First Wedding Anniversary Giant Cupcake

Some of you may remember my first wedding cake pop order I had last year. I was very proud of my little treats in their stand looking all pretty so I was delighted when asked to make a giant cupcake for their wedding anniversary this month.

Their original order was for 50 red velvet cake pops decorated in pink and white so I kept the theme running for this cake. The cake itself was of course red velvet, you can't really get a more romantic sponge could you? Topped with cream cheese frosting it was the natural choice for event.

For the base I covered it in pink fondant dyed with claret Sugarflair colouring paste and for the top I piped rose swirls onto it with the cream cheese frosting with the famous 1M piping nozzle. To keep up the romantic feel I cut out hearts in red and pink fondant leaving a big red fondant heart for the front on which I piped 'Dave & Natty'.

I tied it all up with a love heart ribbon for the extra cute factor and a huge dusting of cake glitter it was ready for the happy couple. I haven't done a giant cupcake in a while so it was nice to make such a pretty one, I have missed my cake glitter!


Pin It Now!

This Is Halloween!

It's no secret that I love holidays which involve baking....which to be fair, in our house..is most of them. But with Halloween you get to be really creative, I love making treats for the kids that come to our door - and I'm quite competitive as you know...I like my treats to be the best! This year was no exception, while I was happy with the ones I made last year, this time I wanted to go even further. We even made an effort with the pumpkin carving this year - Jack Skellington and Mr. Oogie Boogie!

There's going to be a lot of photos just to warn you. I made glittery chocolate skulls, bones and pumpkins, sparkly spooky toffee apples and cake pops.

The chocolates were made from moulds bought from Poundland, the skulls and bones were brilliant as they were silicone ones, the plastic pumpkin ones however were a total nightmare and I may have ended up smashing them in frustration when trying to get the chocolates out.  I made them from white, milk and also orange chocolate. The orange chocolate buttons I bought in Tesco and melted easily, had the perfect colour and tasted lovely to boot. I dusted the moulds with cake glitter before pouring in the chocolate which means it stuck to the chocolate rather than everything else it touched.

For the sparkly spooky toffee apples I used the same recipe as last year and decided to make half with a dark green/black colouring to make them like poison apples. Half way through the poison looking ones the sugar crystalised and made the last 4 apples look absolutely horrific!! One was so bad I actually put it in our window on Halloween to scare people! I managed to get 4 apples stage by stage leading up to the scariest of them all.

 From right to left
starting to get scary, getting a bit scarier, not really wanting the eat the next one and the last...
well...there are no words for that monstrosity really.

Below - in all its scary glory!

 Now for some nicer looking toffee apples, no colouring, just sprinkles and some glitter.

Once set I attempted to add some sprinkles and the drenched them in cake glitter to make them look a bit special - to finish I wrapped them in cellophane bags and tied them with curling ribbon, just like from the carnival. I have to say I think the dark colouring was a mistake - they looked burnt even though they weren't but I managed to palm them off on some poor unexpecting boys.

Now for cake pops, possibly my favourite things to make at the moment. For the cake I used some left over red velvet and purple sponge rolled with vanilla buttercream. I decided on four designs - pumpkins, eyeballs, ghosts and Jack Skellingtons. I got a brilliant Halloween theme cake pops set from eBay with orange and black sticks with orange and black twist ties for the bags. They were all dipped in white chocolate, the pumpkins - dyed with orange colouring. The ghosts were easy to decorate with black royal icing as it was only the face but it was hard to keep a ghost shape when inserting the stick...ended up looking like those things in Pac Man but still worked out well.

The pumpkins as I said were dipped in orange coloured chocolate and decorated with black icing and a green fondant stalk - it was quite fun actually giving the all different faces. Next came the eyeballs, these again were fairly easy, using green fondant and red and black royal icing -  a lot of people weren't sure about these for some reason...it's not like they're real eyes or anything! I have the say, the Jack Skellington ones were my personal favourites, the only issue was that I couldn't find my tiniest piping nozzle - my baking room is a mess! So I had to use a bigger one so it's not as fine as it should have been.

