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?

 That's all for today

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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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Dahlia Cookies

I've never been blessed with the sort of artistic skills that lend themselves, to painting or moulding things by hand, which is why I love that so many moulds are available now for sugar craft and they save so much time. I recently acquired some lovely moulds from sunflower sugar art, (Sunflower Sugar Art USA) including this dahlia one.

These are the cookies I made with the mould

These cookies look so lovely just as they are.

We wouldn't want to over-egg the pudding or gild the Lily now would we?

Well, maybe ...

I took the ivory one first and brushed on a little EdAble Art dust in pearlised toffee.

The first Eau du Nil coloured one, I brushed with Squires Kitchen Bridal Satin in Delphinium

The other Eau du Nil one, I brushed first with a Squires Kitchen Gentian petal dust and then brushed the Bridal Satin in Delphinium over the top

Here they all are together. Look a bit different from before?

I can't make my mind up which colour I like the best.

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This is how to use the moulds to make the cookies. All you need is

Sunflower Sugar Art Dahlia mould (or a similar one)

Sugar paste / Fondant coloured however you fancy
A little vegetable fat (Trex)

Round cookie cutter about the same size as the mould

Batch of sugar cookies cut with the round cutter

Petal dust / luster dust if you want to use it and a paint brush.

I coloured some shop bought sugar paste in ivory and in teal, then set about moulding my flowers. This is quite a large mould so I used the freezing method, I am not sure whether the manufacturers recommend that we should put their mould in the freezer, but, it works for me.

Rub a little vegetable fat between your palms to help stop the sugar paste sticking to the mould.
Roll the sugar paste into a ball a little smaller than a golf ball and then flatten it and push it into the mould. Push down quite hard with the heel or palm of your hand to get the sugar paste into all the nooks and crannies.

You will either have too much or not quite enough sugar paste in your mould

Too much - You need to level off the top by sliding either your finger, a palette knife, a cocktail stick or anything else you have handy that you think might work across the top of the mould. (Be careful not to but the mould with anything sharp, or yourself)

Not enough - add a small ball into the middle and press it down.

When you have the right amount of paste use your finger to polish around and tidy up all the edges so that  the edges are smooth and tidy.

Pop the mould in the freezer for around 20 minutes or if you are like me, till you remember it is there. Mine sometimes get left overnight ...

Push the flower out by gently flexing the mould at the edges. This should pop out quite easily, if the paste still seems stretchy pop it back in the freezer for a bit longer.

This is the moulded flower. Beautiful.

It is best to leave these out to dry overnight, before you continue as they can be a bit sticky as they warm up from the freezer. I usually dry them on a baking / cookie sheet with baking paper on top so that it doesn't stick.

All you need to do then, is stick these on to a cookie using edible glue or piping gel. I stuck mine onto chocolate sugar cookies about the same size as the mould. The mould is about the same size as a cupcake and they look lovely there too.