TUTORIAL TUESDAYS: Russian Doll Cake Pops

Hey again everyone!

Sorry that it's not actually Tuesday when I am posting this. Before I did this tutorial I wanted to make some more cake pops so I could produce better instructions. After doing them again I believe I have mastered the art of making and covering the pops, it's just the decorating bit that I need to perfect now as it is quite fiddly. Practice makes perfect though :D

So with all the sunshine at the moment it is hard to resist sitting outside but I have been quite good doing work and am sat in the library again today :(. We are having a girls night out tonight though so that's something to look forward to!

Anyway on to the tutorial:

1) Use 4oz margarine, 4oz self-raising flour, 4oz caster sugar and 2 tablespoons of cocoa to produce a cake mix, put in a 19inch tin and cook on 170 for 25 mins.

2) Leave to cool in the tin for 10-20 mins then take out of the tin and leave to cool properly for a few hours. I didn't find any problems in putting it in the fridge.

3) Use a food processor to blend the cake into crumbs. Whilst mixing 85g of cream cheese and 140g of icing sugar together in a bowl.

4) Add the mixture to the cake crumbs and combine until it is fully incorporated and the mixture is moist.

5) Use scales to measure out 1oz of the mixture. Split this into 0.3oz and 0.7oz bits and roll each bit into a ball using your hands. The smaller ball will be the head of the Russian doll and the larger ball will be the body. Repeat this until the mixture is used up. The recipe I used initially said this mix produced 20 cake pops, I have made this twice and got 18 each time.

6) Put on a plate in the fridge and leave for a few hours.

7) Get 150g of coloured or plain chocolate. For this I used 1 and a half bags of Silverspoon's orange chocolate buttons. These can be found in most Sainsbury's and I presume other larger supermarkets.  Melt the chocolate slowly in the microwave for 20 seconds at a time stirring for 10 second in between so the chocolate doesn't burn.

8) Once the chocolate is a smooth consistency, take a few of the heads and bodies out of the fridge on a plate. Dip the head into the chocolate and stick to the body. Do this for all and then return to the fridge. Then take a few more out and repeat the process until all of the heads are stuck to the bodies and they are back in the fridge.

9) Remove the few you first stuck together from the fridge. Then get 18 lolly sticks and put the end of one (about 1cm) into the chocolate and then into the cake pop. Leave them to set for around a minute.

10) Holding the end of the stick dip the cake pop into the bowl of chocolate to cover the cake pop. Use a spoon if necessary then shake the pop gently to remove excess chocolate. Stand in polystyrene or an upside down colander to set for around 15-20 mins. Do this for the rest of the pops.

(Keep stirring the chocolate so that it remains smooth. If it gets a little hard put back into the microwave for a few seconds)

11) Once all the pops are covered and set comes the fiddly part the decorating. Break up and melt around 40g of white chocolate in a small bowl as before. Use a teaspoon of the chocolate and dip the front of the head gently onto the spoon for the faces. Do this for all pops and let dry.

12) Then use edible pens to draw on the faces and decorate. I bought a red and a black pen the other day so I will review these in a blog this week :). If you don't want to use pens you can use black food colouring and a paint brush to paint on the features. Do not use other colours of food colouring as I have found red and pink turn a funny brown colour.

13) Leave to set for about half an hour and voila:

Singular Russian Doll

Group in Polystyrene

Sorry about the mess, chocolate runs everywhere!

As you can see Some of the faces were quite hard to do, especially applying the white chocolate. Never the less I am fairly happy with them and no doubt will give them another shot soon.
I will again put a full clearer recipe on the task bar at the top. So why not give it go? Lolly sticks can be bought of Amazon :D


Samantha Who (Loves to Bake)

Cake Pop Update and Cake Related Gifts :D

Hey everyone!

I haven't felt the urge to blog in a few days but I am finally getting round to it :) I am at home now with the family and have been up to Flamborough for food and a walk with my sister. I am sooo tired now though after all that sea air!

