Sachertorte Cupcakes and Home Bake Box Review

I've written before about the Home Bake Box mini box I ordered and made macarons from; I subscribed for a second month to see what I got and once again it was something I'd made before, though this time much more successfully than the macarons: Sachertorte.

Again all the ingredients were neatly weighed and packaged in little labelled bags with a recipe card. There was also a note saying that when they had packaged the first few bags of jam they had leaked so they were double bagged, and wouldn't be sending jam through the post again!

When I made it before, I made the traditional round cake with the word Sacher written on the top. This time instead of suggesting we pipe that word (which is how I thought it was always made), we were given some gold leaf to decorate the top. I was also interested to see the recipe gave instructions for making three different sized cakes, either a larger single layer, a smaller two layer cake, or cupcakes.

Since I had made it before I thought it might be fun to try out the cupcakes. There's not a lot of point me posting the recipe here as it isn't a recipe as such - the sachets were labelled things like 'cake mix' so I couldn't tell you exactly what quantities of which ingredients you need.

The method was quite interesting in that I had to beat the egg whites - this made for a really light and fluffy cake.

 

Almost there...

 

The cupcakes before and after baking. Afterwards, I spread a little of the apricot jam as a glaze on top.

Finally I had to make a chocolate ganache to cover the top but couldn't see the amount of cream I needed to add to the chocolate that was provided. By this point I had gotten so used to all the ingredients being pre-measured that it never occurred to me to turn over the recipe card and look on the back, so I just guessed how much cream to use (I was getting impatient by this point) and my chocolate ganache ended up too runny. It still worked ok, but was a little thinner on top of the cupcakes - you can still see some of the apricot jam in places.

We were also provided with a small piece of gold leaf and instructions to use scissors or tweezers, not our fingers. So I used scissors but when the pieces stuck to the scissors and I tried to get them off with my fingers they stuck to my fingers - doh! This was the first time I had used gold leaf - I know it's normally pretty expensive - and it's not something I'd be particularly bothered about using again unless it was a really integral part of a cake decoration.

Here are the finished cupcakes, with all the gold leaf that I could get onto them (the rest ended up stuck to my fingers!) - they tasted a lot better than they looked!

Wedding Cupcakes, How to Make Sugar Flowers and some Reviews

I was delighted to be asked to make some cupcakes for the wedding of my boyfriend's lovely cousin and her fiance. They wanted the cupcakes for the evening buffet, and the bride sent me a photo of some she liked, which were covered in white with white roses and bows. She also told me that the wedding colours were white and pale pink. I didn't have much time (as I didn't get a huge amount of notice) and wasn't sure I could make that many edible decorations in time, so the bride-to-be had found a website where we could also buy some. I ended up using a combination of both and also came across a product that made making edible flowers a lot quicker and easier, which I will review below.

I spent several evenings over the course of a week making the flowers. I used flower paste, as you can roll it thinner and it dries harder than fondant, so is ideal for modelling.

The Craft Company is a supplier of cake decorating products, ingredients and baking equipment that I have used before and have always been pleased with their service and quality. They contacted me to ask if I would like to review a product from their range, and I chose this blossom cutter and mould set, which costs £9.98. It is also available in other flower shapes including butterfly, daisy, hydrangea and petunia. I chose the 'blossom' shape as I thought it would be ideal for the wedding cupcakes.

The set is very simple to use. Roll out the flower paste and use the cutter to cut out the shapes.

Place the flower shape on one side of the silicon mould - one side has an indent and the other side is raised.

Close the mould and press down gently - you don't actually need to press very hard at all.

Open it out and you have a beautiful flower with petal details. This is really quick and easy to use and would be a God-send if you are having to make a lot of flowers for a big cake or lots of cupcakes. I was sent this free of charge but is definitely something I would have spent my own money on. The cutter and mould also comes with an instruction leaflet which was easy to follow.

I made several flowers in the space of just a few minutes and left them to dry.

It's also very easy to colour the flowers (or use coloured flowerpaste in the first place). I used pink lustre dust on the flowers, giving more coverage to some than to others.

