Chocolate Fondant Roses

It was my birthday at the weekend. The sun shone all weekend so we were out and about quite a lot taking advantage of the good weather. My friend made me a gorgeous lemon and limoncello cake and I got very spoilt with an array of lovely gifts.

I like to include those around me in my celebrations, including my work mates.  I decided they needed some good chocolate cupcakes in their lives! What better excuse to do a little decorating while I was at it to really pretty them up?!

12 indulgent cupcakes!

As you know I am not expert when it comes to decorating cakes and have had some major fails in my time! It doesn't stop me having a go and I have made roses plenty of times. I use petal cutters as I've had them for years, so have no experience with the all in one cutters you see a lot in the shops.

Here's what I used:-

Ready made fondant, edible glitter, petal cutters, leaf cutter, foam pads and shaping tools.

I start out rolling the fondant as thin as I can, then cut out a selection of petal sizes. For these cupcakes I chose not to use the largest cutter.

I then took a small piece of fondant and shaped it into a cone. This is used to wrap the petals around.

I then take the smallest petals and begin shaping and thinning further with a ball tool. I like to use the sponge as when the petals bounce back it gives them some extra shape. I then took these smallest petals and wrapped them closely around the cone.

I then go up to the next size, shape again, then start to wrap more loosely around the rose bud. I always find that the base can get quite elongated so I kept the original cone shapes as small as possible.

By thinning the petals they fall more naturally round the base.

I made some leaves out of teal fondant, and covered these with some edible glitter. I have a problem with glitter, I can't seem to stay away from it!

I swirled the cupcakes with a generous amount of frosting and placed a rose in the centre of each with a couple of leaves. Simple yet so pretty!

 I love the combination of teal, chocolate and pink!

Have a great weekend!

Apple Cinnamon Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Frosting

I got my first true feeling that Autumn had arrived this week. I stepped out of my house to pick up my son from school, and the air had that crispness in it that always arrives in September. Even though it was a pleasantly warm afternoon, there was that Autumn 'feeling' that I get around the time school starts.

We have 2 apple and 1 pear tree in our garden. The apples start to fall pretty early on and it's very frustrating when you come out of a morning and find them all around with wasps in them!  That's not to say I don't get a bumper crop out of the ones still on the tree however!

Apples are the fruit of the season so what better time than to share my Apple Cinnamon cupcakes. 

 

They are topped with a very sweet salted caramel frosting. This is the frosting I used to decorate my son's cake. The left over frosting was the perfect complement in taste and colour!

Choc full of apples!

Cinnamon is a must when making apple desserts. In this recipe I have used cinnamon extract. You can of course use ground cinnamon, but I wanted quite an intense flavour, so opted for the extract.

Apple Cinnamon Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Frosting

Makes 12

Ingredients

1 apple, peeled and finely chopped

1 tbs butter

120g plain flour

70g light brown sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

40g butter

120 ml milk (I used semi skimmed)

1 egg

1/2 tsp cinnamon extract or 1tsp ground cinnamon

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180'C (350'F) and line a cupcake tray with 12 cupcake liners.

2. Peel and chop the apple discarding the core. Take your tablespoon of butter and melt over a low heat in a small pan. Once melted, add the chopped apple and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Give the apples an occasional stir. Take off the heat to cool slightly.

3. Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter until everything is combined. The mixture should look a little sandy.

4. Add the egg and milk and mix until just combined. Then add the extract.

5. Add the apples and fold in to disperse.

6. Fill your liners with the batter (about half way to 3/4) and bake for 20 minutes. The cakes should be golden brown and when tested with a toothpick, it should come out clean. Leave to cool on a rack.

You can frost these with anything from cream cheese, vanilla, brown sugar etc. The caramel frosting I used is incredibly sweet so just a light spread on top is enough.

The frosting was made with a combination of Trex, icing sugar, tinned caramel and sea salt. To frost 12 cupcakes you would need :-

1/2 cup Trex

250g icing sugar

A small tin of caramel

1 tsp of sea salt or more to taste.

This is just an approximate as I was using left over frosting which had been made in a larger quantity.

The apples provide a nice moist texture combined with a light fluffy cake.

I hope you try these and let me know what you think!

Have a great weekend!

Fondant Guitar and a Happy Birthday!

After a couple of busy weeks I am back to blogging.  The summer holidays were full of days out, lots of playing out for the young man, a birthday and a gorgeous break in Italy. I certainly didn't feel like doing much crafting and having a break from the blog was just what I needed to recharge. I hope to have plenty of fun craft ideas up over the course of the next few weeks.

