a m y m c c r a c k e n

Occasion: Erin Tremewen’s high tea baby shower

Recipe: red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing

Decoration: coloured icing, edible glitter and white buttons

Erin & Paul welcomed Richmond Bob Tremewen on Christmas Eve

Genna from work has a friend that absolutely LOVES pirates and asked me to make her some cupcakes for her birthday – fun!

She let me choose the flavour so I used my amended red velvet recipe again (with the cocoa swapped with custard powder & no food colouring) with little pirate themed fondant decorations on top.

custard cupcakes

ingredients

• 250g plain flour
• 2 x 15ml T custard powder, sifted
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g soft unsalted butter
• 200g castor sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 175ml buttermilk
• 1 tsp cider vinegar or other vinegar

method

1. Preheat oven to 170°C and line a muffin tray with paper cases
2. Combine the flour, custard powder, baking powder and bicarb in a bowl
3. In another bowl, cream the butter, and sugar until light and fluffy
4. Beat in the vanilla extract
5. While still beating, add one spoonful of dried ingredients, then one egg, followed by some more dried ingredients, then the other egg, followed by the rest of the dried ingredients
6. Beat together the buttermilk and vinegar
7. Fold into creamed mixture
8. Spoon the batter evenly into the cases
9. Bake for 20 mins or until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched
10. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down completely before decorating

buttery cream cheese icing

ingredients

• 400g icing sugar, sifted
• 125g cream cheese
• 125g soft unsalted butter
• ½ tsp caramel essence

Beat all of the above ingredients together until smooth then pipe onto the cupcakes.

decoration

To create pirate themed decorations to go on the top of each cupcake I rolled out coloured fondant and used some miniature shape cutters & sculpturing/modeling tools. Then to glue parts together I used sugar glue.

For Michael’s (Steve’s Brothers) birthday I decided to make a cake around something he loves – dinosaurs! I didn’t want to make a shaped cake but instead little dinosaurs like the ones that I found on http://www.abakedcreation.com/2009/06/dinosaur-birthday-cupcakes.html.

To make these I used a packed of white icing / fondant from the supermarket. Broke it up into batches, then dyed them different colours for each type of dinosaur.

This was my first time making fondant models. I found that once I kneaded in the colours in it had softened way too much from the heat of my hands so I popped them back in the freezer for a few mins so they could harden up so they were more clay like to play with.

Here’s the t-rex…

Here’s the spikey dinosaur…

here’s the spotty dinosaur…

& here they all are…

With the left over fondant I made some dinosaur eggs that also worked as candle holders – cute!

On top of making something that looks real cool, I still wanted to make something that tasted yum so I made the same cake I made for his dad last year – a Lemon Sour Cream Cake from the Edmond’s cook book. I’ve made this a few times now and I knew I wanted it to be bigger so I doubled the following recipe.

lemon sour cream cake

Ingredients

• 125g butter, softened
• 2 tsp grated lemon rind
• 1 C sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 C plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ C sour cream

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C
2. Cream butter, lemon rind, sugar and eggs until light and fluffy
3. Sift flour and baking powder together
4. Fold sifted mixture into egg mixture alternatively with sour cream, mixing until smooth
5. Spoon mixture evenly into a greased and lined 20cm round cake tin
6. Bake for 45 mins, or until the cake springs back when lightly touched
7. Leave in tin for 5-10 mins then transfer to a wire tack to cool down before decorating

As I doubled the recipe I cooked the cake longer, it took approx. 1 hour and checked on it every 5 mins till ready. I think next time I’ll cook each batch separately and do this as a double layer cake as it wasn’t as light as it usually turns out – but in saying that it was still SO delicious.

If you ever want to use this recipe, instead of icing it, it’s really nice just squeeze some lemon juice over the top while it’s still warm. Then once cooled just sprinkle over a light dusting of icing sugar, mmmmmmm!!!! BUT for this time, I iced it with a lemon butter icing.

lemon butter icing

Ingredients

• 100g butter
• 2 T lemon juice
• 1 ½ C icing sugar
• 2 T water

1. Cream butter and lemon juice
2. Add icing sugar and water and beat until you get the consistency that you desire

I dyed the lemon butter icing green so it was like ‘grass’ that the dinosaurs were walking around on. Before placing the dinosaurs on the cake i brushed them with edible glitter (it’s called rainbow dust) just to give them an extra touch – and because I just ordered a pack of the edible glitter and i REALLY wanted to use it.

So here it is, my (well Michael’s) dinosaur cake!! Rar!

I popped the candels by the ’28′ when it came time to serve…

Last Nov my sister Suzanne came to visit with my nephews Tyler and Kayden. I was the most excited Auntie you could ever imagine but I was also a bit stuck – I hadn’t had kids to entertain before but I figured baking would be a good idea cos (a) it gives them something to do and (b) we have something to bribe them with when we want them to be good haha!

My nephews are pretty young so I knew that me and Suzanne that would do most of the baking but we got them involved by picking colours. They chose GREEN cupcakes then YELLOW icing.

Being a kiwi, I have the Edmonds cookbook – everyone should have a copy of this, it has pretty much every recipe you can imagine and they’re all simple, and easy to follow. So i chose to use the cup cake recipe from there:

CUPCAKES

Ingredients

• 125g butter, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ C caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 C plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ¼ C milk
• 1 tsp food colouring

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190°C
2. Cream butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition
4. Sift flour and baking powder together
5. Fold into creamed mixture
6. Stir in milk and food colouring
7. Spoon mixture evenly into the prepared muffin pan that has been lined with paper cases
8. Bake for 15 mins or until cakes spring back when lightly touched
9. Transfer to a wire tack to cool down before decorating

YELLOW BUTTER ICING

Ingredients

• 1 T butter
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• ½ tsp food colouring
• ½ C icing sugar, sifted

Beat all of the above ingredients together until smooth then decorate.

Look at these cuties! I think Kayden Iin the red shirt) was much more interested in eating the sprinkles rather than decorating the cupcakes haha!