Strawberry and vanilla ruffles for a girly birthday

It was my friend A's birthday again.  I mean really, who apart from me has birthdays every year?  It's just greedy really.  What's that?  Everyone has birthdays every year?  Not just me?  No fair!

Anyway, for her birthday this year we happened to be going to visit on the actual day and I had wanted to try out buttercream ruffle icing for a while, so I figured I'd combine the two.  Oh, and a strawberry cake.  So three things in fact.  Sad to say that some things worked out better than others that day...

So, a great thing happened whilst I was making the strawberry cake - I successfully made meringue!!  This is a red letter item indeed, as the only time I had tried before to make meringue I had wasted 8 egg whites and quite a bit of time and frustration on the project.  And not succeeded.  Hence the photo of the pink meringue mix, I was happy!

I used tinned strawberries well-drained, but as the end result proved, perhaps not well enough drained - the cake was edible but very moist.  The recipe doesn't suggest to use them, and in fact when I managed to chat with the legend herself, Miss Edna de la Cruz, she had never heard of tinned strawberries and showed me a photo of the cake when cut.  Suffice it to say, I heartily recommend that you don't use tinned strawberries when you make this cake.  Ever.

On the plus side, the YouTube video I've linked to above for the buttercream ruffles worked a treat and I got them done, almost without mishap.

Only I misjudged exactly quite how much icing I would need for this technique, and had to make up more - twice.  So the top layer is flat because by that stage I wasn't in the mood for making up yet more icing.  Sorry A!

I think I rescued the cake though, don't you?

And as it was a sunny day, I thought to take my spring flowers cake outdoors for some alfresco shooting

Then, when we got to A's house after school that day, she wanted a photo too because she was so pleased with her birthday surprise.  Thanks sweetie, so glad you liked it!

Candy melts aren't always a good idea...

One of the companies here makes flavoured and coloured candy melts (Silver Spoon, but I couldn't find the product on their website?), so the pink ones are strawberry.  When I bought them, I had thought this was a good idea.  Not so much now.

We had Maltesers to use up, so I made Malteser Slice.  And thought it would be fun to use the pink chocolate on top, rather than the usual white chocolate.  Please, don't try this at home.  Apart from the melts not actually melting as well as normal chocolate does in a bain-marie, it really didn't taste right having strawberry flavoured chocolate on your Malteser Slice.  Looked good, but did not taste good.  Ah well, that's what experimenting is all about really, isn't it?

Alcoholic cupcakes? Well, I never

One of the school mums knew I baked cakes, and had perhaps seen some of my work on here or our Facebook page and had a party planned for later on today.  She decided she'd quite like some mini cupcakes for nibbles for afterwards, and fancied them to be alcoholic.  No problem, I said, I'm sure that's easily done.  And quickly proceeded to research it.  Do people flavour the sponge?  Do you need extra alcohol for the flavour not to bake out?  Do you flavour the icing?  Do you need extra icing sugar to counteract the consistency of the icing once the extra liquid is added?  Do certain flavours work better in batter?  Icing?  So much to know...

Then Lisa told me she had some Champagne and some Amaretto and could I use those please?  So, one problem solved, ha ha.  In the end I went with the Amaretto, as it was a slightly more viscous liquid (and the bottle was already opened) and just used it in the icing. 

We thought Strawberry Swirl would be tastier than just Vanilla cupcakes, so here's the finished product...

And here are the non-alcoholic version for the pregnant party-goers and the children, with an Easter theme and chocolate buttercream icing.  Mmm...

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.

 

Strawberries are nearly in season

Other bakers have 'ranges' of cupcakes, and business could be busier so I thought I might try out some new recipes in order to (hopefully) stimulate interest.  I can do various flavours, but people generally want vanilla with colours - which is always fun. 

And I've been doing a lot with blueberries recently, then noticed that strawberries are on offer and finally looking good.  They aren't local, so not ideal, but the girls have been asking to eat some for weeks now and I've not wanted to buy them because they aren't in season yet.  Kinda difficult concept to get over to young, hungry kids but I did my best.

So I bought a few punnets, looked through some of my favourite books and thought I'd like to do a taste comparison test, and offer the cakes around to our Facebook fans and friends for their opinions.  And, to be quite frank, the Team are getting sick of cake - shameful, I know.  Not the whole Team you understand, but some of them.  And apart from that, while strawberries are a wonder-food and healthy, by the time you add in the cake batter and icing, it's harder to agree that they're good for you.  So, to aid my health-and-seasonal based teachings, and save our waistlines - I baked up a batch of each recipe and offered one of each on the proviso that I had to receive honest feedback.  And we're off!

At the top, in the white cases, are the bases for the Strawberries and Cream cupcakes. These have crushed berries throughout the batter, and are to be topped with vanilla buttercream and half a fresh strawberry.  At the bottom, in the brown cases, are the cake part of the Strawberry Cheesecake cupcakes.  As you can see, these have pieces of fresh strawberry mixed through the batter, and are to be topped with cream cheese buttercream icing and crumbled biscuits - to resemble the layers of a cheesecake.

The cheesecake icing, naked.  I'm pleased with the swirls on these, though would like them even fatter.

And now they're dressed and ready for their close-up.

These are the naked Strawberries and Cream ones.  I got the buttercream whiter by extra whipping and a touch of Superwhite by Sugarflair.  I don't see this as cheating, rather it's a way to offset the ivory tinge caused by using real butter.

Here we see them fully dressed.  Pretty, aren't they?

Side by side, they created quite a buzz on our Facebook page.  And from the top...

I noticed later on though, that a little bit of water had run off after I'd washed the berries.  It won't affect the taste at all, just doesn't look wonderful.  What do you think?

P.S.  The feedback so far is very positive, with Strawberry Cheesecake winning at the moment.  But only 3 votes are in at this point - more to come later tonight I hope!