New Page Added

Unit conversion page added.  I always find it a really handy reference to have at your disposal.  Hope it comes in useful for you!

Basic Recipes Section

I have finally gotten around to posting a few items on the Basic Recipes page.  On it you will find ingredients lists and instructions for Vanilla Buttercream and Chocolate Buttercream frostings and Vanilla Cupcakes and Chocolate Cupcakes.

Cupcakes For The Office

My office is one of those places that when it's your birthday you have to bring in buns/ cakes/ traybakes for everybody.  The guy who sits beside me drives a motorbike, making the task of bringing in treats for 20 people a little tricky, so he paid me to make cupcakes for him.  I planned to make 12 chocolate and 12 vanilla and per his request made the vanilla buttercream green.  To make them look a little more interesting I split the vanilla frosting in two and coloured one half electric green and the other leaf green and piped them on together, this gives the frosting a really good look. I also used lime green cupcake cases I had purchased on eBay to tie it all in and since he is an avid death metal fan I made the chocolate cupcakes in black cases (also bought from the same seller).  The vanilla cupcakes were topped with rainbow sprinkles and the chocolate with chocolate flakes.

Previous Baking Endeavours

As mentioned in my 'About Me' section the first thing I ever really baked (that wasn't a school project or under some form of supervision or instruction) was a cake for a Leverage premiere party.  I happened to have a box of Betty Crocker Devil's Food Cake mix in my house so I ran out to the supermarket to buy frosting and decorating supplies.  I made a stencil of the show's logo (using the printer and photocopier in the office to print it out, then used greaseproof paper to trace it and a scalpel to cut it out) and used some blue ready made icing in a tube to do the lettering.  I had also bought edible lustre spray to highlight the logo.  Basically, this is how it turned out:

It looks a bit messy between the V and the R but for a first attempt at something like this I was happy with the result.

The next cake I was asked to make was one for my mom for Halloween.  She had bought a silicone cake mould last time she had been visiting family in Vancouver and wanted me to bake and decorate the cake.  By this stage I still didn't own any proper decorating supplies so I had to buy liquid food colouring from the supermarket.  I don't really recommend liquid food colouring, unless you're making red velvet cupcakes, simply because if you use too much the frosting can taste very bitter and can make it runnier than normal too.  I learned that from making this cake because the store was all out of orange food colouring so I had to buy yellow and red and make it myself.  The end result however really did look the part.

I used edible glitter to add finishing touches to it, the green around the top and the glowing effect in the eyes, nose and mouth.

The following February was my godson's first birthday and I was asked to make the cake.  This was the first time I didn't use a boxed cake mix (sorry Betty Crocker!)  Instead I used the Brooklyn Blackout recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.  I purchased a teddy bear shaped tin and gave it my best shot.

Henry (as he was so named) was finished off at around 2 o'clock in the morning.  It was my first real attempt at piping frosting onto a cake.  His eyes are white chocolate buttons, the nose milk chocolate button and the mouth was made from liquorice.

Shortly after that in March I decided to make a birthday cake for my good friend.  This particular friend is a big country and western fan so I decided to go for a cowgirl theme on the cake.  I managed to find a good image on Google to use as a template and again used greaseproof paper to create a stencil.  The cake was Devil's Food Cake made from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook, as was the chocolate buttercream frosting.  I made an extra batch of vanilla buttercream and coloured it to look like rope.  After watching an instructional video on Youtube of how to pipe rope I went about it.  The cowgirls were done with the edible lustre spray and have blue sugar stars as well.  The end result:

2011 Belfast Pride Rainbow Cake

I have been going to the Belfast Gay Pride parade every year for the last 5 years.  This year I thought I would make a sweet treat for me and my friends.  Having looked up "pride cake" on Google images I thought I would have a go at creating a rainbow cake.  Google image search is fantastic for inspiration or getting ideas to adapt for your own creations.  So after sneaking a look at step by step photos that somebody had posted while in work, I went home intent on trying it out.

I decided to start off simple.  I threw together the ingredients for a vanilla cake and then pulled out 5 extra bowls to divide the batter between, one for each colour (I figured it would be okay to forego the indigo layer of the rainbow).  I had varying amounts of batter in each bowl, smaller amounts for each colour.  First in the pan was red (which was going pink so I added some cocoa powder to darken it down), then orange, yellow, green, blue and finally violet, making smaller layers as I went.  I LOVED how it looked before I put it into the oven, I had used my new Americolor gels and they worked just great.

I set the timer for 30 minutes and after the buzzer went I checked the cake with my tester, it still needed a good while before it was done, so I set the timer again... This went on for varying increments of time until an hour had passed.  The tester eventually came out clear and I put the cake on the cooling rack to cool overnight (it was 11pm by this stage).  The next morning I got up and made a batch of vanilla buttercream and added my Americolor Bright White gel to brighten up the frosting and decorated the cake with rainbow sprinkles.

After all of this effort I was DYING to cut into it to see what it actually looked like inside...

I really am quite pleased with how it turned out, the colours still looked beautiful after baking.  This could be replicated with any combination of colours, if the mixtures are added into the pan in a less uniform way the result will be more psychadelic, it could also be applied to cupcakes, though in that instance I would use piping bags to get the batter neatly into the cases.

Graduation Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for my brother's graduation in June this year.  The cupcakes themselves are standard vanilla with vanilla buttercream frosting (coloured green as this was the colour of the trim on his graduation gown).  The little caps are made from mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups turned upside down with After Eight chocolates on top.  I bought some ready made icing in a tube to stick the two together and also used it to stick the tassels to the top of the caps (tassels are made from Regal Icing rolled into strips).

The peanut butter cups are not easy to come by in Northern Ireland so I had to buy them off eBay.  They were a bit expensive but I think the end result was really cute (though if I make them again I think I'd refrigerate the peanut butter cups to avoid the chocolate peeling off the sides when the wrapper is taken off, which happened on a few of them).  Alternatively you could use Rolos but they are slightly smaller than the peanut butter cups.