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Sunday 31 March 2013

postheadericon Valentine's Cupcakes!

So this year for Valentine’s Day I went with the theme of ‘Bee Mine!’ Unfortunately my cupcakes did not turn out quite as planned because I had lots of things to do and as usual I left it until the last minute. But anyway, here are my Bee Mine cupcakes:

 


  

 
As always my icing let me down! I swear one day I will have absolutely perfect icing! Had my icing been more compatible with me then I would have done a bee hive with the bee in the side of it! =D
I made the cake carrot and the icing was a vanilla buttercream with some cream cheese in it as well and then with yellow food gel it was dyed.

 

The bees and the fondant were made out of MarshmallowFondant. The heart was just with a cutter and then using black colouring with the writing. For the bees here is a really awesome tutorial on it!

 


Monday 25 March 2013

postheadericon Irish Coffee Cupcakes!







These were made by me and an Irish friend who wanted to make a cupcake that had both whisky and coffee in them. I actually don’t like coffee at all and whisky I can tolerate to a small extent so I wasn’t super excited about this, but I wanted to try it out anyway! We actually used this recipe from Martha Stewart’s website and I guess that if it is good enough for her then I would be willing to try it!




The cakes actually turned out to be very tasty and I would recommend this recipe for anyone that wanted to try out a coffee cake! We did fill the cases too high so the cakes ended up spilling out a little but apart from that they were a success. 




The only problem I had was piping the icing on. For some reason piping bags and me just don’t get along whatsoever and my piping always looks shocking! Obviously the only solution will be to keep making more icing and then practise piping =D But if people do have tips on maybe what consistency is best for piping or how they make nice icing on their cupcakes then that would be fabulous! As you can see from above, there were some half decent ones and then I just gave up and slathered on the rest of the icing =P



Sunday 24 March 2013

postheadericon High Heel Shoe Cake!



I am finally starting to go back through all of my cake photos and making blog posts about them. It is about time because this cake was made back in January!!!

                                      
So this was made for my best friend Jasmine for her birthday! Here is a link to her blog - you should totally follow her if you want to make lots of awesome, creative homemade things!

So I decided a while ago that I wanted to try and make a high heel out fondant. Most of the heels that I had seen online had been made out of gumpaste which I have never tried to make before. Although I would like to make it one day I much prefer working with Marshmallow Fondant and wanted to try and make it out of that even though I knew that it would be a lot trickier to stay totally hard. So, here are the steps I took to make the shoe:


 
My idea for the shoe was a red shoe with gold glitter on top because Jasmine had previously glittered some of her shoes before so I knew that she liked that effect. My glitter didn’t work out as well as I had hoped and the effect turned out to be more like lustre dust on it. 

One site I would highly recommend for tips and advice on making gumpaste shoes with lots of examples in case you don’t know what time of shoe you are going to do would be this site by sugarteachers.blogspot.co.uk.
I would recommend making the heel first. This gives it time to hard up so once you put the sole on top it doesn’t fall. Remember and stick a dowel, or depending how tall the heel is, a cocktail stick so that you can stick the heel onto a polystyrene stand and the sole can have something to stick onto.  I ended up using a flat shoe for the template- size 6- and using the same method as the trainer shoe cake. I drew around the shoe and then cut a bit of cardboard out for the template. Using the cardboard template again for a guide you are going to want to cute the same shape out but with about 1cm off the edge so you get the inner sole- I used a light pink for mine. This can be stuck on the main sole with edible glue or even a little bit of water. As you can see in the 2nd photo I put something underneath the heel because I wanted to support it. This was a 2litre bottle I believe that I cut a section out of so it would stay round and then got the size right so that it could fit under the shoe.

This was the finished shoe just drying off and ready to be put on the cake! I based my design on one that I had seen on the sugar teacher’s site and I think that it didn’t turn out too bad. The heel of the shoe was made purely with trial and error- figuring how tall I wanted the back to be and then tapering this down until it met with the sole of the shoe. The front was done in pretty much the same way- getting a rough idea how much to put on the shoe and cutting it down until I got it to a shape that I wanted. When I put the front bit on I left it to harden up by rolling up some kitchen roll and putting it under to that the shape would stay ‘up’ and it worked for me!
I wanted it to say Vivienne Westwood just because that is one of Jasmine’s favourite designers! And the red stripe on the front of the shoe was made by painting on red food colouring with a little bit of vodka.



The cake that I had actually made was a beetroot and pistachio cake and this was definitely not my choice! I was not best impressed that I would be making a cake with beetroot but actually I had to swallow my words because tasting the batter before it even went in the oven was so fabulous! And look at that colour! >>>>>
The cake did not turn out that bright after being in the oven but the taste was still so fine and with the pistachios it was gorgeous! I ended up just adapting a carrot cake recipe that I liked- substituting the beetroot instead of carrot obviously and adding in chopped pistachios. I would definitely recommend using beetroot in cakes!




I did add other things onto the cake: It was supposed to be a shoebox cake but next time I will work on it to make it more like a shoebox! And I also added in some make up, nail polish, ‘tacky’ rings and some pearls to make it more girly!




Saturday 23 March 2013

postheadericon Spiced Apple and Custard Tarts





These I made back in January just on a whim- I don’t remember the last time that I had made pastry before then so I decided to give them a go!
There was actually 4 different parts to these tarts- The pastry, the spiced apple pieces, the custard and the oaty crumble that you can sprinkle on top to give it a bit of a crunch!
I got this recipe from Lily Vanilli’s Sweet Tooth recipe book which I got as a Christmas gift and before then I had never actually heard of her. Her recipes seem quite modern and interesting and if I am ever in London again then I would perhaps go to her bakery for a wee taste =)
So, anyway, I really liked this recipe and I wouldn’t mind practising it again so I could get it perfect. For a winter’s treat it is very nice with the spiced apples but I am sure that you can substitute this for berries if you wanted something more summery! 


This apple mixture was spiced with brown sugar, butter, cinnamon and nutmeg although it was recommended to use star anise as well but I didn’t have any in the house.  
I was a little bit concerned about the custard; I think that I had made it once before but I had forgotten how it had turned out but I was really impressed with her recipe and it managed to turn out consistent, smooth and yummy!

All in all I liked these- a bit stressful getting all the components ready all at once and I need some more practise making pastry so hopefully there will be some pastry posts coming up in the future!


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Ellen's Cakes
I am a 21 year old student who loves to bake and make yummy sweet things
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