During the holidays my son turned 10! 10! I still cannot get my head around that figure! This year he wanted a complete surprise for his birthday cake. Normally he picks a cake design and I theme his party around it. Now he is 10 he wanted to have a completely different celebration. He picked some of his closest friends and they went Go Karting followed by a meal out. 

One of his passions is guitar. He has been learning since he started Junior school, and this past Christmas we bought him an electric one. I had seen some great guitar cakes on Pinterest along with some helpful tutorials on how to make one out of fondant. I decided this was the way to go with his cake and thankfully it was the right choice! He totally loved his cake (design and taste!). Win win!

The guitar was pretty easy to make and I based the design on his electric one. I firstly took pictures of the guitar and amp. I then resized the guitar so that I could use the print out as a template.

I started with this tutorial as a guide and printed out 2 copies of the guitar.

I carefully cut out one of the guitars and just the white part of the other. These would serve as my templates for cutting out the fondant shapes.

I laid the full guitar on a piece of rolled black fondant, and using a craft knife, carefully cut around it.

I then did the same with the cut out portion of the guitar.

I then overlaid the pieces secured with a little clear alcohol.

It was then time to add the details. I used small pieces of fondant to shape the frets and buttons on the cake. I also took a small piece of light brown fondant and cut around to add the top of the handle.

I added another strip of black fondant to the handle to build it up. I took some silver edible paint and began adding the finer details. I also used an edible food writer to add the name of the guitar to the handle.

I left this to dry for 3 days. I also shaped the amp from a large piece of black fondant and left this to dry.

I made a caramel cake with salted caramel buttercream and frosted the cake smooth.

I didn't frost the cake to the bottom as I was adding lots of extra buttercream to the sides due to the design! This cake was seriously sweet!

I tinted the remaining frosting orange, yellow and red. I then striped this into a piping bag so that the colours would swirl together. Using a large star tip, I started piping 'flames' on the side of the cake. Using the Wilton method of flames I built this up over a few layers on the sides of the cake.

First row of flames.

Building up the flames.

I had seen some cakes on Pinterest which used fondant for the amp cable, spelling out a name or Happy Birthday. I placed the guitar and amp on the top of the cake, leaving room for the message.

I rolled out some black fondant into a thin sausage shape and started to add this to the cake as the cable.

I found I had to do this in stages as it kept breaking if too long and thin. It was easy to blend the pieces together so that it looked like one long cable.

Here you can see the cable is spelling out my son's name. I worked backwards from the guitar to the amp. To me this was easier!

Once that was done, I used buttercream and tip 1 to pipe the strings for the guitar. Not quite 6 but near enough!

The piped smaller flames around the top edge of the cake to complete the design.

Apart from the guitar, this is a very simplistic design.

The amp speaker was made using my craft knife to score the front of the fondant.

Tons of buttercream flames!

Today marks another birthday. It is a year today that I started this blog. Thank you to those of you who have followed my little piece of the internet. I love hearing from you! Here's to another year.

From left over Frosting to Hydrangea Cupcakes

I always make too mush frosting. I am constantly paranoid of running out while decorating a cake. This results in the top shelf of my fridge being devoted to tubs of different colours and flavours of frosting. Sometimes I get around to using it up and other times it goes too hard and has to be thrown away. Most of the time the latter is the case.

With my recent Chalkboard cake, I had a little left of each colour used along with some white vanilla frosting from a previous project before that.

It had crusted over so a good mix and a little water was needed to bring it back to life. I mixed the white frosting in with the purple and had plenty to make a batch of cupcakes with.

One of my earliest pins was this.

I discovered Glorious Treats from this one pin and I have been a fan ever since! If you haven't already seen Glory's blog, check it out here.

I have wanted to recreate these for a while. Here is my version of Glory's cupcakes.

I didn't blend my colours like Glory, however, I used the same tip for each colour so that there was a little transfer on a couple of the cupcakes. I used Wilton tip 129 and filled my bag half way with frosting. Using a 90' angle (straight up) I began by piping a flower in the middle.

I then piped a couple more either side of the first one, and continued around to the edge.

This can be a very random technique and you can over pipe.

I filled the whole top of the cupcake with flowers to achieve the look of a Hydrangea.

I did the same technique for each cupcake. This is so simple and quick. They would make a lovely gift for a Mum, Grandma or friend. Perfect for birthdays, Mother's Day, or just to say Thank you!

Beautiful and bright!

They look equally nice if they are all the same colour.

I hope you like these and have a go! Have a great weekend!