Chilli Chocolate Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Icing

I am so frightfully late at this post. I know, I know I say that almost every post but does the pun make it better?!

I did make some Halloween bakes this year so I'm going to post them and hope you don't mind.

These were the first, some Chilli Chocolate Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Icing. I thought the cinnamon may be a bit too much but actually I loved it. These were some of the best cupcakes I've had! The chilli gives such a nice warm bite and cream cheese icing is juts always delicious.

The recipe can be found here: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/25881/chilli-chocolate-cupcakes.aspx
I substituted the flour for ground almonds just because I didn't realise I was out of flour but this made the sponge so moist and the faint almond was a great contrast.

I used a different Cream Cheese Icing recipe than the one above, I did originally try this one but it was far too runny. I found a good recipe on Pink Whisk and  added 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and some green food colouring. http://www.thepinkwhisk.co.uk/2012/05/perfect-cream-cheese-frosting.html

I made little witches hats to top them inspired by Cakeyboi! These were made with a giant button (Chilli choc from Hotel Chocolate) and Hershey Kisses (ordered online). I made these the day before with a little dab of choc icing to glue them together and finished with a piped red bow.

I sent some with the boy to his work colleagues for a Halloween treat. Here they are all packaged up to go. I couldn't get the lid to shut with the hats on so we took them off, wrapped them up and I asked the boy to put them back on when he got in!

Olympic Days and Cakes

I haven't posted for ages! I wanted to do lots of Olympic baking and post it along the way but, too be honest, I got so excited about the Olympics I didn't really do anything else!

This post is a little taster of all the Olympic-cy things I did over the two weeks. 

The first exciting thing that happened was that I was suprised with some standing tickets for the Olympic Opening Ceremony at 4pm on the day! Cue an absolutely huge rush to get there in time. We pretty much ran from 4pm until 7pm and then stood up until 3am! I had a huge blister on the ball of my foot but it was worth it! 

The whole evening was so fantastic, the atmosphere was great. I just love the Olympics so I was so glad to be there and be a part of it.

If the photo was clearer you could see me at the front on the edge of the hill just in the bottom right hand side of this picture in the standing pit.

I made a Team GB cake for the day of the opening ceremony. It was a lemon cake filled with lemon curd with a lemon buttercream. I decorated it with blueberries and red and white icing to make a Union Jack.

I also coloured each layer red and blue so that when you cut it to it you would get a red, blue, and white pattern. Alas it was not to be, just after I took this picture I dropped it face down on the floor! I think I tweeted that I hope it wasn't a sign of how Team GB would perform but luckily it wasn't!

This is a slice in my hand post smashing, just to show you the colours!

I am entering this cake into Lottie's Bake Off Challenge over at Lottie's World of Cakes and Bakes after she kindly agreed even thought I dropped in on the floor!

I was a little bit heart broken, I won't lie, but I had had a couple of glasses of Champagne and it was Friday the next day so I took it better than expected. The boy spent all evening staring at me expecting me to have a melt down!

I went to see the swimming at the Aquatics Centre on the first morning and I screamed my little head off for Rebecca Addlington. The noise of everybody was incredible! All the spectators were cheering for every country and whooping for all the athletes. It was just lovely.

I bought these patriotic shoes at the request of my 5 year old nephew and I wore them to support Team GB!

I wore my fancy new shoes with a Union Jack T shirt to the Athletics. I waved my flag and whooped for Mo Farah in the qualifier for the men’s 5000m.

I watched him win the 5000m at a screen near Tower Bridge. How beautiful is this?

I then made these cupcakes for the Closing Ceremony and a friend’s birthday.

They are a Spiced Raspberry Low Carb Cupcake!

Too be honest I hate making diet cakes and I only made them because she is a special friend, but they actually turned out pretty well considering they had no flour and no sugar! I just feel if you're going to eat a cake then do it properly - full fat all the way baby!

I made the toppers with fondant icing cut out with a circular cutter. I sprayed the medals with a gold spray and used the squeezey writing tubes to pipe the 1 and rings. This is the first time I've made any toppers like this. They were really fun to make and look effective I think.

We watched the closing ceremony in one of the host boroughs, Waltham Forest, on their big screen. We had a delicious picnic and got the most excited when the spice girls came on. I haven't sung any of their songs for years and was surprised that I knew every word to the rap!

