Naked Glamorous Chocolate Brownies

You know how I like to glam up my chocolate brownies, so they don't feel left out among all the uber gorgeous cupcakes, well, I was inspired by the trend for naked cakes, that seem to be so popular lately, to make a naked glamorous chocolate brownie. And here they are.

 I think these are the most glamorous of the glamorous brownies yet. I used the hand moulded fondant roses, that I have only just learnt to make and wrote about in this post.

I use these little star shaped flowers a lot as filler flowers or little extra decorations. There is a little mini tutorial on how to make them here. The leaves are just made with a standard rose leaf plunger cutter.

What do you think? Glamorous enough for you? Gooey and chocolatey enough for you?

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Valentine Bling Chocolate Brownies

I recently showed you these sophisticated black lace chocolate brownies that I made, today we have some more glamorous brownies, with a little more bling. Maybe quite a lot more bling? I am loving the look of these! I think they would look great as a cupcake too. 

These brownies are baked in a lovely little heart shaped pan using my favourite traditional brownie recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. You can also find the recipe here. The decoration uses a quilted effect on the palest peachy pink fondant which is then bling-ed up with gold pearls and gold painted hearts.

Baking the Brownies

These brownies start off with this lovely little tin from Wilton, when using it, I find it best to fill it a little over half full, so that the brownies rise above the tin and then you can trim them neatly down to size.

One tray of lovely fudge baked chocolate-y-ness, you can see how they have risen up and over topped their tins.

Its best to let these cool, till properly cold in their tins, as if you try and pop them out before, they are likely to break into little pieces. When completely cool and popped out, you can trim off the excess to these dinky little hearts. The lovely thing about this tin, is the domed shape it gives to the top of the brownie.

The Decoration

I used this lovely heart mould from sunflower sugar art to make the moulds and picked my three favourites to use on these brownies. They look lovely as they are, but even lovelier when painted to bring out the details.

I made the gold paint for these my mixing gold lustre dust with a little clear alcohol. What a difference a little lustre makes?

I achieve the quilted effect using this simple but effective quilting embosser from patchwork cutters.

This gives such a beautiful quilted effect, so sumptuous.

Then simply lift the fondant over one of those dinky little brownies, trim off the excess and add some gold pearls and one of the little decorated hearts.

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Jewelled Flower Cupcakes

I see lots of beautiful sets of cupcakes, usually made by English ladies, made of complimentary flowers and colours, each slightly different to the other, usually referred to as "vintage", I love these and want to make a set one day. BUT ... Firstly, I struggle to find time to make 20 or 30 of each of the different flowers and pearls and leaves and other beautiful things that are required and secondly, there is always one design that I like more than the others and that is the only one that I want to make, which I suppose is why mostly, my sets of cupcakes or cookies are all the same.

So, here I am, with only a couple of evenings to spare, needing to make some cupcakes to be sold for charity at a craft fair and wanting to make something more than a buttercream swirl with some sprinkles. Everybody loves sprinkles and I love sprinkles, I just wanted to make something a little more me. One of my aims is to learn to make more sugar flowers and I haven't done as many as I would have liked, so seized this opportunity to make some for the cupcakes.

I suppose this flower is a fantasy flower. It is reminiscent, to me, of a peony, although it is made with a hollyhock cutter. The one I used is from a Sunflower Sugarart set. I love the crinkly outline of the petals.

The Cupcakes were made with this recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Recipe book and my own chocolate butter cream recipe. The chocolate butter cream swirls are piped with a Wilton 1M nozzle.

Making the flowers

You will need

1. Flower cutter and silicone veiner. I used one from Sunflower Sugarart

2. Sugar florist paste in whatever colour you want to use for the petals.

3. Sugar florist paste in whatever colour you want to use for the centres.

4. A ball tool

5. A Dresden tool

6. Round flower formers. I used ones from Wilton, or you can scrunch tin foil into shape

7. A mould for the centre of the flower. The one I used is the Karen Davies Vintage Brooch Mould

8. Lustre dusts and edible glitter. See below for the details of the ones I used.

9. A little vegetable fat (trex/crisco), cornflour / cornstarch and a little edible glue.

Start by rolling out the sugar florist paste as thin as you can and cut out a flower shape. Use the ball tool to stretch the petals and thin the edges a little.

Press the cut out and thinned flower between the two parts of the silicone mould and press together to add the veining. You will notice that the two parts of the mould have  little notch so that you can line them up properly.

I wanted my veining to be a little more prominent, so I used a Dresden tool to make some of the markings deeper. This flower doesn't really look that special yet, it is amazing how it is transformed with a little lustre, a centre and a shape.

I popped the veined flowers into some curved flower formers to take shape whilst I made some centres for the flowers. I  knew that I wanted a stylised centre for my flower, first of all I tried this moulded button, below. It is cute, but, not quite what I was looking for.

