Hello Kitty!

Thanks to a forum I go on regularly I discovered Bento Boxes...  (try an image search for Totoro bento box to get an idea, or hello kitty bento...) and so had to order one (in Hello Kitty style...) and a gadget to make hard boiled eggs shaped like Hello Kitty...
I also ordered a Hello Kitty cutter with the thought of making Hello Kitty shaped sandwiches (can you tell my last little cupcake was a girl!).

However, in the midst of all of the bento box madness I thought I would make the Hello Kitty Biscuits.  This was my first attempt at iced sugar biscuits and I was quite pleased.

Kate Middleton Hen Night

As part of some of the other stuff that I do, I do some work with young people.  In the run up tho the Royal Wedding we decided to have our own hen night for Kate Middleton.  I thought I'd make a few cupcakes to take along!

This was the selection I took our builders for their elevenses...

Easter!

I was away at my in-laws over Easter, but did manage to squeeze in some baking.  I made some sugar biscuits (Hummingbird Bakery recipe) which I thought the children might like to ice, but which I ended up icing... these were in the shape of Easter eggs, bunnies, carrots and flowers and I just added a few details with some royal icing.  I also made some paste eggs, and I made some Easter nest cupcakes, with white icing, chocolate flake nests, mini chocolate eggs and fluffy easter chicks... However, being away I forgot to take pictures of any of the things that I made (ha ha ha ha ha...).

So instead, I have some pictures of the beautiful cakes that my sister-in-law made...

Simnel cakes

Amazing chocolate roulade...

Royal Wedding!

I was quite excited about the Royal Wedding and we all headed over to my parents (as they have a better tv than us!) for the day - the whole day!  We started with breakfast for the build up coverage and then worked our way through elevenses and lunch.  I rustled up some Royal Wedding cupcakes and my mum had made some treats too!

Another new baking book!

I had wanted to try making fabulously iced sugar biscuits for a long time, but the things holding me back were the lack of a successfully stable biscuit recipe and a general fear of the fancy icing.  However, as time went on I became more and more obsessed about trying it and so purchased the very fabulous Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits (see http://www.biscuiteers.com/) and decided to give it a go.  Although perversely I used the sugar biscuit recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook as it didn't require chilling...  My motivation for this baking session was to make a gift for a colleague who was having a lovely May Day wedding.
So I made the biscuits and left them to cool, and then made the icing - this time to the Biscuiteers recipe! and this is what I came up with...

 Iced and ready to go...

Dressed up for the wedding

 Good to go!

Cakepops!

Crikey! I can't believe it's been so long since I last blogged - how time flies now I have 2 little cupcakes of my own! Still, I have been baking and trying lots of new things and so I'll start with the most recent and work backover until I'm up to date...
Cakes change like fashions and the latest thing at the moment is cakepops, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I bought a book (Pop Bakery by Claire O'Connell, although I wish I'd bought Cake Pops by Bakerella...) and some sticks and set off on a new adventure! First I made a chocolate cake to the recipe given in the book - which was a fairly standard recipe - and as per the instructions left it to cool overnight. Then cake the hard part, putting my pristine chocolate cake into the food processor to blitz into crumbs - this felt like an act of sacrilege but was for the greater good! I then mixed the crumbs with cream cheese and icing sugar to enable me to form them into balls.

The balls were then chilled in the fridge before I popped them onto sticks and dipped them into white chocolate. I really want to try this again, but using the recommended candy melts as the White chocolate wasn't a brilliant consistency for dipping. However, they turned out ok!

Naked cake pops...

Naked cake pops again...

Dipping the cake pops...

Official cake pop tester...

Baking made easy

I watched a new tv baking programme this week called baking made easy http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/i_cant_believe_you_made_90494 I wasn't majorly struck by it as a series (so far) and didn't find the presenter particularly charismatic, BUT, I did like some of her recipes.  In particular I was desperate to try the "I can't believe you made that cake"... and so as we'd been invited to a friends for tea and cakes on Sunday, I thought I would give it a go!
I made a basic recipe chocolate sponge and filled and covered it with the Hummingbird Bakery recipe buttercream.  I then stuck Cadbury's chocolate fingers all around the outside - chocolate cigarillos being hard to come by where I live... and then filled it with fruit.  I was very pleased with the results!