What a great two weeks, London did us proud I think. I think I welled up pretty much all week but especially about the volunteers. How fab was it that theygave up their time just to make it a success!

I hope you all had a lovely Olympic experience. Did you manage to see any of the events? Were you a sports hater who was turned in all the excitement?

Bring on the Paralympics!

Photo issue :(

As you can see I am having photo issues!

I recently got a new android phone and it linked to my blogger/gmail account. All of my blog photos appeared in my photo folder on my phone and, as there were 271 of them, I thought I would delete them off the phone to save space.

Turns out they weren't really on the phone and I deleted all the pics from my blogger account.

I have tried un-deleting all photos from my phone and googled to see if anyone has the same prob but no joy.

It's going to take me while to put each one back on so you'll have to bear with the ugly black warning signs. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

On the plus side, I bought a new camera so the quality of the new photos should hopefully be better!

Cake fairy

X

Random Recipes - My books!

I haven't entered into Dom's Random Recipe challenge for a while but this month he is giving us a chance to be nosey neighbours  an easier task so I thought I'd definitely have time to join in. After viewing a few entries, I have to say I have been massively impressed with everyones cook book collections! So the task this month was to take a photo of your cookery book collection and share a story about it. These are the books we usually pick our random recipes from and it gives a little insight in our fellow bloggers worlds.

My collection of cookery books is not that impressive! 

I only have 15.

I live with an English graduate and a complete lover of books. We have three bookshelves in our flat and I'm only allowed one shelf. Our whole house would be covered in built in wall to ceiling book shelves if he had his way!

As you can see the book shelves are pretty full. We even have some piled on the front - I don't like this - I have to admit I'm a neat freak. 

I have resorted to a one in one out rule which has spurred many tiffs!

Our building has a great book swap down in the courtyard. It keeps me in tacky crime novels all year round, so my tube journeys go by with suspense and adventure, helping me ignore the heat and sweaty armpits!

The boy is always coming up stairs with am arm full of books exclaiming "look what I found?".

In my journey to keep the number of books down I try to use the internet for recipes as much as possible. This way I can can compare many different versions and read reviews which I find really useful. It's always great to know someone else has perfected a recipe for you! And with all the great food blogs out there we're spoiled for choice.

However I do think bakery books are beautiful. I genuinely will go to bed reading one, marking the pages of recipes I want to try and exclaiming at the pretty decorations. I am pretty good at restraining myself from buying books except when the Book People come to my office!

I don't know if you know who the book people are but they turn up at offices around London bearing lovely books. Tthey usually have a great selection of cookery books and at such reasonable prices I can't help it!

I predict that when I move somewhere larger my restraint will not last any more. I secretly can't wait!

Thanks for a great challenge Dom, I've loved peeking in to everyone's houses!

Happy reading all.

Chocolate and Yogurt Coated Blackcurrant Cookies - We Should Cocoa

This is my entry for this month We Should Cocoa hosted by the lovely Choclette over at Chocolate Log Blog. 

She started off announcing that this month chocolate pairing ingredient was challenging. 

Blackcurrents, Pah I thought, easy. I love chocolate and tart fruit. No probs!

However I was very wrong, I've searched high and low for these cheeky little things with no joy!

In the end I managed to find one pack of yoghurt coated blackcurrents at 2 am in the small shop I went to to buy eggs and bacon for breakfast.

My plan was to make blackcurrant and chocolate cookies. I was looking forward to the juicy blackcurrants in contrast with the chocolate but I went ahead with the recipe anyway. I didn't get the pretty splashes of purple I would have got with fresh blackcurrants, but I did get little bits of fruit chewiness which was pretty pleasing!

The yogurt melted and you couldn't really see any blackcurrant pieces - here is one on the left just above the chocolate chunk! You could say it was surprise eating!

The cookies were chewy and super easy to make. I am a chewy cookies girl rather than a biscuit person so a chewy cookie is a must for me!

