Giant Chocolate and Caramel Cupcake

I was telling you about the cakes I was making to be raffled for charity, this is The Giant Cupcake. It is a chocolate sponge topped with caramel frosting and then decorated with sugar flowers. You can find out more about the sugar flowers here. 

This giant cupcake was in response to popular demand, as a lot of my friends and colleagues had asked for a giant cupcake. I wanted to make a beehive cake. In the end I made both, more about the beehive cake next time.

I have made a couple of vanilla Giant Cupcakes before including this Alice in Wonderland themed one, so I decided to go for chocolate instead. I added caramel flavouring to the buttercream by stirring in some, well, almost a whole jar, of Dulde de Leche.

The wrapper part of the giant cupcake is covered in chocolate sugar paste.

My hubby said that he thought that this was the nicest cake I have ever made :o). 

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Blossomology Part two - with a little help from our talented friends

A month or so ago, I was asked to make a cake to be raffled at my workplace for charity. I felt so honoured to be asked, but, also a little unworthy, after all, its just me, so I really wanted to pull out all the stops and make a cake that I could feel really proud of and tempt all my lovely friends and colleagues into spending lots of money on raffle tickets.

I had two cakes in mind that I wanted to make. Many of my friends and colleagues were asking for a giant cupcake, as I had recently made one, for a colleague, as a parting gift. The cake that I wanted to make was a beehive cake.

In the end, I decided to make both. This was also an opportunity for me to practise some more sugar flowers and these are the sugar blossoms that I made to decorate the Giant Cupcake. More about that Giant Cupcake in the next post.

In blossomology I wanted to try and make lots of different blossoms from the same cutter, to practise some different skills. We are very lucky in the cake decorating world that there are so many great companies and talented crafters out there making kits and tools, that, even those, like me, with little artistic talent, can make sugar flowers. One of my favourite companies is Sunflower Sugarart they have UK and USA websites. I have used their blossom mould and cutter set to make these sugar blossoms.

To make these blossoms I used:

The blossom set from Sunflower Sugarart

A small rolling pin

A cutting board or mat

Petal / Gum Paste coloured with Sugarflair's Ivory / Caramel

A small about of vegetable fat (Trex / Crisco)

A small amount of cornflour / cornstarch

A foam sugarcraft pad

Lustre dust, I used Edible Arts Pearlised Toffee

This is how:

1. Rub a little of the vegetable fat onto your cutting board. This helps the petal paste stick whilst you are rolling and cutting and helps it not stick at the same time.

2. Roll out petal paste, really thin. Officially, it is supposed to be so thin, you can seen through it, but I usually go a little thicker

3. Use the cutter to cut out a blossom and give the cutter a little wiggle to neaten the edges.

4. Sprinkle a little cornflour on your foam pad, then place the cut blossom on top. Use a ball tool around the edges (half on / half off) to thin and frill them a little. This helps make the blossoms look more natural and realistic, you can omit this stage for a more stylised blossom.

5. Lift the blossom and place it on the bottom half of the mould. Use the ball tool to help settle it in position

6. Press the two halves of the mould together to impress the veining onto the blossom

7. Gently lift the moulded blossom out

8. Brush with a little petal or lustre dust to add a little magic

9. Settle the veined blossoms into the wells of a paint palette to dry out and harden out.

I wanted to make some smaller flowers too, so I used one of my Orchard Products cutters with the sunflower Sugarart veiner to make some smaller ones.

Sweet little things aren't they?

Check back soon to see these on the Giant Cupcake

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Blossoming Caramel Chocolate Brownie Cupcakes

When I was making these, I was thinking that they would be another glamorous brownie, but, I am not really sure whether a cupcake brownie can qualify as a glamorous brownie. They are quite glamorous though, aren't they?



























These are easy to make, hardly need any specialist equipment and they taste really delicious too. I made my chocolate brownie cupcakes using the Hummingbird Bakery traditional brownie recipe, but, you can use any recipe you like from scratch or from a box. When the batter is mixed, fill cupcake cases about two thirds full, just as you would for a regular cupcake and bake. You will need to bake for about 10 minutes less than your recipe states. Remember that brownies are cooked when they are still a bit undercooked in the middle!

When the brownies come out of the oven, they will have beautifully risen domed tops and your house will be filled with the delicious smell of chocolate. Don't let your heat sink as the brownes sink a little in the centre. This is what gives them their lovely fudgy texture and when they are decorated you won't notice

This is all you need to decorate them.

1. A little chocolate sugar paste (fondant)












2. A teeny tiny blossom cutter plunger












3. A star shaped nozzle. This is a Wilton 2D
4. A batch of caramel butter cream (recipe follows)

Making the teeny-tiny chocolate blossoms

If you can, make your teeny-tiny chocolate blossoms the day before you are going to use them. It doesn't really matter, giving them a chance to dry out a bit means they keep their shape better when you use them. You need 7 blossoms per cupcake brownie, this recipe gave me 12 cupcake brownies, so that was 84 blossoms! Always make a few more for luck.

1. Roll out a small amount of chocolate sugar past thinly
2. Cut out the blossoms using the cutter.
3. Lift the cutter with a bit of a sideways flick - you should have your newly cut blossom inside.
4. Shape the blossom by pressing down the plunger gently onto a foam sugar craft pad if you have one.
(I usually just press my forefinger and middle finger together and plunge the blossom gently between the two. Place the blossoms somewhere to dry.)

Caramel Buttercream

Buttercream is one of those really flexible recipes that you can't really go too far wrong with. The traditional English recipes vary from between equal amounts of butter and icing (powdered / confectioners) sugar to twice the amount of icing sugar to butter.


For this caramel buttercream I used equal amounts:

250g / 8oz / 2 sticks butter (softened)
250g / 8oz / 1 cup icing / powdered / confectioners sugar
Tin or jar of caramel (at least 200g / 6oz)

The tin of caramel I had weighed a little under 400g / 12oz. You actually only need about 200g (6 oz) to get a good caramel flavour, I didn't have any use for the rest of the can, so I just tipped it all in. For buttercream you need to use really soft butter. Leave the butter at room temperature for a couple of hours to soften up, or give it 10 seconds on low in the microwave.


Method

Put the butter into your mixer and beat really well (or use a hand mixer). You need it to be really smooth. Star nozzles have a narrow centre so any lumps of butter will get stuck. When the butter is soft and smooth add about half the icing sugar and beat until really well incorporated, then add the the rest of the icing sugar ad beat until the butter cream is looking lovely and soft and fluffy. Finally add the caramel and beat until just incorporated.

Decorating

Put your piping nozzle into a piping bag and fill the bag with the caramel buttercream. Pipe a couple of test flowers. If the flowers don't hold their shape, pop the piping bag in the fridge for 10 minutes or so to firm up a little.

Start by piping a flower in the middle.

Hold the piping bag upright and pipe slowly, then pause and lift slowly.

Pipe six flowers around the edge

Pipe a final flower on top of the one in the centre

Then carefully place a teeny-tiny blossom onto each flower



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Jubilee Crown Cake

Here is my Jubilee cake as promised. I made it using Peggy Porschen's Creamy Caramel Cake from her latest Boutique Baking book. Very delicious. I have made quite a few cakes from this book and am just pondering whether I should set myself a Julie and Juila style challenge to bake everything in the book.

This is a 6" three layer cake as popularised by Miette and Peggy.

It was quite a rush to make it and you can see from the pic above, I haven't quite managed to get everything centred. I am sure it will soon get eaten at this afternoon's Jubilee tea party though.

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