Baking Buys

Another Baking Buys post, I can't seem to stop shopping at the moment, not healthy for the bank balance...I just can't help myself. Some of these were bought a little while ago and kept for this post that you will have seen me use in past posts.

On one of my last trips I managed to pick up some red,white and blue sprinkles, red writing jelly (these use this a lot on their iced cakes), cake flags and also some tutti fruitti flavouring, it's a tiny bottle but it's super concentrated so a little goes a long way :) You'll see these feature in my next post so keep a look out.

The first of which are my Norway purchases, these were actually bought a while ago but I've only used them recently which reminded me that I actually had them! Today is actually Norway's independence day, I really wish I could have been there but instead I had the day off. Normally we do something fun like going to a theme park but there's been so much going on it didn't feel right this year so we had a nice day at home with a bit of shopping, eating and baking. Which is why I bought some of the following bits you'll see in a moment. Norway love their baking - LOVE IT! I love trawling their baking aisles in the shops as they stock so many great products we just don't get that would be so useful.



Last Week I had ANOTHER shopping trip, I couldn't resist popping into TK MAXX where I picked up this cupcake cutter, I've been wanting one for ages and this one was perfect. I also picked up a plain icing rolling pin which I forgot to take a picture of before I covered it in icing sugar, it's great for fondant and gumpaste work. Which bring me to my trip to HobbyCraft, there I bought two boxes of gum paste mix, I never bought ready rolled until my mum pointed out the price difference, £5.99 for the mix, £12.99 for the ready to roll stuff. As I was buying it for my brother's wedding cake, not knowing how much the mix made I bought two, but after mixing it (in fear) I discovered one mix made up 500g of gum paste - exactly the same as the ready made but less than half price! Love it.

 My next hit was Tesco and the garden center. I love the new products the garden center is stocking, I couldn't resist the patterned rolling pin, set of girly cookie cutters, apple blossom plungers and the cute polkadot petit fours cases. The range is so reasonable the rolling pin was only £6.99 - bargain!

 My next hit was Tesco, it's not that exciting for most but I found the blue table cover in the picture above, actually I got the cupcake one there too! I also found the Jubilee golden syrup tin, I think this would love lovely in my baking room when it's empty to hold some of my various tools, and a nice keepsake :)

Finally I hit my town to pick up something to help me make my cake pops more rounded, I found this Joseph Joseph measuring spoon, I have tried it out and while it doesn't make them perfect it definitely helps. In another little shop I found these star cookies cutters for making a star tree, I know it's stupidy early.... but I thought these would come in handy for Christmas, or do you think I could use them at other times?

 

Now I did do a big order from Sew White, a lovely website my work friend told me about, but I've already tried some of the products out so I think they need a post all to themselves :)

Nom!

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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!

Chelsea Football Birthday Cake

So this week my task was to make a birthday cake for a boy turning ten, and he loves Chelsea.
So they asked for a cake with the badge on, I was a little worried about this as I hadn't done a badge before, and they can be very fancy and fiddly, and they have to be perfect! I decided the best way to do it was to make a stencil, so I printed the badge off the internet and used that as a guide.

The cake itself was Bournville cake, the best baking chocolate that there is I think. With chocolate buttercream, again, very important, only ever make buttercream with BUTTER! You can always taste the difference, don't skimp. I dirty iced it Cake Boss style on my icing turntable, which is amazing (and from Lakeland). I usually make Victoria sponge cakes so cover them with jam, however buttercream made it a lot easier to put the fondant on and gave it a smoother look which you don't get with jam.

I covered the cake in white fondant as thats the main background colour on the badge, then using dark blue fondant I laid out the cut out figure and with a very shark knife cut around it. I managed to do it in one piece apart from what it's holding which was brilliant.

The lettering used was with patchwork tappit cutters. They font was quite similar to the one of the badge so it worked really well. These are really tricky to use and hard to get out clean so I had to spend ages finely cutting away excess to clean up the egdes.

I was really happy with how it turned out in the end, and adding the name Jacob around the end to personalise it a bit. I also didn't write Chelsea Football Club on it, but opted for Happy Birthday as it looked a bit more celebratory. Pin It Now!

Lavender And White Two Tier Birthday Cake

It was one of my best friends birthdays recently, and as I couldn't be there for her birthday I decided to whip her up a little birthday cake.

I had some new cake decorating gizmos from a great cake decorating shop in Oslo when I was visiting called 'Cacas'. It was my haven, an official supplier of Wilton it was filled with everything you could ever want to decorate with, it's just a shame it all cost a fortune!

I usually do the big pink cakes, so I thought I would do her something different, a victoria sponge cake, made up of two layers, one being pink and the other lilac so there was a little surprise when you cut into it.

I covered it in lavender coloured fondant and decorated it in plain white for a classic look. For the decorations I used this Wilton mould where all you had to do is push the fondant into the moulds and lift them out, the trick to this is to dust it in icing sugar first so it will come out clean.

This mould came with ribbon and button designs which is the type I use the most so it's worth the crazy import rate.

The lettering on the front spells 'cheeky', this may seem odd, but it's kind of a catchphrase around here, and they named their new place 'cheeky towers' so it fit quite well. I also piped peals around the seam of the bottom tier to top it off and complete the look.

For an added extra bit of detail I used the brownie stencils I also bought in Cacas, and spread icing over them, lifted of the stencil and was left with a pretty pattern that took no time but looked cute and tied in the colours. I love this cake because it's sleek looking, really pretty colours and was girly without going too pink for once, and of course, it was very cheeky... Pin It Now!