Halloween Monster 18th!!

Earlier this week it was my friend Mimi's 18th birthday and I was asked to make the cake for her party which was on Halloween.

After much dithering and planning and deciding, we chose a monster cake and this is how we did it... 

All you need is one Victoria sponge and one load of buttercream in a colour of your choice. You then need a Wilton tip #233 pipons nozzle or a grass nozzle and some piping bags. 

Once you have made your buttercream, sandwich your sponges togother and cover the whole lot in a thin layer of icing. 

Then begin piping. You can either do short sharp bursts against the cake or if you just squeeze and go in random motions from  above to create a crazy hair like creation. You can do this anyway you want and depending on how stiff your buttercream is you might find different techniques to work better. 

For the eyes of your monster you can either just do roll out icing which we used for the mouths and the eyes of the smaller monster or you can do what we did and use cake pops... 

Make one batch of cake pops and cover in roll out icing. We found the best way to do this was to wrap the cake in roll out icing, then smooth with a damp finger. Then roll in icing sugar and the palms of your hands so it becomes a smooth ball. 

Then using black writing icing, draw on the pupils. 

Using cake pop sticks attach the eyes to your cake and add any other features using fondant icing. 

Then you are done! 

 

Happy Baking!
Gx

Halloween Cake Pops

With Halloween in a couple of days I wanted to create some easy but delicious treats that one could serve at a party or just for fun.

The basic recipe is for caramel cake pops then decorated into pumpkins, you could also design them to be eyeballs, ghosts or other such like depending on what you have.I have always associated caramel with autumn as it is such a warming flavor.

Ingredients: (for 20 cake pops)
60g caster sugar
60g butter
1 egg
60g self raising flour
1 tsp caramel flavoring (just for ease)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees fan.

Cream the butter and sugar together.

Mix in a bit of the egg, then a bit of flour, then a bit of, then a bit of flour until all the egg is gone and there is half of the flour remaining.

Add the flavoring and mix.

Fold in the remainder of the flour, get as much air as possible in to the mixture.

Grease your cake pop tin and fill the bottom half of the mold with cake mix.

Put the lid on the cake pop tin and bake for 10 minutes so that they fill the tin.

Then leave to cool.

For decoration:
4 tablespoons Icing Sugar
1 tablespoon water
Orange gel coloring- to effect
Orange sugar crystals
Mixed peel
Green food coloring

Mix the water, sugar and coloring together so that it is thick paste. Pour over the cake pops and then cover in the sugar crystals.

For the stalk I used a piece of mixed peel which I painted green with food coloring. 

Happy Baking and Happy Halloween!

Gx

Cupcakes, tarts and meringues for 50

Last weekend with an emergency gazebo purchased and two vats of curry on the hob, we threw a little party with over 50 guests in our garden. 

As it had been due to rain, my father made a quick fire dash to Argos and purchased a very fetching forest green gazebo with white detailing... ooooh stylish. But typically, once you spend £40 to protect your guests from rain it doesn't so now we are left with a glorified tent taking up valuable cupboard space... great!

Anyway the main point of this was that for the party I whipped up 70 custard and strawberry tarts and 55 cupcakes designed to look like "99" ice creams, along with a few dozen meringues. 

Strawberry Custard Tarts

These tarts are made up of rich shortcrust pastry which is baked blind which are then filled with custard and topped with sugar dusted strawberries. 

Rich Shortcrust Pastry
1 egg
125g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g plain flour
125g salted butter

Whisk the egg, extract and sugar together until the sugar is dissolved.

Stir the flour in to the mixture until it has an almost sandy texture.

Add the butter in cubes so that the dough can come together easiliy and knead gently for a few seconds.

Refrigerate for as long as possible, I left mine for about 24 hours and the pastry was considerably better for it! 

Roll out in to small discs and place in the buttered molds, cover the mold with grease proof paper and fill with baking beans or rice. Then bake for about 15 mins.

Once the pastry cases are done fill with the custard....

Custard

4 egg yolks
125g caster sugar
40g cornflour
500ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
25g butter

Whisk the egg yolks and caster sugar in a mixing bowl until the mixture is slightly paler in colour. Add the cornflour and whisk well making sure that there are no lumps remaining.

Then heat the milk and the vanilla extract until the milk is on the point of boiling. Mix half the milk into the egg bowl, whisking continuously until the milk is well combined. Then pour this mixture into the rest of the milk on the heat and whisk constantly until the custard is thick enough to cover the back of a spoon.

Remove from the heat and stir for another minute before adding the butter. Stir until the butter is melted.

Pour until a bowl and let it cool a little bit before covering the bowl with cling film until you are ready to use it.

End
Scoop a spoonful of custard in to each pastry case and add one or two sugar dusted strawberries as decoration.

Summer Cupcakes

Sponge

• 125g caster sugar

• 125g soft unsalted butter

• 2 large eggs

• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

125g self-raising flour

• 1 tablespoon milk

Icing 

140g butter

280g icing sugar

Some "Flakes" and sprinkles

Cream the butter and sugar together then slowly add the eggs, extract and half the flour in an alternating pattern. 

Fold in the remainder of the flour and if the mixture is still stiff, add the milk and mix.

Dollop a spoonful of mixture into each cupcake case and bake for about 12 minutes. Once out of the oven, leave to cool while you make the icing. 

For the icing, whisk the butter so it is smoother and slightly paler. Once it has reached this point slowly add the icing sugar until there are no lumps of butter. 

Put the icing into a piping bag fitter with a medium star shaped nozzle and pipe in a circular motion on to the cupcake. 

Cut up each "flake" into thirds and place in the icing of each cupcake. Then cover with some sprinkles.

I then used the egg whites left over from the custard to make meringues....which you can find a recipe for here...  http://girlbaking.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/perfect-meringue-recipe.html

For chocolate ones, add a tablespoonful of cocoa powder to the mixture at the end and then dust before baking. 

All these recipes make considerably less than I actually made but as a general guideline, I hope they are good! 

Enjoy and happy summer!