Chocolate and Yogurt Coated Blackcurrent Cookies:

• 250g plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 170g melted salted butter
• 200g dark brown soft sugar
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 150g chocolate (Chopped in to pieces with a sharp knife)

1. Preheat your oven to 170C and line two (or more) baking trays with greaseproof paper.

2. Using an electric whisk, beat together the melted butter and sugars until fluffy.

3. Beat in the egg and yolk and vanilla bean paste until the mixture is creamy.

4. Sift in the dry ingredients and fold into the creamy mixture. Try not to over mix.

5. Fold in the chocolate pieces and yogurt coated blackcurrants (feel free to substitute with real blackcurrants!)

6. Scoop the cookie dough with a tablespoon or ice cream scoop and drop on to your prepared trays. Leave 6 cm between each dough ball and you don't need to flatten the dough.

7. Bake for 15 mins for chewy deliciousness!

8. Nibble hot or leave to cool on a wire rack.

I hope you are all enjoying the weather ( I had to mention it, I'm British right!?). It's not really baking weather but you can still make many delicious desserts that are no bake, so it's no excuse not to quench our sweet tooth's.

It is two days until the Olympics officially start! Where are you watching the Olympic ceremony? I am watching it on a big screen in Walthamstow. I am so excited about the Olympics, I just can't wait!

Cake Fairy x

Orange and Vanilla Bean Cupcakes

I saw these really pretty cupcakes a while a go and thought the flavour combination sounded yummy. I was right!

These are nice and fresh. The creamy vanilla beans perfectly goes with the tangy orange.

Recipe

You can find the recipe over at Annie's Eats here.

You know how much I love easy and effective cupcake toppers and I especially like ones you can eat. As you can see I candied some oranges for this recipes. This was the first time I have candied anything (I'm sure I say that in every post) it was surprisingly easy. Annie details exactly how to do it in her post. I used a whole orange and had to cut the pieces in to quarters. Annie candied a smaller tangerine so one ring covered the cupcake - In future I would go with this idea but I only had oranges, it's so much cuter to have a whole slice. 

This is my entry for Tea Time Treats this month. The theme is Summer Fairs & Fetes and Cake Stall Cakes and Bakes and it's being hosted by the lovely Karen from Lavender and Lovage. Sadly I have no summer fair to sell these at (really wish more were held in London!) but I think they would be a fab treat if I did!

I don't mean to sound so English but the weather really is awful here! I just got back from Malta and it was beautiful. I can't recommend it enough for everyone, all ages and interests! I yhought I'd share some holiday snaps (possibly too many but it was hard to choose) with you, just to remind us UKer's that the sun does exist! 

Happy Baking x

"Stain Glass window" Decorations

I have written a guest post and my first tuorial! Please check it out, it is on "stain glass window" decorations.

http://mypassionforfood.co.uk/stain-glass-window-cupcake-decorations/

Thanks,

Cake fairy x

Guest Post: Chocolate Courgette Cake

My name is Danielle, I’m 25 and I live and work in London, as a lead food blogger for hungryhouse. I have always enjoyed entertaining  and cooking for friends and family, and I think this is where my passion for food started. I love discovering new recipes and adore sharing my favourites recipes, especially when it comes to desserts. With a little bit of practice I think everyone can bake delicious desserts and while I  am often order my favourite chinese cuisine at the weekend, I always try bake my own deserts and have it waiting for when people pop by.

I would like to thank cakefairy for this guest post opportunity and for allowing me share one of my favourite recipes with you here on her blog. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed sharing it :) Cakefairy has kindly done the same over on mypassionforfood.co.uk . She has written a tutorial on Stain Glass Windows decorations and I encourage you all to go over and read it and then of course to have fun trying it out for yourself. She is definitely my cake fairy whenever I am stuck for a recipe!

Flickr: little blue hen

My Chocolate courgette cake recipe is a must, vegetables and cakes is nothing new, everyone loves a moist piece of carrot cake. However when I mention that one of my favourite cake recipes is a Chocolate Courgette Cake I get a lot of particularly peculiar looks. Though these looks will not stop me on my personal baking quest to make sure everyone has tried this delicious yet slightly unusual chocolate treat.

