I look after a Bulldog called Betty from time to time after a few years back when she came to stay with us for a few months. Her owner is 50 this week, and went to Liverpool to celebrate at the weekend so Betty came to stay with us.
I wanted to treat her owner, so I got a few bits & pieces and then decided to make some cupcakes with Bulldogs on! This is Betty who I used for the inspiration…
Betty was actually sat on the sofa next to me whilst I used a tray and fondant to make the toppers. I basically used various colours of fondant to make these bulldog faces:
I made 3 but only used 2 in the box of cakes that I gave to the recipient. The spare one has topped a cupcake that is back in the freezer to pass on to my parents too!
The actual cupcakes are made with a Caramelised Biscuit liquer (like Biscoff) which was also used in the buttercream topping. I added some cocoa powder ass well to give a chocolatey swirl, and finished with some sprinkles.
My sister in law is 40 this week, and my husband asked me to make 40 cupcakes for her. I bake in multiples of 6 and only had boxes that hold 6 or 12, so she’s getting 42 instead. It is the answer to life, the universe and everything, so I’m sure that the 42 is OK.
Anyway… The cakes
Mint chocolate:
Chocolate cake with a peppermint fondant filling. Topped with chocolate and mint swirled buttercream and a piece of mint chocolate bar.
Vanilla:
Vanilla sponge topped with vanilla buttercream and sprinkles. A classic.
Mega chocolate:
Chocolate cake, topped with chocolate buttercream (made with additional melted dark chocolate mixed in). Finished with Oreo Crumbles and a Cadbury Twirl mini.
Lemon:
Another simple, yet effective flavour. Lemon sponge, topped with lemon buttercream and sprinkles.
Chocolate Orange:
Chocolate sponge that was flavoured with Orange essence. Topped with orance chocolate buttercream, and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange segment.
White Chocolate Cherry:
Sponge cake flavoured with cherry essence and white chocolate chips baked in. Topped with cherry buttercream and a white chocolate chunk.
Salted Caramel:
Salted caramel flavoured sponge topped with salted caramel buttercream and a sprinkle of sea-salt. Fainal touch are Cadbury caramel chocolates / Quality Street caramel barrel.
Amber is my eldest niece, and I’ve made her birthday cakes every year since she was born. Usually, I make a cake based on her request and over the years this has included:
Unicorn Cake
School Cake
Minecraft Cake
Rainbow Ballerina Fairy Caterpillar
Her birthday falls quite soon after Christmas, and often the ideas come my way later on. This year, I asked if I could just run with my own idea and I was told to “have fun with it”. In school last year, Amber learnt about space and has been really interested in it ever since. She was jealous that we went to visit NASA in Houston on our trip last year, so I knew that I wanted to make her a “space” themed cake.
I made a fondant cake topper astronaut with its helmet off, so that I could try model a character of Amber to sit on the cake. The glasses were the hardest part for me – I couldn’t make them out of icing (too fiddly) so I ended up stripping a pipe-cleaner instead.
The planet on the top of the cake was made using a round silicon mold that a workmate gave me in December as they weren’t going to use them… never has something come to me so perfectly timed.
I was scared that they’d snap when trying to remove them from the mold, but they came out intact – hooray!
I tried to make the letters for “AMBER” in the same planet design, but the chocolate didn’t quite fill the molds. I still used them though – never waste food!
The cake was a “standard” birthday cake: Vanilla cake, strawberry jam & vanilla buttercream. I iced the cake by hand (didn’t use my cake coating kits for ths one) and used a scraper to achieve the colouring on the outside of the cake. I used a base of light-pink coloured buttercream and them added purple, magenta and silver for the pink “galaxy” effect.
I used a paint brush to apply the silver star splatter, and used some fancy sprinkles that my friend got me for Christmas to add stars to the outside.
After adding the planet and the astronaut topper, I used some cake balls to add some additional planet design to the outside of the cake.
We presented the cake today, then cut some slices for people to enjoy – I was really happy with how this one turned out.
I remembered this weekend how much I enjoy baking when I do it just for fun and not because I HAD to bake for someone.
I decided to try making a yule log for the first time and had a look online. I found a recipe for a larger pan so I did 3/4 the amount as I had a smaller tray.
I made a whipped white chocolate cream ganache filling using 200g double cream and 200g white chocolate.
The recipe I followed said to roll the Yule log lengthways (longest side) but due to the thickness of my cake and filling it ended up looking like an arctic roll.
