Cake pops - discuss...

Do you love or hate cake pops?  I'm asking you as both a baker and an eater...  I love the way they look, and do like eating them, but what a nuisance they are to make!  I have a lovely customer, who has been very kind and ordered from me quite a few times (thank you S) and likes cake pops.  And is very kind to like mine.  No, honestly!  I don't have a cake pop machine, so they aren't perfectly round.  And unlike my friend Katie, of Dainty Katie Cakes (aren't they just the most gorgeous things you have ever seen??!), I don't make cake pops often enough to become good at them.

Now, before you suggest the inevitable and tell me to make them more often, I don't have the desire to do so.  I know, that may sound lazy, but despite having both my gorgeous Mini's at school fulltime now, I do find that I can fill my days adequately without resorting to baking them just for practice.  Because, let's face it, Becca Towers does not need more calories! ha ha

Anyway, I digress.  The customer in question, S, wanted to give her colleagues a treat on her last day on placement with them, and felt cake pops were the way to go.

So, they're not bad to start with.  But after setting, and dunking in Candy Melts they don't look quite so round.  Still bright, colourful, tasty and fun - but not round.

 

Or covered particularly smoothly for that matter.  But the customer loved them, and that's what counts.  She even got a couple extra as a loyalty bonus (though they were ones that I deemed not good enough for sale).  Oh, and both Mini-1 and Mini-2 were impressed...

So took these messy monsters in to school the next day to share - anyone for cake balls?!  haha

 

Lots and lots of mini lovelies

I was contacted by a friend of a friend, to make mini cupcakes for her daughter's 21st birthday.  The customer was pleasingly specific about what she wanted, and I was happy to be able to help.  The brief was 25 blue, 25 pink, white icing and white cake but coloured wraps and accents. 

Luckily, I have a supplier of pink and blue mini cupcake cases (how lucky is that?! any other colours and I probably couldn't have helped her) and I have edible food colouring in every colour of the rainbow in order to make the accents out of sugarpaste. 

There was a lot to organise for the party, so the husband came by to collect the cupcakes, and seemed pleased.  And the customer verdict?  Well, the few remaining ones were brought into work this morning and my friend was told 'these are all that are left.  They went down very well'.  Hooray, and Happy 21st Morven!

 

Hello Kitty comes to party at Becca Towers

Our kids have winter birthdays (well, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere they're in winter), so never really get to play outside during their parties.  It never seems to matter, but I'm aware of the lack of opportunity.  So I fancied giving the girls a party for going back to school.  It's Mini-2's first year of school, and today is the end of her first week of full days at school (they went only half-days for the first few weeks, to ease them in) - what more excuse does one need?

I also happened upon a really, really cute boxed party set of Hello Kitty.  The box had 8 matching paper plates, cups, napkins, party hats, and horns.  So fun, right?  And 3 months plus was a long time to wait to use it.

So I decided to challenge myself a little bit and try out a two-tier cake again (my birthday was the last, and first, one) and to match it to the napkin colours.  A local cakey friend, L, had Hello Kitty cutters that I borrowed (and have since bought my own) and I used them to make the little faces for the sides of the cake, and to make the cookies.  But first the cake...

I tried to match the colours of sugarpaste, and was quite pleased.  I made the pink myself, but bought some green sugarpaste and added in white until I was closer to the shade required.  The top of the cake looked quite bare, and wasn't perfectly flat and tidy.  So I remembered learning this trick for making ribbon when I was at cake school, and thought it would look perfect on top of the cake.  The girls loved it!

The top tier is chocolate cake coated and filled with chocolate ganache - another challenge.  The Aussie's seem to use ganache almost exclusively, in place of buttercream, but I found it quite difficult to manoeuvre and get smooth.  So if you look too closely, you'll see the bumps in the green cake.  The lower tier was vanilla cake with buttercream, at which I have more practice - so looks a bit smoother.

Now, the cookies.  Here they are naked, ready to be baked.

 And deliciously golden, out of the oven.

 And finally, dressed in their matching green and pink outfits :)

Here is the table all laid and ready for the party guests (we have 6 chairs, so the girls were able to choose 2 friends each), set with the matching paper crockery at each place and the co-ordinating snacks (red grapes an fresh green peas)

 And finally a close up of the cake and cookies in situ - welcome to school girls!!!

(an update - the girls never played outside during this party either!! ha ha. they were having too much fun messing about indoors)

Choc chip cookies for the first day of school

One of the ladies in the American cake forum to which I belong on Facebook makes cookies for her kids every first-day-of-school.  She had mentioned it in a post and I thought it sounded wonderful.  The reason she had posted her pic and info was because her son is a senior this year (and daughter in college), so she wasn't planning to make the cookies, thinking he was too old for them.  Then he surprised her on his way out the door, saying I hope you're baking cookies today Mom! 

Sadly I had missed the girls' first day of school, but really wanted to instigate the tradition.  So I figured I could do it for Mini-2's first full day of school - any excuse, right?!  

I chose to use the Carnation recipe, as it was so good last time and you can keep any uncooked dough for up to a week in the fridge.  It needs to be refrigerated for about half an hour or more before cutting, so I wrapped it in foil first time, and cling film this time.

And then got to cut nice, thick slices of cookie - ready to be baked fresh for their arrival (well, for me to go and collect them as us all to walk home)...

 Mmmm, fresh-baked choc and peanut chunk cookies with a tall, cold glass of milk.  Hungry yet?

 (This last photo is another batch, made almost a week later when friends came to visit.  I've included it because this post is being written some time later ;)  )