Ingredients

Cake

350g of Self Raising Flour

50g of Cocoa Powder

1tsp of Mixed Spice

175ml of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

375g of Caster Sugar

3 Eggs

2tsp of Vanilla Extract

500ml of Grated Courgette

Frosting

6tbsp of Softened Butter

65g of Cocoa Powder

350g of Icing Sugar

45g of Milk

1tsp of Vanilla Extract

Method

1.    Preheat the oven to 200 degrees

2.    Grease a 10 inch spring-form tin and put to one side

3.    Mix all of the dry cake ingredients thoroughly together in a bowl

4.    Mix all of the wet cake ingredients thoroughly together in a jug

5.    Pour the wet ingredient mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients until they are combined

6.    Pour the mixture into the greased spring-form tin and level the surface

7.    Put into the pre-heated oven and bake for 45-50 minutes

8.    Remove from the tin and place onto a plate and leave to cool for 60 minutes

9.    After the cake has cooled you can make the frosting

10.  Put the butter in a bowl and mix in half of the sugar and cocoa

11.  Mix thoroughly and add half of the milk

12.  Continue to stir and add the remainder of the sugar and cocoa

13.  Finally add the rest of the milk and continue to mix until you have a consistent mixture and add the vanilla extract before one last stir

14.  Then you can add the frosting to the top of the cake

Serving Suggestions

This cake is so delicious that it does not need anything to distract from its taste but if you really want to decorate the cake before serving I would suggest spending longer when frosting the cake. With this frosting mixture you can create a beautifully presented cake with no additional ingredients. While it can be difficult to get your piping perfect, I find by using a large open star nozzle mistakes are less noticeable. With this tip, the frosting peaks will fall after a while and you will not have any harsh icing lines on your cake. This piping tip and the similar rosette tip, forces the icing out through thin slits. This means the thin layers of icing flops a little rather than being too structured.

Technique

The cake has two layers of icing, and this gives it its sopisticated artistic design.

15.  Pipe the frosting onto the cake starting on the outside. The piping tip should be around ½ inch from the top of the cake.

16.  The idea is to get a wave-like motion going. While squeezing the piping bag, you move the tip from one inch from the outside of the cake, to the very edge of the cake. You hold it at the edge for a couple of seconds before doubling back and pulling away. Continue this until you have a ring of icing blobs all around the outside of the cake. Use the same technique on all the inner circles of the cake, until you have covered the cake completely.

17.  Use a medium open star piping tip for the second layer of icing. This layer looks a bit like flowers and  requires a bit more practice! There will be gaps within the first layer of icing, begin icing here. Gently move the piping tip upwards while gently squeezing the bag, when you are above the first layer of icing, stop squeezing the icing bag and pull it away from the cake. Work your way in towards the centre of the cake.

Piping looks much better than using a spatula and once you mastered the technique, it also is a lot quicker. The good news is that with a little bit of practice you will be making cakes that look like they could be put on a shop window display. Another great option would be to make cupcakes, whether it is for a children’s party or for yummy mid afternoon snacks cupcakes are a great alternative. All you would need to do is divide the mixture into cupcake cases instead of the spring-form tin and cut the baking time by half.

Pimms Cupcakes - A summery treat!

I saw this recipe last year and have wanted to make it for ages. After reading about them again on CrazycupcakeGem I decided to make them for a friends BBQ. 

Pimms on sunny day what could be better!

The icing is so exciting on these cupcakes. It's four types; strawberry, mint, orange and cucumber. Cucumber?! I know but it works. It is a true Pimms experience.

The Pimms is so great in the cupcake as well, the sponge is rich and moist and you can really taste the spice and warmness of the Pimms.

The weather has been truely strange as of late, but it is suppose to be summer so I say do all things summery. Wear sandals in the rain, bare your pale winter legs and eat Pimms!

The recipe can be found here.

The piping is the tricky part. You need to get all four buttercreams in to one piping bag. I find the easiest way to do this is to build them up. Start with a spoonful of each buttercream in the bottom of the piping bag being careful to keep each type in it's quarter. Repeat this a spoonful at a time, twisting the bag to keep each buttercream in it's quarter of the bag. Squeeze the first bit out into a bowl to check you have the four stripes and then pipe away. As you can see my four stripes are perfect so don't worry too much, It stills tastes great.

I sprinkled my cupcakes with my new favourite cupcake accessory - freeze dried strawberries. I also topped the first batch with a quarter slice of a lemon but I noticed everybody picked these off so for the second round I used sugared lemons. However, I find these too sweet so it's a toss up! I think the fresh lemon leaves a little taste of lemon on the top of the buttercream which is nice.

I'm off to Malta on Monday and am really excited. Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Cake fairy x

Chocolate Oreo Cake - United Bakes of America

My first Oreo cake finally!

