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.

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.

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.