Cupcakes and Christmas cakes galore!

Sunday evening and I am one pooped out cake baker!  Four nights of selling my cupcakes and Christmas cake for TLS have kept me very busy indeed.  As mentioned in my last post I have several orders for Christmas cakes and the opening night for TLS's "Dickens by Candlelight" was on Friday.  Last Wednesday  was "sneak preview" night at the theatre and naturally I brought my cupcakes along.  Not many people were there, but all who were, bought my cakes. :D  I brought along my Death by Chocolate, Bourbon Vanilla and a new flavour, Mincemeat and Brandy.  Those who are into raisins really liked the latter.  This was the first time I had gone public with my cupcakes, and it was a relief to see how well they were received.   And well received they continued to be, although being completely new to the game I wildly overestimated how many cupcakes would be needed.  Strangely the mincemeat and brandy cupcakes only sold well on the preview night.  Tonight I didn't sell any at all, which made me a little sad.  Perhaps I will withdraw that flavour and try lemon instead.  Death by Chocolate is definitely the most popular flavour, so I will definitely be making proportionally more of those in the future. My christmas cake was also very popular, especially with the English crowd that came.

Also, the director of the play and founder of TLS was delighted with the toppers I had made, which was good because I was a little nervous that they were too blah.  But they incorporated the group's colours, neon pink, yellow and green and thanks to an old-fashioned potato stamp, each colourful disc had the company logo on it.

So to date all my christmas cakes are all baked; nine round ones and three large sheetcake versions to be sold in slices at the theatre performances.  You should see my decorating "studio" a.k.a the basement; cakes, toppers, fondant on every available tabletop, counter and shelf.  Even the ironing board is doing double duty as a place to put the toppers until they have dried!  Right now I am a little concerned that my mail order for about 20 bags of marshmallows has not arrived and I am fast running out of fondant!!!!!

I also decorated this christmas cake for display purposes at the theatre in my colour; turquoise.  I'm otherwise very pleased with it except that it screams "Douglas GmbH" all over.  For all you non-German residents, Douglas is a chain-store specializing in cosmetics, perfumes and bath products.  Their signature colour is also turquoise.  Surprisingly, no-one at the theatre made the connection........

Father's Day Cake

Strange as it may sound,  in some parts of the world it is Father's Day today.  So to celebrate I made a cake for my husband.  Yes, my daughter should have been the one to do this, but she was swamped with homework and tests to study for.....and I wanted an excuse to bake!  Since hubby detests fondant and buttercream, I  went for something completely different.   This is a vanilla sponge cake filled and covered with fresh raspberries,  blueberries and unsweetened whipped cream.  Then I covered the sides with chocolate cigarillos and the most non-girly ribbon I could find.  the result was very pleasing and my husband loved it!

In the meantime it has been a busy time in the kitchen for me.  I have been fortunate enough to get several christmas cake orders;  you know, those yummy, rich English fruit cakes covered in marzipan and...you guessed it, fondant!  They need about a month or more to properly mature, so my cellar is getting crowded with all the cakes that are stored there.  Also,  I have been given a great opportunity to promote my cakes and cupcakes with TLS, a brand new theatre group.  Check out their website for more information at www.tlsfrankfurt.com.  They are putting on their first play, "Dickens by Candlelight", a modern interpretation of "A Christmas Carol" in Sindlingen.  Performances run for a month and I get to sell my cakes at the intervals!  Great opportunity, but lots and lots of hard work!  On top of all that I have been asked to make their cast party cake for the middle of December.

With all these orders my family is in serious danger of being neglected this Christmas.......but nevertheless I am very excited and full of all kinds of creative ideas at the moment.   I am also itching to practice making carnations and gerbera daisies; flowers that to date I have very little experience with, but would love to be able to make properly.  All in good time, all in good time!

Witch's Hat cake

Tonight I am a very happy blogger.  Since my last post I found a better tutorial on making marshmallow fondant; one that made extensive use of a KitchenAid mixer, and this time I hit the jackpot!  My fondant had the perfect consistency and with the addition of bourbon vanilla tasted devine.

About the same time I received an order for a Halloween-themed birthday cake, so naturally I was  keen to try out my new fondant.  The birthday girl had requested a Witch's hat, but could not decide on flavour or colour.  After a moment's thought and a twinkle in my eye I jokingly suggested a rainbow-coloured vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream filling covered with purple and orange fondant.  I figured this would cover all the bases, but she loved the idea!  And truth be told I loved every aspect of making this cake.

