Cupcake deluge

 It's strange, but not so very long ago I was writing to a fellow baker, telling her that the vast majority of all my orders are for cakes, not cupcakes.  To be sure, I have made hundreds of cupcakes in the past year, but most were donations or gifts, with the one glaring exception being the cupcakes I made for TLS in December.  Now all of a sudden I have more cupcake orders than ever before?!

I don't mind, as they are in general less work and far less stressful to create than cakes, but I am a bit bemused.  My cupcake bouquet, which I originally made as a gift for a sick friend, has become rather popular, with my fifth one being delivered all the way to Heidelburg (about an hour's drive away).

 These cute puppies were made for a client who wanted to give them as a surprise gift to a friend.  However, this friend also ordered a birthday cake from me to be delivered the same day as the puppy cupcakes.  Needless to say, the cupcake order had to be cancelled:(  I had no choice than to pack the orphan puppies carefully in a box and hope they would find a home soon.

 On a happier note, the same client contacted me a couple of weeks later to order flower and butterfly cupcakes for her mother.  I was given pretty much free rein with the design as long as they were chocolate and had butterflies.  These are what I came up with.

 June 21st, or the closest weekend after that is cause for midsummer celebrations in Finland.  Our small, but very proactive Finnish section of our school put on a whole morning of performances, culminated with snacks and drinks to celebrate.  I donated these strawberry cupcakes to the event.  The flowers are copied from the Marimekko® "poppy" fabric, which is their signature design.

 Most exciting of all is that I was finally  asked to make 2 cupcake towers! One was for a seven-year old's birthday and she wanted something very pink and very girly with butterflies.  I made a cupcake tower that was silver and pink and sparkly just for her.  The cupcakes were strawberry and vanilla  and I made a gazillion sparkly pink and white butterflies in different sizes.  During my last Alan Dunn course in Holland I had purchased some fuschia edible disco glitter dust which I use liberally!  Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the final set up as the client picked them up herself.

The other cupcake tower was for a colleague's 40th birthday party.  She wanted a shabby chic theme with rich chocolate cupcakes and Kahlua white chocolate ganache.  I was getting all excited about the design, but then her budget limited the possibilites and I ended up doing light turquoise and pink ribbon roses.  Still, she was delighted, which in the end is all that matters!  Unfortunately the picture is not very good as I took it on location and in a hurry.

 Last week my daughters and I drove to England for a week long whistle stop tour of all the universities my youngest was thinking of  attending.  One of our first overnight stops was at a pub/B&B that my cousin runs near Brighton.  I hadn't seen her in 30 years, but that wasn't a hindrance at all.  We had a fabulous stay at her George Inn www.thegeorge-alfriston.com, which is definitely worth visiting!  Anyway I wanted to bring her something special, so tried my hand at these fondant covered cupcakes.  I had a devil of a time covering the cupcakes, but I managed in the end.  Since we were spending the previous night in Canterbury and spending that day looking at Kent University, I arranged to leave my precious cupcakes at the Inn in Canterbury for the day, so that they wouldn't spoil!  The staff were very gracious about my unusual request, although they did threaten to eat them if I forgot to pick them up!

After an exhilarating and exhausting trip all around England, I had to find a way to thank my lovely neighbours for feeding our cat while we were gone.  They are dog lovers and in a sudden flash of inspiration I found a home for my puppies! And voila; out of left-over flowers, butterflies and orphan puppies these yummy cupcakes were born.

They were delighted, and I have guaranteed good care for our kitty whenever we're away:)

Now it is time for a break and head north for the summer.  Since I know I won't be able to resist the urge to work with sugarpaste, I plan to practice my flowers and piping skills over the summer.

 

Spring flowers

With sunny skies and longer days, spring is definitely here despite the cold nights.  The snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils are in full bloom and it won't be long before the cherry trees start to blossom!  After the inevitable green cake for St. Patrick's Day, I had a relatively quiet weekend to look forward to.  I had a cupcake "sampler" order for Monday which inevitably left me with extra cupcakes. 

For a while I have been itching to try making a cupcake bouquet and now that I had both the time and the cupcakes, I got to work making flowers.  I also got to practice my buttercream roses, which I have to admit I haven't done in years.  The cupcakes are an assortment of vanilla, lemon, strawberry and chocolate flavours.  In the end I was pretty pleased with the result and so was my friend who received it.  She is battling cancer and I thought I would cheer her up with this edible bouquet.  Perhaps next time I make one of these I will try using fancier cupcake cases and more ribbon.  I think this is a great gift idea for anyone who loves cupcakes.

I also had time, finally, to practice making sugarpaste peonies.  Here is a picture of my very first attempt.  Not perfect, but I hope that in time they will get better.  They are not so much impossibly difficult as time consuming; each petal must be hand shaped and shaded and there are so many in each bloom!  To make this peony I followed an online tutorial...in German no less! For those interested the link is http://tortentante.blogspot.com/ .  Monika is a very talented lady whose cakes have won prizes and have been featured in wedding magazines. 

Last but not least, here is this year's St. Pat's Day creation.  Every year the Irish staff members throw a buffet lunch for all staff members at the school and it has become habit for me to provide the cake for them.   I will admit that the leprechaun is recycled from last year's cake, but everything else was fresh!  The beer mug was made from rice krispie treats with the "foam" being Bailey's flavoured buttercream, yum!  I am somewhat amused to see how inordinately popular the rice krispie treats are with the staff.  The Brits like it because I suppose it is a familiar treat from "back  home", but the Germans have been hitherto completely ignorant of this treat.

Next on my wishlist is time to make a tiered wedding cake, just to prove to myself that I can do it.  Tempting as it is to use up every free moment cake decorating, I do have to make time for my family and the garden occasionally!  However, before I get too caught up in the wedding cake theme, I have a birthday cake to create for my husband......

Fairies and dinosaurs

Here they are as promised; the fairy and butterfly cake and the dinosaur cake.  The fairy definitely would have looked very different had I attempted her before I went to Lorraine's course.  As it was I was very pleased with the way the hands and the feet came out.  The face I was not pleased with and I know I really need practice getting the mouth right!  I wasn't really given any specifics for this cake other than it had to be pink and feature fairies and butterflies.  That it did, but I also went waaaayyyy OTT on the flowers.  When it was all finished, I regretted putting so many on, but it was too late to do anything about it.

My daughter reassured me that since the client is 8 years old, she won't think it OTT at all.  You know what? My daughter was right!  she was ecstatic over the cake; I believe her exact words were, "Oohh, that's the most romantic cake I have EVER seen!"

This dinosaur cake was all in all much simpler and far less time consuming than the fairy cake.  I found these cartoonish dinosaurs relatively easy and a lot of fun to make.  Ok, so the brontosaurus gave me a lot of grief because while I was away in Maastricht, the neck snapped off.  Then when I made a new improved head and neck for him I managed to snap the tail off.  At that point I thought it best to throw the whole thing in the bin and start again.  T-Rex was also a little tricky because I found it hard to support him properly so that he would dry in an upright position.  But little Harry also loved his cake, and in the end that's the  most important thing!

By the way, both cakes were bourbon vanilla with vanilla buttercream covered in marshmallow fondant.  More pictures of these and all my cakes can be found in the photo gallery.

Piglets and flowers

Just a very short blog to show off my little piglets that I made for a rush order last Friday.  Originally I was just going to cover the cupcakes with fondant discs made to look like pig faces, but I couldn't resist making these little pigs.  They were a lot easier than I thought they would be and they do look cute, don't they?