22!

So, I had a complete mind blank and forgot to take ANY photos of making my birthday cake or even of when it was completed. I kinda wish it was feasible to invite photographers to house parties to capture moments as I often forget where I've left my camera and the photos I did take are pretty dire...

So, here is a photo I have shamelessly stolen off Faye! (Who has such a cute blog that you should check out called Dinosaur Circus.)

The cake was marble, sandwiched together with vanilla frosting and then just plain old fondant to cover it all. I'm still pretty hit and miss with my fondant technique, but thank goodness for ribbon as it hides all sins! For decoration I dyed some fondant blue with Sugarflair food gel and cut it out with a star cutter I had lying around. Simple but effective! It was said that it looked a little bit like a Christening cake for a boy, so there's an idea for you all if you're stuck.

I am being a terrible cake blogger at the moment for which I can only apologise. I'm leaving Dundee two weeks today (sob) to move into a new flat in Stirling before starting a postgraduate course in Publishing, so I think it'll take a little while for me to get settled (plus find a new photo spot! Goodbye beloved window sill with your lovely natural light and also goodbye to you giant kitchen...)

However, I do have a few cakes that I haven't blogged about yet, so I'll get those posted soon. Until next time!

Graduation!

I'm sorry guys, I don't really have an excuse for not posting here! I was quite busy with Uni until April and then I just didn't really seem to bake that much. But I'm back now! I graduated on Tuesday and was inspired to make some graduation themed cupcakes. We don't wear mortar boards at our graduation ceremonies, so that went out the door for a cake topper, so I decided to make little degrees out of fondant and strawberry laces.

Super easy to do and I think they look pretty cute! You just roll out some fondant quite thin, cut it into a rectangular shape and then roll up before tying some strawberry lace around. Ta-da! As I said, super easy. 

The cake recipe is from The Hummingbird Bakery Recipe book and is just their basic chocolate cupcake recipe. However, I've noticed in my copy they list butter in the ingredients but don't actually tell you when to put it in? Very strange! This does though, so there you go!

 I made these in a muffin pan because I wasn't sure who was going to be at movie night, so they are pretty huge. Someone rightly pointed out that they're not quite a muffin or a cupcake but oh well!

Here's a photo of Faye (who now has a new blog called Dinosaur Circus which you should definitely check out!) and I from the big day, sadly we were given inedible degrees!

It's my grad ball tonight, so I'm off to get ready for that. I promise not to leave it so long between blog posts this time, see you soon!

2012 bakes.

A month into 2012 and still no blog post. Shame on me!  In my final semester of my degree now (eek!) and have been polishing off some applications for postgraduate study as I don't feel quite ready to face the real world yet... I also blame the distraction of the birth of my first niece and she demands a lot of attention despite only being six weeks old. We had a little family get together and I made some simple chocolate crispie cakes and some vanilla frosted cupcakes decorated with pink and purple shimmer sugar.

 I also did some more baking in January for my sister-in-law's birthday. She requested a Mickey Mouse cake and this is what I conjured up!

 As you can tell, I didn't have any black food dye so improvised with chocolate frosting and a little squidge of jam for his tongue. I still think despite the colour difference you can tell who he is though!

I made Mickey out of two 8 inch victoria sponges, my usual recipe, and four little tins for his ears. I covered the 8 inch sponge in ready to roll fondant, before using the little tin as a template to cut out a little segment to put the ears in then frosting over the gap.

For decoration, I pulled up a reference photo and lightly traced the design with the handle of a spoon of all things, it was more of a guideline as to where to ice. The chocolate buttons were just for fun!

This month my friend is turning 22 and has requested a Delorean cake, you know, the car from "Back to the Future"?! I'm sure I'll need a long think about how to achieve this, let me know if you have any ideas in the comments!