Over the Rainbow Cupcakes

I've been saving this recipe up especially for this today, as not only would it have been Frank L. Baum's 157th birthday on 15^th May, but it's also The Wizard of Oz's 113th birthday today! (That is, The Wizard of Oz was first published on 17^th May 1900.)

Anyways, these cupcakes came to life for a different birthday to the two listed above – that of my best friend Victoria. For Vix's 25^th birthday, I got her a pair of tickets to go see The Wizard of Oz at the London Palladium, but the show wasn't until a few weeks after her birthday and I knew the tickets wouldn't arrive in time. So, in lieu of a physical gift, I made these cupcakes and posted them to her along with a little postcard which had a picture of Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin-man and Lion and the words “we're off to see the wizard!” on the front, and the date, time and venue of the show on the back. I hope you like them!

(PS – you might recognise parts of this recipe from an earlier one I posted!)

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

200g butter or margarine

200g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

200g self raising flour

1tsp vanilla extract

Food colourings in red, yellow, green, blue and purple (or at least red, yellow and blue – you can mix the other colours if you need to!)

For the butter cream:

150g slightly salted butter

300g icing sugar

Vanilla extract, to taste

A little milk, if necessary

For the decorations:

30g red sugar paste

30g yellow sugar paste

20g light green sugar paste

20g dark green sugar paste

edible glitter in red, green and white hologram

edible glue

Prep time: 45 minutes

Cook time: 12 – 15 minutes

Makes 18 cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcake cases.
2. Beat the margarine and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Tip the flour into the bowl along with the vanilla extract, and fold into the mixture until just combined. (Be careful not to over mix here, as you'll be doing a lot of mixing when you add the colours!)
3. Split the mixture into 5 even portions, then use your food colourings to colour the batter red, yellow, green, blue and purple. I use Sugarflair paste food colourings, as I find you can get a really vibrant colour without using too much. I'd be wary of using liquid colourings, as in order to achieve a vibrant colour you will have to use a lot of liquid, which could effect the taste and texture of your cakes.
4. Place half a teaspoon of purple batter into the bottom of each cupcake case, and spread this evenly across the bottom of the case with the back of a spoon. Next, add half a teaspoon of the blue batter on top of the purple batter, smoothly gently with the back of the spoon. You want to cover the whole of the purple layer, but not mix it in, so try not to put too much pressure on the cake – just flatten it down as quickly and lightly as you can. Repeat the process adding half a teaspoon of green batter next, then half a teaspoon of yellow, finally adding half a teaspoon of the red batter.
5. Bake for 12-15 minutes until firm and springy to touch. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Meanwhile, make the decorations for the top of the cupcakes. Start with the yellow brick road as that's the easiest. Roll out the yellow sugar paste to 3mm thick and then cut out a wiggly path that starts big at the bottom and gets small at the top (see the picture for reference, as what I just wrote makes very little sense!) Paint edible glue over each of your YBR's then sprinkle the white hologram edible glitter over them and leave to dry. Next, the ruby red slippers! Roll out the red sugar paste, again to around 3mm thick, then cut out shoe shapes. It's probably easiest to use a cookie cutter for this, but I didn't have one so just freestyled it with a sharp knife (hence why they are all different shapes!) once you're happy with your shoe shapes, paint a little edible glitter over each and then sprinkle with the red edible glitter and put to one side to dry. Finally, make your mini-Emerald cities! Roll the two green sugar pastes into long thin sausages, then fol over and trim into different length “buildings”. Use a little glue to stick a few “buildings” together, mixing up the sizes and colours to create the illusion of depth. Spread a little more edible glue over the top of each Emerald City, and sprinkle with the green edible glitter. Once all of your decorations are dry, shake any excess glitter back into the relevant pot, and place the decoration to one side until ready to use.
7. I imagine that by now your cakes have completely cooled, so it's time to make the butter cream! Beat together the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract until smooth and cream, adding a little milk to the mixture if necessary to achieve a good piping consistency. Place the icing into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle, and then pipe the butter cream onto the cupcakes in a spiral. Place one of the decorations onto each cupcake, and dust with a little more white hologram edible glitter to finish!

