Easter Cake Pops and Treats!

Easter is of course not Easter without a ridiculous amount of food, chocolates and sweets - well this is the case in our house anyway!

I did plan to do lots of baking this weekend but some of it got sidelined for going out and enjoying ourselves with the family :D, but more about that after, first I had another nice little cake pop order to make. I'm becoming more and more fond of these treats and it was great to be more adventurous I'm thinking of investing in some books like Pop Bakery, any suggestions are welcome. The brief? Easter! So it was pretty free really and I wanted it to be full of cuteness - and I have to say, I'm really pleased with them! After a lot of researching I soon found out that chicks were the most popular theme, simple but sickeningly cute I couldn't resist making them. The biggest colour theme running through this time of year is pastel, you see it everywhere and it seems so fitting for Easter. I also then made pastel blue cake pops with white pearl polkadots that actually had a Tiffany & Co look about them and also white chocolate drenched in hundreds and thousands.

 

I really wanted to make hot cross buns this year but just never got around to make them and am so jealous seeing everyone's pictures popping up of them fresh from the oven. We still bought some though, can't have Easter without hot cross buns and butter. I did however manage to make some Norwegian shortbread biscuits and even decorate some. Again I was feeling inspired by Peggy Porschen and went for the polkadot theme and dusted them off with yellow cake glitter, yum!

Now I may be 24...but that didn't stop be from making cornflake cakes! These, along with rice crisp cake might be some of my favourite little nostalgic treats to make. Topped off with mini eggs, of which we still have about 6 bags left (yay!) to complete the birds nest look. I made so many I had to bring the rest into work to share them around, who said you can have too many anyway?

 

As I mentioned in my last post I made my mum an Easter egg...I had a go anyway. I've seen so many eggs like this I really wanted to try to make one. Jazzles are such a cute looking sweet, perfect to use on an egg. Layer up the sweets in the mould I drizzled some melted chocolate over a few now and them while layering on more chocolate to give it some structure so they wouldn't just fall off when taken out of the mould. After painting on layers of white chocolate in-between cooling the two halves in the fridge I left it to set overnight. I should have made it thicker but it still popped out with ease. Using chocolate that was melted but almost set again I glued the two halves together and again left to set overnight. I wasn't really sure how to present the egg so I opted for the 'egg in mug' look, I was also going to cellophane and ribbon it but I run out after all the ones we did for the family. It's definitely less hassle to just buy an egg from Tesco, but sometimes it's nice to try new things and make something a bit personal now and then. What did you all make for Easter?

 

Pin It Now!

One Direction Cake - Sweet Sixteen

Today is my cousins 16th birthday, we've had it all planned for weeks! They're visiting us at the moment for Easter/her birthday (there will be a post up with maaaaany pictures of the trip!), and as you should all know by now, I LOVE birthdays! I'm sure I end up more excited than the person who's actually birthday it is. I love shopping for presents, wrapping the presents and best of all giving them. And in true tradition...everyone gets a cake!

To say she is a One Direction superfan would be an understatement...I don't think I can put it into words so I wont try, I will however tell you that I will be attending one of their concerts with her next March in Nottingham and some of her excitement must have rubbed off on me as I would be lying if I said I wasn't the slightest bit excited myself.

We've been teasing her all week about her presents, which to be honest we were lucky even arrived as all the post gets delayed around Easter but we got lucky - thank God! For her presents it had to be a One Direction hoody, this is the ultimate must-have memorabilia for any fan - you also don't get a lot of this stuff in Norway so we knew it would go down well I just had to casually steer her away from all of the shops we went to this week that might sell it. I also know that she loved Elf cosmetics (Eyes, Lips, Face) as you can only order it from the UK online they do a couple of special orders a year so I logged on and ordered a nice selection of bits for a gift box. I did see a few bits that I wanted to get when we were out so had to sneakily buy them, like the the gift box, big red bow and wrapping paper. Claire's had a huge stand of One Direction goodies where I saw the paper and as it's a small shop I can tell you trying to buy the paper on the sly wasn't easy but I got away with it!

And of course I have to mention the cake! Again making this in secret wasn't easy and she must have known I was up to something cakey but she was banished from the kitchen until this morning. Liam Payne is by far her favourite in the group, so it had to be all about him. I found a picture of him with another fan, shamelessly cut her out and placed my cousin in -gotta love Photoshop. I got this printed on rice paper through an order of eBay and it came out really well :D. Sticking it down on the top of the cake I used royal icing to help glue down the sided without making it soggy, I also seal it down with piping royal icing pearls which also looked really cute. As this cake was all about love I used a heart to display the big old 16. To tie in the One Direction colours I placed strips of red fondant down the sides and even finished it off with some One Direction ribbon - again which I bought on eBay.

I also have to mention the Easter egg my mum found for her (eBay!!), there used to be loads of great Easter eggs like this in shops didn't there? Last couple of years have bee rubbish, so my mum found a shop on eBay that sold a One Direction cup with personalised name on the back topped with a Cadbury's egg , which in my opinion in the best kind of egg you can buy - it just tasted better in egg form doesn't it. Finishing it offf with some cellophane and ribbon to make it more special, you don't get eggs like this in Norway normally it's pretty cardboard ones filled with sweets which actually I do love too.

It's safe to say her birthday surprises went down brilliantly and all of the sneakiness was completely worth it!! Happy sweet sixteen Tina! xxxx

Pin It Now!