Teddy Bear Cupcakes

I made these little cupcakes for Ollie's Baptism last week. They were white chocolate mud cake, covered in white chocolate ganache and fondant. I love making the little fondant bears, ducks, booties and trains. It was a cute theme for the Baptism and these cakes would work for a baby shower and a first Birthday too.

On a different note, I am making hundreds of little flowers today for a wedding cake on Friday. It is for a special friend and I am really looking forward to making this one. Maybe I will also post a "How to make little flowers" post soon.....

100th Birthday!!

As a cake maker, it is not all that often that you get to make a cake for a 100th Birthday! A big Happy Birthday to the amazing Dorothy! This cake was a buttercake, covered in two thick layers of chocolate ganache. The theme was pink and sweet, so I designed a cake with pretty pink icing roses, little white flowers, and small details of piping. The most important thing was the 100 on the top. Dorothy had a lovely afternoon tea with her family, ate cake and read her letter from the queen.

Cupcake Icing

Even though I usually work with fondant, I enjoy working with Buttercream icing. (and eating it!) What are your best tips and recipes for buttercream? I have done a lot of research into different types of recipes and experimented with what is the best for piping. So I thought I would share my recipe and hints.

Buttercream Icing (frosting)

*1 cup of unsalted butter
*1/2 cup milk
*vanilla
*8 cups of icing sugar

1/ Mix butter, at room temperature, using beaters. Mix for two minutes.

2/ Add vanilla and slowly add up to 1/2 cup of milk for another two minutes or until creamy.

3/Add 4 cups of sifted icing sugar and then mix slowly at first and then on high until creamy.

4/Keep adding cup by cup until quite firm.

Tips

* To make icing as white as possible use a light coloured french butter. Also to step 2 add a squeeze of lemon juice. The acid in the lemon acts to make it whiter without flavouring the icing. Once you have more white icing than yellow, you can add colours that end up more pure.

* Place mixture in the fridge for a few minutes so it starts to set so that it is firmer to pipe.

* Use quite a large piping tip

* Pipe with a 90 degree angle to the cupcake. I pipe around the outside first and move to the middle. Don't pipe too fast otherwise the ribbons will go flat.

Happy making.....and eating!!