Happy Thoughts
x

The Massive Rainbow Birthday Cake (of doom!!)

Cake'n'Bake Recipe? But it's a Tuesday! Well, yes. But I ran out of time to post this one last November, and today is actually my birthday, so I thought it would be a good idea to post it today.

I made this birthday cake for Cake'n'Bake Club's first birthday party in November 2012 - the theme being "Birthday Party". I knew I wanted to do a rainbow cake, mostly because I love making rainbow cake and hadn't done one in ages, but also because I'd made a rainbow cake for our first ever meeting a year before, and it seemed fitting. So I had my heart set on making a rainbow cake, but this time with the Cake'n'Bake Club logo on the top. That's kind of where it all went a bit wrong. You see, the topper I ordered was too wide to fit on top of a cake in the 6" cake pan I was planning to use. (Schoolboy error!) So I had the use a bigger cake tin. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, as I'd just make the cake shorter by doing less layers to compensate for it being wider. But this was a RAINBOW cake, so I couldn't get rid of a layer, because then it wouldn't be a rainbow. I mean I already merged Indigo and Violet into simply "purple" - I don't think I could get away with loosing more colours!

So I made 6 layers of cake in my 9" cake tine, and covered it all in frosting, and sprinkles, and my edible icing with the Cake'n'Bake logo on it.

This one slice fed 5 people. Not joking.

In the end it was 8" tall, 9" wide, and weighed 9lbs. If you fancy making a 9lb giant birthday cake of doom, the recipe and quantities are below. If you'd like to make a smaller one (the 6" pan) use 100g of margarine, sugar and flour and 1 egg per layer.

Ingredients:

for the cake:
900g margarine (no joke)
900g caster sugar
9 medium sized eggs
150ml milk
900g self raising flour
3 tbsp vanilla extract
Food colouring in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple

for the icing:
500g vegetable shortening (Trex)
1kg icing sugar (still not joking!!)
2 tbsp vanilla extract

to decorate:
hundreds and thousands of hundred and thousands
an edible cake topper of your choice (optional)

1.  Preheat the oven to gas mark 5, and grease and line two baking tins. 
2. Unless you're using your kitchen sink as a mixing bowl, you're probably going to want to make this in batches. I made my batter in three batches, splitting each batch into two layers of cake. 
3. Start off by beating 300g margarine with 300g caster sugar in a large mixing bowl until light and creamy. Beat in three of the eggs, one at a time, followed by 50mls of the milk and 1tbsp of the vanilla extract. By the time you've beat all that in, your mixture should be light and fluffy.
4. Measure out 300g of the flour, then fold this into the cake batter a little at a time, until the ingredients combine to form a smooth batter. Scoop half of the batter into a separate bowl, and use the food colourings to create a red batter and an orange batter. I always start with red as it's the worst colour to mix. If you don't use enough blue or green colouring, you just end up with light blue or light green. If you don't use enough red food colouring, you don't get light red. Oh no, my friend. You get pink. So you need to use a fair amount of red food colouring to get a red sponge. Don't forget though, that the colours will be more vibrant and a little darker once baked.
5. Pour the batters into the prepared cake tins, and bake for 25-30 minutes until firm but spongy to touch. Allow the cakes to cool in their tins for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 to create your yellow, green, blue and purple layers. (Optional extra: make yourself a cup of tea and try to figure out how you're going to get this massive hunk of cakey goodness from your kitchen to the venue!!)
7. Once all the layers are baked and cooled, mix up your frosting by beating the shortening and icing sugar together. I used an electric mixer for this to save time.
8. Place your purple layer onto your serving plate, and spread a thin layer (roughly 1 tbsp) of the frosting over the top of this. Place your blue layer on top of this and repeat. Repeat also with the green, yellow, orange and red layers.
9. Once all of your layers are stacked, crumb coat the cake. A crumb coat is a thin layer of icing that goes onto your cake and is left to set before you put your actual icing on. It's like cake underpants. Crumb coating is a very good idea when making rainbow cake, as one of the purposes of a crumb coat is to stick the crumbs to the cake so they don't get into your outer layer of frosting. Rainbow cake crumbs stand out against white icing, so crumb coating is good. Plus it's fun to say: crumb coat. Anyways... once you've covered your cake in a thin layer of frosting, pop it into the fridge for an hour or so to allow the crumb coat to set completely.
10. Once the crumb coat has set, ice your cake with the remaining white icing. Top your cake with the edible topper, and use sprinkles to hide the seam between the cake topper and your frosting. I also poked sprinkles into the side of my cake to look like polka dots. I'm not really sure why I did that, it was just a whim. I thought it looked pretty at any rate.
11. Invite that guy from Man VS Food over, promising him a t-shirt and eternal glory if he can eat the whole thing in 45 minutes. Alternatively, share the cake with lots of friends and family, and lots of tea! 

