The festive season is just around the corner and of course we are incredibly excited! We love everything about this time of year; woolly jumpers, blustery weather, houses adorned with tinkling lights and the abundance of fantastic flavours on offer! With all this in mind an obvious flavour choice for our next cake with The Happy Egg Co. jumped out at us; after dinner mint! The luxurious combination of dark chocolate and smooth mint cream is a seasonal classic around the Christmas dinner table, and one to share with family and friends while watching winter TV specials! We loved the idea of a decadent cake incorporating the fresh sweet taste of peppermint and the bitter creaminess of dark chocolate. Why not finish a festive dinner with an after dinner mint cake instead? We certainly will; we’re salivating at the thought!
Another thing we adore about combining peppermint with dark cocoa is the vibrancy of natural greens contrasted perfectly next to warm browns and crisp grey whites. They do say that you eat with your eyes first so festive greens and natural browns will help tempt everyone!
You don’t even have to wait until after your evening meal to enjoy such a cake flavour. It’s winter in less than a month so why not indulge and warm up your tummy with a generous slice and a piping hot mug of peppermint hot cocoa! Excited? Watch this space for our truly tempting and taste bud tingling recipe!
Last week we used Maggie Austin’s Fondant Frills tutorial, via Craftsy.com, to add ruffles to our spooky Witches’ Cauldron cake. Though this technique is certainly not out of place on extravagant wedding cakes the grey and black ruffles we used suited our Halloween cake perfectly! This week we’ve used a rich chocolate brown, glimmering gold and burnt orange to create a glamorous autumnal cake using the same method. We thought the frills on the Witches’ Cauldron cake resembled rugged rocks assenting a cliff face and we believe these frills resemble delicate, crunchy leaves; perfect for the season!
To find out how to create the gorgeous, delicate ruffles we used to decorate our Golden Acorn cake visit Craftsy.com for 25% off of your first cake decorating course. In Maggie Austen’s Fondant Frill class you’ll discover how to make your own flower paste / gumpaste, achieve a pretty ombre look, and create sumptuous cabbage roses. Why not catch the crafting and cake decorating bug in time for the festive season? You’ll be pretty darn popular when Thanksgiving, Christmas or Hanukkah arrives and you’ve created stunning ruffled mini cakes for everyone you love! We had so much fun frilling out fondant strips for our Golden Acorn cake and the dramatic yet subtle texture is perfect for lots of different projects. We’re already thinking of snowdrift themed tiers of ice blue and white ruffles teamed with shimmering hand painted snowflakes and quilting.
To decorate our cake we created lots of sugarpaste / fondant acorns to topple atop of our warm hued ruffle cake including one large golden acorn perched at the top; perfect for a playful yet glamorous cake. Of course, if you’re thinking of trying out this cake at home and lack the time we had why not fill the top of your cake with chocolate truffles, crumbled cookies, juicy berries or cracked walnuts.
Underneath the rich myriad of ruffles is a delicious chocolate, pumpkin and vanilla Neapolitan style layer cake filled with vanilla buttercream making this cake even more irresistible. With cold and blustery months ensuing this cake is the perfect centrepiece to cosy family get-togethers and dinners. Give our recipe below a try for a decadent treat!
Chocolate cake layer (makes one 1 1/2″ thick 8″ in diameter layer)
165g self-raising flour
165g caster sugar
165g butter
3 to 4 medium eggs
70g cocoa powder
Pre-heat your over to Gas Mark 3 / 160C / 325F and prep your 8″ circle cake pans with cake release. With each layer mix the appropriate ingredients by creaming your butter and sugar first. When pale and creamy add your eggs and any flavourings (such as cocoa powder, spices, pumpkin puree and extracts). When combined add the flour. Mix well and then pour your silky batter into your cake pan. Bake from around 25 minutes to 40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean when tested.
Leaving all of your cake layers to cool on a wire rack start preparing your vanilla buttercream.
Vanilla buttercream
300g butter (stay clear of low fat spreads due to the larger water content)
350g-400g icing / confectioner’s sugar
2 bourbon vanilla pods
1 tablespoon of room temperature water
To begin your buttercream dice up your butter into small cubes before adding them into the bowl of a stand up mixer and creaming until smooth and silky. Once creamed gradually add in the icing sugar by adding a little and leaving to combine in the mixer for approximately 10 seconds. Repeat this until you have a consistency you like. Add in the seeds from the inside of a bourbon vanilla pod. To do this slice the pod in half, to scrape out the seeds inside and pop them into the buttercream. Mix for another 10 seconds.
