Tag: cupcakes

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50th Birthday Cake

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:

Bottom tier (coloured yellow):
– Lemon sponge cake
– Lemon curd
– Lemon buttercream
– White chocolate mock ganache coating

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.

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Pride Cake

We had a Pride Day at Zen and I volunteered to bake cakes for it. I originally planned to do my striped rainbow cake again, but I couldn’t be bothered with the effort to dye and pipe all the buttercream.

I instead came up with a painted version with fondant toppers:

The main cake was vanilla sponge with strawberry jam, vanilla buttercream, and rainbow sprinkles.

I also made some vegan cupcakes to go with it – 6 each of Vanilla and Chocolate cupcakes.

Posing with my creation in all my rainbow-glory

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Viva Als Vegas

We lost our good friend to cancer a few years back. It was when the pandemic was still rife and we couldn’t have many at his funeral/ wake.

Today would have been his 44th birthday, and we were able to have a big celebration charity fundraising event last night. It was Las Vegas themed as that was his favourite place where he visited at least once a year… Sometimes even more.

I didn’t organise the event, but I did get asked of I would make the birthday cake so that’s exactly what I did …

vanilla birthday cake with buttercream.
cupcakes to go with the cake – fondant playing cards and chocolate poker chip toppers.

The event was amazing – raising nearly £5,500 for Macmillan. We drank cocktails, gambled, bid on things at the auction, and celebrated a truly amazing man.

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January Birthdays

My Niece, Amber, Wanted a ballerina cake for her sixth birthday. I got it in my head that pink ruffles would be the way to do this… how much did I regret trying these when the icing kept dropping off the cake?

I suppose the plus side is that when I am not a professional and I am not getting paid, I don’t have to worry too much when things go wrong.

Another birthday treat was some chocolate cupcakes made for my sister in law’s birthday:

Nothing overly exciting for these – chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream. I chucked some Cadbury Miniature Heroes on top and some blue sprinkles to bring some colour.

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Happy Birthday to Me!

It was my birthday this week. As the world is still on lock-down I decided I wanted to make my own cake.

I have some small cake tins so I made 2 small rounds the weekend before that I froze to keep for decorating this week. I wasn’t 100% sure what my plan was – at first it involved Jammy Dodgers and Party Rings, but ended up only using the latter.

I wasn’t feeling adventurous on flavour, so I went with the good-old Vanilla cake, vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam combo. I smeared some random pink colours around, and used a white chocolate drip. The gin was just as it was colour co-ordinated and made the cake more grown-up!

The top of the cake was decorated with some of the pink buttercream and Party Ring biscuits.

A shot of the inside of the cake

Finally, when I baked the cake layers, there was a bit too much cake mix. I didn’t want to over-fill the cake pans so I decided to make 2 x cupcakes with the remaining mix. I decorated these to match the cake:

Even with a smaller cake, there’s still 2 Party Rings worth left even though I also gave some to friends on Monday! I miss being in work where I could force cake upon my workmates… I love making it, but there’s only so much I can eat myself.

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April – Lockdown Baking

I can’t believe that it’s the end of April already. I was looking back through Google Photos and saw a number of things that I’d baked this month but not posted about, so here goes:

First off, the mountain of cookies I made after learning to bake soft, gooey cookies. I had some “pumpkin spice baking chips” from our USA trip last year, and used these for the cookies.

Next up, was the cupcakes I made for James’ birthday that I left on his doorstep. Chocolate cake with PB icing, PB drizzle, and chopped up nuts

Whilst sorting out my kitchen cupboards, I also found out that I had 2 bags of vegetarian marshmallows left. They were a few months past their best before dates, so I decided to make these into a combination of Rice Krispie treats, and White chocolate Rocky Road:

And the final bake to post about, was a chocolate banana & rum bread that I made when I had a couple of ripe bananas that I’d not got around to eating yet

Worryingly, we’ve eaten all of these bakes between the two of us this month (well, except for the cupcakes). Maybe I should avoid baking anything for myself in May!

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Social Distancing Baking

It’s a struggle to try and pretend that everything is normal at the moment, but I still wanted to do some baking and spread some joy to people (whilst keeping my distance, of course).

