Valentine Cupcakes

One of life's many contradictions, I refuse to celebrate Valentine's day, yet this year found me making a batch of time and love intensive cupcakes.  Hmmmm, go figure. 

Whilst I am entirely an un-romantic soul, probably upsetting other people frequently with my tirades against valentine's day, I did have fun making these. 

I was asked to make them by a lady that I work with, who unlike me is not a git about V day.

The large cakes are a red velvet cupcake (mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm) which seemed to suit the occassion perfectly with that lovely rich romantic colouring. 

These were then topped with cream cheese icing, and nice big, rather heavy chocolate love hearts.   I made these myself from white chocolate which I coloured.  I then hand moulded each one separately.

The finishing touches were to then sprinkle a few little sugar love hearts around and about over each one.  6 large red velvet in total, in red foil cases. Perfect.

I also made chocolate roses out of the same colour dyed white chocolate, which I placed on top of vanilla, smaller cupcakes, which had a swirl of marshmallow icing on top. 

 The third and final cake type, was a chocolate sponge which I piped high and swirly marshmallow icing over, then sprinkled again with the sugar love hearts.  

I think the three sets together made a lovely selection that would melt any romatic heart! 

And, I rather enjoyed myself!  Maybe next year I will allow valentine's Day into my house .... but just for the cake!

There's something wriggling on my plate...

I would like to start this post very immediately, very firmly, by stating, THIS IS NOT one of mine! 

On the other hand, could I pass up the opportunity to share? ... I think the answer, evidently, is no!

For all those who's names are not Peter Bickerton, and do not already know what the above is... it is a chocolate meal worm cake.

My my what an interesting world it is that we live in!

I work with Peter, and recently he gave a public talk titled Inr-Edible Insects.

Peter is mad incredibly passionate about Thought for Food, an organisation attempting to think outside of the box about ways in which we can improve the world's food sources, and the crisis which many areas of the world face leading to hunger and starvation.

The organisation can be found on facebook or at http://www.tffchallenge.com

But I will leave it there as to the cause, before I turn those who are disinterested bored.  Suffice to say it is a fascinating area, incredible to learn more about, and the talk is well worth watching (available on youtube).

Peter is also quite passionate about eating insects, and so alongside the talk Peter gave, he provided refreshments....

not the usual sort.

There were sweet chilli locusts.

Sweet and sour crickets.

Some other kind of cricket.

and once done with the savoury, the cake.  And well, I had to put it on here!

This lead to somewhat a moral dilemma for me.  I have been vegetarian for about 15 years, with a short blip around 9 years ago where I ate meat for around 3 months duration, before returning to the veggie ways.
However, I am generally of the opinion that if someone provides you the opportunity to try something that you will only get to do once or at the very least not again for  very very long time, I firmly believe that you should take that opportunity.  (Clearly here the old adage "if your friend Joe Bloggs jumped off a cliff/stuck hand in fire (etc)  would you do it too? suggests that some things are better left unexperienced, but you get the picture, within reason, I like to try new things!)

Sadly I couldn't quite bring myself to take this opportunity, and alongside feeling like a fraud having just said you should always take such opportunity, I had to be informed by others of the experience.

I am informed that the mealworm cake tasted like it just had crunchy bits like hazelnuts in it.  And apparently the crickets and locusts were pretty good too.

All in all a fascinating afternoon! and some new taste sensations for a lot of my colleagues.

Dont forget to check out Thought for Food!  And keep an eye out for those locust peddling lads!

Plum and Pomegranate Upside Down Cake

I am currently situated in a gorgeous kitchen, overlooking mountains, pomegranate fields and a beautiful private pool ... mmmm villa holidays are wonderful. 

My boyfriend and I, are in Turkey on holiday with my family (I know, a wonderful form of mild torture/pleasure which he is being subjected too ... going well so far, mostly he is having fun creating havoc with my younger brothers and drinking beer... seems like a good way to go I guess).   However, my Dad just can't cope without cake in his life, and well, none of us veer that far from this same point if view, so to speak,  ourselves.  So I had a first experiment using the facilities here to make a cake.

Along with the jeopardy of an unknown oven, there was the added issues created by my complete ignorance regarding Turkish language, and some differences in ingredient availability.  Luckily, we have wonderful hosts, who have helped me out massively by telling me about these things, and writing down "baking powder" in Turkish (as there is no self-raising flour here), and explained that instead of vanilla essence, I will have to use vanilla sugar.

My ingredients looked a little unfathomable to me, but I think I worked it out!  (Turns out, I may have used a yeasted raising agent, but we will gloss over that ...)

It turns out that it is pomegranate harvesting time here, oh what a happy coincidence!  And the couple who own the villa have stocked us up with some pomegranates which they have been given by the farmer owning the fields surrounding the villa.  I kid you not, some of these pomegranates rival my head for the largest spherical object in the house!  They are beautiful, and so fresh.  Of course I couldn't waste this opportunity, so along with some fresh local plums, I thought ... upside down cake!!!

I haven't previously made an upside down cake, so I had a quick google search and looked around at recipes for general guidance, then went ahead and made it up as I went along.  I put melted butter and sugar in the tin then laid out the fruit elegantly, and made a sponge mix, which was then placed over the top.

The cake was then baked, which took longer than I had anticipated (about an hour total), but with the aid of some interesting foil backed with some kind of brown paper (I have no idea what this is?? But it seemed to work ok as a non stick lining, having gotten this one completely wrong, thinking it was normal baking paper), I managed to get there in the end.  The cake rose well (phew) and tasted rather pleasant indeed!  I can certainly recommend pomegranate with plum as a combination, and doesn't it just look sooo appetising!  

Mmmmmmmm cake.

Thanks for reading!

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!