Craft me Happy!

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Scooby Doo 40th Birthday Cake

I absolutely love making this chocolate fingers and Smarties cake. I made a 6 inch version of this cake last year for Maisie's birthday. It really is very simple and yet makes a grand entrance every time.

I decided to make it again for Simon's 40th birthday party as it's so easy and effective. This time however, I needed a lot more cake. I always think adding a second tier to a birthday cake has a much greater impact than just making a bigger cake, and this style of cake really lends itself well to having a second tier.

I made a 6 inch and an 8 inch Madeira cake and placed both of the cakes onto a thin cake board the same size as the cake. I then just inserted cake dowels, that had all been cut to the same length, for the top tier to sit on.

These dowels were cut about 1 or 2cm above the top of the bottom cake as I wanted to leave room for Smarties - it also meant that I didn't have to level off my cake too accurately.

With careless regard for how little time I had to make this cake, I asked Simon what theme he would like for his birthday cake and he flippantly suggested Scooby Doo. (!) I briefly had amazing ideas of jaunty haunted houses with ghosts and bats flying around and a Mystery Machine on top... and then I came to my senses and decided to attempt just a Scooby Doo figure with a number 40. Ever so often I need to remind myself to be realistic...

I'm not in a position to give you a tutorial for Scooby as this is the first figure I've made out of sugar and so I'm certainly no expert. My Scooby looks like he's eaten a few too many Scooby snacks, but I did have fun making him.

I'm slightly embarrased to post him, as he's pretty amateurish, but hey, it's all good birthday fun! I made him out of flower paste or gum paste (which sets harder than roll out fondant icing) and I coloured him with concentrated paste colour. He did come to life a little after I added a few touches with a black Sugarflair pen.

I made my number 40 banner out of flower paste too. I printed out the number 40 in the Whimsy font. This font is perfect for this project as it's nice and chunky, so not too fragile when it's made out of sugar. Mine's about 8cm tall - the bigger it is, the easier it will be to cut out of paste later... I then cut out my paper number to use as a template.

I coloured my flower paste in blue and green and rolled it out to about 4mm thick. I then laid over my '40' paper template and cut it out with a craft knife. I cut some bamboo kebab skewers down to size and then sandwiched them between the back of my number and a scrap piece of flower paste and glued all 3 together with some edible glue.

After my numbers had dried, I iced around the edge with white royal icing and stuck on some mini Smarties.

Then of course, I needed somewhere to stick my skewers so that they would stand up. I did try just inserting them into the cake, but they were too heavy and there was a risk of them just slicing through my cake. I didn't have any cake picks to hand, so as a last resort I skewered 2 holes into poor Scooby's back and left him to dry completely.

My unfortunate Scooby actually did a pretty good job of holding up my sign and from a distance it all looked pretty good.

-------

Supplies needed

6" and 8" Madeira cakes. I use this Madeira cake recipe.
Jam for the cake filling.
Buttercream for the cake filling. I used Dr Oetker vanilla buttercream for speed.
6" and 8" cake cards or thin cake boards to go directly under the cakes.
Thicker 8" and 10" cake boards.
4 cake dowels to support the top tier.
Smarties.
Chocolate fingers - about 43 for the 6" cake and about 56 for the 8" cake.
Chocolate to melt for the cake tops and to 'stick on' the chocolate fingers.
A few metres of ribbon.
Flower paste or gum paste.
Edible Glue.
Flower paste colours.
Kebab Skewers.
Black Sugarflair pen.
Royal icing.
A piping bag.

--------------------

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Cake Pop Topiary

For Christmas, Simon bought the house a cake pop maker. As a rule, kitchen presents are always 'for the house' around here and this was no exception. The idea was that Maisie and I could have fun making and decorating them and we could all have fun eating them. I have to say, for a fun present it has gone down very well. Maisie and I have spent a good few hours baking and decorating cake pops - icing them and sticking on Smarties and pretty sugary shapes. She will eat them afterwards as well, which is always a bonus!

I wanted to make some cake pops for Simon's birthday party and I've been trying to find different ways of displaying them. It occured to me that I could make a kind of topiary out of cake pops, so I looked around for some ideas. I saw this very nice ombre cake pop tree on Pinterest - do have a look it's quite incredible!

I wanted to make something a little more informal than this as it was just for a small party at home. Also, I wanted to put little cake cases on my cake pops as I felt that this was just a bit more practical. It will allow people to handle them a bit more and I don't know about anybody else, but we've had many a cake pop fall on the floor as they've broken off the sticks. I thought adding little cake cases may help to solve this problem.