Cupcake baking

I had two people to make some cakes for and do a doorstep drop & run (cakes on doorstep, knock on door, run away).

The first batch I made were Red Velvet Cupcake Baileys cupcakes. This was made using the limited edition “Red Velvet Cupcake” Baileys, and resulted in some pink cakes (no food colour used, this was solely the colour of the Baileys).

Red Velvet Cupcake Baileys
  • FOR THE CAKES
  • 1/4 Cup Butter
  • 1/2 Cup Sugar
  • 1 Egg
  • 1/4 Cup Baileys (red velvet)
  • 1/4 Cup, + 1/4 of the 1/4 cup Self-Raising Flour
  • 1/4 Cup + 1/3 of the 1/4 cup Plain Flour

FOR THE ICING

  • 1/4 block butter
  • Red Velvet Baileys
  • Icing Sugar
Red Velvet Baileys Cupcake

The second cupcakes were for my Sister-in-law and these ones were chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing.

Double Chocolate Cupcakes

For the Cakes

  • 1/2 Cup Sugaer
  • 1/2 Cup Plain Flour
  • 1/4 cup Cocoa Powder
  • 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
  • 1/4 tsp Baking Soda
  • Pinch Salt
  • 1 Egg
  • 3 Tablespoons Milk
  • 2 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 Cup Coffee

For the Buttercream

  • 1/4 block butter
  • Cocoa Powder
  • Icing Sugar
  • Milk
Chocolate batter and Red Velvet Baileys batter before baking
Straight out of the oven

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Glass Stabbed Cupcakes

Another idea I had when making cakes for Halloween was to try making some “stabbed” cupcakes. I’d seen the idea on Instagram and thought it would be a good one to try. I had obviously made cupcakes before, but never tried anything with sugar work.

I had to begin by making the sugar mixture for my “Glass” – 2 cups of granulated sugar, some water, and a tube of liquid glucose. I had to heat this to 300 degrees F, whilst constantly stirring. It took nearly an hour!

Once the mixture was heated to the necessary temperature, I poured it out onto baking parchment and allowed it to cool down and set for a few hours

After setting, I hit it with a knife to get it to break up into the “shards”

I already had some cupcakes baked, and some leftover buttercreams. I used chocolate buttercream first, then added a vanilla swirl to the top mwhich i “stabbed” with the sugar shards

Finally, I added some red coloured icing drizzles to make the “blood”:

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A Cake Buffet atWork

It’s been a year since I got some software in work that I never thought I’d get, so I used this as an excuse to bake a load of cakes and share them with my work colleagues…

The Blue theme was literally because I bought a Dr. Oetker sprinkle-mix that I liked the colour of. Some more details on each item follow:

Cakesicles. These had a chocolate cake and salted caramel  centre with dark chocolate coating
Chocolate cupcakes: Chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream swirl
Vanilla cake with strawberry compote and vanilla buttercream
Lemon Cupcakes: Lemon cake with lemon curd filling, topped with lemon flavour buttercream
Vanilla Cupcake: Vanilla Cake with vanilla buttercream
Cakesicles: Blueberry muffin filling mixed with jam and buttercream, coated in white chocolate
Not on theme, but I made a gin bundt cake too!
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Last Minute Wedding Cake

This post was originally on my old website, but figured it was another good one to share on here….

In November, my parents’ friends were let down by their cake maker and I got asked around a week before if I’d be able to make something for them. I could do anything – their theme was poppies as they were getting married on Remembrance Day. This was the results of my labour:

I spent most of the evenings in the run up to their wedding making things for the cake. Due to the last minute request, I had no time left to book any leave from work. I ended up making over 100 cupcakes (red were vanilla and white were lemon). I made the poppy toppers by hand cutting out and shaping fondant, and topping with glitter.

The top of the cake tower was a three layer vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream. It was not quite as neat as I would have liked, but the fondant tore three times when I was trying to decorate it, and this was the best I could manage at 10pm the night before their wedding!

It didn’t turn out too bad though – and the bride and groom were very happy with the result: