with cinamon, and the crochet coral decorations were placed using cocktail sticks.  The starfish are from a haribo funny mix. 

I love it!

Stuart McGhee's Bizimals

I have a good friend at work, who is part time in my office, and spends the remainder of the time being creative for a living.  (As opposed to me who is creative apparently only for make people fat through frequent cake feedings).

His work is brilliant, and I am exceptionally jealous of the ability to put a pen on paper, and not come up with something which could be mistaken for part of a Rorscharch test.  

His birthday was last week, and of course I thought, well why not recreate his drawings on cake!  A seemingly great idea, but when you pay attention to the Rorscharch remark, you will see where this was perhaps a foolish move.  In order for me to complete this task, each cupcake took approximately 4 hours to complete... Not particularly economic on the time front then.

Stuart McGhee's original work can be seen on his website at www.stuartmcghee.com/ or on deviant art at http://stuartmcghee.deviantart.com/ the drawing which inspired my creations are his Bizimal collection ....

And after some painstaking, tracing and painting onto fondant circles, using various food colourings, sometimes mixed with a teeny bit of vodka to thin, here are my reproductions in cake form ...

Tropical Paradise Cake

I work in an organisation filled with marine biologists, it's a great place to work, and everyone who works there, has come to be there because they love the sea (makes sense really!).  Sadly, contracts can be very short, and one of the girls who has been working in my office for about three months, finished last week.  What better a send off though than a marine themed cake!  It was a tropical island paradise, with some creative marine creatures all over for decoration. 

I made this cake with a friend from work, who I had fun introducing to creative cake decoration.  She is a very artistic person, and took very well to the task! 

I had on hand, some pink royal icing in a piping bag, with a very small bit of the tip cut off to create a tiny pipng line.  This was used to pipe the pink sea fans on the sides, as well as the pink fish, and crab below.  The fish and crab were piped onto baking paper to get the outline, then piped over a couple of times.  Once they had dried they were removed from the greaseproof paper, et voila, pretty sea creatures.

I also had a lot of fondant on hand, in a wide variety of colours, which we moulded like play doh into all sorts, as well as rolling out and cutting some shapes, like the pretty seahorse.

Green fondant sea grass...

Pink fondant seaslug, with purple sanding sugar on the body for colourful spots ....

One very big fondant octopus!

The cocnut tree on top of the cake was made of chocolate a packet of rolos and some green fondant.  I started out by melting some white, and some dark chocolate (in separate bowls).  I created a base out of white chocolate by pouring a pool of white chocolate onto a piece of baking parchement, allowing this to set, then adding a second layer to make the tree nice and stable once added.  I then dipped the bottom of a rolo into the dark chocolate and attached it to the white chocolate "sand" base.  Each rolo was then added to the top of the previous one, with time in between each 2 rolo additions for setting of the chocolate.
The leaves were cut from green dyed fondant, set to dry over the bottom of a dish, to give a curved look.  I used the melted dark chocolate to add a brown line down each frond.  This had 2 jobs, decorative, and more importantly it added a more stable structure to hold the thin, fondant layer which was drying in a curve, and would not have any support once removed from the underside of the bowl!   
Unfortunately, the leaves still seemed a little bit like they might break off and fall apart once they had dried, so I inverted and covered the bottom's with a few layers of melted white chocolate, which once dried, provided a much more solid, less fragile structure.  An additional blob of white chocolate was also used to attach the whole thing to the rolo tree trunk.
The coconut at the bottom, was a little bit of fondant shaped into a coconutty type ball.  Lovely.

We made great use of spare dessicated coconut, food colourings and sanding sugar to cover almost everything on the cake!  Anything and everything was used, with very little method involved.  A seascape is an excellent way to get creative without constraints!  A wonderful task for children, and big children (like myself!) alike. What a great time :)

Oh and of course the all important cocktail umbrella for miniaturised days of lolling in the tropical sunshine!

Ahhhh now if only I could go and find some of that tropical sunshine I mentioned ...

Thanks for reading.

