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

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