Masquerade Cake

Here's my first tiered cake - a masquerade cake for a 30th birthday. I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

The bottom tier was made with four layers of vanilla sponge cake (10 inches in diameter) filled with lemon curd. The top tier was 2 layers of chocolate fudge cake filled with chocolate buttercream (8 inches in diameter). Each tier was covered with 2 layers of sugarpaste (client was allergic to nuts so I couldn't use marzipan as the first layer) then decorated with black and red sugarpaste decorations and gold glitter.The '30' was made with flower paste to give it enough rigidity to stand up without support.

I have a few more cake projects happening this week so stay tuned for more pics soon!

Marble cupcakes

What a perfect way to spend an afternoon sipping tea in the sunshine and eating girly cupcakes. Here's a quick recipe to make pink and brown marble cupcakes:

Ingredients:

• 180g unsalted butter (softened)
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour (sifted)
• 1/2 cup skimmed milk
• pink food colouring
• 1 heaped tbsp cocoa powder

Method:

Preheat oven to 175C (fan forced). Beat butter, caster sugar and vanilla essence in electric mixer until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes on a medium speed). Add eggs one at a time, making sure that they are mixed in well after each addition. Alternate folding in sifted flour then milk until all the ingredients are well combined. Divide mixture into 2 bowls. Tint one batch of mixture with pink food colouring. Add cocoa powder to the other batch and stir well. Drop a spoonful of each mixture into a cupcake case. Drag a skewer through the mixture to marblise the colours together. Bake for approximately 25 minutes until a skewer inserted into the cupcakes comes out clean. Once done, remove cupcakes from the oven and leave them to rest for about 5 minutes before turning them onto a wire rack to cool completely.

I made a glace icing to cover my cupcakes which is done by adding small amounts of hot water to icing sugar until the desired consistency is achieved. Colour your icing with food colouring then spread it onto the cupcake and allow it to harden slightly before eating! Remember to add any decorations before the icing dries so that they stick on!

Happy baking x

Giant Cupcake

I absolutely love the Wilton giant cupcake pan. Here's a giant cupcake I made with it on the weekend:

You can use any cake mixture you want. This cupcake was lemon flavoured - yum! I made a enough lemon sponge batter to fill 2 x 9-inch round tins - it was the perfect quantity to fill this pan. Here are a few tips to help you make the perfect giant cupcake:

1. Grease the pan really well. Wilton cake release works wonders on this pan - my cupcake slid out of the pan when I turned it upside down - easy!
2. The part of the pan for the top of the cupcake is not as deep as the cupcake base so you might find that the top part bakes faster. You can cover the top half with foil to slow down the baking and stop it from burning, or once the top half is finished, tip it onto a wire rack to cool then return the base of the cupcake back into the oven to finish baking.
3. Make sure both halves of the cupcake are completely cool before joining them together or decorating them. You may need to level the top of the base (use a sharp knife) so that the top half can join to it evenly. Stick the halves together with buttercream or a frosting of your choice.
4. The base of the cupcake looks nice un-decorated (as I have done) or you can decorate it with frosting or sugarpaste.

Hope you enjoy making giant cupcakes!

Pistachio, Lime & Coconut Cake

Last weekend I decided to experiment with flavours and baked a pistachio, lime and coconut cake. I made a lime butter cream to cover the cake - but as you can see from the picture I didn't make enough to cover the cake thickly - the sides could have done with another inch of frosting.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

Cake

• 175g shelled, unsalted pistachios (if you need to shell the nuts yourself a 400g bag should be enough)
• 75g desiccated coconut
• Zest and juice of 2 limes
• 125g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 225g unsalted butter (softened)
• 225g caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs (beaten)
• 1 tsp rosewater

Frosting

• Zest and juice of 2 limes
• 200g sifted icing sugar
• 250g unsalted butter
• Food colouring (optional)

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C (or 170C with fan). Put pistachios into a food processor and grind until finely chopped. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt together. Cream butter and caster sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy (the mixture will turn light yellow in colour after about 3 minutes). Gradually add the beaten eggs, mixing well after each addition. Next, mix in the rose water. Add the grounded pistachio nuts, coconut and lime zest and mix until smooth. Gradually mix in the dry ingredients, making sure they are all well combined. Lastly add the lime juice and stir through. Pour the mixture into a prepared cake pan (23cm), and bake on the middle shelf for about 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Leave the cake to cool in its tin for about 5 minutes, then carefully turn it onto a wire rack and leave it to cool completely. Once the cake is cooled, you can either cut it in half and put frosting in the middle (a layered effect) or you can put frosting on the top of the cake, or in my case - you can do both!

To make the frosting, mix butter and icing sugar on a low speed of an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add lime zest and juice and mix well. If you wish to colour the frosting, add a liquid or gel paste colour to the frosting last and mix well.

To decorate, place the cake on a serving plate and spread the frosting on the top (and sides if desired) using a palette knife or spatula. I made little sugar paste flowers for the centre of the cake, but any decorations could be used. Perhaps try using crushed pistachios and rose petals.....

Happy baking!

Pastel Cookies

Last weekend I made a quick batch of cookies to test out my new ovens to make sure they bake evenly. Here's a sample of some of the cookies - they are just plain sugar cookies decorated with royal icing in pastel colours.

And here they are all together ready to take into work for my colleagues.......

Stay tuned for more baking ventures soon!

Vintage Cupcake

I've recently come across Polyvore which enables you to import images from websites and create your own image. Here's my first attempt at using the software to create a vintage themed picture full of lots of gorgeous cakes.

Back in the kitchen!

Hi everyone - apologies for being offline for so long. I have been enduring renovations to my home for the last 2.5 months and only recently have gotten access to a kitchen again after 5 weeks! I've been having major baking withdrawals so as soon as my ovens (yes I have 2 ovens now!!) were connected up I had to test them out. Here are some little girly cupcakes I made.....

The icing was piped using a PME 57 nozzle to make individual petals. I used 2-tone icing and added lilac glitter and little pearl draguees on the top to make them extra cute!

Happy Baking xx