I am off for a girly night with my NCT friends tonight and i have just whipped up some mini sponges dipped in ganache to take along with me. 

Here is a picture of them mid production. Once the ganache had firmed up I popped them into mini cupcake cases and sprinkled with silver shimmer dust to finish them off.

I hope the girls enjoy!

Whilst researching the latest wedding cake designs i have discovered the limitations of  cake stands available in the UK. They are either heavy silver or gold shiny lumps  or weird alien lampshade designs which hold cakes at different levels or see through acrylics - Not my style at all. There is a few cupcake stands and vintage looking cake plates but not a huge choice and no specialist UK suppliers.

The US seem to have a much better selection. I like the fabric sash stands from raisethecake.com which are custom designed to match your wedding cake colour scheme. If you are looking for a vintage feel therochestudio.com has a nice selection of vintage cake stands for sale in a varity of styles and designs from large wedding cake platters to small single cupcake stands. And look at the cute wraught iron cupcake trees by bosscupcakestands.com! I want one! 

Luckily they all ship to the UK!

Now i have just about recovered from the cake baking marathon of the past few weeks i thought i would de-brief you a little on how the final stages of baking went.

Firstly the dreaded white cupcake cases. Now i thought i had found the perfect white cakes in the Culpitt ones but when it came to the lighter, sponge mix the cases collapsed in on themselved giving me very ugly edges - this would not do for the delicate vintage cupcakes. I tried recasing them but i couldn't get the cases to take the shape of the cake so it looked very baggy and i couldn't get an airtight seal with the icing - so the cake would have gone stale.

I then tried Waitrose cases (which you would think should be the best!) but alas a very similar situation to the Culpitt catastrophe.
 
So i came full circle back to Dr Oaker which you may recall were the perfect size for my tins and therefore gave me a lovely frilled edge but went very brown during baking. I did a little research online and a suggestion was to bake in 2 cases then remove the outside case. I tried this and the inside case was definietly a lot less darker. To further improve this i added a third case during the bake which vastly improved the colour. It did not stay completely white but it gave me a nice, clean pale colour which did not look discoloured. I was happy!

Next the Victoria sponge stack. Leanne changed her mind on the fruit at the last minute which i think was very wise.  It did not change the baking but it gave a strong colour to contrast against the sponge and filling.

Despite doweling each cake on an individual board i was very nervous about the stability of the cake. The sponges had to be extremely fresh which meant they were not dense. Also i needed a decent amount of buttercream between each layer to achieve the right look.  This combination of airy, light cake and lashings of buttercream and jam  does not bode well for tiered structures where the bottom is under some pressure. It did seem to lean a little (i don't think the slightly sloping barn floor helped!) but some quick readjustment meant it stayed upright until it was cut at 11.30pm!

The fruit was a nightmare. Everytime i put a piece on another one rolled off. In hindsight i should have taken some buttercream along to the venue to use as glue around each tier (although how i would have stopped this from spoiling the look of the cake i don't know. We live and learn!!!

Holographic glitter mixed into the icing sugar made the cake sparkle and shine. (I was sparkling and shining too as i was covered in glitter during the wedding!) Overall a sucess but a little stressfull having to bake so close to the wire and assemble on site.

Yesterday was the big day - Dan and Leanne became Mr and Mrs Moynihan! It was  also the culmination of a month of sugarcraft and baking.

The day went off so well despite the weather and the happy couple looked amazing. The cupcakes and Victoria sponge stack were a hit and there was not a trace of cake left at the end of the night. I even witnessed a scissor, paper, stones fight over the last cupcake...

Big thanks to Leanne and Dan for my lovely gift. I hope you have a lifetime of happiness together.

I will blog more this week about some of the challenges and tricks which came up in the last stages of the wedding but for now i am completely caked out so here's some pictures...

PS. hello to Jon who i discovered is secretly my biggest blog fan!

Lots of bows are needed for the upcoming wedding cupcakes. I have been working on them in the past few days and am really pleased with the results.

The larger bows will have tails added whilst the little ones will sit on a embossed topper. The foil is providing support as they dry to keep the 3D shape.

My favourite ones are the candy stripe bows which involve rolling stripes of pink into the white sugarpaste before consutructing the bow. They take longer to make but they have great impact.

Next i will be moving onto he leaves for he rose and cluster cupcakes.

I think i may have finally found the white cupcake cases for vintage themed wedding cupcakes.
 
I tried these Culpitt cases (which are the only white cupcake cases Surbiton Sugarcraft sell) with the last Herman cake cupcakes and despite the mixture being a dark, chocolate colour i got very little discolouration and virtually no oil seepage. I think with a lighter colour sponge they will stay white! Fingers crossed!

Eloise helped me bake today. We had another go at a sourdough Herman cake. This time we made a Nutella muffin version.

Eloise was very good at helping with the stirring (although i did have trouble stopping her eating the mixture!). During the baking she insisted on sporting a Grecian look by only having one arm in her babygrow. Not sure if this is her signature baking outfit, we'll find out next time!

We drizzled white chocolate on top to fnish them off. Feedback on these cakes from the adults  were that they were a little dry - this could be because we ran out of oil so they were missing about 1/3 cup.  The kids however loved them with Eloise's cousin Emily eating 2 in one sitting!

I have started making handmade flowers and bows for 90 cupcakes for a friend's wedding in July. I am starting on the white flowers and so far have made some small 6 petal roses, some squiggly ribbon roses and some small filler flower shells. I have also made bulbs which will form the struture for some larger 10 petal statement roses.

The theme is vintage so we are going for pale pink and pale green colours to contast with the white. I have a month to make them all so i need to be very focused and fast to get them ready in time.
 
The main wedding cake is very special and can only be made the night before the wedding at the very earliest - keep an eye out for the blog post reveal!

Back from our second wedding of the year. This one was in Suffolk at a beautiful venue called Hengrave Hall.

The wedding colours were yellow and white and the room was beautifully decorated with daisy and gerbera flowers inside bird cages.

The cake was made by Aunt of the bride, Pauline (who also made my wedding cake) It  was a white 2 tier cake with small daisies around the tier and a comical topper but what really caught my attention was these beautiful daisy cupcakes.

The giant handmade daisy sugarpaste toppers looked stunning and i was so impressed with how bright and yellow the papercases stayed - no signs of oil seeping through or discolouration!

The cakes were presented on a perspex stand on top of a white grand piano! In the beautifully decorated room they looked stunning.

I love these fab tulip muffin cases. You can make them yourself using squares of baking paper, but i bought these pretty green swirl designed cases in a pack of 50, ready shaped for about £2.00.

I made simple vanilla sponge chocolate chunk muffin to try them out and the shape of the cases allowed the muffins to rise really well.

One thing i noticed - if you got even the tiniest amount of mixture on the top of the cases it stains really badly in the oven so try and keep the top of the cases really clean for a perfect finish.

I am going to try the traditional brown paper look for my next batch of muffins.