Valentines Week - Simple Cupcake Toppers

A quick way to dress up some simple cupcakes is with some quick cupcake toppers.  The best part about these cupcakes is that the toppers can be customised to suit any occasion.  These are so quick and easy to make and are a great way to try working with fondant if you haven’t ever done it before.

First choose your favourite cupcakes and whip up a batch.  I used my favourite recipe for rose water cupcakes that I shared once before here.  I love that these taste like musk but if you aren’t a fan of musk the rosewater can be swapped out for violet water or orange blossom.  You will need 18 cupcakes iced in buttercream,.  You will also need white fondant, pink fondant, a small heart cutter, a small scalloped cutter and letter embossers.

1 - Roll your white fondant out to about 1/8 of an inch thick and cut out 18 scalloped rounds.  Set these aside on a plate covered in paper towel. 

2 – Roll out your pink fondant to 1/8 inch thick.  Emboss your letters on at a time then using your heart cutter a heart shape with the letter in the centre.

3 – Use a small paintbrush to brush a little water into the centre of your first white round.  Place a heart shape on top.  The water will help the fondant pieces to stick together.  Repeat with the remainder of your hearts.

4 – Place each heart on top of a cupcake and arrange your cupcakes to spell out a message.

Now present them to your better half for Valentine’s Day or leave them as a surprise for your crush with a note from their secret admirer.  These cupcakes are sure to bring a smile to anyone’s face this Valentine’s Day.

Housewarming Cupcakes

 

There is nothing better than edible gifts I think!  So when we were invited to a housewarming on the weekend that specified no presents I decided I would make some cupcakes as an edible gift anyway.

I wanted to keep them pretty simple so a bit of white fondant, some teal fondant and some alphabet stampers later I had my gift done.  I was one cupcake short though so I had to put both the p's in happy on one cupcake.  Woops!

This is the first time I have used my alphabet stampers but it won't be the last.  I got them free with a cake decorating magazine.  They are so easy to use and will come in very handy I think.  I am gradually building a good arsenal of cake decorating items and am having so much fun playing with them all!

Anniversary Cupcakes

Corey and I don't usually buy presents for our anniversary because we prefer to use the money to go out for dinner or stay somewhere for the night.  This year we spent the night at the Marriott over the weekend.  If you follow me on instagram you may have seen a photo of our gorgeous view.  It was awesome!

Since we don't buy gifts I always make Corey cupcakes or cake instead.  This year I made some cupcakes.  I was going to make them all the same but then decided why not have a play around with a few different ideas.

I made a batch or vanilla cupcakes and used normal white Queen fondant from the supermarket.  The pink fondant is a new thing I discovered at Spotlight the other day.  Usually when I need a lot of a coloured icing I buy Satin Ice.  If I only need a small amount I colour it myself but sometimes that can be a pain in the butt.  Certain colours never turn out right and I find it hard to get the exact colour I am after.  The pink icing I bought is called Fondariffic and comes in small 8oz tubs.  At $8.99 it worked out the same price as buying another gel colour and saved me the hassle of colouring the icing myself.

I have been wanting to make bow cupcakes for ages so I couldn't resist throwing a few of those in as well.  I think next time I make them I need to make the strip for the bow portion longer.  They were a bit hard to fold and keep together.

I really love decorating cupcakes! Fondant is like adult playdoh and then at the end you get a yummy treat.  I want to refine my skills a bit more.  I have covered a cake with fondant before but I would love to work my way up to sculpted cakes.  I was reading through my Planet Cake book last night and I think I am going to try and work through the projects in there to build up my skills.  I just need to find some occasions to make cupcakes for otherwise I am going to end up eating millions of cupcakes and turning into the size of a house!

Halloween Cupcakes

Tonight we are heading to my mum's house for dinner and I decided to make cupcakes for dessert.  Given that I will take any excuse to decorate cupcakes I decided to make them Halloween themed.  These mummy cupcakes were super easy to make and all they took was some simple icing and fondant.