Next, I tried the little jewelled centre, below. This was just the look I wanted, so I set about transforming it with a little petal dust, lustre dust and edible glitter.

The mould that I used for the centres, is this Vintage Brooch Mould by Karen Davies.

Moulds are so easy to use, take a small ball of sugar florist paste and work it till soft, roll it into a little ball and press it into the mould that you want to use. Smooth around the edges and remove any excess, then pop out the moulded paste

To paint the centres, I used:-

1. Sugarflair pearl ivory lustre dust all over
2. Edible Art edible glitter in baby blue in the centre
3. Sugarflair  autumn leaf petal dust to add colour around the outside
4. Squires Kitchen gold sparkles on top of the autumn leaf colour

After sticking the jewelled centre in the centre of the flower with a little water, I brushed a little more of the gold sparkles lustre dust on the centre of the petals

Then, back in the flower former to finish drying

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Black Lace Valentine Brownies

It seems a long time since I glammed up a brownie, so Valentine's Day would seem to be the ideal opportunity for some sophisticated glamorisation. These are dense fudge-y chocolate brownies covered with a pale sugar paste and then black lace make a lovely valentine surprise.  I always think of this as being a Paris colour scheme, the softest, pale peachy pink teamed with a matt sophisticated black lace. These brownies are based on an idea I used for these button bow cookies where I used the sugar veil lace mat as an embossing mat.

What you Need

To make these you need:

A batch of brownies baked with your favourite recipe. I used this recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Book

A heart shaped cutter

Peachy pink sugar paste. I coloured mine with Wilton's creamy peach, you can get a similar colour with sugarflair's "paprika"

Black sugar lace. Mine is made using the ready coloured black cake lace mix and the original sugar veil mat. Check out this post for more about making cake lace.

Bow Mould. The one I used is Bow Set 4 by First Impressions.

A litte CMC / Tylose powder for making the bows (optional)

Baking and Cutting the Brownies

I baked half of my brownie mix in a square pan and the other half of the mix I used to make some bling valentine brownies, which are also decorated in this pale peachy pink colour, but with a little gold razzle dazzle instead of sophisticated black. The heart shapes were cut out of the large square brownie using a heart shaped cutter, it is easier to do this if you turn the square brownie upside down and cut from the bottom to the top. As the middle of the baked brownie does not usually rise as mush as the sides, you get the best shaped brownie if you cut them with the point towards the middle and the rounded end in the corner.

This brownie recipe is so chocolaty, I can almost smell the chocolate through the screen. This recipe makes a lovely dense fudge brownie and this denseness makes them ideal for decorating. I decorated mine the day I baked them, they will cut better if they are not quite so fresh and even better if you have time to put them in the fridge over night.

Covering the Brownies

Once the brownies are cut out, its time to cover with the peachy pink sugar paste. When working with a pale coloured sugar paste and dark chocolate brownies, it is best to roll out just as much as you think you will need each time as those little chocolate crumbs get everywhere and they just love to stick to your pale peachy pink sugar paste whenever they get the chance.

I used an icing smoother to help adhere the sugar paste to the brownie, just as you would if covering a conventional cake, then used a pizza wheel to cut around the base and trim off the excess sugar paste.

Now for the lace. Brush a little water over the sugar paste. I use a water brush for this, you should be able to find one in your local craft store, look for one with the water colour paints and equipment. Make sure it is only a little water. Too much and some of the black sugar lace might dissolve and bleed into the sugar paste. So, not a good look. You can always add a little more if the lace is not sticking.

Position the lace carefully, so that the pattern on the lace enhances the shape of the brownie. Use your hands or an icing smoother to adhere the lace on to the sugar paste and then trim with a sharp knife or pizza wheel.

I love the way that the texture on the sugar veil mat makes lace that looks like it is made from looped thread.

If you look closely, you can probably make out a couple of areas where I have not quite scraped enough lace off whilst I was making it. Whilst you can see this in the picture below, it isn't really noticeable on the actual brownies which are approximately 7.5 cm or 3 inches high.

Making the Bows

When designing these brownies, I was going to use the same bow that I used on the button bow cookies, hover, having got to this stage, I didn't want to cover up so much of that delectable lace, so opted instead for a smaller bow using this first impressions mould.

Separate a little of your peachy pink sugar paste and mix with a little of the tylose or CMC powder to help with the moulding process. If you haven't got any, use the ordinary sugar paste and put the mould in the freezer for about 15 minutes before un-moulding.

This mould works best if you start with a small sausage of sugar paste and sort of wind it into the mould. Take off any excess and smooth carefully all around the edges to make sure you get a good finish.

Pop out the finished bows. How sweet are these?

Brush a little water onto the underside of the bow and gently push the bow onto the top of the brownie.

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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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