Rainbow Cupcakes

As the end of term approaches, Uni life gets a bit surreal. The workload evaporates, people disappear to hometowns filled with real food and people over twenty five, and everyone makes the most of a final week with friends and freedom.  What better way to fuel the fun (food-wise, anyway) than stir fry, pizza and cake.  Fortunately I was kept away from the first two but I did promise to bring some form of cake-based creation.  Having spent the previous week making (or attempting) elegant, mother-appropriate Red Velvet cupcakes, I decided to abandon all dignity, embrace my inner-child and produce a rainbow.

Somewhat ironically, I got the idea while researching the Mothers Day-themed Flavour of the Month.  Rather than just use vanilla cupcakes which might not hide the taste of food colouring, I decided to use the Love Food: The Cupcake recipe for White Chocolate and Rose Cupcakes, substituting vanilla essence for the rose water, although this would work too.  I picked white chocolate because the mixture was still light enough to show the colours, and because of all the flavours in all the chocolate bars in all the world, white is my favourite.  I suspect that the high sugar content may have something to do with this.

Once I had made the mixture, I weighed it and divided it into five portions, with what would be the top (pink) layer with slightly more than the others, as it had a larger space to fill.  I dyed each in turn, using blue and red colouring for the purple, stirring carefully so that not too much air was lost.  I then layered the colours, starting with purple in the bottom.  The recipe didn’t stretch very far; I only managed to make nine, so next time I would probably double the quantities.  This also meant that some layers didn’t sit perfectly on top of each other, so it would be better to double the quantities if you are looking for a distinctly layered effect.   

For the icing I used the Love Food: The Cupcake vanilla butter cream recipe, which produces really fluffy, sweet, melt-in-your mouth, drool-over icing.  I wanted the topping to look quite plain because the sponge was so bright, but without looking dull or in anyway refined.  Again looking to my inner child (always a useful source of inspiration) I sprinkled edible gold glitter over everything and put a pink strawberry button on the top.

The cakes were slightly overcooked, but thankfully the white chocolate flavour still came through.  The colours inside produced a suitably joyous effect to delight children young, old and inner.  Whether you’re feeling blue, seeing red or going for gold, the rainbow effect is an easy, tasty, trippy way to add some colour to your celebrations.

Mothers Day Cupcakes

As much as I love traipsing around countless shops which have been plastered in pink and filled with scented candles, mum-friendly DVDs and chocolate, I decided that it would be more fun to bake my mum a present this year.  I decided on red velvet, as she had previously mentioned, in a slightly mystified way, that they seem to be really popular at the moment.  Normally, Mum is not one for food dye (blue food is a red flag in her eyes) so this seemed like a good opportunity to unleash my inner child on the rainbow while still making her happy.

I used the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook for both the cupcake sponge and the cream cheese icing.  I also used muffin cases because these recipes are for American-style cupcakes, which are traditionally larger than English cupcakes.  However, the recipe only made eleven of these, whereas using smaller cake cases would, obviously, leave you with more cakes.

While I always enjoy baking, this recipe was particularly intriguing for two reasons.  Adding the distinctly brown cocoa powder/ food dye paste and watching the mixture turn red was a bit like watching a low budget but fascinating magic show.  On a similar note, the combination of bicarbonate of soda and vinegar brought back memories of papier-mâché volcanoes and the time when science was still fun.  I was a bit worried that these two oddities would reveal my baking ignorance (I went a bit Quentin Tarantino with the red food dye) and ruin everything, meaning a last minute dash to a garden centre.  However, the cakes rose (thank you God of Baking) and were definitely red.