I did buy a couple of bags of regular Halloween sweets to go with everything else, I made little goody bags containing one cake pop, a couple of chocolates and a few of the bought sweets. All in all, with the toffee apples I had about 40 items to give away. I ran out in 40 minutes last year so I doubled my loot! What was really nice was that my niece came to help me share them out, dressed in her best cat costume she even got a few goodies to herself!

 

Had a go with face paint for a two-faced effect, my niece wasn't quite sure if she liked it or not!

Pin It Now!

Choccywoccydoodah London!

So continuing on from my last post, I promised to tell you properly about the London branch of Choccywoccydoodah, the first is in Brighton which I visited and loved in November so couldn't wait to snoop around the new shop on Fouberts Place, just off Carnaby Street, London. What's great about this new shop is that they have a cafe right upstairs, now instead of tearing open your chocolate treats in a scene from something the day after lent, you can dig into some tempting treats in a quirky room, with a nice view...and forks...not your bare hands! Unless you really want to of course.

The shopfront itself is impressive and stands out against the rest of the buildings, dark and strong but with bold colours and glitter bursting through the gaps to draw you in along with the alluring smell of chocolate. If your a Choccywoccydoodah fan then you would have seen the episodes from last Christmas where they had the glamour-puss lady in the Brighton window, a new daring type of Christmas window but it definitely worked and going into the London store you're greeted by a lovely chocolate lady that could easily be the glamour-puss' sister! Although I suspect actually the evil queen in Snow White rather than a Christmas shopaholic. I became instantly jealous of her hair and dress - which is ridiculous....she's chocolate....I still want them though.

So anyway, you walk straight onto a big and beautiful table of chocolate and cake, tempting chocolate gifts and the stunning Snow White display. After many of my hours have been devoted (forced by niece) to watch Snow White, I couldn't help but have a good ogle. Evil queen, Snow White, castle, mirror mirror and of course the poisoned apple, it all looked amazing and could easily have gnawned on one of the castle's towers - don't worry I restrained myself - just.

Tearing myself away I had a good nose around the rest of the shop, I'm loving the chocolate ladies at the moment and the land girl really caught my eye, I loved her, red lips, tiny waist and a gingham bust - what more can you want in a land girl? On every little display around the shop and on shelves on their own too sits cakes, many, many cakes. You really can't understand how beautiful these cakes are until you see them for yourself. Everywhere you turn you see a new cake, and grow a little more hungry.

As you can imagine big cakes are really their thing, tall, pretty and every inch is chocolate. Decorated in flowers, hand painted letters, cute Westies, huge hearts and glittery roses. I REALLY WANT A GLITTERY ROSE! Sorry, got that out of my system now. One day I will have one of these cakes, I just have to - I'd rather have one of these cakes than a car...I wish I was lying. But anyway, don't worry if you can't afford or need a huge cake right now as you can actually get smaller ones to take home for as little as £34.99, or you can buy a figure, a gnome perhaps?

Or maybe a duck or love bird? There's lots of options to make sure you don't go home empty handed. And if those are still a bit too big for you stomach or handbag then you can even take little treats home (to eat in secret so you don't have to share), chocolate lollies, chocolate marshmallow slabs, chocolate popcorn slabs (these looked incredible, must get one next time!) or even just jars of treats or buttons - there is actually something for everyone.

Now we couldn't leave without visiting the cafe upstairs...would have been rude not to wouldn't it? It was an absolutely boiling day but we just couldn't visit without trying something. There's a whole beautiful table full of gorgeous cakes, brownies, tiffins...everything really. And as for drinks there's hot chocolates, milkshakes and even proper lemonade. If you're feeling extra indulgent you could always try the banana split - it sounded epic. But as we were in chocolate heaven we decided to share a slice of chocolate cake, I say slice, it was in fact like a wedge out of one of those giant Jarlsberg cheese's you see in Tesco. It also came with two scoops of vanilla ice cream and raspberry coulis, I thank the chocolate Gods for this, ice cream with cake that day seemed like the best invention ever. Not feeling like we could finish a milkshake in a Man vs Food style we opted for a safe pink lemonade which was so refreshing and just what we needed.