So I attempted cakepops on Wednesday/Thursday. And it is a lot harder than I thought it would be. There are so many parts to the process and its very time consuming. 

 I began on Wednesday night by making a cake. I made a small chocolate cake in a 19inch cake tin. I then left this to cool and bobbed it in the fridge over night. 

The next morning I put the cake in a food processor to produce crumbs, I then mixed these with a combination of icing sugar and cream cheese to produce a moist mixture. I did think the recipe that I used did not use enough cream cheese which meant the mixture was slightly crumbly and caused problems further on. Next time I will use more cream cheese.  I then weighed out 1 oz onto the digital scales and rolled it into a ball. I repeated this and put then balls in the fridge to set.

That afternoon I melted white chocolate in a bowl in the microwave and took the balls out of the fridge. I then dipped the end of a lolly stick into the chocolate and inserted it into a ball and dipped the ball into the chocolate to cover it. I then used sprinkles to finish it off. I did this for all the cake balls :). However, I found some of the balls hard to cover and they crumbled off the stick whilst in the chocolate, I think this was for a number of reasons:

1) As mentioned before there was not enough cream cheese in the mix.

2) The balls warmed up and began to crumble, so it might be best to only take a couple out of the fridge at a time.

3) The chocolate sets very quickly so can get sticky and gloopy and be hard to apply to the pop. Next time i'm going to keep an eye on the consistency and put back in the microwave if necessary.

Although some did not turn out excellent , a few were pretty good and here are the results:

Cakepops with sprinkles

Russian Doll Cakepop, decorated with food colouring

Cake pops 2

As you can see I also used some strawberry chocolate for some of the pops. Its made by Silverspoon and can be found in Sainsburys in the baking aisle. I also have some orange flavour. It is quite expensive though at just under a pound for 100g (you need around 500g for 20 pops). They are quite hard to store once made. I got a small cardboard box and put holes in it with a skewer.

I think that I will be giving cake pops another go. I find that if I aren't totally happy with something, I will keep trying. I am hoping to be able to post pictures of some more successful  pops in the next month :).  I will be doing a tutorial of the basic method and techniques in next weeks TUTORIAL TUESDAYS post so something to look forward to!

On another note my sister has bought me a couple of cake related things whilst I have been away:

The first is a cool cupcake display/carry case which fits a single cupcake in. The bottom part of it is a silicone mould which can go in the oven. The top part is hard see through plastic lid which twists on. This means that you can ice the cupcake creatively  and the casing will protect it. I think it would look amazingly cool in my lunch box.

The second present was a 100 piece cupcake decorating kit including icing bags and nozzles. These sort of nozzles look to be best for intricate designs and writing. The set also includes number and letter stamps which can be pressed into regal icing and then provide outlines to follow with icing. It also includes some other stencils in fancy shapes.

See the pictures below for both:

Cupcake Carrier

100 Piece Cake Decorating Set

Anyway that's it for today, hope you are looking forward to TUTORIAL TUESDAYS and maybe some more cakepops next week :) 

Samantha Who (loves to bake)

TUTORIAL TUESDAYS: Two Tier Birthday Cakes

Hi guys!

It has been a few days since I blogged, I aren't as busy with work this week but am ill :( so still a stressy week! I am going home to visit the family on Friday though, which I am very much looking forward to as it feels like forever since I have seen my sister. But anyways no uni for me today as I feel pants eughh! 

Sooo some blogging is in order instead.  I am going to try something new out with my blog and this is going to be TUTORIAL TUESDAYS <3. Where every Tuesday I write a post on something I have made and add a recipe to go alongside it. That leaves me free to blog about other things in the world of baking during the week. Simples :).

This weeks Tutorial Tuesday:

 I haven't made anything since the St Patrick's day cupcakes on Friday but I am planning my first attempt at cakepops Thursday evening so wish me luck and I will update you later in the week :). So today I am going to blog about something I have/can already made ..... Two Tier birthday cakes.

