Christmas time!

Following on from my previous post, time for latest instalment of the backlog!


After the terrifying looking angels/angles?! from my last blog, I decided to try my luck at piping some Christmas tree cupcakes. I learnt some very valuable lessons. 

Lesson One: Gel food dye is awful stuff, well Silver spoon is. It leaves a really chemically after taste in your mouth, most unpleasant! It also requires quite a bit of dye to get to even half the shade you were hoping for. Not good, the photo, makes it look much greener than it did in real life (the shade I was hoping for).


Lesson Two: Don't bother trying to incorporate glitter into your icing, total waste of time. Does it show up? Does it heck! Also on the glitter front, I learnt "dumping" it over your piped Christmas tree cupcakes makes them look like a five year old has helped. No five year old had helped me so I have no excuse! Lesson learnt! Also make sure your glitter is edible and not just non toxic, there is a difference!


Lesson Three: Not really a lesson, more a tip, but to smooth my base out and make them a bit more Christmassy I added a disk of Marzipan with some Icing sugar over, it made them taste really nice (can't remember what sponge mix I used) but it worked well with it and added to the Christmas feel :)



Now feeling like I had conquered the butter icing world I tried cream cheese icing. Well, I have no idea what happened here, a big, but tasty gloopy mess! All I can presume is that  Verity (the Kitchen Aid) and I may have over beaten it! Ooops! Lesson learnt, and I am happy to report all subsequent cream cheese frostings have been a success!

Cream cheese frosting goo disaster!

After this came some slight, and it really was slight recipe "tweaking" I used a basic chocolate sponge recipe with grated orange zest, I also added some to the basic chocolate butter icing. The zest made the sponge beautifully moist. I finished it off with some Terry's chocolate orange segments (thank god they're on offer over Christmas, and they're not Terry's they're mine!). Tasted magnificent, the look... well I tried piping it... it looked like dog ... (you get the gist) so I tried using a spatula. 

Now at this time I didn't have a nice little spatula that makes them look all smooth and professional, I had a big old cooking spatula! It would seem not quite the same effect can be created! Luckily about this time a cupcake shop opened right by me which sold these things, about 150 pounds lighter off, I was fully supplied, and broke!




Laura and Verity! xx