I coated the outside of the log with a dark chocolate ganache buttercream & found when I was finished that I had too much coating left. Being me, I decided to make another Yule log to use the excess filling and coating.
I made the second Yule log with less ingredients to make a thinner cake in the hope that it would be easier to roll. This time, I rolled from the thinner end to get more of a swirl
I used the leftover coating to cover the Yule log:
I assume it’s because I left the coating overnight, but the second Yule log looked far darker than the first even though it was the same mixture.
Overall, I was really happy with how these turned out. They look OK, and taste really good! Marry Christmas to me & my family!
I have the pleasure to occasionally dog-sit for Betty the Bulldog. This is a picture of Betty a few years back on her birthday when I made her pupcakes…
Anyway, Betty’s owner asked me if I could make a cake for her grandson’s first birthday. I was given a picture as inspiration, but she lets me go with my own design.
This was what I made:
It is 5 layers of vanilla cake sandwiched with vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam.
Because the weather was warmer last week, I decided to coat the cake with a white chocolate coating instead of buttercream as I figured it would be more stable during the warmer weather.
I made the topper from fondant, following this guide online
and I kept the cake in my fridge until collected to ensure it was as fresh as possible (I made it the day before collection). Here it is sharing a shelf with my cold brew:
The balls were only decorative and bought online – I don’t have the skill to make my own!
I’m at the age where all my friends are turning 40, and I decided to make another brownie slab to celebrate.
I used the recipe from George’s Bakery “Rebel Bakes” again for triple chocolate brownies.
The message on top was inspired by a birthday card I saw on Thortful. The letters were made using white chocolate candy melts (some coloured red) and sprinkles from Get Baked which are the best rainbow sprinkles you can buy in the UK.
The topping was made by melting more candy melts and Biscoff spread, and swirling it around the pan.
Once the topping had set, I removed the slab from the pan and wrapped it in baking paper ready for gifting.
The youngest niece asked for a bunny cake for her birthday…
She is always quite indecisive when it comes to what she wants, though my husband had a conversation with her on video the other week that went something like:
“What cake do you want?”
“A Bunny Cake”
“What Colour?”
“Orange”
“What Flavour”
“Erm, Chocolate”
So I at least had the guidelines of what to aim for with this one (though the end product was more of a browny-orange than actual orange).
I started by baking 5 layers of chocolate cake, and making a chocolate buttercream:
After that wa stacked, I wrapped it in cling film until I needed it and put it in the freezer. In the mean time, I made fondant cut-outs for the bunny’s face / ears:
I had decided to pipe the fur on (vanilla buttercream) using a nozzle that frustrated me loads as it keps pushing through the piping bags due to its shape. Thankfully I got through it though after 6 piping bags.
The top of the cake had a “crown” of various colours (again, asked for by the birthday girl” and I put the cake in the fridge overnight until her party. The ears had to wait until the party itself as they were too tall for any of my fridge shelves, and I couldn’t be bothered to re-jig the shelving.
I usually write “Happy Birthday” using fondant on the cake board, but I’ve been using a silicon mold with chocolate recently for brownie slabs. I did the same for this cake, though they nearly didn’t fit on the board due to them being bigger than my fondant cutters.
I added sprinkes first (Easter-themed ones) then melted chocolate and allowed them to set
The party was yesterday, and the cake was cut – and it was decadent!! Very rich chocolate cake and buttercream. The funny thing is, although I LOVE cake, I don’t really like chocolate cake that much and so I didn’t bother having any myself:
We cut the slices to half height because people were VERY full of sugar and food already!
I got asked to make a 50th Birthday cake that was maybe lemon flavour as it’s for a spring / summery birthday. Aside from that, it was creative licensing all around. I had an idea in mind that I roughly doodled using instagram stickers and the end result was this:
Top tier (left white): – Vanilla sponge cake – Strawberry jam – Vanilla buttercream – White chocolate mock ganache coating
The Process
This was the original “doodle” against what I actually made – pretty much as I imagined it!
I made the cake tiers in advance, cling wrapped them and kept them in the freezer for nearly 2 weeks. When it was time to make the cake, I took them out of the freezer 24 hours before & moved them to the fridge to defrost.
To ensure that they lasted as long as possible after being picked up, I stacked the cakes using a variety of strong straws to act as cake dowels to keep the cake sturdy.
