Superbowl cupcakes

I realise that I'm posting this a little late... approximately a month ago would have been good, in preparation for the superbowl. However, I haven't been that organised, so here are my superbowl cupcakes which I made at the beginning of February to celebrate the NFL match.

I never used to even really know anything about NFL, however my other half loves it and after kind of being subjected to it most Sunday evenings last season, I sort of ended up taking an interest in it and actually quite enjoy it now! It's really a pretty good game... anyway, back to the cupcakes!

We were supporting the Patriots, but in the interest of fairness, I made cupcakes for both the Patriots and the Giants. The recipe is for a chocolate cupcake and is from the Dr. Oetker website. I used the icing recipe which is part of it as well. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised as I don't generally like buttercream that much and this one was really good!

The tricky bit was making the logos.

The Patriots have a complicated logo so this is a simplified version thereof! I was pretty pleased with how they turned out though. I made them out of modelling paste (half normal fondant icing and half flower paste) so that they would dry out a bit and hold their shape. 

The Giants logo was a bit easier to recreate, although keeping the letters even was difficult. The colours aren't really quite right, but I think they're okay for some novelty cupcakes which were only to be eaten by me and my other half!

After making two Giants logos and two Patriots logos, enough was enough! I decorated the rest very quickly and simply with, what else, glitter!

Chocolate dinosaur cake

The beginning of January saw my other half have his birthday and, as he is trying to ignore the fact that he is getting older, a children's birthday cake was in order. I saw a video on YouTube detailing how to make this cake and thought it was cute, so decided to have a go. You can find the video here and there is a link to the paper templates used as well.

I made the Easy Chocolate Cake from BBC Food (which I also used for my cricket pitch cake) and, since neither my other half or I like butter icing particularly, I also made the ganache from the BBC Food recipe - I figured it may as well all be chocolate since it wasn't going to be green!

The thing I disliked about this cake is that due to cutting out various parts, there are bits of cake left over. It wasn't really a problem, we just ate those as well, but they weren't iced and in general I prefer to use as much of the cake as possible. In any case, it was fun to make and disappeared very quickly.

The cake is only one layer high, and with the recipe I used this is really enough as the cake is moist and dense, almost like chocolate brownie. Plus it has the chocolate decorations (generic version of Smarties, and you can't really see but there are white chocolate chunks along the back of the dinosaur) for the ultimate chocolatey experience!

A little Valentine's day baking...

I'm not really a Valentine's day fan - I have no problem with it and think it's quite cute really, but the red/pink/teddy/heart gifts are all a little bit over the top for me. I think it's nice to celebrate it a little though, and it is definitely a good excuse to bake a cake!

For a while now I have been wanting to try out a recipe I found in Good Food magazine for the Ultimate Chocolate Cake. I have been resisting, waiting for a special occasion, as there is a reason this is the ultimate - 400g sugar, 200g butter, 200g chocolate and that's before you get to the icing! However, the time had come and, in addition, I wanted to try out my heart-shaped springform tin which I have actually had for ages but hadn't yet used.

You can find the recipe here on the Good Food website if you want to try this yourself.

The cake is very rich and moist - it's almost a little like chocolate brownie, which perhaps isn't so surprising if you look at the recipe and the quantities of the various ingredients. It made me worry it wasn't cooked through, but I think it's okay! Mine did sink quite a bit which was disappointing - I think I might have opened the over a bit early. It wasn't early according to the time, but I had reduced the temperature on my oven since we have a fan oven and I suspect I shouldn't have turned it down so much. I think I just about managed to hid the dip by filling it with chocolate ganache though!

What do you think of the chocolate fingers around the sides? I quite like them, I just about got the effect I wanted. I had toyed with using whole fingers then putting actual chocolates (truffles, for example) all over the top so it looked like a basket of chocolates but especially with the cake dipping (and me not being able to find chocolates in time!) that didn't happen. I'm quite pleased with the result though.

Definitely one to try again! I think I'll try it in a normal round tin though and see whether this makes a difference. If you're craving chocolate, this is the ideal solution...

Happy Valentine's day!

A quiet month...

So January was a quiet month on the baking front - I had to ban myself given that we still had Christmas cake and lots of biscuits and chocolate left over from the holidays. I did make some shortbread, as I had butter that needed to be used as well as a stressed team at work! I also made my other half a birthday cake, which I will get round to posting about!