It was fun dividing up the batter and colouring each batch a different colour.  It's a pity I can't show you what a slice would look like......Anyway, since I didn't have the appropriate shaped cake pans to make this cake, I improvised with three different ceramic bowls, the smallest of which was a cereal bowl!  Once baked, cooled, torted, filled and stacked I had to trim the cake into shape.  To say I "sculpted" the cake would be a serious exaggeration.

Once the hat was covered in buttercream it was time for the best part, namely rolling out the fondant.  It was smooth, it was pliant.  There was not a crack or a crease to be seen.  This was bliss!  I felt like a professional!  It was also time to try my new imprinting mat, which worked a charm!  Positioning the fondant on the cake was somewhat tricky, as I really could have used an extra pair of hands to hold the fondant aloft while I shaped the very top of the hat.  However, both my kitchen elves are in England right now, and hubby was working late.  Nevertheless, I got the job done and all that remained were the hat band, star and moon decorations and the birthday message.  The letters and shapes I had made ahead of time, so that took no time at all.  On an impulse I decided to add pearl lustre to the whole thing.  Together with the patterned "fabric" of the hat, the lustre just made the whole thing better.

Tomorrow the Hat goes to it's new home and I hope it is well received.  Yet even without compliments this cake was truly a feelgood experience.  I get such a rush when things finally fall into place and work the way they're supposed to.  I've been doing cakes for friends and family for as long as I can remember, but working with fondant is a whole new area for me.  Every cake I make is a learning experience.  These days every free moment I have I am working on new techniques, or practicing the skills I already have.  I get an almost child-like sense of happiness when I'm up to my elbows in icing sugar creating flowers and figures out of fondant and icing.

halloween cake

This cake represents two firsts for me: The first time I have attempted a tiered cake and the first time I have used homemade marshmallow fondant.  The result isn't quite perfect, but much better than I had hoped.  The fondant proved to be quite the nightmare.  I had to work it for at least an hour before I could roll it out.  Even then it refused to relinquish it's foam rubber look; in other words it was springy to the touch, and had an uneven quality that was quite prone to tearing.  Once I got the fondant rolled out almost as thin as I wanted and positioned on the cakes, I quickly realized that it was virtually impossible to smooth out the inevitable folds and creases.  The fondant also ripped, and not having the will to spend another hour working with the fondant to re-cover the cake, I opted for some cleverly positioned snakes, bats, cats and trees to cover up the imperfections.

Despite the setbacks and flaws in this cake, it was received with plenty of oohs and aahs by my daughter's friends.  The cake was my tried and tested Devil's food cake with chocolate buttercream filling, so I know it tasted good!  Also, it can well be said that even if things didn't work out the way I had planned them to, there were some valuable lessons learned here so all was not in vain!

Now it's back to the drawing board to come up with a tasty fondant that has the perfect consistency to work with!  Either that or I go back to ordering the professional stuff and try to improve it's flavour.

Marshmallow fondant

It has been a while since I last blogged; one can blame one's day job interfering with the real joy in my life of cake decorating and cupcakes.  Last weekend was cold and wet, so I entertained myself by trying out a marshmallow fondant recipe which so many people wax lyrical about.  Everyone who has ever posted anything about marshmallow fondant has claimed it is easy, tasty and infinitely cheaper than the commercial stuff available.  I've been wanting to try this out for a while, but it took a bit of dedicated research to find white marshmallows in Germany.  They all seem to be pink and yellow.  Eventually I got hold of several bags of the stuff and so I eagerly set to work.  First I melted the marshmallows in the microwave, being careful to stir at regular intervals.  When they had all melted into a smooth, sticky, very, very sticky mass I stirred in some bourbon vanilla and food colouring before coating my hands and my work surface with lots of shortening.  Then I emptied a box of icing sugar on to said surface before pouring the marshmallow goo on top of the sugar.  Next step was to knead the sugar into the marshmallow mix until it had the consistency of play doh.  Eventually the impossibly sticky mass did morph into something that looked very much like fondant icing, but the process was so sticky and so messy that I cannot bring myself to post a picture of me kneading the goo, even if my daughter had great fun taking the pictures!  Suffice it to say that eventually these:

turned into these:


The dark grey turned black over night, which was the intention and these colours will be used to make a Halloween themed cake and cupcakes for this coming weekend.  The orange also turned a more vibrant shade when left overnight.  So far the taste is definitely better than the commercial stuff, but time will tell if it is as easy to work with.