I used cream cheese icing to top the cake, as I liked how the two colours contrasted.  As flowers are a traditional Mothers Day gift, I decided to make roses like the ones from Erin’s Birthday Cake.  I bought ready-made fondant icing and used liquid food dye in yellow, green, blue and pink to dye lumps of it, and for the purple I mixed the blue and red in a separate bowl before adding it.  I found that the easiest way to spread the colour evenly was to divide about two tablespoons of fondant in half, carefully putting about five drops of colouring (for a really bright colour) in the middle and then folding the fondant in on itself until the colour was spread consistently with no marble effect.  If the fondant is too cold or is left out, it will go hard and crumbly; if it is too warm, it will be slippery and will fall apart.  By the time I got to the last few colours, the fondant had gone quite hard.  However, the food dye made it softer, but not so soft as to be disobedient.  To find out how to make the fondant roses, click here.  My top tip would be to keep the petals an equal size, and to make sure that they are not much taller than the thin strip, as this makes them look slightly disproportionate.

While the roses were still far inferior to those in the tutorial, I was really pleased with how these cakes turned out.  In fact, there may even have been a small jig and musical number involved, but that’s another story.  More important than my response or musical ability was Mum’s reaction; she loved them, which just goes to prove that it is the thought that counts.  While the cakes saved me from sore feet and hours of hunting through pink chocolate-flavoured scented candles, they also meant that I got to eat cake.  Although this was delicious, the sweeter treat was being able to give Mum my time and appreciation in tasty cake form.

Flavour of the Month - March 2012

With spring springing and reminding us that there is life beyond random bouts of snow and thermal underwear, it is time to celebrate not just Mother Nature but mums everywhere.  This Mothers Day, why not give your mum the opportunity to have her flowers and eat them?

Rose

A classic symbol of all types of love, these are probably the most popular flowers make for cupcakes.  For a video demonstrating how to make fondant roses, there is a link on the post for Erin’s Birthday Cake.

The aptly named Violet here shows how to ice a butter cream rose, including leaves, straight onto a cupcake.

Another example of a butter cream rose minus the leaves, this video is slower and shows the method more clearly.

Daisy

Reminiscent of carefree childhood days in which a chain of these was an acceptable present, these are perhaps one of the most appropriate flowers for a Mother’s Day cupcake.  While they look more fiddly than the roses, they are very effective and not too tricky.

Chrysanthemum

For those green-fingered mothers who are simply not satisfied with a traditional rose, the exceptionally happy Tengsern here shows how to ice a chrysanthemum onto a cupcake.

Sunflower

The perfect flower for a playful cupcake, this video shows how to ice a sunflower using a fairly simple method which will please fans of Oreos and butter cream icing.  No ladybirds were injured in the making of this video.

Bow

If your mum is not a flower fan, or suffers from severe hay fever brought on by iced imitations, this pretty fondant bow is a lovely alternative cupcake topper.

Still struggling for inspiration? Here are some of my favourite mother's day cakes to give you some ideas.  Click each image to visit the original website and discover more cake creations.

Gardener's World

Returning to the floral garden theme, this pastel-coloured garden cake is feminine without being, childish.  Particularly delightful are the little details, such as the flower on the cuff of the glove and the ladybirds.

I love you sew much

This careful construction is a spectacular tribute to those mothers who prefer sewing fabric over seeds.  Another example of the beauty in fine details, this has a tape measure, cotton reels and buttons to complete the picture.

Mum's the word

Finally, for those who like to court controversy, this is a tongue-in-cheek reminder of the reason mothers deserve a break; just make sure she is feeling suitably well-treated when you bring it out. 

Happy Mothers Day to all mums reading, and particularly my own mum, Julie.

Need to remind someone of this important fact?
Buy the handy magnet here. 

Erin’s Birthday Cake

In something of a promotion from my last birthday-related cake-based project, I have moved from making the accompanying cupcakes to the main event.  That’s right; this time, I got to make the one with the candles, the theme song and the massive amounts of fondant icing.

