St Patrick's Day Cupcakes! - with step by step instructions

When I said in my last post that I had been creative last night I was not joking, as I also made some St Patrick's Day Cupcakes!

I saw a version of these online and decided that I wanted to try and make my own! I decided that my actual cupcake should be brown in colour, so I searched for a tasty looking cupcake recipe and found this one on the BBC Good Food website.

I knew I didn't need their topping as I was going to do my own. So here are the ingredients that I used and that you will need!

• 200g butter
• 200g plain chocolate (under 70% cocoa solids is fine)
• 200g light, soft brown sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 250g self raising flour
• Vanilla Buttercream 
• Green food colouring
• Candy rainbow belts
• Marshmallows 

For the Vanilla Buttercream you can make your own (I promise to make some myself soon and show you how, as I learnt how to do this on my course!) but I had some Betty Crocker buttercream so I just used that. Also, I use gel food coloring which I buy from here as it's much better than the liquid stuff and lasts a million times longer.

As per the instructions in the recipe, I set my oven to gas 3 (160C/140C fan) and then lined a 12 hole muffin tin with cases. In the comments under the recipe lots of people had said that the mixture I was about to make would easily fill more than 12 cases, so I also put 2 cases in 2 ramekin's.

Then I melted the butter, chocolate, sugar and 100ml of hot water together in a saucepan, stirring occasionally.

You are supposed to let the mixture cool down a bit before you add the beaten eggs, but I rushed it and my eggs started to cook in my mixture! Ooops! But it turned out fine. You should, however, wait for the mixture to cool slightly, then add the eggs and the vanilla.

Next, I put the flour into a large mixing bowl and stirred in the chocolate mixture until it was smooth.

Then I spooned the mixture into the cases. On advice from the comments from the BBC Good Food website I used a ladle to get the mixture into the cases so that I did not make a huge mess! As you can see I easily filled all 14 of my cases.

You now need to leave them alone for 5 mins before you put them in the oven. Which is exactly what I did. The recipe says to bake for 20-22 mins on a low shelf, however I found I had to bake mine for nearly 30 mins. Once baked I left them to cook on a wire rack.

Next, I made my buttercream green using the food colouring!

Then I iced each of my cupcakes. (Sorry, the pic is a bit dark!) I did this using a palette knife, but I'm sure the back of a spoon would work just as well!

Now I cut up my candy rainbow belts so that I had a nice sized strip for each cake.

And I cut up the marshmallows. I ended up cutting a 'large' marshamallow in half, and then I split those halves into quarters, so that I would have 4 pieces for the bottom of each rainbow. I had to put some icing sugar down on my board as it was getting very sticky to cut them!

Then I stuck the rainbow into the icing, and then put the marshmallow round the bottom of each rainbow stem.

And then I was finished!

I just hope everyone enjoys them now! Hehe! :-)

Totoro Rice Krispie cakes! - with step by step instructions

Hello Cake Friends!


I got really creative last night and made some of these amazingly cute rice krispie Totoro cakes! I'm not sure that you can technically call them cakes, as there is not cake in them, but they are sweet and amazing none the less!

Below is how I made them!

I actually saw some of these on a different website, and had to have a go at making my own as they looked so cute! As you may know I have already made a Totoro cake for a friend (which was the first cake I ever made!) and love all things Totoro! So these had to be tried!

On the Rice Krispie website they list the ingredients you need to make rice krispie squares, so I followed this and added a few more for the Totoro decoration! 

So here is what you will need:

• 45g butter or margarine
• 300g marshmallows
• 180g rice krispies
• 200g dark chocolate
• white chocolate drops

I actually used sainsburys own rice pops as they are a bit cheaper! And I used their pink and white sugar free marshmallows to try and help with the calorie count!

You start by melting the butter in a large saucepan

I weighed out the rice pops and marshmallows

Once the butter is melted you need to add the marshmallows and keep stirring until they have melted

Next add the rice pops in and keep stirring. The rice pops will be tough to stir in at first, but keep going with a low heat to help the rice pops blend into the marshmallow

Now you need to take a bit of mixture and make little Totoro shapes with your hands. BE CAREFUL! The mixture is hot and really sticky so it's hard to handle. The best thing to do is cover your hands in cold water before making each one. This stops the mixture sticking to your hands and helps with the heat.