February should be a bit busier on the blogging front, again it's just a case of getting round to it. I have just made some Superbowl cupcakes for tomorrow, so I will be posting about those. In addition, I have been learning to make different types of sugar flowers at my classes so I will blog about those too - bluebells, winter jasmine and snowdrops to come!

Christmas cake #2

Not much information needed for this one - essentially it's the same as the last Christmas cake, albeit square! This one has actually turned out to be better cake as it was cooked for a little less time so it's more moist. Unfortunately I don't like the decoration quite so much but never mind!

The ribbon and holly are made out of coloured fondant icing. The ribbon has been covered in red, holographic, edible glitter and I dusted the holly leaves with silver dusting powder. Yum!

Christmas cake #1

It's nearly Christmas time, and that means time for Christmas baking! I have made two Christmas cakes this year for three reasons: 1) I like baking, 2) I wanted to do lots of cake decorating and 3) everyone in my family loves fruit cake. Christmas cake always goes down well. 

I made my cakes back at the end of October as I like giving them time to mature. Normally they stay in the cupboard until about three days before Christmas when I finally get round to marzipanning and icing them, but because part of my cake icing class involved a Christmas project Christmas cake number 1 is now finished.

As usual, I used Delia Smith's recipe from her Complete Cookery Course book, amended like normal to contain the dried fruit I like best! I also omitted the almonds and used fruit juice instead of brandy. Unfortunately I didn't have (or thought I didn't have) any ground mixed spice when making the cake, so I added ginger and nutmeg in its place. I'm not sure what effect this is going to have on the taste, so am curious to taste the cake to find out. I then found out just recently that I did have ground mixed spice after all, it was just hiding at the back of the cupboard! I could have kicked myself for not finding it (I was sure I should have had it since I had obviously made this recipe before!) and am just hoping the cakes taste okay. They smelled good when I unwrapped them to decorate them, so fingers crossed.

I have learned a few tricks for icing the cake now! Any holes in the cake should be plugged with marzipan before putting the layer of marzipan on. In addition, the cake should be placed upside down on the cake board and if the bottom edge of the cake lies just above the board (due to the way the cake is a bit higher in the middle after cooking) put a long rope of marzipan around the base. Then cover the cake in apricot jam, then marzipan.

Once the marzipan has dried, roll out the icing (I used fondant icing rather than royal icing - I'm not keen on the hard royal icing) and then brush the marzipan with either white alcohol or water. Cover the cake in the icing and smooth. I recently bought a cake smoother and the difference it makes is incredible! This cake is the smoothest I've ever made!

I then left the cake to dry for a few days. I had already started to make some icing penguins using ready to roll fondant icing. Once the heads and bodies were quite dry (I made them separately) I stuck them together using cocktail sticks. I had also previously made some little parcels out of left over icing I had coloured and let them dry out.

So then all that remained was to place all the models on the cake. I put the penguins on first of all, then the presents, but it was still lacking something. Recently I treated myself to a little holly leaf cutter so a friend suggested that I add some holly to the sides. This made it look much more complete!

The final touch was some white, holographic glitter which I sprinkled all over so it looks like snow and frost is sparkling around the penguins. 

Now it's just a case of keeping my fingers crossed that it tastes good!

Fairy cakes

I got an urge to do some coloured icing and cake decoration so I made fairy cakes to take to work. It's years since I last properly made fairy cakes (I have to be honest, they're not my favourite!) and it was great fun! I just used a basic Victoria sponge recipe (4oz caster sugar, 4oz margerine, 4oz self raising flour and 2 eggs) and put it into fairy cake cases. I also added some vanilla bean paste to give them a really good vanilla flavour.

The icing is buttercream - the main reason I don't make fairy cakes very often! I am not a fan of buttercream in general, I find it very sweet and not very tasty. However, it is good for decorating fairy cakes and just because I don't like it doesn't mean that other people don't! I think my team at work will eat anything if it's full of sugar!

In any case, I had great fun colouring the icing and then adding glitter and stars! I have to admit, I left a couple of cakes un-iced so that I could enjoy them too!

Not something I can see myself making very often, but if I get the urge to bake something simple just for a bit of icing fun they are perfect!