Retirements & Birthdays...2 Giant Cupcakes!

The end of June highlighted the end of the school year and two retirements in St. Catherine's National School. Having attended the school myself, I decided to make a cake as a farewell gift. I had always wanted to try making a giant cupcake and had recently purchased the mould. I made a chocolate giant cupcake and added some chocolate fudge filling, finishing it off with buttercream on top. I had a birthday cake to do the same weekend so went for a vanilla cake, with the same filling and just changed the pattern of the buttercream on top, adding some edible pearls and a fondant '30'. The final two pictures here are iced lemon sponge squares (a simpler alternative to the lemon squares I previously made), and some banana bread mini muffins!

All things crumble!

With summer arriving, the Rhubarb in the garden was ready to pick, which started a couple of experiments with crumble! First up was a rhubarb and apple crumble, followed by a mixed berry and apple crumble. For the first, I used up the regular apples we had, which softened nicely into the crumble. Unfortuantely, for the second, I followed the recipe to use cooking apples but they could have done with some pre cooking before being added to the crumble!

The Birthday Cakes Adventure!

I have always wanted to try my hand at making proper birthday cakes but never had the equipment or know-how! In the last year or two, with a little perseverance, I used some family birthdays as an excuse to delve into the world of larger cakes! First up, I made a two layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. For an added twist, I made this into a Ferrero Rocher cake, adding some chopped into the filling, as well as adding some to the top to decorate. There's something about chocolate and hazelnut...delicious combination! Carrot cake was next on the menu. I have always wanted to make my own, after years of disappointment biting into a piece in a restaurant only to find raisins, which are not exactly a favourite of mine! I made a simple one layer square sponge carrot cake, with chopped walnuts in the mix. The cake was then covered in the traditional cream cheese frosting, and decorated with some whole walnuts as well as some homemade fondant carrots. My biggest challenge so far has been a birthday cake for my aunt's 60th. I am always up for a challenge, but there was a bit of delving into the unknown with this, given I had never covered a cake in rolled fondant before! As there was a party involved, I had to make a substantial cake, so I ended up making two 9X13" chocolate sponges, and filled them with that Ferrero Rocher frosting as requested! To decorate I added some mini muffins with sweets on top, as well as a '60' cut from additional sponge. This was the most tedious aspect of the cake as I was cutting around a paper template rather than using a cutter. The sponge was very delicate, so next time I will consider chilling over night or freezing before cutting. I then layered melted white chocolate over the numbers...much more straight forward than trying to cover something so awkward and crumbly in fondant!

World MS Day 2012

For World MS Day, in May this year, I contributed some tray bake items to a coffee morning fundraiser in aid of Multiple Sclerosis. My aunt, a dedicated social worker with MS Ireland for years, asked if I could make just something for her to bring in. In the end I decided that with the cause involved I wanted to do more than one thing. Having been involved in the MS Readathon event each year while I was in school, I was only too happy to have another opportunity to help out. I settled on three tray bakes for the coffee morning, going with all things lemon and chocolate! Of course not together though!

I baked lemon squares which consisted of a biscuit/shortbread base, followed by a rich lemon curd-type baked filling, dusted with icing sugar. I also made a tray of chocolate sponge, generously covered in a rich sticky chocolate fudge icing, sprinkled with chocolate drops. Lastly, to add an element of simplicity, I made rice krispie squares, using a mars bar mix to coat the krispies, and topping the whole thing off with melted milk and white chocolate. I am glad to say these tray bakes went down a treat at the coffee morning, and with the generous donations of many people on the day, some much needed funds were raised for the MS Society.

Rice Krispies to Cornflakes!

There are some days when nothing will do me other than to do some baking! I rarely need an excuse to pull out the mixer, but on those occasions where an event is involved, it makes it that more enjoyable. With couple of days of cupcakes for Mother's Day and St. Patrick's Day, I experimented with piping chocolate designs onto clear plastic to decorate the cakes with. They turned out to be pretty delicate, but just enough survived to decorate! The brownies below also sparked the start of my venture into gluten free baking. A day of needing to entertain young cousins resulted in some milk chocolate cornflake cakes with marshmallows and white chocolate & cranberry cornflake cakes. Of course as with most children growing up, we loved to make rice krispie cakes and they were the centre piece at birthday parties. With no rice krispies in sight one evening we settled on using Cornflakes. This turned out to be a pleasant surprise, as the Cornflakes seem to hold up better to the chocolate and stay crispier for longer! The final photo in the strip shows my first (and solo so far!) attempt at miniature Bakewell tarts.

A Test of Red Velvet

I ventured into my first experiment with red velvet cake a few months back. Tasted delicious, but probably could have done with a little more red food colouring! The light sponge combined with the cream cheese frosting makes for a lovely cake. The slight tang of the frosting helps to cut through the overall sweetness of the cake.

The Early Days!

As an introductory first post, I thought I would share a few snaps of some of the goodies I made in the early days, a couple of years ago! Clockwise from top left includes a chocolate fudge almond cake, Halloween fairy cakes, Christmas biscuits, a chocolate Easter nest cake, and some Easter cupcakes!