Dinosaur cupcakes!

These were made with my usual cupcake recipe, the same frosting as last time (dyed green with liquid green food colouring) and dinosaurs crafted out of ready-rolled coloured icing (:
To make the dinosaurs, I just rolled out pieces to the right shapes. I cut part of the head out and used thick white icing to fill it in (to make the teeth), then I used a sharp knife to create the zig-zap pattern. I used a small tube of black icing for the eyes (although, I later realised using an edible black pen would probably work better). The pieces were stuck together using water (:

(the other little red dinosaur you see is my boyfriend's creation xD :P)

Cupcakes

Decided to have a go at piping, so I made some cupcakes (using the usual recipe). I then found a recipe for vanilla frosting (which I'll post later when I have to book to hand).

I found the piping quite fun, although not all of it was very neat! I used a disposable plastic piping bag, and a star shaped nozzle. The frosting was yummy (:

The cakes altogether went down very well with my best friend and my boyfriend, so I'm counting them as a success!

Chocolate cake

I saw this posted on a form and it looked so good that I had to try making it!
Here's the recipe and instructions (:

Cake ingredients:
1 ½ cups plain flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2/3 cups sour cream
1 ½ sticks of softened butter (200g sticks)
1/3 cup cocoa
2 eggs

Icing ingredients:

6 ounces dark chocolate
¾ stick butter
1 tablespoon corn syrup/golden syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup sour cream
2 ½ cups icing sugar

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 Farehneit
Put all the ingredients for the cake into a food processor and blend
Pour into two 8 inch round cake tins and bake for half an hour or until cooked through
Cool slightly in the tins then transfer to wire cooling rack to until cold.

When the cake is cold, you can make the icing:

• Melt the butter and chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water.
• Allow to cool slightly and add the golden syrup and sour cream, stir well
• Put roughly a third of the icing onto one of the cakes and spread until about half an inch from the edge then place the other cake on top.
• Take another third of the icing and spread it over the top of the cake
• Coat the sides of the cake with the remaining third of the icing using a palette knife.

It turned out ok, tasted amazing, but the icing was very runny compared to what it should've been like. Will definitely try it again though!

More birthday cupcakes!

These were made for my boyfriend's 20th.

I used the usual recipe, but this time I split the mixture into 4 separate bowls and added different food colouring to each bowl.

I made 4 of each colour

They were then decorated with icing, fondant, sprinkles and cute little animals I bought from a supermarket (:

My favourite:

(:

Birthday cupcakes

These were made for a friend of mine for his 24th.

They were made using the recipe I usually use for cupcakes, as written earlier in the blog. I used my heart-shaped cases, but had to make several batches as I only have 6 cases! Once cooked, I made 4 different colours of icing (just from powder and water) and decorated (:



The extra cakes were made into smiley faces ^_^ and given to other friends.

18th cake

This was a cake I made for my ex's birthday. It used the same recipe and idea as for my own cake, just with different colours and it only had 2 tiers. I also had to cut the stars out by hand with a knife as I gave the star cutters I used for my cake back to my aunty!

Pokemon cookies

This was a Valentine's day present for my ex. I decided to make lots of pokemon cookies (:
This started by collecting, resizing, printing and cutting out pictures of various pokemon.

I made the dough using the same recipe as I did for the Christmas cookies. I then placed the pokemon pictures on top of the rolled out dough and used a knife to cut around them. The chocolate chips tended to get in the way of trying to cut the shapes out! But other than that, it wasn't too difficult.

Once cooked, I used to pictures to help me decorate the cookies to look like the pokemon. I used icing powder and water to make icing as well as using tubes of icing for the smaller details.

Cupcakes

Some cupcakes I made for my ex in January.
I used a recipe out of the Olive magazine '101 brilliant baking ideas' book, bought for me by a friend (:
125g of butter

125g of golden caster sugar

2 eggs

225g of plain flour

1 teaspoon of baking powder

100ml of milk

I used heart-shaped silicone cupcake cases, a present I got for Christmas from my parents (:
And then decorated the cupcakes with icing, fondant, chocolate and marshmallows.

I also made him a cookie monster cupcake. This was made with the same recipe, placed in a normal shaped case. Once cooked, I cut a hole in it and placed a cookie in there. The cake fell apart slightly because of this, which involved using a lot of blue icing to fix! I used marshmallows as the eyes (:

Christmas cookies

Me and my ex made some chocolate chip cookies for Christmas last year (:
Used a recipe found in the same book as the one for my birthday cake:

125g of butter

50g of caster sugar

1 egg

150g of self-raising four

As much chocolate chips as desired ;)

I found some Christmas cookie cutters at a local shop, so we cut the dough out using these.

After cooked, we used tubes of icing and Christmas sprinkles, that I got as a present from a friend for Christmas the year before, to decorate.

My 18th cake

My love for baking mostly started when I decided to make my own cake for my 18th birthday last year.
I looked around the internet for ideas and decided to make a 3 tiered cake with different coloured fondant on the different cakes and cut out fondant shapes to decorate.

I made 3 separate cakes with a simple victoria sandwich cake recipe that I found in one of my mum's old cookbooks:

125g of butter
125g of caster sugar

2 eggs

125g of self-raising flour

1 tablespoon of hot water

This recipe makes 2 layers, which are then sandwiched together with buttercream and strawberry jam, yum (: so I repeated this another 2 times.

I used different 3 different sized tins so that the cakes would be different sizes and look better when placed on top of each other.

I then rolled out my fondant icing and cut some of it into a circle for the top half of the cake, and some into a strip, to go around the edge of the cake. I mixed some apricot jam with hot water and used a brush to put some on the fondant, this helped it stick to the cake.

I did the same with the next 2 cakes, and then used cutters to cut shapes out of the fondant icing.

Once decorated, I placed the cakes on top of each other and decorated more with icing flowers that I'd bought and lots of other decorations (:

My first post!
This is a blog to keep track of all my baking adventures (:
I started baking about a year ago, so I'm going to post everything I've made so far and any future ones as well.