Now you can stack up your cakes! Our layers consisted of the chocolate first, then a layer of vanilla buttercream, the layer of spiced pumpkin, some more vanilla buttercream and finally the vanilla cake layer. When decorating our striped ruffles corresponded with the cake layers hidden inside! Once your layers are stacked prepare your cake with a smooth crumb coat, chill for an hour, ice with roll out icing / fondant and make your way to Craftsy.com for Maggie Austen’s Fondant Frills class to re-create the delicate ruffles!
Craftsy.com provides online education for creative enthusiasts so they can turn their ideas into reality.Crafty’s online cake decorating courses allow you to learn at your own pace whenever you choose! Click here to receive 25% off your first cake decorating course with Craftsy.
This is a sponsored conversation written by Juniper Cakery on behalf of Craftsy. The opinions and text are all ours.
We always get excited when the Halloween festivities come creeping around the corner. We love planning (and eating up) fun ghoulish tutorials and recipes, carving out pumpkins, buying in spook-tacular baking supplies and of course over using the pun ‘spook-tacular’. With all this in mind here is a fun recipe and tutorial so you can create these ghostly Haunted Black Forest Cupcakes at home! These spooky cupcakes are our non-alcoholic spin (great for the kids!) on the traditional Black Forest Gâteau cake. They’re soft dark chocolate cupcakes swirled with delicious cherry buttercream finished with floating fondant ghosts; perfect for petrifying parties or spooky soirées!
Basic Dark Chocolate Recipe (makes approx. 12 cupcakes)
226g self raising flour
226g butter
226g caster sugar
6 eggs
2 heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder
100g of melted dark chocolate buttons, callets or broken pieces 12 cupcake cases
Pre-heat your oven to Gas Mark 3/325F/170C.
Cream your butter in a mixer then add the caster sugar. Add in the flour along with half of the eggs for around one minute. Once half of the eggs are combined add the remaining and mix for about 5 minutes. Add in your melted dark chocolate and cocoa powder. Mix.
Fill your cupcake cases until 2/3 full and place on the top shelf. Bake for around 20/25 minutes.
Add half of the butter diced into pieces. Cream the butter in a mixer then gradually add icing sugar and the remaining butter (cut into cubes) until you get a smooth, creamy texture. Add in your cherry essence. Finally add some pink gel paste food colour with black gel paste food colour until you get your desired dark cherry colour.
Assembling your cupcakes and creating your fondant ghosts…
Step one: Pipe your cupcakes with swirls of your delicious cherry buttercream.
Step two: Cut down three kebab stick to about 4 to 5 inches in height (though you should compare this alongside your cupcakes).
Step three: Mix some tylo powder in with some white sugarpaste fondant and form into spherical balls about the diameter of a 10 pence piece (or a quarter if you’re US bound).
Step four: Melt some candy melts. (Tip: We pop some in a disposable piping bag, melt them in the microwave and then snip the bag.) Apply a little to the top of the kebab sticks and carefully slide the sugarpaste balls on.
Step five: Leave these to dry and harden. You can stand your sticks upright by pushing them into a cake dummy or a thick cardboard box… or by even leaving them to stand in a high and narrow container (e.g. a coffee pot).
Step six: When the balls are a little firmer push these into the centre of your piped cupcakes.
Step seven: Roll out some white sugar paste to around 2mm thick and cut out as many circles as there are cupcakes using a plain circle cutter.
Step eight: Carefully lay your circles out over the kebab stick and fondant ball ‘lollipops’ in your cupcakes and arrange the bottoms of them to look like flowing ghostly shapes. This takes a steady hand as you can end up smearing the buttercream underneath!
Step nine: For the finishing touch carefully draw some creepy (or funny) faces on your little ghosts!
Hurrah! Finally you have a little army of ghosts ready to celebrate the Halloween season!
When it comes to cake (or usually any type of sweet) chocolate is usually a winner isn’t it? We adore the rich and warming aroma of our freshly baked cocoa filled cupcakes swirled with silky whipped chocolate buttercream! With that in mind here is a lovely little batch of fine chocolate truffle cupcakes we whipped up! Each cupcake is topped with either a hand made white chocolate heart or an indulgent chocolate truffle (some flavours include Tiramisu, White Chocolate Meringue and Caramel Eclair).
If you need to re-create our super smooth and luxurious chocolate buttercream for your own cakes we’ve posted up our recipe and ‘tutorial’ here! Beware… you may find yourself huddled up in the dark of your kitchen cupboard possessively devouring every dollop!
