How make pretty flower cupcakes

Now I am obviously a big advocate of cupcakes of the eating variety but today I thought I would share with you my lovely cupcake decorations made with flowers and not flour! They are so simple but so effective. Beautiful on a vintage cake stand to brighten up your table or even just your day. Once you get the hang of them they can be made with any flowers you like from bought flowers to flowers from your garden. I would recommend using flowers with quite a strong stem as you don't want them to break when pushed in to the oasis. Small flowers such as spray roses or daisies work best but there is no reason why you couldn't replicate with one or two larger flowers. Obviously you can make as many or as few as you like but in the spirit of baking I will make one dozen.

List of ingredients:

12 tea lights in silver metal cases (the ones you get in big bags from Ikea)

Block of oasis

Bunch of spray roses

12 cupcake cases

Method:

1. Soak the oasis in water until water absorbs through the whole block.

2. Remove the tea lights from the silver outer case. These can be put to one side and kept for another time.

3. Cut a thin strip of oasis, about the same thickness as the depth of the tea light holder.

4. Press the tea light holder in to the oasis so that you end up with the silver case filled with oasis.

5. Cut the spray roses from the bunch so that they have 1-2cm of stem.

6. Push the roses in to the oasis starting around the edge and finishing in the middle.

7. Place in to pretty cupcake cases and voila!

Happy flower baking!

A New Home

A new year and Buttercream and Dreams has a new home! Its all been a little bit busy here as we settle in to a new house and most importantly a new kitchen. And it is a very lovely kitchen indeed! Plenty of space to create wonderful cakes and the cupboards are now full to the brim with cake tins and glitter and ribbons and sprinkles. Its cake baking heaven (well for me anyway!). Now that we are all settled I shall be keeping you updated with all the latest adventures and maybe even sharing a few of my cake secrets with you!

Hello Kitty!

This week I was asked to make a Hello Kitty birthday cake for the beautiful Maddy's 3rd birthday. Being more used to pretty girly flowers and sparkles I relished the challenge and was pretty pleased with the result! Maddy knew exactly what she wanted (the right type of customer!) and so I set about creating her special cake. Rather than the image being put on top of a traditional square or round cake I cut out the shape from the backed cake and iced it so the shape of Hello Kitty could be seen. Being a 2D character made it slightly easier to re-create. Then I added the details in different colours and edged it all in black sugarpaste. I have to say, the black really bought it to life and I loved the finished effect. I knew I had succeeded when my husband, who is my harshest critic, told me it was my best cake yet! Perhaps he'd like a hello Kitty cake for his birthday next month!

The village fete

How exciting! Today I have been asked to plan the wonderful Emily and Raymonds wedding and I am so so excited about it. They asked me to help create a village fete theme for their big day next July and I am already getting rather carried away! Its such a fun idea and my mind is working overtime thinking of how I can help turn their theme in to a fantastic fun filled day. There are so many things I have planned from skittles and tombolas to splat the rat! I'm even planning cake baking and vegatable growing competitions with each guest being asked to bring an entry. Over the next few months I'm sure I will be thinking of even more fete related fun but in the meantime I'm off to practice my throwing skills for the Welly wanging!

Hooray for Harry!

I have to say a huge thank you to the talented Mr Harry Waine for my fabulous new leaflets. I love them! They are very pretty, very girly and very Buttercream and Dreams. I was very happy when the little box of freshly printed postcards arrived in the post and I got to see the final version. Now I just need to find some lovely people and places to hand them out to.

The great cake challenge continues

Seen as my last cake from the Hummingbird book was so delicious I thought I would try another. This time it was the turn of the carrot cake. I have my own (well my mums) delicious carrot cake recipe but I wanted to see how the Hummingbird version measured up. My mums carrot cake has always been a firm family favourite so this had a lot to live up to. We were going to Wales for the weekend with the In laws so it was the perfect opportunity to trial the new recipe. So the night before our travels I began baking. The recipe was similar to my usual but didn't seem to have as much carrot in or as many sultanas. Nothing wrong with this but I do like carrot! I have to say although the cake was nice it was nowhere near as nice as my mums recipe so this is definately a case of sticking with what you know. It was tasty and I happily munched through a few pieces but it was quite a bit heavier than my mums recipe and the cream cheese frosting was much sweeter which made it quite sickly.
I also combined the new recipe with some new decorations. Some lovely carrots!! Fun fun fun and they looked so sweet on the cake. They were really easy to do. Roll some orange sugar paste in to a fat cone and then score lines across with a knife. Then I cut thin strips from rolled green sugar paste and curled them as the roots. They were chubby little carrots but I liked them very much!
So the verdict was cake was tasty but not as good as my usual but the carrots were a triumph!

The great cake challenge

The great cake challenge has officially begun! I was set the challenge by my lovely husband Edd and consists of well, baking! Every week (or as often as possible) I am to trial a new recipe or a new and interesting cake decoration. Like many of you I have my tried and tested cake recipes that never fail and so have little need to change. However, despite their deliciousness it's time to try the new, if only for the excuse of eating cake! The first challenge cake was a Hummingbird cake from the fantastical Hummingbird Bakery Cook Book (my favourite!). Yum Yum is all I can say! The Hummingbird Cake is similar to a carrot cake in consistency but instead of carrot it is packed with pineapple, bananas and pecan nuts. It really is a fantastic combination. And to make it even better the whole thing is sandwiched and covered with a delicious cream cheese frosting. It was even a triple layered cake so had even more yummy frosting. It works really well as a nice desert style cake and was definately a favourite with my family. I have to say I am definately converted on this one and it is certainly a new cake that I will be adding to my staple recipes!
Apologies about the lack of photo. I appear to have just deleted it from my camera! I will just have to bake it again instead!