The finishing touches were store-bought decorations: – Yellow, white, gold & cream decorative balls – Fake sunflowers – “Happy Birthday” cake topper – “50” number for front of cake
As with all my cakes, once it was decorated, I gave it a quick photoshoot in my photo box so that it really stands out againg the black background:
I did laugh at my creativity for making the cake box taller. The cake itself would have fit OK, but once the toppers were added the box was not tall enough. In came the kebab sticks & clingfilm…
Added Extras:
To go with the main cake, there was also 2 boxes of vegan cupcakes so that I had catered for as many people as I could. These were made with chia seeds instead of egg, vegan “butter” instead of butter, and oatmilk in place of dairy milk. I did 6 each:
Lemon Cupcakes with homemade lemon curd & vegan lemon “buttercream”.
Vanilla Cupcakes with strawberry jam & vegan vanilla “buttercream”.
I used this recipe for the lemon curd if you wanted to make your own.
The finishing touch:
I decided for this cake to also provide some “cake care cards” to advise how best to transport and store the cakes, along with cutting instructions and information on ingredients for anyone who needed to know.
I like the idea of these cards & will likely do them again in future for other cake events.
I don’t usually make myself a birthdy cake, but I had an idea for a cake and decided to use my birthday as an excuse to make it:
It started by making 4 x 4″ layers of “brown butter” sponges:
They were then filled with a biscoff buttercream and caramel:
I stacked them using a kebab stick to hold them central (and then added more when chilling):
After allowing to chill / set up a bit, I coated in a ganache made from White chocolate, White chocolate hazelnut spread, and cinnamon:
the cake was then coated with crumbled Biscoff biscuits, drizzled with melted Biscoff spread, and topped with more buttercream and crumbled cookies.
Because the cake was so soft, it had started to lean when I had stacked it and to counter this I ended up coating it in extra thick ganache – this shows on the cut through picture above!
I cut the cake into as many portions as I could and have been giving it out to friends and family the last couple of days.
I tried to be sensible and have limited myself to one BIG slice, but honestly that’s the most I think I can manage 🤤
I got to do something new over this last week – Gender Reveal Cakesicles
My friends are having a baby (expected towards the end of next month) and asked me if I’d be willing to make some cake-pops for them to have a gender reveal party. I have mini popsicle molds, so I asked if I could do those as I’m not the best as free-shaping cake-pops. Funny enough, this was deemed to be OK.
The request was for 40 cakesicles to be made, but only one of to have the colour reveal inside. I was given the sealed paper with the baby’s gender on it, and neither parent knew what it said. I was literally the only person other than the doctors / nurses to know! My husband didn’t want to know either, so to try keep everything secret, I made both pink and blue cake fillings to ensure the mystery remained.
I made the cake and cakesicles on the Sunday. I have 2 molds, so shaped 8 at a time.
I wrapped them in greaseproof paper and put them in zip-lock bags until later in the week. The day I did this I wasn’t fully paying attention and ended up making far more cakesicles than we’d actually need. Plus side – this gave me more for practice / errors.
On Thursday, I took the cakesicles out of the freezer to defrost during the day, and then I started working on them Thursday evening.
I had bought bags of white candy-coats to use so that I wasn’t trying to colour white chocolate. I melted these a bag at a time, and after adding vegetable shortening I finally got it to a consistency I was happy with for dipping.
The dipping commenced. I dipped all of the cakesicles and picked the “best” ones for the final 40.
I had numbered the backs of all of the sticks and knew which number was the gender reveal coloured one which made it easier to keep track of for the day.
My friend had made some chocolate stars / moons which she had coloured gold, but asked that I just go with whatever I fancied for decorations. I did a collection of gold designs using glitter, gold leaf, and her toppers.
I had bought some clear plastic boxes for cakesicles, so boxed up my favourite 40. I collected these back at the party for re-using to avoid the impact of “single use” plastics.
After boxing up the best ones, I had a LOAD spare. Thankfully, we have plenty of friends and workmates to pass these on to, as well as freezing some for family next weekend (they freeze for a few months).
I kept one each of the coloured ones so that I could 1 – test to see if you could see the colour through the chocolate (you couldn’t), and 2 – to take some pictures of the cut cakesicles.
The finishing touch was adding some small gold bows to each stick which I applied with glue dots.
When it came for the actual reveal at the party, the hosts allowed everyone to pick a cakesicles from the table. I kept an eye on who chose the one with the colour in it, and then they had everyone stand in a circle. Starting at the parents to be, each person took turns in biting their cakesicles to see if it contained a colour – to make this last longer we sent the order the longest way around the circle from the person who had the reveal. They got a video of this (2 minutes 20 before the bite revealed a colour).
