New cupcake flavour...Bakewell

We've added a new cupcake flavour to our varieties, the Bakewell cupcake, inspired by cherry bakewells.  It has that all important almondy flavour with raspberry jam and coated in icing and a glace cherry.  If you love cherry bakewells you'll love these new cupcakes.  They contain almond extract so nut allergy sufferers will miss out I'm afraid.

Moshi Monster cake and more

I had great fun creating all these Moshi Monsters for this cake, I had heard of Moshi Monsters before but didn't realise there were so many of them, here we have Mini Ben, McNulty, Mr Snoodle, White Fang, Oddie and Jeepers.  They're all made out of sugarpaste and completely edible, as long as you enjoy eating sugarpaste.

Here's a cake featuring characters from Shrek, Puss In Boots was the favourite so I put him more in the forefront, and look, he's gone and scratched the birthday message into the cake with his sword!  Again they have been made from sugarpaste but kept flat to the surface of the cake.

This In The Night Garden cake is done in a similar way, with the characters kept flat, it was a bit of a squeeze getting all of them on there.  I decorated the bottom of the cake with a leaf border and lots of little flowers.

Here's a yummy triple chocolate giant cupcake which is decorated with white chocolate swirls and Cadbury Twirl chunks.

A novelty cake of someone's boat complete with a model of their dog.

And keeping with the sailing theme, here's a wedding cake we did featuring sailboats, this was a three tier fruit cake and very heavy it was too, good job Jay was carrying it and not me, I took the models.

And to finish off, we have a cake bite tower cake.  The 'cake' part is actually cake dummies and it was used to display the cake bites, but I think a chocolate cake covered in cake bites would be just as good.

Jubilee weekend cakes

This Union Jack cake was donated by us for a Jubilee event and it was being auctioned off to raise money for Help for Heroes, we were glad to hear that it went for £60 and we hope the purchasers of this cake are tucking in and enjoying it.  We were busy with other cake orders over the weekend including various cupcake orders, and here are some of the cakes we did.

Here's a birthday cake we did featuring the main characters from In the Night Garden.

 

A scrummy triple chocolate cake.

And a small selection of some of the cupcakes we made.  We hope everyone had a good long weekend and enjoyed that extra bank holiday, shame about the good old british weather!

Wedding Fayre and Latest Cakes

Well it's been a while since I've blogged again......oops, I said I wasn't going to leave such a gap but we've been so busy.  We did our first wedding fayre at the weekend and we had a very good time and gave out lots of sample cakes and met lots of lovely people, even got some wedding cake orders, so I guess we did a good job.  Our cake bites went down very well too, some of the comments we got were 'I'm in heaven', 'it's like a party in my mouth', and 'amazing', we sell them as wedding favours and they are very scrummy. 

Anyway, I'll keep things brief and leave you with a selection of pictures of some cakes we've been making since the last blog post.

I said we'd been busy, and that's not including the cupcake orders we've had go out!

Baby shower, Chihuahua and hearts

These are some baby shower cupcakes we did a couple of weeks ago, they are vanilla cupcakes with multi coloured sprinkles and handmade sugarpaste decorations.  The decorations are little prams, bibs, baby grows and teddy bears in shades of pink, blue, lilac, yellow and green.

A hand painted decorated cake this time featuring a chihuahua.  I use Sugarflair food colouring pastes which are great for painting with, I use them in the same way as painting with water colour paints.

Another celebration cake, this time simply decorated with red hearts, piped beading and a crimped pattern edging.

Spongebob Squarepants Cake

 

This celebration cake features Spongebob and Squidward Tentacles, they've both been made out of sugarpaste and the cake has been decorated with piped details such as coral, water bubbles and flower shapes.  A shell border pattern has been added to the bottom of the covered board using a modelling tool.

Happy Easter

Here are some simple Easter cupcakes, vanilla sponge with vanilla buttercream and crushed Cadbury Flake and Cadbury Mini Eggs to give a nest effect.


Happy Easter everyone.

Duplicates

We often get asked to do cakes that we've made before, sometimes people see a cake they like from the gallery, but we always like to make it a bit different.  Here's a couple of our recent duplicates.

Another horse and jockey cake, this time we were asked to make the jockey a bit chubby and wearing a trilby hat and to have a dog end in his mouth.

And another Mickey Mouse cake, we've done about three of these now, this time we thought we'd jazz it up a bit with a brightly decorated board. 

Back in the swing of things

It's been a while since the last blog I know but I hope to get back on track with the blogging.  I do have a good reason for the break though, and that would be this bundle of fun.

Isabella was born in February and she's been keeping us busy, but people still need cake and we're getting back on track with the business, just need to be super organised.

Sprinkles and Crumbs has been going for a year now and we hope this year will be even better, we'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has ordered cakes from us, we've made an interesting selection of cakes in this time and even had a few requests for jobs.  Unfortunately we aren't in the position to be able to employ people, but you never know, maybe one day.

It's going to be an interesting year creating cakes and looking after Izzy and I'm sure we'll have lots of fun along the way.  So, to keep you up to speed, here are some pictures of some recent cakes we've done during my blogging absence.