Happy Thoughts
x

Rainbow Cupcakes

I love rainbow cake. Of course, if you know me IRL, or if you've been reading this blog long enough, you'll already know that! I love baking with bright and vibrant colours, and rainbow cake soon become a “signature dish” for me. I wanted to share my recipe for rainbow cupcakes, as I think they are fab, but also because I often use this recipe as a base recipe when making/decorating birthday cupcakes (which will be popping up on this blog in the near future!)

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

200g butter or margarine

200g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

200g self raising flour

1tsp vanilla extract

Food colourings in red, yellow, green, blue and purple (or at least red, yellow and blue – you can mix the other colours if you need to!)

For the buttercream:

100g slightly salted butter

200g icing sugar

Vanilla extract, to taste

A little milk, if necessary

Edible glitter, to decorate

Prep time: 30 minutes

Cook time: 12 – 15 minutes

Makes 18 cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcake cases.
2. Beat the margarine and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Tip the flour into the bowl along with the vanilla extract, and fold into the mixture until just combined. (Be careful not to over mix here, as you'll be doing a lot of mixing when you add the colours!)
3. Split the mixture into 5 even portions, then use your food colourings to colour the batter red, yellow, green, blue and purple. I use Sugarflair paste food colourings, as I find you can get a really vibrant colour without using too much. I'd be wary of using liquid colourings, as in order to achieve a vibrant colour you will have to use a lot of liquid, which could effect the taste and texture of your cakes.
4. Place half a teaspoon of purple batter into the bottom of each cupcake case, and spread this evenly across the bottom of the case with the back of a spoon. Next, add half a teaspoon of the blue batter on top of the purple batter, smoothly gently with the back of the spoon. You want to cover the whole of the purple layer, but not mix it in, so try not to put too much pressure on the cake – just flatten it down as quickly and lightly as you can. Repeat the process adding half a teaspoon of green batter next, then half a teaspoon of yellow, finally adding half a teaspoon of the red batter.
5. Bake for 12-15 minutes until firm and springy to touch. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Meanwhile, beat your butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract together to make your buttercream, adding a little milk if necessary to achieve the desired consistency. Once your cupcakes have cooled, pipe swirls of buttercream onto the top of these, and then decorate with a sprinkling of edible glitter!

Happy Thoughts
x

Cake'n'Bake Wednesday: Rainbow Cake

Hello folks, and welcome to the latest feature of The Princess and the Cake: Cake'n'Bake Wednesdays! Back in October of last year, I decided to reach out to like-minded bake-a-holics in my local area, and to cut a long story short, the Cambridge Cake'n'Bake Club was born. We're a group of bakers, mostly amateur, some early-stage professionals, who get together once a month to share recipes, hints and baking tips whilst scoffing our faces full of the baked treats we've made. Simple really!

