40 Pink Cupcakes!

It has been a busy baking week! Today I made and iced 40 cupcakes! Dave was doing handy man jobs and I was without light at then end so iced in a head torch - would have look ridiculous! So these are for a friends daughter's first birthday party.

The theme is pink which is handy as it's also Pink Ribbon day on Monday so the duff ones are being taken to work to be sold! The extra duff ones have gone in a container for Dave and I to eat (along with the bounty mudcake - oh god...)

I am still not satisfied with my standard vanilla and chocolate cupcake recipe. I have researched loads and the chocolate one I tried today tastes nice but not perfect and until I do find one that I am happy with I will not go on to try the 100s of different, exciting and delicious looking recipes I have piled up to try. I also tried 40 swirls and some turned out just how I wanted but the rest were terrible and seeing as I can't pipe then - I’m just going to have to keep on trying!!!!!!

Thanks mum for the cupcake sprinkles - I love them! All the way from England in a box on a ship!:-)

Bounty Mudcake caught fire!

I made a bounty mudcake the other day. It was the Woman's Weekly Cherry mudcake but adapted to bounty bars as my fiance is not a fan of cherry ripe.

It requires a tall tin lined with baking paper. i went a little over the top as normal when lining cake tins but, when put on the middle shelf they were rather close to the top of the oven.

I ignored this and was faffing around with another problem. with my large cake tin, if the mixture is slightly runny it tends to leak alittle. so i was cleaning up the drips and arranging tinfoil to prevent them from falling to the oven floor. last time i let the batter drip out it burnt in the oven and filled it with smoke.

Then i noticed that the baking paper had caught fire!!! I yelled for Dave and we took it out - the cake had a ring of fire above it! I refused to put the cake in the sink 'we can save the batter!!!' and eventually the fire died out.

The baking paper had burnt all the way down to the batter and had flake off but - i picked out each and every tiny speck, albeit with a little batter too but most was left unharmed.

so in it went again and came out perfectly. i iced in ganache and you would never tell that it had nearly been to waste. if we do come accross a bit of charred baking paper, we might only assume it is coconut.

a delicious cake - next - i shall try with Mars Bars!!!!!

My first attempted at fondant.....

Terrible! My first attempt at using fondant icing! I was planning on doing my wedding cake but after this attempt i think i'll have to re-consider....

I made the Planet Cake carrot cake - turned out perfectly. Then i made a white chocolate gananche and layered the cake with this and covered the entire cake so it was smooth.

I used Orchard's white fondant icing. I coloured it pale pink, the Cavey Cakes colour and started to knead it. Turned out pretty good! I had to have a couple attempts at rolling it out due to it sticking and ripping, and maybe I should have measured it as, it didn't quite cover the cake.

But once it was on i did a patch up job and it didn't look too bad. If i'd had a smoother i could have made the finishing a bit smoother so my finger prints weren't obvious! I experimented with writing pens my mother sent over from the UK and did a really lame flower.

But it is still delicious to eat and Dave and I will be eating cake every night this week. I'll just put it down to good practice...