Red Velvet Cupcakes

                                                               Red Velvet Cupcakes

Going slightly off the Christmassy theme I've been executing for the run up for a while now, these cupcakes are at least festive in colour! Rich red velvet sponge cupcakes with a cream cheese buttercream frosting, fondant heart and red sparkly decorations!

Christmas Cupcakes!

                                                           Christmas Cupcakes

Yes, can you believe it it is officially 6 days til Christmas people! And who could deny this tasty treat box of cupcakes I made for my sweet toothed friends as it's getting to that present-exchanging time! 3 chocolate cupcakes, one white and fluffy.

I have to admit it seemed a shame to bake it.

So first up: penguin cupcakes! Chocolate cupcake topped with black buttercream, a white buttercream belly and piped eyes, yellow writer icing beak (Shh I got lazy and cheated again) m and m eyes and oreo cookie wings!

Santa Cupcakes! Chocolate cupcake with a thin spread of nutella buttercream, layer of peachy fondant with piped red tube icing (Yep-cheated again.) piped buttercream (using the thin writer tip) and piped black tube icing for eyes and mouth (Oh yes, cheated yet again...)

Snowmen Cupcakes! White cupcakes with a generous helping of white buttercream, black tube icing, m and m eyes, a candy carrot nose, fruit pastel muffs and a cut piece of rainbow twizzler! (If you're from Britain you can buy these on Amazon Uk that's how I got mine!!!)

               And last but certainly not least, the rudolphe cupcake. A chocolate cupcake topped with Nutella buttercream and piped white fondant to glue down the m and m eyes. A giant chocolate button nuzzle with black tube icing smile, red jelly tot nose glued down with nutella buttercream, modelling chocolate ears and chocolate pretzel antlers! Too cute to eat! (Well my friends managed...)

Three of the boxes were hand collected, one hand eaten in a bowl in my kitchen (I'm not OCD she just likes eating cake in bowls.) and one hand delivered and received late at night in red spotty pajamas! (You know who you are!)


I have to admit I was more proud of the photography than the cake:

Christmas Cake Number Four! Two folk and Their Dogs on A sofa...

                                                              Christmas Cake Number 4!

So my quirky Aunt recently told me how she likes to sit on the sofa with her partner, each with a dog on their lap. I recently promised her a (Very alcoholic) Christmas Cake and so I slapped the ideas together et voila!

Just another simple christmas fruit cake with a layer of marzipan topped by white fondant. I made the tree and sofa out of modelling chocolate, figures and rug out of fondant, and buttercream piped the tree and icing. I then decided to be lazy and bought tube icing to pipe the edging and stripes and finished it off with a round of m and ms!

Merry Christmas :D

Christmas Cake Number Three-Snowmen!

                                                           Christmas Cake number three

This one I made as my present to my other Nan who has been asking for it for weeks because her co-workers at the hospital have apparently heard an awful lot about it and are desperate for a slice. All I can say is I hope I satisfy!

 I went for apricot jam this time instead of buttercream-what a risky experiment.

There are little piped white snowflakes round the edge-they're more visible in reality than on my irritating camera I promise!!

Fairy Birthday Cake

                                                                    Fairy Birthday Cake

I received this order just after the Arsenal Shirt cake and I have to admit I looked much more forward to doing this. It also gave me a pretty nice break from Christmas cakes and who wouldn't enjoy making a pretty pink birthday cake complete with fondant fairies, flowers, and bumble bees? A classic light white sponge cake with buttercream and jam, pink sugarpaste with piped buttercream and fondant decorations for six year old Zara who I wish a very happy birthday!


I'd also like to reccomend this wonderful invention:

Behold! The grass icing nozzle-it worked a treat:

I have to admit I was pretty proud of the mixture for this cake...

 Just look at those air bubbles!!!

 My friends don't like cakes with jam in. I personally am a traditionalist and therefore commend Zara for having excellent taste. A Victoria sponge with no jam is as pointless as trying to pipe grass without a grass nozzle.

This is one of the first birthday cakes I've made for a party and as much as hope it went down well I hope Zara had a wonderful time and is looking forward to an excellent Christmas Eve Birthday!

Schrodinger's Cat Cake

                                                      Shrodinger's Cat Cake

 Okay so before I delve into the scrumptious details of our half-dead feline friend-I'll explain what all this is about.

So my big brother whom I love dearly but is blatantly insane for optionally taking maths, further maths and physics as his A level options has a pretty cool physics teacher who insists on the weekly tradition of 'Cake Fridays'. The students take turns in bringing in physics themed cakes and for my brother's turn (directed more specifically to my turn) we wanted something pretty special. They've seen a circuit cake, a cake decorated like a galaxy, and a cake decorated with Malteasers to represent a physics theory I don't understand. We opted for Schrodinger's cat.

So unless you're a physicist, have an incredibly geeky sibling or are a Big Bang Theory enthusiast you are probably asking what an undead cat in a gingerbread box has to do with physics. The basic theory is that some Russian or German or something dude named Schrodinger came up with the idea that if you put a cat in a box and leave the lid on the box you don't know if it's dead or alive because, as I said-there's a lid on the box. So while the lid is still on this box and before you've attempted to open it and peek (And this is the kind of cat that doesn't meow or smell when it dies) the cat is both alive and dead.

     
Hence the Schrodinger's cat cake.

So although I'm guessing from the remains the group of physicists greatly appreciated both the gingerbread and the simple sponge cat, which of course, pleased me-my greatest joy in doing this has to be seeing my Mum's face when she walked into a kitchen looking like this:

Gingerbread men

                                                   Gingerbread men

Again, not technically cake, but I found myself baking a gingerbread box for my Shrodinger's cat cake (I'll explain in tomorrow's post) and what better a way to use the left over gingerbread than the good old fashioned classic gingerbread man? Complete with m and ms of course but I am ashamed to reveal that we'd run out of chocolate to dip them in. A failure, I know. I've also saved a little over to make a mini gingerbread house to top our Christmas cake-so stay tuned!

  Now I know this is cheating, and I've made gingerbread from scratch many times before, but I had an entire cat cake to make so I must confess I used ready made gingerbread dough blocks. I have to admit-DELICIOUS. Sainsbury's ready to roll ginger bread dough blocks are just as good raw as they are in any other state you'd like to eat them-so I have to recommend!

Also, while we're on the topic of gingerbread I must pay my respects to the wonderful team at Costa who have made a consciously ginger effort this Christmas-who could resist a gingerbread muffin, gingerbread latte, and of course the classic Gingerbread George? Although I must admit, I loved spooky gingerbread George last halloween and the grabbit rabbit really did capture my heart. Christmas George however does rank just above charlie the chick and of course football George who I could not care less about.