My parents came up for the day yesterday. Originally myself and the boyfriend were going to go and visit them for a long weekend buuutttt I ended up treating myself to a car!! Yep I couldn't cope with the Honda any longer..I tried for three horrendous months to get to grips with it but I just didnt feel happy driving it..so I sold it and have now bought a lovely brand new shiny white c1...I love it! The car garage was quite a way from our house so my parents offered to come to see us and to drop us off at the car garage to pick the new car up...very helpful indeed! Well I survived the drive back home...it was nerve wracking driving a brand new car down the motor way for the first time..I'd been worrying all week! But I've been out in it a couple of times since and am really enjoying driving it...hooray!
Anyway back to cupcakes! I normally use Rachel Allen's recipe for lemon cupcakes but as I was so impressed with the vanilla cupcake recipe from the Love Bakery book, I thought I would try their lemon cupcake recipe as well..I think the quantities are quite similar anyway. It produced lovely fluffy and moist cupcakes which I then decorated with the Rachel Allen recipe for lemon butter cream. I spent most of my evenings last week making all the little flowers and butterflies and had many occasions where I had to explain to people why my hands were bright purple in colour! I love the finished cakes though and think the purple works really well. My Mum was very impressed and insisted my Dad took lots of pics for her before she ate any!
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Your mum must have been so pleased with these - they look beautiful. So impressed with your hand crafted flowers
ReplyDeleteThese look absolutely glorious- I'm sure your Mum must have been chuffed to pieces to be presented with such pretty cupcakes! The flowers must have taken yonks- any tips?!
ReplyDeleteLucky mum and happy birthday to her:) Cupcakes look so pretty:)
ReplyDeleteThose are so pretty! I love lemon...
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Your cupcakes are so pretty, I really need to try making sugarpaste decorations. My only problem is that I get impatient and just want to eat the cake! By the way, your chocolate cake in your last post looks absolutely fantastic!
ReplyDeleteThese look beautiful! I bought some fondant icing cutters recently but they are a lot smaller so I think I'll get some bigger ones and moulds. They have a much more dramatic effect. Any recommendations on where to get cutters or moulds from or did you make the flowers by hand? Thanks
ReplyDeletewow these are so pretty!
ReplyDeleteNom!
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Thank you everyone for your comments :) i spoke to my mum this week who said that for about 3 days she had a cupcake every night for her dessert..how cute!
ReplyDeleteMhmmmm...after reading your comments this week and seeing some of you asking for tips on making decorations I've been trying to think of what advice I can give you! I guess I can only really tell you what I've found works best for me....
I always make my flower decorations in advance..or else..like Jo has said in her comment I get impatient and want to just eat the cakes instead! I tend to bake at the weekend so normally during the week before will sit down and make decorations. This also gives them a good length of time to dry out and set hard.
I always use sugar flower paste - you can get this from all good cake decorating shops. It sets solid (unlike fondant which will always be a little soft). This is vital as it prolongs how long the decorations last on the cake, especially when using butter cream. The sugar flower paste does start to absorb the moisture from the butter cream (therefore making them go soft) so if you are making the cupcakes for a special occasions make sure you ice and decorate them as close to the occasion as possible to stop flowers/butterflies flopping...its not a good look!
If you are using shimmer dust my cake decorating teacher always advised to hold the decoration over the steam coming out of a kettle for a few seconds which apparently sets the dust onto the flower preventing if from dropping onto the cake...i never do this with decorations for cupcakes but its a good tip if you are doing decorations for fondant cakes!
The actual making of the decorations is relatively simple. I have got quite a selection of different cutters which I've built up over the last year. There are plenty of good websites that sell cutters/moulds/veiners but sometimes I prefer to go into a shop so I can see what I am buying. The staff in these shops are fantastic and very knowledgable about the products so dont be afraid to ask for advice! I always use food colouring paste which I think gives a better colour and also doesnt alter the consistancy of the flower paste like a liquid would.
All of the flowers on these cupcakes are made using cutters and veiners, not moulds. I use a small non stick board and rolling pin to roll out the flower paste and also use a very small amount of corn flour if the paste is sticking. Edible glue is also very useful to have..this is what I use to stick the centres into the flowers and also build up different layers of petals.
Sorry for the huuuge comment but i hope this helps!
xxx