Lazy Cupcakes

Minnie Mouse Birthday Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:00:00 +0000

So, picture the scene, its February and my sister-in-law Leanne asks if I can make her a birthday cake for her in March. I say yes and asks what she would like, she replies with "Surprise me!" and then I spend the next few weeks brainstorming ideas and looking on various sites for inspiration.

Leanne is a fellow Disney fan so the final idea came to me pretty quickly. Something red with polka dots. The problem is... ive NEVER covered a cake in fondant/icing and I really dont know where to start.

So I open up youtube, and watch what seems like a bazillion videos on how to cover a cake, from crumb coating to finishing, and although it looks pretty simple, I know it will be anything but easy!!
I started by ordering some Wilton Colour Gel's from Amazon. I didn't want to buy red icing, I wanted to make it. Id heard horror stories about people using so much red colour that they used a whole bottle. Id also done a bit of research into which colours were the best, Sugarflair, Americolor & Wilton were mentioned a fair bit. I went for Wilton, mainly because the colours I wanted to achieve seemed to get the best results with Wilton.

I then invested in a new rolling pin, a non-stick plastic one from Amazon. Pretty cheap at £9 but quite hefty when it arrived which I was happy with. You can get similar ones from Ebay.

It came to cake day and I was a complete mess, forgot to document the stages with photos and panicked wildly about my icing.

I had nothing to worry about. I used my Ikea baking mat as a cover on my white worktop to kneed the colour into the icing. I didn't need a lot at all. Maybe a 1/4 teaspoon and then I wrapped the icing in cling film and popped it into the fridge to develop the colour. It went to a pillar box red colour which is perfect for what I need.

My cakes were cool at this point, this is the basic recipe I used in my 4" tin.

Ingredients - Cake

160g Self Raising Flour
160g Caster Sugar
160g Butter
2 Medium Eggs
4tbs Milk
2tsp Vanilla Extract

Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix together, no need to sift or mess about! This will make 1 x 6" sandwich tin or a deep 4" cake which you can slice and fill.

I filled and covered my cake with my basic vanilla buttercream recipe...

Ingredients - Vanilla Buttercream

400g Icing Sugar (Powered Sugar)
200g Butter
2tbs Milk
2tsp Vanilla Extract

Add more icing sugar if it is too thin or doesn't hold its shape, or add more milk if its too thick. Dont worry if it goes either way, buttercream is very rescuable.

Decorating the Cake

After adding a thin layer of the buttercream to the outside of the filled cake, I let the cake set for a little while, so in the meantime I rolled out my fondant (which i had already coloured and was sitting in the fridge) on my non-slip mat. Using minimal mix of cornflour and icing sugar I rolled out the fondant icing to around half a cm thick. I probably needed it thicker. I laid the fondant over my cake and smoothed out the top using my smoother. Working downwards and in a soft delicate motion I pushed the fondant flat. I had watched a hundred videos on youtube showing this technique and even though I know this helped loads, I still managed a few holes. Thank god for polka dots!!! I attached the bow, which Id made a few days earlier, and the dots with a little water. And then attached the ears which had toothpicks glued inside. I added a thin rope of the red to the bottom to hide the mess and voi la.... my first ever fondant covered cake!!

Cakes for Mothers Day

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:00:00 +0000

This mothers day I decided to bake a cake each for our mums using my 6" lose bottom tin. Its so cute and tiny that it was quite tempting to go all in and make as much batter as possible... which is what I did. Lets set the scene. I have 1 night to bake 2 cakes and decorate them to a level that I wont want to cry about later. Its a Friday night, which means its Walking Dead night. Which means... I have until 10pm or thereabouts. Ill need to eat tea and prep the kitchen ready for my madness. This will be tight. Theres always sky+ for a delayed start. Lets GO.

I had planned my cakes the week before, but on the morning of Friday I had a sinking feeling that my fondant covered cakes wouldn't be what our mums would want. So, I text them both, and they both came back saying they would like vanilla cakes, with buttercream. My mum added chocolate into the mix, so I decided to make her one with chocolate buttercream, and Fred's mum one with vanilla buttercream.

I had already made some fondant roses earlier in the week, and I was pretty happy with them and how they had dried. I made these by hand, no fancy tools apart from a plastic bag and a small spoon to smooth the edges. Tutorial coming soon!!

So I went about making the cakes, and making it up as I go along. I used my basic vanilla recipe. (x3) to make each of the cakes. They took an hour or so to cool before I put a thin layer of buttercream on to crumb coat the cakes. I made vanilla buttercream tinted with pink for one cake and a chocolate buttercream for the other. I used my new Wilton Icing Colours set.

I highly recommend you get some of these bad boys if you do a lot of colouring work. They are tasteless and you need the absolute tiniest bit to get a great colour. I dipped a toothpick about half a cm into the pot to achieve the colour i had on my cake... wow.

I decorated the cakes using my Wilton 1M tip and made roses around the cake. A technique id used before and seen used by a few of my baking friends. I was really happy with the end results. I laid the fondant roses on top and refrigerated overnight.

White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 16:00:00 +0000

My husband Fred loves white chocolate. He is forever trying to sneak bars of lindt into our shopping and loves a good white chocolate biscuit or cookie. Instead of buying some expensive cookies that included white chocolate I told him id make him some. My sister and her boyfriend Ant were coming round for tea that night, so I made a good size batch and completely winged it in terms of the recipe. Im pretty sure they liked them though as they all went in a day, and I didn't get a single one.

