Home-made cakes thread 2

trixi_2

Hello wonderful cakebakers - I have read all the first thread and all of the second and love the cakes you all produce. So much so, I'm taking up the baking hobby I gave up years ago. Budget doesn't stretch to a kitchen aid but I've just bought a breville SHM2 mixer after reading some reviews on this site - used it this evening good but very noisy - has anyone else experienced the same with theirs?

becs

Thanks Nat, I ordered that and the baby blue and navy, someone at work said the baby blue makes a nice royal blue. Now just to work out ingredients quantities and how the hell I'm going to cope with icing 216 cupcakes! I've bought the big grippy disposable piping bags from Lakeland as figured could just fill a load of them and bin when finished each one!

VfM4meplse

Twinkles08 wrote: »

But me being me I stumbled on the fact that this morning argos have got the prospero on offer at 20% off knocking it from 189 to 152ish.

It looks amazing, but there are som many bits and pieces to it I don't have the storage space for . Apart from anything else, I have a smoothie maker (unused) and a 600w mini-processer so don't need the added bits.

I think it's a good buy, but I think the price will come down further by the end of the year if you can wait. I'm on the prowl for something a bit more powerfuk....

nat82

I used the Baby Blue on my Club Penguin cake and managed to get a nice royal blue colour. The blue I used for my orange and blue cupcakes a couple of pages back was Ice Blue I think, which is brighter thatn the baby blue. You'll be fine once you get into the swing of icing them! I use those bags from lakeland too. Good luck and don't forget to post a picture!!!

tealeaves

nat82 wrote: »

Made a 3 tier wedding cake today. Will post pics later. It was fuschia and black. Chocolate, lemon and carrot flavours.

Because of the vibrant colours of the sugarpaste, I really struggled to get rid of all traces of icing sugar. How does everyone else deal with this? I usually go over it with some clear spirit but wondered if there was a better way of dealing with larger surface areas? Thanks.

Hi, I don't use icing sugar when rolling out sugarpaste so not sure how to sort trace marks but what I do for large roll outs is I lightly grease the surface with a bit of trex which seems to do the trick. for small amounts if it gets a bit sticky, I just put a bit of trex on my hands when kneading and there haven't been any problems so far. Hth

nat82

Thank you Tealeaves. Trex did cross my mind after I'd posted. I'll try that out x

awesome2_2

Hi Trixi

I have this mixer and not really thought about it being noisy till now but I have gone from a electric hand mixer which is about 25yrs old:rotfl:So thinking about it now I would say its quite noisy
but no more than my trusty old one


Nat Thanks for your reply am just toying with ideas for my dd 16th but saw the mat and thought it was lovely may have a trial run when it arrives. Alos I use trex when rolloing out coloure paste too so hth

moosetastic

thanks nat82 for the answer to the portion question. Loving the black and pink cake, such a powerful colour combination I think.

awesome, i love those embossing mats, I have a couple of small ones, they are a bit tricky to master but look fantastic, I think it will look really good. if you look on you tube there are some good vids on how to use them properly. plus, you get different effects depending which way you put it on the icing, pattern down will emboss into the icing like on the pic on ebay, but pattern up and the pattern will stand out on the icing and i think it looks nicer like that.

So, delivered my giant cupcake and 24 cupcakes for the lady in the hairdressers I spoke about before. She absolutely loved it! heres some pics -

the cupcakes before the decs went on


the cupcakes with the decs on


the giant cupcake


the whole thing in situ this morning

nat82

Fantastic Moose! I've never used sugarpaste for the bottom of a giant cupcake before, any tips?! I piped buttercream onto the lastone I did which was nice too. I love all your little cupcake decorations. I've got 12 3rd birthday cupcakes to do on monday. They've to be purple and sparkly! I love doing cupcakes. Much less stressful that doing big cakes!

moosetastic

thanks nat, the bottom of the cupcake is made with candy melts, its the first time ive done it like this and to be honest, once i got the technique right it was ok, but the damn thing cracked at the back and looked a right mess. Dont think I'll be doing one again, not unless I made it thicker. I used sugarpaste before, its quite easy really, just like icing a little cake, i did it on a couple last year like this one -