Melted snowman fruit cake gift

One of the many lovely things Josh brought home from nursery this year was this melted snowman fruit cake. Technically this is a 'handmadebyjosh' and his teachers project, but it was such a good idea I thought I'd share.

 

 

 

About 3 weeks ago we were asked to send in empty clean 220g bean tins. I couldn't work out what sort of craft a nursery class could make with them - I had visions of them being used as plant pots or candle holders. And was very happily surprised to receive this cute cake. Very simple to do, you just used them instead of a baking tin. The cake is removed once cool, turned upside down, topped with a disc of icing, a ball of icing and decorations to look like a melted snowman and dressed up with corrugated card an cellophane to make a really sweet gift.

 



Super hero party: Iron Man Biscuit Cookies

There are likely to be quite a few super hero party related posts soon, as for the past few weeks I've had my head down creating and baking for my Son's themed Birthday this Saturday.

 

Firstly here is a last minute idea of mine: Iron Man's hand biscuits (I'm British and just can't bring myself to call anything that isn't soft and chewy a 'cookie'). They are baked with coloured dough so they look effective without needing a rainbow of regal icing or a steady hand for royal icing flooding. Althou, if you want a quick version of these biscuits, simple make the red dough and then cut grey and white regal icing into circles to stick on afterwards. [Read more, for the receipe]

 

 

 

Burger Cupcakes [Suitable for Vegetarians]

I saw this concept on an old blog entry from Heather Taylor from "I do ... Inspiration" and fittingly I was Inspired. The photo that I had innocently found while researching superhero cupcakes on google images was that of Burger Shaped cupcakes! Some might say this idea is a bit kitch, naff or cheesy (burger pun) but I thought it was worth trying at least the once.

 

It's simply made by cutting a plain sponge cupcake in half across the horizontal, and then 'sandwiching' a disc of chocolate cake or brownie in between stuck together with Jam (for the tomato ketchup) and green buttercream (lettuce). I made my 'burgers' with some leftover chocolate cake but would have liked to have made the 'burger' with brownie for a difference in texture. If you have any, sesame seeds would also look the part (scattered over the top during baking).

 

I only made a small batch of these to try out the idea, my willing Guinea Pigs tomorrow are: Jac, Nicola and all the little ones :) Although I have to admit I've also made some traditional butterfly cakes and the kids decorated a few vanilla sponges cupcakes with pink buttercream - so something for every there hopefully.

 

 

*- please note the title of this blog  entry is meant in jest, obviously the suitability for vegetarians depends on the recipe used - but the vast majority of cake recipes will not involve the use of meat, although any recipe using eggs, milk or butter will not be suitable for vegans.

Cake: The Trash Can Pack / Trashies

I volunteered to bake a cake for my Nephew's birthday last week. Apparently he's really into the 'Trash Pack' and Trashies toys -he has the bin and the dump truck. Now, I've only ever seen the TV advert so a little research was needed, but I quickly decided that in the time scale a 'Trash can' cake was the most straight forward with a surprise bright green cake inside.

This is a basic guide to how I made the cake - although I'm sure there are far easier or more professional ways to achieve the same cake. I didn't have a lot of time to plan and shop for this cake, so everything had to be available from my local asda or my own store-cupbaord - with more planning I'd have located some 5" round baking tins and bought more dowels and ready coloured grey and green sugar paste.

Cake:

(using a 12" by 6" rectangular tin)

14oz Self Raising flour

14oz Butter

14oz Caster sugar

7 medium eggs
2 tsp baking powder
2tsp vanilla essence
Gel food colouring: green

Icing:
1 tub frosting/buttercream
1 kg ready to roll white icing
Gel food colouring: green, black and yellow
Gold luster

Firstly I made a large rectangular cake using the recipe above (if you have small enough round tins use these instead and you will have less wastage), which I have adapted from my basic sponge measurements. After preheating my oven to 170°C I cream the sugar and butter, then adding the wet and dry ingredients alternately. I added the green gel at the end so I could judge the brightness of the green. I used asda natural colouring gel, most gels will work well, but avoid the liquid colouring. To add the gel I coated the bottom part of a cocktail stick in the gel and swirled it around in the cake mixture to release the colour before turning the mixer back on, I binned the leftover stick and repeated the process 3-4 times.

Baking times will vary depending on the size of tin, but for mine it took 30 minutes, although I was expecting between 45-1 hour for a thicker cake.

