Spot the difference

I know Halloween has been and gone but I wanted to post something that made me smile so much. While looking for new die-cutters I came across the following Sizzlit die-cut of Count Dracula ...

... and it immediately brought to mind a cute photo we took of Justin last Halloween

Can you spot the difference?

Birthday cupcakes

It was my mother-in-laws birthday on Saturday and I toyed with the idea of using it as an opportunity to make a birthday cake but the week didn't really allow time for a full-on cake. So on Friday night, I decided to set-to and make some cupcakes instead (once the kiddies were in bed and hubby was at karate).

I made the cupcakes gluten free so that Jase could eat them too and they didn't turn out too badly. They were much drier in texture than normal sponge cakes and sweeter as I used rice milk instead of dairy milk but still edible. Strangely, they seem to have improved with time, becoming more moist in the cake tin!

I always find that I end up making twice as many cakes as the recipe states with the same quantity of ingredients - how does that work? I made about 18 normal sized cupcakes and 24 mini ones and baked the normal sized cakes in a deep muffin tin which helped stop them splaying too much. I experimented using my daughter's icing plunger to fill the mini cakes and it worked a treat. I have seen a bottle labelled as a cupcake filler and I think I need to look into this further as I do find it hard to not get cake mixture all over the cases and tins! I did notice on television the other day that they used an ice cream scoop (the one with the metal arm that scrapes the ball of ice cream out) so I might give that a go!

For decoration, I used some buttercream that I had stored in the fridge (note to self: useful to keep a supply ready made in case of last minute cake making decisions) and coloured half of it pink. I then used an open star nozzle that I recently bought and loaded pink buttercream in one side and non-coloured buttercream on the other side and piped some swirls. I had enough to decorate eight cakes.

I then cut out some plunger flowers in pale pink and a rose leaf in pale green fondant and arranged on the buttercream swirl. I finished off the flowers with a silver, pink and green edible ball in the centre of each fondant flower and a compulsory sprinkling of sparkle!

I laid them out on a plate and put a pink candle in the middle one. Glad to say my mother-in-law thought they were very pretty.

© 2011 Nicola Noble

Lego stormtrooper cake v.2

I was asked some time ago by one of the mums at school if I would make a lego stormtrooper cake for her three year old's birthday today. I thought long and hard about it (would I have the time etc etc) and decided to give it a go. I worked out the cost of the ingredients and then plucked a figure from the air that I thought she might agree to pay, which she did.

Several weeks ago I coloured some fondant green (I was planning to do orange but discovered I didn't have orange colouring and didn't want to mix my own!), covered the cake board and left it to dry on top of my kitchen dresser. This made it much easier when I came to place the cake on the board this week - no annoying dents caused by finger nails catching the icing!

So on Monday this week I baked the cake and carved the shape and on Tuesday I covered it in white fondant, added the black fondant bits and piped black royal icing decoration. Then on Wednesday, I added the finishing touches of a belt and some lettering cut out of coloured fondant.

The cake was collected on Wednesday evening and I think they liked it!

I did say that I might get to do this cake again (following my first attempt during my cake decorating course) although I didn't think it would be so soon. I learned from my earlier mistakes and made the helmet much bigger this time and added a 3D belt. I also cut out the eye pieces from the white and dropped in some black pieces which worked well.

I also had a go at adding cake pieces to the head (under the fondant) to give some dimension to the helmet which worked well, although next time (did I say next time?) I will be braver and add more across the nose and mouth part to give it more dimension.

© 2011 Nicola Noble

Barbie princess cake

A friend of mine just asked for some tips on how to make a Barbie princess cake so I thought I would copy my reply to her here for anyone else who might be interested. I made this for my daughter's 4th birthday last year.

There are several ways that you can make the doll cake:

1. You can buy doll's head and torso from most cake decorating shops (made by Wilton) but personally I don't think they look that nice.

2. You can use a Barbie doll and either bake a lot of cakes to stack to the height of the doll, or you can take the legs off the Barbie (most seem to come off quite easily) so that you don't need to make it so high.


I found the following video clip really useful http://www.howdini.com/howdini-video-7075975.html.


I opted for the full height Barbie and made a selection of cakes - 3 medium width ones, 3 small width ones and one shallow one baked in a pyrex bowl to give the curve at the top. Another suggestion for the curve at the top is to use a doughnut or a bagel. I stacked them on top of each other and carved the outside of the stack to give a smooth slope. I think it looks like a dalek at this stage! I then cut a hole out of the middle of each one and re-stacked them with buttercream in between to hold them together. A trick I learnt on my cake decorating course, which would have been helpful, is to align cocktail sticks in each layer before separating for the buttercream. It is then easy to re-align the cakes in the position they were cut.

I used fondant to cover the cake (over buttercream) and had a front panel and then a skirt draped around the back and onto the front panel. That was tricky as it needed a huge amount of fondant to cover the sides and back - much more than you think. It would be significantly easier to cover the whole cake in coloured buttercream (see the video attached) but I just like using fondant.

I also made the bodice in fondant which was a bit fiddly and in hindsight I could have dressed the doll in normal Barbie clothes and then just covered the join with a ribbon (as I did) or fondant flowers etc.

A useful tip is to wrap the Barbie's legs in clingfilm before you put them into the cake so that they don't get covered in buttercream in the middle of the cake. Also my holes in the middle of the cakes were a little too big so I dropped a few cake off-cuts into the hole and pushed the Barbie into these to keep her steady.

© 2011 Nicola Noble

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