Sunday, 31 March 2013

Valentine's Cupcakes!

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So this year for Valentine’s Day I went with the theme of ‘Bee Mine!’ Unfortunately my cupcakes did not turn out quite as planned because I had lots of things to do and as usual I left it until the last minute. But anyway, here are my Bee Mine cupcakes:

 

  

 

As always my icing let me down! I swear one day I will have absolutely perfect icing! Had my icing been more compatible with me then I would have done a bee hive with the bee in the side of it! =D

I made the cake carrot and the icing was a vanilla buttercream with some cream cheese in it as well and then with yellow food gel it was dyed.

 

The bees and the fondant were made out of MarshmallowFondant. The heart was just with a cutter and then using black colouring with the writing. For the bees here is a really awesome tutorial on it!

 

Labels: cupcakes, Valentine's | 0 comments

Monday, 25 March 2013

Irish Coffee Cupcakes!

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These were made by me and an Irish friend who wanted to make a cupcake that had both whisky and coffee in them. I actually don’t like coffee at all and whisky I can tolerate to a small extent so I wasn’t super excited about this, but I wanted to try it out anyway! We actually used this recipe from Martha Stewart’s website and I guess that if it is good enough for her then I would be willing to try it!

The cakes actually turned out to be very tasty and I would recommend this recipe for anyone that wanted to try out a coffee cake! We did fill the cases too high so the cakes ended up spilling out a little but apart from that they were a success. 

The only problem I had was piping the icing on. For some reason piping bags and me just don’t get along whatsoever and my piping always looks shocking! Obviously the only solution will be to keep making more icing and then practise piping =D But if people do have tips on maybe what consistency is best for piping or how they make nice icing on their cupcakes then that would be fabulous! As you can see from above, there were some half decent ones and then I just gave up and slathered on the rest of the icing =P

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, cupcakes | 5 comments

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

Music cake and Cocktail Cupcakes

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So for my flatmates birthday this year I was very busy during the weekend of his birthday with 2 ceilighs in the space of 2 days, very tiring! Therefore I was super rushed with these cakes!

Since he has been into making cocktails and into music I wanted to incorporate them into his cake. I saw some really ace cocktail cupcakes so I got some straws and cocktail umbrellas to try and make them into cocktails. I ended up losing my piping bags so I just put on the icing in a basic way and didn't have time to make all of the fondant toppers but I did make a couple of fondant limes!

I only made 9 cupcakes because I had made a square cake as well. I decided to do a plain design but with the music to happy birthday around the sides of the cake:



Happy



Birthday to You...Happy



        

Birthday To You...Happy Birthday To Youuu..

 

Happy Birthday To You!



  

 As a wee extra surprise I decided to make the cake batter tie dye using 5 different colours, although the red and the pink did turn out similar. I forgot to take pictures of the batter before putting the cakes in the oven but this is how they turned out:



Excuse the crumbs!



I didn't get a picture of the cake when it was cut but here's how the cupcakes turned out:



This one turned out a little bit fuzzy but you get the idea!

Doing tie dye in a cake is really fun and looks super awesome once you cut into the cake! I just poured the batter in different corners and the centre of the baking tin, got a spatula and swirled it around a wee bit to make a pattern =) Since the cupcakes are a lot smaller, just layer the different colours of batter in the cupcake liners! 

Labels: birthday, cake, cupcakes | 5 comments

Sunday, 1 April 2012

Sesame Street Cupcakes

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So while at work on Saturday I found out that one my work mates had just moved house, so clearly a baking opportunity ;)

 I was originally going to make house cupcakes but then I saw lots of cupcakes that people had made using the faces of the sesame street characters. It seemed like a lot more fun even if it has nothing to do with moving houses haha! But moving can be quite stressful and seeing a crazy face on a cupcake hopefully would cheer people up :)

They were quite fun to make although I didn't get to spend as much time decorating the cakes and I ended up finishing them off the morning of work as I was running late as usual! I only managed to do the faces on 6 of the cupcakes:

They were a chocolate cake that I have used before and judging from the reactions I think it will be my go to chocolate cake. I didn't have a filling for it but because they were small cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream, I don't think that they needed it.

The main problem with these cupcakes was the buttercream. I am not sure if I did something wrong or if it was too hot but the buttercream kept separating a wee bit. I guess it will take a few more practises :)

My favourite was definately cookie monster, mainly because I think that I am most like him in real life haha! Although I actually didn't used to watch Sesame Street as a kid!

Labels: cupcakes, sesame street | 11 comments

Sunday, 19 February 2012

Valentine's Cupcakes!

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Since I was already making the red velvet cake I decided to make some cupcakes for a couple of my friends as well. I don't normally make cupcakes because I don't like to decorate them as much as there is not as much space to put details onto it.

I am slowly getting converted to cupcakes however as I had a lot of fun with these ones:

Before they went into the oven. Look at the vibrancy of the colour! I used my wilton red food colouring gels which I think is why it was so vibrant and bright!

After the oven:

Looking quite brown but actually once you cut into them the red colour really shown through! The cupcake cases I actually got from Hobbycraft in the Christmas sale, I don't have a proper picture of them but they have cute hearts on them, how fitting for Valentine's day!

After they were decorated!

I used the cream cheese icing as well just with pink colouring. The chocolate hearts were made just by melting some chocolate and piping them into heart shapes. I melted them onto my parchment paper just to stop them sticking. After a wee while (I didn't bother to time it!) they harden up and you can just stick them into the frosting!
After that I just sprinkled on some hundreds and thousands because I love colourful things!

I was quite happy with the way these turned out since usually Ii struggle to pipe the icing in a spiraling way but they were well received!

Labels: cupcakes, Red Velvet, Valentine's | 2 comments

Thursday, 2 June 2011

End of exam cupcakes!

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These were made after the exam period for my boyfriend and also for me since I missed being in the kitchen =P They were plain vanilla cupcakes and I decided to experiment with filling a cupcake. There are two ways that you can fill a cupcake: once the cake has cooled stick the piping tip in the cake and pipe the filling in. This is what I did with a dark chocolate fudge filling. As you can see this way doesn't put a lot of filling in the cake. The other way is to cut out the top in the shape of a triangle, fill the cupcake with the filling and then put the top back on, cutting a little off to accommodate the filling. This is what I will do the next time! This is the first time that I have managed to put a swirl with butter cream on a cupcake, makes it look pretty =D

Labels: cupcakes | 0 comments