Vanilla Cupcakes with Sparkly Flowers

Keeping up with blogging and photo editing proved quite difficult over the last 2 weeks as my computer became just a TV for watching the Olympics and not much else. Now that the Olympics are over I am trying to catch up along with packing to move house this weekend. I am also very excited to be going to the Paralympics which will keep the Olympic fever running and even more exciting is my friend and old housemate is competing in the Women's Long Jump. She is a truly remarkable person and I know we are all excited to see her compete. You can find out more about her current world record here. 

Back to the baking, so this was just something I was trying out. As I said I'm move this weekend and trying to use up some of my bits and pieces in my baking cupboard. I simply coloured some marzipan and cut out some flowers using my daisy cutter. I then painted them with edible glue using a toothpick; not the best tool, but it worked. Then I dipped the flowers in some sprinkles and let them dry.



I was really please with the results, as a person who is not too great at the fiddly decorations I think these are simple for anyone to make. I even had a lady as me where I bought them from.

Happy Baking x

West Ham Graduation Cupcakes

I'm not much of a football fan, or any sports fan really, (though apparently that currently excludes these Olympics - feels weird but loving it, GO AUS!!), anyway one thing I do know about football fans in particular is they have a lot of pride in their team colours. So when I was asked by my friend Kate to do some West Ham cupcakes for her boyfriends graduation, I was a bit nervous about getting the colours right.

For example.. West Ham colours are NOT burganday, deep red or maroon... its Claret and Sky Blue. I knew straight up that Claret icing was going to be difficult and I didn't want to dare try create it and I was lucky enough to find some Claret cases and made the icing sky blue which was a lot easier to pull off. As I said I'm not a football fan, but I'm proud of these colours.

Well Done Dan on your graduation.

Happy Baking x

London 2012 Olympic Ring Cake

The London 2012 Olympics! We have been counting down to this for years. I have been in this country for just over 5 years now and ever since I stepped foot off the plane its been talked about/discussed/debated and finally its here.   I must say until about a week ago I was not fazed much by the Olympics and thinking back I can't even recall any memories from the Beijing Olympics (though I worked out that was the year I moved into the Villas and we had no internet or TV for quite some time... hence my lack of memory of the synchronised 2,008 drummers). 

As of last week and the countdown to the Opening Ceremony got closer there was a real buzz about London that's pretty hard to ignore and my Olympic spirit kicked in. For the Opening Ceremony we were lucky enough to have my friend Miss Kate throw an Opening Ceremony party so we could all watch it together on the big screen. We all (most) dressed up in Olympic outfits and each had to bring a dish, and of course my dish was cake!  

Miss Sumo Kate

Miss Sumo Helena

The idea for this cake is not my own and I give full credit to The Whisk Kid, however I adapted it to just 5 layers in the order of the Olympic Rings and just used my simple buttercream recipes for the icing. Whilst I was making this I was a bit sceptical that the colours would not be bright enough as when the cakes came out of the oven, they were all slightly brown, which is fine as that's how they should be, but I wanted the bright colours of the rings to be the highlight of the cake.   The cake was cut by our lovely host during the start of the procession for each country and it looked truly amazing. The colours were so vibrant and the cake tasted perfect, with not too much icing which is a difficult when you have 5 layers of cake. If only baking was an Olympic sport....  

GO AUSSIES GO!!!!   

Happy Baking x   

p.s. This is the first time I have tried to do some gif's and I think they are okay for my first attempt, but have learnt some key things for next time. Tip one: cake needs to be in the same spot. Tip two: camera also needs to be in the same spot/angle. But you get the point.