Happy St Patricks Day

Top of the morning to ya! well I had to do it, I had to make some Guinness chocolate cupcakes.

VERY rich cakes I could barely manage one but the stout flavor really comes through and works surprisingly well with the chocolate. I used this recipe from food network:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/dave-lieberman/chocolate-stout-cupcakes-recipe/index.html

The ones in the picture I made with my sister and they just had plain butter icing on them.  I made some more for my mother's art class with baileys and its a revelation baileys icing is AMAZING and so easy just normal butter icing but instead of milk to loosen it up add baileys and your mind will be blown.

Welsh Egyptian Cake

Whilst I was working at the cafe I got some good opportunities to give out my business card, I was asked to make a unusual cake for one of the regulars. A welsh lady who visits Egypt a lot... I merged the two ideas and  this is what I came up with...

my mum painted the flag which turned out AMAZING.

I was very chuffed with my little sheep too, its great to have a play with sugar paste to see what one can create. 

This was a difficult cake to put together working with 2 square cakes I carved them in to shape to create the pyramid.

Putting the sugar paste on was a little difficult, I cut triangles and stuck them on cutting to size, to make the brick indents I used a CLEAN ruler whilst the sugar paste was still soft. Lastly the sand was made up of finely broken digestive biscuits. Over all this cake was difficult due to the shape but I learnt new skills creating it and was very please with the end result. so was the birthday girl.

ITS A FRIGGIN' RAINBOW!!

I have not much to say about these cupcakes apart from HOW CUTE ARE THESE!?!?! So easy to make and people loved the idea. Just a plain sponge with blue butter icing, white butter icing with glitter and rainbow sugar sweets.
Fantastic for children they will go mad for these babies.

Last Years Christmas.

So Christmas time came and went too quickly as usual leaving the weather behind it. This is a great time of year to bake. My mum and nephew made our family's Christmas cake. Its a traditional recipe with royal icing.

Sorry for the bad quality photo. Christmas is a great time to bake and get the kids involved my nephew helped with the icing and "snow" ( icing sugar)

Every year I make one cake for my family and one for the boyfriends family.  I love working with fruit cake or Christmas cake because marzipan makes it easy to cover in sugar paste. This is my festive sugar paste Christmas cake.

My boyfriends niece (Lilly,6) helped me make this ginger bread house with trees. I used the old templates I was given at the national bakery school it worked out great. I'm not gonna take all the credit she did most of the decorating.

Finally I am excited to say I got a waffle maker!! I will definitely post later with different recipes for waffles I am experimenting with. I want to find a brioche recipe that will be crisp on the out side and sweet and soft on the inside so watch this space.

Some Little Experimets- mars icing!!

Well this was something a tad different. Chocolate fudge cake with mars bar icing. I melted the mars bar in the microwave was a bit weird but mixed in fine with butter icing and turned out very yummy caramel and chocolatey.

Some Little Experiments - Mocha

I used to work at a cafe whilst there I was taught how to make coffees. I had made coffee cakes SO many times but coffee and chocolate....

Chocolate and coffee cakes with coffee icing and melted chocolate on top. I think they look very fancy and are very easy to make.

If any one would like the recipes for any cakes please don't be afraid to just comment and ask. 

Some Little Experiments- lemon

As any budding baker its always good to experiment with different flavors and combinations. I like lemon drizzle cake so I tried to make lemon drizzle cupcakes... Not just lemon drizzle cupcakes but lemon drizzle cup cakes with lemon curd, lemon icing and candied lemon... too much maybe?

They tasted fantastic but with experimenting you find out what works and what doesn't. Using drizzle (sugar and lemon juice) caused the paper case to become unstuck, but your not really lacking in lemon flavor so next time I will be leaving that part out.