60th Birthday Cupcakes

It's been a manic few weeks and we've finally settled into our new house, we still have some unpacking to do - in particular my baking stuff! But I managed to find all the bits I needed for a cupcake order I had this week. I feel like it's all been packed away for weeks (which it has) so it was nice to get some of it out and do some baking again. I do feel like I make a lot of fondant covered birthday cakes, which I do, but it was nice to be asked to do some cupcakes again as I can't remember the last time I did some for a birthday.

The order in question was for a batch of 30, 10 carrot cake, 10 vanilla and 10 chocolate. Cream cheese icing for the carrot cake, lemon for the vanilla and of course chocolate for the chocolate. I always use the Hummingbird Bakery recipes for my cupcakes, it's foolproof - perfect every time.

For all of the cupcakes I decided to ice them with the Wilton 1M piping nozzle for the rose swirl effect, it wins every time in my opinion and always makes them look that extra bit special. Each batch was to have its own design, the carrot cake cupcakes were easy, cream cheese icing and of course tiny carrot decorations. I got a pack of 12 chocolate ones from Sainsbury's which I thought was a nice alternative to fondant ones...you can't really go wrong with chocolate can you? I kinda thought it was best to keep these ones clean, simple and classic.

For the vanilla ones we decided on lemon buttercream, vanilla on vanilla can be a bit bland so a small kick of lemon really lifts it. Flowers had been requested so I made some thin fondant daisies and to give it that bit extra I cut out some rice paper butterflies, along with the lemon yellow icing they looked really cute and summery, my favourite by far.

Right now, the chocolate ones, I decided to go all out on the chocolate for these with chocolate patterned hearts on top of the chocolate buttercream. I bought some transfers at Cake International in November and loved the vintage rose one I finally got to use for this order. Using white chocolate for a nice contrast to the dark, the rose patterned hearts ended up looking really pretty against the buttercream, perfect for a 60th I think.

Placing all of my little cupcakes in their box they all looked so cute and professional and each batch had one cupcake with a pink fondant '60' on it. All lined up in order they really looked the business. I think it's fair to say I've got the cupcake buzz again, can't wait to see what I cook up next!

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Christmas baking! Including The Seven Kinds!

Last year we didn't get to do much Christmas baking as we had to leave for Norway last minute, so this year I made sure I did LOTS! Including a gingerbread house, seven kinds of Norwegian biscuits, accidental chilli sachertorte, failed croquembouche, gingerbread tree and festive chocolates.

First I'll start with the gingerbread house, I tried to make one last year but I made the dough too soft and it all fell to pieces in a slow but spectacular fashion, this year we made far better one - it stood up and everything.  Because of last year's epic failure I was given a gingerbread house cutter set which made getting even side much easier. We went very much for the old Hansel and Gretel theme with the front and sides decorated with piping icing, candy canes and heart windows. the roof was decorated with piped tiles, mini smarties and a Norwegian and Union Jack flag. We then sat it on a lawn of snow (icing sugar), edged with smaries and placed one of my sprakly gingerbread candy candles on the snow because it looked pretty :) Fact.

Now for the seven kinds, every Christmas every house must make seven kinds of Christmas biscuits apparently it used be to show that you weren't poor so you could afford to make so many kinds. Now we do it because we're greedy and want to put as many in our faces as we can at any given time over the festive period...as fast as we can, or is that just us? There are loads of different kinds you can choose from so our seven were: pepperkaker (gingerbread), krumkaker (crispy cones), sirupsnipper (syrup snaps), serinakaker, goro (rich man cookies), berlinerkranser (Berlin wreaths) and sandkaker (sand cakes). The krumkaker and goro you need a special iron to make them with, lucky for us we have them and this was the first time we made goro, it wasn't my favourite but it looks so nice! My favourite has to be krumkaker and serinkaker which is a gorgeous short biscuits covered in nuts and pearl sugar...actually the berlinerkanser were also very short, buttery and covered in sugar - always a winner! We gave them out to family for Christmas as we made so many which was a nice extra gift to give and still have enough left over for work tomorrow, bonus!

Left to right:
Krumkaker, sirupsnipper, goro and pepperkaker
The pigs say 'God Jul' which is Merry Christmas in Norwegian,
printed with a biscuit stamp I was sent by the lovely Sew White

Berlinerkranser

 Left to right:
Sandkaker, serinakaker and berlinerkranser

decorated Pepperkaker

Now the sachertorte, my sister-in-laws parents have been asking me to make them one for ages, about a year and I keep forgetting so I thought this would be a lovely gift, unfortunately without realising I put in chilli chocolate instead of dark...and didn't realise until after..but..BUT apparently it baked out and you couldn't taste it (we didn't tell them what I did and my brother reported back!)

