DIY Plant Pot Cake and Giant Chocolate Cupcake Recipe
Recently the lovely people at BakingMad.com sent me a package full of baking ingredients to whip up something special with! In the box was an apron to keep me tidy whilst baking, some Billington’s sugar, Allinson flour and a precious bottle of vanilla Nielsen Massey extract. With such quality ingredients I wanted to make a showstopper and decided it was time to dust off my giant cupcake pan! I’ve experimented with a couple of giant cupcake recipes for the pan but this is a trusty one that always turns out good results: 350g golden caster sugar 350g plain flour 350g unsalted butter 6 eggs (beaten) 90g cocoa powder 85g plain…
DIY Sofa Cake for Loaf’s #BakeItToWinIt Competition
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before but we’ve got a boys’ room in our house, dedicated to films and playstation! My boyfriend originally set it up with some red leather recliners but they’re starting to show wear and tear and could do with replacing. He’s got his heart set on replacing them with a sofa but times are tight so when I saw the Loaf.com Bake It to Win It Competition advertised on Facebook I knew I had to give it a go – it’d make an awesome early Valentines’ present right? The competition rules are simple – bake a replica of any sofa or bed frame in…
How to Decorate a Minion Cake #2
Earlier this year I helped my friend make a minion cake for her little boy’s birthday and recently I was asked to make another one with a twist – a minion in a pirate costume! I’ve already written a post on how to decorate a minion cake so I won’t bore you with too many details but what I did want to show is that practice really does make perfect! Most of the techniques I used were the same as last time although there were a couple of changes I made: For the eyes I used pastry cutters to cut out the outer circle of grey and dusted it with…
The Ultimate Carrot Cake Recipe (with Cream Cheese Frosting)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the best kind of baking is baking cakes I don’t like. You get all the pleasure of producing something beautiful without any of the associated calories! This is one of my favourite recipes, I’ve made it a few times and the feedback I get on it is always phenomenal – it’s a pretty easy bake too so if you need a good cake last minute this carrot cake recipe is the one for you! I’m afraid I didn’t take any pictures during the baking process but the instructions are fairly simple and I’ve included a couple of notes on things to…
DIY Despicable Me Minion Cake
This weekend I was enlisted to help my best friend decorate a cake for her 4 year old’s birthday party. At first he wanted a Hot Wheels Transporter cake (a bit ambitious) so he settled for wanting a minion, Despicable Me is great right? Rosie baked the cakes in advance, the minion is made up of 5 stacked cakes baked in 20cm sandwich tins with jam and buttercream in between each. We then dowelled these to keep them steady. The dome of the cake was baked in a pyrex bowl, unfortunately we didn’t have a 20cm hemisphere tin which would have been perfect for the job. Next, we put on…
Valentine’s Day Cupcake Decoration Ideas
Love it or hate it, Valentine’s Day is the first gift giving occasion of the new year and it’s just around the corner. Homemade gifts always mean that little bit more (unless my boyfriend is reading this, in which case nothing means more than Mulberry!) and if you’re struggling to think of the perfect gift for a partner or a friend, cupcakes are a great way to go. I spent my weekend playing around with various options for creating some Valentine’s cupcake decoration ideas to share with you. 1. Piped Buttercream Roses This one’s lovely and simple, with a closed star nozzle, starting from the centre of the cupcake, pipe…
Mary Berry’s Chess Cake
This is a recipe from the Great British Bake Off ‘Showstoppers’ book. It’s a Mary Berry recipe, I love Mary Berry. I love her even more after watching Alan Carr interview Mel and Sue last night who told him that she went to Pacha in Ibiza at 71 and likes to drink tequila slammers! The woman is a legend! Anyway, I was making a cake to take to work for my birthday (an odd tradition, feeding everyone else on your birthday but we’ll go with it) and I chose this one because I loved the surprise element of cutting into what looks like a chocolate cake to find a checkerboard…
Teapot Cake
What are weekends for other than making random shaped cakes for absolutely no reason? I got some hemisphere cake pans from Lakeland for Christmas and hadn’t managed to try them out yet, I looked up a recipe for the pans on their website (a basic sponge) and set to work. The cake recipe has to be quite dense for the finished cake to hold its shape although I did read somewhere that you can use ganache for the crumb coating as it will set more solidly and make the construction sturdier. For this one I used vanilla buttercream as the sponge was solid enough. At this point I hadn’t actually…
School’s Out!
This is my final assessment piece for my cake decorating qualification. It features: – Piped lettering – Graduated line work – Piped flowers – Scrollwork I’ll find out my mark next week but I’ve definitely passed so I’ve got a real cake decorating qualification, who’d have thunk it?? Tutorial to follow soon on the piped orange flower. Update: I got a distinction!!! Whoop.
Piped Flowers: Easter Daffodils
Just a quickie – royal iced flowers are great for getting ready in advance. Add a bit of gum trag to the icing for strength and using a leaf nozzle pipe five or six petals in a circle onto a square of grease proof paper. Once dry, colour some icing yellow and pipe a built up spiral using a number 2 writing nozzle in the centre of the petals. Leave to dry and then carefully peel off the paper and stick to your cake with a blob of royal icing.