Now you need to melt the dark chocolate. I did this by boiling some water in a pan and putting a glass dish over the pan, and melting the chocolate in that. (Sorry the picture is not great!)

Now you need to dip your Totoro's into the chocolate, only I found this really difficult (I nearly lost a Totoro into the sticky chocolate!) so I actually used a small spoon and dribbled chocolate where I wanted and smoothed it around using the back of the spoon.

Now you need to add two white chocolate drops onto each for the eyes! You need the drops (not buttons) so that you can push the pointed end into the chocolate

Now you need to add pupils! I used the end of a cake pop stick, dipped it in chocolate and then 'painted' a pupil on each eye, although you could use a cocktail stick or something else small!

And here are the finished Totoro's!

These were fun to make! When I first made the Totoro shapes I was worried they were not going to look that great, but as soon as I had finished the eyes I was really happy with them! They just look so cute! Hehe!

Have fun making your own! :-)

Mother's Day Cake

Hello Cake Friends!


I had a go at making a cake for Mother's Day last year and thought I should finally add a blog post for it as it's nearly Mother's Day again!


I wanted to have a go at making sugarpaste flowers as they look so pretty, but I had no idea where to start. (As you will have seen from my cake making lesson I have more of an idea now, and promise to do a step-by-step post soon!)


So I bought a 32 Piece Flower Making Set from this website: http://www.cakescookiesandcraftsshop.co.uk/acatalog/Sugarcraft-Flower-Making-Set.html


I also bought some floral wire, flower stamens and some flower paste from the same website. The floral wire you need to make the stems of the flowers, the stamens make the centre of some flowers. Flower paste dries a lot harder than normal sugarpaste and so is much better for making flowers.


Here is the cake!

I can tell you that although it doesn't look like there are loads of flowers, this took me hours!!! I definitely need more practice to get quicker and better at making them, but I was really quite happy with the results! 

And so was my husbands Mother that the cake was given to! :-)

Charlie Chaplin Cake!

My husbands sister adores Charlie Chaplin! She knows all about him and can watch like 2 seconds of one of his movies and tell you which one it is, the year it was made and all sorts of other facts! So for her birthday I had to do her a Charlie Chaplin cake.


I decided straight away that I would make it look classic in just black and white, and as she was having a party I knew it needed to be big. So I started with a 12" square cake (which I filled with buttercream) and covered it with white sugarpaste.


Then I printed off a picture of Charlie, and stuck it onto cardboard. I rolled out some black sugarpaste and then, using my template, cut out the pieces. 


Then I put them onto the top of the cake, and finished off the other details (hair, face and cane!) with black icing. I was pretty happy with the results, and so was my husbands sister! In fact, she didn't want to eat it! Lol!

First ever cake course - the results!

As I said the other day, my friend and I booked a cake decorating course which we went to on Saturday. It was my first ever course so I was pretty excited, even though it meant waking up pretty early on a Saturday as the course started at 9am!


It was at The Cake Embassy in Battersea, and I really enjoyed myself! Although I have made quite a few cakes myself, I learnt some great techniques and picked up some useful tips which I know will help me in the future. I will definitely be sharing these with you as I make and decorate more cakes!


So here are some pics! We cut the cake to put buttercream inside, and then dyed our buttercream and used some to cover the outside. This is something I had never done properly before as I usually then cover my cake with sugarpaste (rolled fondant) rather then having a buttercream covering. We then swapped colours with someone else to practice writing, and then made some sugarpaste roses.

I know, it's not the prettiest cake in the world!! But as I say I picked up some useful skills, and I wasn't really trying to make a cake to impress. 


Oh, it tasted amazing by the way! :-)

Unicorn Cake! - with step by step instructions

UPDATE! I have now started my own cake making company! Please visit my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/CustomCakeStudio and give it a like! :-)

This cake I made for a friend's birthday, and I remembered to take good step by step pictures to show you how it was made.

I printed a picture of a Unicorn head so that I would have a template to work with.

