Medical cupcakes for a new nurse

A repeat customer, who likes to challenge me, wanted a treat for a friend who had been accepted to study nursing at University.  

I was stumped initially, and she sent over some images for inspiration.  They were great, and I agreed to the order as I had a two-week lead time.  So plenty of time to practice and re-do anything necessary, ha ha.

I made all the decorations in advance, so they would have time to harden.  It would also give me time to re-do them if they didn't work out as I had imagined, or if they cracked while drying.

Then the day before collection I baked up the Classic Vanilla cupcakes as required, so that they were as fresh as possible for the customer's friend.

Once sufficiently cooled they were iced in our signature Classic Vanilla buttercream icing, and the decorations carefully placed on top.  Et voila, gorgeous cupcakes fit for a trainee nurse! Congratulations and enjoy!!

 The last few were a simpler design, but still along the medical theme.

 And a collage view, that I posted to my Facebook page.

Sugar cookies part 1 - birds

There were some more work birthdays coming up, and I was wondering how I could mark those occasions too.  I wanted something that would suit more than one person, and could be personalised. I follow a fair few cookie pages on Facebook and thought - aha, cookies!  

I have made roll-out sugar cookies before, and tweak the recipe slightly regarding bake times each time.  I haven't tasted anyone else's to compare, but wonder always if mine are the right crunch/soft ratio, or the right colour and so on.  Nonetheless, I went with my tried and true recipe (flavoured with a drop of caramel) and baked up a large batch of birds, circles and plaques (more about them to come).

The birds and circles were spares really, just done for fun - and then Mr Becca mentioned that he had a meeting to attend and did I have any spares for him to share with the participants?  Uh, yup.

As you can see, I had a few chocolate chunk ones, however they didn't bake up as well, because the chunks were a bit large I felt.  (the children ate those ones, and declared them perfect)  I decorated them in gorgeous shades of bright pink and green, and think they looked lovely.  He asked for them to be personalised with an initial, and the participants were all very impressed :)

Super Lemon cake

One of my colleagues has a name starting with S.  She's fairly unassuming, doesn't like to blow her own trumpet, and likes lemon flavoured cake most of all.  So when I noticed it was her birthday coming up, well... I couldn't let it pass without a little bit of fanfare!

I bought some of Lakeland's fantastic PushPans a year or two ago and love using them.  They give a great shape and bake up well every time. I own some in 6" and some in super-tiny and cute 4", and it was the latter I decided to use this time - as some of the senior students had said they planned to buy her a cake for her birthday.

I used my normal sponge cake recipe and instead of adding vanilla extract for flavour, I added Star Kay White lemon plus the zest of a lemon.  I'm really impressed with their extracts, as the flavour is authentic without tasting artificial, and a few drops give lots of flavour - so the icing consistency isn't ruined.  Perfect.

I joined the two layers of cake with the buttercream and some extra delicious lemon curd, and added both the lemon extract and some yellow colouring to achieve the perfect taste and colour for my buttercream.  With the addition of a little fondant sugarpaste decoration of a Superman style capital letter S in bright pink, we were good to go.

And I'm thrilled to say that S loved her cake, and it was just the right size to last her and a friend a couple of days.  

Mixed birthday cupcakes for a man

When it comes to birthday treats for men, well, you need to know if they have a sweet tooth.  See many men prefer crisps to chocolate, and well, that's a whole new ballgame then.  

Luckily this chap was partial to chocolate, and vanilla.  So these mixed classic cupcakes were a doddle, and the blue, green and yellow designs - perfect!

Happy 60th birthday to a great guy...