Anyway, we have a shared blog where we post our recipes (www.camcakeclub.blogspot.co.uk if you're interested) but since I decided to move the focus of this blog away from the movie challenges and make it more about my baking in general, I thought I'd start sharing my Cake'n'Bake Club recipes here also. Cake'n'Bake Club meetings take place on the first Wednesday of every month (in fact, it's our first birthday party tonight!) so I decided to turn the same day into my Cake'n'Bake Club feature on this blog - thus Cake'n'Bake Wednesdays! Some months there will only be one post, some months there will be more - it depends how many things I baked for any given month! I think that's enough jibber jabber for now, so if you want to find out more about Cambridge Cake'n'Bake Club, please click on the tab above, and if you'd like to see my recipe, please read on!

For our first ever club meeting in November 2011, we went with the "Signature Bake" as a theme - that is, bakers were asked to bake and bring something they thought represented them - either the first recipe they ever bakes, or one they'd come to be renowned for, and for me it could only ever be one thing:

Rainbow cake!

Firstly, I apologise from the poopy photos - I had no idea we'd be publishing a blog (never mind two blogs!!) so I didn't really give the cake photography the time and effort it deserves. Secondly, I wanted to point out that my cake got a bit squished in transit - please ignore the bottom half of the frosting in the first photo!

OK, before I type the recipe, time for a little cake-science. The reason the colours of the cake curl around each other is purely down to the fact it was baked in a bowl! when baking in a Pyrex bowl it's the bottom and sides that cook first, and as they cook they also rise, forcing the top colours down into the middle of the bowl - pretty cool, right? If you were to bake this recipe in a flat tin, your lines would all be even and you wouldn't get the swirls (the cake would still look and taste great though!)

Ingredients

For the cake:
300g margarine
300g caster sugar
3 medium eggs
300g self raising flour
2 tbsp lemon juice
red, yellow, and blue food colourings (I used gel food colourings as I find you get a vibrant colour without watering down your mixture!)

For the frosting:
150g shortening
300g icing sugar
3 tbsp lemon juice
black food colouring
edible glitter (I used "white hologram")

Prep time: 30 mins
Bake time: 50-60mins
Serves 8-10

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a round Pyrex (or other oven-proof) bowl with foil.
2. Beat the margarine and sugar together until creamy. Beat in one of the eggs until well combined, then fold in a third of the flour. Repeat until all of the eggs and flour have been used up and you have a thick, smooth batter. Gently fold in the lemon juice.
3. Separate the mixture into 6 even portions, and colour each red, orange, yellow, blue, green and purple. (In cake-land, indigo and violet merge to become "purple".) As a reminder, you mix a red and yellow to make orange, blue and yellow to make green and blue and red to make purple!
4. Carefully place the red mixture into the bottom of the bowl and level with the back of a spoon. Layer each mixture on top of the other, spreading gently to the edges after each layer.
5. Bake for 50 - 60 mins, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool in the bowl for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
6. Once the cake has cooled prepare the frosting. Mix the icing sugar into the shortening a little at a time until a smooth paste has formed. Mix in the lemon juice to taste, then spread evenly onto the cake. Place a little black food dye into the remaining frosting, then pipe a line across the cake. Add another drop of black colouring into the remaining frosting, and pipe a second line next to the third. Repeat for another two lines so you end up with a grey-scale rainbow. Sprinkle with the edible glitter to finish then serve!

Happy Thoughts
x

What Would Happen If You Gave a YoYo to a Flock of Flamingos?