Ingredients

200g white chocolate cut into small chunks
175g plain flour
110g soft butter
50g sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/ gas 4.
Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix together until all ingredients are combined.
Bring the whole mixture together to form a soft lumpy dough.
Split into two large ball, split each ball into 3, and then each of those balls into 2. You should have 12 small balls of dough. Arrange on a baking sheet covered in greaseproof paper.
Squash balls into small cookie shapes allowing plenty of room around for them to expand.
Cook in the oven for 10-15 minutes until pale golden. Dont worry if they take longer.
Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

Easy Pastry for Pie

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 11:30:00 +0000

Making pastry for the tops of your savoury pie doesn't have to be all bells and whistles.

You know how I like to keep things easy, lazy almost and still keep things tasty.

Now I warn you, this recipe isnt healthy, you wont win any awards for the ingredients and its certainly not going to impress a foodie to look at, but it keep them smiling once they eat it. Think pastry Nanna used to make, think glutton and all things nice made with the ingredients that you probably frown upon when picking up your expensive baking ingredients.

Well, this uses the cheapest of the cheap. smart price is your friend. ;-)

Ingredients

100g lard
100g salted butter
200g plain flour
water to combine everything

Method

Add lard, salted butter and flour to a bowl and mix with your fingers, or if you have a stand mixer, pop it in with a dough hook on. Combine until it makes a rough dough, then add water slowly to make the dough come together to make a smooth pastry. If it gets too wet, add flour. Its as simple as that.

The recipe is good to double if making by hand, but please be careful if using a mixer as a double mix can overload a kitchenAid type mixer. Kenwood should handle it fine.

Wrap in cling film and store in the fridge or freezer. Use within a few days if keeping in the fridge. If you want to use it straight away, leave it in the fridge for 30 mins before rolling out.

Pastry was the first thing I made in my Kenwood Chef Premier so heres the video...

My gingerbread house & royal icing recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 21:53:00 +0000

It's that time of year again and I always like to make a gingerbread house to sit on my sideboard and slowly go inedible. It's a weird tradition I've done for the last few years.

Now let me put you straight, I'm not baking the gingerbread, I'm not at that stage quite yet (maybe next year... Ah who am I kidding) but I do buy my gingerbread house, sorry excuse me, I do buy my Pepparkaka Hus from ikea for the incredible sum of £2.45 I mean, come on, I couldn't buy the ingredients for that much and it tastes really good. Ikea do really great gingerbread and so for the time being, I'm happy buying the kit and spending the time decorating it instead.

This year I went for simple. Well, that was my original angle, and well it turned out a little more complex than I first intended. I used strawberry laces, strawberry cables and bubblegum foam mushrooms which were absolutely yummy. All from Asda for £1.

I stuck my house and decorated it with royal icing. The recipe is really simple.

Ingredients

1 egg - white only
250g icing sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

I put the egg and lemon in my stand mixer with a whisk attachment and let the mix get fluffy. Then slowly added the icing sugar until it was all mixed in. Once incorporated I then turned up the speed and left it for 5 mins until the mixture became fuller and silky.

Once the mixture was ready I put a few layers of cling film on my work surface and loaded the middle with the icing. I then rolled up the cling film to make a sausage and twisted the ends as if you were making an icing sausage. You can then put this in your piping bag, pull one twisted end through a coupler and snip off the excess, pop on your tip and cover and you have yourself a clean way to reuse a piping bag. This is a great tip if you only have one bag and several colours of icing to pipe. It keeps the inside of your bag clean if you're careful with the cling film and its quick to clean up afterwards with just your tip to wash.

Here's my finished gingerbread house...

More Cupcakes by Karen

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Part 2 of my special look at how you can adapt my Basic Vanilla Cupcake recipe is here, and Karen is back with more wonderful and inventive cupcakes. In the first post, Karen shared some amazing cupcake recipes that im now dying to try and re-create myself. However, lots of the ingredients are limited or not available in the UK, so in following posts ill be looking at ways we can get the same results here in the UK... now THAT'S fun! :-)

Reese's pieces

Add peanut butter and crushes RP in batter, vanilla buttercream topped with more crushed RP

Pistachio

Add pistachios and pistachio instant pudding in batter, confectioners sugar, butter and pudding mix for frosting - will get really thick thanks to pudding mix, add milk to correct consistency

Toasted coconut

Toast shredded sweetened coconut until golden, add to batter and top with vanilla cream cheese icing and toasted coconut

Anna's 2nd Birthday cupcakes

vanilla cupcakes with orange-vanilla buttercream, strawberry cream cheese, vanilla butter cream and chocolate frostings

Ice Cream Cones

strawberry cone cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting and chocolate chips, made for a friends birthday.

Cupcakes by Karen

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 07:00:00 +0000

In 2010 we visited Walt Disney World, and being big un-posh foodies (nothing on the scale of Mrs Petticoat's adventures - seriously, that girl eats some awesome food) we visited Epcot's Food and Wine Festival and hopped over to say hello at DisneyFoodBlog.com Foodie Fest at Ariel's in Disney's Yacht & Beach Club Resort.