Double layer moist chocolate cake filled with Oreo cream cheese buttercream...Yum!

I made a chocolate cake and substituted some on the cocoa for ground up oreos. You couldn't taste the oreo that well in the cake so in hindsight I would just roughly break up the oreos and stir them in to the batter to get the crunch of the oreos.

I am not going to give a recipe for a chocolate cake as I know we all have our fav moist recipe, just  chuck in some ground up Oreo's.

The icing is used was an Oreo cream cheese buttercream. Loved it! Cream cheese icing is so creamy a light, a great combo with the choc cake. I got the recipe from Cupcake Crazy Gem. All in all lovely cake and super easy to make.

Speaking of Cupcake Crazy Gem, I am entering this cake for Cupcake Crazy Gems United Bakes of America Challenge.

Next challenge I will branch out a bit, but I really wanted to try an Oreo cake and what better chance!

Happy Baking all x

Happy 1st Birthday - Chocolate and Strawberry Cake

Hi all,

I hope your having a lovely weekend! I went to a friends wedding yesterday and it was such a beautiful day. The rain also stayed away which was great!

The most important part of the day, the dessert (!), was a scrumptious chewy pavlova with strawberries. I don't know how they got it so chewy!

I have now been blogging for 1 whole year so this is birthday post just for me.

Happy 1st Birthday Cake Fairy Blog!

I've written 47 posts which is about 3-4 cakes a month and I've loved writing them.

What better way to celebrate my blogs birthday than with my favourite combination - Chocolate and strawberry!

I found some freeze dried strawberry sprinkles in the supermarket on Friday and thought I had to use them. I'm not the only one who picks out the freeze dried strawberries from cereal boxes, right?! I just love freeze dried strawberries. I especially like the chocolate covered ones.

Vanilla Savoy Cake


This is such a great recipe, my new favourite. The cake is so fluffy and delicious. It has no butter in it which I actually like as I find getting butter to room temp so difficult in my flat and I hate butter lumps. The air that is whipped in to the eggs makes the cake rise.

4 egg whites
4 eggs yolks
200g caster sugar
100g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and put a shelf in the middle of the oven.
2. Grease and line two 8in tins with greaseproof paper. I can never be bothered to fully line the tin (oops) but I find just putting in a circle at the bottom is enough the get the cake out with no problem.
3. Using an electric whisk, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until pale yellow and very fluffy. This takes about 6 minutes. Don't skip on this step because it is key.
4. Add the two vanillas and whisk in until fully combined into the yolk mixture.
5. Whisk the eggs whites until you have firm peaks. This is where having two electric whisks is very handy!
6. Sift the flour in to the yolk mixture and fold in.
7. Fold in the egg whites. As you can tell I'm quite impatient but you do have to make sure your folding delicately to keep the air in the batter.
8. Pour the batter in to the two tins and put in the oven to bake for 20 minutes.
9. Make the buttercream and strawberry puree while the cakes are baking.

Chocolate buttercream

As usual my buttercream recipe is from Cupcake Crazy Gem's trusted top 10 frostings.

Strawberry purée

You can find the recipe here. Just substitute the Martini for water. I don't sieve my purée just because I quite like the texture and pieces of strawberries but you can if you like it that way. You can also just use your favourite strawberry jam.

Assembling

1. Take the cakes out of the oven and leave to cool.
2. The cakes usually come out fairly flat but level the cakes out with a bread knife if you need to.
3. Cover one cake with the strawberry puree and sandwich the other cake on top.
4. Cover the cakes in chocolate buttercream, smoothing out with a palette knife.
5. Scatter over the freeze dried strawberries.

Enjoy with friends!

Happy Baking.

Guinness and Baileys Cupcakes

This post is slightly late in coming! I made these for St Patricks Day.

The boy's mum bumped in to a friend of ours and mentioned to them that her and the boy's dad were coming over to our house for St Paddy's Day lunch. She also mentioned that I was going to make St Paddy's day cupcakes, to which they replied "Oh they'll probably just be green".

She thought "I doubt it" and she was right!

I made Guinness and Baileys cupcakes. You'll have to forgive me but I thought this was a really original idea and I had come up with it all by myself. A little gooogling later, I discovered everyone and their aunt was making them!

Either way they were delicious.

I followed this recipe for the Guinness cakes by Dave Leiberman.

