Orange cupcakes

I am a big fan of these.  I mean, obviously I would say that.  But seriously Mmm.  And check out the leopard print cases which I got at Morrisons.

These were also for my Grandma's birthday do.  An orange sponge, filled with home-made orange Jam and topped with orange cream cheese icing and a very cute teeny orange.

I used the Primrose Bakery orange cupcake recipe which produced a lovely moist sponge.  I then cut out the middle and filled them with some beautiful jam.  Unfortunately I can't claim to have home-made it myself...because I didn't. However, I was lucky enough to get a bread-maker for my birthday, in which i can make jam! So I intend to do so very soon.

Yum!

vanilla and Strawberry 85th birthday cupcakes

Last month, I was sat round the dinner table with my family and we were talking about birthdays. My Grandma mumbled (loudly) "Well i suppose we won't do anything for my birthday." So, of course, we did.

Last weekend we all gathered around a huge dining table at the Hendon Hall Hotel and had a traditional English tea party.  It was rather poshe. There were scones, smoked salmon sandwiches, the lot.

It was my job to provide cupcakes (would you believe) for the event.  I'm going to do separate blogs about the different ones I made.  Just to keep things neat. 

These ones were quite simple.  A vanilla cupcake filled with some delicious strawberry jam that I bought at a farm shop, with a swirl of buttercream on tome and a sugarpaste strawberry.

It's nice and easy to make sugarpaste strawberries.
You will need:
Red sugarpaste (I like to use pre-coloured red to save time and to get a really deep colour)
Green sugarpaste
cocktail sticks
water
lustre dust (optional)

Make a ball and then a cone out of your red sugarpaste.  Soften the point of the cone until in resembles a strawberry.
Make tiny thin sausages of green sugarpaste and lay them on top of eachother in a star shape, like this *

Then squash them together with your thumb so you have a star shape and then stick it on the top of your red cone with a dab of water.

Next make a little indentation in the middle of your green star and another little sausage for the stem.  Gently press them stem into the hole.

By now you should have something that resembles a strawberry.

Use your cocktail stick, or something similar to make little pricks in the red part, for the seeds.

I like to cover mine with a layer of pearl dust.  Just for prettiness.

Nearly Valentine's Day

Just a quicky to remind you all (not that you'd forget) that this big red mooshy day is drawing nearer.  Whether you want to surprise someone with some sugary delights or whether you want to console yourself with some, you can't really go wrong.
Get in touch at amy@yaycakes.com

Nutella self-frosting cupcakes...

So.  I'd been wanting to include Nutella in my baking ventures for quite some time now, purely because I think it is a food sent from heaven.  I'd say I developed a minor addiction to it at one point. Thankfully for my teeth and waistline I managed to get that under control.

I had read a few articles about these 'self-frosting' cakes and was waiting for the right opportunity.  The idea behind them is that you add the Nutella before baking so when you take them out the oven, they're already iced and ready to eat.

This weekend some friends and I went to the New Forest to celebrate our birthdays and had planned to have a winter picnic (yes. i know) so I thought, these would be perfect as it wouldn't matter if they got bashed around because there was no icing to spoil.

I used my trusted Primrose Bakery vanilla cupcake recipe and filled each case two thirds full.  My first attempt at swirling Nutella through the batter failed as it was too hard and the batter was quite thin, so I heated the Nutella for a few seconds and it was loads easier.

All you have to do is place a spoonful of the chocolatey goodness on top of the batter, then use a cocktail stick to swirl it.  To do this, push the cocktail stick down until it touches the bottom and then swoosh and swirl about until you think it looks pretty.

And that is IT. Well, apart from baking them in the oven.

I decorated mine with some little pink hearts because I couldn't resist.  They tasted delICIOUS.

Christmas gift boxes

Again, better late than never.

I attempted to make some of my own gift boxes which turned out nice, but I came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the effort and didn't really work out much cheaper.  So in the end I found some snazzy (!) hologram-ish boxes and filled them with all the goodies I had made.  As Christmas presents go, these went down very well and seemed to be much appreciated by all those lucky enough to receive them.

Inside the boxes, from the top left hand corner, we have:

A selection of christmas cookies, a blue santa chocolate lolly

(next row) A christmas pudding double chocolate cake ball, a white chocolate truffle, a mint oreo truffle

(next row) A chocolate marshmallow, more truffles, a christmas tree cake pop and more cookies!

YUM

christmas cookies

Yes I know I'm pushing my luck still writing christmas blogs, but, there just wasn't time in between all the presents and eating and cooking and eating and drinking.....to do them as I went along.  So if you think it's just too post-christmas for you to read this, perhaps bookmark it for next year.

Nothing much to say here, except I used the trusty Hummingbird bakery sugar cookies recipe for my cookies and sugarpaste, writing icings and glitter to decorate....

christmas sweetie kebabs

Recently I have gotten a bit interested/obsessed with a few party-planning blogs.  I'm not talking British jelly and ice cream parties, I'm talking extravagant, over the top, excessive, beautiful, American parties. Have a look at some of the absolutely gorgeous spreads over on the Blowout Party Blog  I mean, look at this one:

Have a click on it to see more close ups.

It was here that I stumbled across 'Candy Kabobs', which, translated into English becomes sweetie kebabs. I think i got a few cavities in my teeth by just looking at this incredible site, Sweets Indeed.  It worked out quite expensive to source the ingredients to make anything too crazy so I decided to make some mini christmas trees, using just red and green sweets.

I ordered myself a load of astro belts from Whirly Pop and picked up a bag of Haribo Super Sour Monsters and set to work making these pretty things...