Decorating cupcakes

I spent a lovely Sunday afternoon learning how to decorate cupcakes with buttercream.

We started by making the buttercream; the tutor recommended President unsalted butter as it is much whiter than other butters (especially the supermarket budget butters which are very yellow) and she then creamed it in the mixer using the whisk attachment (rather than the beater) until it was very light and creamy (three to four minutes). She then added the icing sugar and a tablespoon of milk until it was the required consistency. At this point you would add any flavouring you might like.

We then learnt how to create classic swirls, rose swirls, zig-zags, plain swirls, bathing cap, iced gem, grass, dahlia top and piped rose top, plus a few others that I don't think I would ever use. Some I managed better than others but found the classic and rose swirls relatively easy to do and very pleasing to look at.

We started by using an open star nozzle and found that the smaller of the three sizes we tried created the best look. The classic swirl starts at the outside and swirls into the middle, giving it a slightly higher middle. The rose swirl is the opposite, so starts in the middle and swirls to the outside. We tried piping these with mixed colours of buttercream in the piping bag and the outcome was really pretty.

Still using the open star nozzle, the zig-zag starts at one side of the cupcake and, obviously, zigs and zags across the cake, whilst the plain swirl uses a plain nozzle. These were less pleasing to look at although the swirl that went from the outside into the middle could possibly be used to look like a swirly ice cream if you piled it high enough. Sadly I felt the one that went from the middle to the outside was reminiscent of something a dog might do, so I don't imagine I will be finding an occasion to use this style!!

The bathing cap is lots of piped flowers (like the old-fashioned flowery bathing caps) and to make it look good you need to pipe this like a clock - 12, 6, 3 and 9 o'clock, then fill the gaps in between and finally pipe one into the middle. This looks very effective if the flowers are piped in alternate colours.

The iced gem is a swirl (like a doughnut) on the outside of the cupcake and a big flower piped into the middle. Again this looks good done in two different colours.

We used a specific grass nozzle for the grass (a flat ended nozzle with small holes in it so the icing comes out in individual strands). This took a bit of practice - too long and it looked like seaweed and too short and it 'melted' into one blob. I also think the buttercream was very soft by this point and it would possibly be easier if it had been a little firmer - the individual 'blades' of grass would have held their shape much better. But I think it still looked effective (see the photo below).

The dahlia top was perhaps the one I struggled with most. Using a petal nozzle you pipe little horseshoe shapes around the outside of the cupcake, then a second layer slightly in from that and a third layer in the middle. Again the buttercream was very soft by now and with a bit more practice and firmer buttercream I might be able to do a better job than I did on the day.

Finally, we tried piped rose tops. This is very hard to do directly onto the cupcake as you can't spin the cake quickly enough to get a tightly piped rose so we tried it on flower nails which made it much easier (a flower nail is a round flat top on a long nail type handle that you can spin between your thumb and forefinger). Again the icing was very soft but I enjoyed having a go at these and the outcome was really pretty, even for my first few attempts. There is a great YouTube video on how to do this (http://youtu.be/h5SDR2EpmRw) and I will definitely be referring to that when I have another go.

We then spent a bit of time making decorations out of fondant icing and then we decorated our six cupcakes.

I piped a rose swirl on one cake and added a few fondant flowers and some sparkle ...

I piped grass and added a couple of toadstools for one cake (this will work well for Sophie's fairy party in March) ...

I piped a zig-zag on one cake and then finished off with chocolate drizzles in milk and white chocolate, plus a few sparkles. My two year old son decided this was the cake for him and cried every time anyone moved it from the plate in front of him! ...

I piped chocolate buttercream in a classic swirl then topped with a fondant sash (made using my new clay gun - yippee) and coloured rice sweets which I then sprayed with edible gold lustre - very decadent looking, although some of the tassels broke off on the way home ...

And finally I used my piped rose tops on two of the cakes ...

Looking forward to creating some masterpieces for Sophie's party and also using some of these new skills for the school cake sale. Standards are getting higher and higher so there's pressure on me to create some marvellous masterpieces (he he).

© 2011 Nicola Noble

Card time

I have been making a few cards recently and I am really pleased with how they came out.

The first card was for a friend's little boy who turned one. I created a simple 1 card for another friend's daughter last year and I loved the design so much that I decided to do a boy version. I was planning to do it in blue but didn't have any blue buttons; I think the green worked much better.