Art Deco cake and cupcakes

Elephant christening cake

Festive cupcakes

Gold and purple cupcakes

Lego Batman cupcakes

Retirement cake

Rugby player cake

 

Under the sea themed cupcakes

I absolutely love how these cupcakes turned out.  Under the sea is a really good theme to work with, so many possibilities, and they're colourful and fun too.  These were for a children's party at a swimming club so the theme worked very well.

All the little creatures are hand made with sugarpaste and sit on top of some swirly buttercream with white sprinkles, it's hard to pick a favourite, I really like the octopus but then when I look at my Nemo-esque orange fish there, he looks so cute, how could he not be a favourite?

Topsy Turvey Celebration Cake

This is the first Topsy Turvey cake we've attempted and I'm so glad that it turned out so well.  The bottom tier is vanilla and the top tier is chocolate, both tiers have piped swirl detailing on them, these have been piped with royal icing and then painted silver.  A sugarpaste ribbon and bow have been added round the cake and painted with gold luster dust.  I find that when it comes to adding silver and gold details, it is best to use luster powders and mix them with rejuvenator spirit to create a paint, you can buy liquid silver and gold food colouring but I find that they dry out very quickly.

The trouble with these types of cakes is that they are naturally top heavy, what with having a wonky top and the base of each tier being slightly smaller than the top, you need to make sure you have a good structure and support system. 

The numbers and twirly decorations are all made from sugarpaste with a wire structure for extra stability.  These were made well in advance so they had plenty of time to dry out and harden, that way when it comes to painting them and putting them on the cake, you're less likely to squash them out of shape.

I was rather worried about delivering this cake in case any of the decorations fell off and broke but I'm glad to say that it got there in one piece and the birthday girls were delighted with their cake.

Ford Escort Rally Car Cake

This is the second Ford car we've been asked to make, this time it was an older model, a Ford Escort Mark 1 Rally car.  It's always best to spend as much time as possible carving the car shape and getting the main shape right, once that is done you can cover it with sugarpaste and concentrate on adding in all the little details. 

I always work quickly to mark out details like doors and windows before the sugarpaste hardens and then you have plenty of time to add on the other bits like lights, mirrors and wipers. 

Cakes from the weekend

This Sleeping Beauty cake is all cake, she's been carved out of sponge and covered bit by bit with sugarpaste.  Each colour has been applied in separate pieces as I didn't want to have multi layers of icing, it takes a bit longer to cover a cake in this way, but it means you still only get one layer of sugarpaste, which makes eating the cake more pleasant.  Unless of course you like lots of thick icing. 

Here's a cake we did for a Colchester United fan, the badge has been made with sugarpaste and the eagle has been piped on with royal icing.  This cake turned out to be quite a whopper, without the icing on, it was already 5 inches deep, well it did need to feed  up to 30 people.

We also had an order for our popular triple chocolate cake with a box of strawberry cupcakes, and judging by the lovely comment we received, it went down very well indeed.

Art Deco cake & 90th birthday cake

The inspiration for this cake came from a mug, I don't know who the original artist is as there were no details, but I've recreated it on a cake.  This cake was commissioned by my mum for my aunt who happens to love  art deco and was thrilled with this cake. 

The whole cake was iced in black sugarpaste, then I rolled out a white piece of sugarpaste to the same size as the cake to paint the picture on.  Once painted I then cut round the painting and transferred it onto the cake.

I finished it off with some piped icing beads around the base of the cake in the same colour as her dress.

Here's a nintieth birthday cake we did at the weekend.  The nine is vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream and the zero is chocolate sponge with chocolate buttercream.  It's decorated with purple flowers made out of sugarpaste and has piped beads round the base of the numbers and satin ribbon. 

We were asked to add something to stick some candles on the board, so in keeping with the design of the cake, made more flowers with extra sugarpaste underneath so they could stick the candles into those.  Good job they didn't want to put 90 candles on the cake, we would've needed a sllightly bigger board!

Jungle Theme Number One Cake

As far as numbered cakes go, a number 1 is easier to ice than most other numbers, mainly because it hasn't got a hole in the middle or too many angles to worry about.  This one has some cute animals on it too, a couple of cheeky monkeys, a lion and an elephant.  They are all made out of sugarpaste and kept quite simple in design.  The cake is finished off with some tree branches and leaves piped on with royal icing, and of course, the birthday message.

Disney's Cars Tow Mater Cake

This is Tow Mater from Disney's Cars in cake form complete with rusty paint work.  Everything on this cake is edible apart from the angled piece of crane which is a wooden dowel covered in icing.  We used strawberry laces for the cable and fixed them into place with royal icing. 

After sculpting the cake and covering it with white sugarpaste I then had to hand paint all the details on, I learned my lesson from the dinosaur cake and made sure I had an assortment of paint brushes so I could cover larger areas quickly, and I'm so glad I did.  I thought hand painting would give the best result as he's rather rusty and mottled which is easier to create with painting.

And to finish it all off the board has been covered with royal icing to make it look like he's on the road to Radiator Springs.