Whilst I was off galavanting in Vancouver earlier this month, I missed my good friend's 30th birthday. I really wanted to make him a cake so I got around to it this weekend (after numerous searches on Google images). He is a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse.... Basically anything Joss Whedon related, so I used the logo from Mutant Enemy Productions, who are the company behind all of them and made a stencil for the cake (I may not be very artistic, but I am one hell of a tracer!)
It was Mother's Day here in the UK today so I was trying to find cupcakes that I could bake for my mom to mark the occasion. I consulted my good friend, Google Images for some inspiration. It seems that bouquet cupcakes are pretty popular so I went with the idea.
Basically, like a normal bouquet, you can make them with any flowers you wish, in any colour you can imagine. I have little bits of fondant left over from other projects so I had pink and red and green. I made a few fondant roses and used my cutters to make some leaves. Each cupcake had 3 roses and 3 leaves.
To mix it up a bit I made 2 cupcakes with message toppers, which were fondant cut out with "We <3 Mom" written on them with writing gel and a heart shaped sprinkle. I was proud of how they turned out, I thought they were pretty cute.
They were red velvet with cream cheese frosting. The roses are still a little dusty from the cornflour I used to roll them out but over all I'm happy and, more importantly my wee mom loved them.
Here is a video I have used to learn how to make quick fondant roses, fab for when you're pressed for time or don't have petal cutters.
Thought this year I'd do something festive (and green). Considered a cake, but since I'm still recovering from jetlag after getting home from Vancouver on Tuesday I figured that'd be a tall order, so I went for cake pops!
I got some white candy melts and shamrock shaped sprinkles on the internet and I had seen a post Bakerella did a while back for green velvet cake balls so I thought I'd adapt it slightly.
I made vanilla cupcakes and coloured them green, crumbled the life out of them and added frosting to make the cake balls, then put them in the freezer to firm up. I melted the candy in the microwave, then got my cake balls, lollipop sticks and went to it. I definitely need to invest in a styrofoam block to stick cake pops in to dry, I hadn't really comsidered what I was going to do with them after they had been coated. I finished them off with the shamrock sprinkles and I have to say I'm quite happy with my first attempt at cake pops!
Here is a video from YouTube by Bakerella to teach you the cake pop basics.
