Valentines Cupcakes - Just Bake

So Valentines is coming up and you either love it or hate it, it is of course another holiday that comes with the possibility of baking - so of course I love it!

I was asked by Just Bake to create some cute cupcakes for them to get in the spirit and they sent me some gorgeous looking chocolate golden hearts (£2.90)* to do the job with. I really love using gold in baking as it used to be so hard to do, but with cupcake decorations like these it's much easier to add some glam to your cakes.

As it's Valentines coming up I thought the best cupcakes to make were of course red velvet, so I used my favourite recipe. Not even the most rugged of men could refuse these bad boys, and if you're just baking them for yourself - then so what, indulge!!

So for the decoration I decided on the classic cream cheese icing, there really is no other choice for red velvet in my opinion. As the classic symbol for love is a heart I thought I'd make these the focus for the decoration. On some I covered them in gold hearts, dotted them around, artisticly placed a couple of top - and of course drenched them in my trademark love for edible glitter!

Some I covered in gold glitter and the others I added lashings of hot pink glitter for the girly eaters.

I also added a copious amount of gold sugar balls and some love heart cupcake wrappers. I love how glitzy they came out...I may have sneaked a few of the chocolate hearts before...just you know, to check they weren't poisoned, would be silly not to wouldn't it?

What is everyone else baking for Valentines? Can't wait to see what everyone else comes up with. Pin It Now!

Pink and Ivory 30th Birthday Cake

As I said in my last post this weekend was my sister-in-laws birthday, so of course she got a cake! I've been so busy lately I've not been able to make many so it's nice to have time to actually do a proper cake.

I love making two tier cakes, they're great to give as presents and you can have lots of fun decorating them. I recently bought a textured rolling pin I've been wanting to try out, you'll see this soon on a Baking Buys post. I managed to get my hands on some ivory fondant, I do have ivory colouring paste that I could have used, but if I see it I usually try to pick some up it looks quite pretty next to pink. Which of course is the other main colour, I've become quite obsessed with this colour combo, if you haven't noticed. As this was going down the girly route I thought I'd make it extra girly by adding some cameos. They can be a bit of a pain as i only have one mould at the moment but my new favourite shop Sew White has informed me they will be stocking them soon so hopefully the process will speed up some!

So for both tiers I rolled out the fondant and used the rolling pin to make the spiral patterns, I've learnt that you need to press fairly firmly or the pattern smooths out a bit when you smooth it on the cake, and don't try to roll backwards afterwards or it'll all be destroyed!!

For the bottom I cut out some pink hearts and using white royal incing piped pearls around the edge and the letter 'L' in the middle for her name, Lindsay. For extra detail I made strips of fondant ribbon in between the hearts and made a pink fondant bow the night before so it could dry and not fall to pieces, think I'm starting to get the hang of these bows now!

For the top tier I again cut pink fondant hearts and made a pink and white cameo inside. Again piping pearls around the cameo to add a bit more definition, I love how sweet and detailed they look! I think the spiral patterned fondant looks really nice and effective against the pink and finishing with the gold ribbon around the bottom of each tier really topped it off I think giving it quite a vintage look.

The cake went down really well after a night of drinking, as you can see it ended up covered in streamers from party poppers and devoured over the next two days, nom indeed! I also have to give credit to my mum for the actual baking of the cake as I was too busy she helped me out one afternoon , we're quite a good team!

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This Week In Giant Cupcakes

Now I'm seriously entering cake time, there will be one nearly every day for a couple of weeks, next week in particular so I'm trying to take it a bit easy this week and prepping some bits for other cakes I have left to do. In the last week I have had two to do, one for a 21st birthday and one for a 50th, both girly! This one was for a girl's 21st birthday, and the theme was pink and butterflies. I get so many orders like this and I just love it. It gives me a reason to go to town on cake colourings, cut outs, shimmer and sometimes even glitter! I think if I had to make girly pink cakes all day I really wouldn't mind, but sometimes it is nice to get something different come up, so Halloween will be the time for some darker treats...

This one was made with my classic Victoria Sponge recipe using jam to stick the icing to the bottom and filling the middle with lashings of pink buttercream. I prefer to use jam for the bottom of the cupcake so you see the indents of the 'case' part which you don't get as much with buttercream as they will work a bit like filler and smooth over these grooves which can ruin the effect.

I love the look of the white bottom and pink top, so to give it a bit of contrast I used my smallest butterfly plunger to make white and lilac butterflies, the lilac I coloured with Sugarflair Grape Violet but only a little to get a light colour as it can go bright purple if you add too much. To make the plain white ones a bit more girly I dusted them with light pink cake glitter I bought from my local Garden Center for about £2.79 I think, they have just started to stock cake decorating supplies so I can't resist the odd purchase. You all know I love eBay but sometimes if I need little bits like this in a flash to garden center is the best option. They also have great ribbons which is where I always get mine from as they're always quite cheap.

To match I cut out 21 in white and also dusted them in the cake glitter.  I aslo added a white and glitter butterfly for under the 21. I didn't want to over-do it and I think the glitter was a really cute touch. I did a pink gingham ribbon around the bottom, I try to always do these on cupcakes where the design allows as it makes them look a bit more like a present.


 The next cake is the 50th birthday one. This is a classic chocolate sponge recipe, I always use Bournville cocoa powder, it just tastes nicer and it always comes out quite dark which isn't always the case with some powders.  They wanted a pink/white/black theme which always looks nice I think. As it was for a 50th birthday I didn't want to go too Barbie girly, just pretty. They wanted lots of bows, stars and hearts which is a really cute selection.

This cake also gave me a change to use some of my new heart and star plungers too! again I did this one with a white base, as I think black would have been too dramatic, with a pink top with white and black decoration. I also added to large 50s in white fondant on the front and back.

I used a few different sizes for a bit of variety. I hadn't used black on a girly cupcake before and I'm really pleased with how it looks as it gives it a more of stand out effect and has good contrast. To colour the black I used Sugarflair liquorice, and the pink I used Claret, I do have a Pink one, but I find I like the Claret colouring more, always use what you trust.

I love the bows on the bottom, I wasn't sure how to incorporate them to begin with and then thought about what I'd like if it was me, and then though they would look nice almost like bunting, framing the bottom of the top making every other one black. I didn't use any glitter on this one leaning more on the decoration.

And to finish of course another ribbon! This time a black gingham one to tie in with the theme. I use pins with the colour balls at the end to keep the ribbon in place as I think it looks nice than plain pins and you notice them more making them that bit safer!

This take me up to a total of 20 giant cupcakes that I have made this year, I still have at least 4 more to make in the next month I think...I wonder how many I will be up to by Christmas!


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