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.



Nom! Pin It Now!

This Is Halloween!

It's no secret that I love holidays which involve baking....which to be fair, in our house..is most of them. But with Halloween you get to be really creative, I love making treats for the kids that come to our door - and I'm quite competitive as you know...I like my treats to be the best! This year was no exception, while I was happy with the ones I made last year, this time I wanted to go even further. We even made an effort with the pumpkin carving this year - Jack Skellington and Mr. Oogie Boogie!

There's going to be a lot of photos just to warn you. I made glittery chocolate skulls, bones and pumpkins, sparkly spooky toffee apples and cake pops.

The chocolates were made from moulds bought from Poundland, the skulls and bones were brilliant as they were silicone ones, the plastic pumpkin ones however were a total nightmare and I may have ended up smashing them in frustration when trying to get the chocolates out.  I made them from white, milk and also orange chocolate. The orange chocolate buttons I bought in Tesco and melted easily, had the perfect colour and tasted lovely to boot. I dusted the moulds with cake glitter before pouring in the chocolate which means it stuck to the chocolate rather than everything else it touched.

For the sparkly spooky toffee apples I used the same recipe as last year and decided to make half with a dark green/black colouring to make them like poison apples. Half way through the poison looking ones the sugar crystalised and made the last 4 apples look absolutely horrific!! One was so bad I actually put it in our window on Halloween to scare people! I managed to get 4 apples stage by stage leading up to the scariest of them all.

 From right to left
starting to get scary, getting a bit scarier, not really wanting the eat the next one and the last...
well...there are no words for that monstrosity really.

Below - in all its scary glory!

 Now for some nicer looking toffee apples, no colouring, just sprinkles and some glitter.

Once set I attempted to add some sprinkles and the drenched them in cake glitter to make them look a bit special - to finish I wrapped them in cellophane bags and tied them with curling ribbon, just like from the carnival. I have to say I think the dark colouring was a mistake - they looked burnt even though they weren't but I managed to palm them off on some poor unexpecting boys.

Now for cake pops, possibly my favourite things to make at the moment. For the cake I used some left over red velvet and purple sponge rolled with vanilla buttercream. I decided on four designs - pumpkins, eyeballs, ghosts and Jack Skellingtons. I got a brilliant Halloween theme cake pops set from eBay with orange and black sticks with orange and black twist ties for the bags. They were all dipped in white chocolate, the pumpkins - dyed with orange colouring. The ghosts were easy to decorate with black royal icing as it was only the face but it was hard to keep a ghost shape when inserting the stick...ended up looking like those things in Pac Man but still worked out well.

The pumpkins as I said were dipped in orange coloured chocolate and decorated with black icing and a green fondant stalk - it was quite fun actually giving the all different faces. Next came the eyeballs, these again were fairly easy, using green fondant and red and black royal icing -  a lot of people weren't sure about these for some reason...it's not like they're real eyes or anything! I have the say, the Jack Skellington ones were my personal favourites, the only issue was that I couldn't find my tiniest piping nozzle - my baking room is a mess! So I had to use a bigger one so it's not as fine as it should have been.

I did buy a couple of bags of regular Halloween sweets to go with everything else, I made little goody bags containing one cake pop, a couple of chocolates and a few of the bought sweets. All in all, with the toffee apples I had about 40 items to give away. I ran out in 40 minutes last year so I doubled my loot! What was really nice was that my niece came to help me share them out, dressed in her best cat costume she even got a few goodies to herself!

 

Had a go with face paint for a two-faced effect, my niece wasn't quite sure if she liked it or not!

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Vintage Button Wedding Cake Pops

This post is actually a couple of weeks in the making now and I've been a bit absent - but it's been manic! But more of that for another post.

Two weeks ago I was asked to make some cake pops for a friend's wedding, cake pops for weddings are getting so popular now I love making them! I wish I could show you some pictures...but...well the dancefloor and the wine called so I have very few. I did however manage to get some pictures of the beautiful cake table sent to me so I could show you as I was so caught up in the Gangnam Style I completely forgot.

It was such a lovely reception with lots of quirky touches I'm fairly sure lots of people were taking notes! So I was sent a few pictures of ideas and they decided to go for some pastel coloured cake pops with fondant vintage style buttons on top, I even managed to find the exact mold online which I can't wait to use again - so many ideas!

The sponge was purple vanilla which looks great when you bite into them, held togetherwith vanilla buttercream and covered in purple, cream and pink chocolate and slightly sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.

The buttons were made up from fondant as I said, pastel colours to go with the chocolate and left in the fridge to harden and set before applying. They looked really cute and the colours contrasted really nicely I think it looked really effective. They had a whole sweet table set up even with their own personalised pick'n'mix section - amazing!