I will poste pictures of the Halloween cakes once they are completed!

Birthday cupcakes

This has got to be the fastest cake project I have ever done.  My daughter comes to me after school all flustered because she has remembered too late that it is a good friend of her's birthday the very next day and there's no more time to shop.  So I suggested a box of personalized cupcakes.  She thought this was a great idea and after a short brainstorming session to determine the overall look and flavour, we came up with strawberry and vanilla cupcakes frosted in vanilla buttercream decorated in flowers and hearts.

Whilst I set to work making sugar paste flowers, hearts and cutouts for the message, Caitlin carefully went about baking the cupcakes.  After the decorations were completed and left to dry, I whipped up the vanilla frosting and covered the cakes.  Meanwhile I recruited my other daughter to cover a shoebox with wrapping paper, as I have yet to order boxes for my cupcakes.

Amazingly all this took only 2 hours!  The next morning I assembled the decorations on to the cupcakes and packed them carefully with tissue paper to prevent them sliding around in the box.  For a rush job we were pretty pleased with the result.  The birthday girl was both surprised and delighted.

With the summer holidays over, I am finding it hard to find time to work out a logo for my burgeoning cake business.  I have a couple of ideas in my head that I just need to try out on paper.  Once this is done I can go ahead and order business cards and labels to stick on delivery boxes.  On a more positive note I have located a dealer who can provide me with smaller numbers of cupcake boxes  at a reasonable price.
At this stage it would be slightly premature to order thousands of boxes!!!!

Test kitchen marathon

Rainbow cupcake

Is this an awesome looking cupcake or what?!  Full credit for this creation goes to Caitlin who asked if she could "play around" with some colours.  This is what one gets when one gives an adolescent free rein in the kitchen!  The cake itself is bourbon vanilla with vanilla buttercream icing and the flavour and consistency has been deemed "perfect" by my panel of trusty taste testers.

In the past couple of weeks I think we baked around 5 dozen cupcakes in various flavours in an attempt to perfect and finalize my repertoire.  Flavours and colours and styles of cupcakes are endless, but I wanted to limit myself to 8 or 9 different flavours with approximately the same number of icing choices.  As I said in the beginning, cakes are my speciality, with cupcakes acting as financial "filler" on the side.
So what did we accomplish?  We perfected the red velvet after a couple of batches and now have one that is a beautiful deep reddish brown that has a noticeable chocolate flavour.  I top that with a much improved upon cream cheese icing that is no longer quite as sweet as it used to be.

We discovered that papaya cupcakes are a disaster!  Papaya flavoured buttercream is ok, but I don't think I will make it a staple product.

Our Tiramisu is to die for!  No really, it tastes just like a real tiramisu cake and we even ice it with lemon flavoured mascarpone cream.  We used real Amaretto liqueur and strong coffee.  Amongst those who tested this cake it was a favourite with the majority.  The only problem we encountered was too much coffee.  This made the cupcakes far too moist, but that will be easy to fix.  We just need to make the coffee stronger and add less of it.

For our coffee lovers we also developed a chocolate mocca cupcake which combines a rich chocolate flavour with enough coffee to give it a bit of a punch.  This one was topped with coffee flavoured chocolate ganache.  My daughter accidentally got the proportions of cream and chocolate "wrong", but the result was devine!!!

Then with an eye for our "gluten free" customers, we came up with a nutella hazelnut cupcake that has no wheat in it.  Ground almonds were used to bind the cake together and it came out tasting almost like a brownie.  Since it was already so rich, we scratched our heads for quite a while before we decided to ice it with whipped cream which had a dash of vanilla and a tiny bit of sugar added.  The combination worked and got a lot of praise from our "guinea pigs".

Finally, having realised that we had an awful lot of chocolate based flavours we decided to try a blueberry cupcake.  I took my tried and tested vanilla recipe and added blueberry puree in swirls.  They came out great, but I could have used much more blueberry.  Then the icing:  At first I tried adding blueberry puree to buttercream, but the resulting colour was so unappetizing that I immediately abandoned that idea.  After a little thought I came up with the idea of using white chocolate ganache.  This proved to be a NIGHTMARE!!!!!   For some reason I kept getting it wrong and I would end up with a curdled, lumpy mess.  600g of white chocolate and a litre of heavy cream later I finally got it right just in time for our friends who had come to dinner to test.  I need to do one more batch to perfect the blueberry-vanilla ratio, but otherwise it's time for the test kitchen to take a break.

Next step;  packaging and logo.  We'll keep you posted!