As I mentioned, I also bought some cupcake toppers, from a website called Sugar Sugar Cake Decorations. There was a wide selection of products to choose from, and in several different colours. I ordered some bows, large roses and small roses in white, and mini sprays of roses in pink. Everything is handmade to order and you are asked to allow a few days drying time; these arrived in the space of a week and were carefully packaged in tissue paper and bubble wrap. I was also really pleased that the box was flat enough that it went through my letterbox - I can only get to the local sorting office once a week due to their opening hours so was a bit worried if I would get these in time for the wedding but they were delivered to my door.

Here you can see the products I ordered; they weren't too expensive though it's obviously cheaper to make your own if you can - I knew I wouldn't have enough time and I was happy to cover the cost of the cupcake ingredients, toppers and wrappers as my present to the happy couple.

I also decided to make some roses myself and used this Jem Easy Rose cutter which I also bought at Cake International, though you can get it from many stockists online. It's really easy to use once you know what you're doing, and did come with an instruction leaflet. Roll out your sugarpaste and use the cutter to press down and make a flower shape.

Roll a small piece of flower paste into a cone, and place in the middle of the flower.

Fold up each petal in turn, curling it around the cone in the middle. When you've done that, cut out another flower, place the rose you've just made on top, and curl up the petals of the second flower.

You may need a little edible glue on the second flower to get the petals to stick. Once you've folded them around, ease back the edges of some of the outer petals to create a curve at the top.

 I bought this PME pink lustre spray at Cake International. It's really easy to use and you can either give an even coverage or more of a subtle hint depending on how you spray it.

I gave some of the roses a light coating and left them to dry. I left the other flowers white.

 I also made one rose out of pink sugar paste but I decided the pink was too dark for what I wanted. Here are a selection of the flowers I made.

The bride had requested vanilla cupcakes, which I have to admit made my life easier! I used a simple recipe that turned out to be really light and fluffy; I usually find vanilla cupcakes too plain to be interesting but these were extremely good.

You need:
225g butter
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
225g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream the butter and the sugar, then mix in the eggs and fold in the flour and the baking powder. Add the vanilla extract. Bake in the oven at 175C for about 15 minutes; it will depend on the size of the cupcakes.

Most of the cakes were either flat or only slightly raised which was good. I covered some in fondant; I cut out circles with a pastry cutter and secured onto the cakes with a thin layer of buttercream.

I used more buttercream to fix the roses I had made onto the cakes. I was really pleased with these.

Pink and white rose cupcakes - I actually liked these more than the edible flowers I bought, though I have to admit they did save me a lot of time, as I wouldn't have been able to make enough of these to go on to every cupcake (I made nearly 60 cupcakes in the end).

I wanted to put cake wrappers around the cakes and found a website called Essesea that offered personalised cupcake wrappers, among other items. I chose plain white wrappers which I personalised with the name of the bride and groom and the date of their wedding.

Unfortunately I found that when I put these around the cupcakes they weren't quite big enough, and I had to secure them with sellotape (rather than tucking tab A into slot B, as they didn't quite reach). I think it's because I used large cupcake cases -the website does say these wrappers will fit standard-sized cupcakes rather than large muffin-sized cakes, so it's my own fault. They worked fine in the end with the sellotape anyway, and I thought they looked really good; the bride was very pleased when she spotted them.

The wrappers were 50p each so would be quite expensive if you needed a lot; I used these for some but not all of the cupcakes.

I covered most of the other cakes with royal icing and then placed the toppers I had bought over the internet on top. I also decorated some of the cupcakes with tiny white pearls all the way around the edge - it took a long time and was very fiddly so I didn't do all of them that way.

I bought some more cupcake wrappers from a website called Cake Craft World; they were only £1.99 for a pack of 12 so a lot cheaper than the others. They are a solid colour with a delicate rose pattern, so not quite as nice as lacy wrappers but a lot cheaper. They were also easy to fix together and fit around my cupcakes perfectly.

Here's a cupcake with a smooth royal icing top and one of the flowers I made using the blossom cutter and mould from the Craft Company.