We love Cookies ‘N’ Cream! It’s got everything your taste buds need for a fun filled party… chocolate… cookie crumble… whipped buttercream… and the finest vanilla pod seeds! This weekend we created a lovely Cookies ‘N’ Cream cake. It went down a treat to say the least. Why not give our recipe below a try for a delicious delight fit for any party?
Basic Chocolate Cake Recipe (makes approx. 3 x 9″ layers)
453g self-raising flour
453g butter
453g caster sugar
8-10 heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder (depending on brand)
10 eggs
1 vanilla bourbon pod
Step one: Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 3/325F/170C
Step two: Cream the butter with sugar and once well mixed add in the flour, vanilla bourbon pod seeds, cocoa powder and then the eggs.
Step three: Fill your 9″ cake pans 1/4 full.
Step four: Bake for around 30-45 minutes or until done.
Cookies ‘N’ Cream is our favourite flavour! It’s a soft chocolate cake swirled with a cookie and bourbon vanilla pod infused buttercream then finished with more crunchy cookie crumbles! Sound good? If so then why not give our recipe below a try and enjoy them yourself!
Basic Chocolate Cupcake Recipe (makes approx. 12)
226g self-raising flour
226g butter
226g caster sugar
4-5 heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder (depending on brand)
4-5 eggs
60ml canola or rapeseed oil
1 vanilla bourbon pod Cupcake cases
Step one: Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 3/325F/170C
Step two: Cream the butter with sugar and once well mixed add in the flour, vanilla bourbon pod seeds, cocoa powder, oil and then the eggs.
Step three: Set out your cupcake cases in your pan and fill each case 2/3 full.
Step four: Bake from around 12-18 minutes then leave to cool on a counter. Remember to try not to eat them!
These cupcakes are an instant crowd pleaser. By adding real and good quality vanilla bourbon pods to your cookies ‘n’ cream buttercream you get a gorgeous ice cream-like flavour to your frosting. Once these cupcakes are ready to eat save yourself a few because they will suddenly disappear!
As a follow up from our popular How to Make Simple Buttercream tutorial / recipe we thought we’d offer up our tips on whipping up an amazingly decadent chocolate buttercream! This frosting is perfect for mouth watering dark truffle cakes and milk chocolate fudge cakes. You can even use our tips to make an amazingly smooth white chocolate buttercream; perfect with delicious fruity fillings and preserves inside layer cakes.
Our first tip for creating super smooth chocolate frosting is… add melted chocolate! The best thing about adding melted chocolate is that it really helps minimise air bubbles. The second is that by mixing a simple buttercream recipe / method with tempered chocolate is that it becomes a sort of hybrid buttercream-ganache; or ‘butternache’. This makes it perfect for crumb coating cakes.
Perfect chocolate buttercream recipe!
To make enough to fill and ganache/buttercream a 10″ cake of three layers and a 6″ cake of three layers you’d need around 900g of our super smooth chocolate buttercream. This equates to… (NOTE: To make enough to generously frost around 24 cupcakes you’d need around two thirds of the recipe below. Simply multiply the amount per ingredient below by 2 and then divide by 3 e.g. 750g butter x 2 = 1500 / 3 = 500g)
750g butter
400g chocolate callets / buttons (the best are by Callebaut)
400g icing / confectioner’s sugar
12 tablespoons of cocoa powder
Step one: Cut up your butter into small cubes. We use a serrated knife to do this as the serrated edge causes less suction than a straight edge one. This means you shouldn’t be fighting desperately with getting the butter off your knife; a hazardous thing to do at best!
Step three: As the butter is creaming add in the icing sugar a bit at a time.
Step four: In a glass bowl melt up your chocolate callets in either a bain marie (the bowl in a saucepan of hot water) or a microwave (check and stir every 30 seconds to avoid burning).
Step five: Remove from heat once melted and stir until the chocolate has half cooled. Pour your melted chocolate into your mixer bowl with the buttercream and mix.
Step six: Add in the tablespoons of cocoa powder four at a time. Mix. Test your frosting once every 4 tablespoons has been incorporated.
Step four: Mix your frosting at full speed at 30 second intervals; checking each time.
Remember to test, taste and analyse your buttercream as you make it and change the recipe slightly if need be. You need to develop a sort of sixth sense or intuition when it comes to whipping up things like buttercreams and fillings. With our recipe and the advice we offered on our initial How to Make Simple Buttercream post you should be on your way to making perfect and delicious frosting! Buttercream can be a trial and error thing, but with experience you’ll end up with wonderful frosting every time!