I made a batch of chocolate cupcakes and iced them with a simple white icing.  I then cut strips of fondant and draped them over the cupcakes to look like mummy wrappings.  The eyes are then small bits of fondant rolled into balls.  You can draw on the black dots with either a food grade pen or black icing or food colouring.

I love decorating cupcakes but more than anything I love ideas that are easy to execute and give you great looking results.  I will definitely be saving these into my Halloween ideas for future parties.

Birthday Baking

Yesterday we had a joint celebration at work.  It was one girls birthday and another girl was leaving to go on maternity leave.  We had a mini party and everyone made something to bring along for afternoon tea.  I decided to make some cookies and cupcakes.

Firstly I made these delicious White Chocolate & Cranberry Cookies from Sugarlace.  These were delicious! I love cookies that are soft and this were the perfect consistency.  I halved the recipe because I didn't need need 4.5 dozen cookies.  It was all going well until I reached the part where it said 3 eggs and couldn't decide how to split it.  I ended up using 2 eggs and the cookies came out perfect.

My very favourite cupcakes are the ones that my mum baked for our wedding cupcakes.  The recipe comes from the Crabapple Cupcake Bakery recipe book and they are ridiculously delicious.  I think you all need to bake a batch of these this weekend.  I like to top them with a basic buttercream icing.  Delicious!!!

Scented White Cupcakes by Crabapple Cupcake Bakery

2 3/4 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
200g softened unsalted butter
1 3/4 cups caster sugar
6 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp rose water
1 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 170*C.  Line muffin pans (makes 24 normal or 48 mini cupcakes)
2. Sift together flour and baking powder.
3. In a separate bowl cream the butter for 1-2 mins.  Add the castor sugar a third at a time beating for 2 mins after each addition.  After the last addition beat until the mixture is light and fluffy and the sugar has almost dissolved.  Add egg whites a quarter at a time beating for 1 min after each addition or until light and fluffy.  Add vanilla essence and rose water and beat until combined.
4. Add a third of the flour mixture to the creamed mixture and beat on low speed until combined.  Add half the milk and beat until combined.  Repeat process.  Add the remaining third of the flour and beat until thoroughly combined.  Do not over beat as this will toughen the mixture.
5. Divide the mixture evenly between the cupcake cases.  For mini cupcakes bake for 13 minutes.  For standard cupcakes bake for 18-20 mins.  Rest for 30 mins before icing.

These are seriously my favourite cupcakes ever!  The only issue I have is that I now have 6 egg yolks waiting to be used.  I am thinking of making some lemon curd but if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them.

A Bit of Baking

Baking has been a bit of an obsession of mine since my morning sickness wore off.  I have actually developed a bit of an obsession. My baking to do list is growing faster than I can make things.  It's loads of fun though and is making for lots of happy tummies around the office.

 

Last Sunday mum and dad came around for brunch and I whipped up some Peanut Butter Banana Bread (recipe here) and Apple & Cinnamon Muffins (recipe here) for the occasion.  Corey has been slowly eating away at the loaf of banana bread since and is loving it!  I am not a big fan of banana's or banana bread but I tried a piece and it was quite nice.  Very moist! I would prefer it without the peanut butter glaze though.  I loved the muffins though! They were also super moist. I think it is because of the yoghurt in them.  The bonus with these is that not only are they yummy but they are also low fat. So guilt free baking!

The weekend before I realised we had a bag of carrots in the fridge that weren't being eaten so I decided to use up a few by making some carrot cupcakes.  These were delicious!  Especially with the addition of maple buttercream icing. Yum!!!

Carrot Cupcakes by Australian Women's Weekly

1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp mixed spice
2 cups grated carrot
3/4 cup chopped pecans (I left these out)

Preheat oven to 180*C. Line 12 hole muffin pan with paper cases.