 Now the cake, as I said it was a good big slice, drizzled with helpings of molton chocolate, if you worried that a shop so big on the decoration wouldn't deliver on the actual cake then worry now more - gorgeous. The whole place in painted in its famous red colour with individual and purposefully wonky lampshade which I thought fitted into their 'square peg round hole' theme perfectly. I wish I took note of our waitress' name in the picture below as she was lovely too :)

I have to say I was very sad to leave and if I lived close I could easily imagine popping in regularly to satisfied my big need for a) chocolate and b) cake.

Long live Choccywoccydoodah!


Pin It Now!

Wedding Party Cake Pops

It's been a crazy few weeks, and we've all been looking forward to my brother and his wife's wedding party at the weekend. It was a great excuse for everyone to get back together again and for all those who couldn't make the wedding join in some of the fun too.

Of course with me when there's a party it always means one thing - cake! I loved doing the wedding cake and cake pops for the actual wedding so I thought it was a great excuse to make some more.

The sponge itself is chocolate, crumbed and mixed with white chocolate ganache. One rolled and chilled I dipped them in milk chocolate and decorated with pink sprinkles, pink chocolate curls, white chocolate stars and lots of pink cake glitter.

I really wanted it to look special, as they'd hired their favourite pub for the party I thought I'd stick with the theme and used pint glasses to display them. I know that doesn't sound too special, but I did stuff them with white and star-patterned tissue paper and tied the glass with white and pink ribbon with silver bells and wedding ring decorations on. The finished product looked really good and I think in the end I made about 70 - I think my little brother and niece had about four each!

I really am going to try to make more cake pops, I think they're my new favourite - and it is my niece's birthday next week...there might be a few kicking around there too :)

Pin It Now!

Flowers and Butterflies Giant Cupcake

It feels like a while since I did a giant cupcakes, it probably hasn't actually been that long, maybe I was just having withdrawals! So I was really happy when I was asked to make a girly giant cupcake for the weekend. My favourite brief as you all know, I love the doing girly ones I find them so easy I seem to make them without thinking which leaves me more time to clean up the kitchen I've just completely destroyed!

I think flowers look really lovely on a cake and I've done so many with hearts and stars on I thought maybe flowers would be a nice look and perfect for the girly theme. I made blue fondant rolled roses dusted with gold cake glitter Choccywoccydoodah style. I still had some rice paper butterflies left so thought these would look really nice dotted around the flowers and leaves, I did think about making fondant butterflies but these are so detailed and delicate they were much cuter.

The actual cake is vanilla as is the buttercream which is coloured with pink liquid colour and beaten within an inch of it's life! The bottom, the 'case' is covered in jam and white fondant which looks really crisp against the pink top. As the roses have gold glitter I thought a nice gold sparkly bow would match quite nicely, I didn't tie it all the way round as it's a wide ribbon it looked a bit heavy so a big bow looked perfect.

I have another cake to do over the weekend, so lookout for another post soon :)

Nom! Pin It Now!

Christmas Cupcakes and Festive Cake Pops

As you know my Christmas baking is going to be a bit all over the place this year but I did manage to sneak this order in before the packing for Norway commenced! I am infact now here finally and it's covered in snow yay! We celebrate on Christmas eve here so it's all kicking off tomorrow.

 

Anyway, I had a cute order for Christmas, cupcakes and cake pops, I haven't made cake pops in a while so I was really looking forward to it. The theme was Christmas. Do forgive me I'm writing this on my iPhone on the app for the first time so we'll see how this goes! I can't seem to move the pictures to the top...may have to fish out the mac.

