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. 

Mini Birthday Cakes

My next cake project was for my grandad’s eightieth birthday.  Birthday cakes for me have a very specific taste – soft vanilla sponge with a strawberry jam and buttercream filling and topped with beautifully sickly fondant icing.  I decided to try and emulate this specific taste in the miniature form of a cupcake.  Since birthdays are supposed to be extra happy days, I wanted to make them standout; with this in mind, I decided to try and make 3D icing balloons coming out of the cakes.

For the sponge, I used the vanilla cupcake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days.  For some reason the recipe uses double the amount of all the ingredients in the same bakery’s vanilla cupcake recipe in The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook while claiming to produce the same amount.  I decided to try out the new one and ended up with twenty seven, rather more than I needed for Gramps.  Luckily, Grandma was making dinner for everyone on Thursday, in two days time, so I put the rest safely away and kept thirteen to write ‘Happy Birthday’ on.  Despite a new oven, the cakes came out looking generally unscathed, although a few were a bit brown on top.  While they cooled, I got on with making the balloons.

I made three balloons in green, pink and blue, and four in yellow.  I washed thirteen coloured paperclips in washing up liquid, rinsing and drying them well before straightening them out.  I bent a curve into the middle of each one, with a straight bit at the top.  At the bottom I doubled the paperclip over to stop it toppling over once the balloon was on top.  To make the balloons I used small lumps of fondant icing dyed with food colouring.  I took a small lump of the coloured icing, a couple of centimetres in diameter, and rolled this into a ball.  For the knot of the balloon I took a small bit from the coloured icing and pushed it to form a point.  I stuck this under the balloon, pushing gently until it stuck on.  I put the balloon down on a clean surface to dry, as I would need to wait until I was at Gramps’ house to assemble them. 

Meanwhile the cakes had cooled so I added a teaspoon of strawberry jam to the top of each cake and smoothed it over.  Using butter cream icing from Love Food: The Cupcake I put this on top of the jam and smoothed it down with a spoon.  Although it got a bit mixed up with the jam, this did not really matter as the taste would be the same.  I rolled out white fondant icing and used a cookie cutter to cut wavy circles large enough to cover the top of each cupcake and gently put each one on top of the jam and butter cream.  I had initially wanted to spell out ‘Happy Birthday’ on the cakes in blue fondant icing, but I did not have any cutters and was running out of time.  Instead, I used spare butter cream to stick small blue circles in the centre of each cake, and went to Gramps’ to construct the cakes.

A few of the paperclips needed bending again to make them look more like balloon strings, and I think that the ‘Happy Birthday’ message would have looked better.  The idea did not quite work as I had hoped.  However, the vanilla sponges were very light, and were proclaimed by Mum to be ‘the best we’ve had yet’, which was a nice compliment.  They really tasted just like little birthday cakes, even if the balloons left me a little deflated.