Peppa Pig Cake

Hooray I got to get back to some novelty caking with this one.  A cake I made for a lady at work, for her Grandaughter's 3rd birthday.  It was quite time intensive, but I think it was worth the end result.  There are a few bits I would certainly like to have improved and would like to work on. But overall a hit!

I made two large rectangular vanilla victoria sandwich type sponges. Cut the edges off of one to get a really neat rectangle.  The second one I cut into a 3.  They were then covered with a thin layer of buttercream, which was smoothed to within an inch of it's life!  I made the edges as sharp as I could possibly manage.  I don't think I have ever spent so much time on buttercream!  But I can tell you, it was well worth it!

I left these in sealed containers overnight for the buttercream to get a bit more solid and form a good foundation over which to lay the fondant.

The following day I did all of the decorating ...

I started out by covering both of the sponges separately with a layer of rolled out green fondant.  This took a little while to get right, as I had to cut extra strips and patch together the fondant around the 3 quite a bit, but again, it was well worth taking the extra time and care for a better end result.  And the bits where it went really wrong and I failed to rescue ...  I covered with decorative sugar flowers and fondant mud puddles etc!

The flowers were bought ready made in a small packet, but the remaining decorations (mud puddles, lake and ducks, Peppa and George) were all made with fondant, rolled and cut or moulded into shape.

I attached everything using royal icing, and iced the lettering of the birthday message in the same. 

I have had some really lovely compliments for this one, and I am quite proud of it.  It was really nice to have a good excuse to make a good novelty cake! and I am looking forward to my next cake creating adventure now.

Thanks for reading.

Two Tier Red and Gold Birthday Cake

This one was made at about the same time as I made the Two Tier White Chocolate Ganache, Swirls and Chocolate Roses for my Auntie.  The two cakes were based on a similar concept, both using the tiers and chocolate roses, but with a very different colour scheme and some slight alterations between the two to make two very unique cakes.

This one was for a friend who turned the big 4 oh recently, I was told, "probably something in red and gold" by her husband (yes men are always helpful when you ask them for their advice), lucky I have some creativity in my blood, so I went with that and ran....

This was so much fun to make!  I made the same sponges as in the white chocolate ganache, green swirly cake, and also used white chocolate ganache to sandwhich the sponges, and coat the two tiers.  However this time I dyed the ganache the beautiful deep red colour you see in the pictures.

I also made an army of red-dyed white chocolate roses to decorate.

The swirls on the body of the cake are made with sugar glitter dust mixed with a dribble of vodka to make it into a paint, which I then used a paintbrush to swirl onto the cake tiers.

I dusted the edges of the red white chocolate roses with the glitter also, to make them look gold edged.  Finally I made some little balls out of the red chocolate, and dusted these with gold too.  

Once I had put all the pieces together this was the result. 

My friend loved her birthday cake, and her 5 year old daughter I think, loved it even more! 

Brilliant :) 

Thanks for reading!

Chocolate Extravaganza!

My car smelled sooooooo good when I bought this one in to work the other day!

I was asked to make a very chocolatey cake, for a friend at work's chocoholic husband.  I was informed that anything cadbury, buttons, flakes, twirls etc were favourites, along with maltesers etc.

We-ell.  I thought about what I could do to make something really special, and whilst super-chocolately, still a good manly cake. .....

 

This chocostrocity is what I came up with.  A two tiered triple choclate chip sponge cake, coated with chocolate fudge icing, followed by chocolate ganache icing, and decorated around the sides with some very chunky chocolate shards (I made these using tempered cadburys dairy milk, and fought my boyfriend off with a few spatula slaps to the hand as he tried to steal bits) stuck to the cake using more chocolate ganache.

The cake was then topped with various cadbury goodies and maltesers, and I dusted with a little gold sugar glitter to finish it up.

I really wish I had made this one and eaten it all myself!!!  But apparently it was enjoyed ... I just might have to do another one all for me .....

Princess Cupcakes

Oh dear I am getting a bit behind!  I made these about a month or so ago for my boyfriend's, brother's girlfriend (phew!) for her birthday.

I stumbled across these brilliant cupcake wrappers when I was having a bit of a pinterest day, on Food Art Party Blog, along with instructions on how to get them the right size etc. and they were just the perfect thing for her.

Sooo, I started out by making some chocolate truffle centred cupcakes. Mmmmmmm chocolate.  I used a recipe from the Waitrose website which I have used previously
Waitrose chocolate truffle filled cupcake recipe click here!

Having baked, then printed up, and spent a considerable amount of time cutting out, the cupcake wrappers, I put the two together.

