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!

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!

Fondant Chalkboard Plaque

A couple of years back I suffered with Labyrinthitis. I had terrible bouts of vertigo and felt quite ill for a few weeks. Since then I haven't had any vertigo incidents but I do get the odd dizzy/spacey spell where I just don't feel myself. It affects how I move and I get a slight headache. Sometimes it is down to just not getting enough sleep. Other times it is a complete mystery, especially when I have felt fine and dandy the day before.

Today is one of those days of feeling spacey.  I look around and my vision feels off and I occasionally stumble. It is not fun at all so I've had a nice long rest and now getting back into the tasks of the day. First things first is to share the rest of the cake I made for my friends birthday.

As I said in my previous post, I just love the chalkboard inspired crafts that have popped up everywhere. I didn't want to cover the cake completely in fondant so opted for a fondant chalkboard plaque surrounded by fondant and buttercream details.

I use Pic Monkey a lot for editing my pictures and for creating new designs. I purchased the Royal version and it is really worth the money. I created a plaque design using their label overlay tool and fonts. I fiddled with the size for printing in Picasa and produced a design I could use as a template and for copying.

I laid the shape over some rolled out fondant so that I could cut the design neatly.

I then took a large brush and some icing sugar and began dusting the plaque. I loaded the brush with icing sugar and flicked this over the plaque as well as brushing parts with icing sugar. I built this up slowly. Quite frankly after the cake was finished I believe even more sugar could have been applied.

I had some white pearl paint, and with a small brush I began to draw an outline around the edge of the plaque. After I did this part I attached the plaque to the cake to continue the design.

I had iced the cake the day before and popped it in the fridge so that it would be easy to work with the next day.

It's not a super smooth finish but the picture makes it look worse than it actually did in real life!

I attached the plaque with some fresh frosting which I spread over the side of the cake.

I then continued to paint the design freehand on the side of the cake. I tried to brush gentle strokes to make it look more like chalk on a board.

In the light you can see the pearl effect but up close it looked more flat.

I then began to attach the flowers to the cake. I secured them with a little frosting on the back.

I liked over laying the flowers and bringing them onto the plaque.

The large flowers were a little tricky but to stayed put!

I built up the design on top of the cake starting with my large hydrangea look flower ball.

I added buttercream leaves to the flowers for a more realistic affect and to fill in the gaps between the flowers.

I had intended to leave the back of the cake plain but I just can't leave things alone! In this case I think adding the flower border was just right. I used a flower tip and piped lilac flowers at the base and edge of the cake. I left them plain rather than adding middles to keep things simple.

Here you can see how much the border blends in with the rest of the cake. It ended up being so feminine and pretty, I just loved it. That is rare for me to say that about my own cakes!

Have you made any chalkboard art? Share on my Facebook page!

Have a great weekend!