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 Birthday Giant Cupcake

I have a few orders of giant cupcakes over the next month or so, so you'll be seeing a few of them!

This one was for a colleague's mum's birthday. I got a lot of free reign with it, just told to make it very girly and cute and pink, my favourite! I really love making girly cakes as I can go all out on them and love making them excessively pretty.

As it was for someone's mum I didn't want to go too princessy, I tried to keep it cute but a bit more grown up. I'd recently ordered the Wilton Gum Paste Flower Making Set from a previous Baking Wishlist post...it will also be in my upcoming Baking Buys post as I've gone a bit spend-crazy this week! I decided to make some dasies, as to be honest these seemed the easiest as I only had fondant to work with and required minimal work as it was my first go. But they came out looking brilliant so I was really happy with them.

Another item you'll be seeing in my Baking Buys post are the butterflies, made from rice paper I got them from surprise surprise...eBay! You have to cut them out though which was a bit fiddly, but the colours are nice and strong and they look really realistic! I placed them on the flowers so they looked like they had just landed on them. I didn't want to overdo the decoration as I do think that sometimes less is more.

I decorated the bottom with crisp white fondant tied around with a pink gingham ribbon and bow. I need something nicer than pins to use to keep them in place, any ideas? I was thinking of using the ones with the balls at the end like the one on the front, not sure if you can get them in just one colour though as most sets have all kinds of colours in them.

The top is decorated with pink buttercream coloured with Sugarflair's Claret colour and piped on with a large star nozzle from Tala, I'm struggling to find the rose ones in large? I also used one of the disposable piping bags - I wasn't sure about them to begin with but I have to say I absolutely love them now I've used them a few times!

To finish off I simply used cutters for her name, kept it in white to match the base and left it there. I was tempted to carry on adding decoration but stopped myself before I ruined it! Pin It Now!

This Week In Cakes

This week I had two cakes to make, luckily they were in my favourite form - giant cupcakes! I could make these in my sleep now and you can do so much with them so I love them.

I hadn't done a really girly one in a while so I was really happy when I got an order for a 21st birthday one. Lots of Love Hearts, pink buttercream, stars and even a cute gingham ribbon. The cake itself is Victoria Sponge with jam on the bottom part and more pink buttercream in the middle. I used chocolate brown Sugarflair colouring paste to make the case part, and claret Sugarflair paste for the icing. These really do give off the nicest colours and a little goes a long way. Both the number and the buttercream were made from the claret one, this just shows how deep you can get it by simply adding a bit more.

The next cake here is for Swavesey Primary School Fete to go into the raffle to win it. It's nice to help out where you can and there is no better way than with cake. The theme was 'treasure island' so I thought this was a good representation of it. Because the surface are isn't that massive on top there is only so much you can put on it before it starts looking silly, so I went for of course a treasure chest, made from fondant coloured with melon yellow and chocolate brown, I added some yellow stars to look like the brass studs and make it look a bit more special, I then added some random pieces of decoration to look like treasure. I also added some fondant coconuts, an 'X marks the spot'  and even a palm tree. I discovered making a palm tree out of fondant was almost impossible, so I just made the trunk out of fondant supported with cake wire. And for the leaves I stripped green liqourice, flattened the green cut offs, cute them into palm leaf shapes and stuck them on top just slightly going through a piece of cake wire to keep them together. It was a bit of a mission but I love how it looked so it all worked out. Oh yes and the sand, I mashed together a bag of Malted Milks until they looked like fine sand and covered the top in them (which was subsequently covered in vanilla buttercream), this cake was also made of Victoria Sponge and the bottom was covered in baby blue Sugarflair paste with a few extra stars to give it a treasure feel. Pin It Now!