yummeelicious

Summer officially ends for me this weekend and with it comes the feeling that time flies way too fast. My baby’s birthday was this weekend. He is cute, funny, still has a huge head of baby curls and growing up to be a fine little man. However, in a moment of total honesty I will admit that the little bundle of joy I took home 2 years ago this week, is possibly the cheekiest child I have ever met. If someone else was responsible for him I would think he was hilarious! I had a few ideas for birthday cakes for him but after a little research found a cheeky monkey that was just him! Nothing else would capture the essence of my baby boy.

Step 1: Like all good cakes, you just need a 9in round sponge of your choosing to start with. As usual, I went with vanilla. Just level off the top and use the bottom as the top (you know what I mean!)

 Step 2: Cut out a rounded triangle from the top half of the cake on each side. Try to get them as even as possible but, as you can see, I didn’t get too hung up on it as it won’t be obvious when you are finished.

Step 3: Cut your cake in half and add the filling of your choice. Given the amount of things going on with the cake, I kept it simple with a generous helping of raspberry jam.

Step 4: Cover most of the cake in chocolate ganache including the sides, leaving a large area of the bottom half clear as shown in the picture above.

Step 5: Cover the area without chocolate with pink buttercream. Try to round off the top to give a kidney-bean type shape.

Step 6: Cover the top of the cake with chocolate sprinkles for the face rounding off as shown above. This is best done while the ganache is still tacky so as the sprinkles stick. Most practical way is to tilt the cake board and shake the sprinkles over. Repeat for the bottom on the cake to cover the “chin”. I may be finding stray sprinkles for quiet some time after this.

Step 7: Place 2 chocolate chips for the nostrils and draw on the mouth with a red gel icing pen as shown.

Step 8: For the eyes, make some simple white icing with icing sugar a little water until it is thick enough to hold its shape. Place 2 circular blobs and even out as much as possible and place two giant chocolate buttons on top. A small dot of white icing on the chocolate button finishes the effect.

Step 9: Use a broken Flake bar stuck into the top of the cake for the monkey’s hair.

Step 10: For the ears, place 2 doughnuts into the cut out space on either side of the cake and cover with chocolate ganache to blend in with the rest of the head. No cheeky monkey is complete without a cheeky tongue sticking out, again in the red gel icing.

This is the prefect kids birthday cake.

My eldest recently turned 4 (yes time does fly and yes I feel old). His current obsession is Superheros, specifically the Avengers. I’m not sure where he picked it up but he definitely has the Superhero bug, so that is what we themed his birthday party on.  The problem he had then was that he couldn’t decide on a favourite between Captain America and Iron-man. So, being a soon to be 4 year old, he had a very logical and practical solution – Make them all! Mad as we are, that is what we did (I drafted my mother into this one). We decided on Captain America for the main cake and made cupcakes of the other superheros (and Ben 10 for good measure).

The cake was a basic vanilla sponge (which I have only recently perfected), filled with raspberry jam and fresh vanilla cream. The top and sides of the cake were covered with the whipped cream also.

Captain America in fairness was by far the simplest design. His shield is literally red, white and blue circles with a star in the centre. The only tools needed were 3 different sized round items to use as cutters and a star cutter. We used a small circle cookie cutter, a breakfast bowl and the cake tin for the largest to ensure it fit on the top of the cake.

Start with the centre circle of the cake in blue. For the blue I coloured white fondant with “Wisteria” colour paste from Squire’s Kitchen, rolled it out and used the smallest circle cutter.

Next, roll out the white fondant and cut with the middle sized circle cutter. Now at this point we had intended to cut out the middle with the smallest cutter so as the blue panel sat into the white. However, the fondant wouldn’t behave and stretched so much when lifted that the cake would have fit in it twice nearly. We decided then to not cut out the centre and have the blue disc sit on top of the white one. As long as you don’t have the fondant rolled too thick, it works perfectly. Place the discs on the centre of the cake.

For the red circle, I coloured the white fondant with “Poppy Red” colour paste from Sugarflair Colours. This was cut out with the cake tin and the medium cutter. To do a full layer of red for both the blue and the white to sit on would have made it to high and not at all shield-like. The red again stretched however as it was the outside circle it was possible to wrap it around the white for the effect. The edges were smoothed off by hand (with wet fingers) and the joins in the fondant smoothed out with smoothing tools.

Roll out some more white and cut out the star shape and place on the blue centre disc, wetting the back slighly so as it sticks. You now have Captain America’s shield.

To complete the cake, decorate the sides with red and blue stars to continue the America star theme.