It was a meet up of Disney food admirers, we met lots of lovely people, but two in particular made us feel like we should be there, in the sea of American accents. Im pretty sure we were the only English people there that year.

Karen and Mike (and their 8 month baby bump) chatted away and weve been in contact ever since. They live within touching distance of Walt Disney World, and we live here in Manchester - thank you facebook and twitter!! We saw them again in 2011 with their then 1 yr old addition Anna, and now, they have another beautiful munchkin baby Lily. Hopefully we will see them again on our 2013 trip but in the meantime... Karen has been making cupcakes... lots of cupcakes.

Ok, so now you know the backstory, a while ago I shared my Basic Vanilla Cupcake recipe with Karen to make smaller batches than usual American recipes called for.... I mean, how can 2 adults possibly eat 24 cupcakes in 3 days (actually dont answer that, its possible). So, Karen took my recipe and did a whole bunch of AMAZING things with it that makes me very jealous that a) I didnt think of that idea, b) that we had those ingredients in the UK and c) that i wasnt so lazy.

Anways.... i'll be doing a few posts with her creations in, heres a few to wet your whistle...

Remember, they all use this as a base.... Basic Vanilla Cupcake

Key lime

Add a few tablespoons key lime juice (available at Publix w fruit juices) to batter and icing. Drizzle with mango or raspberry purée for complimentary flavors or sprinkle with graham crumbs for more of a "key lime pie" touch.

Caramel apple crunch

Use about 2T sweet apple sprinkles (pampered chef) and 1T sweet caramel sprinkles in batter, caramel fruit dip in icing And top with more apple sprinkles.

Salted caramel

Add a touch of Vanilla and just a tiny cinnamon to batter, cream cheese icing, top with straight caramel fruit dip then sprinkle with fluer del sel or any course sea salt.

Piña colada

Add crushed pineapple and coconut to both batter and icing

Raspberry chocolate chip

Add about 1/4c raspberry purée (I use frozen raspberries, purée in food processor and strain seeds) and mini chocolate chips to batter, and a few Tbsp purée to icing.

Banana nut crunch

Add a mashed banana to batter, 1-2 Tbsp honey to icing and top with this topping: http://food.unl.edu/web/fnh/walnut-crunch

Cinnamon toast crunch

Add a bit of cinnamon and vanilla to batter, crush cinnamon toast crunch cereal finely and add to icing, top with a few pieces of whole cereal.

Cherry vanilla chocolate chip

Add vanilla, chopped maraschino cherries and mini chocolate chips to batter, top with vanilla buttercream icing and put a cherry on top!

Peanut Butter and Jelly

Add a touch of vanilla and peanut butter to the batter to taste. When cupcakes cool, spoon out a “hole” in the middle, remove most cake from what is taken out but keep enough to “cap” after you put the jelly in. Put the jelly in the middle and cap. Add PB to the frosting to taste.

Ill be posting some more of Karen's cupcakes soon... so keep an eye out, and if you adapt my basic recipe, let me know!!!

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Easy Honeycomb

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Honeycomb is everywhere lately and its a great idea for a Christmas gift so I decided to make some and let you know just how easy it is to make. Honeycomb can also be covered in chocolate to make it last a little longer than the day it did in my kitchen. Ive also included a gift idea at the bottom of the post, which ill be trying to do for all my posts.

Firstly lets get started with the simple list of ingredients and equipment that im guessing all of you will have stashed away in your kitchen cupboards!

Equipment

Wooden Spoon
Thermometer
Tablespoon
8" Cake Tin or Baking Sheet
Large Cooking Pan

Ingredients

200g Caster Sugar
4 tbs Golden Syrup
1 tbs Bicarbonate of Soda

Method

Prep your cake tin. My photo shows the tin lined with grease proof paper - DO NOT do that, or you'll end up cutting off the paper as it will have stuck so badly that naughty words will escape your mouth. Make sure the cake tin is greased heavily with cooking spray or whatever you usually use. OR you can also line with heavy duty foil.

Dont line with grease proof - it will stick.

Mix together the sugar and golden syrup in the pan OFF the heat. It will clump together and look weird but this is a necessary step so nothing burns when you start heating the mixture.

Sugar and golden syrup mixed cold

Start to heat the mixture on a low to medium head, swirling the pan if needed, but NEVER stirring the sugar as it will mess up.

Sugar still not fully dissolved

Once the sugar is all dissolved pop in your thermometer and let the mixture reach 105c which is the hard crack stage for sugar.

Sugar all dissolved and temperature raising to 150c

Almost at 150c

As soon as the mixture reaches 150c remove from your hob and add the bicarbonate of soda quickly stirring it with your wooden spoon until the sugar foams and doubles in size. Make sure all the bicarb is mixed in and then pour into your cake tin.

After adding bicarbonate of soda

Now, let the honeycomb (or cinder toffee as I call it) cool completely at room temperature. For me this was around an hour. Once cooled you can remove it from your cake tin, break or cut up and serve however you like.

The pretty version after I had cut all the damn paper off. lol

Close up of the air pockets

Gift Idea

Place in a gusseted cello bag and tie with a ribbon and gift tag for an easy and inexpensive gift.

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Happy Halloween 2012 - 3 recipes!!

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Happy Halloween foodies. So glad you stopped by to glance your beady eyes on my ghoulish offerings. And you're wearing a costume, how kind... you make a lovely monster!!

