Cake decorating

When my youngest daughter was born I subscribed to Cake decorating magazine. It kept my mind off how tired I was now that I had four children. The first recipe that I tried were the white chocolate cupcakes from issue 1, except I had no white chocolate so I used milk chocolate instead. This recipe makes between 12 and 18 cakes depending on the size of your cases.

• 125g unsalted butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 125g self raising flour
• 75g chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 190oc / gas mark 5.
Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well. Fold in the flour and add the chocolate chips. They should take between 15 and 20 minutes to cook. They're topped with buttercream. I had 18 cakes so I used 150g butter and 300g icing sugar. The star decorations are brown fondant icing.

 

Next I tried the Pretty iced squares. Make a 20cm square madeira cake ( see previous posts for recipe ) and cut into 16 equal (ish) squares. The recipe says to use fondant icing sugar, which I didn't have so I used glace icing instead. The tops are brushed with apricot jam and the icing poured over the top. The designs have been piped on using a narrow nozzle.

 

 

  Next I made butterfly shaped sugar cookies using the shape cutter that came with the magazine. The recipe is in the first issue.

Sugar cookies;

• 125g unsalted butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 1 medium egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 250g plain flour

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the vanilla extract and egg. Sift half the flour in the the bowl, mix and sift in the other half. Knead the dough until smooth, wrap in clingfilm and leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour. Preheat the oven to 180oc/ gas mark 4. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface and use your cutter. Any shape cutter will work. Bake for 10 - 15 minutes and leave to cool before icing.

 

 

For the icing you will need 450g of royal icing sugar. This is slightly firmer than normal icing sugar. I made three different colours, blue, pale pink and darker pink. You could make any colour. Just add a little water to 150g of the icing sugar and add the preferred colour. Not too much water because you dont want it to be too runny. First pipe the outline of the biscuit, then you can add a little more water and 'flood' the rest of the biscuit, then use different colours to make the patterns.

 

 

This next recipe is for a large chocolate ganache cake, but I made individual ones instead. The recipe for the chocolate cake is in a previous post. The ganache is made from

• 400ml double cream
• 400g dark chocolate

Pour the double cream into a small saucepan and put it on a low heat. Break the chocolate into chunkc and add to the cream. Keep stirring until the chocolate has melted but dont let it boil. Remove from the heat and whisk gently. Allow to cool to room temperature. This will take 1 - 2 hours.
I made 24 small cakes using a muffin mould, then stacked them three layers high and covered them in the ganache. The stencil image in the top is made with a stencil that came free with issue 6.