The Rocky Road melted

We love Rocky Road chez Becca.  It's crisp, crunchy, chocolatey and chewy - as my friend Sheila would say, what's not to love?  Incidentally, Sheila isn't Australian.  Just in case you were wondering.

Normally, you add the marshmallows at the last moment, give them a twirl into the chocolate mixture then pour the whole lot out into the tray to set.  But this time I was using pink and white mini marshmallows and they melted really quickly, whilst I was twirling and swirling them through the mix!  I had no way to rescue them, and thought - what the heck, I may as well go for pretty rather than stylish here...

So I added on pink Smarties, covered the whole lot in the last of our Colourburst Candy Melts and gave it all a good dose of pink fairy dust, oops, I mean edible glitter.  Et viola, treats for us at Becca Towers.  Mmmm...

Mother's Day chez Becca

You're probably thinking that this post will be all about Mother's Day at our house, right?  Nope, sorry. It's about what I baked for others.  I posted some pretty pictures about a month ago to entice people to order cupcakes or a little 6" cake from us, but it didn't work. 

For me at least, I saw that many of the other bakers on Facebook with whom I'm friends (some local, many not) were fully booked, often a week or three in advance.  Others showed the photos of all their goodies boxed up and ready for either collection or delivery - but we weren't quite that lucky.  So when a new Facebook fan asked for a dozen mini Strawberry swirl cupcakes, we were happy to help.  As I started on these little beauties (here we see the batter with the strawberry swirled through)

I received a call from a woman abroad (Jersey, but saying it's International makes it even more exciting) who had been let down by the cake-maker just 2 days before Mother's Day, which was fab too.  She wanted a selection of flavours, but after I explained that generally wasn't busy enough for that to be commercially viable, we settled on a mixed dozen of Classic Chocolate (chocolate cake and chocolate buttercream) and Strawberry Swirl (swirled cake and buttercream).

I was really pleased with how well the rose swirl of piped buttercream worked on these little ones, as I had only done the ice-cream type of swirl previously.

I don't know if you can buy boxes with inserts specifically for mini cupcakes, but they travelled well like this, and the customer was happy - so that's the main thing.  And, despite ordering them for afternoon tea with a friend, she sneaked a taste and told me they were delicious - hooray!!

As for the emergency International Mother's Day order - here's how they turned out...

Here we can see the Classic Chocolate at the front, with cute little green flowers to match the 'Mum' plaque in the middle, and now we see the Strawberry Swirl ones with their coordinating darker green flowers.

 

Pink, sparkly and with roses please

I've been friends with J for a little over 5 years.  We met via a mother's group, the NCT, for whom I volunteered for 4 or so years.  Her elder daughter is a few weeks younger than Mini-1, and her younger is a few months older than Mini-2 - perfect or what?!  As you may remember, Mini-1 recently had her birthday, as did J's Mini-1.  I couldn't make her birthday cake as she has serious food allergies and I haven't any experience of gluten/dairy/egg free baking (yet).  But her other daughter... well, the request was blue cake with a pink, sparkly top and lots of roses.

Lucky I'd been practising with my new rose mould - and you thought it was all a coincidence, huh!  So the cake baked up well, as it was a recipe I've used successfully before.  After cooling and crumb-coating with icing flavoured and lightly-coloured with strawberry jelly crystals (a technique learnt from my new American cake friends on a Facebook advice group)  I added on the heart and rose-shaped chocolates I'd made earlier in the week.  Et voila!

And here's the happy birthday girl with all the lovely candles in place - it was a Princess costume party and she was Rapunzel.

 And here we see Snow White and Jasmine, ready to join the party!

Good friends need tasty treats

I have a good friend, to whom some really bad things have happened.  On the day that her mother went into hospital for a radical double mastectomy to counter the breast cancer with which she had been diagnosed only 3 weeks prior, my friend was told the results of her biopsy - also breast cancer.  Not surprisingly, her daughter is going to have genetic screening soon too.  And her son has been ill since birth, and possibly spent more time in than out of hospital. 

So to try to cheer her up, I offered her the pick of our menu.  And she chose...  Mars Bar Slice. 