This halloween I made a series of devilish treats for my guests and work mates. They were dying to eat them...

First up we have some dirt cupcakes, which are topped with some rather sinister looking objects.

Halloween Oreo Cupcakes

Ingredients

Basic Vanilla Cupcakes

Chocolate Oreos

Sugarpaste or rollable icing

1tbs Butter

1tbs Icing Sugar

Method

Make your cupcakes using the recipe linked above.
Split your Oreos and scrape off the chocolate filling into one bowl, and the biscuits into another.
Crush Oreo biscuits into a fine crumb. I do this by putting the biscuits into a double bag and then rolling with a rolling pin.
Add the butter and icing sugar to the chocolate from the Oreos and mix together to make a spread for the top of your cupcakes.
Spread the mixture onto your cakes and then dip to coat in the fine Oreo crumbs.
Make sugarpaste or royal icing toppers using food colouring and toothpicks to get your details. I made frankenstein, witches fingers, worms and gravestones.

I also made some Halloween themed cupcakes and shortbread for my work mates to enjoy, heres how...

Lemon & Honey Cupcakes

Ingredients

Basic Vanilla Cupcakes

Lemon Juice

Basic Vanilla Buttercream

Honey

Candy Corn (optional)

Method

Make your cupcakes using the recipe linked above. Add Lemon to the mix instead of Vanilla. Add to taste.
Once cupcakes are out of the oven, top with a very small amount of honey while cupcakes are hot and allow to soak in.
To make the buttercream, follow the instructions in the recipe linked above. Add Lemon to the mix instead of Vanilla. Add to taste. Add a very small amount of honey.
Pipe onto your cooled cupcakes and top with a piece of candy corn. I got mine from American Soda

Cinnamon Spiced Shortbread

This is a really simple recipe to make and have in the freezer ready to bake for unexpected christmas guests. You can store it for up to a month in the freezer without losing any flavour.

Ingredients

Simple Shortbread

2tsp Cinnamon

Method

Make the simple shortbread dough using the recipe linked above. Add the cinnamon to the dough instead of vanilla. You can add other spices such as nutmeg, all spice, apple pie spice or pumpkin spice.
I rolled my dough into sausage shapes and refrigerated them overnight.
I then cut into discs and pricked with a fork to stop the biscuits spreading while cooking.
Cook as per the instructions.
Once cooked, dust with icing sugar as per the instructions.

This blog post has been entered in Calendar Cakes.

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Cake Pop Maker

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:00:00 +0000

This past weekend I went to Lakeland. Yeah, I know, you're all thinking... and what? Lemme let you in on a little shameful secret. It was my first time. I had no clue that my nearest shop was only 10 miles down the road instead of the 2 hour drive away I originally thought my nearest shop was.

Id found out about the lakeland on the Thursday, obsessed all Friday and then my wonderful husband said we should go on the Saturday. It was a wonderful weekend. Almost Famous burgers on the Friday night, and a mini shopping spree in lakeland on the Saturday, followed by trying my new gadget on the Sunday.

I made original cake pops for valentines day. I mixed cake with frosting and then moulded them into my Mickey silicon mould and then coated them in chocolate. They were like bricks, and tasted of sweet mess. My idea of cake pops had been shattered. I really dont know how anyone could enjoy them. Balls of sweet sick.

Ive been looking at the Babycakes maker, which bakes cake batter into balls, no sweet mess. But with postage to the UK and all that mess, its stupidly expensive.

Imagine my joy when I find out that lakeland stock a maker of their own. It makes 6 cake balls in 4 minutes... yeah right. That was until I read review after review of it being simple to use and doing exactly what it said on the box. So I bought one. This one to be precise.

I whipped up a bowl of my Basic Vanilla Cupcake batter and used this to make the cake pops. It was pretty much the same as in the booklet that was provided with the machine, apart from the recipe in the book making 30 cake pops... I really didn't need that many.

Following the instructions I waited for the machine to heat up, I then popped the batter in the holes and closed the lid for 4 minutes. The first 6 took around 4 minutes 20 seconds. The rest took 4 minutes exactly. Heres how they turned out...

They came out of the machine clean. Some of the ones I overfilled crept over the sides, but they gave me a little extra to munch on between filling. On the whole, I think it took me 30 minutes to make the batter and have a bowl full of cake balls. It was really easy and the shapes came out uniformed after the first batch. I think my batter could have done with a little more milk to make it easier to pour into the holes, and im not adverse to using a piping bag either - I did try my silicon pourer but it didn't work so well. So... either a squeezy bottle or a piping bag would give you perfect filling, or if you're not that bothered a little spoon and your finger will do the trick... you just need to be fast.

I can imagine this is great fun to use with children, and I hope my maker still works when I have a family old enough to hold a stick (to dip it in chocolate of course) as im sure they would make great treats or presents for friends. (emergency bags and ribbon at the ready)

The next step for me is getting them on sticks and dipping them in chocolate. Ive ordered some sticks from Ebay, but they are quite small, god knows why I thought they would be big enough, but they kinda look cool for making chuppa chup lollipops.... hmmmm.

