Homemade Cakes thread

bindiboo

My father's days efforts. The cup cakes were for father in law and the choc cake for my hubby. Hoping to see my dad at the weekend so will be making him a special edition.

abis21

yumyums wrote: »

Just wanted to say good luck! Your cakes all sound amazing.
I made my own wedding cake last year and it did get me a bit stressed in the end but it turned out well. It's hard work and especially at a time when most other brides are having pampering treats & getting their nails done! At least you've got helpers for the washing up. That's the worst bit of baking by far - the mess.

Can't help with a recipe for the banana cupcakes but this banana cake recipe is lovely:
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/6067/banana-cake-with-pecan-crumble-crunch
I'm sure it could be easily adapted to cupcakes (obv. without the pecan crunch topping). For buttercream I've seen people add ready made caramel to a regular buttercream recipe (or make your own).

Please let us know how you get on and definitely post photos.

Best of luck with the wedding.

Well the fruit cake went super, so I am really pleased with that. Also made the sugar flowers over the weekend, so now I only have to decorate it. Want to do candy striping on the edge of the cake. Haven't ever used that technique before, but have just watched a programme on it - how hard can it be?! :rotfl:

Am very much hoping that the cupcakes won't stress me. I do really love baking, and I decided to keep the decorations really simple and just do a buttercream swirl on top of each one with no extra fancy bits. Figured if I did the fruit cake a little fancier, then the cupcakes will be fine to be plainer. Have bought a 2D tip and going to try and recreate the flower swirl that someone posted a picture of the other day.

Am sooooo glad I have helpers for the washing up. It is defo the worst bit of cake making and I don't want the kitchen looking like a bombsite!

Thanks for the banana cake recipe. Am giving them a go tonight, so will let you know how they taste!

Sally22_2

This is the wedding cake I made for my friend, I made all the cakes/cupcakes except the top fruit cake as I didnt have time!

minimacka

This is the cake that i made for my sons 18th birthday yesterday.

x

lisa26_2

AnnieH wrote: »

Walesby is where my daughter went camping with school. I'm not far away, in Nottingham. Where abouts are you?

Ah, not that close then. I'm in N.E Lincs. Walesby is lovely (assuming its not a different one!), we go walking in that area quite a bit.

I ordered 5 cake/biscuit books from the book people yesterday and I can't wait to get them now!!

Minxz

Hi all, I've just been looking at some of your cakes, amazing! You are all so talented! I used to make loads of novelty cakes years ago when my older kids were small, and getting back into it now as I have a huge age gap and a 4 year old son now. I'm making him a ben 10 cake for his 5th birthday on Friday, and my dughter turned 18 2 weeks ago, so I made here pink glitter cupcakes, my first try at them, and i was really pleased with the result! ( Some pics below)
I have 2 questions please... when I make the buttercream for the cupcakes, even though I buy unslated butter, and whisk for ages.. I can't get it pale enough to stop blue food colouring looking like pale green when I want to make pastel coloured icing, like the ones in books! Any tips?
Plus, I need to make a graduation cake- my son got a 1st with honours last week, and I am sooo proud, I want to take a cake along to the big family meal out to celebrate his graduation next week. I'm thinking mortar boards, but haven't a clue how to make one, does anyone have any ideas please?

Thank you so much, I'm off to peruse more of your creations now.. I LOVE the camping cake! ( we are very keen campers, might have to copy that one day!!)

lisa26_2

Minxz wrote: »

Hi all, I've just been looking at some of your cakes, amazing! You are all so talented! I used to make loads of novelty cakes years ago when my older kids were small, and getting back into it now as I have a huge age gap and a 4 year old son now. I'm making him a ben 10 cake for his 5th birthday on Friday, and my dughter turned 18 2 weeks ago, so I made here pink glitter cupcakes, my first try at them, and i was really pleased with the result! ( Some pics below)
I have 2 questions please... when I make the buttercream for the cupcakes, even though I buy unslated butter, and whisk for ages.. I can't get it pale enough to stop blue food colouring looking like pale green when I want to make pastel coloured icing, like the ones in books! Any tips?
Plus, I need to make a graduation cake- my son got a 1st with honours last week, and I am sooo proud, I want to take a cake along to the big family meal out to celebrate his graduation next week. I'm thinking mortar boards, but haven't a clue how to make one, does anyone have any ideas please?

