Biggest wedding cake so far...

My cousin Selina asked me a couple of months ago if I would make a wedding cake for her big day, I have made a wedding cake before which was a 3 tier cake (10inch vanilla sponge, 8inch carrot cake and 6inch vanilla sponge), but she wanted something bigger! The request was for a 14inch fruit cake, 12inch chocolate sponge, and a 10inch vanilla sponge.....

Now this may not seem like a big ask but this would be the biggest cake I've made to date, and firstly I needed to measure my oven!! Safe in the knowledge that my oven was up to the job, I mixed up the fruit cake 3 weeks prior to the wedding - I used my favourite fruit cake recipe from my Nigella Lawson 'Christmas' book, which also happens to be the recipe I use for my Christmas cakes! Because the cake was so big, I was worried about the edges scorching as I knew it would need to be in the oven for a considerable amount of time (5hrs 30mins in the end!!) so not only did I double line the tin with brown paper, but I then triple lined that with baking parchment just to be on the safe side.

As soon as the cake was out of the oven, I used further Bourbon to brush the top of the cake to make sure it didn't dry out, before double wrapping the whole thing (tin included!) in foil and allowing it to cool completely (the cooling took much longer than I expected - nearly 36hrs!). Once completely cooled, the cake was removed from the tin, fed with some more Bourbon and then double wrapped in foil again. It wasn't unwrapped again until the Wednesday before the big day when I covered the cake in a layer of marzipan ready to be iced.

The middle tier chocolate sponge was a recipe from James Martin 'Desserts' - another of my well thumbed recipe books, and the top tier was tried and tested vanilla sponge from Nigella's 'Domestic Goddess' book. I made these the Thursday evening before the wedding, filled them and covered them in frosting before leaving them in the fridge overnight to set.

All three tiers were iced with white sugarpaste and polished smooth. Selina wanted the cake to be simply decorated, so it was left with just the white sugarpaste and decorated with gold ribbon to compliment her colour scheme for the day.

I was really pleased with how the cake turned out, but more importantly, the Bride and Groom were very happy with the completed cake!

"Congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs Bailey"

Lots of love and cupcakes

Laura xx



A few cupcakes from this weekend

I always like to make treats for when we have friends or relatives to visit, this weekend was no exception! My future in-laws came to visit this weekend so I decided whip up another batch of those wedding cupcakes to get their opinion on the recipe.....

Nothing special, but bright and fun! They went down really well, this wedding cupcake recipe really has been a hit with all of those who've tried it. I've been invited to my Uncles for dinner tomorrow so I will take a box with me for them to try as well!! Two birds with one stone!!

Lots of love and cupcakes

Laura xx

Honey Beehive

I've made this cake several times before, but my favourite way to present it is using my 'Nordic bakeware' beehive tin - what could be more appropriate for a Devonshire Honey cake?!

A friend asked if I could make one of these for her daughters 1st Birthday as she was having a 'Teddy Bears Pinic' theme for her party.

This is the recipe that I use -

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1840/devonshire-honey-cake

Using this particular tin I have to double the quantities, and baking tends to take about 90 minutes.

Once the cake has cooled slightly, I brush with more clear honey to keep the outside from getting dry and giving the cake a bit of a glossy finish. Despite appearances, the cooled cake does need quite a bit of trimming in order to get the 2 halves to sit neatly on the cake board giving you the 3D beehive.

You can make a honey glaze using 55g of icing sugar, 1tbsp honey and a little hot water, but I used lemon juice and icing sugar to create a drizzle instead - to give a bit of a contrast in taste, and after all, honey and lemon are always quite a good combination!

For this particular cake, my friend wanted the drizzle to be pink and made a special request for pink bumble bees, just to give it a more girly twist!

Now I must be honest, when I've made this cake in the past, I've used ready made bee decorations - for obvious reason I needed to make the pink ones myself, not half bad even though I do say so myself!!!

Here's the finished article, complete with the birthday girls name spelt out on sugar paste leaves to carry on the party theme....

My friend was very pleased with the cake, and it went down really well at the birthday party, which is always nice to hear!

Got a busy week ahead as I'm making my cousins wedding cake for next Saturday, as well as another couple of birthday cakes, I'll make sure I add as many posts as I can!

Lots of love and cupcakes

Laura xx

Cupcake recipe experiment....

