Valentine's pictogram cupcakes

Now, this is probably one for Cake Wrecks but this idea was fueled by the fantastic authors of Hello Cupcake! The blog that goes with the book last week happened to feature some ideas for Valentine's pictograms - "I love you" and "Cutie pie".

I used the "I love you" idea to create my own and then I decided to make it more personal. So, just to explain the rest of the pictogram, my boyfriend is called Andy but I tend to call him Pandy because it rhymes and is the name of the kid's TV character. So, I create a Pan (check out my fried egg!) and a D.

Now, I needed to complete the set with something that ideally illiterates with "Pandy" and rhymes with "you". Starts with a P, rhymes with "you". Now what could that be...

Oh yeah, POO!

I love you, Pandy poo.

Circus cupcakes with Marshmallow frosting

Last week was a week of new recipes for me (more new recipes later). Firstly I did these vanilla cakes with Marshmallow frosting based on the "Almost-homemade vanilla buttercream" recipe from Hello Cupcake - I'm not sure why it is called buttercream when it is more about the marshmallow than the butter, but nevermind! P.S. This book is soooo inspiring.


I was attracted to this recipe because it uses Marshmallow Fluff, which isn't readily available here in the UK, but my local Powerplay have started to stock American sweets including Marshmallow Fluff in Raspberry, Blueberry and Original flavour. So, if I can master this recipe then I can hopefully, try a Raspberry version, yum, yum, yum!

Now, the recipe is a bit weird for me firstly because it is measured in "cups", wtf?! We don't measure things in cups in the UK, I've never heard of that as a measurement. But after some googling I worked out that 3 1/2 cups is about 805g and that is the second weird thing... 800 grams of frosting??! Wow, I'm frosting 12 cupcakes, not 1200!

So I made an eighth of the original recipe using half the jar of Marshmallow Fluff. I had used the first half in a batch of frosting that did NOT come out well, the frosting sank into the cakes and was an overall disaster. But this batch was great, after whipping the Fluff for quite a while it was nice and thick and was so white - perfect for adding colour if you choose to.

The theme was inspired by a circus party that was posted on Party Perfect so I used some spotty cases that I've had in my stash for a while and all of my sprinkles with a primary colour theme: chocolate beans, martha stewart jimmies in red and yellow, hundreds & thousands and sugar dots that my mum got for me on her trip to Germany.

Rainbow cupcakes

If a rainbow could be made into a person, that person would be a lot like my friend Jane. Everything you could say to describe a rainbow describes Jane - bright, happy, magical, rare.

I made these rainbow cakes in celebration of Jane's birthday. I didn't see Jane for her birthday but I made these at home in tribute of when we were at uni together and would bake cakes. In fact, Jane taught me a recipe for cupcakes that has now developed into the recipe that I use every week.

So firstly, I made my favourite vanilla cake recipe but before cooking I split the batter. I would recommend that you split it equally into six bowls and then mix your colours.

I didn't split them equally and I regretted it. I tried to have a little more red so I could then add blue to make purple, etc. But as you can see from my pics I ended up with hardly any purple batter and therefore tiny cakes. Whereas I had loads of red and green batter and ended up with an unevenly sized batch.

To mix the colours all you need is red, yellow and blue food colouring and then combine them to make the colours in between. Red + yellow = orange. Yellow + blue = green. Blue + red = purple. If you can find orange, green and purple food colouring however, you are likely to get better colour that is less muddy. I already had green so I just mixed red and yellow to make orange and red and blue to make purple.

I added the food colouring directly to the batter instead of mixing it first. That meant I could see exactly what effect the colouring had on the batter. As the batter has a yellow tint anyway I needed to use more food colouring on the blue and purple to lose the yellow-ish colour.

I used coloured cases to match to add to the effect and after they were baked I frosted them with cream cheese frosting and sprinkled with rainbow coloured hundreds and thousands.

