Batman Cup Cakes

A nice easy one today - Batcupcakes.

I'm Batman...

Today's toy is a Batman cookie cutter!




Cup cakes -
4oz marg
4oz caster sugar
4 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4oz self raising flour

Icing (this made loads, most of which I'm saving for next week) -
Big dollop marg  (sorry, that's not very technical.)
1kg icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

100g block of black icing

Make up cakes as usual - cream marg and sugar together, whisk in eggs and vanilla, mix in flour.
Scoop into large cup cakes with you trusty medium sized ice-cream scoop.
Cook for 20mins or so at 190oC until golden brown and cooked through.

Allow to cool on a wire rack (look at my funky new rack! It stacks!!!)

Roll out the icing on a flat surface with a light dusting of icing sugar. Rotate, flip and roll until it's about 2mm thick.

 Buff with polishing tool for a mirror finish.

Doesn't quite show how mirrory this was!

Take the cutter and stamp out many many bats...

 

 

Lift each bat carefully and allow to air dry on a nonstick sheet.

Load a sandwich bag with icing - force it all into one corner, then snip the corner off. Twist the bag until it starts flowing out of the hole.
Holding a cake in one hand, apply firm and constant pressure to the bag and rotate either the cake or the icing to cover the cake in an inwards spiral.

Let the cakes dry for an hour before applying the bats (if they don't quite stick scrape a small amount of icing off the tops. Only a tiny bit. Just enough to stop them wobbling about)

Present cakes to excitable child for his 4th birthday...

Vanilla Cup Cakes

 

Vanilla Cupcakes
Dry ingredients:

280g caster sugar
240g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
80g margarine, softened


Wet ingredients:

240ml (8½ fl oz) milk
½ tsp vanilla essence
2 medium eggs

-Sift the dry ingredients together into a large bowl, add the margarine and whiz until the mix resembles breadcrumbs.
-Combine the wet ingredients in a jug, and whisk together. Mix, whilst gradually adding this to the dry ingredients.
-Whisk until smooth.

-Pour the mix into cake cases in deep tins (fill the cases about 3/4 full). (I got to use my icecream scoops again - small for regular sized cakes, medium for muffin cases)
-Bake in the middle of a pre-heated oven (190oC) for about 20mins.
-Perform a skewer test just to make sure they're cooked through.
-Leave in the tins for 10 minutes or so, before removing the cakes and placing on a cooling rack until cooled through.

Decorate with swirls of buttercream icing.

Crumbs? Well... yes, I may have sampled a couple...

Only in the name of quality control, you understand...

 And here are some for the boy downstairs!

These cakes shouldn't be eaten on the day of baking. They're just too sticky... best leave them til the next day. They're even good a couple of days later. If they last that long.

Flutterby cakes

Just an excuse to play with food colouring and butterfly cutters, really!

There's not much to say here - It's a standard cake mix divided into cake cases (purple, naturally), baked, cooled and decorated.
Somehow I've managed to achieve cakes with a completely flat top. I doubt I could do it again ;-)

Here are the cutters; plunger butterflies. They both cut out and emboss details on the shapes.

Available from that popular online auction site. Or Lakeland. Or other places.

So... what did I do? This was a while ago. (Terrible blogger that I am...)
Ok. Ummm.. Butter cream icing! And pink food colouring!

This was made using the instructions on the icing box, and 5 drops of red colouring gel. (75g (3 oz) butter
175g (6 oz) icing sugar, a few drops of vanillla essence and milk)

When it's a nice smooth consistency place some in an icing bag with a star tipped nozzle (I do prefer the round tip, but I can't face piping chocolate with it!)
Squeeze the icing onto the cake top in a spiral motion. Twirl the cake, twirl the bag, twirl both - whichever's easier.




Messy messy!!

Next up are the butterflies (actually, this is out of order. I made the butterflies while the cakes were baking, as they need to harden slightly)
Tint up some roll out icing. One batch with red gel, one batch with red and blue gel.
Knead thoroughly until evenly coloured. (huh. where's that photo gone? it was there a minute ago!)

Roll out onto a smooth surface, dusted with icing sugar. Dust a rolling pin and begin rolling the icing out, turning regularly and re-dusting where necessary.
Roll to about 2mm thick.

Using the plunger cut out a shape, then stamp the plunger down to emboss the wings.
I made a selection of flat and three-dimensional butterflies.

(for the 3D ones concertina a stiff piece of paper and lay it out. Gently bend each butterfly down its centre and place in a V. I found it easier to lay the butterfly in the V first, then poke it into place with an icing stick.)

You'll need to attach the butterflies before the cake icing fully sets.

 

Tickled Pink!

There's been no baking this week; it's far too hot!!

So here's one I made earlier.

This one is putting the cupcake stand to good use... and getting to play with the sprinkles...

I do love my sprinkle collection. And I quite like pink as well. You might not have noticed.

 Chocolate hoops! Sugar pearls!

Chocolate flakes! Sugar glitter!

Hundreds and Thousands!  Silver balls! 

Chocolate rice balls! More Chocolate Sprinkles!

 As you can see the icing was applied with a trowel!

I do however have a new icing bag.... soon... soon!