Girlie cupcakes for a party princess.

I was  asked last week at quite late notice if I could make one of my fairytale castles but unfortunately as so much work goes into them I couldn't fit it in. Instead though, I was able to make some very girlie cupcakes and I was really pleased with the them.  When so much money can be spent on party bags these days they make a beautiful alternative when presnted in a little windowed cake box!

I'm getting there! (post held back from last week)

I have now finished two of this weeks cakes and I'm feeling a little bit more in control now!  Today I have made one of my signature giant cupcake flower pots.  The cake is  for the best friend of a very good customer of mine who enjoyed her own cake so much that she decided that she wanted to treat her friend.

In total there are about 160 flowers on the cake and it took two hours to assemble.  I think it was worth it though?

A very stressful week

This week has been manic.   I have been preparing for a weeding cake that is going out next week,  I have two large cakes and 3d cupcakes on this week and on top of all that my extension has started!   I can feel a bald patch growing at the back of my head because I play with my hair when I am stressed, a habit i have been trying to break for  about 34 years now.

I have finished the first cake, an electric guitar that needed to  feed 80 people for a 21st birthday party!

A little sneak of my burgundy wedding roses!

You can't hurry fondant flowers.  Each layer needs to be able to dry fully before adding the next.  This is why I have so many projects on the go at the moment!

Chocolate Heaven

This one is for all you chocolate fiends out there.  I now have three chocolate truffle cakes baking in my oven into which went amongst other things:- 5 blocks of unsalted butter, 25 eggs and 5 bars of 80% cocoa dark chocolate.  Blow the calories!

An email I received yesterday!

Dear Michelle,

I'm writing you from Chile, after seeing the lovely photos of your creations in Flickr.

I am 27 and studied Graphic Design, currently working at the Front Desk of an important Hotel, but I've recently discovered that Baking and Cake decoration is what I want to do. So I've started on my own, little by little when I have time, taking a few lessons too, and baking at home. For now, I just make cupcakes and decorate their tiny tops with fondant figures or cream, but I'm just starting. Like you dreamed once, I also dream with dedicating my time only to this one day, and make it my full time job, and also joining it with my other passion which is graphic design.

In the meantime, I look at other people's cake creations in Flickr and food blogs in awe, sighing and getting inspired. So I wanted to say thank you for showing your designs, I love them!

Regards,
A fan in Chile,
Cinthia Gonzalez

A break from roses!

I'm working really long hours at the moment to try and catch up on lost time due to a niggling back problem.  My white roses are complete for the second wedding cake in June and I now need to contemplate how I am going to make the topper for my next wedding cake and how to get a perfect colour match for the burgundy sample fabric that the bride, Emma, has given me.  It is a really hard colour to make!  In between all this I have several other cakes to make the first of which is a 600th b birthday cake for a relation of a friend who has had several cakes from me.

Wedding Roses!

I am currently working on two wedding cakes alond side everything else and I thought I'd share the roses with you!

And the party goes on and on...

As with all good birthdays, my nan's seems to be lasting  forever.  However, today is actually her proper birthday and we have organised a surprise party this  afternoon at the community centre that is shared by her and her friends in their sheltered housing.  She has family coming down that she doesn't know about, and she actually has been moaning all morning that she hasn't had a card from them.

I wanted the cake for this celebration to be a really special one and I also wanted to ensure that nobody went home empty handed, hence the additional cupcakes.

Happy birthday nan, can't wait for your 100th!! xx

The final installment

I have finally finished the cake and did want to bore you all with any more photos other than the final ones.  It was quite a learning curve for me as well, because I spray painted the cake black for a different finish, but this means you have to be exceptionally careful when positioning the cake and when applying glue, it comes of quite easily!

The next stages in creating my 'Deal or No Deal' cake

The  cakes are now baked and once they are cooled it's time to level them and torte them ready for the jam and buttercream.

I make my buttercream using unsalted butter and icing sugar in a quantity of  1:2.  I then add whole cream milk at the end depending on if I am going to use the buttercream to sandwich a cake or use to pipe.  I also add about a teaspoon of vanilla paste for flavouring.

In this case the buttercream is for sandwiching and covering the cakes so it needs to be a little firmer.

First of all I give the bottom level of sponge a good covering of jam and then if possible I apply the buttercream to the top layer of the cake as it is really difficult to put on top of jam!  I also heat my spatula to spread the buttercream as this make it easier.  After this I gave the sponges a covering of buttercream to seal it, which helps prevent it from drying out and also gives a good surface to apply the marzipan to.

The next stage is to apply the marzipan.  For that I give a light coating of heated apricot jam to the buttercream (you can apply it without the jam but I find it adheres better with jam).

For this aprticular cake the angles need to be really sharp so i have spent a lot of time on the marzipan layer to make sure that I have as good a surface as possible to work from for the final layer of fondant.

While the marizipan is hardening a little I colour the fondant ready to apply.

A two tiered cake with a difference!

Today I am starting work on a two tiered cake which is rather quirky for a 90th birthday for a rather special lady.  The lady in question is my grandma Mavis who will soon be celebrating her birthday with all her children, grand children and great grandchildren around her.  She is an incredible woman, who for most of her working life worked full time whilst also tending to my grandpa who was disabled through polio shortly after my mum was born (my grandpa also went to work full time). 

Apart from her family the next most important thing in my nan's life is to make sure that she watches every showing of 'Deal or No Deal' and nothing or no one can come between her and the television when it is on!

Needless to say I am making her a 'Deal or No Deal' cake for her celebrations and I thought it might be fun to take you through each stage of making the cake, so that people can appreciate the amount of work and ingredients that go into making a special occasion cake and then perhaps understand why my prices are a little more than you would expect to pay for a shop bought cake.

The first thing I always start with is turning the oven on to make sure that it is up to temperature by the time the cakes go in, and then I line the tins.  This in itself is quite time consuming.

I have a special tin that can be divided into various size square or oblong sizes.

Next I work out all my quantities bases on a standard 6" round cake and then multiply the amounts up, OK if your brain is functioning properly, but mine has times when it goes into complete melt down!  For today's sponges I used a 14egg recipe of which 7 were duck and 7 were small chicken.  I mix the eggs like this because the duck eggs are so large and as I only have three ducks laying I don't get as many eggs.

As you can see the quantities are BIG and today i have used three and a half blocks of unsalted butter before I even think about making butter cream!

My most important ingredient for a lovely vanilla taste is a vanilla bean paste which I use rather freely and you can really notice the difference between this and vanilla essence in the buttercream.

My other secret tool is my food mixer, a Kenwood Titanium, which has a huge mixing bowl and a cover to stop everything flying everywhere!

When I am creaming the butter, sugar, eggs and paste I use the K beater blade shown above and cream the mixture until it is really pale, adding a little sifted flower with each addition of eggs.

When it comes to incorporating the flour I change the paddle to a balloon whisk to incorporate as much air as possible into the mixture.

Finally, the lovely creamy mixture is spooned into the prepared tins and placed in the oven on about gas no3 for about 1 1/2 hours.  This is not an exact science and really does vary from oven to oven.  half way through i cover the top of the cake to prevent it from burning and after about an hour and a quarter I will press down lightly on the sponge to see how it is doing.  Once I feel that it might be ready I check it with a skewer, which should come out clean if cooked.