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!


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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!

Minnie Mouse Cake Pops and Mickey & Minnie Cookies

I seem to go through waves on cake, sometimes I don't make any for a month (not many times, granted) and then suddenly I'll have three in a week - like this week. As long as I plan it right it's fine, and after a little initial panic it's all fine. So this post is about the first batch, which thrills me to say are cake pops and cookies!

I think cakes and treats for children's birthdays might just be my favourite, there's so much you can do with them it's great. These were for a surprise birthday party for a little girl who loved Minnie Mouse, so of course Minnie Mouse cake pops they just had to be! I was also asked for some cookies with Mickey and Minnie on them for the party bags.

OK the cake pops, these weren't as easy as I'd hoped. I couldn't imagine being able to actually make her face, not nicely anyway! So rice paper came to the rescue and it worked brilliantly. The cake itself is red velvet mixed with vanilla buttercream and rolled into balls, and the ears are actually chocolate buttons stuck on with some melted chocolate. This bit was quite tricky and took me forever but so worth it. Once set I then dipped them in chocolate, I did try to make it black but it just started to crumble so decided to play it safe with chocolate, must research more into how to do it without ruining the chocolate. Luckily they turned out really cute in chocolate so all was well. I always think dipped but undecorated cake pops look really sinister, anyone else?

For the faces I made up some ivory royal icing to match Minnie's face and then stuck the rice paper cut out faces on, making the icing bigger than the face so it stood out more. Once all of the icing had set I put on their gift bags and red ties and they were ready to go!

Now the cookies, I used the sugar cookie recipe from Butter Hearts Sugar (brilliant blog) it's brilliant for when you need to decorate the cookies and bakes really well. I made star cookies with 'Mickey' on and heart cookies with 'Minnie' on and then added red fondant stars and hearts. The actual lettering was piped in the Disney font too just to give it that extra bit of detail :) When set I then placed them in their own gift bags with red ribbon all ready for the party.

I definitely seem to be doing a lot of cake pops and giant cupcakes lately, and I have to say I love it!

Nom! Pin It Now!

Red Velvet Wedding Cake Pops

While the sun hasn't exactly been shining this week you can't deny that Spring is finally here, our garden's full of tulips and daffodils and the wedding season seems to have kicked in, everyone's getting hitched at the moment which to me, only means one thing...cake!
(by the way, there's going to be a lot of photos, sorry!)

I love how weddings are no longer a normal iced fruit cake with flowers, they're cupcakes, sweet tables, croquembouches and even cake pops! The worst thing you could do according to most people I've spoken to is to give them a slab of fruit cake...present them with a cupcake or cake pop however, it's exciting and you have an individual treat just for you. The last wedding I did cakes for was a tower and table full of cupcakes and I loved that idea, so when I was asked to make some cake pops I immediately accepted the challenge!

The actual cake for weddings at the moment seems to be red velvet, which I have to say is a favourite of mine so I was stupidly happy when this order for 50 red velvet cake pops came in. The theme was pink, white and girly, which seems to be my most popular theme of late.

They had requested pink and white cake pops with piping detail, half pink with white piping and half white with pink piping. I made the biggest red velvet cake I had ever had in my own, while a lot of people don't like the next part, I absolutely love smashing up the cake and turning it to crumbs! I was having a stressful day so smash up a cake was a great release, also you have to smash it up to make the cake pops so it had to be done anyway... :D

It seems most people use Candy Melts for cake pops, I never have. I find the normal cake covering chocolate works just as well, I always get white chocolate so I can colour it easily. So after I had mixed the cake crumbs with buttercream and rolled them into balls and chilled, I dipped them in chocolate (half coloured with pink food colouring) and left them to cool. I made my own cooling stand by poking holes through some polystyrene for the cake pops to sit in. Free and effective! I used another big piece for the actual display stand as I didn't have one. I wrapped in pearly wedding paper and patterned cellophane and tied it all up with a cute pink bow. I will soon be asking my brother to make me a proper one as he's good at all that stuff.

For the piping I used royal icing, again some coloured with pink and I have to say it took me hours!! I even took on the famous piping claw hand that I've heard so much about and saw on Choccywoccydoodah. I did a few different designs, swirls, hearts, bow and polka dots. I wrapped each one individually with a little cellophane treat bag and silver tie which I bought in a pack from eBay, love that place they get all of my money!

I think they came out seriously cute and perfect for a wedding, I had to fight my family off from eating them so I hope they enjoy them!

P.s, do you like how I transported them? Never driven so carefully in my life - need a 'Cake On Board' sign!

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Cambridge Zombiegeddon Brain Cake!

So from traditional to down right freaky. This month I was asked to make a cake fit for zombies...a brain cake of course!

This cake is to support the Cambridge Zombiegeddon, a flash mob zombie walk for Halloween. I've taken all of this technical description from their page so I get it right :)

"A flash mob (or flashmob) is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and sometimes seemingly pointless act for a brief time, and then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment and/or satire. Flash mobs are organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails The term, coined in 2003, is generally not applied to events and performances organized for the purposes of politics (such as protests), commercial advertisement, publicity stunts that involve public relation firms, or paid professionals

our aim is to do this at Halloween in Cambridge (Saturday the 29th) with anyone who would like to get involved it would sure as hell be fun!!! And that's the aim it's got to be fun and safe.
There will be 3 stages to this event with exact information becoming available shortly before the actual march so make sure you keep your eyes peeled.
There are a lot of different flash mobs zombie walks etc available on youtube I suggest you have a look to see what we are trying to aim for.
I have change the event to the Saturday for a few reasons mainly there are always more people in Cambridge and I am sure we will have lots of hungry zombies!! And we want a lot of people to witness the zombie march ... not only that, Saturday is a better day for most people.