I originally thought I would make a Baileys cream to top them with because I had forgotten how "not sweet" the cakes were. After a quick nibble, to check they weren't posioned, I decided a sweet buttercream would be better.

I  used this recipe for the Baileys buttercream from Tide and Thyme.

As you can see I topped them with a swirl, however, not just any swirl an Ateco piping tip swirl!  I have been on the hunt for a large piping tip forever, I like the Wilton 1M but I would like it to be a bit bigger. After goggling, because I'm obsessive like that, I heard mention of Ateco but apparently you can only get them in the US and Australia. My excitment when I found them on a trip to Nottingham was immense. Haha.

I top them with a fondant "Shamrock". It's not quite a shamrock but this is the only cutter I had and I didn't fancy cutting them all by hand, I think you get the general idea.

The boys mum and dad seemed to like them. The boys dad even asked for seconds.

The sponge is a rich chocolate with a hint of an oaky stout flavour which I think makes the chocolate flavour deeper and the icing is creamy, boozy delicious-ness.

You can definately have these anytime of year - but just for grown ups!

Happy baking.

Batman Cake

Last weekend I made my first fondant covered character cake for my nephews 6th birthday. I have been promising him this for ages, every time I spoke to him he wanted a different cake. He started out with a Pterodactyl cake which I was slightly nervous about! He then settled on Batman, which I hoped would be a bit easier.


I did a bit of research online to see what other batman cakes were around and decided on a round cake surrounded by a skyline with the batman sign projected on top.


I'm sure none of my decoration methods were particularly professional, I went for the "make it up as you go along" method which consisted of some print outs and clear plastic to make stencils and toothpicks to mark out my design.


For my first attempt, I have to say I was pretty pleased with myself. It did take many evenings of work but turned out pretty well.


I had to roll the blue icing out 3 times because it kept sticking at the last moment. Any tips to stop the fondant sticking to your surface? I covered my counter in icing sugar and kept moving the icing around but it still stuck.


The black icing made me nervous because the colour seems to run easily and I didn't want my blue icing to get stained. Cue, doing everything slowly and a lot of talking to the icing - yes I do that!

I made a French savoy sponge from my new "The art of french baking book". Correct me if I'm wrong but I think this is also called an Angel cake. The sponge has no butter in it (I figured with all the Fondant icing I should try to take out some fat!) and is made by separating eggs. I found the sponge light and dense, okay that makes no sense but it was delicious and...... spongey.


I made two 8in round cakes and sandwiched them together with sugar free strawberry jam. I didn't hand make it as usual just to save some time. I like smooth sugar free jams best.


I covered it in vanilla buttercream, made with vanilla bean paste which made it super yummy. The first layer was the crumb coat, nice and thin, I then popped it in the fridge overnight.

I smoothed out the cake with more buttercream the next day. I could have spent hours doing this, it never seems to be as smooth as you want it but I had to crack on.

Next I rolled out the blue fondant. I bought white fondant icing and massaged blue food colouring in to it a few nights before, a nice tv watching task. I had to use far more food colouring than I had anticipated and I had originally wanted the blue to be darker but, quite frankly, I got bored. I brushed the cake with water to make the buttercream sticky in preparation for the fondant.

I covered the cake and it was tense. As you can see I didn't get the icing flush to the bottom as I was too scared I would cut away too much. I knew I was going to cover it with black icing so I wasn't worried that much.

Next I added the skyline. I just did this to eye so no fancy tricks to share. I marked the windows with little L shapes using the end of a knife.

I made the back of the batman sign by tracing the image on to a piece of clear plastic and cutting around it. I then marked the bat by poking holes through a paper print out to give the outline on the fondant which I then cut around. You can see tiny holes on the edge of the bat so I will have to work on that!

Again I made the projection bit by eye and stuck it on by brushing it with water. I stuck on some yellow windows with the left over yellow and finished with a few white chocolate stars.

I had both my niece and nephew stay for the weekend. As I had missed their birthday's because I was in Japan we decided that the Friday would be Tom's "birthday" and Saturday would be Anya's. We went for a quick dinner to Nandos on the friday then finished off with the cake. The little man seemed to appreciate it! Every few hours he would run over the the cake and say "Can I see the Bat? Don't touch it!". It took me a while to persuade him that we could cut in to it and eat it!

Happy baking. Cake fairy x