Rainbow cupcakes

Birthday time again – and my turn to make cakes for the Friday cake meeting at work. I decided to use up one of the small Christmas cakes that I had left over from Christmas (still well preserved in a mixture of sloe gin / cherry brandy / plum liqueur!) and make a couple of complementary cakes. As there is a coeliac amongst my colleagues, I made the very delicious gluten-free carrot, coconut and pistachio cake that I last made in October again.

Cupcakes are generally seen as one of my specialities and I hadn’t made any for a while, so I decided that I would make some lemon cupcakes, filled with passion fruit curd (as I had some in the fridge!) and topped with lemon buttercream.

Given the never-ending rain that we have all had recently, I was inspired by some rainbow-themed cupcakes that I had seen on Pinterest. When it came to decorating the cakes, I tried just smoothing the buttercream on with a pallet knife but my pallet knife skills are not the best and it looked a bit scruffy to me. I decided to go with my ever-reliable  Wilton 2D nozzle and pipe roses. The clouds were piped with a small round nozzle. The rainbows themselves were fizzy multi-coloured belt sweets – cut in half and then stuck down into the clouds.

These cupcakes always taste fantastic – I just love the tangy passion fruit curd combined with the zingy lemon cake and buttercream. When they were first complete, I wasn’t that happy with the finished look but the next morning, I did feel a bit more confident about them – and everyone at work loved them!  If I were to do them again (maybe with a bit more time), I’d love to add little pots of gold to these! 

Lemon layer cake with lemon buttercream roses

Birthday cake time! Not for me but for a very good friend. As I know she loves lemon cake, I decided to stick with a safe and well-trusted recipe that I have done before – Primrose Bakery’s Lemon Layer Cake. I won’t type out the recipe again, as it is the one I wrote a blog on in November for my Halloween Lemon Layer Cake.  We were going out for dinner on Friday so the cake had to be made on Thursday after work. Thankfully, it’s a fairly simple cake to make and bake – as long as you get the timings right.

This time, rather than buttering the sandwich tins and lining the bases, I used my trusty Dr Oetker Cake Release spray – it is so easy to use and does the job really well.  I think I mentioned it last time, but do make sure you keep an eye on these cakes – you do not want them to over-bake. This time, the cakes still looked slightly anaemic, but were bouncy when touched – this is what you are looking for.

As I was baking this after work, it was quite late by the time the cakes had baked and cooled, therefore, I decided to just do a crumb layer of buttercream icing on the Thursday night. A crumb layer is basically just a simple thin covering of icing all over the cake. This seals the cake and creates a good base for then icing the roses.  Leaving it overnight meant that this layer of buttercream had firmed really well and made it much easier to pipe the roses.

The buttercream is best left in the fridge overnight but needs to be taken out of the fridge for at least an hour before using, and then given a really good beat!  People are always amazed by rose swirls on cakes and cupcakes but they are really not that difficult to do. This is a good photo tutorial and there are lots of film clips on YouTube. To be honest, the main things are getting the consistency of the buttercream right, a Wilton 2D piping nozzle, steady pressure on the icing bag and lots of practice! I do them quite a bit and I still have days when they just don’t seem to go right!   

I’ve attempted this design of icing before and found the sides to be very tricky. This time, I used my tilting turntable (placed on top of a cake tin to bring it up to a good height) and this made piping the swirls onto the cake much easier!  

For full cake recipe, visit this blog post.

Filling and decorating the cake

Ingredients

1. 6 tblsp lemon curd
2. 220g butter, at room temperature
3. 1kg icing sugar
4. Juice of 2-3 lemons

To make the buttercream icing:

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, juice of 2 lemons and half of the icing sugar until smooth.
2. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.
3. Add extra juice, if required to get the correct consistency. Beat until smooth.

