Easter Cupcakes!

My daughter loves to help me bake - so today in an effort to distract her from irritating her little brother I suggested that we make some easter cupcakes! Below are the pictures of the little gems, topped with the leafy green buttercream icing, flake bar nests, peanut M&M eggs and fondant (left over from the recent mermaid birthday cake) birds. a fun way to fill in a couple of hours. We delivered them to friends and family. Happy Easter, God Bless You and don't eat tooooo much chocolate (darn... too late).

Cake balls

Well...my idea to attempt cake pops flopped when I realised I didn't know where to get lollipop sticks from! So instead I had to be content making cake balls. I conveniently had some vanilla cake left over form another baking experiement, so i crumbled this finely with my fingers and added some vanilla icing (store bought) and mixed well. My quantities were slightly out - I think I had too much icing for the amount of cake (about 350 - 400 gm for one whole cake is best). Despite this the mixture still tasted pretty good, just a bit overly sweet!
I rolled the mixture into balls (small walnut) and popped them on a baking tray and into the freezer to harden. Once hard, I simply melted some cooking chocolate in a bain marie and dipped - getting them out was tricky, I tried a toothpick but it broke! so I ended up using a fork :) The balls went back onto the baking sheet, were quicly sprinkled in chocolate hail and replaced in the freezer for a few minutes. After this I inserted the wee flags which I made using white paper, felts, crayons, scissors, glue stick and toothpicks (cute!). They were nice, but just too sweet to inflict on my close circle of willing tasters!
Lessons learned: Get the ratio of icing to cake right, use homemade icing, use chocolate made specifically for coating or candy making, lollipop sticks would be handy when it comes to dipping and keep the balls small as they gat significantly larger after dipping.
Easy to make though and a real cute idea - see the link here for some 'extreme' cake pop creations!

Some flavours I have thought about trying for the future are...banana cake and lemon icing with white chocolate, coffee/cinnamon cake and coffee icing with milk chocolate, chocolate chilli cake and chocolate icing withdark chocolate, and carrot cake with cream cheese icing with white chocolate. Yum!

Amateur Cakes

The word 'amateur' has such a bad rap! the student's I teach use it in place of 'loser', 'no-hoper', 'useless at'. However, it has it's origins in the language of love (french) and actually means 'one who has a taste for something' or 'lover of' - hence I am proud to currently call myself an amateur cake decorator, as I do love to do it, and I certainly do have a taste for it!! Yum! Below are pictures of some of my cakes, I hope to continue honing this skill during the year!

Cupcakes

Cucakes....those perfectly delicious mini cake everyone loves to receive! I made some cupcakes today with my daughter. We use the classic edmonds recipe, except I always add a splash of milk which seems to thin the batter and create a slightly smoother and more moist cupcake. Fresh is best!! Eating a fresh cupcake should conjure up images of biting into a cloud of sweet warmth..mmmmm. Unfortunately, today's creations were eaten before I could take a photo...half anyway - the other half went to a friend with a new baby! My next cake goal is to try making cake pops!
I have added below pictures of cupcakes I have previously made with my daughter.