30th Birthday Violet & Cream Cupcakes

It was my sisters 30th birthday yesterday, so rather than buy a cake I decided to make her a batch of flower cupcakes.  These were vanilla sponges which were decorated with large cream and violet buttercream swirls (using my trusty old M1 nozzle!), topped with hand crafted sugar flowers, and finished with a sprinkling of silver glitter dust.

The sugar flowers were made using roll out icing which I tinted with Wiltons 'violet' colouring paste, and were cut with a daisy flower cutters set. They were left to dry overnight, some on a flat surface, others I put into little truffle cases to create curved shaped petals.

Pink Mallow Cupcakes

I made these pink sparkly cupcakes for my little girls birthday tea... delicious!!!!

Daisy Cupcakes

My sister held a garden party on Easter Sunday and my contribution was.... yep, you guessed it, cupcakes!!!

I chose a simple design and cheated a little by using shop bought flowers. I used a classic vanilla sponge topped with large swirls of vanilla buttercream (using an M1 nozzle) and finished them off with delicate white, lemon, and candy pink daisies.

Easter Egg Cupcakes

My daughter and I made this yummy cupcakes as Easter gifts for our family.  We used vanilla sponge topped with chocolate buttercream (we used part butter and part melted milk chocolate with the icing sugar to ensure the mixture wasn't too dark!) and finished off with mini eggs :0)

Lemon Meringue Pie Cupcakes

It was my Mums birthday on Monday, so I decided to make some cupcakes. My mum loves lemon flavoured cakes so I created a batch of light and fluffy cupcakes, and while still hot I drizzled each cake with a lemon and icing sugar mix - the flavour was absolutely gorgeous!!!

Once cool I topped with vanilla buttercream which had crushed meringue pieces mixed in to it. The meringue did make it hard to pipe... some of the pieces were not crushed small enough which partialy blocked the M1 nozzle I was using!!! This did result in a really pretty effect as the frosting came out in several little ribbons which piled up. I finished off with a light dusting of silver glitter.

Vanilla & Nutella Polka Dot Glitter-Dust Cupcakes

I just love making and decorating cupcakes, so when my new nozzles arrived in the post I just HAD to use them!!!  I used a basic sponge mix and added a little vanilla flavouring, before filling muffin cakes and baking.  Once cooled I filled each cupcake with nutella using a #230 nozzle, then using an M1 nozzle I pipped large vanilla buttercream swirls on top, sprinkled with silver edible glitter, and finally topped with mini choco beans. 

Delicious!!!

Fruit Cake/Malt Loaf

Ingredients:

1 cup shreddies (any brand)

1 cup raisins (or dried mixed fruit)

1/2 cup soft brown sugar

1 cup milk

1 cup self raising flour

In a bowl mix the shreddies, raisins, sugar and milk.

Stir and place in the fridge overnight

(or for approx 8 hours, until the shreddies have soaked up the milk and are soft).

When you're ready to bake add the flour to the mixture and stir in - it will become very thick and stodgy. 

Pour into a loaf tin and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes on 180 degrees (Gas mark 4).

Can be kept for approx a week if wrapped/sealed.

Flower Cupcakes

Today my daughter and I made cupcakes and I took the opportunity to practice my decorating technique (I'll be making flower fairy cupcakes for my little girls 4th birthday). The buttercream wasn't stiff enough, but I got to try out my new M1 nozzle :0) I sprinkled with lemon sparkle dust and topped with handmade icing flowers.

Teddy Bears Picnic

As the weather's been too cold to go out we decided to do something indoors today - a Teddy Bears Picnic.  My little girl and I baked lemon cupcakes decorated with vanilla frosting, topped with mini marshmallows and parma violets :0)

We invited my sister, newphews, and Mum for sandwiches, cakes and strawberry milk (yummy!), and the kids seemed to have a lovely time!

Let Them Eat Cake!

This weeks 'big make' was my newphews 3rd birthday cake.  Ok, so I didn't do it all myself - my sister baked a deee-licious sponge ready for me to ice and decorate. It took around 4 hours to complete due to all the fiddly bits (!) but it was worth it to see the look on my nephews face :0)  He is a BIG fan of Lightening McQueen!!!

Catch-up!

Okay, it's been far longe than I said it would be, but until now it's seemed like I've not been able to catch-up with everything!!!

Having been ill for the last 5 days I've had some time to trawl through some old pics (what was I thinking the black hair?!) and found some images of a couple of my creations, some better than others, so thought I'd post them on here.  The Princess castle was for my daughters 1st birthday, and the Mario Kart - which took me 6 hours over 2 days! - was for my sons 8th birthday :0)