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New Year Cupcakes

 Happy New Year!

It is 2012 and already I have crafty plans afoot. In this post i'll describe how I made the cakes above and projects i'm considering in the next few months. 

First, and most importantly, the cakes!

To begin I made vanilla cupcakes to a standard mix. The BBC have a good recipe to follow. I mixed up some buttercream icing and slightly tinted it yellow with a couple of drops of food colouring. This meant it matched the gold cases and golden sprinkles on top. 

The champagne bottles are shaped green fondant icing with white icing labels. I wrote on 2012 using an edible black ink pen and added the gold round the neck with slightly damp gold sugar paper sprinkles. The pen and gold paper can be sought from good cake and craft suppliers. The "bubbles" are silver balls, which you can find in most supermarkets.

The 2012s are simply piped chocolate candies (again from good cake decoration suppliers- better than just chocolate as it is easy to melt in the microwave, easy to mold, and quick to set). I say simply... it took a few goes to get them to look readable and not fall apart on me!

The clocks are white fondant icing rolled and cut to shape, with chocolate piped on at the hour marks. The clock hands are drawn on with a black edible ink pen. I was going to use large chocolate buttons as clock faces but they didn't look right, so I had to consume the whole pack myself. Tough times. 

It is nice at new year to plan a few projects for the future. Having increased my knitting confidence with my mobile phone cover I have decided to be brave and attempt an item of clothing, maybe a jumper, or maybe just a nice scarf! I'm also creating lots of swatches of knitting as I try out different knitting stitch patterns and perhaps after a few more I can start creating a patchwork quilt. I say all this, but, after one trip down a craft shop I will probably see something shiny and new and get distracted and start another project... but that's how my crafting works, a bit of this, a bit of that, it's what does you good.

Knitted Phone Cover

This was a labour of love. Was my first attempt at using a cable in a pattern (the twisted sections). It took a few attempts to get it right but I kept trying and eventually managed it. Nice and cosy for my phone!



 The pattern is available online for free and was found via the Ravelry website. I adapted the pattern slightly to make it wider for my phone and added a flap to keep the phone secure. I chose wool that had a round profile and was fairly thick so that the cable stood out clearly. I also added in some extra padding material. Should keep my phone scratch free, fingers crossed!

Ready Teddy Go!

 


This was a really fun project, if not a bit difficult at times. I find knitting very calming, until you have to do shaping. At the half way mark I was a little unsure but he seems to have turned out fine! Hope my niece is impressed with her christmas present!

 

The knitting patterns is available for free here: http://www.allaboutyou.com/craft/pattern-finder/knitting-patterns/designer-knitting-patterns/teddy-bear-knitting-pattern-47497

And was found via Ravelry, I very useful website full of great knitting patterns.

Chocolate satsuma cakes

December brings lots of lovely juicy citrus fruits into the shops. For a winters evening in watching tv with friends, these went down a treat!

I mixed 100g butter with 200g caster sugar and then added the grated rind of 4 satsumas. I then added 2 eggs, mixing a bit inbetween. I combined 200g plain flour, half teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and half teaspoon of baking powder (gives the cakes some air!) in one bowl, and the juice of four satsumas in a jug. I poured in a third of the flour, mixed, then a third of the juice, mixed... etc till all the mixture was used. I melted 100g orange chocolate in the microwave and stired this into the final mixture. It is much nicer to get proper 70% cocoa chocolate. Once spooned into the cases they were baked for about 20mins at 180 degrees.

For the icing I melted another 100g orange chocolate in a bowl in the microwave (I tend to zap it for 10sec, stir, then zap for another 10secs, because it can burn really easily. I poured the chocolate into a bowl with 200g butter and 250g icing sugar. I mixed this with an electric whisk until smooth. It is important to thoroughly test the mixture at this stage before icing, take a break with a cup of tea if needed. 

I went all out this time and actually piped the icing on to make it look neat. Some choc orange segments and satsuma segments finished the cakes off. Tasty!

Rainbow cakes

It was a dark day in late Novemeber and so I figured a bit of rainbow in our lives would make it better. 

Rainbow cakes are fun, sugary and full of e-numbers. 

Start with the usual cake mix, divide into as many colours as you want and then tint the mixtures with food colouring. 

 



Spoon the colours one at a time into the cake cases and slowly build up till all cakes have all colours. Bake. Eat, with lots of butter icing and hundreds and thousands sprinkled on.

Totoro Cake

Totoro, for those of you who don't know, is a character from a a japanese film. Very cute, very cakeable.

As it is summer I wanted to make a light fresh fruity cake. Matt (of Games Day blog!) mixed up the sponge layers, three tiers gave plenty of scope for filling. The filling was raspberry jam followed by a layer of mascapone and fromage frais with some caster sugar and vanilla essense. This was topped with fresh raspberries. Used low fat fromage frais to give the filling a lighter texture, and calorie count.

The cake was covered in white chocolate butter icing with some coloured grey. The Totoro features were royal icing eyes, nose and mouth and mikado whiskers coloured black. Two spoons made the ears.