All that is required then in a big birthday candle, some fireworks and of course Captain America himself!

Check back soon for the other super hero cupcakes….

My (not so little) brother’s birthday was last weekend, and since he has been a avid supporter of my baking over the last couple of years, (he’ll try anything and has given me a number of baking books) it was only right that he finally got one that was just for him. When he is not appreciating my baking, he is playing football or hurling, and has been a member of Trinity Gaels Club since he was about 6. My memories of Graham growing up always have him wearing his Trinity Gaels kit and the blonde floppy hairdo from the 90′s. He’s grown up/gotten old since then! When it came to designing a cake that suited him best, it just had to be his club crest. As club crests go it is not that complicated. I decided to make the crest seperately and then attach to the cake.

First thing to do it find a decent picture of the crest to print out and trace it onto baking parchment. You will need fondant in white, black and red for this one.

Rolling out the white fondant I lay the traced out crest on top and traced around the outline with a blunt sugarcraft modelling tool. Lift the backing parchment and you will have the indent on the fondant ready to be cut out with the tip of a sharp knife. This step was repeated on the white fondant to cut out the hurleys.

For the football, I traced out the outline and also the lines on the ball itself. I cut out the outline of the ball and used a black icing pen to complete the detail. This was by far the trickiest part of the process.

Rolling out the black fondant, I traced out the background and cut as before. The red fondant was traced over for the stripes to ensure they were the correct length and width and cut out as before.

Once you have all the separate components cut out, all that is needed is to assemble the pieces.

Lay the large white background on a flat surface dusted with icing sugar (to ensure it doesn’t stick). Using edible glue paint the back of the black background piece and place as per the design pattern. Next glue on the football and the red stripes.

Lastly lie the hurleys across the red stripes and using the tip of your sharp knife, follow the line around them so as to cut through only the layer of red stripes. Lift the hurleys off and remove the pieces of the red fondant where the hurleys lay. These should lift easily once they are cut through fully. Once all the pieces are removed, paint the back of the hurleys with edible glue and place on the crest. They should now sit flush with the red stripes.

Roll out some more black fondant and using regular alphabet cutters, cut out the team name. Place these at the top of the crest using edible glue.

Once the glue has set, use a damp piece of kitchen paper to gently wipe the crest so as to remove any icing sugar or stray pieces of fondant. This is good to do especially when using black which doesn’t hide the white icing sugar well.

Once done, leave aside whilst you make your cake. Any round cake will do just ensure that its wide enough to fit the crest. I went with a vanilla cake with chocolate fudge icing for the centre.

Once cooled and assembled coat the cake in warm jam and cover with white fondant. Paint the top of the cake with glue and place your crest in the centre.

All you need then are some birthday candles and a good old-fashioned tea party!

The things you can do with a simple heart shaped cookie cutter. A joint early morning effort with my mam and the boys.

A nice post dinner treat!

My little man turned 3 recently and is going through his pirate phase. By this I mean he ends his sentences with ARRRR! when he is pretending to fight with you! He thinks it’s scary, I just think it’s cute

Anyway for his birthday we went with a pirate theme with birthday banners, eye patches and even a pirate ship water table present courtesy of his Nanny (thanks mam!). So of course, the cake had to be a pirate too.

The cake itself was a simple 9in round sponge with buttercream and jam filling. The cake was then covered in pale pink buttercream icing.

Decoration ingredients

• Ready to roll icing
• Red food paste
• Blue food paste

Colour some ready to roll icing red, and roll out until a little larger than half the cake top. Cut a straight edge with a knife. Drape the icing over the cake so that the cut edge covers one-third of the cake top in a diagonal line, draping downwards on the right side of the cake on the cake board and a few pleats to resemble a bandana.

Re-knead the excess red colouring and roll out all the trimmings. Cut out a mouth shape and 2 very thin strips for teh ends of the mouth and press in place on the cake.

Knead and roll out the white icing. Cut out small rounds using an upturned end of a piping tube and press these at intervals on the bandana, sticking them with some water. Roll a small white icing ball, then flatten, shape into an oval eye and press on to the pirates face. Add a small black round on top for the eyeball.

Colour and knead some blue icing. Cut out more spots for the bandana.

Knead and roll out the black icing. Cut out a semi-circle for an eyepatch. Shape the remaining black icing into a thin rope and press above the eyepatch, across the face.

The remainder of the black icing can be cut out in the shape of the a beard and placed on the side of the cake under the mouth.

The perfect pirate! Yummeelicious!!