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!

Christmas Cupcakes and Festive Cake Pops

As you know my Christmas baking is going to be a bit all over the place this year but I did manage to sneak this order in before the packing for Norway commenced! I am infact now here finally and it's covered in snow yay! We celebrate on Christmas eve here so it's all kicking off tomorrow.

 

Anyway, I had a cute order for Christmas, cupcakes and cake pops, I haven't made cake pops in a while so I was really looking forward to it. The theme was Christmas. Do forgive me I'm writing this on my iPhone on the app for the first time so we'll see how this goes! I can't seem to move the pictures to the top...may have to fish out the mac.

The cupcakes are vanilla and I stuck to two designs as there were for a stand, one half I made look like Christmas puddings with green fondant leaves and red piped berries. I also have them a generous dusting with gold cake glitter to really make them sparkle, I have to say I love them! The other design was more simple with cute miniature candy candles with another generous helping of red cake glitter.all of the cakes were topped with vanilla buttercream first and I'm sure they will look great on the Christmas table.

 

Next for the cake pops, these again were a vanilla mix of cake and buttercream. I dipped them in both white and milk chocolate. I made ones covered totally in gold glitter, red glitter, candy canes and again Christmas puddings! I absolutely love these they're so cute and will make great gifts. I put them in cellophane gift bags that i got from Sainsbury's and tied them with Christmas ribbon from Tesco. I'm so happy with how they look and will have to make some more soon I forgot how much I love them.

Merry Christmas ! Pin It Now!

Cherry Cola Cupcakes

Cherry coke is easily my favourite fizzy drink, I discovered it when I moved back here after living in Norway for four years when I was 12, it was bought my accident thinking it was regular coke and I was sold. Since then I my love for cola has seriously increased, not that I drink it every day or even every week, but I love cola flavoured things, especially the sweets Cola Bottles (it is also my favourite alcoholic drink at Wetherspoon pubs!)

I never thought of baking with it until I saw Gizzi Erskine's Fizzy Lemon and Cola Pastry Tart and I knew it had to make it, I promise to get a better picture up soon it looks a bit pale in this one! I've been hunting for months for cola essence, (I finally got some from eBay) I wanted a stronger flavour than just adding actual coke, as essence had a more 'cola bottle' taste, do you know what I mean? I like the more candied flavour.

So I had a little think and thought it would be a fun idea to combine cherry and cola into a cupcake. I thought I was go classic for the cherry part and not overdo it, choosing to use glace cherries as you can't get a more candied flavour, I chose to put the cherries into the cake part and the cola into the icing so they're separate as I wasn't sure how they would taste when physically mixed together.

I think they came out really well, I used my disposable piping bags for the icing and used a nozzle I actually got in a set from...Poundland! Shocking I know but they were actually pretty good for £1! To give it that element of fizz I added some cola popping candy to the icing after piped.

Ingredients:

• 100g unsalted butter, softened
• 100g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 100g plain flour, sifted
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 pot glace cherries, diced

For the icing

• 175 icing sugar
• 75g unsalted butter, softened
• 1tsp cola essence
• cola popping candy

Makes 12 (I made double)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius (160 fan)
2. Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add the eggs one at a time, adding flour and baking powder inbetween each egg until fully combined
4. Add the diced cherries and mix until evenly distributed
5. Mix some nice cases, I chose red to give it the Coca Cola theme
6. Spread mixture between the cases and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean
7. When cool mix together the butter and icing sugar, if you don't have an enclosed fancy mixer you may want to add the icing sugar gradually so you don't cover yourself in it!
8. Add the cola essence to taste
9. Cut the piping bag to size to fit the nozzle, fill it up with the buttercream icing and pipe on big swirls of icing
10. Sprinkle on popping candy
11. Eat! Nom!

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This Week's Best Baking Buys

So I've been very good with my baking spending recently, but I'm afraid with The Great British Bake Off showcasing some seriously sexy items I have not been able to resist.

Of course the KitchenAid mixer is something that is always catching my eye, and if I could buy their little individual kitchens they all have then I'd even put one in my bedroom believe me. But both of those things are out of reach.

There were a couple of things within easy each though, I loved the look of the heavy duty baking sheet, I was saying only last week how I needed one without a lip, mainly for when I'm baking my giant cupcakes as sometimes I need to do two in one night and it would be handy to be able to put two in the oven at the same time. Luckily, Tesco has everything, of course, and I found this one there for £8.25 which I didn't think was too bad, sometimes you shouldn't always get the cheapest. It's also great because it was such a large surface area the baking possibilities will be endless!

I was also really intrigued by their piping bags, I go through so many it's actually a little ridiculous, I use them do much they end up splitting at the seams but find it hard to find one to fit my large icing nozzles and you can't exactly measure them first as none of the bags say what size they are. then ofcourse The Great British Bake Off contestants were using disposable blue ones, which fit for any nozzles as all you have to do it cut them to fit! Perfect, and they're biodegradable so you can use them guilt free. I my blue Savoy bags from eBay, but these are exactly the same from The Craft Company, 10 for £3.12. I'll do another post when I've given them a go, I'm always after the perfect swirls.

In October I have a weeding cupcake order for 150 cupcakes and a top tier with a pink and butterfly theme, which I love as it's my favourite theme to do! We're meeting up next week to discuss the details but I went ahead any ordered these butterfly plungers, I've wanted them for ages and saves me having to buy ready made butterflies in the future. These will be great for girly cakes and I can't wait to give them ago, I'm thinking pinks, glitter and shimmer! The plungers are veined too so they give off a bit more detail, I already have the leaf design one and they work great. They come in a pack of three, various sizes for £7.99 from The Cake Decorating Company.

I can't wait to give all of these a go at the weekend, I also have my eye on one of the loose bottomed pie dishes....I think I might be trying out some pastry at the weekend...and maybe some cupcakes! Pin It Now!