Failed croquembouche..now I have actually successfully made one before so I was quite gutted it all went to .... sugar. We've had a new oven fitted and in short, I hate it. I hate baking in it which is why my posts have been a bit thin on the ground recently. But we're moving soon so hopefully the cooker there will be much better :). The profiteroles just didn't dry out properly inside and I should have compensated by adding more caramel for structural support, but I didn't - and it all fell apart before my eyes. So in the end it ended up as a profiterole pile covered in chocolate, spun sugar, snowflakes, gold balls and gold leaf. We had this on Christmas even as this is when we celebrate Christmas being vikings and while it didn't end up looking how I wanted, it still tasted great.

You've seen the gingerbread tree before but here's another picture, it was visually great and tasted really nice, I'll definitely be making one next year!

And last but not least the festive chocolates. I made some to give away which included glittery Christmas puddings (mould bought from Sew White) and some patterned after dinner mints. These were basically mint flavoured chocolates spread over snowflake chocolate transfers and just before they set I just them out into cute shapes such as moose, heart and snowflakes. These were great after a heavy made and looked great too.

I still have lots of Christmas baking stuff I didn't get a chance to use so hopefully I'll get round to it next year! I will also be putting up a photo post from Christmas :)

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Cake International - Birmingham 2012!

Cake International - a baker's dream! I've always wanted to go but have always been busy as it usually falls right on my birthday but this time I was able to spend a whole day there. Tickets for the saturday were completely sold out so it was PACKED! The queue to get into the NEC was a bit brutal in the car but without a doubt - worth it.

Once inside the place was buzzing - and heaving! Everywhere you looked you saw nothing but cakes, glitters, cutters, rolling pins - bliss! Some women go shopping for shoes, I go shopping for glitters and rolling pins. If you went and say you didn't see anything that took your fancy then I'm sorry but you are a liar :D. I had to physically restrain myself from spending nearly £90 on some topsy turvy cake tins.

But more on the shopping in a minute, the cakes showcased themselves were incredible, they were everywhere and there was even a special competition area where you cool 'ooo' and 'aaaah' all over various cakes and cupcakes of different technical abilities. I have to say I could never enter anything myself it would be far too daunting I've never seen anything like some of these beauties.

 

Don't be fooled thinking cakes are all bunting, flowers and butterflies oh no... check out the Dark Knight, Ghostbusters and The Avengers cakes.

There were also a few odd ones I have to say...the phrase "happy as a pig in ...." comes to mind...really don't think I could have a slice of this one. And while the clown is brilliantly done...it freaks me out! As does the pregnant belly one if I'm completely honest.

See what I mean?

There were so many amazing ones I especially loved the VW campervan and KFC cake.

Now for the shopping...well I got a little carried away. And I'm afraid I can't even tell you the exact places I bought them from as it was like a feeding frenzy on a chicken farm - but I can tell you that I shopped until I dropped, getting everything from chocolate transfers to metal ball tools.

So here's a list of my goodies anway
Ribbons - you can never have too many
Piping nozzles, one to make grass and two teeny tiny ones for piping
Cake pop sticks - worse ones I've bought as they were fairly hollow
Cake pop bags and ties - pretty standard as anyway
Two tiny painting brushes - for when using gel colour as paint
Dusting brush - for glitters
Glitters! - in red, gold, pink and bright pink
Gold and silver metallic edible paint - perfect for Christmas
Ball tool - First saw these on Cake Boss, great for smoothing edges of fondant and using with gumpaste.
Chocolate transfers - in star, rose, swirl and snowflake patterns
2 pack of cookies boxes (with 4 boxes in each) - comes with bags, boxes, ribbons and tags perfect for Christmas presents.
Silent Night Christmas stencil - this will be lovely on a chocolate cake with icing sugar or cream with cocoa powder
Wilton green piping icing - always handy to have some ready made

So that's the list, here are the pictures...I could easily have bought much more but I've got so much other stuff I have enough for a new Baking Buys post already!

The next Cake International is in April and I will be running a competition for tickets to those also where I believe Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood (beaut) will be attending - eek! So stay tuned for that post!

There were of course lots of demonstrations and book signings but I have to admit I spent all my time shopping and gawking and looking at the demos going on around various stalls. It's great to have all of your favourite suppliers in one place...now to Sew White there next year also and you'll never need to go anywhere else.

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