Combine eggs, oil, sifted flour, sugar and spice in a medium bowl.  Stir in carrot and chopped pecans.  Divide mixture amongst cases.

Bake cakes for approximately 30 minutes.  Stand cakes for 5 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool.  Enjoy x

Harry Potter Birthday

Last week my work friend Sally had a birthday and it was our turn to spoil her as she does for everyone else on their birthdays.  We were pretty pumped about it and me and two other girls spent a few weeks planning.  Sally is a massive Harry Potter fan so we chose that as our theme for the day.  Here are some pics....

 

The entry into our office was Platform 9 3/4.  We got the inspiration from here.  It was super simple to do and looked fantastic.  The party was last Tuesday and we still have this hanging on our door now!

 

The birthday banner in Gryffindor colours of course!

 

Her desk was then surrounded by streamers, balloons and golden snitches that we cut out of coloured paper.

 

 

We made a heap of these posters here and printed them out to hang all around the office.  These have also stayed up since the party.  I of course had to do some baking so I made owl cupcakes, golden snitch oreo balls and the old favourite rice bubble slice.

 

Now this is my absolute favourite part of the day.  Let me just preface this by saying, in the interest of full disclosure, I DID NOT MAK E THIS CAKE!  This cake was made by one of the very very very talented girls that I work with.  We are trying to convince her to start and business and I am trying to convince her to give me cake decorating classes.  She is an absolute genius!!!!

In case you don't read Harry Potter the Monster Book of Monsters is a textbook that they are prescribed for one of their classes and it is alive and tries to eat everyone.  Michelle did an absolutely fantastic job recreating this book for Sally's cake.  It was freaking amazing!!!!  I can't wait to see what we can come up with for Sally's birthday next year.

Halloween Baking Inspiration

At work for halloween we are having a little party.  Everyone gets to bring a plate and it has to be halloween inspired food.  I have been searching the web looking for inspiration and here is what I have found...

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I think I am leaning towards doing something Frankenstein themed.  I know one of the girls in my office is doing oreo ball eyeballs and another girl is going to make something mummy themed so I thought I would pick Frankenstein as my inspiration.  I have a little while to think about it still so we'll see.

Oreo Cupcakes

 

I have been wanting to try these cupcakes out for so long so when I had leftover oreos from dad's Fathers Day cheesecake I knew I had to make them.  Leftover oreos isn't a phrase you hear very often so I knew I had to hide these so they wouldn't get eaten before they made it into the cupcakes.  Luckily, Corey left them alone till last night when I started baking.

 

These are the easiest cupcakes to make.  You simply chuck half an oreo into the bottom of your cupcake cases and then top them with your favourite chocolate cake batter and cook as directed.  Pretty simple!

The only thing I found with these was that the cookies stay quite crunchy in the bottom of the cupcakes.  I was expecting them to go a bit more soft.  I think next time I will out a small amount of batter in then my cookie then some more butter.  That way I think the cookies will be a bit more squishy when you eat them.  They are still good though.  Now I am off to take these cupcakes to my cousin's daughters birthday party this afternoon.  I hope everyone enjoys them!

Quick & Easy Mickey Mouse Cupcakes

Saturday was our nephew Phoenix's 1st birthday party and I was asked to make some cupcakes to bring along. I used my usual sprinkle cupcake recipe and decided I wanted to decorate them to suit the theme which was baby Mickey Mouse.

I used black polka dot cupcakes cases and some red butter cream icing. For the ears I used dark chocolate melts. They are not super Mickey Mouse but they still fit the theme and were super quick and easy to make. They just go to show you don't have to spend hours in the kitchen to make cute cupcakes!

And isn't the birthday cake that Corey's sister made adorable! It was lactose free as well because little Phoenix is lactose intolerant but if she hadn't told us we wouldn't have known. It tasted amazing! I can't wait till I have kids so I can go crazy making themed cakes. It is going to be awesome!!!