So dress as a zombie and hunt for some brains tell your friends (BUT KEEP IT A SECRATE) you can be as original as you like or stick to the classic brain dead zombies. The wilder and more unusual the better.

We are currently looking to fill a few main roles in the organisation of the hoard.
We need a production team available to record the event although we encourage you to take a camera yourself and document the day, write a blog share on facebook or twitter.
If you think you can help in any areas at all please let us know it would be great to get your ideas and thoughts?

You can follow us on twitter @zombiegeddon_uk or #zombiegeddon share our events page on facebook or even use the flyer above.
Above all have fun
TM :D "

Right, now all of you cake lovers, let's talk about that big old brain! There was only really going to be one choice for the actual cake itself, Victoria Sponge simply wasn't going to do. So the logical choice was of course for Red Velvet cake! There's nothing better than when tucking into a brain than to see a gorgeous piece of Red Velvet under there. Although this cake wasn't really suited to cream cheese frosting so I opted for scary looking jam instead.


I baked the cake in a Pyrex bowl, perfect brain shape that my lovely mum bought for me because I couldn't find anything else that would fit. It took over an hour to bake because it was so fat and I wanted to do it in one big go rather than having to get pieces to match up.  I did have to carve down some sides to give it a bit of shape but other than that is was perfect.

I covered the cake in pink fondant coloured in Claret Sugarflair colouring paste. I tried to leave it a little marbled so it didn't look too perfect. I googled for good brain pictures for ages so I could get the right look. I decided I would make long sausages in the pink fondant, as long as I could and layer them on the cake in the squiggle pattern, pressing them against eachother to look like they were part of the same thing.


I wanted to get some shadowing to really bring out that good ole organ look - why not! Using Christmas Red (not very apt!) I used a brush to dab it in the creases Art Attack style, I watered it down a bit so it was more like paint. I dabbed it over some more to make it look a bit bloodied. I really wanted it to look like it had just been harvested from some poor unexpecting soul, and dumped in a box. So I created my own jam glaze. I didn't want to use an already red jam as I wanted it to be a bit lighter, so I used some jam I had left over from the Sachertorte, apricot. I then coloured it up with the same red and added water to make it a bit more glaze like so it spread more easily and looked a bit more like goo. Yum. I slathered this all over the brain enough to make any zombie drool...or moan?

To finish off the look I put the cake on some baking paper while I messily (on purpose) splattered some more blood jam on the brain so it splattered the paper. I wanted it to look almost like it came from a zombie butchers. There's no room for pretty cake boxes during zombieggon so I had a brain wave. I'd get a normal old boring cardboard box like you'd find in a bin and splat some bloody handprints on the side like passing zombies were trying to get to the brain. I did this with more Christmas Red and latex gloves...the food colouring is really hard to get off your hands so I decided to play it safe. I also did a bit of advertising with #zombiegeddon written on the sides just so you all know what the cake is supporting.

I then tied it all up with a lovely length of packaging string...pretty huh? And the look was complete. I'm actually really impressed with how it looked, fresh from a horror film and how easy it was to put together. I found it really fun to make as you do need something different upon all over the glitter and hearts now and then and what's better than making a cake that looks like a brain, ready to be feasted upon?


Happy brain eating.


Zom! x (did you see what I did there....) :D Pin It Now!

Book Review - Kinky Cupcakes

posting will be a bit quiet for week as I have my little brother's birthday coming up and baking it and decorating it will take some time! So I thought I would tell you about a couple of my favourite books.

Both actually were given to me by my brother Joe, cupcake themed of cours. This one is called Kinky Cupcakes , by Joanna Farrow from Octopus Publishing Group - and it's beautiful!





You do need a bit of time on your hands for this one, but it will all be worth it. It's a pretty sexy book and these cupcakes will be great for a party with your friends, hen nights etc.

This is truly a book of indulgence, it's filled with beautiful cupcake cases, decoration exotic flavours. With great cupcake recipes such as Tutti Frutti, Exotic Spice, Red Velvet and even Chocolate Chilli. Think Victoria Sponge no longer and mix things up a bit for exciting cupcake inside and out.

I've taken some pictures of my favourite ones, I haven't gotten around to trying any for myself unfortunately as you need some modeling chocolate or gum paste, which isn't easy to get around here without going online. But I will try to find some cash for the starter kit in my baking wishlist so I can give these a go.


These look so great I think you could easily justify spending a whole day just on decorating, like this Maneater one(top right), they give you instructions on how to make the decoration yourself which actually makes these do-able, and not ridiculously difficult - bonus!

Some of these are quite saucy, it's easily the raciest book in my collection, just look at this Frills and thrills cupcake (left), saucy - but cute! And with the instructions again it isn't too hard to make some ruffles and a bottom, even men will like tucking in to these!

I have to say I love this Hey Suspender one (bottom right), the cut outs are really something I'm getting into at the moment, something 2D really cant make a cake stand, it also means you can use outline pen on them really easily with great effect, this one is again really simple but so effective.

This is by far one of the cutest books I have seen or even owned, and once I'm a whizz with the gum paste I'll happily test a few risque cakes out. I just need the perfect event to make them for, my brothers 5th birthday probably isn't the best time to show them off!

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