Birthday Cupcake Order

I had an order for 25 cupcakes yesterday, with instructions to make 'girly' cupcakes with guest's names on (on similar scrolls to the Supernatural cupcakes). So I made these cuties.

GAH! I've really got to find a way of getting non-blurry close ups. Maybe next time. Anyway. I'm a big fan of butterflies and as I was given free reign within the girly category it was pretty much inevitable that I was going to make fondant butterflies as toppers. I also made little pink and purple flowers to go on top, but I figured the cupcake would be a little busy with all the decorations going on. So I stuck to the butterflies instead :)

I don't think you can see very clearly on these, but the butterflies were embossed with little flower designs using these embossers. I adore these. Love them, love them. I first found them on CakeJournal, where she used them on these cupcakes and ordered them almost straight away. My only irritation is that I don't use them very often as I don't often use fondant on cupcakes. The fondant discs are nice and all, but they bring down the taste quite dramatically unless you lather the underneath with jam! I like the effect on the butterflies though :-)

One more photo for luck I think. The cakes are in one of my tins as she specifically asked for no packaging. I'm still waiting for her to return it actually. Ho hum.

<3>

Cupcakes for a birthday

For my birthday, my mum's friend smuggled me into the spa that she works in and paid for lunch and paid for a treatment, plus I got to use all the fabulous spa rooms, pool and loungers. It was her birthday this week and because I'm poor and have no connections to any amazing places that she could go to, I thought that the best way to say a joint thank you and happy birthday would be to make her cupcakes. I'm quite good at it after all :-)

There are an extra two crammed into the box to stop them moving around - I couldn't exactly charge her for packaging when she was getting them for free and I was a bit too skint to buy a couple of the proper cupcake boxes. :-( Anyway, so the presentation wasn't as it could've been, but in all fairness, she got an extra 2 cupcakes, so I'm sure she wasn't complaining!


There's vanilla with vanilla butter cream, mocha (coffee cupcakes with mocha icing) chocolate and rhubarb and custard.

The rhubarb and custard were made with almost 50% more rhubarb than they were made with last week and the result was a bit weird. They were hardly a cake at all in the end, but when you bit into the slightly chewy crust you got a viscous rhubarb ... almost paste. It was heavenly. Next time I'd take the rhubarb content down a bit, but only because I'm on a quest to find a cake recipe, not a cakepie. But seriously guys; yum.

My mother, who normally limits her evaluation of my food to 'very nice' or constructive criticism rang me as I was at the supermarket to tell me that they were 'criminally good' and that they were the nicest things that she's ever eaten, ever. I'd say that she's exaggerating, but she doesn't do that with my food. So I was pleased! Of course, that's dependant of tastebuds. I'd also sorted the custard topping so that it was pipable (basically by whisking the cream till stiff and then folding in enough custard to taste but not enough to ruin the consistency) and she almost fell in love with that. She had about 5 ("but only two with the topping on!") and then wondered why she felt very sick *rolls eyes affectionately*