Wedding Baking Part 2!

Vanilla Cake Pops for the kids (and big kids….!)

Along with the cupcakes that I made for my sister’s wedding, I decided that if I had time I would also make some cake pops. The reason I gave myself even more work is that there were almost 30 children attending the celebration (all of which were under the age of 9 years old) and I was worried that cupcakes may be a tad too big for some of them, especially for the tiny tots.

I had never, ever made cake pops in my entire life until one day before the wedding – I know how bonkers that sounds now – but decided to give it a go as I had some time to play with, and if they didn’t work out it wouldn’t be the end of the world as I hadn’t actually told or promised anyone that I was going to make them.

I scoured the internet and found this recipe by Molly Bakes: http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/529103/basic-cake-pops. ‘Molly Bakes’ make fantastic cakes and all sorts of other lovely treats over in East London, and they also have a cake pop book out, which I believe this recipe would have come from (see here: http://www.mollybakes.co.uk/).

The recipe was *amazing* – for someone who has never made them before it was pretty idiot proof if you follow all the steps correctly – I never seem to have much luck with internet recipes but I didn’t need to change a thing. The only note that I would make is that I took my cake out of the oven sooner than the 35-45 minutes that was stated on the instructions, but I was using a very hot oven so this timing could be correct – my advice would be to sneak a peek through the oven window after 25 minutes or so.

I decided to tie the cake pop design in with the colour scheme of the cupcakes, so I melted my candy melts and split the mixture into three, using colour pastes to make one batch pale pink, one pale green and leaving one plain white. I also wanted to tie the flower detailing into the design but equally they had to be fun as I wanted the kids to love them, so I freestyled the decoration part with lots of colourful sprinkles and mini icing flowers (I bought mine online from www.cakecraftworld.co.uk/ but you can get similar from most supermarkets). To effectively get the sprinkles on you can either empty them into a little bowl and roll the coated cake pops into them, or you can sprinkle them on from above. Either way work fast as they do dry quickly and once they’re set you can’t add any more decorations. Stand them up until they’re completely dried – you could use florists oasis to stand them in, or even an upturned egg box would do the job!

Once dried pop some mini cellophane bags over each one and individually tie with a ribbon or twist tie – have a look on Ebay for these, I got 50 sticks, bags and ties for a few pounds– and they’re done! We displayed mine on a wire stand (that my sister had also picked up at a car boot sale for 50p) but once they’re dried they’re not too delicate so you can even just lie them on a pretty tray, it doesn’t have to be fancy.

Sorry for the cliché, but the proof is in the pudding and these were absolutely and completely delicious, probably more so than the cupcakes. Most importantly, the kids loved them! One little girl came to ask me if she could have one, and within minutes there were suddenly thirty children running around with cake pops in their hands – to see their excited faces made the extra effort so worthwhile! It is fair to say that a couple of big kids loved them too and the few extra that I’d made kept a few rumbling tummies quiet during speeches ;)

Some tips to make these even easier for yourself:

- If you’re in a real hurry to whip these up you could equally use a ready-made shop bought cake such as a madeira sponge rather than taking the time to make it from scratch.

- If you can’t find ‘Candy melts’ or  ‘Renshaw Simply Melts’ (which seems to be the UK version though you can get both from good cake making suppliers) just melt some chocolate, I would say probably the cheaper stuff (for example Milky Bar or Dairy Milk) would melt best.

- You don’t need to buy fancy decorations to make these look good – some chocolate for covering and hundreds and thousands, or simple penny sweets would look just as effective! If you can’t find cake pop sticks easily just use some lolly sticks instead , use greaseproof paper for covering  and tie them with pretty ribbons – just as lovely and more individual!

An English Countryside Wedding!

Beautiful Crystallised Flowers for West Country style Cupcakes

Wow, where on earth has 2012 gone?

