When I was at university my friend Astrid made similar butterfly cupcakes using the Hello, Cupcake! book. I remember thinking how amazing they looked and knew I wanted to give it a go myself one day. I found the perfect opportunity to make them this week for Heeral, my sister’s work bestie, who is leaving. The hardest part about making the butterflies was working quickly before the chocolate and candy set, it took a few tries to get my timings right. I placed the wings on to vanilla cupcakes topped with raspberry jam frosting. I decided to leave out the body and antenna and go for a more minimal look, they kind of remind me of those butterfly cupcakes you make when you are little where you make the wings with the top of the cupcake. I hope she likes them! x
I seem to think that making birthday cakes for family and friends is the best time to experiment and try different things. I guess it’s not really a bad thing, it allows me to learn new techniques and make a cake special to that person. This cake was for a dear family friend of ours. We’ve known her forever and she’s so kind and lovely and one of my favourite people. I made her this giant 3- tiered pink cake made up of layers of vanilla sponge, raspberry jam and vanilla frosting. I covered the top with fondant flowers which I left to dry in cupcake tins so they stuck up and then painted them with edible food colouring. I finished it by wrapping it in a matching pink bow. I hope she enjoys it and has a special birthday. Happy Birthday Azra! x
Everyone should be provided with cake on their birthday. Fact. These cupcakes are for our lovely friend Sharon to celebrate her birthday today. I wanted to make her something pretty with a bit of sparkle. I made vanilla cupcakes and topped them with glitter and circle sprinkles, which I’m slightly obsessed with. I hope they brighten up her day and distract her from the blizzard which seems to be happening outside. Happy Birthday Sharon, have a wonderful day! x
In my mind macarons have always been one of those things that are super difficult to make and you have to be professional and delicate and French to make them properly. Saying that, they have been on top of my list of things to learn/attempt for ages now but I’ve been putting it off for fear of total failure. After making these I can say that they are really simple and fun to make. There’s more than one way of making macarons but I decided to look around for the simplest recipe, anticipating that lots of steps, ingredients and time would be involved in the process. I chose this recipe because it seemed friendly, and it was. Only a couple of things to note: I added food colouring to the meringue, the temperature is 140°C, and they only really take about 12 minutes to bake. Oh and another thing, do not use greeseproof paper like I did on my first batch. They stick, so badly (Doh!). Use baking paper or those wonderful reusable baking sheets. Because I didn’t want to make anything too serious I chose to make raspberry sherbet flavour. I did this by sprinkling some raspberry sherbet on the macarons just after I piped them, before they had formed a skin, and then baked them. For the filling I made a buttercream with jam, fresh raspberries and more sherbet (recipe below). I put them in the fridge after assembling them which makes them taste even better. I survived my first macaron attempt and can’t wait to try some more complex combinations!
Macaron Filling
(for approx 20 whole macarons)
250g icing sugar
80g unsalted butter (room temperature)
2 tbsp seedless raspberry jam
splash of milk
a handful of fresh raspberries
2 tsp of raspberry sherbet
Beat together the icing sugar, butter and milk. Then add the jam and sherbet and mix until smooth. Add in the fresh raspberries and mix until the berries are broken up in to large pieces.
Yesterday I did a course at the Peggy Porschen Academy in London. I’m a big fan of Peggy Porschen for her amazing designs and how perfectly finished all of her cakes are. I chose to do the ‘Stripy Rose Cakes’ day course as it covered learning how to ice and cover individual cakes, make roses and some piping techniques. It was such a brilliant day and I really did learn so much. It was so nice to be surrounded by people that were equally enthusiastic about cake! The Academy was lovely with a great workspace and atmosphere. My teacher Elyse was great, she was very clear and made every step easy to follow. The part I found the hardest was making the roses, something that I have been wanting to be shown how to do for a while. It was great to learn properly and to be given lots of tips to help make them extra pretty. I think with some practice I will really get the hang of it. In the afternoon we were given a cup of tea and a piece of cake to taste. It was lemon and so delicious. I can’t recommend the Academy enough, I’m really pleased with how my cakes turned out and even happier I now have some new skills.
I like to think that the people I love already know how much I love them. But in my opinion you can never go too wrong with giving people cake to show them just how much.This is a really simple easy cake which combines two Valentines classics, strawberry and chocolate. It’s a marble cake with part chocolate and part pink vanilla sponge, topped with fresh strawberry frosting. To decorate I sprinkled some edible rose petals. It has a lighter feel than your normal Valentine sweet treat and I will definitely be sitting down to a cup of tea and slice of this with loved ones on Thursday.
I was recently asked to make some cupcakes for our neighbours’ daughter’s 3rd birthday party. This was a lovely task for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was great to do something for our neighbours who are really nice, and happen to have a couple of the cutest kids I’ve met. Secondly, I got to make something girly and pink which I hardly ever do. Her party was fairy themed so I covered them in a lot of edible glitter and pink stars. I was also really pleased to finally have a reason to use the large pink shiny cake board I’ve been eyeing for a while. Happy Birthday Tillie! I hope you had a lovely party.
Seeing one of the cupcakes I made painted so amazingly is one of the coolest things ever. The talented artist is my friend Kim who, although can clearly paint anything, specialises in pet portraits. She has a brilliant new website which features a blog post about painting my cupcakes, which you can see here. I love her paintings and I can’t wait to see the double cupcake painting she has planned. 
Due to my final university work I’ve only been doing some essential baking, such as birthday cakes for close friends and family. Including this gift for Ginetta, whose birthday it was this week. Not wanting to leave the stand empty I made these mini vanilla cupcakes, because who doesn’t love a partly edible present…
My lovely cousin is visiting from America and after seeing my baking from afar, wanted to sample something while she was here. I chose to make vanilla cupcakes. I themed them to her favourite sweets here, Percy Pigs. I look forward to making her more yummy things during her stay.
