WWE Championship Belt Cake

I was asked by a co-worker to do a WWE themed cake for her son's 5th birthday.  I thought instead of a wrestling ring cake I would set myself a little challenge and attempt a WWE belt cake.

I printed a bunch of pictures off the internet and photocopied them and enlarged them so that I could make stencils for cutting out the details.  After that I just needed a can of gold lustre spray, some silver food paint and a load of black and white fondant (not to mention a couple of tubs of silver dragees!)

Here is the finished product!

More photos of it are on the facebook page.

Phishful Thinking...

I had an idea recently while devouring a tub of Ben & Jerry's Vermonster ice cream that the flavour combination of the ice cream would be amazing in the form of a cupcake.  This got me thinking about other flavour of ice cream that could be easily translated into cupcakes.  One popular suggestion was Phish Food: chocolate ice cream, marshmallow and caramel swirls with chocolate shaped fishes.

After I got a chocolate mould on eBay in the shape of fishes and researched a recipe for marshmallow frosting I was off!

The cupcake would be made up of a chocolate cupcake, marshmallow frosting, drizzled with caramel sauce and topped with a chocolate fish.  Cute, right?

So I baked a batch of chocolate cupcakes and made some of the marshmallow frosting.

Marshmallow Frosting (Recipe from Martha Stewart )

Ingredients:

8 large egg whites

2 cups sugar

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

2 tsp vanilla extract

Place egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar into a glass bowl and set over a saucepan of simmering water.  Whisk constantly until sugar has dissolved and egg whites are warm to the touch (approximately 3-4 minutes).  Transfer to a larger bowl and whisk with electric mixer.  Start on a low speed and gradually increase to high until stiff and glossy peaks are formed (approximately 5-7 minutes).  Add the vanilla extract and mix until it is combined.  Use immediately.

The recipe says for 2 dozen, but I easily had enough to do 4 dozen.

To pipe it onto my cupcakes I used a large round tip, then drizzled some caramel sauce over the top.  I just bought mine in the supermarket, but if you have a recipe homemade is always better.  This was topped with one of my little chocolate fishies.

After tasting the cupcake I decided that the next time I make them I think I'm going to do a caramel filling rather than drizzled on top, the caramel flavour a bit lost in the mix.  They were still pretty darn good!  The marshmallow frosting is so light and sticky (I ended up with it all over my face!) and I imagine it would only be better toasted with a kitchen blowtorch.  Oh how I would love one of those to play with!  Anyways, here are a couple of close ups of the cupcake.

From the side

From the top

Hope you enjoy making these!  They're pretty fun little cupcakes.

Bake A Cake In A Mug In Your Microwave: Cinnamon Roll Edition

I loved the recipe I found a while back for the microwave chocolate cake in a mug, I have had it numerous times and some of my friends have tried it and enjoyed it too.  Since becoming addicted to Pinterest I have found a few more recipes I wanted to try out and wouldn't you know it?  I found a new mug cake recipe!  Cinnamon Roll Mug Cake!!

Ingredients:

2 tbsp applesauce (if there are apple pieces you'll want to blend it smooth)

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tbsp buttermilk

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup PLUS 1 tbsp plain flour

2 1/2 tbsp soft brown sugar

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

Put all your ingredients into a mug (this one is smaller than the last recipe, so a normal sized mug is perfect) and mix with a fork.  Make sure you get your fork right into the bottom to mix thoroughly.  As you can see from my ingredients picture I substituted a couple of ingredients, instead of buttermilk I used normal skimmed and instead of vegetable oil I used corn oil and it worked great.  Previously I had used buttermilk (which I only really have in my fridge when I'm making red velvet) and instead of brown sugar I used golden caster sugar.  Again, it was still yummy, so there is a little flexibility for you if you don't have everything at your disposal.

Once you have mixed all the ingredients together, get that mug into the microwave!  Mine took around 2 and a half minutes to cook properly, but it depends on your microwave, so have a tooth pick or cake tester ready to check it!

This recipe also included frosting for the mug cake!  Yummy cream cheese frosting!

Ingredients:

1 tbsp cream cheese

2 tbsp icing sugar

1 tsp milk

I just put all the ingredients into a sandwich bag and mixed them together by hand.  This is great because when you're done you can just snip off a wee corner and pipe the frosting onto your cake!  Easy!!

And might I add..... YUMMY!

30th Birthday Cake

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!)

 And here is the Mutant Enemy monster in action...

Mother's Day Cupcakes

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.

St Patrick's Day Cake Pops

Happy St Patrick's Day!

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.

                                      

Have fun!



I Did It All For The Cookie Now On Pinterest

I'm really getting into these social networking sites.  My current addiction is Pinterest.  It's like having an online bulletin board where you can share all the interesting stuff you find online.  Love it.