Once cooled I cut the large cake into 4 individual 5 inch cakes, I levelled the tops and stacked them with frosting between each layer and using a dowel rob for stability ... again, ideally I'd have used 4 evenly spaced dowels and cut them to size but time was an issue and as it had to be transported I left the dowel in (which I tried to hide a bit with the 'lid' handle). The cake did 'slouch' a little by the end as a result of the lack of even support, but I like to think it added to the 'old trash can' look of the cake.

Once assembled, I crumb coated the whole cake in frosting (store bought betty spoon as a time saver) and refrigerated for half an hour.

Now the interesting part, the icing. Firstly I died most of my 1kg of white ready roll icing grey using black food colouring gel - you can buy ready coloured icing from sugarcraft and specialist shops if you have more notice. Then I rolled out a large rectangle of icing and cut it to straighten the edges and measured to the height of cake, I placed the cake onto the rectangle and rolled the cake up in it, cutting at the overlap and using a sugar craft tool to bleng the join a little.

Placing the cake upright I then rolled out a circle to cover the top of the cake. And used a ball shaped sugar craft tool to make grooves around the cake to look like the indentations on the outside of the 'trash can'. Next I died most the remaining white icing green to match the inside of the cake and cut 'oozy dribbles' to go around the cake, I hid the tops of these with a long flat 1 inch piece of grey icing - which was supposed to look like part of the lid.

To one side I used more green icing to cut the letters 'j-a-c-k' and the number 5 out, and laid a 1 inch strip of grey icing over a stack of two flat wooden spatulars to dry out and give it a 'handel' shape. the remaining tiny bit of white icing was then died yellow, formed into 'screw' shapes and painted with gold luster.

The cake went down very well, the kids all liked the shape and theme of the cake while the adults where impressed with the favour of the sponge (despite the vivid green colour, lol).

Olympic Opening Ceremony : Cupcakes and Pizza

As it's the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 London Olympic games, so I went a bit Olympic ring crazy with a little batch of cupcakes this morning :)

We're letting the kids stay up to watch the ceremony - hopefully they'll crash out before we do but as they're currently hyper running around waving Union Jacks I suspect they may last longer than us!

Even tonight's pizza got the Olymic treatment, with red, yellow & green pepper, olives and red onion (tinted blue with food colouring).

Cranberry and Pumpkins Seed Flapjack

With this beautiful weather you may think I've gone a little crazy for making this comfort food snack in the blazing sunshine, but after experiencing a 'cranberry and seed slice' at a little cafe on site at Pendennis Castle while on holiday I just had to try and replicate the sensational taste.

I took my basic flapjack recipe and played around with it to make these lovely slices, I hope they do the original justice.

FOR THE FLAPJACK

250g/9oz Butter

85g/3oz Light Muscovado sugar

175g/6oz Golden Syrup

350g/12 oz Porridge Oats

½ tsp Baking Powder

50g/2oz Sunflower Seeds

25g/1oz Pumpkin Seeds

25/1oz Dried Cranberries

FOR THE TOPPING

85g/3oz Pumpkin Seeds

85g/3oz Dried Cranberries

2 tbs Golden Syrup

Preheat oven to 170°C (350°F, gas mark 4, non fan 180°C).

Butter and line a 9 x 9 inch baking tin.

Melt butter, Sugar and syrup in a pan on a low heat.

Stir into the Oats and add the baking powder, Cranberries and Pumpkin seeds.

Tin into the baking tin, pushing down into the corners and smoothing down with a spoon.

Baking for 20-25 mins or until edges start to brown.

Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes before turning out onto a chopping board, dividing into 8 long slices. Leave to fully cool on a wire tray.

For the topping, mix the golden syrup, into the cranberries and pumpkin seeds, coat well, and scatter over the cut flapjack.

It turned out beautifully, here it is in the tin, out in the sunshine.

With the green and red colours I think these would be perfect at Christmas but taste great all year. And for all the added nutritional value from the seeds, oats and cranberries I probably won't be working out the calorie count on these ;)

Farewell Ladybugs :: Ladybird Cupcakes

Today was the last day of our playgroup, and I was sad to see it close. But we went out on a high with a teddy bears picnic (indoors due to this damp 'British Summer').

We've barely unpacked from the wedding, but somehow I found an hour yesterday to make this appropriately themed cupcakes.  

