It's still September...and so another birthday!

Sunday 27th was my cousin Liam's 17th birthday, I still can't get over that he is 17! Making cupcakes for boys can be hard, butterflies and flowers don't cut it. I had ordered some black fondant and gold luster dust for Riley's pirate skulls but it did not arrive on time. What on earth will I do with all that black? I had black cupcake papers left over from the AFL cupcakes so I decided on chocolate cake with chocolate Italian buttercream (STILL left over from the wedding!, I really need to work on my quantities) in black papers with a black and gold star on top. Very masculine I thought, perfect for a manly 17 year old! :o)

Check out my fancy photography skills *jokes* I am trying to improve my skills, do you like my attempt at a background?

In other news I have just finished cutting out all the flags for the NRL final cuppies! Now to glue them all together! and I also have a request for 21st birthday cupcakes this Friday, my brief was they had to be green...stay tuned :o)

AFL Cupcakes

I was asked to make 100 cupcakes for an AFL function on Saturday...50 for each team. They where all chocolate with vanilla buttercream.

Again I had to make red buttercream, but now I know the trick it's so much eaiser! I made little flags for each team. St Kilda had red American buttercream with gold edible glitter and flag.

And Geelong was blue American buttercream with a silver cachous on top, with a flag.

All set up for the function, got to use dad's stand again which was good!

Next weekend NRL! I'm just bummed I don't get to make Brocnos ones.

Kate

Where to begin...

Just a quick post from me today, I have to come back with my AFL cupcakes I made for the final and the recipes I promised. Anyway I had a freind ask what she needs to do to get started to make cup/cakes so I thought I would post my reply for everyone to read.

Have a good rest of the weekend!!

That's great to hear you want to give baking a go, I really don't think enough women (or men!) our age can do it anymore which is sad. I remember cooking with my mum and it's something I want my kids to remember doing with me!

Anyway you definitely do not need a mixmaster! Just a handheld electric beater will be fine. A few basics I would suggest getting are some pyrex mixing bowls, spatula, measuring cups and jug, measuring spoons, scales, sieve, cucpake tray (just watch which size you buy, you can get mini, patty cake, muffin or texas muffin size. I generally use muffin size as thats what the papers fit in best) and maybe a 20cm or 22cm round cake tin a loaf tin. I wouldn't worry about having tins in every size, I usually buy specific tins as I need them so I can slowly build my collection but the standard 20cm round I would use the most and my loaf tin but I have no idea how big that is sorry! Personally I don't like the silicone stuff but you can give it a shot to see if you do!

Wollies and Coles have great baking stuff, papers and decorations to start experimenting with. There is a little shop in Newell St called Bakery and Catering Supplies that have just started selling some beautiful cupcake papers and they also stock piping bags and tins. You can also get some plastic disposible piping bags and tips to fiddle around with from Wollies.. I use a large washable piping bag you can get from kitchen shops, you can also get large piping tips for swirls there. The tip I use most often was ordered online, it is a wilton 1m tip used by a lot of cupcakers for the top swirl! Unfortunately I have to order most of the stuff I use to decorate online as there is nowhere around that stock what I need. Two good websites are www.completecakedec.com.au and www.cakedecoratingcentral.com

If you want to get into cupcakes I suggest you buy Crabapple Cupcake Book, the recipes are easy to follow and always taste good. The net is always a fantastic resource too. For sweets in general another good book is Womens Weekly Old Fashioned Favourites. I have just started a blog too which I am hoping to add recipes to siftandwhisk.blogspot.com
Some tips for cupcakes are

*Don't skimp on the beating of the butter, then slowly add sugar and beat more then add eggs one at a time and beat beat beat!

* Once flour is added take it slow, overbeating at this stage will make cupcakes tough. Alternate flour with liquid (eg. Milk, Juice, etc) and slowly incorporate.

* Have butter, egg and milk at room temperature. You can quickly zap butter in microwave to soften but DO NOT MELT, same with milk but don't boil and eggs can be placed in a bowl of warm water to bring up to temp.

*Don't have oven too hot, I usually set mine at 170" I find this works well for me, but every oven is different.

*Don't over fill the cupcake papers, I do mine around 1/2 full depending on how I plan to decorate them. Grab yourself and Iceream scoop to fill pans, it's alot less messy this way!

Other then that all I can suggest is just experimenting! You will learn little tricks as you go and soon you will be able to whip up a cake no worries :o) Trust me I have had many disasters but I just keep trying. If you have anymore questions ask away!

Goodluck

Kate

Happy Birthday to Moi!

Well it really is the season for Birthdays, after all September is 9 months from Christmas! So anyway on Monday I turned 26...I think, isn't it terrible when you can't remember how old you are. It's not like when you’re a kid and you know exactly how many days, weeks, months till your next birthday.

Was I excited about presents? well yes everybody loves presents and I got some lovely beads for my Pandora bracelet and a gift voucher for a facial. Oh and a handbag butler, I had wanted one of these after seeing them on Not Quite Nigella's Blog! Was excited about going out for dinner and having my favourite, RIBS!? Well yes of course BUT I was super dooper excited about making my Birthday cupcakes!

Sad I know but it's true! I had bought some stunning cupcake papers that where a purple/pink with gold and the colour inspired me to make some raspberry cupcakes. I love raspberry, the real raspberry taste not the fake one. So I got some frozen raspberries (we never get fresh up here in North QLD and if we do it's $15 a punnet) defrosted them in the microwave and pushed them through a sieve to make a lovely red puree. I made vanilla bean cupcakes using a wonderful recipe I had found on Sweet Treats Blog and swirled a teaspoon of the puree in before cooking.

