Recipe Time - Rich Chocolate & Buttermilk Cakes

So as promised here are two of my fail safe favourite moist cake recipes. Perfect for cake pops, sculpted and tiered cakes.

First up my favourite rich chocolate cake recipe. Chill this cake for a great carving medium.

My buttermilk cake is great base cake. Add you flavours of choice and get a perfect texture every time. If adding a liquid flavour that is more than 1tbsp as 10g plain flour for every tablespoon of liquid.

Please use my recipes and enjoy your baking.
xoxo
Sugarpie

Beautiful Blue Bird Cake Pop Tutorial

I adore these cute little birds which sold out quite fast at the Queens Park Handmade Markets last weekend. Thought I might share the process with you.

You will need:

• Crumbled cake
• Buttercream
• Melted White Chocolate coloured you favourite bird colour (I used ChefMaster Blue Candy Colour)
• White modelling chocolate
• Gel/Candy colours (I used ChefMaster Candy Colours -  Pink, Yellow and Blue)
• Small Black Sugar Pearls
• Heart or Blossom cutter
• Small Petal or Tear shaped cutter
• Petal Veiner or toothpick
• Paper Lolly sticks

Using a nice dense cake (I used chocolate mud with honeycomb crumble) and not too much buttercream, shape your small balls of cake (about 30g) into a tear drop shape bending the 'tail' up slightly. Chill then attach to your sticks with a little melted chocolate in the colour you will use for the body. Put aside to chill while you make your bits and pieces.

 To prepare the wings, beak and heart you will need white modelling chocolate. Never used it before? Visit www.craftsy.com and see some of their great tutorials or search www.youtube.com where you can find plenty of free videos. I plan to add some modelling chocolate tutorials to my blog at a later time so stay tuned.

Colour a small amount yellow (if you don't have the right candy colours you can use normal gel colours to tint the modelling chocolate, I would not recommend liquid colours as they make the chocolate too sticky), a small amount pink and a medium amount the same colour as your melted chocolate you have chosen for the body.

How much is a small amount? When I make 50 pops I use a piece the size of a ping pong ball for the beak and hearts - this will give you enough to play with. For the wings I use a tennis ball sized amount.

Rolling the chocolate is easiest done on a silicone matt. If you find it sticks use just the smallest amount of copha (Crisco in the US) on your hands and the mat.

For the beaks pinch off pea sized amounts of yellow and roll between your fingers to make a small cone. Put them aside to firm up as the temperature of your hands will make the chocolate soft.

Roll out the pink and use a small heart cutter (or a flower if you don't have a heart shape) to cut one for each bird.

Roll out the blue and use a small petal or tear drop shape - 2 for each bird. I then used a magnolia/lily petal veiner to get the feathered look. If you don't have access to a veiner you can use the tines of a small fork or a tooth pick dragged gently from the rounded end to the point to get a similar texture.

Then comes the fun part! Dip your bird in the melted chocolate and carefully shake off the excess. While the chocolate is soft add the beak and eyes to the rounded 'face' end.

Use a toothpick to pick up a small amount of melted chocolate and attach the wings to either side of the body. Place the wings rounded end forward and bend the pointed end of the wing out slightly away from the body

Use another small dot of chocolate to attach the heart to the back of the bird.

 

And there you have a flock of pretty birds ready for any type of celebration.

Have a few 'wings' left over.........just add a beak....

Hope you have as much fun making these feathered friends as I do!

xoxo
Sugarpie.

Homerlicious Maple Cinnamon Pancake Pops.

So this week is my second Handmade Markets and I'm really excited. Last month I almost sold out and it was a quiet day. I am really hoping for a ripper of a day on Sunday. To get there I have been working on new and fun pops to sell and I have to say this is my favourite so far.

Mould your chosen cake/butter cream combination (I've used  cinnamon sponge with maple syrup butter cream) into small discs. Stack then with a little melted choc between before carefully inserting a paper lolly stick.

Once they have set, dip them carefully in your melted pancake coloured chocolate. I added a small amount of paramount crystals (you can use copha instead) to thin the chocolate to allow it to ease into all the gaps between your pancakes. Allow chocolate to set.

 Using a brown petal dust (I have used Barco Dark Brown) and a flat sided medium bristle brush catch the ridges to give you pancakes a crispy cooked edge.

 Melt some white chocolate and colour yellow with candy colour. At the same time colour some white modelling chocolate to match. Roll the modelling chocolate into little 'butterpats', two for each pop. Drizzle a small spoon of yellow chocolate in top, teasing it down the sides in delicious buttery dribbles and position the butter pats on top.

Let them set completely then watch them all disappear.

Happy popping!
xoxo
Sugarpie

Butterflies and Naming days

When our lovely friends Vanessa and Justin asked for a pretty cake for their beautiful daughter Adalira on her naming day, how could I say no. Vanessa contributed with a delicious Orange and Poppy Seed cake for the base and here's what came next.

Using the sleeping baby mould from Cakes Around Town and petal paste I made a cute little baby.

 

 With the addition of soft shading with Barco petal dust in flesh, pale pink, pale yellow and light brown and a cute layered ruffle bum and butterfly, our sleeping baby was complete.

 She was then perched atop the yummy layers of orange and poppy seed cake with cream cheese butter cream. The night before I had punched out 100 butterflies in soft lilac hues and set them to dry. They were then swirled around the cake in a beautiful pastel mass.

 

 Surrounding the cakes were trays of yummy cake pops - Mocha for the grown ups and pretty pastel hued Cinnamon Donut pops for everyone!

 So all together it made a 'pretty' yummy display...

Happy naming day miss Adalira -

photo courtesy of Raymond Keyworth Photography

We look forward to watching you grow, passing on all our love and wisdom (and lots of baking tips in Aunty Rachel's kitchen).

