Mothers Day

I'm a bit late posting this as Mothers Day was last month, but here's a quick look at the cupcakes I made.
Chocolate cola cake a the base and fudge frosting on top. I used the BBC recipe again, but instead of pouring hot frosting over the warm cakes, I let the frosting cool completely and beat the bejaysus out of it to make it fluffy.
Then I just topped the cakes with an in-lay 'M' from fondant.

Sugar, Sugar

Those of you who follow me on twitter will know that I went to a beginners sugarcraft workshop a few weeks ago. It was a one day class in the back room in cakebox.ie in Dun Laoghaire. Below are the fruits of my labor.

Sugarpaste roses. These were gorgeous when I left the shop, but getting bumped around on the DART and LUAS in a box too shallow for the height of the cake they got a bit mushed by the time I got home.

Fully frilled cake - actually it's not a cake. Under that 2 kgs of sugarpaste is a styrofoam form. However everything *on* it is edible. Oh wait, except for the yellow ribbon on the bottom, ok except for THAT, everything is edible. I forgot to take a closeup photo of the frill which is probably for the best as it would also show my woeful piping.

Baby Booties - Nomnomnom-what? sorry? were you saying something? *wipes sugarpaste off face*

Sleeping baby - it's supposed to be a baby, but eh. Oh well at least if I ever have to make a Wallace and Gromit cake I've got it sorted.

Daisy Cupcakes

I got bored a couple of weeks ago, there was no one around and nothing to do and it was a crappy horrible rainy day out so I decided to do some baking. Nothing too exciting after all it was only me going to be eating whatever I produced and unless I want to turn into a telly tubby I didn't want to be eating a dozen buttercream topped cakes all by myself. So I went for these simple little cuties. I tried a different (easier) vanilla sponge recipe, still with the gluten-free flour blend which mixed and baked faster than previous attempts and topped it off with a lemon icing glaze and some daisies cut from leftover navy and yellow fondant.

Red Velvet Halloween

The sister offered to make dinner for the halloween\bank holiday \ it's not your birthday weekend. I wasn't planning on making any cakes because you know, birthday girl bringing her own cake smacks of patheticness. But once again I got bored and I had some spare fondant in the cupboard AND I'd been messing around on Pinterest and saw a couple of people had pinned wee little halloween models that would be fun to try and make my own versions of that. Well it was either that or drink myself into a depressive anti-birthday stupor. So I got out my food colouring and made up some wee pumpkins (with tiny green stems!) and then using my navy food colouring I kneaded up some more for tiny little witches hats. Then since I was still bored I made up some tiny ghosts, it took me a couple of goes to get good faces, but a toothpick dipped in navy food colouring sorted that out.

Of course all these cute little halloweenies demanded to be put on top of some cakes and since it was halloween I thought I'd try a recipe with blood red sponge, and what is better than a red velvet cake? Since I knew mum was going to be eating the cakes I made them with gluten-free flour and dyed the buttercream frosting orange. The models looked cute on top of the buttercream but I'm not sure the orange buttercream went well with the lovely deep colour of the red velvet. Oh, and also I forgot to take any photos of the final product, so you'll just have to imagine what it looked like.

Chocolate Robots

Ahh chocolate how I love you. But first to make some fondant. I looked up recipes online and they all seemed pretty simple, water, sugar and corn syrup brought to a rolling boil of about 125 degrees. But when I looked at comments under these 'simple' recipes it seemed to be all doom and gloom. 'I ruined my pot' said one. 'The sugar syrup destroyed my pans' cried another. So when I did it I made sure to follow the recipe to the letter. I also dumped the pot in boiling hot soapy water once I'd poured it onto the metal tray to cool to ensure I didn't 'destroy my pans!'.

As it turned out the fondant was really dead easy. I let the syrup cool on a cookie sheet and then started the slow folding movement that turned the syrup from sticky and clear to stiff bright white. Then I dumped it onto a table with some icing sugar and kneaded it until it was smooth although it

was still hot, so I had to stop every couple of minutes to be sure not to burn my hands. Once I had it shaped I wrapped it in wax paper, stuck it in a ziploc and left it to 'ripen' for a couple of days.

I wasn't sure how long the chocolates would last and as I wanted them for a party on Saturday I made them up on Thursday evening. Using a makeshift bain marie out of my 'does everything' pot and a ceramic bowl I melted half the chocolate and half filled the molds. Then I melted a lump of fondant down adding some lemon juice for flavour and stirring constantly. The fondant melted down to a smooth cream which I spooned into the molds and then filled the rest of the way with the chocolate.

I've read a lot about tempering chocolate and it all says that you shouldn't refrigerate it to save it from 'blooming' but I wasn't thinking straight (high on chocolate fumes) and I only had one mold and enough chocolate for 2 dozen so I put it into the fridge for about 20 minutes before I could make the next batch. The chocolates turned out lovely and shiny, thanks be to the silicone molds which are dead handy for popping out chocolates. The lemon juice took a bit of the sweetness from the fondant which meant they weren't too cloying and the robots went down a treat at the party.

Blue Stars

My friends and I all love cake - it's like crack to us. So when I and D announced they were having a welcome party for their new baby it was a perfect opportunity for some baking and messing around with buttercreams. I didn't have time to get down to the shops so really the only food colour I had in the house was a couple of bottles of Squires Kitchen, one navy and one yellow. Which was handy as I had some navy and yellow cupcake papers.
I made up a batch of vanilla sponge - although I was a bit apprehensive about the recipe because I was using a gluten-free flour blend that I hadn't used before. But beginners luck or whatever it was the cupcakes baked beautifully soft and light. I'd made up the buttercream a couple of days previous and let it sit in the fridge to amalgamate or whatever - buttercream always seems to work better when it's been in the fridge overnight or for a couple of days. Piped onto the cakes it actually worked well, previous to this I'd used a syringe for piping and that always just results in the frosting spilling over the top of the syringe and all over my clothes. This time I tried a piping bag which was stiff and a pain in the arse to clean but it was easier to control. I dyed some fondant navy, cut out some stars from and waalaa some lovely cupcakes fit for a welcoming party for a little boy.