How to make a Cupcake Bouquet, step-by-step!

As this is a question I get asked quite a bit, I decided to photo my latest cupcake bouquet every step of the way to show exactly how it's done. It's fairly easy to do and by using different colours and decorations you can create a beautiful bouquet that not only looks lovely but tastes great too! 

You will need:

A suitable container (I like to use metal buckets that are easily available from florist suppliers, they are approx 6" across - you could also use terracotta pots or anything else of a suitable size that takes your fancy), plastic disposable cups, various coloured tissue paper, sellotape and a stapler.
Optional: cellophane, ribbon, sugarpaste, elastic band, edible glitter.

You also, of course, need a batch of cupcakes plus enough buttercream to decorate them! You will only need seven but my recipe makes twelve so plenty to nibble on later ;)

This time I used good old vanilla for both cake and buttercream but you can use any flavour combination you wish.

Method:

To start off, you need 7 plastic cups, arrange them into this shape:

Now, at this point, you can either staple them together as they are or you can do as I did and wrap some tissue paper around each cup (sellotape comes in handy here just to keep in place) before stapling for an even lovelier effect, like this:

If you'd like to use cellophane, now is the time to wrap it around your pot as it's much more fiddly to do it later on - cut a big square of cellophane, turn your pot upside down and secure with an elastic band, don't worry that it looks awful, we can pretty it up later!

Next, take a sheet of a different colour tissue paper which will complement your icing colours, cut in half and lay out flat across each other:

Lay the tissue sheets over the top of your container and gently push your cup arrangement downwards pushing the tissue paper with it.

Ok, you're ready to ice your cupcakes! For these ones, I used a Wilton 2D nozzle in a piping bag and painted a stripe of red extra colouring up the seam of the bag before filling with buttercream to get a two tone effect with the icing.

Another optional bit now! To make the cakes a little bit more special, I rolled out some red sugarpaste and used a plunger cutter to make some flowers, added one to each cake and then dusted each cupcake with some edible glitter.

To assemble your bouquet, simply pop a cupcake into each cup holder! I then tied a length of red ribbon around the pot to cover that elastic band!

And there you have it, a gorgeous bouquet of cupcakes! Perfect for a present :)

Happy Baking :)

New Cutters!

 My other half loved my fondant covered cupcakes so much that I decided to make some more as I had some new plunger cutters to try out. I LOVE getting new stuff, it's like the postie is bringing me a present and I can't rest until I've used my new goodies.

First I decided to do the same as my previous fondant covered cakes and scoop out some cake so you get a lovely bite of buttercream inside, then I went for a Valentine's theme although they would be perfect for someone special all year round.

Then I thought I'd do some yellow butterflies with a Happy Birthday message:

I used some glitter writing icing to embellish the butterfly wings a bit and for centres on the flowers. They came out pretty well, I dusted both sets with some rainbow glitter for a bit of extra sparkle, I'm really liking the glitter, looks beautiful when the light catches it!

As the new website will enable customers to choose and pay for their cakes completely online, I'm thinking of offering these cakes for personal customisation - choose the wording, the base colour, the decoration colour, the decoration style and even the cake/filling flavour. That way, every order will be bespoke exactly as the customer chooses!

For inquiries or orders, please contact me at bakerloucakes@hotmail.com - or leave a comment :)

Baking Frenzy!

I'm still designing products for the new website so I've been baking lots of different things so I can take photos for the product images. Yesterday I couldn't make up my mind which flavours to try out, the choice was between sticky toffee, chocolate orange and mint choc chip. Being a woman and hormonal, I kept dithering and ended up baking all three flavours!

This is the chocolate orange cupcake, I just adapted my usual rich chocolate recipe by adding fresh orange zest and juice, same with the icing:

I'm not a fan of chocolate orange personally but I must admit this one was good!

Next I tried the mint choc chip, I've always been a bit dubious about this flavour as I kinda thought it would be a bit like cake smeared with toothpaste, so I decided to really up the chocolate content by adding choc chips to the cake as well as using them as a topping. And it worked, really pleased with how they came out :)

Finally it was time to experiment with sticky toffee. When I make this as a pudding, it always goes down a storm so I was hoping it would work well in cupcake form. I used my usual trusty recipe for a moist toffee flavour sponge, when cooled I scooped a bit of cake from the top of each one and filled it with a gooey toffee sauce (after I'd tested it a few times, naturally!) To finish off, I piped on a small amount of buttercream as I didn't want to overdo the sweetness and scattered a few mini fudge chunks on top.

The sticky toffee was so yummy although next time I think I would make the sauce thicker as it did kind of sink into the cake, still fabulous though!