You can see a little bit of the raspberry swirl on the side of this cupcake, also if you look closely you can see glitter (edible of course!).

I had heaps of Italian Buttercream leftover from the wedding in the freezer so I defrosted it and re-whipped it in Kitty (my KitchenAid) while pouring in the rest of the puree. It went a beautiful shade of pink and tasted divine. It wasn't overly sweet and had a lovely tang to it.

And because I’m extra mad, after looking after 4 kids all day I decided I needed to make sugar flowers too! I had got some beautiful gold lustre dust and glitter I wanted to try out and it looked fantastic.

So anyway enjoy! And I will be adding some of my favourite recipes as soon as I can.

Kate

Arrgghh, me hearty! It's Riley's Birthday!!

Hi! This week my nephew Riley turned the big 3! He was having a pirate party so I jumped at the chance to have another go at using fondant and made some fondant skulls. And I was also excited to master the art of red buttercream. Colouring buttercream red or black can be extremely difficult, I threw out a whole batch of Italian buttercream once because I destroyed it tying to get the colour right.

Anyway the way to do it is:

For american buttercream: Use red powder colour to the milk you will be using for the buttercream, let it sit in the fridge overnight. The colour will also intensify as it sits so if possible make 24hrs before hand,

For IMBC or SMBC: I have not tried this way yet but I would suggest colouring the water for the syrup the same way as the milk. I will let you know how I get on if I try it.

So anyway back to the topic Riley's chocolate cupcakes with red blood (vanilla) buttercream and fondant skulls...they had to be chocolate Riley and Aunty Jaye's FAVOURITE!

(*Note IMBC= Italian Meringue Buttercream /SMBC= Swiss meringue Buttercream)

Sweet Dreams!

OK yes I admit it, I dream about these babies! They are the most morish, yummy, short and sweet morsels you will ever try. Sorry about the terrible photo, they in no way do them justice but you must do yourself a favour and bake these. (I always double the batch!)

Raspberry Melting Moments

(recipe from taste.com.au)

Ingredients

• 125g unsalted butter, softened
• 1/3 cup pure icing sugar, sifted
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1 cup plain flour
• 2 tablespoons custard powder
• pure icing sugar, to serve
• 
  

• Raspberry filling

• 60g unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 3/4 cup pure icing sugar, sifted
• 6 small frozen raspberries, thawed

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C/140°C fan-forced. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Using an electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Sift flour and custard powder over butter mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon until just combined and a soft dough forms.
2. Using 1 heaped teaspoon of dough per ball, make 30 balls. Place on prepared trays, leaving room for spreading. Using a fork dipped in flour, lightly flatten each biscuit until 1cm thick. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until light golden. Cool on tray for 10 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
3. Meanwhile, make raspberry filling: Using a whisk, beat butter in a bowl until light and creamy. Add vanilla. Whisk to combine. Add icing sugar. Whisk until well combined. Stir in raspberries.
4. Spread the flat side of 1 biscuit with 1 teaspoon filling. Sandwich with 1 biscuit. Repeat with remaining biscuits and filling. Serve dusted with icing sugar.(Or you can fill a piping bag with the filling and do a swirl on one side before pressing them together)

RSPCA Cupcake day

Monday 17th August was the RSPCA cupcake day. I made vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with a vanilla buttercream.

Vanilla Cuppies had pink buttercream and a handmade sugar flower or heart.

And the chocolate cupcakes had green vanilla buttercream and handmade fondant dog footprints. My ever helpful hubby asked why I was putting bear prints on top, bears are animals too!

The cupcakes all packed up and ready to be delivered, with thanks to everone who bought cupcakes I raised $250 for the RSPCA!

Natalia and Ryan's Wedding

So I got a call a few months ago from my mother in-law Carol. She had recently celebrated her 60th birthday and a friend of hers that attended loved my cupcakes and wanted to know if I would make some for her nieces wedding. I had never done anything quite as big or as important but I knew I could do a good job of it and would love the practice.

The bride Natalia was very laid back and was open to all my suggestions, which made things easy. We decided on a chocolate cake, with ivory vanilla buttercream and a little handmade sugar flower. The day of cooking went quite smoothly, we packed up the car and off we went to the reception. Got there and opened my big container, SUGAR!! 4 had fallen over!! Thank god I packed that pallet knife and just smoothed them over, popped the flower back on and viola. Suffice to say they went to the back of the stand. We (my mum came to help) arranged the cupcakes on the stand my dad had made for me...placed the flowers on the cutting cake and stood back. I was so freaking proud of myslef!! It wasn't perfect but I think it was pretty darn close.


The next day I recieved this email from the bride and groom:



"Hi Kate,
Ryan and I just wanted to say a huge thankyou for our beautiful wedding cake. It was everything we hoped for and more. You did an amazing job. Everyone has commented to us so far how yummy it was and each cupcake just looked so cute. I couldn't beleive how big it looked! When we get our proffessional photo's we will send a few on to you. I hope there wern't too many hiccups with setting it all up.
Thankyou again
Best regards
Ryan and Natalia Morris"

My first blog post!

Hi!

Just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Kate, I am a wife, a mum and I love to bake!

I wanted somewhere to share my recipes, triumphs and disasters.

Cupcakes are my favourite thing to bake but I love ALL sweets, I'm not biased!

So I hope you all enjoy,

Kate