Looking back at my early January posts I was so full of blogging enthusiasm...but seeing as I haven't blogged since January, I think it's fair to say that I definitely have some ground to make up! Excuses excuses but it has been a busy year...firstly moving house, secondly Kenny the K-Mix sadly went to the big mixer heaven in the sky (RIP)...my boyfriend says that I killed him with a slightly too stodgy cake mix but if the truth be told, I think Kenny always was on his last legs. There is a lesson to be learned here: by all means do make as much use of old mixers as you can, especially those such as Kenwoods as they are built to last and they do keep going on for years. But buy a second-hand machine carefully; even if you purchase it from a lovely old granny, it could last another 50 years or 50 days as in my case...and they are so big and heavy to get rid of (unless like me you live in south London where we all know the unwritten rule of leave *anything* on your doorstep and it will be gone in less than 5 minutes).

So the third, and possibly most important event of this year so far was our first family wedding in about 15 years! This wasn't just any old wedding either, it was my sisters wedding where I was to be bridesmaid-in-chief and cake maker to boot!  This wasn't to make the wedding cake which would have been tricky with bridesmaid duties, but just some additional cupcakes and cakepops for the 30 junior members of the congregation.

The wedding itself was to be traditional one with a Somerset countryside feel; held in a local church near to where we grew up, with the reception at a gorgeous organic farm called Huntstile www.huntstileorganicfarm.co.uk. There wasn't a strict theme or colour scheme to the day, the main colours used throughout were various shades of green, with everything being very natural and lots of real fresh flowers decorating everywhere from tables to the pews in the church.

I had a free rein with regards to cupcake flavours, so I just decided to keep it super simple stylistically - lemon and vanilla cupcakes, both with lemon and vanilla frosting respectively. The question was - how to decorate! For an event like this they truly do need to both look and taste good. I wanted to tie the cakes into the wedding so that they looked a part of the day too, so after scouring lots of wedding pictures and sites for ideas, I decided to include edible crystalised flowers into my cupcakes. To be honest, I was never too sure on doing this before as I always thought a) it would be a massive faff, b) where could I get edible flowers from in zone 2 and c) would they taste really weird? Days before the wedding I found a recipe from 'Eat My Flowers' http://eatmyflowers.co.uk/home/recipes/ and went for it.

In answer to point a) they are easy to make and a massive faff all at the same time. It's not hard work but it's fiddly and very time consuming - I now completely understand why they are fairly expensive to buy! Firstly you pick your edible flowers - do be careful on this one as not all flowers are edible - I went for pansies, violas and rose petals. I would not use any shop bought flowers as who knows what they might have had sprayed on them. Get them from someones garden who doesn't cover their flowers in slug killer or any other nasties!

I was unsure as to how to prepare the flowers, so I washed and dried them, then took off as much greenage as possible on the pansies and violas. I found that you have to leave a teeny bit at the back of the flower, as the petals are attached here and if you cut too much off then your petals fall away too - you can still use them individually though. With roses just carefully pick each petal off, you'll be amazed at how many one rose has!

To prepare the flowers, whisk some egg white - I also used a touch of vodka which apparently makes the egg dry faster (and probably kills off any tiny bugs - ha!) and with a small paintbrush paint *both* sides of each petal leaving no part uncovered. Then you need to cover both sides with a good amount of fine caster sugar - my technique was to drop one side of the petal into a small bowl of sugar so that it's all covered and then sprinkle the side facing you. Place all of these petals on a tray covered in greaseproof paper and place in an airing cupboard to dry out (I believe you can do this in a very low heat oven too) overnight is fine but I left mine for 24 hours until they were all crispy and sparkling with the sugar!



So pretty - what do you think?





As the flowers were so pretty I kept the cupcake icing simple, opting for white, pale green and lemon icing with white non pareils sprinkles and a touch of irridescent glitter. I used silver foil and green greaseproof cases and we displayed them on a selection of beautiful and shabby chic cake stands (mostly cheaply picked up from car boot sales).

Even though I was up until the early hours of the morning making these I was so pleased with the end result, it really is worth it. If you've ever thought about giving these a go, this is proof that it can be done, and for the record they don't taste weird whatsoever, just like crispy bits of sugar! Make them ahead of when you need them - on a rainy day when there is nothing else to do other than to be a bit crafty. If kept in an airtight container with greaseproof paper they should keep for a couple of months at least :).

Wedding baking part two with cake pops to follow! x