Barney Cake

I made this cake for my friend's little boy who was turning two.  He loves Barney and it was so cute watching his expression when he saw Barney on the cake.  I am glad he liked it. :)  His mum wanted something simple, a square cake with an edible image.  Since I don't own an edible printer, and I couldn't find a suitable edible image online or in the shops, I decided to make one out of fondant. 

Mocha walnut cupcakes

I was reading through one of the cake decoration magazines and came across a recipe for a coffee cake.  Now I don't really drink coffee, I am more a tea person, however, I do love the smell of coffee in cakes so I decided to make some and try them out.  I also added some cocoa powder and walnuts to the cake to make it more to my taste and I loved how it turned out.  The coffee glaze added just the right touch to the cupcakes.  I just have to remember not eat this before bedtime, or I'll be bouncing off the walls! 

Do you like coffee cakes?  

Marbled cupcakes

 
I decided to do a little baking for a friend who was moving overseas.  And I thought I'd try something a little different - marbled chocolate and vanilla cupcakes.  All you need is a chocolate batter and a vanilla batter.  Then spoon equal amounts of both batters into the cupcake liners and swirl the batter with a toothpick before baking.  Or you can skip the swirl and end up with a two-toned cupcake.  Just as fun!  Add some icing on the top in a lovely swirl and you have some pretty decent and yummy looking cupcakes!  I used a Wilton 1C tip for this swirl (simply because I had just bought it and wanted to try it out) or you can use the usual Wilton 1M or even a 2D for slight variation.

I used the same tip to make a rosette as shown above.  Simply start your icing in the middle of the cupcake and then press and move outwards clockwise.  Stop icing once you've made a round.

Here's what it looks like on the inside.  In this case I didn't swirl the batter so I ended up with a two-toned cupcake.

Pretty cool eh?  And you get the best of both flavours too! Yum!

Happy baking!  :)

Mermaid cake

I did another cake for my friend's 4-year-old daughter (lucky girl!) for a second party she had today.  She wanted a mermaid cake and I thought I'd take it to the next level by making matching cupcakes and setting it all up in a cupcake tower.  I was so excited to set up the whole dessert table - though the background was not quite ideal for a photo shot, the birthday girl absolutely loved her cakes!

Here are some more close ups.

Rows of cupcakes on the tray.  The cupcake toppers were made by me.  I was quite pleased with how they turned out.  :)

  I love the whales!

The crab and octopus are pretty cute too!

And here is a close up of the cake.

And the back of it.

It was sooo much fun to do!  I can't wait for my next cake! :)

Pink castle

This pink castle cake was made for my friend's 4-year-old daughter.  She wanted it pink like a princess' castle and it was also eggless, as some of the kids at her party had egg allergies.  Very easy to do as I used a ready made castle cake pan and then piped buttercream in stars all over it.  A very girly cake!  :)

Message in a cupcake? C-mail!

How nice is it to have a pretty cupcake given to you any day? That would put a smile on my face anytime! :)

But how great would it be if your lovely little cupcake was also holding a secret message especially for you?  You've heard of message in a bottle - well here's message in a cupcake!

 Here's the little cupcake topper - ordinary looking, you say.  But when you turn it around ....

....a hidden message awaits!  Pull it out of it's holder and what have you got......

Isn't that sweet?

Or how about...

Or even...

What would yours say? :)

Star Wars Fan

For my husband Brian's birthday this year, I decided to bake him an R2D2 cake as he is a big Star Wars fan.  I had to buy the pan specifically for it.  It was a lot of fun decorating the cake as it was very easy using the star tip.  The only thing was it took a lot longer than I had expected - a couple of hours just to pipe in all the icing neatly.  So if you ever attempt a cake this size, make sure you leave lots of time for icing!

Eleanor's cupcakes

These cupcakes were done for my sister's friend,  who wanted to surprise her cousin Eleanor for her birthday.  She wanted pink, purple and orange frosting with loads of flowers and sprinkles.  The letters were made of royal icing as well.  Lots of fun!

Baskets, birds and beautiful flowers

After the excitement of course 1, my friend and I couldn't wait to get started on Wilton course 2.  It's all about royal icing in this course and you learn how to pipe royal icing flowers, which dry hard and can be stored for later use.  Very exciting and here is the final cake after 4 lessons.  It was soooo pretty I couldn't bare to eat it!

Oh baby!

I did this cake for my neighbour, Geeta, who wanted to surprise her relative who was having a baby shower.  I used the Wilton baby bottle pan to make the cake, followed the instructions on it and the cake came out easily.  Then I followed the shape of the cake with icing.  It took absolutely ages to ice as I was very nervous about getting it neat and nice.  But well worth the effort and patience I think.  My neighbour was very pleased with it, as was her relative :)

Roses

This is the second cake in Wilton course 1.  So another excuse to use buttercream icing.  This time we learnt how to use the icing to pipe roses.  Not an easy task!  But loads of fun!  Especially when you get to eat what you made. YUM!

I Can See A Rainbow

I'm so excited!  I have been waiting a long time to ice a cake and I have finally, finally done it!  I don't know why it took me so long to do so, maybe I was intimidated by the piping, but I finally signed up for Wilton course 1 and learned how to make frosting and handle an icing bag.  It was a lot of fun and I wish I had done it sooner.  But hey, it's done and I'm really proud of my first cake :)