Oh, and before you ask. Lakeland did not ask me to write this... I really did love it that much to blog about it. lol

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Soft Pretzels

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Im a huge fan of large salted soft pretzels, the kind you get at a Disney park. Disney also have plain, jalapeno, cream cheese and cheese topped pretzels at their pretzel stands. But I always go for the salted. Maybe im a secret slug and salt is my weakness. I dont have salt on my food day to day, but I always tend to gravitate towards salted foods. Caramel, chocolate, popcorn, pretzels.

Ok, so you get the idea.... I like salt. I love soft pretzels. On with the recipe...

Soft Pretzels

Makes 16 small 3" soft pretzels OR 2 large and 8 small.

Pretzels before baking

Pretzels after baking

Ingredients

250ml warm water
1 tbsp yeast
2 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsp soft butter
2 tsp salt
440g of flour

5 tsp bicarbonate of soda for warm bath
1 egg for glazing
Salt or grated cheese to top

Method

Add the 250ml warm water, yeast & salt into a mixing bowl, give it a little mix and leave for 10 minutes until the yeast gets all frothy.
After 10 minutes add the sugar, butter and flour and either bring together with your hands or let a mixer do the hard work with a dough hook attachment. Kneed the dough until their are no lumps and it is soft and smooth. I leave mine on a slow speed in my stand mixer for a few minutes.
Place in an oiled bowl and cover to rise for 1 hour. Treat the dough like bread. Put it someplace nice and warm.
Let the dough double in size, or get a little bigger at least. It probably wont rise as much as bread as its quite a heavy dough.
Once risen, kneed gently again and then get your oven hot and your pot boiling.
Your oven needs to be pre-heated to 180 c or gas mark 3
In a pan, gently boil some water and add the bicarbonate of soda to let the water gently simmer.
Divide your dough in half, then half again, and then half again so you have 16 balls of dough.
Roll each ball into a long rope and then shape into a pretzel. Heres a handy VIDEO
Mix your egg in a bowl ready to glaze. And have your salt or cheese ready to top.
Once all of them are shaped, pop 2 into the simmering water to boil. Use a large slotted spoon to turn the pretzel in the water. Boiling them for around 1 minute. Repeat with all of the pretzels.
While your next pretzels are boiling, give the already boiled pretzel a little glaze with your egg and top with salt or cheese. You can top with whatever you like really. I bake mine on an uncovered baking tray, so I glaze and top on that tray too. (in the photos you'll see i covered my tray with foil - bad mistake, they stuck badly, so its back to my tried and tested method.)
Once all pretzels are boiled, glazed and topped put them in your oven for 12-20 minutes depending on how your oven browns. Check regularly after 12 minutes. Mine took close to the 20 min mark as I also wanted the bottoms a little brown.
Once they are out of the oven you can then leave them as they are or dip in chocolate or caramel. OR if you're feeling adventurous, fill with cream cheese.
Pretzels really need to be eaten within a day or two. Best the same day.

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Pink Vanilla Birthday Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 19:00:00 +0000

I was recently asked to make a birthday cake by a colleague for her future sister-in-law. They would be meeting for the first time, and with a language barrier they needed something to break the ice, and nothing is more universally satisfying than a cake!!!
The brief was simple. Something small and girly.

So I had a look through my recipes and decorating inspiration and knew it had to be something pink and delicate.

We decided to do a pink vanilla two tier cake, filled with vanilla buttercream, and finished with white vanilla buttercream and pink roses. The placement of the roses and the other details were left to me, and so I went about creating the cake.

I made two separate cake batter mixes, and put them individually into the 6" cake tins I had decided to use. I find this easier than trying to split a double mix equally or weighing batter. I can only do this because I almost always use an all-in-one mixing method in my kenwood chef. If I was doing this with a hand whisk id weigh and split a double mix.

The inside of the cake is pink. So it will be like a surprise when you cut inside. My cake tins are generously greased and because the cakes are small, I don't line the bottom with parchment. In bigger cakes (ie anything over 6") I would grease the sides and put a round of parchment in the bottom.

I then bake and cool the cakes. They pop easily out of the tins and the pans are almost completely clean. I let them cool completely before making a huge batch of vanilla buttercream.

The buttercream will fill the inside and cover the outside completely. So I need a lot. All the leftover will then be used to pipe pink roses cascading down the side of the cake. Heres the results.

The end result came out really nice, which I was very happy with. The roses looked cute and I finished with little pearl balls, pink sugar and white butterflies, all edible. As well as a faint pattern left on the buttercream. If I was to do this again I would finish the bottom of the cake off with ribbon or a piped rim, as it was the only part I wasnt 100% on. Let me know what you think!!!

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Happy 19th Birthday Naomi

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:00:00 +0000

My sister Naomi is 19 today. She shares her birthday with Davy Crockett, who has in turn, a link with Disney, and we both love anything to do with Disney.

My parents got her a Zoku, after the phenomenon happening in my kitchen earlier in 2012. I swear, every household needs one.

She originally mentioned ice cream cupcakes. So... many a pintrest and google search later, I found that you can bake a cupcake straight into a wafer cone.

So off I went in search of flat bottomed cones and luckily came across some in Sainsburys. Askeys to be informative. £1 to be super informative.

I made her 12 in total, 6 vanilla and 6 peanut butter. The recipe as always came from my Basic Vanilla Cupcake recipe and a double of this recipe was enough to fill all 12 cones nicely.

