I Love Cupcakes

I really love cupcakes. I love the ready made serve of cake, I love the opportunity they give me to practice a bit of decorating, I love trying new cake recipes with them and I love how they look. And most importantly, they are YUM (unless something goes wrong)!!

This week I made a couple of different cupcakes. The first was a chocolate recipe I hadn't tried before..was ok...but not great. I made some whipped choc-mint ganache and practiced piping swirls on them. This is they:

The next ones I had a go at were devils food cupcakes. These were good. Not too sweet, so really lent themselves to a bit of ganache (milk chocolate) decorated with fondant. This is what I did with them:

Oh so pretty!! I think these would be great for a special celebration cupcake stand, don't you?!

Experiment Gone Wrong

OK, so the other day I posted on my facebook page that I was going to make a Mars bar cake...

I baked a caramel mud cake which was yum, cut it in half then filled and covered with milk chocolate ganache. Mistake number 1 - I used the cheapest compound chocolate I could get from the supermarket. It was disgusting and the ganache was not that great.

Then came decorating time. I had no plan in mind. Mistake number 2 - having no plan at all. I thought about mixing all the fondant I had left to give a marble affect. Didn't work out so well. Then I had the bright idea (well, turns out not so bright) of making it into pouring fondant and covering the cake with that. Mistake number 3 - actually following through with that idea.

After a very ordinary job of covering the cake I did a very ordinary job of decorating it.

Believe It Or Not

I can't believe I made this cake - dark chocolate and orange (jaffa) mud with dark chocolate ganache, home made chocolate fondant, home made red, orange and yellow fondant, and some gum paste flowers I made.

Apart from the chocolate fondant and the colour orange, I had no real plan for this one...I made the design up as I went. I guess you could say it's inspired by all those cherry blossom cakes you see around with my own take on it. Every time I look at this pic, I can't help but think, WOW, I made that. Gotta say, I'm excited!!!

For Kathryn

A few weeks ago I got an invitation to a friends Hen's gathering. An evening with African drumming, food, games and possibly singing. Dress code - The Beatles. Kathryn LOVES The Beatles. The location was her mum's house. When RSVP'ing I asked is if it would be ok if I took a cake with me. Of course it would!!!

So, there was no decision to make when it came to the flavor of the cake - CHOCOLATE. And a theme - The Beatles. Nothing too difficult for a beginner such as myself though. Googling images I found this:

That image would make a pretty good cake. And not too difficult either. Not saying there would be no challenge involved, it's just that it would be achievable....surely....

Step 1 - Bake the cake. I made a largish one, so used what are called bake even strips (homemade ones) to help the cake bake evenly and not burn around the edges. Have to say, this was a great idea. I made the best chocolate mud cake ever!!

Step 2 - Torte and ganache. I trialled a different cream from what I had used previously in ganache. OH MY GOD - devine!!! The cake was cut into 3 layers and filled with the ganache. I then covered the cake following steps found at Sugar Sweet Cakes and Treats.

Step 3 - Some more experimenting. I decide to make my own fondant. Glad I did, it's easy enough and I think it tastes better than using bought stuff.

Step 4 - Cover the cake and decorate. i'm not going to go into much detail here, but I did discover how difficult it is to work with fondant in high humidity. I was making some silhouettes for the side of my cake and they were melting as I went. Argh...end result...ok, but would have been a lot better if I wasn't working with melting icing.

The Bride to be was happy, the other guests were impressed and the cake was one of the most amazing things I have ever tasted. Pure chocolate heaven!!