Disney Classic # 38 - Fantasia 2000

I played with a few ideas for Fantasia 2000, all of them working along the same line... Fantasia 2000 was part-sequel part-re-imagining of Fantasia, so what ever I did for the cake had to be a bigger, better, new and improved version of the popping candy cupcakes I'd made for Fantasia. For Fantasia I aimed to make something that - on top of being tasty -was colourful, noisy, and had a bit of sparkle, and I think I achieved that with the rainbow sprinkles inside the cake, the popping candy centre and the edible glitter. But this time I wanted more - and so we ended up with a rainbow sponge cake, popping candy layers, edible glitter and SPARKLERS!!

I chuffing loved the sparklers - not the greatest photo I know!

I sort of made this up as I went along using my basic vanilla sponge recipe. For the icing I thought I'd try something new and so used a recipe I found here, but to be honest I don't think I'd use it again. It was easy to spread and set nicely, but it was far too runny for piping and had a coconut-y taste that I wasn't too keen on. But hey ho, that's how it goes!

Prep time: 1-2 hours            Cook time: 20 mins per layer (2 hours)         Serves: 10-12

Ingredients:
200g ready to roll white icing (or 200g of pre-coloured icings in colours of your choice)
Various food dyes (red, yellow and blue at a minimum!)
300g margarine
300g caster sugar
3 medium eggs
300g self raising flour
4 tsps vanilla extract
200g shortening (if you can't get any shortening, I used a dairy-free vegetable spread ;-) )
1kg icing sugar
120ml water
pinch of salt
1tsp almond extract
5 packets of popping candy
2tbsps strawberry jam
Edible glitter
multi-coloured sugar balls

1. Colour the ready to roll icing and cut out shapes to decorate the top and sides of the cake with (this can be done a few days in advance to save time)
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 and line a cake tin
3. Beat together the margarine and the caster sugar until creamy, then beat in one of the eggs. Sift some of the flour into the bowl and stir into the mixture. Repeat until all of the eggs and flour have been incorporated to make a smooth mixture.
4. Add two tsps of vanilla extract and mix well.
5. Divide the mixture equally between 6 bowls and use food dye to colour the mixtures red, orange, yellow, blue, green and purple.
6. Bake each layer for 20 minutes or until the sponge springs back when pressed. Turn out and leave to cool on a wire rack.
7. Whilst the layers are cooling, prepare the frosting. Tip the shortening, water, 2 tsps vanilla extract and 1 tsp almond extract into a large bowl with roughly half of the icing sugar. Beat with an electric mixer for 10 minutes, then beat in the remaining icing sugar.
8. Once the cakes have cooled, begin to stack them, placing a thin spread of strawberry jam and a packet of popping candy between each layer.
9. Once the cakes are stacked, ice the cake. Stick the pre-made decorations onto the sides ad top of the cake, and sprinkle edible glitter over the whole thing. To finish, crate a border around the bottom of the cake using the sugar balls.
10. Cut into slices and enjoy!

It might be a while until you hear from me again, as this is/was the last movie/cake before I had to take a break to go into hospital for my operation, and I've decided to give myself April off for recovery and hope to pick this up again in May! Whenever the next Disney Night ends up being, we will be watching The Emperor's New Groove and I'll be making something a little bit Inca! Until then...

Happy Thoughts
x

Les Poissons, Les Poissons, hee-hee-hee, ho-ho-ho!

Disney Classic # 28 - The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid was the first Disney movie I ever saw... it got me hooked! Unfortunately though, I struggled for ideas for a little while. My friend Becky asked me if I would be willing to make a wedding cake for her... so for a short while I decided that what I would do was make a plain sponge cake, ice it in fondant, and then decorate it with fondant sea-creatures, as a sort of practice wedding style cake. (Of course, when it came to the wedding cake, the sea-creatures would be replaced with fondant flowers, or butterflies, or something more weddingy.) Anyways, a couple of weeks before The Little Mermaid, Big Mike asked me what cake I was doing, and I told him. "Oh," he said, "I thought you'd do another jellyfish cake." AH!! How could I be so stupid!!