Sometimes a coffee break is needed, especially if your working day is around 14 hours long like ours (at times longer, no joke). With that in mind we whipped up a lovely and delicious little cupcake. A Caramel Mochaccino cupcake! We were lucky enough to taste test these after a hard day of photoshoots, stock taking and product development.
This cupcake is a soft chocolate cake swirled with two toned (and dual flavoured) caramel and coffee buttercream. We then finished the towering swirl of frosting with an adorable little mochaccino coffee cup!
In this week’s tutorial we have thrown in a recipe to show you how to create a batch of delicious red velvet brownies! These are perfect for any occasion and with warmer days just around the corner these are ideal for picnics in the park, barbecues or even just a quick treat on a Saturday morning! With the 4th of July just a few months away try marbling some blue brownie batter into the mix and add white chocolate chunks instead of milk?
Tutorial Tuesday: Red Velvet Brownies Recipe
Ingredients…
200g chopped milk chocolate
Extra chopped chocolate for gooey chunks (optional)
3 table spoons of Red Velvet Baking Emulsion by LorAnn Oil
175g self raising flour
100g butter
100g caster sugar
3 eggs
Step one: Melt the chocolate and butter together by setting a bowl in a saucepan of hot water. Keep stirring until both the butter and the chocolate are mixed and then remove the pan from the heat.
Step two: In a separate bowl mix the eggs and the sugar together until they form a creamy yellow colour.
Step three: Combine the chocolate and butter mix with the eggs and sugar and stir until fully mixed.
Step four: Add the flour and the Red Velvet Baking Emulsion to the mix and stir until you get your preferred tone of red. Mix until smooth until you get a thick and sticky texture (if you would like any chocolate chips or chunks in your brownies now is the perfect time to add them)
Step five: Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake for around 30 minutes (depending on oven) on gas mark 4 (conversions are available on Google)
If you have followed this recipe you now have your own batch of delicious red velvet brownies! Why not experiment and add white chocolate, flavoured chips or even cookie dough! We love the idea of baking up some red velvet cupcakes, swirling them with delicious vanilla buttercream and nestling a tiny square of red velvet brownie into the frosting!
It’s the time of year when everyone indulges in a Cadbury Creme Egg or twelve and what better way to enjoy a few than in a freshly baked cupcake! We had a few requests to share our recipe so we thought we’d divulge. This is a pretty simple and straight forward recipe that can be customised and changed to suit any personal tastes or styles. Why not use Cadbury Caramel Eggs (or Screme Eggs at Halloween), change the colours, add chocolate chips or bright sprinkles or add delicious chopped nuts! If you can’t find Cadbury Creme Eggs we recommend using pieces of Cadbury Caramel bars, Cadbury Double Decker or Cadbury Boost bars!
Recipe Time: Cadbury Creme Egg Cupcakes
Ingredients (this makes approximately 12 cupcakes)…
226g self-raising flour
226g granulated sugar
226g butter or Stork
100-200g cocoa powder
3-4 large eggs
12 Normal sized Cadbury Creme Eggs (though it may be fun to try 3 mini eggs inside!)
5 tablespoons hot water
1 teaspoon baking powder
To make the cake cream your butter in a mixer then add the caster sugar. Add in the flour and baking powder along with half of the eggs, make a paste with the cocoa and hot water and add, mix for around one minute. Once half of the eggs are combined add the remaining and mix for approximately 5 minutes.
Once the batter is fully mixed separate evenly into twelve cupcake cases. Fill the cases to around 2/3 full and then push in a Cadbury Creme Egg (or equally as tasty Cadbury treat) into each batter filled case.
Place on the top shelf of a pre-heated oven at Gas Mark 3/325F/170C. Bake for around 10-17 minutes. Baking time may differ slightly depending on your oven as the majority of ovens can be around 10-15 degrees over or under (unless you have a state of the art catering oven).
Leave to cool and in the meantime prepare your buttercream.
For the buttercream add half of the butter diced into pieces. Cream the butter in a mixer. Then gradually add icing sugar and the remaining butter (cut into cubes). Once the buttercream is of a smooth consistency add some Vanilla extract and colour paste and mix well.
Once your cupcakes have cooled bag up your buttercream and pipe generous swirls on top of them!
Now you can sit back and eat as many as you like with the largest cup of tea in the world! Enjoy!