I decorated all cupcakes with some very thick white chocolate fudge icing, which I dyed a lovely princess pink (see my post X-box 360 cake for the recipe for my white chocolate fudge icing).  Which I piped into rosettes on top of the cakes (there are loads of youtube video tutorials available to help you do this if you are fancying doing something different).  This is kind of, my current favourite thing to practice!





I added white sanding sugar and sugar pearls to the cakes wrapped with the pink princess wrappers, and pink sanding sugar and pearls to the cakes in the purple and pink swirly cupcake wrappers.








Ta da, gives them a little extra something, without overdoing it I think. 

Then of course out came the trusty cupcake stand for presentation. 

They were very well received and very fun to make, without being too tricky.  Though the crown shaped wrappers did have me in quite a frustrated state as I tried to ever so carefully manoeuvre around them!

Two Tier White Chocolate Ganache, Swirls and Chocolate Roses

My Auntie's birthday cake.  

I made a big batch of summer berries and cream sponges.  (Two 8 inch circular sanwhiches, and two 6 inch circular sandwhiches).  I used white chocolate ganache to stick the sponges together and coated each tier, using a warm palette knife to get a nice even finish.

The swirls were made with green dyed royal icing.  

I made the milk and dark chocolate roses by hand, but you can buy these ready made. 

Put it all together, and ta da you get a lovely tiered fancy-pants cake!

Little Cupcake Tower

 

 

Oh how I love an excuse to make cupcakes! 
Birthdays are a brilliant one.
It was a friend at work's quite recently, and she specifically requested a selection of cupcakes.
And so that is what she got :)
 Using the rather swanky cupcake tree my Mum bought me for christmas a few years ago to sit them on, I created a nice little display for her, and added a matching card.

I selected Red Velvet, with cream cheese icing and a sprinkling of red sanding sugar...

...Strawberries and cream, with vanilla buttercream.  I topped these with the lovely sugar hearts pictured on the left...

...and coffee with coffee buttercream, topped with some pink sanding sugar, and pink sugar pearls. 








Another good bit of practice on the rosettes on top of my cupcakes went in here, and they went soooo much better this time than my first attempt previously (there wasn't 3 inches of icing per cake where I had gone wrong and gone over the top for starters!)

Ta da, what a lovely looking tower! (It has cake on it, thus the definition of lovely is fulfilled).

Hen Night Naughty Cupcakes

As mentioned in a recent, previous post, my best friend from school is getting married this year.  Her hen do was last week, and, well, as with any other opportunity, this one was made the most of, for cake making possibilities!

I did some research and looked around the internet for some good ideas for hen night decorated cupcakes.  I started by deciding to make these my first attempt at decorating cakes with piped rosettes.  Then putting a number of hen themed toppers onto the cupcakes.

I thought it would be a wise idea to test out making the rosettes before making the final versions.  My boyfriend liked this step, as he got about 8 cupcakes out of it (as a bridesmaid, I have been trying very hard to remain the same for my dress, which means not too many cakes for me in the last few weeks!).  The result in decorative terms however, was not quite so great a move forward.  The word disaster could certainly be applied!  As I watched the icing ooze over the edges of the cakes and refuse to hold the rosette shape, I concluded that in my first attempt the icing was far too runny, and learned that I would definitely have to improve upon that when decorating the real thing.

I chose a red and black theme (with a few additional toppers having a few other colours for specific reasons) and made all of the fondant toppers, decorated with glitter and royal icing, over the course of the weekend before I made the cakes, to give them plenty of drying time.

Charlie is a coeliac, so that was then the next little hurdle to overcome.  Soooo, having made the gluten free toppers, I moved on to making my red velvet cupcake recipe gluten free.  Thank goodness there are now quite a good range of such flours available!  It was nice and simple, and I just had to be very careful to check all the ingredients and nutritional warning bits on the other ingredients. And of course, most importantly, I only used unopened brand new packets, so that I could be 100% certain that I had no contamination from previously using a spoon that might have gone near gluten or such, which would have been a massive oversight.

Once the cakes were made and cooled, I then had a fun time practicing the cream cheese rosette swirled icing on plates.... they did NOT go well for quite some time.  And once I finally thought I had got it ... I hadn't, if you were to look at a side profile of some of the red iced cakes, there is the same height of icing as cake on most of them, where I messed up comepletely the first attempt, and re-iced over the top.  But, who doesn't love icing?!

Having finally sorted out the icing too my satisfaction, I then simply placed the pre-made toppers, decorated with a little bit of coloured royal icing where relevant (e.g. the handcuff links and between the chain part of the ball and), then sprinkled with some red love hearts, which I already had, and happily were made with rice flour, so posed no problems! 

Et voila ....

A beautiful, bountiful box of naughty treats and goodies to be enjoyed with tea/coffee/champagne (delete as you feel appropriate) over the course of an amazing hen mid-week-weekend.

Thanks for reading!