I had a crack at these at the end of January  as it was one of the girls birthdays (Aasha) and one of Luke's flat mates birthday also (Jamie). I didn't really follow any recipes for these I just used my own imagination and the normal vanilla sponge mix. It was easier than I thought just very time consuming, especially as I was doing cupcakes at the same time on both occasions (why is everyone born in January/February? And what was special about about April 1989? haha). 

So here's the tutorial, I will talk through the basics and put the main recipe up as usual on the task bar at the top of the page :) :

1) I needed a lot of cake mix for these, I used 2 x the normal 6oz, 6oz, 6oz, 3 eggs mix, (which I use in most of my recipes) to fill two 21 inch cake tins. I then put them in the oven on 170 for 40-50mins. These make the bottom tier when sandwiched together. 

2) I then used 8oz self raising flour, 8oz caster sugar, 8oz margerine, 4 eggs and some vanilla essence to fill a 19 inch cake tin and put it in the oven for the same amount of time.

3) Once they were cooled I leveled off each cake with a sharp knife. 

4) I then took the 19inch cake and placed a cereal/soup bowl upside down on top of it and cut around it. There was quite a bit of spare cake but this can be used for cake pops :) (see my next blog later this week). This then made my top tier.

Now onto decorating, the more interesting part :)! 

5) I made 3 times the normal butter cream mix (again used in most of my recipes, starting to see the pattern? It's all about making it simple. Simples? :) ). 

6) I then sandwiched together the 21 inch cakes with jam and butter cream to make the bottom tier and place it on a cake board.

7) I then covered the top and the sides of complete first tier and the smaller tier in buttercream using a pallet knife (these are really the best thing for the job) and smoothed it out nicely. 

8) Now for the regal icing (ready to roll) I buy this off Ebay as its cheaper (around £1.80 for a 250g) but you can buy bigger blocks 1kg of plain white icing from Tesco for around £2.oo and colour it yourself with food colouring. I used 1 & 1/2 250g blocks for the bottom tier and about 3/4s of a 250g block for the upper tier. 

Tip: I think it works better to use two different colours for the tiers :)

To apply the regal icing, I first sprinkle the worksurface with icing sugar and also cover a rolling pin. Then use the rolling pin to roll out the icing. Once I think it's big enough to cover my cake I gently and very loosely wrap the icing around the rolling pin, this makes it easier to apply to the cake. 

9) Hovering the rolling pin above one side of the cake. I unravel the icing a little so it touches the work surface and slowly unroll the icing over the cake. Once its in place I cut off any excess with a sharp knife and smooth the icing using my hands or an icing smoothing tool (smoothing may take a while to get it perfect, don't be too rough).

10) I applied regal icing to both tiers and then placed the smaller tier on top of the bigger tier. I always thinks its a nice touch to add ribbon around the bottom of each tier at this point. I normally buy 5cm ribbon from Ebay and secure the ends to each other using a pin or sellotape.

11) It is then up to you how you decorate them. I tend to cut letters out of the leftover regal icing, use sweets and also use curling ribbon (the stuff used on presents at Christmas, available from Ebay and Paperchase) and skewers to make fancy decorations.

Heres photos of the two I have done recently:

Aasha's finished cake (Flowers, dragonfly and Ribbon not edible)

Close-up

Jamie's Cake

Thanks for the read, keep your eyes out for more Tutorial Tuesdays as there will be many more :)

Until next time,

Samantha Who (loves to bake)

St Patrick's Day Cupcakes

Hi Hi everyone!

I am VERY hungover after a great day of St Patrick's Day Celebrations. Me and two of the girls  Nicky and Aasha joined my fellow matheletes on a pub bar crawl, watched the England rugby game and had a night out at Sheffield's 90s bar Babylon. I had a fantastic time but I am paying for it now!