So, this all came about from a recipe I found online that was said to be a good recipe to use for wedding cupcakes as they would be moist and fluffy but they would stay reasonably flat on top making them easier to add frosting. With my own wedding fast approaching, I thought I'd give them a go!

So this is the recipe I used -

1 packet of white cake mix (I used a 500g packet of Wrights maderia cake mix)

1 cup plain flour
1 cup caster sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cups water
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream
4 large egg whites

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Place cupcake liners in cupcake pans.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together cake mix, flour, sugar and salt. Add remaining ingredients and beat with hand mixer for 2 minutes, or until well blended.

3. Fill the cupcake liners about 3/4 full. Bake about 18 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean

I know 'cups' aren't a measurement normally used in the UK, but this is a recipe I picked up from an american site so had to pull the measuring cup out of the back of the cupboard, it was either that or I'd have to google all the ingredients conversion values into grams!

The resulting mixture was quite runny - much more so than my normal cupcake mixture! I ended up having to pour the mixture into a measuring jug to get it into the prepared muffin cases, only after trying (and failing!) to spoon the mixture in. If I'm completely honest I was more than a little sceptical that this mixture was going to work, but was pleasantly surprised when the cakes came out of the oven....

I left them in the oven a little longer than the instructions stated as they didn't colour as much as I would have expected. After 24 minutes in the oven, a cake tester came out clean, the cakes were springy to the touch and had risen evenly.

To decorate, I whipped up a batch of vanilla frosting and split this into 3 bowls before adding colouring (pastel shades are always nice in the summer!)....

Frosting piped on and decorations added, these are the finished cupcakes....

Most importantly though, what do they taste like? The answer - pretty good! I was surprised as I don't normally go for ready mixes, preferring to make my mixtures from scratch. They are a little sweeter than my usual cupcake mix, but they had a better texture. I can see why these have been described as a good choice for wedding cupcakes as they would be a definite crowd pleaser and the results when baking were consistant across the batch of 24.

The site I got the recipe from said that this recipe could also be used for sandwich cakes - this is something I'm obviously going to try out in the coming weeks after the results I've had today so I will keep you posted......

Lots of love and cupcakes

Laura xx

Baileys and mocha cupcakes

These are definitely one of my favourites - mainly because of the boozy frosting!

A friend in work requested a dozen of these cupcakes for her daughters 15th birthday - something a little bit more grown up!

So, the cupcakes are my every faithful vanilla cupcake recipe with 30g of cocoa powder and a tablespoon of camp coffee added - the result, mocha cupcakes with a hint of both flavours without being too overpowering!

Then for the frosting, I beat together 120g soft butter and 375g of icing sugar using my trusty Kenwood chef, and then added one standard measure of Baileys, turned the Ken up to a high speed and left it for about 5 minutes until the frosting was light and fluffy. This made more than enough for 12 cupcakes - and as you can see I'm definitely not mean with my frosting!!

Each cupcake was topped with a milk chocolate star! It's all about the finishing touches after all!

Lots of love and cupcakes

Laura xx

Past and present bakes....

So here are a few of my cakes....

'Hello Kitty' 3 layer vanilla sponge filled with raspberry jam and buttercream

Giant lemon drizzle cupcake filled with lemon curd and cream cheese frosting

Double chocolate swirl with chocolate ganache

3 tier wedding cake (bottom + top = vanilla sponge filled with raspberry conserve and buttercream, middle = carrot cake filled cream cheese frosting)

2 tier red velvet cake filled with cream cheese frosting

'Thomas the Tank Engine' vanilla sponge train set

Vanilla sponge garden bugs

Last years Christmas cakes!

Victoria 'sandwich' filled with strawberries and fresh cream

Lots of love and cupcakes,

Laura xx

So this is me....

I'm Laura - a 26 year old Audiologist by day, and cake baker by night (well more like weekend!). Baking is my hobby, a bit of a creative stress reliever. I've been baking for friends and family for the past 12 months or so, and I've been trying new things whenever I can - be it a new recipe, or a new design. I enjoy what I do, and people seem to enjoy polishing off whatever I create!!

I don't pretend to be the worlds best cake maker!!! Please don't get me wrong! Like I say - it's a creative hobby.

I'm hoping to post pictures and descriptions of my cake making adventures, feedback is always welcome, but please don't be too harsh on me! I'll add some photos of my recent baking exploits, unfortunately I only have photos of the finished articles but will make a conscious effort to photo the whole process from here on in!

Lots of love and cupcakes,

Laura xx