XOXO
Sugarpie

Sweets for the Sweet - Mr & Mrs Campbell's beautiful wedding.

It's been a bit quiet here on the blog over that last month or so as most of my blogging time has been put to good use organising a beautiful vintage wedding for the lovely Karen and and her prince charming, Dylan. Well on Saturday all the hard work came together in one very beautiful day so allow me to share some photos of the all the pretty things and of course the Sugarpie Sweets Buffet.

The stunning  historical Gabbinbar Homestead was the location for one of the most beautiful weddings I have had the pleasure of seeing.

Cute little timbre signs from reclaimed fence palings directed the guests down a little hedged path to the ceremony. Another one hidden in the corner of the garden pointed the way to the croquet lawn.

 Another sign on the old gate declared the happy couples love for all to see.

Over in the homestead pretty white baskets held grey lavender pomander hearts (lovingly stuffed and stitched by the bride with a little help) and their little tags matched guests to their tables.

 Recycled glass jars (75 of them in fact) of all shapes and sizes made wonderful old fashioned centre pieces wrapped with lace, broderie anglaise, white, black and lavender ribbon and raw twine. The flowers were a fragrant collection of freesias (my own favourite), white and green carnations, Lisianthus and pinky cream and mauve roses.

 White chalkboard picks displayed table numbers.

 The soft glow of the tea lights as the sun set outside gave a pretty romantic glow. The tables were set with crystal glass wear and individual take home boxes with a special message from the happy couple ready fill at the Sweets buffet.

The glass conservatory doors were trimmed with white paper lanterns and soft tissue pompoms in white, lavender, purple and black mirroring the weddings colours.

Overall a very soft romantic look. Then there were the little extra touches.

 On the top of the black baby grand piano sat a collection of special family memories surrounding a lovely photo of the bride and groom were photos of their parents and grand parents weddings. A great conversation starter.

 Instead of the traditional guest book, family and friends were encouraged to sign tags and hang them on the wish tree.

 In the pink sitting room, an antique sideboard was dressed with timbre letters, white birdcages and flowers ready for guests to leave their gifts  and cards.

A long night was spent sewing all the ruffles together for a custom coloured photo background for the photo booth in the corner  - and of course I had to test it!

But the best part (in my own biased opinion) was the Sweets Buffet. Set on another of the homesteads beautiful antiques. A delicious selection of Honey and Lavender Macarons, Cinnamon Donut Cake pops, Guinness Fudge, Sugar Fondant cookies and purple and white Jelly Belly Beans.

 These cookies featured the bride and grooms initials impressed into the fondant.

And by now I am sure you would like to see the happy couple.....

Congratulations Karen & Dylan, may you have long and happy sweet life together.

XOXO
Sugarpie.

chocoholics dream birthday trio

Last night we joined in the celebrations for our lovely friend Vicki's 60th birthday and what better way to celebrate such a wonderful lady than with a trio of her favourite chocolates. My original plan for a tea set cake sadly did not come to pass this time (very wet air in Toowoomba and a change of job at work put me on the back foot) but I do plan to go back to it at some point.
So anyway birthday cake phase two took shape as a cake version of three of Vicki's favourite chocolates.

Cake 1 - Chocolate Seashell.
Based on the Guylian Chocolate seashells with the praline ganache filling .... very yum. So I made the hazelnut praline to begin with, I have  half a jam jar full of the remaining nutty sugary powder, delish sprinkled on ice-cream.

I then filled a chocolate mudcake shell with delish mousse that had been gently mixed through with chocolate ganache and the blended praline.



I then added a layer of cake to the top and encased the whole thing in chocolate ganache. The whole cake was then swathed in a layer of marbled chocolate fondant. Colour and texture was added with modelling tools and chocolate brown, snow white and gold Barco dusts.

Finished off with a pair of red roses lightly brushed with gold lustre dust.

Cake 2 Strawberry Mousse Cup
This one was inspired by the Godiva Strawberry Trifle Cup. The base was a layer of Genoise Sponge moistened with Strawberry liquer. A delicious layer of French jelly (made with real strawberries of course) was topped with a very generous layer of strawberry mousse....I've even shared my recipe at the bottom of this post :-)
A sweeping of white chocolate ganache, some gold dusted chocolate panels and a trio of roses finished the cake. Sadly it was all eaten before I could snap a picture of the pretty layers.

Cake (well cake pops) 3 - the Lindt Chocolate Balls
Who doesn't love Lindt chocolate? A serious amount of Lindt went in to these divine little gold leafed treasures. With hearts of chocolate mud cake combined with Lindt Ganache and a splash of chocolate port, these little beauties where then dipped in dark lindt chocolate and the gold leaf was brushed on to the warm surface. Yummmmmm.

So together they made a very pretty and decadent dessert trio..........a perfect happy birthday.

And as promised, here is my recipe for the delicious strawberry mousse cake layer. Makes a wonderful dessert with the addition of some fresh berries and biscuit to garnish.

Strawberry Mousse
Puree 2 cups of fresh strawberries in the blender. Add 3/4 cup sugar and 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice.
In a small bowl glass bowl, sprinkle 1 sachet (1 tbsp) unflavoured gelatin over 1/3 cup cold water and leave to sit for a few minutes. Place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir until disolved. Remove from the heat as soon as the gelatin has disolved.
Stir the gelatin into the strawberry puree and allow to thicken for about 10 minutes. In a large bowl  whip 2 cups of cream until medium stiff peaks.
Gently fold half the cream into the strawberry then fold the strawberry cream into the remaining cream gently with a rubber spatula.
Chill for minimum 30 minutes then spoon in to glasses.
To use in a cake, chill overnight tightly covered with cling wrap.
Enjoy.

XOXO