A selection of cupcakes, some with the flowers I made and some with the decorations I ordered:

I also piped some buttercream roses onto some of the cupcakes; I will do a separate post on this.

 I took a couple of my cake stands to the wedding reception, and put them out with the cupcakes for the evening reception.

I was quite pleased with how these turned out and I had several nice comments from other guests at the wedding. I also created a cupcake bouquet but I think that deserves a separate post all to itself!

Thanks to The Craft Company for sending me the blossom cutter and mould set to review; I was not required to write a positive review and all opinions are my own. I paid for the other items mentioned in this post with my own money and chose the suppliers myself.

Ginger Bonfire Night cupcakes with popping candy

I wanted to make something for Bonfire Night as we were going to watch the fireworks then back to a friend's house for some food afterwards, and for a long time have had the idea of popping candy in my head. Do you remember eating that when you were a kid? I used to love the way it would fizz and pop in your mouth, and hoped it would have the same effect sprinkled on cupcakes!

I also wanted to make my cupcakes fit the theme so decorated them to look like little bonfires. The cakes themselves are ginger flavour which I think also works really well for this time of year!

The recipe I used was from the book Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery, though the decoration idea was my own.

There is a separate recipe for the frosting below. For the cakes, you need:

200g butter, softened
175g brown sugar
3 tbsp black treacle
150ml milk
4 pieces stem ginger from a jar of stem ginger in syrup. Chop the ginger and reserve the syrup for the icing.
2 eggs
300g self-raising flour
1 tbsp ground ginger
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 180C/ 160 C fan.

In a saucepan, melt the butter, sugar and treacle over a low heat. Take off the heat then stir in the milk.

Beat the eggs in another bowl, chop the stem ginger (reserving the syrup) and add the ginger pieces to the egg mixture. Beat this into the butter mixture- either still in the saucepan or you can transfer it to a bowl.

Add the flour, ground ginger and salt and mix well.

Spoon into cupcake cases - I had some Halloween ones as I couldn't find anything that would have specifically worked for Bonfire Night, though in retrospect I think a metallic red would have been good. But I did pretty well with this recipe and had all the ingredients in the house already - even the stem ginger and the treacle - so didn't want to go out and buy cake cases specially.

Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes then leave to cool.

Ginger buttercream frosting
280g butter, softened
8 tbsp ginger syrup from the jar of stem ginger
600g icing sugar

You can either make this in one batch then separate it, or in two as I did. If you want to make two batches, halve the ingredients.
Otherwise, beat the butter until creamy, add the syrup then the icing sugar and mix to make buttercream.

Take each bowl - or separate the mixture into two bowls - and colour one orange and one red. I used some orange Wilton gel colour that I had from Halloween last year, and it only needed a tiny amount to turn a lovely orange colour. For the pink, I used a few drops of liquid food colouring - admittedly it was one that was made from natural ingredients so wasn't neon pink like some are - but then I added a few more drops, and a few more, and still wasn't happy with the colour, so I used a tiny dab of Sugarflair ruby red sugarpaste colouring and that was perfect.

Spoon each icing into a piping bag. This is the point at which I started wishing I had the new duo colour piping bag set from Lakeland as it would have been perfect to use here - you can pipe two colours at once and swirl them together. That was the effect I wanted to create with the red and the orange icing, to look like the flames of the bonfire, so I took it in turns to pipe some of each colour onto the cupcake. I did a small blob of icing and drew the bag upwards so it stood up like a little flame. Unfortunately the red was a little softer than the orange (from all the liquid food colouring, I expect!) so it didn't quite stand up as well, but I thought it still looked nice.

Here you can see how I did one colour first, then the second colour in the gaps around it:

Next I cut up some Cadbury's Flake and arranged the pieces on the cupcake to look like logs on the bonfire.

Now for my favourite part: the popping candy!

I sprinkled a little popping candy on each cupcake in the gap at the top of the flake pieces. I wonder whether I should warn people before they eat the cake, or just let them have the surprise? I think the popping candy will mimic the effect of fireworks going off.

The finished cupcakes for tonight's Bonfire Night party