Yet despite all this, she remains as cheery as possible and is even having her hair cut (in advance of losing it with the chemotherapy treatment) as a fund-raiser for two local charities that are very dear to her, Charlie Kean's children's cancer fund and Maggie's Centre, Dundee.  Here's a lovely, smiley photo of her with her kids and long blonde hair, at our Ice Arena with very special guest...

And here's my brave friend, after the chop - still smiling away and looking as stunning as ever.

I'm just happy that our glittery bake helped her feel better, if only for an hour.  And including our donation, a mutual friend tells me that this friend has beaten her fundraising target of £1000!  Outstanding!

Christmas cupcakes, anyone?

My offer had been to do Vanilla and Red Velvet for Christmas - because I had thought it would look nice, but unfortunately I had a lot of trouble tracking down one particular odd ingredient for the Red's.  Who'da thought it'd be such a bother?  We went to 6 stores in the end, with the kids being really quite good and patient while we searched for this elusive ingredient - but no luck.

I had been in touch with the customers by email or Facebook message only - I hadn't thought to take a phone number.  So I quickly messaged them with the problem, to check if all Vanilla would be ok.  Some got in touch faster than others, so I just bit the bullet and did them all Vanilla.

And boxed up some, ready to go...

Here's hoping they love them, and of course - Merry Christmas 2011

Christmas at school, Becca style

I felt quite pleased to be asked by Mini-1's school to provide brownies for the adults to nibble with their tea/coffee after the Carol Concert (which was held before the Christmas Fayre).  To be fair, it's a fairly small school so I knew it was an achieveable request, and offered to do 2 trays and cut them into bite-size pieces so they'd be a) manageable and b) go further.  Mini-2 and I arrived after the concert, but just before the fayre started and were thrilled to be greeted by many parents, (some of whom we didn't even know) congratulating us on the delicious brownies!  No idea how they knew I made them, but very pleased nonetheless. 

Then it was the turn of the class party.  I had considered offering to bake mini cupcakes for the class, but knew it wasn't officially sanctioned by the Scottish Government (not conducive to the Healthy Eating in School (or elsewhere, for that matter) Policy) and so the Education Dept didn't allow it.  But then the class teacher shyly asked if I could.  Sure of course, I said, but I couldn't make as few as 16 - could she pass out the rest?  Oh yes, was the quick reply.  And thus it was that I handed in 4 dozen similarly decorated little Christmas beauties.

And I'm pleased to say that these too got great reviews!

A wee birthday treat

I posted a photo on our Facebook page showing what we could do for Christmas gift ideas, and was lucky enough to get a request or two out of it - yippee!

The first lady wanted a box of 4 Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream icing - which of course meant birthday glitter!  I used mini red and pink hearts, a wafer flower and gold glitter, black and white crispy balls and neon pink glitter with chocolate hearts. 
We love birthdays at Becca Bakes, thanks for letting us help you celebrate Merry!

Giant 19th birthday

The daughter of a friend was turning 19, and her mother had requested a giant cupcake in red/white/pink with bows for her some months ago - knowing Sammi would love it.  Hence the practice one a month or so ago, to get the recipe right and work out icing techniques and so on. 

Collection was set for Sunday lunchtime, so I would usually  have baked Friday night, decorated Saturday night but as it was a Friday night, Mr Becca was in the kitchen.  No bother, I woke up a little bit early (weekends usually mean a lie till around 815am, woo hoo) and baked Saturday morning.  This would still give a fresh cake, but also allow it time to cool fully before icing and setting.  We were off out to a friend's half-way across the country (weeeell, not technically but a good hour or so away, and our country is kinda small) for lunch, so time was of the essence.

So to Saturday night.  I had found YouTube videos for making bows out of fondant (I really liked this one, because she made it look so easy) but it wasn't. 

As you can see, the bows I made look nothing like the one the girl made, but with enough practice I think I could nearly do it.  Or I could save myself the bother, and buy some ready-made by an expert off eBay ;)

I had Googled giant cupcakes to see how others decorated them, as I felt the rose style swirls looked great and wanted to see how other bakers placed them around the cake.  That done, I did my best.  And feel that I could do better.  Still, it turned out well and Sammi and her mum were thrilled with it. 

