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

BRAND NEW Sweetie Cake

My sister turned 25 this week and has been complaining that I haven't made her a birthday cake. She does live in London, which makes it difficult, but she was home this year. So I decided to make her a cake. The biggest cake I have made so far.

A 4 tier sponge cake, covered in buttercream and decorated with sweets! 

Each layer consists of a sponge split in two and filled with either raspberry jam or lemon curd. Each on it's own board for ease of serving. From bottom to top, the cake sizes are: 9", 8", 6", 4".

Each sponge was smothered in vanilla buttercream and decorated, ready to be assembled at the party venue.

Top tier - Sugar paste hearts & Love Hearts with piped buttercream & candy covered chocolate pearls

Sugarpaste Happy Birthday banner

From Top to Bottom, the sweets I used are:

Love Hearts

Candy covered chocolates (similar to smarties)

White Chocolate Jazzies

Dolly Mixtures

Fizzy Astro Belts

Shrimps

Marshmallows

And no birthday is complete without candles - and these were some pretty spectactular ones. Although they did set off the smoke alarm!! :)

I really enjoyed making this cake. It was lovely to try something new & I had a lot of great feedback - yes, I know it was mainly family members, but they can be quite harsh at times.

 

If you would like a sweetie cake of your own, please get in touch. They can be any shape (round, square, heart-shaped, hexagonal) and size, and as many, or as few, tiers as you like. You could even match it up with some sweetie topped fairy cakes. I can use your favourite sweets, match to a colour scheme or theme of your choosing, and can supplement it with sugar paste decorations & banners.

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. :)

Cake Pops - my new favourite cakey snack

I first came across Cake Balls & Cake Pops via @cakeballsuk and @mollybakes on Twitter. This lead me to the cakey genius that is Bakerella!

A cake ball is cake that has been crumbed, mixed with buttercream (or alternative frosting) then covered in chocolate or candy. A cake pop is a cake ball on a stick! How can you not like them?

I decided to have a go back in May, with some chocolate cake & dark chocolate coating. They looked ok [pic below], but had a very strange texture. But I hadn't tried a cake pop/ball myself and didn't really know what to expect.

Then, in June, we went to London. I dragged my family to Selfriges where I knew I would be able to get hold of one of MollyBakes cake pops.  Here's my lovely hubby with his. He opened it before we left the shop so had to get a quick photo.

They were lovely!  But it wasn't until last weekend that I attempted them myself. Mainly it was down to a lucky coincidence that meant I had 'spare' cake and candy melts in the house at the same time! So, this is how I made my cake pops.

Crumb cake in a food processor and mix with buttercream, then form into golf-ball shapes. Put them on a sheet of greaseproof paper and leave in the fridge for a few hours until fairly solid. (Or in the freezer for about 15 minutes.)

When they're ready melt a few of the candy melts, dip the end of some lolly sticks in the melts and stick about 2/3 of the way into the balls.To ensure a firm foundation and keep your sticks steady, place a little bit of the melts around the stick to seal any gaps. Then place to side (or briefly in the fridge) to set.
 

When they are set, and the sticks feel pretty firm in the balls, melt some more of the melts and dip the balls in the melts until covered. Then use sprinkles to decorate as you wish!

And ta da - cake pops!

They need a bit of work to get the coating smooth - but they looked good and tasted great!

Here's how they look inside.

But, if this all seems like too much work - just give me a call and I'll make them for you!  :)

Ideal as wedding favours or party bag fillers, they could be wrapped up like a bouquet or presented in a pot. They can be any flavour and colour you want - the only limit is your imagination. Go on, you know you want to.....

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!

Who makes your Birthday Cake?

I was tagged in a meme last week by Julie of Ice Maiden Cakes asking 'Who makes your Birthday Cake?' so here it is! Eventually! :)

It's taken me a while to remember my last birthday cake and I think my mum bought one for us to eat in work (family business) from Tesco. My birthday is in January, so to be honest we're all a bit fed up of rich food by then and on a diet, and as far as I can remember, I have not made my own birthday cake.

But when I was about 3 I was made a cake by my mum's friend, Annie Jones - and it is this cake that eventually led me to start baking. It's one of my earliest memories and I have no idea if I've built it up to be more fabulous in my head than it actually was.... although I doubt it - Annie was a pretty great cake maker! :)

It was a fairy castle cake, all turrets and sparkles - a true girlie princess cake, and when the candles were lit and the lights were turned off it looked as if the castle was all lit up from the inside. It makes me smile just thinking about it now. I would love to one day recreate this cake, as I remember it. Maybe for my own birthday as I'm not sure I'd be able to hand it over! ;)

Thanks Julie - for reminding me! :)

And I'd like to tag the following fabulous bakers to find out their stories:

• Alice Rose
• Cupcakes & Peonies
• Delicious Cake Design
• Crystal Cakes

Don't forget to link to your post in a comment below.

p.s. The photo above is a lemon poppy seed cake - no relevance other than it's a cake & I wanted a picture.