Nuts about Halloween and a Golfing Birthday!

Hello everyone
Nice to be back baking once more. A break is nice now and again, lets me think up new ideas and practice new skills. I'm a bit behind on my blogging though, due to baking and laziness, I'm not going to lie but here I am at last showing you two cakes I made. One was a Halloween cake for Popcap and the other was a golfing themed cake.
The Popcap cake was a giant Walnut from the very popular game, Plants V Zombies. A terribly addictive game that takes up lots of my time when I'm not baking or learning to drive my car :D
For Halloween this Walnut character is in disguise with glasses, moustache, nose and bushy eyebrows. I chose to make a lovely chocolate brownie cake mix for this cake. I made several cakes so I could layer them up on top of each other and then cut it to shape. I made up a delicious chocolate buttercream icing which went very well and is one of my all time favourites, lets face it who doesn't like chocolate!!It went down a huge treat and was devoured hurrah!



Once again the lovely Nicola, one of my best customers :D called on me to make a cake for her mother in law. It was a bit rushed but of course I got it down with hours to spare,PHEW! It was to be a simple lemon sponge cake with raspberry jam centre and to be decorated with a golfing theme for the lady's 70th birthday. I covered the cake in green fondant, and piped lemon flavoured buttercream dyed dark green for the grass all around the cake,yum! I made the golfing equipment out of petal paste as it dries nice and quick and also hardens and works well for small things like flowers and characters and in this case golf clubs and a golf bag. I usually leave them to dry for 2 nights before painting them but as this was slightly rushed I left them over night and painted them and they worked just as well. The letters were used from my stainless steel alphabet cutters, thanks to Mr. Ben's parents for buying me them last Christmas :D and I use them religiously. Last but not least, I iced the cake base and sprinkled brown sugar all around it to make it look like sand for the sand bunker,yippee it all worked out and was collected en route to the party,thank you Nicola for having faith in me and my cakes, you rule :D



I also made a Christening cake for my gorgeous little godchild Ruby but I think I'll give it a few days before I put it up. Don't want to be cluttering up my blogs now do I :D so keep an eye out cos it is one of my favourite cakes I've made so far.
Cheerio for now and happy baking everyone xx

Chocolate malteser cake,Carrot Cake and Chocolate Truffle Cake OH MY!

Well here we are another day another euro! Last week was my super busy baking week. It was fantastic!Having a different order for pretty much everyday, felt like I was running my own little bakery, I WISH!maybe someday...
Anyway, as you already saw my paddling pool cake I did for a friends' sons birthday I'll fill you in on the others I made. I had a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and a chocolate truffle cake to do.
I adore carrot cake, such a nice easy recipe, I even don't mind grating all the carrots!The result is a fabulously springy sponge of a beautiful browny/orange. It's super light and when iced with my cream cheese frosting I have to admit it is the bee's knees. The recipe was originally for cupcakes but when I first made it as a cake I never looked back and it by far one of my most popular cakes :D As you can see from the photo I go completely overboard with the frosting but trust me it can definitely take it! Such a simple idea but yet so effective and too delicious, one slice is in no way enough, in my opinion anyway.
The chocolate truffle cake was a huge hit for the group I brought it to. I myself am not a fan of chocolate cake AT ALL!!!Sure it smells delicious in the oven, the melted chocolate wafting throughout the house is so tantalizing but that's about it for me, the smell of it alone is plenty I just don't know what it is about chocolate cake I just don't like it, now give me a lemon sponge cake and I will devour it even a plain Victoria Sponge works for me, just not chocolate. Weird?I know. Back to the cake, the recipe for this I found on my Big Oven App on my iPhone. Just a random one I chose that got 5 stars and the photo looked delicious. My way of choosing a cake is by skimming the recipe and then looking at the photo. If the cake looks rubbish then I move on. I'm all about the picture :)

Anyway this one looked ok but I knew my special touch would do the trick. Instead of a plain chocolate flavoured icing, gross!!!I made the most delicious frosting ever, Chocolate Ganache!!!!! Could this simple topping be any more sinfully delicious?! Equal parts cream and a good high % cocoa chocolate is all you need and boy what amazing results, I have a bag of it in the freezer which I am very tempted to melt over ice-cream at some stage heehee.
Basically it's a chocolate sponge cake with added melted chocolate and icing sugar to make it über rich, let them cool then once the chocolate ganache has thickened enough for spreading I slapped it on as you can see and even had it sandwiched between the two halves. What you are looking at is a heart attack on a plate lol but what a good way to go eh?

I was also asked by a friend to make her 30th birthday cake. We chose Malteser Biscuit Cake, best cake in the world in my opinion.I love it because its all chocolate and no sponge, my favourite!!! Covered it in a layer of buttercream frosting so the chocolate wouldn't come through the fondant. The colour chosen for the fondant was a faulous purple, what a super colour and one of my favourites too so YAY! I stencilled a fairy at the bottom of it, painted it up with a very pale lavender royal icing ,let it dry and painted it again twice so it would stand out, thank god it worked, my hands were cramped after a while :) but worth it of course. I used the rest of the lavender icing to draw on two vines with flowers made from petal paste and a few leaves made the same way stuck onto the cake with gin, the glue of my baking world or sometimes icing sugar :) I used my teeny little flower stamper and put lots of them around the cake popping an edible silver ball in the centre of each and voilà! Happy Birthday to Ciara!!!!I hope it tasted yummy!




Last thing I got up to was cupcakes. A nice change from big cakes so of course I was more than happy to make them for a friends' BBQ on Sunday. She was looking for 20 pretty cupcakes. YAY!!! I love cupcakes, I love icing them up and making them as pretty as possible without going overboard so I was straight on it, mixing up a bowl of raspberry buttercream frosting and chocolate ganache. I made a few Hello Kitty Cupcakes for the kids, I was very pleased with them too! I covered some of the cupcakes with a big swirl of chocolate ganache and dotted some silver balls on top and some chocolate sprinkles on the others, I used the fabulously pink frosting for the rest and put my Hello Kitty faces on a few and added some edible glitter, flowers, hearts and balls to them . I thought they looked great and I was very pleased with them as was the customer BIG HAPPY YAY!