The last one I had made was too tall for any carrier I owned, however I was lucky enough to find a long roll of cellophane and used this to wrap the cake for transport, thus...

 Not ideal, but not bad.  And it survived the car ride home, so all's well that ends well.

Christmas chez Becca

I hadn't baked Red Velvet anything in a while, and was thinking of doing it for our own Christmas lunch (as no-one but Mr Becca actually likes fruit cake, of any variety) so did some cupcakes.  A colleague of Mr Becca's had got in touch earlier in the week, and asked if I could do 3 dozen cupcakes for them.  Sure thing!  We agreed on a mix of vanilla and red velvet (see how I snuck that in there?) and how and when I'd deliver them, then off I went.  I boxed some up and put a photo on the Facebook page, in the hopes that someone may be encouraged to purchase some, then boxed up a dozen for one office and the rest for the other. Enjoy.

Merry Christmas dear readers!

Thanksgiving

We are lucky enough to have friends from many countries here and today it is Thanksgiving in the USA.  Our friend Jill is from Virginia and loves the holidays (hers was the 4th of July party we attended a few months ago) and has invited us around again to celebrate Thanksgiving.  It was originally a festival to celebrate a bountiful harvest, and judging by the menu she has on offer, it sure will be a bountiful feast!  She's got an enormous turkey (already in the oven I believe) and is making sweet potato mash, pumpkin pie, lots of veg, and so on and so forth.

As is tradition, guests bring a dish too and I've checked with the boss/hostess and have made Cornbread (because I really enjoyed hers last year) plus a cake and some Rocky Road for dessert.  I know that pie is the traditional dessert - especially pumpkin or apple - but I'm not great at pastry/pies as yet.  There's no time like the present, as the saying goes, but time was of the essence and I didn't want to risk a mistake and necessitate a re-bake at the last minute.

So, Cornbread.  I found a recipe at Goodtoknow recipes and got together all the ingredients.  Polenta flour wasn't available at the first store I tried, so I asked Mr Becca if he knew where I may find some.  'Above the stove, in the pasta cupboard', he said.  How very handy, ha ha.  This was really easy to make, and had they been home at the time the girls could easily have helped with all aspects.  It baked up really well, and seemed done at the appointed time.  I cut it up and popped it into the cake tin, to take to Jill's and only tried a few pieces, honest...

The little bits you see are spring onion and red chilli flakes.

Next on to the cake - Lemon & Cream cheese.  This recipe was from a Facebook page called Fans of Cake Baker, which is a lovely community page of home and professional bakers who are kind and helpful with any query you may have.  This cake sounded light and perfect for after a heavy meal, needing as it did the zest of 3 large lemons plus some juice.

It too was easy to make but took ages to bake - 1hour 35mins at 150c.  I couldn't decide how to ice and decorate it, switching between thinking lemon buttercream and lemon cream cheese icing.  Then felt that a simple dusting of icing sugar and neon orange edible glitter would be ideal.

I had wanted to make some Mini pumpkin pies or Pumpkin and Feta filo triangles, both also from Goodtoknow recipes, and even bought a beauty of a butternut squash but felt that they wouldn't supply enough of each to feed the guests.  Another time...  So after checking again with the boss, I made some Rocky Road, sprinkling it with the same neon orange glitter.  After all, if it's from Becca Bakes, it's gotta have glitter!

Most odd, the glitter is blatantly orange in the jar, but seems to have lots of green and some gold in it?  Sorry, perhaps if I were a better photographer?

Halloween, Becca Bakes style

Our schools have a Healthy Eating Policy.  Well, all of Scotland does really, and quite rightly so.  I believe that our fair country may be the fattest in Europe, something about which I'm not proud.  I'm an honourary Scot, having lived here for over 15 years now, and am still not a fan of deep-fried Mars Bars (seriously, someone in Glasgow 'invented' them!).

