Wedding Cakes & Patriotic Cupcakes

Friday, 29th April 2011 saw Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton get married. It was a lovely wedding, and Kate (Catherine) looked gorgeous. However I was very intrugued to see the wedding cakes. Yes, Cakes!

A gorgeous and elegant fruit cake, made by Fiona Cairns. It consisted of 17 cakes stacked and beautifully decorated. Kate Middleton was very involved in the design of the cake, including sending a list of the 17 flowers she would like ot have included on the cake, all symbolising love, marriage and happiness. (Source: ABC News)

Photo from: http://styleclone.com/17052/the-royal-wedding-cakes-revealed/

There was also a grooms cake, made by Mcvities. Unbaked, and made of crushed Rich Tea biscuits and chocolate.

Photo from: http://styleclone.com/17052/the-royal-wedding-cakes-revealed/

I was also very interested to find out that 2 was a very conservative number of cakes for a royal wedding & I found some lovely stories about royal wedding cakes on my browsing the net.

Prince Charles and Diana had 27 cakes at their wedding. The main wedding cake was made by David Avery, the head baker at the Royal Naval cooking school & he made 2 identical cakes in case one was damaged. Luckily both cakes survived in tact and the second cake was split among the naval cookery trainees - each had 2 pieces, one for themselves and one for their mum. (Source: Wikipedia)

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip's wedding cake was 9 foot tall!!
"The nine-foot high, four-tier wedding cake, was made with ingredients given by Australian Girl Guides. The wedding cake was cut using The Duke's Mountbatten sword. After the wedding, pieces of cake were given to schoolchildren and institutions."
(Source: about.com)

I do love a wedding & want to learn more about the traditions and rituals surrounding wedding cakes.

In order to mark the event my parents hosted a Royal Wedding garden party & here are some photos of my cupcake offering for the day.

Fondant iced Union Jack cupcakes

W [heart] K fondant iced cupcakes

Cupcake Tower

Cake Pops

Sharing Secrets & Baking Tips

You may have heard me mention Brew Drinking Thinkings over the last few weeks, this is beacuse I am one of their food writers. I am one of many bloggers contributing to this fab new online magazine. My focus is home cooking and baking, but the website covers so much more. If you haven't already had a look, go and have a read.

I've already published a few cake & baking recipes on the site including:

Victoria Sponge with Passion Fruit Cream

Fondant Iced Marble Cupcakes

Fool-proof Cupcakes 

And will be publishing plenty more. You'll also find weekly baking tips on the main Food & Cooking blog page.

Keep an eye out for a BDT section appearing on this blog soon to stay up to date on all recipes.

A look back at 2010

A bit late to the party maybe as it's now over halfway through January, but Happy New Year everyone!

First of all a huge THANK YOU to everyone who ordered a minirhi bakes cake. We've been going for 6 months now and I had much more business than expected, have met some new people and caught up with old friends. I've also had some lovely feedback and repeat business, so I must be doing something right! Anyway, thanks - your business is very much appreciated.

I thought I'd share with you some of my favourite cakes from 2010.

July : Ella's Peppa Pig Cake
I think this was one of my first orders, and I was so pleased with the way it turned out! Smooth icing, the character looked like it was meant to, and it actually went pretty smoothly too....

August : Daryl & Leanne's Wedding Favours
This was a wonderful day, with our best mates getting married...a little stressful making the cookies, but they looked fab on the tables and helped me take my mind off the fact that I had to do a reading on the day!!

Ocotber : My first Giant Cupcake
I had a fair bit of trial and error making giant cupcakes, but I got there in the end! This was my first successful one, for my sister-in-law's birthday.

October : Chicken Cake Ball Cupcakes
I don't really et much time for experimenting, so as we were off to a friend's birthday (who had recently acquired chickens) and because my Cake Pops book was tormenting me for not trying more, I decided to make some cupcakes to take with us. Cute, or what?!

 
 
October : New Baby Cupcakes
A friend of ours had a baby back in October, and I had new sprinkles to test, so I created a series of cupcakes for Mummy, Daddy and 'Big Sister' - coz big sisters are always the best!! ;)

November : Baby Shae's Naming Ceremony
This was an order of 'firsts'! My first naming ceremony cake, my first cake pop order & my first time makeing chocolate cake pops....possibly my first time making blue buttercream too! 

November : Mickey's Clubhouse
I think this was one of the most complicated cakes I have made, and I was really pleased with how it turned out. Especially Mickey!

I have to say I have enjoyed making all of my cakes! I've been tired and stressed and worried people won't like them, luckily hubby's been around to tell me I'm being silly or to move me away from the cake so I when I get back to it I can see it's not actually THAT bad! :)

I am looking forward to 2011 - and have already made 3 celebration cakes - plus I am planning an afternoon tea fundraiser sometime soon for TREAT Trust Wales. :)

Giant Cupcake

I have been wanting to try a Giant Cupcake since I first heard about them. But didn't want to fork out on a proper tin pan until I had at least given it a go. Then I found a silicon baking mould in The Works for £6 and couldn't resist!

So I made my standard Vanilla sponge mix (175g flour/sugar & 3 eggs) and filled the base and made a 100g/2 egg mix for the top. And this is what happened:

Apparently the mix is too light for the depth of the mould and I needed to add some plain flour (about half the quantity of self-raising) to the mixture, thanks to @icemaidencakes.

So, here's my second attempt:

I did lose a little bit of the top to the mould - because I forgot to grease the pan in my excitement - and the top was a little.....overdone in places. But it was nothing a knife and some buttercream wouldn't fix.

Here is the final cupcake.

And here it is in comparison to a standard cupcake:

According to the box, the giant cupcake is 25 times the size of a normal cupcake, and I think that I probably used the equivalent amount of mixture.

The sponge was a little more dense that the one I usually make, but still tasted good and has lasted well.

I'm looking forward to having another go!

Fairy Cake or Cupcake?

The Cupcake tower I made on the weekend sparked a discussion about the difference between Fairy Cakes and Cupcakes. Which got me thinking. In my mind there was no difference, they just had different names, fairy cakes in the UK, cupcakes in America.

In my kitchen, fairy cakes are smaller, made in 'bun' tins, while cupcakes are larger and made in deeper muffin tins. (There is quite a difference between a muffin & a cupcake, which maybe I'll cover in another post!) For example, with my standard cake mix I get anything up to 16 fairy cakes and 9 cupcakes. So they're not quite twice the size, but not far off.

I found this article by WiseGeek that talks about the main difference between British fairy cakes and American cupcakes being that cupcakes use a denser cake mix, while fairy cakes tend to be lighter.

There's also a mini cupcake that is smaller than a fairy cake - pretty much a bite size cake. 

I hope this clears it up a little. And if you want any cakes - cup, fairy or mini, please give me a shout. :)