Anyway with it being St Patrick's it was the perfect opportunity to make some St Paddy's day themed cupcakes :) I wanted to do something different this time, something a bit more creative and found a fab idea on the following site: http://www.confessionsofacookbookqueen.com 

The gold under the rainbow idea seemed quite tricky but surprisingly it was quite simple.

I made the usual vanilla cupcake mix and let them cool. I then used out a knife to cut out the center of the cakes and filled them with yellow and orange m&m's to represent the gold. i then put part of the cake I cut out back on top to seal the m&m's in. 

I made the basic vanilla buttercream and used a large star nozzle to ice the cupcakes. I built the buttercream up so it was quite high. 
I used a paint brush and lots of different food colourings to  paint the icing to look like a rainbow. 
I finished off the cupcakes with the St Patrick's cupcake picks I got online and some gold edible glitter. These were the results:

Again the recipe can be found on the task bar :) I am going to try and attempt cakepops this week which I am really looking forward to, I've purchased a few things off amazon in preparation so I will blog about them sometime soon :)

Samantha Who (loves to bake)

Finally..... BlackForest Gâteaux

Good evening!

I have been promising it for a while and here it finally is . . . . .  BlackForest Gâteaux!!! I'm still very busy with work but thought it would be nice to have a break and do something that I actually enjoy :) unlike robotics haha.

Blackforest has been my all time favourite shop bought dessert since I was a child. I think it has everything a good pudding should have : Chocolate, Fruit, Jam and Cream. What more can you ask for? And with it being my favourite, when I caught the baking bug I just had to try making it :D. If you use Google to look for recipes, (which I do a lot of the time when I don't know how to start something off), they all seem quite complicated with lots of unnecessary ingredients. So what I have done is simplify it (as I do with most of my recipes) and I can PROMISE you it tastes just ask good if not better. 

I have baked this twice before, first for Luke's flat mates when they all moved in at the start of the final year and secondly for New Year's Eve at Luke's parents. I would loved to have baked this more but it is fairly time consuming and  quite expensive to do but VERY WORTH IT. To be warned before you start it is one of the most expensive bakes I have done. I think last time I made it the ingredients totaled about £12-£15 ish. (It does look really posh and professional in the end though, so its up to you whether it's worth it).

I have posted the RECIPE on the taskbar at the top of the page,  for those of you that want to give it a go. Lucy's changed the layout for me so they all can be accessed from a DROPDOWN MENU :D


 As a whole, the individual parts of the gâteaux are quite easy to do. It is the bringing together that is the fiddly part. The basic steps for those of you that want an idea are:

- Bake two 20 inch chocolate sponges and drizzle them in black cherry flavouring (this can be black cherry liqueur or a cheaper version with I use, the juice from a tin of black cherrys) and leave to stand. 

- Apply black cherry pie filling and whipped double cream to the first cake and sandwich the other on top.

- Cover the centre of top layer with black cherry pie filling and apply squirts of cream around the edge using an icing syringe or similar instrument.

- Make collar by melting chocolate and setting onto acetate or see through gift wrap (like what flowers come in) in a long collar shape.

-Wait five or ten minutes until the collar is mostly set and wrap around the cake. 

-Sprinkle with edible glitter and grated chocolate to finish.

-Leave in a cool place for the collar to set, then remove acetate.

I finished mine of with a sparkly ribbon and voila it looks as follows:

Blackforest Gâteaux

I made some extra cake mix and had some silver foil star-shaped cases that I got for Christmas from my lovely sister that I wanted to use. And I couldn't bake Luke's family a cake and shun my own haha so I made Mini Blackforest Stars :D. I followed the same process, drizzling the cakes in flavouring. I then cut them in half and filled with jam and cream then put back together in the cases and decorated on top, this was the result, they are sooo cute:

Mini Blackforest Stars

Anyway, I have finally got round to blogging about it and I do think it has been well worth the mention! <3 I am next hoping to make one for Dad in summer, I definitely recommend giving this a go as it gives such impressive results!!!!

