A giant cupcake way to say thank you

A regular customer of ours, let's call her S, loves loves loves our giant cupcakes.  She's ordered a classic one or two, a sticky toffee pudding one and now a thank you one.  This was for her child's nursery (kindergarten) teachers because he was leaving to go to a different nursery.  I had free reign, and was keen to try out a technique I had seen on Pinterest. It was a novel way to make a shaped top on the cupcake, using a fondant 'snake'.

You crumb-coat the cupcake as you normally would, then roll out a long snake of fondant and wrap it around the top half.  Then you place over your fondant top as you would when covering a cake.  If you click this link, you should hopefully see one of my pins on the topic.  (Have I told you how much I'm loving Pinterest?  It's like having a wall full of post-it notes, but on the computer!  And you can add to it whenver and however much you like! So so fun, and kind of addictive.  Check me out at Pinterest and see what I mean)

Then you roll out enough of another colour of fondant to cover the base, cut it to the size you need (I needed 3" x19" for this particular time) and roll it onto a rolling pin to transport it, then roll it off onto your giant cupcake.  That probably sounds super-confusing, so check the link above to find the photo tutorial.

I have embossed the greeting for two reasons - I really like embossing and I haven't successfully used my alphanumeric cutters/moulds yet.   The whole cake was then sprinkled with a bit of white fairy dust, and we're good to go!

I'm really pleased with the way it turned out, and the feedback from both the customer and the recipients was great!  Hope you do too 

Blonde Rocky Road for a meeting

Mr Becca has a pretty stressful, customer-facing job and when it comes time for staff meetings - they have decided to have them after-hours, to not impact customer service.  Which is exceedingly kind of them, don't you think? :) 

I knew that this one would run late, as I overheard him talking to a colleague (and I wasn't sure if he was joking or not, so took it at face value) saying he had added a point 20 to the agenda. Eek!

So I offered to make him a sweet treat to take along, to gee everyone up when their spirits were flagging.  Because a hit of sugar always perks you up - it's a scientific fact!

I gave him my recipe binder and said, choose what you want (because frankly, he had no idea and neither did I).  So he chose this one from the archives, Blonde Rocky Road by Gizzi Erskine. Although having Googled it just now to add in the link for you, I notice she spells it without the e at the end, hmm.  

Either way, here are the add-ins, plus the crushed all-butter Scottish shortbread that is underneath these goodies.  The recipe calls for macadamia nuts, which I used when I first made this recipe a few years back, but we had eaten all of ours, so I chopped up some blanched almonds instead.  

 

It took hours and hours to set, and even then wasn't fully hard.  But I was able to cut it straight from the fridge, then made sure to keep it in the fridge for as long as possible.

As you can see, it's super-rich and decadent, and had a slight coffee taste even with me just using half a teaspoon of powder.  After all, it was a late night meeting and I didn't want them being too wired! Plus I knew our kids and friends would want to taste-test it too. 

You can see here the fudge I used, and some of the remaining mini marshmallows.

And one last gratuitous shot of that divine rich treat...  all gone now I'm afraid.  But you'll be pleased to know that it got rave reviews.

Rolo slice for the work picnic

Mr Becca's work have an annual staff picnic.  I remember my dad's work doing this - only he worked in a HUGE company, so there were rides and tents with food and everything!  To us children it was heaven, and we looked forward to going on the ski-jump ride each year, as we never went to fair or carnivals or fairgrounds or whatever those places are where they have a lot of rides and rubbish food to eat.  The work picnic was our carnival, and we loved it.

Mr Becca's work however, is small.  They have a marquee in case it rains, and a barbeque and some tables laid out for folk to sit at.  There is a large open grass area, and a playpark just through the trees. Actually, for a kid that's still kind of perfect :)

He asked me to make a couple of traybakes to take along with us, and I was happy to oblige.  A kind reader had once emailed me her secret recipe for a Rolo traybake slice and I had bought Rolo's a few months back in preparation, but forgotten about them.  Lucky for me, they were still within their use-by date.

The recipe needed milk chocolate, but I felt it would be a bit sickly, so added in a third dark chocolate.  Don't they look lovely melting up together?  Psst, Mr Becca didn't seem to notice there was any dark chocolate involved, so let's not burst his bubble, ok?  ;)

 

 At this stage, I really wasn't convinced.  I mean, be honest, that doesn't look fabulously tasty now, does it?

But wait, the addition of a layer of melted chocolate, pink glitter and some leftover Rolo's later and voila - That looks better!

 

It was so so good!  The children and adults alike absolutely loved it.  And despite there not being a full complement of staff and families that turned out for the picnic, there was no Rolo slice to take home to Becca Towers.  Score!

Circus style cake for a birthday

A lady got in touch with a cake request that had me stumped at first.  She wanted circus style for her soon-to-be 5 year old daughter, and in my head I had visions of a two or three tier masterpiece, with modelled clowns and lions.  And panicked, because that type of cake is way out of my comfort zone, and doability.  Now that I'm lucky enough to have another academic year of work, I have less time available to craft more magnificent pieces of art than before, so am careful which orders to accept, and which I need to regretfully decline.

But after a bit of chat back and forth, we determined that it was something more suggestive of a circus than the epic masterpiece I had envisaged.  When added to the fact that her children preferred buttercream, I had a better idea of what would suit the family.  Bunting was a definite, as it's so fun!

Red and white were the only required colours, so I had fun with the bunting et voila!  

The bunting was printed onto paper, thanks to a link from The TomKat Studio - Kim puts so much fun stuff on the blog, it's hard to rein yourself in!

On the top of the cake was a plaque, but it just says simply Happy Birthday, rather than a name and age.

But we know it was Blythe's 5th birthday - hope it was fabulous sweetie!!