It wasn’t easy to try and beat the Han Solo in Carbonite cake I made fro Dr B a few years ago, but this might be a good contender! I made it for Dad’d birthday last month.
Vanilla sponge with a strawberry and buttercream fillling for the body, a smaller round cake for the head with another half a small cake on top for the brow, cake wedges for the ail. All covered in fondant icing with added sparkles for scales.
Yum!
One of my nephews is currently obsessed with Club Penguin. If you have no idea what I’m talking about it’s a Disney thing and all you need to know is that there are some Penguins who have helpers/magic assistants called Puffles. In essence, and in the Disney merchandise mobile, Puffles are bean bags with hair.
I have long been a fan of Bakearellas Cake Pops, and made some a few years ago. I’ve got better at it though, and these are chocolate cake on the inside and chocolate coated on the outsife. The eyes are made of fondant and writing icing. The hair was done by ‘glueing’ chocolate cake decorations to the head with chocolate and then quickly dipping the pop in and out of some Wiltons Candy Melt coating, and twirling it around upside down to make spikes. They went down a treat!
The last month has been pretty busy, so there haven’t been any posts – I’m about to make up for this now.
Let’s start with the Brookes Heggie wedding that happened last month, a gorgeous sunny day in Devon with a gorgeous couple. Laura looked amazing in her ‘film star of old’ style dress, Harry looked like Harry in a tweed suit and my Andy did a great job as best man and looked awesome in his kilt.
There was also fantastic food: roast lamb and summer veg, then three kinds of pudding followed by the wedding cake! Tiered cupcakes topped with a smaller sponge to be cut. I also got ridiculously excited by the mismatched teaset used for the coffee. What an awesome day.
I love tea, especially Earl Grey, but I usually have some left in the pot. I forgot to take the leaves out and it steeped, but then I remembered seeing this post on the Patent and the Pantry through a wordpress search.
I can’t deal with cup measurements in baking, what is wrong with using scales you Americans\Canadians you? So I adapted the recipe to use my basic fairy cake as a base.
Earl Grey fairy cakes (makes 24ish)
Cream 125g soft unsalted butter with 125g caster sugar until light and fluffy. Then gradually add 125g self raising flour and 2 beaten eggs. Stir in 1 tsp vanilla essence and your steeped earl grey tea, however much you need to get a smooth, dripping-off-the-spoon consistency. I also threw in some unsteeped earl grey tea leaves, but its up to you.
Divide the mix into paper cases and bake in a 200 degree oven for about 15 mins or until cooked. Cool on a rack/grill pan and then ice.
Lemon icing
Juice 1 large lemon and add to as much butter as you think you need. Cream in icing sugar until you get your lovely buttercream icing as thick as you like then, using a fork, swirl onto the top of your cakes. Yum!