I baked 2, 12 x 6 inch madeira cakes.

Then I cut these in half so that I could add a layer of chocolate buttercream.

I cut out my Unicorn head and stuck it onto card (a cereal box), then laid both cakes next to each other and put the Unicorn template on top.

I cut around the template.

Then I transferred the pieces to a cake board. As you can see I had a bit of a 'gap' in between the cakes (where the edges had bevelled) so I filled this with cut offs of cake and helped stick it in with buttercream.

Next I gave the Unicorn a cheek bone out of rice krispie treats, and carved and eye hole and nose hole.

Then i covered the whole thing in vanilla buttercream.

Next I rolled out a big sheet of white fondant and covered the whole cake. I made sure that I pressed into where the eye and nose holes were, and moulded the fondant around the cheekbone.

Twisting two long strips of fondant together I made the horn.

This I painted gold using edible gold paint. 

Next I rolled out strips of coloured fondant to make a rainbow mane. I added these to the top of the head, leaving a gap around the ear, and to the neck.

Then I added edible sparkles in the same colours as the fondant.

Finally I put a small ball of fondant into the eye socket, and gave the eye, nose and mouth some detail using black gel colouring which I painted on with a brush. Then I cleaned up the cake board with a bit of water and kitchen roll.

This is the final result!

Tom Lewis and Soot Sprite Cake!

UPDATE! I have now started my own cake making company! Please visit my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/CustomCakeStudio and give it a like! :-)

I don't know if you have heard of the artist Tom Lewis? I LOVE his work and so do some of my friends. You should check him out at his website: http://www.tomlewis.co.uk/

Anyway, for my friends birthday I made her a cake inspired by Tom's painting, 'The Legend of Kokucho Meadow'. I also added soot sprites from the Studio Ghibli films! And the writing is my friends name and 'Happy Birthday' in Japanese. (Well, I looked it up on the internet so I really hope that's what it says!)

Sorry the quality of the photo isn't brilliant, it was taken on an iphone and then cropped! I cant believe I didn't take a better picture, I will have to see if someone else did!

13,000 Calorie Chocolate Pasty!

Have you ever watched Epic Meal Time on youtube? If not I suggest you check these guys out as they make some of the most insane food ever! http://www.youtube.com/user/EpicMealTime


Some of it looks disgusting, a lot of it looks delicious! And if nothing else it is inspiring, and that's what gave us (me, my husband, my brother and some friends) the idea to make the 13,000 Calorie Chocolate Pasty!


FYI, we didn't know it was going to be 13,000 calories until we had made it! That is the total sum of all the ingredients! And we called it a pasty as that's quite British! Rather than all the American things the Epic Meal Time guys make!


This is how we made it!

Step 1: We bought lots of chocolate, and cookie dough. (The butter in the picture was for making the cookie dough!)

Step 2: We made up the cookie dough and quickly realised there was not going to be enough. We still had white chocolate chips to add!! 

Step 3: We went to the local shop and bought 4 more packs! Finally we felt we had enough!

Step 4: So we added the white chocolate chips.

Step 5: We rolled out one ball of dough into a baking tray.

Step 6: And then added Morrison's own brand twix bars.

Step 7: Marshmallow

Step 8: Rice Krispie Squares (cut in half) and white chocolate buttons

Step 9: Mini Mars bars and M&S Vanilla Fudge bars (cut in half). More marshmallow.

Step 10: A layer of curly wurly's

Step 11: We then added the other cookie dough ball, which we rolled out and then added in quarters, as this seemed the easiest way to get it on!

Step 12: Look how high it is!

Step 13: We couldn't resist adding a smiling face in buttons!

Step 14: Then we baked it! On a lower setting than the cookie dough recommended, and for longer, making sure we kept an eye on it!

Step 15: All baked! And it would be rude not to add in cookie dough ice cream as well!

Step 16: The first cut!

Unlike the guys at Epic Meal Time we did not demolish this in one sitting. We split half of it between 7 of us! It was sooooo good! But also gave us all a sugar headache about 45mins later! We still went back for more though!

Not recommended if you are on a diet! Unless you have plenty of people to share it with! :-)