The Butter Cream of my Life.....

I have a great butter cream recipe that looks fantastic on the cupcakes I do which keep their form , which for any cupcaker is paramount to a great cupcake. I have tried the Wiltons recipe and its great, but I dont like having to melt the copha to use in it.... ewww. SO I use the recipe I devised which is
250 grams butter, softened
4 cups of icing sugar
2 teaspoons of vanilla
2 tablespoons of milk
for chocolate butter cream add  3 to 4 tablespoons of chocolate ganache..... mmmm ganache.
To pipe the buttercream i use a big nozzle, lets not get too complicated, i wont go into sizes... just get a big one.... and swirl onto the cupcakes...  :)

Happy birthday GRAGRA

Its my husbands birthday, and for his big day I am making a cake in the shape of his footy jersey, he's a mad keen Manly supporter! So here we go i have made a mud cake and cut it to shape, now for the tricky bit....... i have 3 hours to get it done!arrrgghh before he gets home. And how do you make maroon again? So I baked  2 mud cakes, cut one to shape and overlayed with maroon fondant and with a cleanskin jersey in mind... see below

white fondant stripes and a few shapes cut out for the detail.....white round collar....using a icing pen i did an eagle... voila! i layed it atop the lower layer that i had decorated (read smeared) time constraints people! 3 hrs!

it all worked out and Graham, my dear husband, was really surprised!

Brown Cows 20 year Reunion!

Recently I went to my 20 year reunion , when we were at school we were known as the brown cows, as our lovely uniform was brown .... grrrross. I` didnt do much organising, i was more the friendly yes lady on the other end of the phone for a friend of mine who did a marvellous job putting it all together, and as per usual at the last minute I offered to make cupcakes for our alumni to enjoy, and also i wanted to reassure Kirsty that I was truly trying to help her... passively.
Any way i said, how about some cupcakes with our school colours and some cows heads on top?  Sounded good, but lets not forget that i have 4 kids and one of them is a baby and the other one has ADHD.  I have to say shit gets hectic in my house.... So anyway. I set about making 40 cupcakes, then I baked 40 mini cupcakes just for good measure....overkill is my favourite word! Also I think the closer I got to the day, the more nervous I became. So a baking I went!
I made a vanilla buttercream in what i call HELLO yellow, and then enlisted child labour in the form of my beautiful daughter Hailey to start making cows heads.... I literally dreamt of ways to make cows heads on the tops of these cupcakes.... so the morning of the reunion i was SET!

The cows head were made from brown chocolate fondant, cut into ovals then pink fondant cut into smaller ovals and layed onto the lower half.... a few little holes made for nostrils and a circle cutter indentation for a smile, two little dots in americolour black and VOILA!

the second set of cupcakes were made with chocolate butter cream and sprinkles, nothing too flash as minis are little and the piping itself serves as the embellishment....


they were LUSH and a huge hit Iused alot of icing that day and Lucky for me i had already fallen off the diet wagon! thats all for now,  thanks for reading! to follow, i blog my buttercream recipe, its awesome!

So I have been busy in my absence......

it has been a while and I have to say the world went topsy turvy for a while, and never fear i am back ... and i have been caking along quite well in my absence.... i know you missed me like a Diarrhoea shower I'll bet... all two of you and thats no joke. My beautiful niece Katia turned 18 and i did a great 2 tier mud cake for her in turquiose and black with purple ... celebration was the theme as was coming of age .. so here is the result..alas i took no pics of the making process ...sorry!!!

Also I made a giant cupcake for a friends 40th and i went for cute yet sophisticated... with 24 mini cupcakes to go with it  in matching Pink and black....they gave me free reign with this one and this is what you get for letting me run free......

Dora Cake for Tia

Today I finished the Dora cake I was making for my daughters Third birthday, Tia is completely mad for Dora the Explorer so I set about making a Dora cake , rainbow butter cake inside with strawberry butter cream filling, I downloaded a pic from the Internet of a colouring in sheet of the wily explorer in question and set about making her likeness atop of the cake.

I cut out a negative image of Dora, totally in black and applied it to the cake, then I cut out the different components in colour blocks and stuck it to the black image and slowly filled her in with colour ,

As you can see it was very fiddly work and it took time and care to apply all the colour with a scalpel and a couple of different tools. I reccommend allowing the fondant to harden slightly before cutting out the components as the fondant stretches and is hard to work with when it is too soft.
the star detail was a star puch cutter and it was a very quick tool that made everything alot easier. 

In the end I used different techniques to lift the image like texture around the socks and shoe detail, around the backpack straps and collar, it gave it a three dimensional quality, 
I got the bright idea of putting a paint roller in her hand and have her painting a rainbow and stars across the cake! It was a good idea, very effective looking, but my hubby didn't like it.... oh well tuff.  I feel this cake had a good finish to it and was quite a good result, Tia is going to love it, it tasted good and has Dora on it.... thats all that counts to her!

Rainbow cake.

I am making an angel cake for my Aunty Rita , for a white themed party, so its going to be a white fondanted cake and as a special surprise the cake inside is a rainbow cake. I have never made a rainbow cake  before so i made a quadruple batch of my butter pound cake and divided it into different bowls

then i lined a square tin with baking paper and very carefully layered the batter trying hard to keep the colours separated

the last layer was purple, Tia got to it and tipped in alot of red food colouring but i salvaged it and put it in last, starting from the middle and working out

There it is i think quite a successful looking cake, all the layers are still defined and the pink looks great, tomorrow i am attempting the angel exterior.

Cupcake Couture Care of Aunty Linda.

I did a cupcake course today, My aunty Linda gave me a voucher for a course she could not attend... bad for her .GREAT for me!!!!the course  taught people like you and me how to make awesome looking cupcakes, it is the first course i have ever done in anything to do with cake decorating.... I had a lovely time, sitting in a group of ladies some who had done fondant work before and others who hadn't.... We made lady bugs , blossoms and bees, and a teddy bear cupcake... i resisted the urge to spend more money on cake tools, alot of which i had already , some i didnt, i will have to look into them as the blossom puncher and leaf puncher was a very naddy tool indeed! and the texturizer which looked like a pie cutter.... for quilting cupcakes and fondant in general...but i did learn alot, about how to use my tools