A lot of love, labour and chocolate went into this cake.  It took me about four hours all in all, leaving my friend and I just enough time to deliver it to Frankie & Benny’s before the arrival of the birthday girl.  Aside from the aforementioned ingredients, it also involved a lot of planning.  Before the meal, a few people were going to Cadbury World to consume large amounts of free chocolate and ride around in a cocoa bean.  While I love chocolate and would never eat anything else (except ratatouille, cheeseburgers and bacon) if it were in any way practical and socially acceptable, I thought that in this case chocolate cake might be a bit too much.  I had a recipe for strawberry cake which I thought might do.  Cue an undercover mission involving much confusion over the nature of Bakewell tarts in order to find out whether Erin likes strawberries.  Having ascertained that she doesn’t mind them, I exhibited a tremendous lack of imagination and decided to make chocolate cake (well, bacon has its limitations as far as cakes go).

For the triple-layered chocolate sponge I used the Hummingbird Bakery’s recipe for Brooklyn Blackout Cake.  I had used it before, for the Clown Cake, and it proved to be just as reliable this time, with a lovely crumbly sponge texture and rich flavour.  For the filling I halved the chocolate custard recipe from the same page in The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook.  It was the strangest thing I have ever made.  If the caster sugar, golden syrup, cocoa powder and water boiling on the stove was not concerning enough, the gloopy, gluey Flubber-like cornflour and water mixture looked entirely inedible.  However, when the two were combined, it somehow, inexplicably, worked, which just goes to support the theory that adding chocolate to anything can only improve it (unless that thing is bacon).

The trickiest bit was the decoration.  While I take a neurotic and creative pride in the appearance of all of my cakes (including the resiliently messy Mississippi Mud Pies), this cake, as a birthday cake, had to look particularly special.  Having spent a while pondering, I had an epiphany in a truly inspirational place: the baking aisle of Sainsbury’s in Selly Oak.  In order to carry out my vision, I found a video on YouTube which showed how to make a simple rose out of fondant icing, which is something I had wanted to try.  The video is quick but very clear and helpful, and can be found here.  I made a few the night before, also experimenting with food dye.  While the video recommends using colouring paste, I found that a small amount of liquid food dye (much easier to get hold of) does not affect the rigidity of the flower too much.  I used bright pink food dye on a lump of white fondant icing large enough for nine roses (well, twelve), which would mean everyone going could have a rose and they would all be a consistent colour.  I made them while the cakes were in the oven, and while they are simple to make they are trickier to really refine; the sizing was slightly inconsistent and some of them looked more rose-like and delicate than others.  However, all together they seemed to work.

Over Christmas, my Grandma and I decorated a fruit cake using fondant icing and those small silver balls widely regarded as a marvel akin to sliced bread and the pyramids.  We cut a snowflake shape out of the icing, stuck the icing to the cake, then filled the shape with the balls.  I decided that rather than writing Erin’s name on the cake in my typically shaky, small-child style, I would cut her name out and fill it with the pink sparkles that had been missing from Mum and Aunty Jane’s Birthday Cupcakes.  I rolled out the fondant and cut around the outside of the cake tin to get the right size and shape, then cut her name out in the middle of the cake.  Thankfully, ‘Erin’ is as short as it is pretty, and has lots of lovely straight letters, so it was not that difficult.  Having smoothed some more chocolate custard over the top, I very carefully lifted the icing and placed it on the top.  Cutting around the tin had helped but I still had to straighten the edges and smooth it all out a bit once it was on the cake.  I then filled each letter with a sizable amount of pink sparkles, trimmed the ends of the roses and pressed them gently round the letters.

Having finished, I could not quite believe that everything had gone according to plan.  Nothing broke, nothing was undercooked, the mysterious icing mixture came together, the roses looked at least vaguely like roses, the name was readable and vaguely in the centre and nothing fell off.  Of course, it wasn’t perfect; the angle it was leaning at made a certain Italian tower feel threatened, a few of the roses more closely resembled cabbages and the fondant wasn’t a perfect size.  However, as I handed it over to the very nice people at Frankie & Benny’s and asked in an alarmingly motherly way if it could sit somewhere cool, I felt very proud of my creation.  Fortunately, Erin appreciated having cake presented to her in public, accompanied by loud music and balloons.  She loved the cake and was genuinely grateful, which meant a lot.  Even those friends who had been to Cadbury World and never wanted to see chocolate again were nice enough to force down a slice and say it tasted good.  This all suggests, to my mind at least, that public displays of friendship and birthdays go better when cake is involved.

