Buttercream Ruffles

I made this cake for my friend Jean since it was her birthday last weekend. I have to be honest and say that I didn't want to make a cake covered in fondant for her since she does them so beautifully herself anyway.

I got the idea of using the petal tip to create the ruffle look on the cake from Google Images. It's a really simple technique and it's so quick to do! Here is a video tutorial I found on YouTube if you would like to give it a go.

The cake is caramel mud and covered in salted caramel buttercream. It was a tiny 4" cake but by the time I had added the ruffles on . I don't know if she liked salted caramel but it was a recipe I had come across and thought it would be worth a try. The only thing I'd change would be the cake - I would make it a lighter cake rather than a mud cake.

This is getting me all hungry now.

Enjoy!

Caramelicious

I finally decided to try out a new caramel cupcake recipe this weekend. I made most of it in the mini size and some in the regular size.

The caramel didn't quite go 'wow' with this recipe - back to the drawing board to look for another caramel cupcake recipe. Perhaps I could add a few drops of caramel extract to add more flavour to it - make mental note to get some of the extract.

I was also going through my cupboards in the kitchen and decided to use up 'leftover' cupcake liners so I ended up with these orange coloured ones - I really don't like the colour, hence why they were the 'leftovers'. Wish I had photoshop to change the colour of those cupcake liners. The colour of the flowers are new to my lil' collection, as you can see I have a thing for pastels. I was thinking perhaps a blue rose - I'll get onto that as soon as I have coloured my freshly made flower paste from a recipe given to me by Miss J.

Enjoy!

Purple Power

Anisha's Purple Flowers

Here's the last birthday cake for the week! 

This cake is for Anisha, she loves anything purple so I made some purple anemone flowers to put onto her cake. I had to get another secret squirrel to find out what cake she likes and I had to wing it as I've never made a caramel mud cake before. I hope it turns out yummy!! 

I'm already thinking about what to make next, banana & toffee cupcakes or macarons.

Caramel Macarons

Caramel Macarons

Macaron Tower

I spent the weekend trying out a couple of different macaron recipes, I never knew macarons originally came from Italy! Did you?

The first method I experimented with was without 'cooking' the sugar and the second experiment I had used an Italian meringue recipe to make the macarons. The first method was easier but the end result was not so aesthetically pleasing and the method where I had used the Italian meringue turned out much nicer.

With the Italian Meringue method, it was a little more fiddly and time consuming but it was well worth the extra effort. The batter was smoother and not as runny so trying to get 'uniform' sized macarons were easier.

I can't wait to sink my teeth into some of these yummy macarons tomorrow when they are ready.

Italian Meringue on your left versus Uncooked Sugar on your right