Cath Kidston Inspired Cake Pops

It feels like months since I've made cake pops, and probably because, it actually has been months! Which is a shame as I love making them, I've just been too busy so it was nice to have time to do some properly when asked to make a batch.

This particular batch were to be very pretty, pastel, floral and Cath Kidston inspired. Who doesn't life a bit of Cath Kidston? The colours, flowers, polka dots... it's all too cute and I love it.

I made three designs, two floral ones which were similar but with different base colours and one with polka dots standing up in floral cases. The two floral ones were made from being dipped in coloured white chocolate. Half in pink and half in pale blue.



For the floral part I cut out circles of fondant and set them on the cake pops with royal icing, for the flowers I cut out red fondant with flower plungers, added a gold pearl for the bud and again placed them on with royal icing. For the stalk and leaves I piped on green royal icing and to finish piped white pearls around the design.



The polka dot ones were sooo easy to make and look super cute. I saw these mini cupcake cases in the garden center and the floral design fitted in so well I couldn't pass them by. So when I had dipped the cake pops in white chocolate, just before they were set I put them head down in the cases so they stood up. To make them even sweeter I piped pink polka dots around them and boom, they were finished.

To make them look more professional I wrapped them up in their own little individual cellophane bag and silver tie. When they were finished they looked great and like something out of Laura Ashley and I hear they went down a storm.

I even got to use my Wilton cake pop decorating stand that I got for Christmas for the first time. This shows you just how long it's been since I made them.



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Gingerbread Cookie Tree

You know Christmas is coming when you start planning gingerbread structures, I will be making a house of course but first I thought I'd try something different - a cookie tree!

I've seen a lot of these over the last couple of years and have been dying to make one so was super excited to see a set in The Works for only £2.99, a set made up of a set of star cutters, hole cutter and two different height stands depending on how tall you want it.

Using the recipe below we made up about 4-8 of each size of star to get it as tall as possible, cutting a hole in each one before baking. Once baked I set them aside for icing, I made up a huge batch of green royal icing for piping and filled a huge icing bag up.

I iced each star with green, stacking more on top and it soon filled up the biggest stand. I kept aside a star for the top and painted it with gold edible paint and dusted it in cake glitter. For tree decorations I added sugar snowflakes, purple coated chocolates, mini candy canes and even more red and gold glitter...you can never really have enough anyway!

I have to say I was surprisingly pleased with how it turned out as I wasn't really sure what I was going to be doing with in on the decoration side, I seem to do my best stuff when winging it. We had a little bake off at work for Christmas and it fitted very nicely into the festive theme...keep posted for the gingerbread house I'm decorating tomorrow!

Gingerbread Recipe:


250g butter
125 golden syrup
150ml double cream
250g icing sugar
400g plain flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground gloves
1/2 tsp pepper

You need to add more spices to taste.

Heat butter, golden syrup, double cream and icing sugar in a saucepan. Leave the mixture to cool and stir in the rest of the ingredients. Knead the dough well and roll out, cut out star shaped pieces, make the holes and bake on 175 degrees (165 fan) for 10-12 min. 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!

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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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