My next blog should be about something St Patrick's day related :D I have seen a recipe that I want to give a go so will dig that out and I have lots of ideas going around in my head so until then!

Samantha Who (Loves to bake)

Crazy About . . . Cakecraft the goodies!

Hello everyone!

Did you all make the most of the sunshine yesterday and today? Hopefully it will continue for the rest of this week :) 

As I mentioned I am very busy with work over the next few days going crazy with robotics, but I still managed to fit in todays blog :D. Following up on yesterdays post about all the amazing bits and bobs I picked up yesterday at Crazy About . . .  Cakecraft above Castle Market, it really is an amazing shop to pick up baking related things. They have buncases, icing, sugarpaste, food colourings, edible glitter, sprinkles, a wide range of edible cake toppers, ribbon, cutters, cake moulds, cake boards, cupcake stands and much much more. I was really impressed with the wide range of goodies in comparison to what I have seen previously in cake shops. And the prices are very reasonable too, they compete with Ebay prices for most things. So here's what I bought:

I originally went in Crazy About . . . . Cakecraft to pick up some cakeboards. They stock a wide range of cakeboards in a variety of colours. I picked up 3 bright fuchsia 21 inch circle cake boards for £1.15  each:

Fuchsia Cake Boards

With the Queen's Diamond Jubilee coming up this year I bought some union jack and sparkle cupcake picks and some union jack icing cake toppers to go on top of cupcakes. The picks cost £2.25 and the cake toppers cost £1.20 I already have union jack buncases and I thought these would go with them really well:

Union Jack and Sparkle Cupcake Picks

Icing Union Jack Cupcake Toppers

I also picked up a 21st decoration for the cake I'm going to bake for my sister's big 2 1 in summer. I don't want to put a picture on incase she sees it but it wasn't expensive at £1.40.

The final thing I bought (infact 10) was 10 cardboard cupcake boxes with inserts. They each fit 4 cupcakes in and are made of white cardboard. The boxes were 17p each and the inserts were 10p each. I've have been doing a lot of cupcakes recently for people's birthdays and I've been putting them into boxes with bows on. I thought it might be a nice idea to put them in personalised boxes with my own stamp on them. I have been looking online over the past few days so I was really surprised to see them in Crazy About . . .  Cakecraft today. Im going to print stickers to go on the boxes:

Cupcake Boxes

Have a look at my other posts or in my gallery for an idea of the wonderful sorts of things I can do with these :)
Anyway I have got loads to get on with so until next time (it could well be the blackforest gâteaux haha)

Samantha Who (loves to bake)

Crazy About ....Cakecraft

Good afternoon everyone!

Hope you are all enjoying this lovely sunny day. I am going to keep this post short because I am at uni and meant to be doing my robotics assignment (Robotics? I don't know why I am studying it either!). Anyway I have just dragged Luke on a wander into the sunshine and visited the shop Crazy About . . .  Cakecraft recommended to be by my lovely friend Billie. It's on Castle Market for all of you Sheffield folk. And it is amazing! It is like an Aladdin's cave for baking and everything's at reasonable prices. It doesn't have a website otherwise I would have provided the link, but they do also have a shop in Chesterfield. 

Sooooo I think my next blog will be about all the wonderful bits I picked up today.

Back again in the next couple of days,

Samantha Who (Loves to Bake)

Strawberry and Vanilla Cupcakes- Luke's Nanna's 70th

Good evening guys,

I have had such a busy weekend work wise. I have two assignments due next Friday and a lot of work to do on my dissertation but I got up early Saturday and still managed to fit in some BAKING :).

This blog was originally going to be about the Blackforest Gâteaux that you can see on the gallery page but I'm going to leave that til next time. And instead blog about the cupcakes I made this weekend :D. 