The cupcakes are vanilla and I stuck to two designs as there were for a stand, one half I made look like Christmas puddings with green fondant leaves and red piped berries. I also have them a generous dusting with gold cake glitter to really make them sparkle, I have to say I love them! The other design was more simple with cute miniature candy candles with another generous helping of red cake glitter.all of the cakes were topped with vanilla buttercream first and I'm sure they will look great on the Christmas table.

 

Next for the cake pops, these again were a vanilla mix of cake and buttercream. I dipped them in both white and milk chocolate. I made ones covered totally in gold glitter, red glitter, candy canes and again Christmas puddings! I absolutely love these they're so cute and will make great gifts. I put them in cellophane gift bags that i got from Sainsbury's and tied them with Christmas ribbon from Tesco. I'm so happy with how they look and will have to make some more soon I forgot how much I love them.

Merry Christmas ! Pin It Now!

Sparkly 21st Giant Cupcake

So from a zombie brain cake to a sparkly cupcake, a natural transition of course!

While Monday was about creating gore, yesterday I was back creating my usual giant cupcakes bursting with pink and glitter.

This one is very similar to my last 21st giant cupcake, it was a double order from the same lady so I wanted them to be similar but not the same. This one is a chocolate sponge iced with vanilla buttercream.

This time I made the bottom 'case' part a cute girly pink colouring it with Clare Sugarflair colouring paste. The top of course didn't need any colouring and the ivory colour looks really clean and fresh next to the pink.

I think the glittery fondant cutouts worked really well last time so I used this idea again with a glittery 21, butterflies and big and small heart.  I've always found it hard to apply to cake glitter, but I stole an idea from Choccywoccydoodah where they dip a clean and dry soft brush in the glitter and tap it over the area rather than trying to gently tip it on...which never works! It also spread the glitter out more evenly.

I really am loving using the butterfly plungers, you get such good detail on them and when covered in glitter, what girl wouldn't love them?

To finish it off I tied up some pink gingham ribbon around the case, which I think I need to buy more of actually as I really don't think I can have much left on the reel now!

I will try to stop forgetting to take pictures after I've already boxed them up, I could probably display them a little better :) This is now the last cake I've got to do with week before I start the wedding order tomorrow, which I though I'd be quite nervous about but I feel really relaxed and confident about it so can't wait to start. I've also got thursday off so I can focus on it 100% with no stress. I'll get pictures up as soon as I can :) Pin It Now!

4th Birthday Snow White Giant Cupcake

So it's that time of year again, my niece's birthday and this time she turns four.  I've made her a birthday cake the last two years so this one could be no exception.

The first one I made was an In The Night Garden Cake, and while I loved it, I was very new to it and didn't even level the layers! So it was very lumpy and bumpy. This is what gave me the cake bug! The next year I made her a little princess castle cake, I hadn't researched it much but I think it turned out well.

This year she is still very much into the princess theme, Disney Princess to be precise, and Snow White in particular, I've lost count of all the times she made up watch that film! And while I'm not sure how making Snow White would actually look, so I thought maybe another giant cupcake would look good. I know I make a lot of these, but she loves cupcakes so I though it would be quite fitting. I decided to make it in the theme of Snow White's dress rather than what she actually looks like.

The base is covered with blue fondant icing, coloured with Baby Blue sugarflare paste, and the red stripes in Christmas Red. I made the buttons from Melon yellow, wet them and covered them in cake glitter, not shimmer - girls can never have too much glitter and she ate these the first!.

For the top part I rose iced it with melon yellow buttercream, and dusted it with yellow shimmer this time. I decided to put the 'posion apple' on the front, though for obvious reasons this was posion free! To make this I just carved an apple shape from the christmas red fondant, brushed it with corn syrup and drenched it in red cake glitter and left it to dry. I used the corn syrup rather than water so it would still look shiny. I then piped on a stalk and the number four.

Luckily she loved the cake, we ate it for breakfast and the rest went home with her. Unluckily I seem to find glitter EVERYWHERE and have a feeling it's going to be around for a while...at least it will make the kitchen look a bit more magical! Pin It Now!