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.

Blue and pink edged cupcakes

After I made my black and white cupcakes I wanted to do some edged cupcakes again.

These lovelies were made with vanilla cakes and cream cheese frosting, I then edged with blue and pink ball sprinkles.

I actually used sprinkles from two different sets. I matched them up because they both have a similar matte look. Even though the blue ones came in a set with red and blue sprinkles I think the pink and blue look great together, it's sort of a blue-purple colour, lush!

Black and white cupcakes

It's been a while since I've blogged, I need to catch up!

I made these cupcakes with my favourite vanilla recipe and used some of the designer icing tubes that seem to be popping up everywhere at the moment. I chose black and white tubes then I decorated with black writing icing, white jimmies, white stars and white sugar balls.

I have to say I'm not keen on icing. I'm so used to cream cheese frosting now that I found the icing to be dry, it hardens very quickly and even the cupcakes underneath seemed to dry out more quickly. I think that cream cheese frosting keeps your cakes nice and soft.

I did however, love icing the cakes and then dipping only the edges in white jimmies. I love that look where the sprinkles are only around the edge. I think I might try it again ;)

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.

Pink and Green cupcakes

So I made these with my standard vanilla cake recipe but I realised that I had forgotten to pick up any soft cheese to make the cream cheese frosting.

Instead of heading all the way to the supermarket I just popped across the road to the international supermarket that is opposite my apartment. There I bought some European cream cheese, I'm not sure of the brand but it was not expensive.

Once I opened it up I found it was crumbly, not cream-y like the Philadelphia brand that I normally use which was a little weird. When I whisked it with the unsalted butter and icing sugar however, it came up so fluffy! It did take a while to whisk out the crumbliness but it ended it up to be the perfect texture. It was great to pipe out, it held its shape and wasn't runny at all.

The only slight downside that I found was that the frosting was a little more bitter tasting than I like - I like it really sweet!

So, I would recommend trying out as many different cream / soft cheeses as you can!

I then decorated with a mix of green and pink sprinkles including using some sprinkles that my Mum had picked up for me whilst she was in Berlin a couple of weeks ago.

I'm not sure why I haven't tried this colour combo before - green and pink is my fave! The only thing that would make them better is if they had my initials, or even my full name on the cupcakes - oh, wait a minute...

Yellow flowers and butterfly vanilla cupcakes

So, I've got my frosting down now! This week I made the same recipe as last week which I have almost perfected now! Vanilla cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (piped with a freezer bag).

I used yellow cases and decorated with some yellow flowers and white hearts with yellow jimmies to make butterflies. I bought the jimmies in NYC from Macy's Martha Stewart collection when I was over there in July for my birthday.

I also used decorated a few with hundreds and thousands to add some extra colour.

Frosting success!! Vanilla cakes with cream cheese frosting and hundreds & thousands

Hurray! I have mastered the cream cheese frosting that I've been trying to accomplish for weeks! And all it came down to was using a whisk instead of a wooden spoon to mix the frosting together.

I used the exact same recipe as last time and I decorated them this week with hundreds & thousands / tiny sugar balls.

This week I also tried something with the piping bag for the first time. I used a zip lock bag, as usual, to pipe out the frosting but instead of cutting across the corner to make a hole, I cut two very small slits going up the bag. This, effectively created a four corner star shape. It wasn't a very defined star, I need to practice to make the slits very delicate, but still was very effective.

I also need to practice making circles with a piping bag because every time I go round I seem to make more of a triangle shape!

I'm very pleased with the outcome, I think they look great. The cakes are absolutely delicious!!

Vanilla and choc cakes with buttercream icing and chocolate sprinkles

As I have moved home recently I had a house warming party this weekend which, of course, called for lots of cupcakes!

I made three batches of 12 cupcakes; one chocolate batch, one vanilla batch with a big chunk of dark chocolate in each cake (a lot like my white chocolate cakes), and finally a batch of vanilla cakes with chocolate sprinkles added to the mix.

Now, it may seem strange to put the sprinkles actually into the mix but I think it gives a great taste and effect - you get lots of specks of chocolate in the vanilla sponge, yum! You can also try this with brightly coloured sugar sprinkles which will give you lots of rainbow specks in the cake - wow!

I iced the cakes with buttercream (equal parts butter and icing sugar) and piped it out using a zip lock bag with a snipped corner.

I had decided on a chocolate and blue theme for the cakes so you will notice they were all made in blue cases. I also used one of my favourite sprinkles on some of the cakes - a blue sugar from Martha Stewart which I bought in Macy's when I visited in New York last July.

On the remaining cakes I used lots of different chocolate sprinkles on the top; stars, hundreds and thousands in both milk and dark chocolate, choc chips and chocolate covered toffee balls.

And they were all absolutely delicious! :D

White chocolate cupcakes with pink butter cream icing and pink sprinkles

I wasn't able to make any cupcakes this weekend as I was moving all my belongings from my old flat in Leeds to my new flat in Leicester. But it's been two weeks since I've made any and I missed my cupcake rush so much that I HAD to make some tonight.

These beauties were made with my classic vanilla mixture but once it came to spooning it into the cases I used two teaspoons of mixture instead of one tablespoon and I popped in a chunk of white chocolate between spoons. Small chocolate chips in a cupcake are nice but I love having one big chunk of chocolate in the middle, especially when they are still warm because the chunk is all gooey and yummy.

For the topping I made some butter cream icing (equal parts margarine and icing sugar) with pink natural colouring. I used a zip lock bag with a small hole in one corner to pipe out the butter cream in a swirl. Some of them look a bit gooey because I was cooking dinner at the same time and it was a bit warm in the kitchen!

My friend, Carrie was over so she helped me decorate them with my massive pink sprinkle collection; pink stars, white hearts, pink sparkling sugars and sugar balls :D