Lemon-aid and 1001 nights...

Lemon-aid - this is a lemon and white chocolate cheesecake cupcake, and the 'aid' part - they are for the lovely man who helped me solve my 'but I can't upload the software I need onto my new laptop as it hasn't got a CD drive' - he did something like hypnotise it to make it think it has a CD drive...
Here are the cakes...

1001 nights - these are pale pink rose scented cupcakes, with rose scented icing, sprinkled with crystallised rose petals.  Bit of a girlie-fest, for a friend who said they would be a good idea!  Both these and the lemon-aid ones have been iced with a palette knife in the Hummingbird Bakery stylee.

Maman Blanc's Apple Tart

We enjoyed watching the series that Raymond Blanc did recently, and particularly enjoyed the bread and the apples episodes (Mr Cupcake likes baking bread nearly as much as I like making cakes...).  However, following the whoopie pies earlier in the week I had some left over double cream, as well as having eggs in the fridge and a few apples in the fruit bowl... it occurred to me that with these and few other storecupboard essentials I could make the lovely Manam Blanc's Apple Tart.  It was very simple as I followed the instructions from the BBC website - although we had no calvados and so substituted this with the good old Captain Morgan that usually lives just for Christmas cake and Christmas pudding!

Whoopie Pies

This was a new cakey experiment... apparently the latest thing from the US in the cake baking world - although based on an old tradition.  I have to say that I didn't feel the love in their creation as much as with cupcakes, but that I did think they looked cute when finished, and they certainly went down well at work! I found it faffy piping the cake components, and then faffy making the marshmallow based filling, but other than that it was fine...  I don't think I'll be making them again in a hurry though!

Independence day cupcakes!

We had been invited to a 4th July party, and although I used more food colouring in these than I think in any other cake (well, maybe with the exception of the Ford Capri), I just felt it had to be done.  We had a lovely afternoon with our friends chatting, and listening to the banjo music being played by the American neighbour!

Cupcakes!

It's been a while since I have baked, but it's been ages since I have made cupcakes... Mainly as now having a toddler and a new one on the way means that my time is more limited.  However, events conspired to inspire me to bake cupcakes this weekend and these are the result.  I made some cupcakes for friends and their family, I made some as a gift for our friends who are new parents, and some as a gift for a variety of people having a joint birthday party.  I enjoyed making them and the recipients seemed to enjoy being given them, so a good time had by all.

Crispy Wedding Cakes - I kid you not!

This post was inspired by the researcher that I co-habit an office with on a Friday.  In disbelief at the idea of giant chocolate crispy cakes as a wedding cake I had to Google it and was then inspired to try it out!

This was my first attempt - with crispy cakes made of marshmallows which I will NEVER be attempting again as melting marshmallows was just not fun, nor was mixing them with the Rice Crispies... in the end I gave up.  My husband created the pink mound by just pressing them into the bowl they were mixed in and I *tried* to pretty it up with some mini marshmallows (not - entirely - successful).  However, it does taste ok and he has promised to take it for the delight of his colleagues...

This was the second attempt - which I think is much better!  I stuck to the extreme basic 'melt the chocolate, mix the crispies in' recipe and then pressed the mixture into a greased and lined cake tin.  I left it to set overnight and then turned it out onto a plate (on a doily of course!) and tied a ribbon around the middle.  I was quite pleased with it and am looking forward to having another try, but making one with more than one tier!  Pics will follow!

Something cooking in the cupcake-fest household...

The HUGE gape between cakes is the result of cupcake-fest having a little baking of her own going on - in the form of bun no.2 in the oven and so things have been a little distracted recently with a woeful lack of cake making!