To assemble

1. Place the first cake onto your plate / stand.
2. Spread 3 tablespoons of lemon curd on top of the first cake and another 3 on a second cake.
3. Carefully place the second cake on top of the first cake.
4. Place the third cake on top of the others.
5. Use a palette knife to spread a thin layer of buttercream icing evenly all over the cake. Leave to firm.
6. Fill a piping bag (topped with a suitable nozzle) with the remaining buttercream.  
7. Start by piping a rose swirl in the centre of the cake, then work outwards and down the sides of the cake.
8. Fill any gaps with swirls of icing.

Christmas cupcakes

Ok – so it was just about still November, but I decided it was close enough to Christmas to start Christmas-themed baking. Last Thursday was the last day of a management course that I had been taking at work and so I decided to make Christmas cupcakes for my coursemates. As there were 16 of us on the course, I needed to do a double batch of cupcakes. Never one to do things the easy way, I was keen to do two different flavours – however, on a school night, two lots of cupcakes is a big ask. I decided on a compromise – a lemon cupcake batter that I then add additional flavourings to make a second batch of Christmas flavoured cakes!

So the base cupcake batter is my lemon Primrose Bakery cupcakes. I made a double batch of this batter up and filled 12 cupcake cases. I then added orange zest, half a teaspoon of nutmeg, ginger, mixed spice and cinnamon, a teaspoon of orange flavouring and approximately 5 tablespoons of alcohol-soaked dried fruit (leftovers from my Christmas Cake). I stirred these ingredients into the remaining lemon cupcake batter and then filled another 12 cupcake cases.

To decorate, I made a lemon buttercream for the lemon cupcakes, tinted it a Christmas green and swirled it onto the cupcakes with a Wilton 2D nozzle. A few silver balls, mini candy cane sprinkles and a gold star complete the cakes.

For the Christmas cupcakes, I topped them with a circle of marzipan and a circle of ready-to-roll icing. I embossed the icing with a snowflake embossing plate (like this one), sprayed them with pearlising spray and topped the cakes with shapes cut with my new Christmas plunger cutters.     

If you fancy just making a single batch of 12 Christmas cutters, this is the recipe I would follow:

Christmas cupcakes

Ingredients (single batch of 12 cupcakes)

1. 110g butter, at room temperature
2. 225g golden castor sugar
3. 2 large eggs
4. 150g self-raising flour, sifted
5. 125g plain flour, sifted
6. 60ml semi-skimmed milk
7. 2 tblsp lemon juice
8. 2 tblsp orange juice
9. 1 tblsp sour cream
10. Grated zest of a lemon
11. Grated zest of an orange
12. ½ tsp cinnamon
13. ½ tsp nutmeg
14. ½ tsp ginger
15. ½ tsp mixed spice
16. Approx. 5 tblsp alcohol-soaked dried fruit or mincemeat

Decoration

1. 2 tblsp apricot jam, sieved
2. White and coloured ready-to-roll icing
3. Marzipan
4. Other decorations as required

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160C/350F/GM4.
2. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake cases.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy this will take at least 5 minutes with an electric hand mixer – don’t rush this stage).
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing for a few minutes after each addition. It should result in a lovely light mousse-like mixture.
5. Combine the two flours and all the spices in a separate bowl.
6. Combine the milk, sour cream, orange and lemon juice in a jug.
7. Add one third of the flour mix to the creamed mixture and stir gently to combine.
8. Pour in one third of the milk mixture and stir gently.
9. Continue to add flour mix and then milk mixture alternately, stirring gently after each addition, until all have been added.
10. Gently stir in the dried fruit and the orange and lemon zest.
11. Spoon mixture into the cupcake cases, filling to about 2/3 full.
12. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes until lightly golden brown. The cakes will spring back lightly when touched, if cooked.
13. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in tin for about 10 minutes, before carefully placing on a wire rack to finish cooling.

To decorate:

1. Use a round cookie cutter to cut out 12 circles of marzipan and 12 circles of ready-to-roll icing.
2. Brush each cooled cake with the sieved jam.
3. Stick a marzipan circle on each cake.
4. Brush the top of each marzipan circle with water and then stick a circle of icing onto each cake.
5. Use additional coloured icing as decorations – using water to stick on.