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!

Five more sleeps!

Sorry for how quiet it's been! This semester of uni has destroyed me. My hand ins were due December 5th, spent the first week recovering, and then I came down with a blasted cold! Finally over the worst of it, so time to crack on with some baking done at last! But before that, here's a quick recap of last year's Christmas goodies.

Christmas Tree Biscuits

Lebkuchen

 Sticky Toffee Pudding

I'll be back soon with a birthday cake I made a friend a while ago, and hopefully some Christmas themed biscuits!

TARDIS cake!

My friends and I are big fans of Doctor Who. So, for my friend Ruaridh's 21st birthday I decided to make a TARDIS cake! After the trauma of the 3D Dinosaur cake, I decided to stay away from a 3D TARDIS in fear of it collapsing, and chose to do one that was half materialized through the time vortex (aka lying down on a board).

To get the shape I baked the cake in a one pound loaf tin, meaning I had to do minimal carving to achieve the TARDIS shape. I chose to use Madeira cake just for something a little different, and the recipe I used can be found here.

I used ready rolled pacific blue fondant and an edible ink pen to decorate the cake. For the windows and the sign I cheated by using some Milkybar White chocolate, because I didn't want to spend £2 to use a tiny amount.

 It helped when making the cake to have reference, and that I had in the form of a toy TARDIS, and the 10th Doctor popped along to help...

A long break!

Hello! I haven't forgotten all about you, just real life gets in the way sometimes! I was quite busy through August, and then suddenly my final year of university began and reading took over, leaving little time for baking but hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things soon.

For now, here's some photos of some things I baked way back in July!

Malteaser Cupcakes

 Black Bottom Cupcakes from Hummingbird Bakery.

Strawberry Tart. Recipe via the caked crusader.

 

Next time I'll share photos of a TARDIS cake that I made for my friend's 21st, but I'll leave you with a photo of PacMan (if he were made of strawberry tart that is!)

Strawberries & Cream Victoria Sponge

 For my 21st, I receieved a lovely cake stand. With all the lovely weather we are having, I decided to christen it with this lovely summer's day cake.

I used Mary Berry's sponge recipe as it's always so moist! Whipped up some double cream with a little icing sugar and spread about generously along with some chopped strawberries. Lovely!