Cow Cake!

A couple of weeks ago, it was my housemates birthday, and I decided instead of present I would bake her a cake.
She is absolutely addicted to cow print! She loves anything and everything that has cow print on it. I had been planning this cake in my head for quite a while, thinking of how I could incorporate cow print in it, and thought... the whole cake should be cow print!

So lets from the sponge.. I made one sponge mix, and separated it into two bowls, into one of the mixes I added some black food colouring and an extra bit of cocoa powder just to maintain the same consistency as the other mix. I dolloped the two different sponges into my lined trays and this was the outcome.

Amazing right?
I wanted the outer layer to be cow print, but I also wanted the challenge of making a fondant cow, this was my first ever attempt as making a fondant cow, and I tell you, I felt like a proud mother when this was finished. 

 He was so cute, I almost wanted to put him in an air tight container and put him on my fireplace as a momentum.

I assembled the three layer cake and covered the cake with some modelling chocolate, I dont know what I did wrong, but it definitely did not come out right, the chocolate went hard as if there were no glucose in it, but I put 4 tablespoons in, so I'm still not quite sure what went wrong! If anyone has any idea how I prevent this in the future then please let me know!

I covered the cake with it regardless, as I had no marzipan at hand. So the final layer was a little lumpy and bumpy, but was covered up quite well with the cow print. This was the finished cake, all cow printed up with the cute cow topper of course :)

Strawberry and Rum

As I keep saying, I love Strawberries! I made these little treats a while back, using some left over rum and strawberries. I cooked the strawberries in rum and dipped them into the middle of the cupcakes before putting them in the oven, so that the cupcakes would have a lovely center. I also made a strawberry puree which I squirted on top of some cream cheese frosting.

The result was Fab! Rum makes the strawberries taste ever so yummy :)

Nothing says Thank you like cake..

Over the summer, I took over my mums best friends company whilst she soaked up the sun for two weeks in Dubai, and oh my, it was the most stressful two weeks of my life, but who knew being a boss was so fun!

In a bid to say thank you for such an amazing experience, I thought I would say thank you with some cupcakes. I bought some duck eggs and I thought I would experiment by using it in a cake... and it was AMAZING, so moist and lovely and rich!

The previous evening I stayed up until the early hours of the morning, making these pretty little roses out of some fondant, I was enjoying it so much that I just kept making more an more!

Some of them need a bit of work but the more you make them, the better you get and better they come out.

Using the duck eggs I made some red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and topped them with these cute little roses and this was the outcome...

I bought little cupcake wrappers which added an extra little bit a beauty to these cakes. She absolutely loved them, and keeps telling me to start a cake shop, haha if only!!

Strawberry and Chocolate...Heaven

What better in the summer than a punnet of fresh sweet strawberries? I love strawberries, they are by far my favourite fruit, I eat them all the time, with cereal, on toast (A must try!) and just with anything I can. So I made these little beauties in a bid to make some summery and British cupcakes.

I made plain vanilla sponge cakes, cut them in half, filled them with whipped cream and jam and topped them with a strawberry, I melted some chocolate and drizzled the tops of the cakes with the chocolate. I enjoyed them over a cup of tea and a chinwag with the best friend, what a perfect afternoon.

However this was not enough for me, I can honestly say I went a tad bit chocolate crazy. I had some left over chocolate sponge from some brownies that I made a couple of days before hand, and so I decided to make some cake pops dipped in chocolate. Sometimes I really do despise making cake pops, they are so difficult to dip perfectly! So my secret.... just cover the uneven surface with more chocolate!!

Macaroons!

So here's where my experiments got a bit bigger and better. I went through a phase this summer, where I went a bit macaroon crazy. I went to afternoon tea in the Dorchester Hotel where I tasted my first ever macaroon, and I LOVED IT!

I also went to Lille in France, and visited two bakeries which had lovely macaroons and I couldn't help but buy some from both bakers! I came to a realisation that macaroons are actually quite expensive for just one bite size taste of heaven, and thus my next challenge was to create my own!

I found a macaroon recipe and coloured them pink, and sandwiched them together with some chocolate ganache, with some glitter sprinkled on top. Making macaroons is INCREDIBLY tricky, it was by far the hardest thing I have tried to make, only because so much can go wrong. I didn't have any templates either so making the same size was impossible. I do want to make them again and experiment with some more flavours, so if any one has any suggestions then please let me know! :)

My first Birthday Cake

I would quite like to share with you this little cake that I made for a friends birthday, it was my first ever attempt at using fondant to cover a cake, I had never done it before until this day. I didn't really know what pattern to put on it, but I wanted to make it quite girly, so I just made some pink fondant and cut out some flowers using the new cutter that I bought.

I really need to work on my letter writing with royal icing as it just came out wrong! (I have got a bit better at making fondant covered cake, but I was quite happy with this as a first attempt!- It tasted delicious too!)

And so the experimentation begins

After all the good feedback, I was itching to bake more! I have only ever tasted a whoopie pie once before, and was a flavour that I wasn't very fond of, but it still became my challenge to make a batch of whoopie pies. 

I ordered a tray on amazon for relatively cheap whilst craving a Victoria sponge really badly! and then it struck me, what if I could make mini Victoria sponge whoopie pies!? I found a lovely plain whoopie pie recipie and tailored it to incorporate my own flavours. I sandwiched the sponge together with cream, jam and fresh strawberries and raspberries to make quite a delectable dessert.

And this was the outcome...

My First Cupcake Display

So I thought I would start adding a few pictures of my previous cakes, as I thought there was no point in starting a story half way so I'm starting it from the beginning.
I started making standard and average cupcakes for fun with plain sponge and butter cream, and the most adventurous ones were just pistachio and rose. Once I started baking, my family would not stop requesting me to make them cakes! So when my cousin was getting married, I seized the opportunity to make him a little present. Being a Hindu, we have ALOT of celebratory days and evenings leading up to the wedding night, and I chose to make these cupcakes for him.

I made Mocha cupcakes, Apple and cinnamon, with an apple pie filling, and coconut and creams cheese cupcakes with a liquid chocolate center. It was a lot more stressful making in bulk than I anticipated -I was awake until 3am but it was so so fun!

Food Food Food

As a first time blogger, this is all rather alien to me. I am a very keen cook with absolutely no cooking expertise, but just love for the kitchen. My obsession with cakes and baking begun very suddenly and I've constantly and quite irritatingly begun uploading pictures to Facebook just so that people can look at my creations. I have decided to instead start this blog in hope that I can share my love and passion with all you other people who love cooking too!! 

So here goes...