As such, school children aren't allowed to bring in cakes for their class on their birthdays (neither are nursery children) but I'm very lucky to have been given permission by our Headmaster in the past to bake (and take in with Mini-1) mini cupcakes for various class parties.  And so I was allowed again, for the class Halloween party.

Mini-1 chose orange icing with chocolate sprinkles because it was the most Halloween-y thing we possessed.  Oh no, actually we used graphite grey glitter (sold it by being told it was as good as black, but it isn't!  Don't let them fool you, if you want black glitter, buy black glitter, grrr).  And I made enough for her class and teacher - and they were very happy indeed!

See, it's not black enough, is it?  Never mind. 

And here's a random, lovely swirl in white that was done the same day, with a Wilton 2D nozzle rather than my usual Wilton 1M one...

And here's a photo Mini-1 and Mini-2 in costume, ready to go out Trick or Treating.  Mini-2 has her face painted like that because she wore her pumpkin costume to nursery earlier, in case you were wondering.  They had a fabulous evening, just like they remembered from last year.  The matching costumes and a couple of lousy jokes won most people over, and they had quite a haul of sweeties.

Giant cupcake, first & second try

I had been keen to try out a giant cupcake, as I'd seen many other bakers make excellent work of them.  I found a silicon mould, with the help of an old colleague who now runs Cissyface Vintage, at a local The Works store and got to work. 

Unfortunately it doesn't come with a recipe, but rather says to use a box or two of packet mix and blah blah blah.  Well, that wasn't gonna happen at my house, so I tried a full batch of cupcake mix, sprayed the two halves of the mould with oil and went for it.  And boy, what a failure that was!  The mix was short by nearly half so I basically baked a pancake and a rugby ball shape - pretty darn useless.  Tasted good, but no-one wanted odd-shaped bits of cake.  And strangely, it didn't really come out of the mould well at all, despite the spray of oil.

So I emailed a couple of fellow bakers on Facebook who seemed friendly, and they were kind enough to share their cake recipe specifically for giant cupcakes.  I chose one and went for it.  And it worked!  And I even forgot to spray the moulds this time, but it came out almost perfectly (you may notice at the top of the top section, there's a tiny bit that isn't quite right).

I felt like orange for the icing (and neon orange for the glitter), and tried to make it a bit runnier than usual so that it may take the shape of the mould and run down the bottom half slightly.  Well, that had been my plan.  But it didn't quite work out that way...

So I added gold-touched butterflies and the words 'Becca Bakes' and declared us good to go.  The Team loved it, and were very impressed - with the look and the taste.  I found the best way to cut it was to slice up first the top half, then the bottom half.  And it had to be separated into halves to fit into a cake tin for keeping - not the tidiest thing to do, but hey, needs must.

And I'm pleased to say that it got good feedback on Facebook too.  While I'm fully aware that it isn't the best giant cupcake you've ever seen, we don't claim to be the best.  But we do have fun, and make great-tasting cake, so as Meatloaf once said, 'Two outta three ain't bad'.

Happy 5th birthday Jack

And so we come to the birthday boy himself, who decided that he didn't want a blue cake, simply blue icing (which, to a 5 year old, is a blue cake).  His mother requested simply 'blue, Jack, 5' as the starting point, and I thought to keep it simple.  So to the finished product...

A lovely vanilla sponge, layered with white icing and strawberry jam, covered in blue buttercream icing (I like the colour better this time), sprinkled with edible blue glitter and sprayed with gold lustre.  They all loved it, and I quote feedback left on our Facebook page 'It was lovely and much admired..........got party boxes for folk to take it home in........thank you :-)'. 

Happy 6th birthday Dea

My friend Ros's youngest turns 6 today, and she wanted a lovely treat for her only daughter.  We discussed cupcakes, and came to the conclusion that most kids really only eat the icing, so why pay for/provide cake?  Thus the idea of mini cupcakes was born!  They provide just a smidgen of cake onto which to sit your icing and decoration, hence keeping everyone happy ;)

As Ros has a large family, we decided upon 3 traybakes (Mars Bar Slice, Malteser Slice and Rocky Road) for the adults and older kids to nibble on and 3 dozen mini cupcakes for the party girl and attendees.  The chosen colours were pink and purple and we were to put the number 6 on a dozen, individual initials on another dozen and girly sparkle on the final dozen.  Not a problem I assured her.

