It's MY Birthday...

Yes, you read correctly... in a little over 3 days it will be MY birthday!  Yes, Friday July 29th is my birthday & you've guessed it I will be making my own cake/cupcakes & eating it/them!!!  What's wrong with that???  I know what flavours I like, I know what design I want & I know what I like - it's perfect if I do it myself isn't it?!


Now, last year I had a three tier stacked birthday cake consisting of a 10" square chocolate, 8" square coffee & 6" square caramel cake... it was divine if I do say so myself & was very girlie!

As you can see I also had a cupcake tower with 3 different flavours of cupcakes, last year I had Oreo, Vanilla 99 Flakes & Vanilla with Chocolate Chips topped with indulgent Chocolate buttercream!

Now this year, as my birthday is on a Friday & my husband does karaoke down a local pub that I always go to without fail... I am taking cake/cupcakes to the pub!  On this years menu will be a chocolate birthday cake in the form of a very girlie giant cupcake, this will not be being cut but will be coming home with me, as it will have a candy shell which makes them not the easiest to cut & my children are away for my birthday so it's only right that they get to share my cake with me!  Also though to keep all the guests happy at karaoke I am doing a selection of cupcakes again, we are having: Oreo, Peanut Butter, Espresso & Red Velvet (all particular favourites of mine) Just hope the guests are not too disappointed they won't be getting any of the giant cupcake?!  Maybe I might do a small 6" cake to take to the pub instead & just leave the giant cupcake at home to have with the children???  I am thinking that sounds like the best plan to avoid anyone being disappointed in me.

Bit of a brief blog this evening, but not a lot else to blog about at present... I've blogged on my personal blog so am a little blogged out "/

Have cake & eat it!!!

Giant Cupcakes... A new found passion!

Well what can I say???  I absolutely love Cupcakes, but now I am ecstatic about Giant Cupcakes!!!  I recently purchased a much longed for Wilton Giant Cupcake pan for some birthday projects I have coming up & I Love It!


I made a St Clements Giant Cupcake yesterday to time trial cooking times for the two sides of the pan as on reading various forums a lot of people had said the top cooks a lot quicker than the base, I also wanted to trial out making a Candy Shell with the base as they look so much prettier than Buttercream or Regal Icing & set the Cupcake off a treat as if it was in it's own Giant Case =)


WoW...  Is the reaction I got from everyone who saw the picture I uploaded to Facebook with 10 likes to the picture so far!  I am now in the process of baking the base of a Double Chocolate Giant Cupcake ready for the first birthday - the batter smelt divine, so I am already very confident that it will taste exquisite... the thing is, when it's made will I be able to part with it?!


I've worked out that the base takes approx 1 hr to bake on 180° in a convection oven & the top takes approx 35 mins to bake at the same temperature, depending on what cake batter is used - so my tip for the day is: If you purchase new pans that are shaped/sized different to standard recipes always do a time trial first or you could end up with disaster on your hands! Lol


Now as I said I wanted to trial out making a Candy Shell, if you are intelligent enough (I'm sure that you are) you will know that Americans refer to Chocolate Bars as Candy Bars... so in fact this is a chocolate shell.  Wilton produce a product called Candy Melts, little discs of chocolate to melt down & form in to your own chocolate shapes, chocolate pops or even chocolate shells, they come in so many colours too: Green, Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Pink, Lavender, White & Colorburst Brights (a white with coloured flecks) - these are all vanilla flavoured (they taste like white chocolate mice) but they also do a few different flavours: Light Cocoa, Milk Cocoa, Dark Cocoa, Chocolate Mint & Peanut Butter!  The options are endless as what you can do with these, but currently I am using them to create cases for my Giant Cupcakes & they look amazing!


I made an Orange candy shell for my St Clements Giant Cupcake & it gave it the WoW factor for sure, they are very simple to make & I am thankful to Destini who posted the instructions in creating this gorgeous case on her Blog - Oh, Sugar! although credit goes originally to Wilton for firstly creating the melts & secondly putting this idea in the 2008 Wilton Year Book :)


I will be uploading pictures at some point, but have a ton of other pictures to put on Facebook first as I have been a little slack with uploading due to time constraints & being far too busy in the kitchen baking... got the laptop next to the oven as we speak!


Back to baking as the base of the Giant Cupcake is just about ready to come out of the oven... until next time Blog addicts!


Here's the long awaited pictures:

Not bad for a very first attempt, eh?

Weddings, Charities & Birthdays...

Well it is all go in my little cake world, since July started I haven't really stopped!  The first weekend was amazingly busy, but the events that went hand in hand with the cakes were amazing in themselves.  I first had a very chocolatey Hen Do cake to create for my friend Sam's hen do, then I had the 2-tier Wedding Cake & 100 x Cupcakes to create for my friend Louise's wedding, finally I had a birthday cake to create for my son's 10th Birthday!  See the pictures for the creations for the 1st, 2nd & 3rd of July:

This is Sam's Hen Do Cake, I think she really, really liked it as While I was out at my regular night off at Karaoke I received this text: Thank u so so much for my choc cake.  Love the pic and sparkles.  Amazing.  Thank u x 

Above are the 100 x Wedding Cupcakes, boxed & ready to be transported for the event...

The 2-tier Wedding Cake with Bride n Groom figures & Del Boy's Reliant (supplied by a friend)

 100 x Cupcakes on tower with bridal bouquet

My Son Cameron's 10th Birthday Cake, Dr Who themed as requested by him!




Now, as if that was a busy week?!  Last week I had a Charity event, Belle's Boutique which was in aid of Cancer Research organised by a good friend of mine Nicholle... she had asked me a while back if I would have a stall with Cupcakes on, to which I agreed as it was for a good cause after all & in memory of her mum.  So again I had a fairly hectic cake week as I also had a 10" Birthday Cake to make for a friends brother's 30th birthday party.  I made 96 mini cupcakes & 68 regular cupcakes for the charity event, these then had to be divided up & packaged.  36 mini cupcakes went on my 2-tier cupcake plate stand, the remaining 60 were boxed in packs of 6 then tied with a cute cupcake ribbon.  The 68 regular cupcakes were boxed in 4's, again topped off with a cute cupcake ribbon - I then inserted business cards under each ribbon!  A big THANK YOU to a wonderful young lady Miss Megan Gunn (my friend Debbie's daughter) who hand-crafted me some wonderful Cupcake themed bunting for the event with my trade name So·phis·ti·cakez!  It was a very busy 3 hours & I am awaiting the final amount raised for the charity to get back to me.

Beautiful Bunting Meg =)

This week, I have a birthday cake & cupcakes to make for Thursday for a very special friend of ours & Friday I have a small birthday cake to make for my friend Aisling's boyfriend... it's all go at the moment, but it's great =)