Baby Rattle Cake Pops

 

I attended my first baby shower recently.  A friend of mine, being American, but having been in the UK for much of her adult life, took the opportunity when another friend got pregnant, to organise her first baby shower.  This turned out to be a hilarious evening, and a great american tradition!  

Of course, I couldn't go empty handed, and it was quite obvious what I was going to bring ... cake!  I pondered what kind of cake, and having played with my first set of cake pops not long ago, I thought, aha, baby rattles made from cake pops! Perfect.  The pops were made with cookie dough at one end, and cocktail flavoured cake at the other, mmmm what a treat!

I started off with my lolly sticks, these ones are 4" long and can be bought in any cake decorating store, be that an online one, or a physical one.  

Then I made up a set of lime flavoured sponges.  Two 8" circular sponges will be plenty.  I used a vanilla cake mix and added, zest and juice from a lime.

I next made a batch of egg free cookie dough, from which I made the smaller balls on the bottom of the rattles.  I creamed 220 g of butter and 250 g of caster sugar in a bowl, then added a teaspoon of vanilla essence, and 300g of plain flour, and approximately 50 g of chocolate chips (the chocolate chip measurement is an estimate, I just kept adding until it looked suitably chocolatey! mmmmm) and mixed this all together to form a dough.  

Well who doesn't like cookie dough?? Mmmm, I know I do.  I made small balls, approximately 1" in diameter out of the raw dough and set these on greaseproof paper on a tray as I went.  

I melted 100g of white chocolate cake covering in a bowl in the microwave, stirring every 30-40 seconds to avoid burning.   A few drops of pink food colouring were added to the melt.  This was then used to dip the lolly sticks into, before they were inserted into the dough balls.

 These were left on the baking paper on the tray for a few minutes to set.  I then fully dipped half of the dough balls, up to the lolly stick in the pink chocolate, shook off the excess chocolate, before placing the lolly stick in a block of florists foam, whilst the chocolate set on the dough balls. 

 

Whilst these were put aside to set, I started to make the cake pop mixture.  I took one of my 8" lime sponge cakes, and crumbled it into a large bowl.  For the pink pops, I made up margarita flavour cake pop balls.  To achieve this I added a tablespoon of tequila, and a table spoon of triple sec to the crumbled cake.  I made up a batch of lime flavoured buttercream icing, and added a little at a time, to get a mouldable cake mixture, which was not too mushy to shape.  

Once the mixture was made, I took small handfuls, and shaped them into balls, approximately 2 - 3 inches in diameter.  I took the lolly sticks with the dough balls on the other end, and dipped the stick into the chocolate melt, then pushed the stick into the centre of a cake ball.  These were then placed on a tray and put in the freezer for approximately 5 minutes.  During this time I made sure the pink chocolate dipping mixture was still liquid, and if necessary you can melt some more, if you don't think there will be enough.

Once the 5 minutes chilling was done, they were removed from the freezer and the cake pop was fully dipped into the chocolate melt to cover.  Excess chocolate was shaken off, and I held the pop aloft, until the cold cake mixture had caused the chocolate to set hard enough to put the pop back down on greaseproof paper without leaving a mark.  This took almost no time at all, as the cake centre was so cold.

The finishing touch, was simply a thin piece of ribbon tied around the pop stick to make a bow.  Lovely! 

Once I had finished all of the pink ones, the remaining cookie dough balls were dipped in a second batch of white chocolate cake covering dyed with blue food colouring, and this time, the cake pop was made to be daiquiri flavoured.  I added a few drops of rum flavouring, and lime buttercream to the crumbled second sponge to get this flavour.  All other steps were repeated as with the pink.

They made a great treat, the Mum-to-be loved them, and the other ladies enjoyed them too!  All in all, not a bad experiment! 

Thanks for reading!

Death By Chocolate Cake

Death by chocolate cake! Yum!!  

One of my friend's at work's birthday, she loves chocolate, so, chocolate cake! 

I used the death by chocolate cake recipe found in Mary Berry's baking bible.

The top is decorated with grated dark and white chocolate.  Chocolatey heaven!