Only it kind of was - how was I to co-ordinate my time to get everything as fresh as possible for her Friday morning collection?  I did the traybakes first, as I've done 'scientific testing' on them and know that they remain fresh and great-tasting for up to 6 days when stored in an airtight tin lined with baking paper.  The Mars Bar Slice was first off the starting blocks, and the milk chocolate top layer was dusted with pink glitter and light pink sugar sand.  Next up was Rocky Road's turn, using pink and white mini marshmallows within and a dusting of the two pinks to decorate the dark chocolate top layer.  Finally the Malteser Slice, and its white chocolate top layer was dusted to match.

Just in case you were wondering, this is how I  make a bain marie with which to melt any chocolate I may need to use.  I have tried it both directly in a saucepan and in the microwave and was mild ly inconvenienced on both occasions to learn that you can actually burn chocolate.  Did you know that? 

 The gas is actually on (very low), though it doesn't seem so from the angle of this photo.

Then on to the cupcakes.  I had done the sugarpaste cut-outs prior to last night, so was able to set them out ready and waiting, along with the other items I had thought to use as decorations.  As I'd already done the oddly-enjoyable task of colour separating mini Smarties for Lacey's cake, I used some pink and purple ones on these little cupcakes.  And my beloved glitter - I'm so glad I discovered edible glitter - it's so much fun!  Here they all are laid out to set on the kitchen table...

And here they are in their presentation/delivery box.

And, oh!! Would you look at that - some of the required initials spell out my name!!  (my surname starts with an M too).  How fun is that?

I'm happy to report that Ros was delighted when she came this morning to collect her order.  Happy birthday Dea, hope the party is a huge success!

Happy 2nd birthday Lacey

I got a text from a school mum friend, Jen, to say that her middle child was turning two this Friday and could I make her a cake please.  I already had a large order booked in for collection on Friday, so we agreed to have it ready for Thursday lunchtime instead.  As it was a cake, it would last well and remain tasty for a few days (more than I can say for cupcakes generally. As they are smaller, they tend to lose their softness/moistness quicker and thus need to be eaten within 48 hours of baking, and preferably 24.  Especially true of mini ones I find) and so be ideal for the family party planned for Friday afternoon.  Jen had seen the 6th birthday cake I'd made for mini-1 earlier this year and wanted something as colourful as that for her daughter Lacey.  I looked up the possibility of making a shaped number 2, but it would require a technique I hadn't yet practiced enough/mastered so we deferred to a round cake that I'd decorate to my preference - oooh, what to do?

As it was for a little girl, I figured pink had to play a part.  And because I feel it's a happy colour, the vanilla sponge was dyed orange and flavoured with a hint of orange too.  I sliced it and filled it with a touch of pink icing and strawberry jam, then coated the whole cake in pink icing.  After separating out a few boxes of mini Smarties, I made a colourful number 2 on the top, added in gold-leafed white letters and butterflies and covered the whole confection in pink glitter.  And the verdict?  Jen and Garry loved it!  Let's hope they loved the taste too...

Cupcakes galore - mini & Cookies & Creme

A local friend, who has been the lucky recipient of many spare cupcakes and cake slices in the past, trusted us enough to bake a couple dozen mini cupcakes for her grandson's 1st birthday.  Her only request was plain sponge and baby blue icing. 

As I have the cute little letter and number cutters, I felt it only right to use them.  And here we have the finished product, with my beloved glitter on the unadorned cakes - silver this time.  She told me the birthday boy grabbed a cupcake as soon as he saw them, and that the rest of them went down quickly too.  Great news, just what we love to hear - happy customers.

Then we had another order for collection tomorrow - two gift-boxes of half dozen Cookies & Creme cupcakes.  The lady chose them because she'd seen the photo of the ones we'd done last week, now that's a first.  She decided to get a box for her hubby's birthday and a box for her staff - what a lovely wife and boss, awww...  Hope they all love them, thanks for thinking of us.