Velvet Snowflakes

As the holidays are here, I decided to make some festive cupcakes: red velvet with cream cheese frosting, decorated with silver ball dragees, edible pearls and home-made snowflakes (which seem to have melted!) They taste good though ;-) Happy holidays, everyone!

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple frosting

I stole the idea for these cupcakes from make bakeswap buddy Susie, who has a fantastic baking blog called 'fold in the flour': http://foldintheflour.blogspot.co.uk

They taste very autumnal with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger in the sponge mix (they do taste like gingerbread, don't they Susie?!) The use of pureed pumpkin in the sponge mix and maple syrup in the frosting made me think of America, as these ingredients were being used in abundance during my recent visit to New York (yes! I am a Hurricane Sandy survivor!!) With that in mind, I suppose you could call them thanksgiving cupcakes...

Pink Piped roses at the Patisserie in my Kitchen

I wanted to have another go at piping buttercream roses on top of my cupcakes and, as it is a frolleague (friend-and-colleague, geddit?)'s birthday, I thought I'd make a batch to gift to her. I also wanted to put one of these super-cute patisserie boxes to good use. I reckon that if someone gave me this as a gift, I'd be pretty chuffed :-) My piping-work still needs practice - I piped a few dudds. Guess I'll just have to eat those myself... ;-)

It's too damn hot! Magic Stars Cupcakes

I'm seeing my gang - a group of schoolfriends who've stayed close since we left college (in 1999!) - this weekend for a picnic. I said I'd bake a batch of cupcakes for the occasion and had it in my head that I'd do vanilla sponge with my new favourite icing (white chocolate buttercream) and dainty chocolate roses and chocolate bows handmade by yours truly. So... I got up today, got all my kit out and began to attempt making the bows and roses. Problem was, with it being so muggy, the icing was too warm and sticky/melty to work with with - I reckon my palms were too clammy! So instead, I decided instead to buy some chocolates to put on top of the cakes. Not quite as impressive as handmade decorations but quite tasty nonetheless (I obviously had to sample a load of the chocolates - Magic Stars - to make sure that they were ok ;-) They've got rainbow glitter on too, but it hasn't really shown up in the photo. Hope everyone enjoys them!

Green Roses 'n' Purple Butterflies

Getting a bit closer to nailing the rose piping effect now. I also thought I'd try out a mint-coloured colouring. Do you get green roses in nature? I'm not so sure... But then again, purple sparkly butterflies don't occur in nature either (to my knowledge)... 'Fraid you can't see the sparkly-ness of the butterflies from this shot. Hey ho.

Assorted Chocolate Cupcakes

I spent an enjoyable day making chocolate cupcakes today, and I plan to gift them to my sister and brother-in-law as a belated 1st wedding anniversary present/house-warming gift.

I made several different types of icing (white chocolate buttercream, chocolate ganache and chocolate fondant. Of the three types of icing, the white chocolate buttercream was the easiest to work with. The ganache was initially a bit too firm to pipe effectively, then when in warmed up to room temperature it became a bit runny. Tricky to get right :-s The chocolate fondant icing came out ok although it set really quickly which meant that it wrinkled a bit when I moved the cupcake into the box which you can see in the bottom two photos.

Above: chocolate cupcakes iced with white chocolate buttercream and chocolate ganache

Above: more chocolate ganache iced cupcakes and wrinkly chocolate fondant! I made the chocolate roses by hand and am really pleased with the way that they turned out :-)

Peony Cupcakes

I made these as a bit of an experiment. I wanted to try piping my rose-flavoured buttercream in the shape of a rose on top of each cake. It worked ok. I think that they do look a bit like a peonies with their tightly compacted petals. I put crystallised violet petals on top of each cake to add to the flower theme. They have a lovely delicate flavour which reminds me a bit of those parma violet sweets I used to have as a kid!

Jubilee Cupcakes!

I baked these today as a bank holiday weekend project.

I was inspired to make these after two kind colleagues bought me a set of cupcake thrones from Fortnum and Mason! Behold! The Queen of Cupcakes! ;-)

Lemon Cupcakes

I decided to make these during the bank holiday weekend. The lemon flavour is pretty subtle but it's definitely in there!