I made a double batch of vanilla, filled the first 6 cones and then added 3 good teaspoons of smooth peanut butter to the mix and a little red colouring as my husband has a peanut allergy and I didn't fancy him scoffing the wrong flavour.

To hold my cones, I put a layer of foil over my cupcake pan and made small holes in the foil to hold the cones steady. But once the batter was in them they were pretty weighted and im guessing baking these spaced on a baking tray would also work.

All of the cupcakes were topped with a swirl of my Basic Vanilla Buttercream and then topped with individual special toppings. The vanilla got coloured sprinkles and raspberry coulee. The peanut butter got chocolate sprinkles and salted caramel sauce. We omitted the flake or the cherry on top, but those might feature in a future production.

Here are the final results...

Vanilla with Vanilla Buttercream & Raspberry Coulee

Peanut Butter with Vanilla Buttercream and Salted Caramel

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Peanut Butter Cupcake Topped with Salted Caramel

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Recently I had a moment in Asda. Imagine the scene. Im walking down the isle where the jars of coulee and jam are... in the corner of my eye I spot a jar with a nice looking label. Its the type that really stands out... SALTED CARAMEL. I look left. I look right. Its reasonably priced and I just HAVE to have it. So I grab it before the husband sees and hide it under some other food. Im smiling from ear to ear for the rest of the walk around the supermarket and Fred (my dear husband) is wondering why until he finds the jar while filling the belt at the checkout. He looks at me, looks back at the jar, and then silently puts it down on the belt. I HAVE WON! I have bought a luxury item without him questioning if we really need it. It feels like christmas.

A week later I spot some peanut butter on offer for £1. Fred is allergic to peanuts and its something I try not to expose him to (even though I love reeses) but im on a mission and put my foot down that I NEED the peanut butter. So I grab a smooth and feel good inside.

This is the result of my triumph.

I simply added a half teaspoon of peanut butter to the batter filled half way in the case, and then put a bit more batter over the top. I used my Basic Vanilla Cupcake Mix.

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FREE Download - Kitchen Labels

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 06:30:00 +0000

A few people have asked for a copy of my Disney inspired kitchen labels. So here you go...

DOWNLOAD PDF (From Google Drive)

To download the file, simply open the link above and then go to file > download. The file will download to your computer as a PDF file. You are then free to edit the file however you wish. There is a number of preset labels, as well as a blank one for you to pesonalise. Enjoy!

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3 Layer Chocolate Cake

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 18:00:00 +0000

Earlier this year I made a 1st birthday cake for my godsons sister Ruby. It was a Giant Cupcake with white chocolate fingers and strawberry buttercream.

Now its my godson, Ben's birthday and he is turning 9. Which is scary to think about since I remember bringing him home from the hospital and seeing him at only hours old. He's growing up fast and into a lovely young man.

He loves chocolate and wanted a cake like his sister had. Since he is at that stage where he needs a manly cake for him and his friends I suggested something a little different. So I made him a 3 layer chocolate cake, with a middle layer as red vanilla cake. He's a big Man Utd fan too.

Ingredients

This recipe fills a single 6" sandwich tin, anything larger than this and I had a terrible feeling he would be eating cake for the rest of his life.

140g Self Raising Flour
140g Caster Sugar
140g Butter (I use Stork)
2 eggs
2 Heaped Tablespoons of Cocoa
2 Teaspoons of Vanilla Extract
2 Tablespoons of Milk
Red food colouring (for the red vanilla cake)

I made this mix up 2 x for the chocolate layers and then again but without the cocoa and with the colouring for the red vanilla. If you see the mix start to split when you are adding food colouring, simply add a spoon of flour and continue to mix. I use a stand mixer but a simple hand whisk will do the job.

The cake was covered in chocolate buttercream which is simply my basic buttercream recipe plus cocoa. You can grab this recipe here: Basic Vanilla Buttercream. And lovingly adorned with Malteasers and 3 cake sparklers.

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Olympics Party!

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Soooo did everyone watch the opening ceremony? Fantastic wasn't it. I had a busy Friday night baking my godson a 3 layered birthday cake (post coming this week) and 30 cupcakes for my Olympic Party happening the next day.

The party was an all day affair, filled with buffet, bbq and friends. I made 30 simple English vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream - You can get the recipe here. I baked them in Union Jack cases and displayed them proudly on a Union Jack stand.

We had everything from sausage rolls to my homemade Whispering Canyon Cafe Apple Vinaigrette salad dressing (obviously nicked from the Whispering Canyon Cafe Restaurant in Walt Disney World) - Heres the Recipe

Ingredients for Apple Vinaigrette

30ml cider vinegar
30ml apple juice concentrate
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
60ml apple sauce
190ml oil

Method

Put all the ingredients in a blender minus the oil. I use vegetable oil. Then slowly add the oil to the mix with the blend slowly. HOWEVER - I have just put all the ingredients in a blender and gone crazy and I don't think it effects the taste at all.

We decorated the house too with loads of flags and bunting. My mum even filled a vase of beautiful white carnations for the front room. It was all very festive. And in true british fashion it rained (hard) while we were bbqing. Thank god for the big lid to cover the food and a bbqing hero!!

Im also entering my cakes into Calendar Cakes, run by Dolly Bakes and Laura Loves Cakes which is a fantastic new monthly baking competition with a theme. I was going to enter last month but I chickened out!!