Thank you so much, I'm off to peruse more of your creations now.. I LOVE the camping cake! ( we are very keen campers, might have to copy that one day!!)

They look lovely! Can I ask what frosting recipe you used as the white ones look lovely and white! Thanks x

Minxz

Thank you I loved making them, and my daughter loved them
They are actually pale mint green... ( sorry also about the photo size, I thought I'd shrunk them but they're huge!)
I used unsalted butter, and loads of icing sugar and a dash of milk, and added a touch of blue colour paste, as the yellowness of the buttercream turned it minty looking! I have seen cupcakes in books etc where they have beautifuil pale pink icing, yet I can't seem to get my buttercreams that pale due to the yellow effect of the butter.

Ahh, m ight try this.. I just copied this from a cake website....
http://www.cupcakes-to-your-door.co.uk/blog/index.php/2011/03/cupcake-icing-whiter-buttercream/

So the challenge is to get beautiful interesting cakes using buttercream. The limitation however, is that if you are going to use genuinely home made buttercream (not those nasty ready made frostings!!), it can be difficult to get really good pure colours. This is because butter naturally has a yellow colour and therefore whichever colouring you add will then have a tinge of yellow which can, for example with lilac icing make it look a bit mucky!
Buttercream icing is made by beating icing sugar with half the amount of softened butter, adding say vanilla extract for further flavour.
There are a number of things you can do to make a whiter buttercream. (When colouring icing always use concentrated colour gels and use a cocktail stick to add just a little gel at a time to the buttercream.)

• Butter – always use a very pale butter like Lurpack
• Mixing – beat your buttercream icing for 5 minutes, this will lighten the colour and has the added benefit of making the icing much smoother to pipe.
• Whitening – add some Sugarflair Superwhite to the icing which will help purify the colour
• Vanilla – if like me you like to add a reasonable amount of vanilla extract, make sure you use a clear vanilla not the brown liquid vanillas.

An additional tip which not only helps whiten the icing but also helps the buttercream to hold its shape better when piped is to gently melt white marshmallows (5 standard marshmallows per 500g of icing sugar) in a little water and add this to your buttercream and beat in well.

abis21

I made the banana cupcakes with caramel buttercream tonight...

Banana cake recipe was delicious, and tatses lovely, however they seem to have stuck very well to the cupcake wrappers and I'm not sure why. Any ideas on this anyone? Its stuck mainly on the bottom of the case...

Caramel buttercream was lovely and worked well with the banana cake. I just made standard buttercream but then added caramel icecream topping as I had read that worked nicely on a few recipes. I wasn't going to be lazy and was gonna attempt to do it properly, but then time was running out! It tasted yummy tho, so I am glad I gave in to laziness :rotfl:

I tried the 2D nozzle out and was seriously impressed with that. Will definately cut down on time and also make a better effect for all the cupcakes I will be doing for my wedding.

My sugar flowers that I made on saturday night have all dried now, but the pink flowers I made have seriously faded. I used an AmeriColor gel colouring. The electric yellow & turquoise colours have held fine and look amazing. The electric purple colour has faded slightly, but it still looks fine and I am not worried about that one. But the pink colour seems to have bleached out almost. It looks very wishy washy and pale - not at all like when i had first made them. And ideas? Didn't really want to have to remake anything, so I might try and add some dustings on to them. Just can't understand why some colours have worked fine and others have faded :think:

AnnieH

Hi ladies, if you're interested, I've set up a Flickr account to put photos of my cakes on.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hairymcfairy/