Social Eatia

Simon from PushON ordered 48 social media-themed cakes for their networking event on Monday.
I made 24 chocolate and 24 vanilla cakes and then decorated them in 5 different designs, with 5 different buttercream flavours.

PushON's own logo was kind of fiddly to cut out, but nothing matched the adventures I had with the printed cupcake toppers- from having them printed as a last-minute rush job, to drying them very gently in the oven so that they would deem to be removed from their backing paper!
However, the QR code did work when scanned, so I guess all the fiddly work was worth it.

Hope everyone enjoyed their party and the cakes on Monday night.


48 cakes: 2 cake flavours, 5 icing flavours and 5 designs, ready to be boxed up and transported to the party!


PushON's logo.


...applied to chocolate or vanilla cakes, with vanilla choc-chip buttercream.


Twitter logo


...applied to chocolate or vanilla cakes, with vanilla seed buttercream.


Feed logo


...applied to chocolate or vanilla cakes, with chocolate buttercream.


Facebook logo


...applied to chocolate or vanilla cakes, with coloured vanilla buttercream.


QR code printed onto edible cupcake toppers - it works, if you feel like scanning it...


...applied to chocolate or vanilla cakes, with strawberry buttercream.


Cakes in situ. (Thanks for the photo, Simon)

Cupcakeasaurus

48 Dinosaur cakes were ordered for Maya's 5th birthday by her gran. I made 24 chocolate and 24 vanilla cakes, and decorated them in a variety of styles.

My favourite ones are the fondant icing dinosaur bones, and the rubble/stones that were made from crushed Oreo and chocolate chip cookies - it was a super-messy job, but a really effective look, I think.

The volcanoes took a lot of debate and experimentation, but apparently they were the most popular design: I should have made more!

Chocolate and vanilla cakes with chocolate and vanilla buttercream, cookie crumbs, fondant icing decorations and shop-bought sugar flowers.


Dem bones


One diplodocus...


...and a whole herd of them.


A sort of Triceratops, complete with Oreo and chocolate chip cookie 'rubble'.


That Oreo rubble got everywhere!


Volcano!



Dino bones, chocolate chip cookie 'boulders' and a wonky palm tree.


I love the bones, they were a last minute design addition, but my favourites, I think. The extra-nice thing about them was that the more broken apart the bones are, the better they look!



Palm trees shedding leaves, before I've even left the house.


The cakes on the stand, ready to party!
I, personally, would have mixed the cakes up on the layers of the stand, and put more than 1 cake on top, but the birthday girl's big brother was art directing this!
I hope they shuffled them round a bit before serving them.

Triple Ginger Cake for a Kung Fu double bill

Thought I'd better bring a contribution to Kung Fu film night, and I'd been looking for an excuse to try this recipe, so I got baking on Saturday morning.

It was quite a lot of cake to eat straight after a take away curry though, next film night I'll make some ice cream instead.

Having said that, it was really nice but VERY gingery- there are some changes I would make to it, but I'll definitely be baking this again.


Dan Lepard's ginger chocolate chip pound cake


Triple Ginger Cake:
ground ginger, crystallised ginger and Green & Blacks dark chocolate with ginger (which is -conveniently- my absolute favourite chocolate)
(thanks for the name suggestion, Paul)


A close up of the icing - it consists only of extra thick double cream and sugar!
I think it's a bit too sweet, especially when I tasted it by itself, the sugar really made my teeth go "eeeeeeeeeee".
I also tried to use the ginger chocolate for decoration, but it has chunks of ginger in, so wasn't so good for drizzling, as much as blobbing. Next time I'll use pure chocolate for decoration, and maybe I would try it with a cream cheese topping.

Mini Mix

Bob ordered 24 mini cakes to take into work for her 30th birthday. She couldn't decide on a theme, so I suggested a mix of designs in an assortment of icing flavours.
I'm always happy to have the chance to practice my icing techniques (and this order also gave me the chance to finally work out the pricing for a box of mini cakes!)

Happy 30th birthday Bob!


24 mini chocolate Guinness cakes with assorted toppings:


cream cheese frosting;


raspberry buttercream with hundreds and thousands;


and a red buttercream rose.
(the cakes with the roses also had a fresh raspberry baked into the middle)


Top view



pretty.

Space Cakes!

A lovely order from Clare for Stephen's birthday: both a fun commission of 12 space-themed cakes AND the invitation to go round and help them eat them!

I made chocolate Guinness cakes (because that's all I seem to bake at the moment!) with cream cheese frosting. The toppers were made from fondant icing, and some hundreds and thousands to represent the asteroids!

(there's nothing I love more than geeking out about a subject- so not only did I do my best to recreate the look of the planets, I also wanted them in the right order. Between creating them, I spent my time online, checking the placement of the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. I also felt a little "not to scale" proviso was in order!)

Happy Birthday Stephen!


12 Solar system cakes: Sun, Mercury, Venus, (a rocket), Earth, Mars, asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Venus and some stars (or the Kuiper belt, as I like to think of them)


"Not to Scale"


Asteroids


Side view



Some astronaut candles


ready for blast off to Stephen's.

Happy Easter!

I had absolutely nothing to do with making this Easter nest (kids brought them back from the grandparents'), but everything to do with eating it! Happy Easter!

Moustache Cakes A-Go-Go!

Camilla ordered 12 cakes with moustaches on for her friend's hen do!

The complicating factor was that she needed to have them delivered to her in Manchester on Wednesday evening, but would be serving them in London on Friday evening - with a detour to Norwich on the way!

I made 12 chocolate Guinness cakes with a raspberry inside each one, trying to go for maximum moistness - if they started out really moist, then they would have a chance of not being quite bone dry by Friday tea time.

We decided to top the cakes with raspberry buttercream to make sure the pink colour gave the cakes a bit of femininity too. And I matched the cake cases with the chocolate brown moustache shapes.

I guess they survived ok, because the feedback I got was:

"They tasted amazzzzing! Omg better than I could ever imagine- there were lots of happy hens definitely! (butter icing slightly melty after 8 hours on a sweaty train, but no-one noticed!) thanks so much xxxx"

:-{D


I made the chocolate Guinness cakes, as they are the moistest recipe I have, and they would have to survive at least 2 days from baking to eating. I put a fresh raspberry inside each one, in the hope of making them even more moist and juicy!


The moustache toppers.
I had imagined making lots of different shapes in lots of different colours, but I thought that since the cakes had a long journey ahead of them, simplicity was key.
The dark brown colour matches the chocolate cakes and their cases, and the simple moustache shapes would (hopefully) travel well.


A rejected complicated moustache shape.


Cakes baked and iced. This is what they would look like until Camilla assembled them on Friday, so I wanted to make them as pretty as possible, even without their toppers.


A close-up of the raspberry buttercream.


Moustaches were packaged in layers.


Protected by greaseproof paper and kitchen towel layers.


And a bit of desiccant to make sure they didn't get soggy en route.


Ready for the journey.


The lovely Camilla modeling the lovely finished product.

:-{D