To make the basic tree shape, I used a vase that I bought for £3 in my local discount store, a cone of florist foam cut to shape to fit inside the top of the vase, a 12cm sphere of florist foam, some garden canes cut to size, some tissue paper and some ribbon.

To make my vase a bit more sturdy I filled the base below the foam with glass beads.

I inserted my garden canes into both of my floristry foam shapes and secured them into the base with a hot glue gun. I wrapped both of my foam shapes with tissue paper to make them a bit more 'food safe' and secured the tissue paper to the sphere with a ribbon. And there you have an undressed cake pop topiary!

For the cake pops themselves I cut 3.5" lollipop sticks in half and I used some 'Sweetly Does It', Petit Fours Cases. To get a rough idea of how many cake pops I needed to make, I made a hole in the centre of the cake case with a knitting needle and attached each one to the foam sphere with a half lollipop stick. It worked out at roughly 43 cake pops.

So I set to work... These cake pops are not the more popular, traditional ones made with crumbled up cake and fondant icing. They are round balls of cake, so they're much lighter and 'sponge like'. I imagine that they are quicker to make than the hand rolled ones, but you haven't got the flexibility of shape as you would if you were forming them by hand.

They cook in batches of 12 and each batch takes 5 minutes, so it didn't actually take long to make 48 cake pops. Once out of the machine, I like to sit them lighter side down on the cooling tray.

Then I sat them in the fridge to cool down completely and melted some chocolate to attach the sticks with. Once cooled I inserted my stick into the melted chocolate and then inserted the stick into the lighter, softer side of the cake pop. I put them back in the fridge for the chocolate to set completely and then put them all in a freezer bag to be frozen overnight.

I like to cover my cake pops in good old fashioned chocolate. Cadbury's milk chocolate and Tesco's best white chocolate to be precise. I fill a narrow cup with pieces of chocolate and then melt them in the microwave. Then I just dip the cake pops into the chocolate and tap them on the side of the cup until the chocolate stops dripping. I do find that if you cover them in chocolate while they are frozen it sets very quickly and you haven't got the problem of your chocolate dripping everywhere.

Once they're set comes the fun part of inserting the sticks back into the sphere. This is where the cake cases came in handy as I wasn't handling the chocolate as I would without them. I started at the top and I was able to reuse many of the original holes, however as I moved lower down I had to remake a few of the holes as my cake pops were slightly bigger than I estimated. As it turned out, I used 37 cake pops to cover the sphere - so a decent amount for a party of 12.

To finish it off I poured a packet of jelly beans onto the base to cover the tissue paper and to serve as a sweet treat.

If I'd had more time I would have loved to have iced each cake with swirls of chocolate or stuck on smarties, flowers or sugar crystals. Oh the possibilities!

----------

Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin' or Instagram

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Maisie's Toy Bag

Some of you may remember, many months ago, (well 9 to be precise), I posted about a felted hanging storage bag that I made for Maisie's room. I had a bit of interest in the pattern, and I also fancied making another one for Maisie's room. So, over the last year, I've been sporadically working on the pattern, trying to get it to the point that I would be happy to show it to somebody else.

I felt that the original one needed a little more shape to it, so I spun up some more yarn and set about tweaking my pattern a little. I added a few more increases and then some decreases close to the top. The top is the same size as the original, but there's just a bit more fullness to it in the middle.

If I was going to post it to Ravelry I needed to specify a yarn that it can be made with. As my yarn is bordering on super chunky I chose Rowan Big Wool in White Hot as I know that this yarn felts and shrinks beautifully.

This was actually a really interesting experiment for me, as I knew that the Rowan Big Wool was going to knit up much bigger than my yarn, but I had no idea just how much bigger!

As you can see, the Rowan bag was HUGE next to my hand spun bag, but it was also much limper and so I knew that it would need more felting than the hand spun one.

Here are my bags next to each other after they've both been through a single 40 degree cycle. The green hand spun one is about the size I want it and it's holding its shape very well, but the Rowan bag really needs another felting cycle.

Finally, here are both of my bags sitting side by side after the Rowan bag has been through a second felting cycle. I just love the solid, structural nature of the cream bag after it's been felted more.

I added a few of my shrink plastic beads to the flowers. They are perfect for this project as they have the same hand made feel and I doubt that the bag's going to go through many more washes.

So, after picking this project up and putting it down, many times over the last year, it is finally finished. Hurrah!

The pattern is finished too and here it is on Ravelry.