The base is my basic sponge recipe, with strawberry icing (adapted from Claire Ptak's perfect strawberry cupcake recipe) and these cute sugar paste ladybirds.

Here comes the Bride Biscuits!!

As I can't actually share any of the wedding prep with you for fear of spoiling the surprise for all our guests, I'm quite pleased to able to share these biscuits - A little favour I've made for my pre-wedding family dinner tonight.

Originally I quite fancied the idea of using biscuits as place names, but with 80 guests I didn't think I've have the time or the patience.

I used my basic 'cookie cutter' biscuit recipe:

250g plain flour

125g caster sugar

125g unsalted butter

1 medium egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

2. Add the egg and vanilla little by little.

3. Sift in half the flour, mix, and then add the rest.

4. Knead the dough until smooth.

5. Wrap the bowl in clingfilm and refrigerate for an hour.

6. Pre heat oven to 180ºC/350ºF/4 (170ºC fan).

7. Roll out the dough onto a lightly floured surface, to about a 5mm thickness.

8. Use your cutters to cut out shapes (intricate shapes may transport better if you lift the cookie with the cutter on your pallet knife).

9. Put your shapes on trays lined with baking parchment.

10. Bake for about 10 minutes or until golden brown.

11. Leave to cool on the trays.

12. Ice Once cooled.

I opted for a few different icing styles (the pink are my first attempts at drop-in icing), but for the majority I used my cutter to cut white regal icing to the exact shape, which I attached with royal icing, I then made flower impressions on top using my daisy cutters, and brushed some regal icing on the tips of the petals for detail.

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They aren't perfect, but they were cathartic to make and look lovely now I've bagged and ribboned them.

Jubilee Birthday Party!

Little lady turned 2 at the start of the month and despite having originally planned a Minnie Mouse Party I couldn't resist changing the 'family' leg of her celebrations into a Jubilee/Britannia party, fitting for the patriotic climate of the weekend.

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"So, the Minnie Mouse Party idea went out of the window?" I hear you ask. No, of course not. We ended up hold the jubilee party on the Saturday, having visitors over Sunday, Zoo on Monday and then a Minnie Mouse Party for her friends on Wednesday.

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OK, so I admit, with a month to the wedding, twelve cards to do and two kids to run after, I probably didn't need to make more work for myself - but sleep is for the weak ... idle hands ... and all that!

An easy idea we've used for a few kids parties are these simple iced sugar cookies. Basically: simple round biscuits, topped with white sugar paste, and finished off with sugar paper 'cake' toppers. You can buy sheets of them in all sorts of themes very cheaply from places like eBay or you can print your own using edible inks.

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I decided attempt a seemly fitting 'Crown' cake for the occasion. I was inspired by an article from Daily Mail on line. But adapted it to fit our red, white & blue theme, and added more children's party friendly confectionery decorations.

Considering the reduced time frame I don't think it came out too badly. Lots of compliments on the taste too (just a basic 5 egg recipe, filled with buttercream and jam).

As well as the cookies and cake, I made red-velvet cupcakes (topped with candy striped red/white/blue icing and sugar paste cameos), sausage rolls, and my Mum made scones. To finish the look we hung store-bought bunting all over the ceiling and along the sides, union jack paper plate, napkins, even red white and blue straws.

Considering the late notice of the theme change I don't think we did too bad. Given more time and supplies I would have liked to have made paper pomanders, made our own bunting, made solider cookies (or at least got them into the theme somewhere).

Belated "Happy Birthday Mr S" Post

Between planning two birthday , countless birthday cards and wedding crafting (only 5 weeks to go) my blog writing has been suffering - and certainly not down to lack of material. There is so much to do I have found little time to write anything down about what I've been up to, but as I've got a few minutes I'll try to whizz through some updates.

Several weeks ago it was Mr S's birthday, and as my Mint Chocolate Cupcake recipe is his favourite I decided to make an XL version as a surprise. It took forever to get him out of the house so I could make it, he them came home early and my son met him at the door shouting "Daddy, we made you cake!" lol, it went down rather well.

Character cakes revisited

I've been excitedly trying to work out which kind of cake to make for my daughter's 2nd Birthday. I  have to admit I do love a good character cake. I remember many happy hours spent with my Mum's 'Children's Party Cake Book' (by Cathy Mackinlay, circa 1987), just looking at the photos :D ... Oh and one instance where, without access to sugar paste, I attempted to ice the cake on p55 with peanut butter - which didn't go down well with my parents, who had no idea I'd even made a cake in the first place.

