Tom Hardy Heartthrob Giant Cupcake

This week was one of my best friends' birthdays, the big 21! I've known for a long time what cake to make her, it really was a no-brainer.

To say she likes Tom Hardy (from This Means War, Inception, RocknRolla) would be a serious understatement. I just had to get him on the cake, after using ricepaper for the One Direction cake I did recently I thought this would be the perfect way, and then she gets to eat him, perfect!

Finding a nice image I used Photoshop to rub out one of his tattoos and replace it with her name in a fancy script, I have to say it does actually look realistic.

The cake itself is vanilla with chocolate buttercream. The sponge is marbled with pink too for some extra girlyness. I though the only way to really do this cake was in a teen heartthrob fashion, like something you'd have in the back of your diary at school.

The 'case' is covered with pink fondant, coloured with Claret Sugarflair colouring paste, I then used the off cuts to cut out the hearts, butterflies and stars too. As I said the buttercream is chocolate, I've lost my 1M Wilton nozzle (cries!) but I have been abusing it recently so went a bit old school with a normal swirl nozzle which actually did look really nice. I like using Green & Blacks cocoa powder, the pigment is so dark is really colours up nicely and it made my car small INCREDIBLE when I drove it over (it was actually quite lucky to survive the trip - nervous driver).
I thought it would be best to literally just cut him out and place him on the top, so it looks like he's coming out of the cake. I did then pipe buttercream onto the bottom of the picture so it didn't look too Art Attacky. After placing him on the front I placed a big pink heart on top and piped 21 onto it. I then dotted the pink hearts and stars around the picture with a couple overlapping. I also added some white chocolate stars to add another girly, and it fitted nicely in to the theme.

I mirrored the decoration on the back and gave the whole cake a generous dusting of pink cake glitter.  To finish it off I tied it up with a chocolate coloured ribbon making a bow at the front. I'm glad she liked the cake, I also used the image for her birthday card from Moonpig so she can keep him forever!

Nom!

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Flowers and Butterflies Giant Cupcake

It feels like a while since I did a giant cupcakes, it probably hasn't actually been that long, maybe I was just having withdrawals! So I was really happy when I was asked to make a girly giant cupcake for the weekend. My favourite brief as you all know, I love the doing girly ones I find them so easy I seem to make them without thinking which leaves me more time to clean up the kitchen I've just completely destroyed!

I think flowers look really lovely on a cake and I've done so many with hearts and stars on I thought maybe flowers would be a nice look and perfect for the girly theme. I made blue fondant rolled roses dusted with gold cake glitter Choccywoccydoodah style. I still had some rice paper butterflies left so thought these would look really nice dotted around the flowers and leaves, I did think about making fondant butterflies but these are so detailed and delicate they were much cuter.

The actual cake is vanilla as is the buttercream which is coloured with pink liquid colour and beaten within an inch of it's life! The bottom, the 'case' is covered in jam and white fondant which looks really crisp against the pink top. As the roses have gold glitter I thought a nice gold sparkly bow would match quite nicely, I didn't tie it all the way round as it's a wide ribbon it looked a bit heavy so a big bow looked perfect.

I have another cake to do over the weekend, so lookout for another post soon :)

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Butterfly Wedding Cupcakes

So this week I had my first wedding order, it's been in the works for a while and I can't believe it came around so quick. I've never done anything on this scale so it was certainly a challenge.

The theme was simple, pink and butterflies. A theme I'm really familiar with so I was actually really looking forward to it. I'm going to post a lot of pictures so beware!

They wanted 150 cupcakes and a giant cupcake for a top tier which I think is a great idea, I've seen it a few times and always thought it looked really cute, cupcake heaven!

The cases were a big part of the order and loved these paper wrappers and originally wanted them in black, pink and white, but bright pink was impossible to find so it had to be black and white. Pink buttercream was also the first idea, but magenta turns out to be an impossible colour to make! I couldn't make it anyway. So we decided it would look nicer with plain ivory buttercream with rice paper pink butterflies. These were really good because they looked like real butterflies, had great detail and were completely edible.

To finish them off I dusted them with pink cake glitter to make them really sparkle. The cupcake tower said it could hold up to 120 cupcakes...wrong! I don't see how this would work unless they were petit fours! Luckily I had prepared for this and already had two of the silver 23 cupcake holding towers. The rest had to be scattered around the three towers which did make them look like they were cascading around.

The top tier was plain as shown, they said they were going to put a bright pink cake topper on it, but I didn't get a picture of that so you will just have to imagine. As luck would have it I had a little stand perfect for giant cupcakes that I got for Christmas from Sainsbury's which is luckily white too so it fit in perfectly.

Now I've done my first wedding I can't wait until I get another order, I can be a bit of an angry baker when I get stressed, but this didn't stress me out one bit it just flowed, so my confidence is growing too. I'm just so happy with how professional it looked.

My poor house was totally taken over by these cakes, I took a day off just to make and decorate them. The baking wasn't too bad, it was the icing! It took me hoooooooours, and I was stood at a funny angle for ages too so I felt destroyed by the end of it. I even had to extend our table just to fit them all in.

What is even more impressive is that we managed to get them all inside my mums little Peugeot 106, 150 cupcakes and one big one. All in boxes from the supermarket, cake tins and also the trays that hold Muller yoghurts in, I collected them from Tesco! Eco friendly too! And a perfect fit for cupcakes...who knew eh. Pin It Now!

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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Girly Cupcakes And Cake Pops

Sometimes I can go weeks with no cakes to make to order, and sometimes the break is nice, this week I have thee to make so the pressure is on!

The first is this, I was asked to make some cupcakes and cake pops for a lady at work for her daughter. I had free reign on the decoration but girly, pink, purples and cute were the main themes. Luckily these are my favourite kind so I had no problem in getting into it. Also her daughter is thinking of having cupcakes at her wedding so it's good to impress!

I do actually have a big wedding cupcake order coming up next month so I will keep you posted but luckily they are also on this theme so it's good to get some practice in.

So first I did the cake pops, I followed by previous cake pop recipe but this time I kept the buttercream vanilla as the outsides were going to be quite decorative. I went with some coloured sugars, ruby red slipper glitter and some lavender coloured chocolate to go on the white base covering.
I think they came out really cute and super girly so I really hope she likes them!

As for the cupcakes I followed my standard cupcake and buttercream recipe which you will find on my blog here just omit extra ingredients such as cherries, cola essence etc. I then coloured the icing with Claret Sugarflair paste and decorating them with fondant butterflies (that I coloured with Grape Violet Sugarflair paste) and cut out with the cutters from my Baking Buys post, I also used pink and white sugar pearls, I tried not to over-do these as simplicity is sometimes a lot prettier.

All in all I am really happy with this girly order and think they will make a great little extra birthday gift :) Pin It Now!