Red Velvet!

These Red Velvet Cupcakes with cream cheese frosting look and taste amazing, perfect for a special treat!

Red Velvet Cupcake Recipe

250g plain flour

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

100g soft unsalted butter

200g caster sugar

1 tablespoon red food colour paste

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 large eggs

175ml buttermilk

1 teaspoon cider or white wine vinegar

Frosting

500g icing sugar

125g cream cheese

125g soft unsalted butter

1 teaspoon cider or white wine vinegar

Method

Pre heat oven 170 C/gas mark 3 and line 2 muffin tins with paper cases.

Sieve all the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy before adding the food colour and vanilla extract. Add the eggs slowly along with spoonfuls of the dry ingredients to prevent the mixture from separating, keep mixing until everything is incorporated.

Finally mix in the buttermilk and vinegar before dividing into 24 cupcakes.

Bake for 20 minutes then leave to cool in the tin.

Meanwhile, blend all the frosting ingredients together starting with the butter, cream cheese and vinegar before gradually adding the icing sugar. Spread or pipe on top of the cooled cakes and enjoy!

Sunflowers, Hessian & Vintage Lace Cake

I designed this Vintage Sunflower cake for a friends 50th birthday, the brief was "up to you to feed 100 party goers!"

The invitations had a sunflower theme so I used that for my inspiration. I thought two deep cakes would be better than one huge one so opted for 6" deep 10" square with an 6" deep 8" round on the top.

I made the sunflowers using yellow flower paste for the petals and brown for the centres, when dried a good dusting with darker shades of yellow and some orange was added to the petals and darker brown to the centres before steaming to set the colour and achieve a more natural finish.

This flower choice does some what limit your colour options but I decided on a mink brown and sage green colour scheme to blend together rather than to clash.
White sugar paste had brown and a dash of pink food colour added to achieve the right shade of mink and spruce green was added to ivory sugar paste for the sage green colour.

A wood effect iced cake drum helps to draw the eye away from the dark flower centres making them less obvious and obtrusive. (there is a video on this blog showing how to achieve the wood effect)

Edible Hessian and Vintage lace was was achieved with "edible lace & moulds" after letting this dry over night the Hessian was dusted with shades of brown and beige for a realistic look.

I draped one piece over the top tier, the other around the base of the bottom tier.
For a more feminine look I added a double edged decorative lace and edible buttons to the bottom and a taller flat edged lace around the base of the top tier.

Bunting was made out from pieces of left over Hessian cut into triangles with letters added to spell out a birthday message, attached with piped string and more vintage edible buttons.

Yummy Pud!

Don't waste your left over bread, make a yummy pud instead! This bread pudding is a great way to use up left over bread, rolls and buns. Try it you'll love it!

Bread pudding recipe

500g left over bread
500ml milk
200g dried mixed fruit
2tsp mixed spice
2 medium sized eggs
100g melted butter
100g caster sugar
2 table spoons of brown sugar.

The darker the sugar you use the darker the pudding will be, I've used light brown sugar in this one cos that's what I had in the cupboard.

For the mixed fruit, sultanas, currants raisins and mixed peel work well and give lots of flavour and different textures.

Method

Pre heat oven to 180 C / Gas mark 4 and line an 8" square tin ready for the bread mixture.

Soak the bread in the milk for about 15 minutes until soft before adding all of the other ingredients and mixing well.
Put in your prepared tin and bake for about 1 hour 10 minutes in the middle of your oven.

Sprinkle with granulated sugar while still warm, then cut into small squares once cool and enjoy!

Any One For Tennis!

This tennis court cake is great for Wimbledon fans. Grass effect green sugar paste/fondant, crisp white lines, net with posts, racquets, new balls, and not to forget the score, which is a great way to add a persons age and a sneaky little message!

The grass effect can be achieved with a veining mat or with a kitchen scourer, a new one of course!
Cover the cake with green sugar paste/fondant and immediately press on the mat or the scourer for the grass, this needs to be done before the paste begins to form a skin and starts setting.

For the white lines, roll out flower paste very thin, cut into even width strips and attach to the cake with edible glue to form the lines of a tennis court.

The net is also made from thinly rolled flower paste, cut into even strips, long horizontal strips the width of your cake and shorter vertical strips 2" long. Space the 2" strips evenly along some non stick paper and apply edible glue, then place the long strips evenly spaced across, attaching a extra wider band along the top of your net and a thicker band down the centre, like a real net and it also adds some extra support. Leave this to dry thoroughly.

Lolly sticks are supporting the wooden posts, they are pushed down into the cake and brown flower paste is rolled into a sausage shape then placed over the stick to cover it. Using a craft knife cut down the inside of the posts to make a slit which will hold the net in place with the help of some edible glue.

Racquets are made with sugar paste rolled into really thin sausages, shape into an oval about the size of a ten pence piece, then add a "V" shaped sausage for the neck and a black handle. The strings are piped royal icing as are the little bouncy lines around the cake.

Tennis balls are also sugar paste in yellow with piped white markings to give a better effect. For the top of the cake the balls are completely round and for the sides they are cut in half with the flat part attached to the cake.

Any Score can be added, in this case it was a 50th birthday cake for a lady from her husband, hence "50 - Love". How Sweet!

Piñata Cake With Surprises Inside!

This Piñata cake is packed with surprises, brightly decorated with multi coloured sponge layers to match and filled with yummy sweets. Kids love them!

I made this one for my 29 year old big kid and she and her friends loved it! Filled with their favourite sweets it's a great surprise, in my daughters case it was Dolly Mixtures, Skittles and M&Ms, but you can use any. It's more effective if they are out of the packet so that they tumble out of the cake as the first slice is cut!

For this cake I used a basic sponge recipe as gel colours needed to be added to the mixture which would require a good bit of mixing, if you use something like a genoese recipe you will end up beating all the air out.

Ingredients

225g (8oz) Self Raising Flour
225g (8oz) Butter, at room temperature
225g (8oz) Caster Sugar
4 Eggs
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Method

Mix all the ingredients together in one bowl, divide into 2 and colour each one differently.

I used Pink, Yellow, Green, Blue, Orange and Purple. You can fill two 8" lined and greased sandwich pans out of each batch so you will need to make 3 batches in total for 6 brightly coloured layers.

Make sure you use bake stable food colour to achieve a bright baked finish, in a gel or paste so it will not alter the consistency of the cake mixture.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180°c/ Gas mark 4 for approximately 15-25 minutes.

When cooled cut out the centre of 5 of the cakes and stack using butter cream, fill with you chosen sweets and add the last layer. Thinly coat the outside with butter cream.

Using your food colours from the sponge make 6 different coloured batches of butter cream and with a frill tube pipe from the bottom of the cake to the top and then into the centre, alternating colours as you go.
We got about 30 portions from this cake and they were generous! So you could get more!

If you would prefer to watch how this Piñata cake is made and decorated there will be a video following shortly.

Hope you enjoy making this cake, it's well worth the effort for the surprised and happy faces!
Let me know how you get on and what you filled yours with?