Anyway, it's all got me a bit nostalgic, finger painting, baking gingerbread men and themed birthday cakes were all desirable draws of Motherhood as far as I was concerned when I was a kid - so you can imagine how excited I was when my son's first birthday came along...

Iggle Piggle from 'In the Night Garden' was the hero of the moment during JJ's first year of life, so who else could I base a cake on. I'd planned out the shape, and even made a template to cut each limb out of a 9 by 9 cake tin. This was a learning curve about sugarpaste, buying plain white then colouring it with food dye was a slow and unrewarding process, but I learnt a lot (even if it was simply: do not use food colouring).

By JJ's second birthday, everything had to be Pixar Cars related (and still is a year and a half later), he even got a red race car shaped bed. I wish I'd known then how much of an obsession cars where going to be for him and I'd have invested in a car shaped tin, instead for this cake I layered two large square cakes and then carved the cake out of them (there was so much cut-off Mr S even made an additional 'mater' cake and iced it with butter cream). This time I bought pre-coloured red icing :)

Third Birthday, Josh was still equally cars obsessed and personally requested a 'Chick Hicks' cake (another Pixar/Disney cars character), this is probably my best cake to date, having perfected my 'car shaped' cake the year before.

My daughter's first birthday I set myself a bit of a challenge with this 'Waybuloo' De-Lei cake, when the big day came around I was feeling so under the weather with flu but managed to cobble together this cake for her. Can't wait for this year, its a Minnie Mouse theme and there are so many great ideas out there.

Baking: Cranberry and Pistachio Biscotti

When I found an image of Diamonds for Dessert's Cranberry and Pistachio Biscotti on Pinterest, I know I just had to try them. I'm a new convert the the world of Biscotti, but found this recipe easy to follow and the combination of the red cranberries and green pistachio's makes for an attractive display - and look great in these kilner jars.

I'm meeting one of my neighbors for coffee this week and will definately be taking some of these with me

Easter nest cupcakes

Just a quick Easter themed update, I've just whipped up some Easter Nest cupcakes for my Dad's visit this week ... OK, I say they're for my Dad but they're mostly for Mr S and the Kids ;)

They're basically just chocolate cupcakes with grassy green butter cream, a crumbled flake 'nest' and smartie/sugar bean 'eggs'. I added a bit of twist by using my mint chocolate recipe - not a particularly Eastery but they are Mr S's favourites (he's had 5 already).

My Signature Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

Every home baker has their signature 'go to' show stopper cupcake, I get asked a lot of this recipe from friends and family - its a closely guarded secret, but I think its time to share the wealth. I can't recall the original source of this recipe, but I have altered it over time and simplified where ever possible.

How to make the cakes:

This recipe will make about 12-15 muffin sized cupcakes.

(the cakes are egg, milk and butter free)

 1 1/2 cups of Plain flour

1/3 cup of Dark Cocoa powder

1 tsp Baking soda

1 cup Caster Sugar

1 pinch Salt

1 cup of cold water

1/4 cup plus 1tbs Vegetable Oil

1 tbs White Wine vinegar

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

1 tsp mint Extract

Step 1: Pre-heat oven to  180ºC/350ºF/gas 4 and prep your muffin trays and cases.

Step 2: Sift all the dry ingredients together into a large bowl: Flour, Cocoa, Baking Soda, Sugar and salt.

Step 3: In a medium bowl whisk all the remaining (wet) ingredients: Water, Vegetable oil, Vanilla, Mint and Vinegar.

Step 4: In the bowl of your electric mixer (or in a separate large bowl if using a hand mixer or wooden spoon) combine a third of your dry ingredients with about half of the wet and mix well.

Step 5: Add a further 1/3 of the dry and the remainder of the wet, and mix well (if using an electric mixer remember to use a spatula to scrap down the sides and make sure the mixture isn't sticking to the base).

Step 6: Add the last of the dry ingredients and mix for a further 2-3 minutes.

Step 7: The mixture will be incredibly runny, you can just spoon or pour the mixture into your cake cases, but a slightly less messy technique I've discovered is to pour the mix into a disposable piping bag, cut a small opening at the tip and then gently squeeze the mixture into the cases. Each case should be about 1/3 full.

