60th Birthday Cupcakes

It's been a manic few weeks and we've finally settled into our new house, we still have some unpacking to do - in particular my baking stuff! But I managed to find all the bits I needed for a cupcake order I had this week. I feel like it's all been packed away for weeks (which it has) so it was nice to get some of it out and do some baking again. I do feel like I make a lot of fondant covered birthday cakes, which I do, but it was nice to be asked to do some cupcakes again as I can't remember the last time I did some for a birthday.

The order in question was for a batch of 30, 10 carrot cake, 10 vanilla and 10 chocolate. Cream cheese icing for the carrot cake, lemon for the vanilla and of course chocolate for the chocolate. I always use the Hummingbird Bakery recipes for my cupcakes, it's foolproof - perfect every time.

For all of the cupcakes I decided to ice them with the Wilton 1M piping nozzle for the rose swirl effect, it wins every time in my opinion and always makes them look that extra bit special. Each batch was to have its own design, the carrot cake cupcakes were easy, cream cheese icing and of course tiny carrot decorations. I got a pack of 12 chocolate ones from Sainsbury's which I thought was a nice alternative to fondant ones...you can't really go wrong with chocolate can you? I kinda thought it was best to keep these ones clean, simple and classic.

For the vanilla ones we decided on lemon buttercream, vanilla on vanilla can be a bit bland so a small kick of lemon really lifts it. Flowers had been requested so I made some thin fondant daisies and to give it that bit extra I cut out some rice paper butterflies, along with the lemon yellow icing they looked really cute and summery, my favourite by far.

Right now, the chocolate ones, I decided to go all out on the chocolate for these with chocolate patterned hearts on top of the chocolate buttercream. I bought some transfers at Cake International in November and loved the vintage rose one I finally got to use for this order. Using white chocolate for a nice contrast to the dark, the rose patterned hearts ended up looking really pretty against the buttercream, perfect for a 60th I think.

Placing all of my little cupcakes in their box they all looked so cute and professional and each batch had one cupcake with a pink fondant '60' on it. All lined up in order they really looked the business. I think it's fair to say I've got the cupcake buzz again, can't wait to see what I cook up next!

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Minnie Mouse Cake Pops and Mickey & Minnie Cookies

I seem to go through waves on cake, sometimes I don't make any for a month (not many times, granted) and then suddenly I'll have three in a week - like this week. As long as I plan it right it's fine, and after a little initial panic it's all fine. So this post is about the first batch, which thrills me to say are cake pops and cookies!

I think cakes and treats for children's birthdays might just be my favourite, there's so much you can do with them it's great. These were for a surprise birthday party for a little girl who loved Minnie Mouse, so of course Minnie Mouse cake pops they just had to be! I was also asked for some cookies with Mickey and Minnie on them for the party bags.

OK the cake pops, these weren't as easy as I'd hoped. I couldn't imagine being able to actually make her face, not nicely anyway! So rice paper came to the rescue and it worked brilliantly. The cake itself is red velvet mixed with vanilla buttercream and rolled into balls, and the ears are actually chocolate buttons stuck on with some melted chocolate. This bit was quite tricky and took me forever but so worth it. Once set I then dipped them in chocolate, I did try to make it black but it just started to crumble so decided to play it safe with chocolate, must research more into how to do it without ruining the chocolate. Luckily they turned out really cute in chocolate so all was well. I always think dipped but undecorated cake pops look really sinister, anyone else?

For the faces I made up some ivory royal icing to match Minnie's face and then stuck the rice paper cut out faces on, making the icing bigger than the face so it stood out more. Once all of the icing had set I put on their gift bags and red ties and they were ready to go!

Now the cookies, I used the sugar cookie recipe from Butter Hearts Sugar (brilliant blog) it's brilliant for when you need to decorate the cookies and bakes really well. I made star cookies with 'Mickey' on and heart cookies with 'Minnie' on and then added red fondant stars and hearts. The actual lettering was piped in the Disney font too just to give it that extra bit of detail :) When set I then placed them in their own gift bags with red ribbon all ready for the party.

I definitely seem to be doing a lot of cake pops and giant cupcakes lately, and I have to say I love it!

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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

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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!