A little history on the jellyfish cake... my friend Helen LOVES jellyfish. Or rather, anything that lives under the sea. So for her birthday back in February last year I decided to make her a cake in the shape of a jellyfish. I made a stand with iridescent tentacles, covered the cake in iridescent glitter, and the inside... well the inside had to be rainbow cake.

A little more history for you - rainbow cake (cake with a multicoloured sponge) is like my speciality cake. Before starting the Disney nights, I made it all the time and my friends were always like "oh wow that's amazing!! I love it so much!" And I love it so much.. in fact, I'm thinking of having a rainbow wedding cake myself. How could you not love something that looks like this:

But anyways, I'm off topic. Jellyfish cake was such an obvious choice for The Little Mermaid, I was hitting myself for not thinking of it straight away. Big Mike came to the rescue, and jellyfish cake happened yet again.

I didn't think crab cakes would go down so well...

Not really any references for this one; it uses my usual vanilla sponge recipe, and the design came to me in a random stroke of inspiration when walking to Sarah's house one day.

Prep time: 30-40 mins           Cook time: 45mins        Serves: 10

Ingredients:
300g margarine
300g caster sugar
300g self raising flour
3 eggs
2 tsps vanilla extract
various food colourings
150g unsalted butter
350g icing sugar (plus extra for dusting)
splash of milk
300g ready to roll white fondant icing
edible glitter (I used white hologram)

You will also need:
A cake board
A tall stand (I used a oil burner stand, but a pint glass would probably work just as well. Anything you can stand the cake on stably)
iridescent gift wrap (I bought mine from Clinton's)
Scissors
Sellotape

1. Before starting, make sure that your cake board is the same size that the cake will be. If it's too big, trim it down to size.
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, and line a Pyrex (or ovenproof) bowl with foil.
3. In a large bowl, beat together the margarine and sugar until creamy. Sift in roughly 1/3rd of the flour and mix. Add one egg and beat into the mixture. Repeat this process until all of the egg and flour have been incorporated. Add 2tsps vanilla essence.
4. Divide the cake mixture evenly between 7 bowls. Use the food dye to colour the bowls of cake mixture into different colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and pink.
5. Carefully pour the red mixture into the Pyrex bowl, and level the top with the back of a spoon. Next carefully add the orange mixture on top of the red, again smoothing gently with the back of the spoon. Repeat until all the cake mixture has been used.
6. Bake in the oven for around 45-50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Once cooked, remove from oven and leave to cool in the bowl for one hour before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
7. Whilst the cake is cooking, it's time to get crafty and create the tentacles! Cut the iridescent cellophane wrap into strip, and stick these around the edge of the underside of the cake board. When you lay the cake board on the stand, these should be long enough to completely conceal the stand.
8. Once the cake has cooled, prepare the butter icing. In a large bowl, beat the butter until soft. Add the icing sugar, the vanilla extract and a splash of milk and mix until smooth. Add a little purple food colouring and mix well.
9. Place the cooled cake onto the prepared cake board, and cover with the purple butter cream.
10. Dust the work surface with a little icing sugar, and roll out the fondant icing to around 3mm thickness. Place this carefully over the cake and smooth down. Trim the edges a little longer than they need to be, then pinch, crumple and push up the edges to make the bottom of the cake look wobbly/jelllyfishlike. (That is a terrible description - but if you look at the pictures you'll see what I mean.)
11. Make a little syrupy-icing mix, using 1 tsp icing sugar and 3tsps water. Use a pastry brush to brush the syrup all over the cake. Dip the pastry brush in the edible glitter and the dab this onto the cake, all over.
12. Place the cake on the stand, and there you have your very own jellyfish! Cut into slices, ogle for a bit and then enjoy!

Next time we're watching The Rescuers Down Under, and I'll be honouring the classy heroine Bianca by attempting a traditional Hungarian Dobos Torte (or Dobosh Torta).

Happy Thoughts
x