Cheating with plastic

Here is a project which was so easy because the customer requested I use plastic figurines! I didn't mind at all, for if I had to make all these by hand, it would've  taken me forever!

The cake was a square chocolate cake covered and filled with buttercream. For the wooden beams, I used Cadbury chocolate fingers. The angry Birds are plastic and the name "Ryan" is cut from fondant. I used a shell tip to pipe the buttercream border. As usual, my piping skills leave much to be desired.

My client also wanted some cupcakes to go with the cake. For these, she wanted Smurf plastic figurines. These are simple vanilla cupcakes with a really delicious caramel buttercream!

I am not too fond of buttercream, as I find it too greasy for my liking. However, I came a cross a recipe for cooked vanilla icing in my 'Baked' recipe book. They wrote that it was not too oily, and that made me want to test it out.

I actually botched it up, but it turned out to be for the better!! You see, in the initial part of the recipe, you have to cook the frosting. I must have left it for too long, and the sugar caramelized! However, I just went ahead with the rest of the method and guess what? The resulting caramel icing was excellent!

I think I might make this botched icing again! :)

Lollipop Cupcakes

I have been itching to practice my icing piping techniques, especially large swirls on cupcakes. However, I'm always too tired and too short on time to start from scratch. So, I finally cheated and bought cupcakes from the bakery just so I could decorate them! Why didn't I think of this earlier?

I tried a buttercream recipe using butter, icing sugar and golden syrup. It tasted a little better than usual buttercream, but I still do not like buttercream in general. I was hoping to find one which tastes good, because I like its stiffer consistency which produces swirls with sharper and more well-defined edges. But I feel it is still too much butter to swallow! I definitely prefer the taste of chocolate ganache and whipped cream.

Anyway, I piped buttercream swirls using a large drop flower tip which I modified a bit! I unfortunately do not own a Wilton 1M tip :( Then I sprinkled some non-pariels and stuck on lollipops which have been sitting in my freezer for ages.

Happy Father's Day

I got a new book from Amazon.com, "The Cake Bible", by Rose Levy Beranbaum. It's a great book with a complete range of cake recipes and what I like most is the detailed explanations of the science behind cake-making. It tells you what every ingredient is for; in the physics and chemistry of the cake.

Anyway, I made the 'All Ocassion Butter Cake' from her book, for Father's Day. The cake was great, it had a good texture and lovely taste. I levelled and torted the cakes (I made two) with the Wilton cake leveller which I also recently purchased. It's a very useful tool indeed.

I filled the cakes with lemon curd which unfortunately didn't go down too well with the children! I iced it with the lemon curd then a simple buttercream. I was going to use my leftover fondant, but found that it's texture had gone off and I did not have time to make a new batch.

Since I was short on time, I just tied a red ribbon round the sides and wrote a simple 'Happy Father's Day' on top.