Halloween

When I started making red velvet cupcakes I had the idea of putting in black food colouring especially for halloween. I could not have been happier when I cut one open to find it was black and red inside! I also wanted to try my hand at the spider web effect, don't think I did too bad for a first attempt.

Cookie Cupcake

I've made some yummy cookie cupcakes for my friend's birthday today. I used Martha Stewart's recipe for chocolate chip cupcakes (http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/chocolate-chip-cupcakes-with-chocolate-chip-frosting) and a cream cheese frosting (http://southernfood.about.com/od/icingrecipes/r/bl30212t.htm) that I added some Maryland chocolate chip cookies to.

*Extra - I made a couple of testers that had a cookie in the base of the cup and i would recommend this to anyone...they were even nicer in my opinion :)

Car update

Oh well, it looks like a kiddy car but at least it looks like a car!

Car cake

I'm just enjoying a sit down while I wait for the butter icing to set on my latest creation. It's my friend's little boy's second birthday and I asked if I could make the cake. I'm going to try to make as many cakes as possible so I can build up my practice and my portfolio. If I do decide to do this professionally I need to show what I can do!
The cake I've made is a chocolate sponge recipe I found at cakebaker.co.uk (here's the link).http://www.cakebaker.co.uk/MakingThePerfectChocolateCake.html  I've used this cake a couple of times and really like how light it is.  The butter icing is a combo of butter, buttermilk, cocoa powder and icing sugar. I have no idea on the measurements, I just kind of threw it together! So here are the pics of it from beginning to where it is so far.  Hopefully I'll be putting some nice pics on later with the finish result!

Breast Cancer Awareness Cake

I decided to make a big cake and some funred velevet cupcakes for hubby to take to work and hopefully make some monmey for Breast Cancer Awareness. It was a fantastic chance for me to try out making sugarpaste for the very first time. I am chuffed I have to say that I did it. There are little things to do differently and I need a smoother but I don't think it was a bad effort for a first attempt.

 

Fireworks!

Well my first effort for my fireworks cupcakes has gone a bit wrong. The idea was to put hundreds and thousands in the batter as I had heard that the colours would then spot through the cake. Obviously these weren't the best hundreds and thousands as there is not a lot of spotting...either that or I should have put more in! The second part was to put popping candy on top so that you got the bang but it got very sticky very quickly and just doesn't seem to have its pop when you bite into the cake. So back to the drawing board I go.

The chocolate orange ones worked out lovely. They are an orange cupcake, orange frosting and a chocolate orange ganache piped into the middle.

Plans for tomorrow

I've got my thinking cap on and tomorrow night is baking night :) I'm going to be attempting some chocolate orange cupcakes and some fireworks cupcakes. I'm really hoping they both work as one will be gorgeous if it works and the other will be a lot of fun. Will take lots of pics and get them on here for you to see.

See you tomorrow :)

It begins!

I have decided to try out making cupcakes and have some fun trying out the icing. A friend and I were trying to come up with ways of making money and this is where my thoughts turned. So I am now trying out different recipes trying to find the best ones I can and tweaking the not so good.

I found a recipe for red velvet cupcakes on Friday and thought I'd make them for my mother in law on Saturday. The first batch came out brown despite following the recipe so thought to myself I'd try again another time and just made the icing. However I made a botch on the icing and ended up with tons of the stuff! So I then made a second batch with twice as much red food colouring as the recipe asked for and these came out a pinky brown! All I can think is American food colouring must be different to the ones in Tesco, can anyone help me out on this? Anyway I gave the icing a go and I was very impressed with myself, I managed to do quite a good job.


Once they were iced I threw on some chocolate strands for a little bit of crunch. I do have to say they were the best cupcakes I've ever made and have inspired me to keep going on this  :) Check out the pics and let me know what you think.