I think I'm becoming slightly obsessed with cake pops, tempted to try to cake pop maker...

Nom!

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A Very Hello Kitty 5th Birthday

Next week marks my niece's birthday, I can't believe she's five already! I can still remember getting the phone call in the middle of the night to announce her birth, I was in Southampton at uni at the time and we all got up for an hour too excited to see oo-ing and ahh-ing over the photos they'd just sent over on our phones.

I love being an aunty, she's so clever (I know I'm biased - but she is!) and she's so funny as well. We loving baking together, it's a good thing the girl likes cake with me around! Cake pops don't last long around her that's for sure. Unfortunately we won't be able to go to her party this weekend as we're away on holiday, but I did manage to make her a cake and cake pops for it.

Last year she was all about Snow White, this year however she's been sent back to the cottage with the dwarves - sorry Snow White, there's a new girl in town.....Hello Kitty! So there was no question really about what her cake should be. I always like to go one better though - so she got some cake pops as well :), I have actually made these cake pops before but she didn't see them so they definitely needed to make a reappearance.

For the cake I made a big vanilla cake iced with pink (of course) vanilla buttercream. The fondant was coloured with Claret Sugarflair colouring paste and Hello Kitty herself was made from a stencil, I love my stencils. I printed out a few sheets of an outline drawing of her and cut out all of the pieces I wanted to make. I layered up the colours keeping her whole white body as a base and laying on the red top, flower and bow etc. I'm actually really happy with how she turned out...I do tend to end up as the 'angry baker' as people call me when I'm decorating - I was a little stressed at times... but overall I'm really happy with her.

For her name, top and bow I used Christmas Red colouring paste which just felt wrong in July and the flowers, butterflies and other top I used lilac concentrate colouring, varying strengths which went really nice with the reds and pinks.

Now moving onto the cake pops, using vanilla cake I crumbled it all up and mixed it with vanilla buttercream and rolled it into little Hello Kitty head shapes. After leaving them to cool I dipped them in white chocolate and then piped on the face details and bow. They're so easy to make and look brilliant...what's more they taste epic!

I can't wait to see photos of my niece blowing out her candles and enjoying her party and cake... have a happy birthday Sophie Chops!! Pin It Now!

I Hate Mondays Cake Pops!

Last week was a horrible week at work it was so busy we all felt physically drained by the end. So a few of us thought we'd cheer everyone else up by making cakes for Monday, have a little bake off. 
I had planned to make some cake pops and a batch of snickerdoodles, but as soon as I put a picture of my cake pops up online I soon realised that I didn't have enough...so I put the snickerdoodles back on my 'to bake list' and made another batch of cake pops instead.

Monday's are always manic at work and while cake was a great idea, I think everyone went slightly mental on the sugar so it may have to be toned down next time! In the end we had my cake pops, shortbread, a pink ombre cake which was brilliant and also a shop bought cake which didn't make it 5 minutes after tasting for us to realise we were being tricked! There's still loads left....so another hyperactive day tomorrow perhaps?

 

Now for my cake pops I went for a variety, there are loads of different designs I have been wanting to try so this was a great excuse. All of the cake pops are dipped in white chocolate, in my first batch I made the standard hundreds and thousands dipped ones, then I got more adventurous with the pink leopard ones that I've been wanting to try forever and finished off with little pink owls with pink wings and yellow feet which are just too cute.

For the leopard ones I used a brush to dab on some pink petal dust and gave them a rough outline with black food colouring paste, the trick is to not outline them completely so they look more realistic. I really do love these and am tempted to invest in some other colours for more looks.
As for the owls, I coloured the chocolate pink and when they were cool I piped some pink royal icing on for ears, and writing icing to make the eyes and beak. In hindsight I wish I'd make the ears out of the cake and then dipped them in chocolate.

For the second batch I made hearts, cherry blossom and Hello Kitty cake pops. The hearts I actually used a heart cutter to make them and after dipping them in chocolate, absolutely covered them in blue sprinkles and hundreds and thousands. The cherry blossoms ones caught my eye a while ago and I'm really happy I finally got around to trying them out. They looked really oriental and exotic I love the fine piping detail. Now I have to say the Hello Kitty ones might actually be my favourite, I just hope my niece never finds out I made them and she didn't get one! This time I did make the ears from the cake before dipping them. The decoration was quite simply but effective too with black eyes and whiskers, a little yellow nose and a cute red bow, done! I'm sure my niece will be seeing some of these for her birthday they were so fun to make :).

I think I'm becoming mildly obsessed with cake pops now...anyone know any good books?

Nom! x Pin It Now!

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?

 

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