It was Luke's (the boyfriend) Grandma's (Nanna as he say's it) 70th which gave me the perfect opportunity to make some girlie pretty cupcakes. I again decided to follow the spring theme and with the weather this weekend they seem really appropriate.

I used some pretty pink and blue spotty buncases and managed to get 12 cupcakes out of the typical vanilla bun mix. If you want to give these buns a go check out the SUNFLOWER BUNS page for the basic cake recipe.  I then made some pink buttercream using the buttercream recipe also on the SUNFLOWER BUNS  page but added pink food colouring instead of yellow:

Pink Food Colouring

(I find Silver spoon works best for pink icing)

Before I applied the butter cream, I used a sharp knife to cut small dome shaped pieces out of the top of the cupcakes so that I could fill them with jam. I put a teaspoon of Tesco's own strawberry jam in each cupcake before using a typical star nozzle (the larger one) that comes with most icing syringes to apply vanilla buttercream to the top of each cake, over the jam. If you want a good icing syringe I would see what's on Ebay as I inherited mine from my Mum and Dad bought me some for Christmas. Lucy did get one from Poundland so that might be worth a try?

For the decoration (the best bit other than licking to bowl) I used yummy Mini Eggs on most of the cakes and blue icing flowers from Morrisons on  3:

Mini eggs

Blue Icing Flowers.

I then went a bit mad on the sprinkles and added two different types:

Hundreds and Thousands from Morrisons

Pink Sugar Strands (one of my leaving presents from work last year)

Followed by glitter and sparkles! I bought these two of Ebay and I swear by Rainbow Dust in Hologram White as a finishing touch to most of my cupcakes :

Rainbow Dust - Hologram White

Magic Sparkles

I then used my letter and number cutters to cut out 'Anne' '70'  and added them to the cupcakes with the blue flowers. (I've added the link to the letter cutters I bought from Amazon, I only paid £7.50 though so I am sure you can find them cheaper).

With that my cupcakes were complete :) Voila here are the finished products:

Single Cupcake

Anne's cupcakes

And that's it! :) As you can see i've tried to include for pictures in this blog and have been using Bibbycam for Blackberry to make them look all pretty. (I do recommend this app for Blackberry users).

On another note I have ordered some St Patrick's Day cupcake toppers so if I get round to baking this week, these may appear on my blog before the Black Forest Gâteaux but we shall see :)

Until next time lovelys, 

Samantha Who (loves to bake)

Carrot Cake

Evening!

After spending all day doing work I am finally free to blog about the Carrot Cake I baked last weekend. Before I start I just want to mention that tonight I have made my own Yorkshire Puddings and it was A LOT easier than I expected! There is a great simple recipe on BBC Food . It's taken me this long to try so i'd really recommend giving it a go :)

Anyway back to the Carrot Cake. As I mentioned in my first post I tend do a lot of cakes for my friend's birthdays, it saves buying presents and I enjoy doing it so it's a good excuse :). On the 4th of March it was my boyfriend's flatmate's birthday and he had cheekily requested I make a carrot cake so I dug out the recipe a lovely lady Jo from work gave me last year. I had previously tried it twice and it worked well. A lot of the recipes I use are simple but produce a great result, this is definitely one of these!

The recipe for the cake can be found on the task bar at the top of the blog under CARROT CAKE (I have decided to do it this way, so they are easy to find and use more than once). The recipe for CREAM CHEESE FROSTING is also on the same page. 

When decorating the cake I chose a Spring/Easter theme similar to the sunflower cupcakes I posted about last week. I think with all the good weather around at the moment its hard to resist dreaming about Spring. 

