Manchester United Giant Cupcake

I've been meaning to put up this post all week, so here it finally is! This cake was actually part of the wedding order I had for last weekend but felt it needed its own post.

While the cake pops were for the wedding, this cake was actually a present for the usher in the wedding which I thought was very sweet. The theme for this one was Manchester United, I've done a couple of football cakes but not a giant cupcake so it was a good challenge.

I always make a stencil when doing these jobs it makes it so much easier and the proportions much more realistic. I'm tempted to try to pipe it next time with royal icing has anyone else done this?
I left the cut out fondant for a couple of nights to dry out and then piped on the lettering when I actually positioned it on the cake, I always find piping lettering scary even though it always worked out fine - madness.

So keeping the top buttercream light I coloured the bottom with an absurd amount of Christmas Red colouring paste, in fact I had to emergency order some more from eBay the day before as I used so much! And I'm sure you can see how I finished it off like most of my giant cupcakes...with a bow! I do worry when using a ribbon for boys cakes but as there's loads of ribbons in football, on the cups etc I'm sure it's fine.

I like doing giant cupcakes that are a bit different from the norm and as this was my first football team one I think it turned out really well...I wonder what my next giant cupcake will turn out to be I've had some great ones this year so far :D Pin It Now!

CMYK Mimeo Cupcakes

This week I was given a fun task by my work, so make some cakes for the launch UK Docs for Mimeo for all of the staff. Me and another lady were asked, I guess we're known for making the most cake! They needed to feed about 140 people, we decided on a big slab cake to feed 60 (which was nearly all eaten before I thought of getting a picture) and cupcakes, we reckoned on doing 70 cupcakes but threw in an extra ten in the end.

The obvious choice was to go for the Mimeo logo which feature CMYK, meaning the print colours Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black). I was a bit worried about how strong the colours would turn out as if they're representing print colours then I wanted them to be perfect.

Black icing can be a bit harsh so we had the great idea of using black muffin cases. I divided the cupcakes in three and do one batch of cyan, magenta and yellow. I got the cases from my local cake supply shop Sugar Daddy's in St Neots, it's like a treasure trove I love it. I also managed to pick up an Ice Blue Sugarflair paste for the cyan and some icing whitener which I thought could help the magenta brighten up.

For the sponge I made the Vanilla Cupcakes recipe from Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days book, which is now my new standard cupcake recipe. I made the cyan batch of icing first, it took more colouring than I imagined as blue normally colours up extremely strong and always seems to develop after mixed so I'm really happy with how vibrant they turned out.  The yellow was easy, coloured with Melon sugarflair paste.

I left magenta for last as I find getting really bright pink colouring difficult. I used some of the icing whitener first which is really strange. You add some powder to a small amount of water so it turns into a paint like substance and add it in a bit at a time. I wasn't brave enough to make it completely white but it definitely lightened it a lot. I'd seen some liquid colouring in Tesco made by Silver Spoon. It's thicker than the normal liquid ones so I had more faith looking at the colour chart on the box that it would work better. It definitely worked better than the other pink I've tried but I'm sure I was mixing it for about 20 minutes (my poor mixer) but everyone commented on how lovely and light the icing was so it did it some good! I used about a bottle and a half of this colouring in a big batch of icing and I couldn't get the colour any stronger than what you see here so don't get the Pantone chart out it will never be magenta!

I seem to be favouring the Wilton 1M Wilton rose swirl nozzle, but I think it looks so nice it'll be my first choice for a while. I set them up on my clear cupcake tower which luckily held all of them and really represented the colours of Mimeo.  The cupcakes didn't last more than a couple of hours and I got some really nice comments on how light and tasty they were and that's all you can ask for really.
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