Pacman Cupcakes - Happy Birthday Janeo!

Jane gave me total freedom to choose the theme of her birthday cake - so I picked Pacman!

I had seen some cakes similar to this on another cake blog (can't find the link now to give them credit, or else I'd post it!) so thought I'd have a bash. Sadly my black food colour doesn't go as black as I'd like so the colour contrast isn't as good as I wanted, but they still came out ok. These join my Mario cake as part of the Ridiculous Cakes Gaming Series: http://ridiculouscakes.blogspot.com/2011/04/hey-maaario.html !

Penguin Flavour Cake Pops

I have wanted to have a bash at making cake pops for a while now, so decided to try yesterday as I had the whole evening free and a charity bake sale on Saturday to bake for. I made penguins, inspired by my trip to London Zoo Lates last month!

I found a recipe on BBC Food, and in a bowl combined cake, melted dark chocolate, mixed nuts and some dessicated coconut. Then I rolled the mix into balls, stuck lolly sticks in, placed them on a baking tray and stuck them in the fridge for an hour to cool. While they were chilling, I melted white chocolate and then added enough black food colour to make it a penguin-y grey colour. Then I took the cake pops out the fridge, dunked them in the chocolate, used a spatula to smooth out the surface and then let them set before adding detail.

I used uncoloured melted white chocolate for the penguin belly, then I coloured a block of sugarpaste orange to make the beak and feet. The eyes are white sugarpaste with lids and eyes drawn on with my new food colour pen I got from Jane Asher - it's awesome!!

Unfortunately, I think I made the cake pops a bit big, as LOADS of them fell off when I dunked! So I have ended up with about 12 pops, and then a small army of penguin cake balls which still look fine, they're just not pops.

So cute!

Dance magic dance!

After the success of Hayl's Jaws cake last year, her birthday cake this year had to be even better! She asked for a Labyrinth cake.

I've never seen it, but know that people go crazy for David Bowie (and his slightly-inappropriate-for-a-kids'-film bulging leggings) and the goblins and the baby and the topsy-turvy stairs and all that jazz, so after a few Youtube vids and Google image searches I created an homage to the Goblin King in baked form...

I made a white chocolate mud cake and then covered it in a caramel ganache made of dulce du leche and white chocolate. I then put halved strawberries around the edge to balance out all the sugary-ness of the topping!

The ganache made the cake SO SLIPPERY, but I made Bowie's face on a piece of greaseproof paper out of sugarpaste - coloured with chestnut for the hair and a mix of red and yellow to make the face - and then added detail with my black icing pen and some bits of fleshy colour sugar paste for the nose and lips. Then I placed the face on top of the caramel topping.

I made Bowie's orb from grey sugarpaste, then added clock numbers (1-13!) around the edge. Finally, I used my black icing pen to make some topsy-turvy stair type patterns in the background, and a Bowie Labyrinth quote from some card and a cocktail stick. Easy!

My new star cutters...

...are awesome.

I made these to take to Daz's birthday bbq, for anyone who didn't fancy a bit of the boobs cake. I made vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing, then used my star cutters to make a load of different sized star decorations. I finished them off with a sprinkle of turquoise colour glitter.

(T)it's your birthday...

Darren Smith wanted an obscene birthday cake. I refused, but as a compromise agreed to construct him some boobs out of sponge...

I baked a square sponge and then two muffins, which I placed top down on the bottom of the square. Then I used my sharp knife to narrow the top of the square and make it more 'chesty'. I mixed red and yellow food colour to make a fleshy pink, coloured a big handful of roll out icing and covered the whole cake. I then coloured a strip in hot pink which I cut into a bra shape and stuck on with jam. The black polka dot detail is buttercream and was piped on afterwards with an icing bag...

And I stuck a little bow on too, just for fun! The nipples are just sugar paste, cut into circles and textured with the end of a cocktail stick. I finished it off by writing a lovely birthday message to Daz across the chest...nice.

Not quite so ridiculous cakes...

I went to a cupcake decorating class at the Cocoa Box in Hampstead on Saturday, and the lovely (and very skillful!) teachers taught me how to make pretty cupcakes!

My buttercream piping skills need a bit of work, but at least I know how to do it now, and I've learnt how to fill an icing bag properly which was a long overdue lesson! Hopefully next time I ice I won't get it all up my elbows and 80% of it outside the bag...

The cakes were already baked (three vanilla, three chocolate) and then we had cream cheese icing, fondant and strawberry buttercream, plus bowls of sprinkles, glitter and sweets to play with.  My favourite design they taught was the cupcake on a cupcake...and my little piggy!

Oink oink.

The class was really fun, recommended! http://www.thecocoabox.co.uk/ Maybe I'll start making sensible cute cupcakes for birthdays now instead of epic 3D ones? (Although I do have a 3D one in the pipline for Windor's birthday that is going to be quite special...think Lionel Richie's 'Hello' video. Pics will be up for that one early August!)

The Tin Lizzy

For her Ruby Wedding anniversay party, my auntie wanted a cake replica of her boat, Tin Lizzy:

So I made one!

I started with a square sponge on a cake board which I covered in blue roll-out icing. I used some surplus bits of icing for the waves, and then used white butter cream icing for wave foam on the crests and around the front of the boat. I used blue buttercream in my icing gun to detail around the base.

For the boat, I baked another square sponge and cut out the shape with a very sharp knife, then covered it in white icing, and a layer of red icing underneath. I used white buttercream to detail the edges, and then grey buttercream to fill in the deck, which I then covered in sugar sprinkles.

The figures of my uncle and auntie are just sugar paste, coloured and moulded into the right shapes, although they came out a bit too pink! Getting too much sun on the boat clearly.

Finally, the sail is just two cookie sticks taped together for the mast (I have no idea what one would use a cookie stick for? I just found them at the Jane Asher shop!) and then rice paper. Easy peasy.