Anyway I first put an emerald green ribbon round the cake to set off the pastel colours I was planning to use on top. I then got 3 small balls of ready to roll white icing about the size of an egg and kneaded in a couple of drops of food colouring into each. I made one pastel yellow, one pastel green and the 3rd pastel orange sticking to the spring theme. I then cut 'Happy Birthday Chris' out of this alternating between colours. I finished off with some edible glitter and some yellow mini eggs and voila:

Chris' Carrot Cake

Bye for now,

Samantha Who (loves to bake)

Sooooo give Carrot Cake a go, it something different from normal cake recipes! Next i'm thinking black forest gateaux :)

Quick Update :)

Hey everyone!

I have had a very hectic week this week with my maths assignments ( I am sure you don't want to hear about them) but today or tomorrow, depending on how fast I get a wriggle on with this assignment I will add a post about my most recent success, a carrot cake I did for a friends birthday. Its a simple recipe that tastes great!

Anyways back soon!

Samantha Who (loves to bake)

Sunflower Cupcakes

Hey guys!

I've been a very busy lady this weekend. My best friend Lucy came to stay and we have done a LOT of shopping :) It was more of a clothes related shop, though I couldn't resist picking up 2 packs of Barbie glittery candles for my lovely housemates birthday cakes. These were a bargain at 69p a pack from B and M Bargains:

I have also been busy baking a Carrot Cake for my boyfriend's flatmate's birthday. I LOVE making carrot cake and have to resist eating it all day. Luckily I made some cupcakes for the girlies to munch on this weekend, so we haven't had to look and long :). I will post about the carrot cake in the next week, but not until I have given Chris his cake (it might just spoil the suprise :p)

Anyways back to the blog. For my second blog post I am going to blog about the yummy cupcakes I did for Darren's Birthday. I originally planned to make regular vanilla cupcakes and present them in a pretty box but I got a little inspired by Spring coming up.

The ingredients I used were:

• 6oz caster sugar
• 6oz self raising flour (sieved)
• 6oz stork butter
• 3 eggs (beaten)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence

This is a typical victoria sponge mix, and can be used to make a cake. The steps for baking are pretty basic :) :

 1)Cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy and light. 

2) Then alternating between flour and egg add a bit at a time and mix well. 

3) Then to finish off add the vanilla essence.

(If you want the cake to really rise add half a teaspoon of baking powder to the mix)

4) I cooked them on around 170 degrees for approximately 25 minutes. 

Using a muffin tray the above ingredients make around 8 - 10 cupcakes. 

As Spring was my inspiration I thought I'd give some flowers ago and hope Darren wouldn't mind haha. I've tried roses before so was thinking of something different and bright. I whipped up some yellow butter cream using the normal ingredients and tried out an alternative nozzle on my icing syringe.

Ingredients for Butter Cream:

• 115g Stork Butter
• 265g Icing Sugar (sieved)
• 1/2 tsp of Vanilla Extract
• 1 cap of Yellow Food Colouring

1) Cream the butter.

2) Add the icing sugar a little at a time and stir.

3) Add the vanilla extract and food colouring and give it a good stir.

Syringe and Nozzle

As the nozzle was flat on one side and had 3 ridges on the other I made several thick lines (petals)  coming out from the center of each cupcake, making sure they each joined up on each side.  I then added chocolate chips to the center of each cake to make the middle of the flower. As these were dark it gave a sunflowery look:

Sunflower Cupcake.

I then gave the cakes a quick sprinkle of gold fairy dust (edible glitter) purchased from Ebay and VOILA  :D:

 



Finished Product <3



I think it would be good to experiment with different nozzles to create different styled petals and use other coloured food colouring to see what kind of flowers I can make. But thats for another time :)

I WILL PLACE ALL RECIPES I MENTION ON THE BAR AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE, WITH THE EQUIPMENT LIST AND COOKING TIMES :D SO SEE ABOVE FOR AN EASY TO FOLLOW SUNFLOWER BUNS RECIPE :D



As yellows, oranges and bright colours are in the summer spring/fashion trends at the mo, Rosie Apple is planning  to do some sunflower-esque nail art, so check her out over the next few days guys.

Anyway Ciao for now,

Samantha Who (loves to bake)