Step 8. Pop your trays into the centre of your oven and cook for 20-25 minutes (or until a cocktail stick comes out clean when poked in the centre).

Step 9: Leave to cool.

The icing
(contains milk and butter)
125g of softened butter
300g Icing sugar
1 tbs cold milk
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
1 tsp mint extract (add more to taste)
Green Food colouring paste
Chocolate decorations for finishing

Step 1: Cream together butter, vanilla and mint add the sugar little by little and the milk, mix until light and fluffy.

Step 2: Add the food colouring paste (a cocktail stick's worth at a time) till you reach your desired colour.

Step 3: Spoon into piping bag and ice the cooled cakes.

Step 4: Decorate.

Please let me know how you get on with making these, any suggestions or amendments to the recipe greatly accepted.

Feeling poorly & Mr S's cookies

We've all been feeling rather under the weather lately. In fact, I think the whole family has had some form of illness or another for the whole of march. I'm to rest up today and banish this flu bug before my birthday tomorrow, so Mr S thoughtfully made me and the kids some chocolate cookies (Perhaps the tag should have read: hand made by Mr S, lol).

There are yet more luscious chocolaty smells coming from my kitchen as he is attempting to make my Mother's Chocolate Fudge Cake recipe as my birthday cake :)

Promise to get better soon and get back to my crafting, have a few sewing projects in mind and will be doing lots of Easter crafts with the kids.

Mr Potato Head Goes POP ... [cake]

I've been busy exploring theme ideas for my daughters Birthday and my Son pipes up telling me he wants a 'Buzz n Duddy Party'. OK, his Birthday isn't till November and by then he'll most probably be into something totally different but it got me researching Toy Story related crafts and I came across Bakerella's Mr Potato Head Cake Pop Tutorial and I just had to try them.

I admit most of the ingredients listed on the tutorial looked like they weren't going to be readily available in the UK - and if they were, would probably cost more than I was prepared to pay (especially for a 'trial run'). But figured I could probably make do with the contents of the kids sweetie box for most of it. The big problem was the 'peanut butter candy melts', I discovered I could source some via eBay, but then yesterday at my local supermarket I spotted a little (100g) bag of "Silver Spoon Create: Orange Flavour Buttons" and rushed home to experiment.

I wasn't originally intending on attempting a Mr Potato Head straight off the bat. My original plan was to test out the process of melting the 'flavour buttons' and application tecniques ... but, I've always raced ahead of myself and before the buttons had melted I was raiding the sweetie box for potential 'body parts' :D
I had a little left over black sugar paste, so used this for his hat and moustache, blue smarties for feet, white chocolate chips with a chocolate sprinkle for eyes, pink chocolate beans for ears and a chopped up tooty frooities for the nose and mouth and cut up lolly sticks for arms.
Not a patch on Bakerella's but not bad for a first attempt, I shall keep practising!

Today's the day, the Teddy Bears have their ... cake-pops

While making my Mr Potato Head cake-pops, I decided to experiment with the left over  coating (melted Silver spoon orange flavoured buttons) and came up with this cute and incredibly simple Cake-Pop, prefect for any cake-pop novices out there (like me). Basically made with two milk chocolate buttons as 'ears', brown smarties on for the 'nose' and chocolate sprinkles for 'eyes'.

The only disaster was leaving them out to dry over night and the coating came up a bit splotchy, I'm hoping this isn't an issue with proper candy melts, but will be making sure I they go in an air tight container as soon as they set next time. This is exactly why I like test runs on all experimental baking projects, lol.

The kids' friends are coming over today, and despite the mottling effect I don't think they'll last long :)

Bunny Bait trial run...

Another trial run, this time on Easter themed 'bunny bait' recipe from Bake at 350. The kids and I used smarties instead of m&ms as that was what we had to hand - considering making it for Easter weekend maybe using mini mini eggs, and possibly adding pretzels like Jaclyn's version at cooking classy ....Bang goes the diet!

Cakes go pop!

Decided to have a quick trial run on making cake-pops this weekend. It's against my baking nature to buy a packet mix' but for this type of receipe I relented. Mr S however convinced me against spending money on candy melts or melting chocolate for a trial run - which is where I think I went wrong, lol. I learned the hard way icing is just no good for the job: it's either too thick to dip or too runny to stay put, they actually looked alright when hardened - but lesson learned for next time :D