I bought some new cutters for my Sizzix die-cutter recently (I have been so good for so long in resisting) and have been itching to use them so a couple of imminent birthdays gave me opportunity. One of the cutters is two cute presents and I cut out a selection in black and white, silver and bright pink. I then dressed the presents with toning shades of paper, ribbon and stick on pearls and rhinestones and stacked them on a long thing card.

The other cutter is a dragonfly. I bought this as part of the fairy party plans for Sophie's fifth birthday in March (plans in progress to do an activity table where the children get to cut out their own dragonfly and stick it to a mini peg with a magnet on the back - happy to receive any other suggestions as to what I could do with the dragonfly/ pegs). I made two cards with this using a corrugated black background onto which I stuck the cut dragonfly and the silhouette. I like the outcome and think they make good cards for men. I love the dragonfly cutter and think it will work just as nicely in pastels for the ladies - watch this space ...

© 2011 Nicola Noble

A monster of a birthday

It was Justin's second birthday yesterday. Early Learning Centre have a cute range of monster party things including table cloth, plates, napkins, cups, party bags and invitations and this provided the inspiration for a monster themed party.

The cake (or rather cakes) were individual monsters and each one was unique. I baked a rectangular victoria sponge and then cut it into 12 pieces (these were meant to be the same size but it didn't quite turn out like that). I used six different colours of fondant icing - blue, red, green, yellow, orange and purple - and iced two cakes in each colour (over buttercream icing). Then the fun part was creating individual characters and it was great to let my imagination run free. The cakes were then placed onto a covered board; I used white so as not to detract from the bold colours of the monsters, with a matching blue ribbon around the edge. I made the antenna by covering uncooked spaghetti (a tip I learned from my cake decoration course) and it was great to use lots of the cake decorating bits I was given for Christmas. Having the right equipment made life much easier!

I placed three of the bigger monsters in the middle in a ring with a monster "perched" on top of them, and the remaining eight monsters were placed in a ring around these. I didn't fix the cakes to the board which turned out to be useful as it meant I had no problem rearranging them to put my favourite monsters at the front (as per the picture of the set party table) and also didn't matter as the party was at home and the cakes didn't have to travel anywhere!

I was so pleased with the finished cake(s) and even looking at the pictures now make me smile. Can't take all the credit myself - my mum is my co-partner for making birthday cakes and is great for bouncing ideas off.

 

I also played around with making some icing run-outs of little monsters and popped them into the top of some muffins!

I bought an extra set of invitations and turned some of these into a banner to hang up by glueing them onto different coloured backgrounds. I also copied the table cloth front card and cut these out as  number 2s and glued onto yellow card. I then taped drinking straws to the back and threaded string through to hang up. The remaining spare invitations were blu-tacked around the house.

 The children got to play pass-the-parcel and stick the spot onto the monster, which was just about as much as two years olds can manage.

The monster theme carried through to the party bags. I bought some make-your-own monster finger puppet sets with three monsters in each, copied the individual instructions and attached to each monster finger puppet kit with ribbon. Each of the little ones coming to the party had older siblings who could make the finger puppets for their little brothers and sisters. I also included a rubber finger monster and a couple of cute monster tattoos. And obviously they each got an individual monster cake to take home.

All in all a very enjoyable and successful party and Justin had a great time.

Now to start planning Sophie's 5th birthday in March ...

© 2011 Nicola Noble

My greetings cards

I thought it would be nice to put a link on my blog to my greeting cards website Snowball Card Designs. Each of the cards I have made is either a one off or one of a very limited number. I love it when I get inspiration from something I have seen or when I revisit my "stash" and suddenly know how to use the thing I bought some time ago; and the feeling of satisfaction when the creation is complete is great.

I have been making cards for family and friends for a few years now and also sold some in a local shop in Twickenham (until the arrival of Justin cut short the time I had to spend making cards). I am beginning to get a little bit more time again and I hope to make a selection of Valentine's and Mother's Day cards in the New Year.

I have put a couple of pictures of my favourite cards below. Hope you like them ...

 

© 2010 Nicola Noble

Santa got stuck

Sophie was given a chocolate biscuit house kit for Christmas and we made it today. It is such a cute gift - a complete kit of (loosely) interlocking chocolate biscuits and a selection of sweets and icing flowers/stars/holly leaves to decorate it, plus the finishing touch of Santa's feet on a cocktail stick to put on the roof.