Red velvet cupcakes

I had never heard of Red Velvet cake until recently. Firstly, I tried some in the cafe at my work, then Crumbs and Doilies had it as their flavour of the month, then I saw them everywhere on all my favourite cupcake blogs. This was something I only tried this week and it's been a while since I've shared a recipe, so here goes:

Ingredients

• 1x large egg
• 100g baking margarine
• 100g caster sugar
• 75g self raising flour
• 25g cocoa (Green & Blacks fairtrade is my favourite!)
• 1 bottle of red food colouring (Silver spoon cake craft is the best for colour)
  

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 180ºC or Gas mark 4 or 350ºF
2. In your mixing bowl beat together the margarine and sugar with a spatula until smooth.
   
3. Break the egg and add to the mixing bowl, fold into the mixture.
4. Add the flour and cocoa, mix together until you have a smooth batter. If you want to make it more chocolate-y just add more cocoa here but take out an equal amount of flour - make sure that whatever ratio you use, the flour and cocoa should equal 100g.
   
5. Pour in the entire bottle of red food colouring (yes, the entire bottle! If you added more cocoa you will need more food colouring to make them just as red)
   
6. Put the batter into a zip lock bag and pipe equally into cupcake cases.
   
7. Put in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes. Once you think they are cooked press down on one of the cakes, if it springs back then the cakes are done!
8. Frost with lots of cream cheese frosting and sprinkle with chocolate flakes or curls.
   

Red dotty spotty cupcakes

These pretty little cakes were inspired by the gorgeous cases that I bought at the weekend: Retro spot cake cases - so hot, vintage inspired and Cath Kidston-esque.

So the first time I used the cases had to be for the first Nottingham Roller Girls practice which I'm going to tomorrow. I'm not so great at the skating right now but hopefully in the next six months I'll be able to take part in a roller derby match. I'm really looking forward to it all, including the bruises!

Back to the cakes... vanilla cakes, cream cheese frosting and lots of red and spotty sprinkles including chocolate beans (large and mini size), Martha Stewart red jimmies and red sugar circles.

Sesame Street cupcakes

Happy 40th birthday Sesame Street!

It was also my friend Laura's birthday this week and she loves Elmo so I figured that was definitely call for some Sesame Street cupcakes.

I stuck with vanilla cakes to keep things simple and made my favourite cream cheese frosting. I split the frosting and then set to work making two cupcakes for each character:

• Elmo: I used lots of red food colouring for Elmo and his eyes were made from a slice of (vegetarian) marshmallow with black writing icing for his pupils. An orange M&M made made the nose and I chopped a third of an oreo cookie (after you separate the two biscuits) for the mouth.
• Cookie Monster: I used bright blue frosting as the base, marshmallow slices for the eyes and black writing icing for the pupils (facing in opposite directions), no need for a nose or mouth, just a third of a Maryland cookie.
• Grover: I used the same blue frosting as I did for the Cookie Monster and again used marshmallow slices for the eyes and writing icing for the pupils. The nose was a pink Smartie / Chocolate Bean and a third of an Oreo cookie for the mouth. Grover is a little different in that he has a pink bottom lip so I used a little of the red frosting left over from Elmo to pipe along the edge of the Oreo mouth.
• Bert: Using yellow coloured frosting I tried not to coat the whole cupcake in frosting but create more of a oblong shape, less of a circle to achieve Bert's long face. Again, marshamallow slices for the eyes and I used black writing icing not only for the pupils but also for Bert's mono-brow, spiky hair and smile. Bert was finished off with an orange M&M for his nose.
• Ernie: Using mostly yellow frosting from Bert and a little red from Elmo I created orange frosting for Ernie's round face. Marshmallow slices for eyes, writing icing for pupils and hair, a red M&M made the nose and a third of an Oreo for the mouth.
• Oscar the grouch: Using the remainder of the yellow frosting from Bert and a dab of blue from the Cookie Monster I created a bright green for Oscar. Marshmallow slices for eyes, writing icing for the pupils and Oscar's squiggly mono-brow (make sure you make him look angry) and Oreo cookies for the mouth finished him off neatly!
• Big Bird: Although I didn't make any Big Bird cakes this is what I planned: yellow frosting for the cake, marshmallow slices for the eyes and black writing icing for his pupils. The beak could be made from one of those yellow banana sweets chopped in half - the first half for the upper beak, and the second for the lower. You could even pipe a little orange frosting for his tongue.
  

This blog post was brought to you by the letter C (for Cupcakes and Christina) and the number 12.