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Cupcakes for college

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 18:30:00 +0000

A few weeks ago one of my Disney friends Caron asked me to make her some cupcakes as thank you gifts for the teachers in her sons college. I was overjoyed to fulfil the order and had such fun thinking of flavour combinations for the occasions.

We decided to keep it simple and opted for Vanilla, Strawberry, Lemon and Oreo.

The recipe was adapted from my trusty vanilla mix, which you can find here.

For the Strawberry I made a strawberry buttercream using natural strawberry jam to flavour and colour the mixture. Strawberry puree was added to the hot cake and then it was topped with the buttercream when cooled. I used an open round nozzle.

The Lemon cakes were made in the same way, using the base mix but using lemon juice and curd to flavour the cake, and topped with a yellow lemon buttercream and lemon icing drizzle.

The Oreo had crushed oreos in the cake and frosting, as well as an oreo crust.

Featured in : Delightful Order: Inspiring Thursday Link Party

Kitchen Labels

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 20:30:00 +0000

In our new kitchen I have a lot more cupboards and spaces to put my things which means I can organise things easier and categorise cupboards into use. So far I have a baking cupboard under my hob, which has all my cake tins, cupcake trays, wire rack and also some of my bigger kitchen items such as my slow cooker, bread bin, frying pans and a small stacked area for tinned food. I also have several BYGEL rails from Ikea for my pan lids and washing up items (outta sight outta mind - ill be making a blog post about hidden storage soon) attached to the back of my cupboard doors.

All of my baking equipment and those small items are placed in labelled clear boxes that have lids on, which means nothing gets mixed up and it makes cleaning much easier.

I designed the labels and printed them onto an A4 sticky sheet, cut them out and stuck them onto all my cupboard boxes, such as cupcake cases, flavours and colourings, packets, toppings, chocolate, crisps and all my baking items such as plain flour, self raising flour and caster sugar.

The labels have a Disney link too, with the text running around the edge reading "Sassagoula Steamboat Company serving Port Orleans since 1853" and "Sassagoula River, FL" underneath.

Simple Shortbread

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 17:00:00 +0000

I had no eggs in the house, and so I decided to have another go at shortbread. The last time I made shortbread I was probably in school and it probably as hard as a rock - I hate that when people make biscuits.

Ingredients

150g plain flour
100g butter
50g caster sugar
(and I added a little splash of vanilla)

I preheated the oven as per the instructions to 160 - I never bake at 160 so I was a little concerned. It says the biscuits take 12-15 minutes.

I mixed the ingredients and then rolled out and cut into strips, making holes in the shortbread like a good shortbread always has and then popped them in the fridge while my oven got nice and hot. I baked for 15 minutes but they were no where near cooked, they were super soft and theres no way Id eat them that raw. So another 5 in the oven, and then another 5... im never baking at 160 again. Next time ill be baking at 180 for 12 mins. I have a brand new oven (only a month old), its the daddy, so its definitely not that.

I turned them out onto my wire rack and threw some icing sugar on them. I really need to get one of those little sieve things.

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Birthday flower pot for my mum

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 22:30:00 +0000

It was my mums birthday yesterday and we were still in Kent, so I was unable to make her a cake. She had to endure a beautiful day at the seaside in Hastings with fish and chips for lunch and sunny weather - woe her.

BUT, we got back home today and I decided since had the house to myself (like I do every Monday) id make my mum the cake she asked for.

Now, ive mentioned before - im not that great at big cakes, so please avoid looking too closely at the photos in this post (or you'll laugh)

Id watched a video on youtube about making a flowerpot cake and so I decided since my mum LOVES flowers Id make her some from coloured icing.

Ive never really made anything with anything mouldable apart from a really poop man utd shirt for some cupcakes. So this would be the first time I would make roses. I made a ball of pink and a ball of bronze (which went skin coloured) and set about making the roses. The first few were rubbish but then I got into the swing.

To make a rose, get your icing and make 6 little pea sized balls, plus a little sausage no bigger than the end of your finger.

I used a zippy bag and placed the sausage on the bag and folded a corner over so i could smooth the icing without it sticking. I made a long flat sausage with this piece and then rolled it up to make the centre of the rose.

The first 3 balls were placed on the bag and smoothed out into discs which were then wrapped around the centre, slightly overlapping as I went. Then the next 3 balls made the outer petals. I sliced off the excess icing and laid on a plate to dry out and harden a little.

I was really happy with the outcome.

The cake I made was a chocolate cake and after what seemed like an eternity in the oven (the centre just didnt want to firm up) the cake was cooling in the kitchen.

Ok, now, I know this sounds obvious, but dont put buttercream on a warm cake (oh god im stupid) In my haze of decorating the cake the bottom icing was waaaaaaay too thin and tore loads, and the cake was kinda still warm inside which meant everything just went wrong.. BUT I was happy with the final result, it looked ok for my first attempt at a few new things. What do you think?

Birthday Cupcakes

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 12:06:00 +0000

This past weekend we all went to Kent for a family birthday. My Uncle Barry was 70 and it was my mum's birthday yesterday too.

Its weird how my mum, her brother and his two children all have a birthday in the same week. My cousins are even on the same day... 5 years apart.

So, with a big celebration I was tasked with making the cake. The brief was chocolate cake and enough to feed around 30.

