Tag: baking (clear tag)
So, back to the M&Ms. I volunteered to make Clare's birthday cake as I had a bit of pinspiration bookmarked which I was itching to try. It was a number cake covered in M&Ms, created by Martha Stewart.
I cheated on the cake bit by going with a gluten-free chocolate cake and vanilla cake box mix. I had thought about trying out a couple of gluten-free cake recipes which I had pinned. I decided against this as I wasn't sure how much these cakes would rise. Gluten-free cakes are often quite dense and flat. I thought it would look funny if the two numbers were different heights.
October was breast cancer awareness month and Mars were selling pink and white M&Ms to raise money. I also stumbled across State of Origin M&Ms which are light blue and dark blue in colour. I was so happy to find some unusually coloured M&Ms I ended up buying 2kg of them, which in hindsight was overkill. But as I was going to be covering a cake with a pattern I didn't want to run out of a colour halfway through. I only ended up using about a third of the M&Ms... oops!
On Saturday evening I iced the cakes with butter cream (half a kilo of butter and a kilo of icing sugar!) and then covered them with M&Ms. Andrew helped with the decoration as it was getting late. We finished the Zero on Saturday evening and then decorated the Three the next morning during Evie's nap.
I found out the hard way that M&Ms do not refrigerate well. When I took the Zero out of the fridge in the morning the dark blue M&Ms had all discoloured. I replaced most of these dodgy looking M&Ms. I know they tasted fine because I ate a few of them as I took them off the cake (Mmm M&Ms and butter cream icing for breakfast). So if you want a pretty cake you shouldn't put it in the fridge.
Happy Birthday Clare! Hope you enjoyed your cake as much as I enjoyed making it.
More photos (slideshow) on Flickr.
16th Nov 2011, 21:36
tags: baking
birthdays
clare
nablopomo
nablopomo11
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This is what our Saturday night involved this weekend. Sorting 2kg of M&Ms into separate colours.
Not for eating though. More on what we used them for later.
13th Nov 2011, 20:27
tags: baking
birthdays
nablopomo
nablopomo11
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I can't seem to host a gathering without baking cupcakes. So after my Halloween efforts I started up my Kitchenaid again and whipped up some Melbourne Cup themed cupcakes.
My original idea was to recreate the race using cupcakes and horsie cupcake toppers. I had grand plans of 24 cupcakes with cupcake toppers showing the colours of each horse and jockey in the race. I even wanted to make a finishing post and fence out of fondant. Of course, ultimately I didn't have time for these pipe dreams.
I ended up making 15 chocolate cupcakes. I iced these with green butter cream using my special "grass" tip. I made cupcakes toppers by meshing horse clipart and jockeys from the form guide. I only had time to do two different jockeys. I went with Red Cadeaux and Niwot cause their silks were pretty.
So not the fantabulous idea that I originally had but in the end not totally unfortunate looking. And they were taaaaaaaasty. That's all that matters really.
5th Nov 2011, 16:52
tags: cupcakes
baking
melbourne_cup
nablopomo
nablopomo11
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Now that I'm on uni break I've got more time for fun stuff. Yay! I couldn't pass up a chance to make Halloween cupcakes. Especially as Sarah and Duncan gave me a great book, Zombie Cupcakes, to use as inspiration. After seeing Not Quite Nigella's Haunted House cupcakes, I knew that I wanted to try them out too.
I think they turned out pretty well. The cake bit is gluten-free vanilla cupcakes. The tops are yellow coloured fondant decorated with black food colouring. The decorations were a Wilson team effort. Andrew is a much better artist than me so he drew the haunted houses using a food colouring pen. I then completed the pictures (by colouring in between the lines. I'm so clever!).
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One mishap. The black food colouring didn't dry properly on the cupcake toppers so everyone who ate them ended up with black lips (oops!). Not sure what I need to do to make the colouring set.
3rd Nov 2011, 20:41
tags: cupcakes
baking
halloween
nablopomo
nablopomo11
2 comments
To mark Fushmush's 10th birthday I made fushie cupcakes. It was another flash of pinspiration. They are vanilla cupcakes covered in blue butter cream icing. The scales of the fish are Smarties and M&M's, the eyes are M&M's minis and the beak is half a Jelly Bean. Do they look like fishies? I think they need a tail as well.
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