Mum and Aunty Jane’s Birthday Cupcakes

The main attraction for any birthday is the cake, specifically the one with the candles and the theme tune.  As these had already been taken care of I had an excuse to make cupcakes, the younger sister of the birthday cake.  This discussion of younger sisters is particularly appropriate as my mum and aunt have birthdays two years and a day apart.  To register both birthdays separately (because siblings born at similar times hate being lumped together) I decided to make two different types of cupcakes.  For my mum, I stuck with the classic strawberry cheesecake cupcakes, while for my aunt I chose decadent chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing.

Having made the strawberry cheesecake cupcakes several hundred times (OK, twice, but you are probably sick of hearing about how yummy they are by now), I will just say that they were, of course, from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and were decorated with digestive crumbs topped with almost alarmingly red quartered strawberries.  They were a nice alternative to chocolate (not something I have ever needed personally, except for a particularly torturous Lent, which put me religion entirely) and just as messy to make and delicious to devour as ever.

Although I was set on chocolate cupcakes I wanted to add a girly touch.  Decoration often provokes tricky decisions for me, due to my dislike of, firstly, throwing sprinkles on things like a child who has had too much sugar (I am sure there is skill to this, but mine is undeveloped), and secondly, inedible decorations (what is the point?).  Eventually, after much meditation on the matter, I decided to use the bright pink sprinkles I used for the Pink Vanilla Cupcakes.  Typically girly: undoubtedly; Edible: of course; Sprinkles: huh?  At the great but strangely named Meatloaf once crooned, two out of three ain’t bad.  There was, however, a problem.  I couldn’t find any in the great baking haven that is Amersham Tesco.  So that plan went out of the window, and instead, I bought chocolate vermicelli (definitely edible) and some odd-looking pink things, which looked dubiously like dyed chocolate buttons but which promised to taste like strawberry.

I used the chocolate cupcake and icing recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook and waited for the cakes to cool before slathering on as much icing as the moist sponge would hold.  The icing was quite thick and cold, which made it hard to manipulate without damaging the cake.  I filled a mug with boiled water, and left the pallet knife in there to warm up.  This made it easy to smooth the icing into a more respectable dome-like shape.  I put about a tablespoon of vermicelli into a bowl and dipped the top of the cupcake until there was a reasonable layer.  I topped this off with a (genuinely strawberry) pink button dipped into the icing.

Having successfully affected their transport from my dad’s house to my grandma’s (which involved a crate, change of driver and some careful pot-hole avoidance), I put them in a cool place to wait until the evening.  I displayed them on the cake stand my aunt had brought me for Christmas, which thankfully made them look much better than the crate had.

 The final result was that the birthday cakes were rather neglected, although I suspect the familial pressure may have had some sway in this.  I am, however, pretty sure that the yummy noises were not entirely theatrical, and I know Mum and Aunty Jane appreciated the gesture.  The cupcakes may not have had candles or their own musical fanfare, but the personal touch, large quantities of icing and a healthy dose of family love and pressure meant they were a welcome addition.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sometimes, chocolate chip cookies are the only possible answer.  They are easy to make but eternally tempting, smell amazing in the oven and taste like luxury out of it.  The mixture is almost as delicious as the cooked product, as long as you don’t mind eating raw egg.  They are also wonderfully transportable, which is handy if you are spreading cookie goodness across the nation and so they need to survive a train journey.

I used The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook chocolate chip recipe, which leads to perfectly sized cookies (roughly the size of a small cat, if there was any doubt) that taste so distinctly like a piece of classic American baking that you almost need a very small Stars and Stripes and a baseball mitt to eat them.

Next time I will put more chocolate in (when my answer is not cookies, it is chocolate) but I finally found the correct cookie texture.  They may have survived the journey, but these cookies were anything but tough.