Now, im not great making big cakes, in fact, id say im below a beginner, I just can't get my head around the long cooking times compared to cupcakes (which for me are my speciality) and plus, the drive down in a hot car does not make me anymore confident, so instead I decided it would be best if we bought a chocolate cake and I would decorate it, and also do 48 cupcakes. 24 in pink for my mum and cousin Jocelyn, and another 24 in blue for my Uncle Barry and cousin Neal - both Man City fans (poor things)

We got the cake from Costco, and wow did it look amazingly good. (it tasted amazing too - theres no way I could have trumped this one)

I made 48 cupcakes on the Thursday night and packaged them away in my carry case ready for our Friday morning commute. I would be frosting them at my aunty and uncles house on the Friday night ready for the Saturday party.

We arrived later than planned so while my dad and Uncle Dennis along with Fred, my sister and her boyfriend went to the pub to watch the England match, I stayed home with the intention of frosting the cupcakes. Instead, I watched the match and rested my feet. 2 hours of start stop traffic on the Dartford Bridge did nothing for my tootsies.

So Saturday morning and I start to frost the cakes. It takes me an AGE using my auntys mixer (which im guessing how to use as I go along) to make the blue frosting. It just wants to turn green because I cant whip the butter white enough. Its my own fault, this would have taken me next to no time in my trusty Kenwood - something I know how to use and know how long it takes to work. About a billion years later, we had blue frosting. I pop it in my piping bag and begin swirling on the cakes. I top half the blue cakes with footballs.

The pink take a millisecond to make - seriously, it whips perfectly and colours instantly (although by this time my aunty is cooking chicken and sausages which is making the kitchen warm)

I pipe onto the remaining cakes and top half with mini butterflies (which is something quite personal in our family - it reminds us of my nanna)

Heres the final result...

Giant Cookie - Using my basic chocolate cake recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 15:24:00 +0000

So I think my obsession for over-sized baked goods has come across well to my friends, as for our wedding anniversary (3 years) our friends Kim (host of Disney podcast Minnie Minxes) and Aron got 'us' a giant cookie mould which looks like a giant oreo basically and I had to immediately try it out (well the next day) with an adapted recipe.

My Basic Chocolate Cake

This recipe is exactly the same as my basic vanilla only I add cocoa to the mix. So here is a basic recipe I used for cookie mould.

Use these measurements for 6 cupcakes
Double the recipe for 12 cupcakes
x3 for a giant cookie mould
x4 for a regular 8" cake

Ingredients (for 6 cupcakes)

70g self raising flour
70g caster sugar
70g of soft butter (I use stalk as its great for making cakes)
2 tbs milk
1 medium egg (YES, only 1 egg, anymore and your mixture will be too eggy)
1 cap of vanilla flavouring (I use extract NEVER essence)
2 heaped tablespoons of Cocoa

Preheat and bake for 25 minutes on 180 deg c. Let it cool for 10 minutes in the tin/mould before transferring to a wire rack.

You could add oreos to the mix or make an oreo buttercream to fill. I just filled with my basic vanilla buttercream.

Zoku, My New Obsession

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Wed, 30 May 2012 20:20:00 +0000

So, we found out about the Zoku machine via our friends out in Florida. Its hot there... all year round. We live in Manchester, home of the rain and cold. However, Fred is a huge fan of ice lollies no matter what the weather, and sometimes no matter what the time of the day.

When we saw it Fred immediately wanted one, and after watching many videos on youtube about how you can stick slices of fruit in there, or cookies, or whatever you fancy freezing, I was sold too, and so I ordered one from Amazon, for £29.99 (price my vary)

It came 2 days later and we popped it in the freezer. Basically you get a cool little heavy freezing unit which you just leave in your freezer so you can make ice lollies whenever you like. You then get 6 sticks, 6 drip trays and an easy release tool to pull the lollies out of the maker.

You have to let the unit freeze initially for 24 hours. Then its good to go for around 9 lollies before it needs to go back in the freezer (Ive read it should be ready to use again in a few hours).

You basically then take the unit out of the freezer, put the sticks into the sadels and pour in your liquid of choice. We let ours freeze for 10 minutes, but thiner liquids would take around 7 minutes.

Apple Pink Lemonade

Luxury Chocolate Milkshake

Strawberry Yop

Pineapple, Passion Fruit & Mango

Vimto

Giant Donut Recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Nicola Thomas) — Mon, 21 May 2012 21:45:00 +0000

I had my first visit to B'n'M last week and saw they sold giant donut moulds!! Now Id be silly to pass it up and when I saw it was only £1 I nearly fell on the floor!!!!

So I decided to try it out on my work colleagues. I followed my basic cupcake recipe because that never fails, and made enough to use 6 eggs (so thats 6 x the mix) and then followed the instructions to butter and flour my mould.

Now, I have a giant cupcake mould, but it never works perfectly, it always sticks and I now know what ive been doing wrong all this time.... butter and flour my mould. Comes out perfectly clean... and then I jump with joy!!

I had enough batter left to whip up around 24 cupcakes - as I know they are a greedy lot, and true to form, they ate almost everything. I decorated the donut with chocolate fudge frosting, and the cupcakes with lemon buttercream, made with the new flavoured icing sugar (that I also picked up super super cheap from B'n'M)