The construction of the biscuit house was moderately tricky and so I did most of this for Sophie but then she was in charge of the artistic bit and I was impressed by her confidence in going off plan. I iced and she placed and the end result was a success.

We just have to wait to show Nana tomorrow (the gift came from her) and then we can eat it - yummm.

If you are interested the kit came from The Village Workshop and you can order a variety of biscuit house kits from their website http://www.villageworkshop.co.uk/

Decorating my Christmas cake - 2010

Monday was the last day of my cake decorating course (boo) and we finished by decorating a Christmas cake. I opted to buy a ready-made undecorated Christmas cake from M&S and to concentrate on the decorating, at least ensuring that the cake was edible!

My design was very simple and comprised a dark blue sky with a snowy landscape, Christmas trees and a few sparkling stars. I had planned to add some snowflakes but once the rest was put together there wasn't space for them.

A few days before the Monday session I covered a round cake board with white fondant icing and put a blue ribbon around the edge. This was done in advance to let the fondant harden so that it was less likely to mark when putting the cake onto the board.

During the session I covered the cake with marzipan fixed on with apricot glaze then added the blue fondant cover. I rolled the icing out to perfection but while I was covering the marzipan with a coating of vodka (to help the fondant stick) the blue fondant stuck to the table and from then on it was less than perfect. As always the room we do the course in was far too hot and the icing kept sticking and then it cracked when I put it on the cake. The marzipan and blue fondant were put onto the cake on a spare cake board and then the cake was transferred (with care) to the covered board. This helped prevent the covered cake board becoming messy/damaged with apricot glaze or while trimming the marzipan or blue fondant.

Thankfully my design included a layer of white fondant icing as a snowy landscape so I was able to cover the worst cracks in the the blue fondant. The tutor had a fabric patterned rolling pin which added some nice texture to the snowy landscape.

I cut white Christmas trees out (thanks to my daughter for letting me borrow her Playdoh cutter for the small trees!) and decorated them with a scroll type embosser. I placed one large tree onto the snowy landscape and padded the very top out by cutting out another tip of the tree and placing this underneath to keep the whole tree level. I then placed small trees along the "skyline" on the top and down the sides.

I then took a few different size stars that I had made previously, brushed with sparkle powder and allowed to harden, and pressed them into the blue fondant on the top of the cake and the sides. To finish I sprinkled some edible disco glitter over the cake.

Overall I am quite pleased with the finished cake but think I need to add Merry Christmas somewhere. I may opt for "plastic" wording or may try and pipe the words in dark blue icing onto a white fondant scroll. I guess it depends on how well my piping of letters turns out ...

© 2010 Nicola Noble

Christmas flowers

This week on my cake decorating course we made a selection of christmas flowers and leaves in fondant icing. We were shown how to make winter flowering jasmine, variegated ivy, holly leaves and berries, mistletoe and berries, poinsettia and christmas roses. I had a go at making the first three.

The jasmine was made by using a pulled flower technique. A ball of yellow icing is pushed and rolled onto a pointed stick and five slits are cut up from the bottom edge. Then the icing is removed from the pointed stick and the five petals are pulled apart. The petals are left square shaped and the middle of the flowers is marked with a star pointed modelling tool.

The ivy was made using cream icing and an ivy plunger cutter which cuts the shape and also adds veining to the leaf. The leaf was then draped across crumpled silver foil to give it some shape (so it's not flat) and once dry it was then painted with diluted food colouring (the gel type colouring diluted with water or alcohol). Firstly a lighter shade of green was painted almost to the edges, then a darker shade was painted up the middle of each part of the leaf.

The holly was created using a holly plunger cutter which cuts and veins the leaf. I think this would be good if you wanted to do a flat wreath on top of a cake but for a flower display it just wan't right. The colour of the green icing wasn't dark enough and I think my icing wasn't rolled thin enough. If the icing had been thinner then the leaf would have taken on a more 3D look when draped onto the crumpled silver foil. Using a simple holly cutter and a separate veiner might have also made it more realistic.

I didn't have a cake board small enough to put the display together so I improvised and used the bottom of a cardboard box. I covered the bottom with white fondant and pricked around the edge with a fork for a border then stuck the arrangement together using royal icing in a piping bag and number 2 nozzle. The holly berries were a bit too dark (I added too much black when I tried to tone the red down) and it would have been nice to have had a bit more colour to it (perhaps arranging it on a darker background although I'm not sure what colour would have worked) but overall I am quite pleased with the finished look.