Dairy Free Iron Man Birthday Cake

Tomorrow is Andy's birthday, so I spent today making him a birthday cake (and he spent today washing up the piles of stuff that I left all over the kitchen). He's a big Iron Man fan, so I decided to make him an Iron Man birthday cake using this technique. It's essentially tracing a picture onto greaseproof paper with buttercream icing, freezing it and placing it onto the cake. When you peel the greaseproof paper off the icing it leaves the picture on the cake! If you want detailed instructions (with pictures) I suggest you check out the post I linked to. I'm far too tired and sticky to write a long blog post tonight.

Anyway, because of Jack's milk allergies I had to make the icing without using dairy butter and I honestly wasn't expecting it to work. I was convinced that the icing wouldn't freeze properly and the paper wouldn't peel off cleanly (even though I substituted some of the dairy-free spread with vegetable shortening). As a result I really didn't put much effort into making the tracing neat, or checking that all the gaps were filled and the icing was smooth. It didn't seem worth it when I was so sure that it would fail. I don't know if that makes it more annoying that it worked perfectly. Everything froze as it should, and the paper peeled off without the slightest smudging.

I wasn't terribly careful with the placement or the plain icing either. I was so sure I'd have to scrape it off anyway.

You can see here that the icing was bumpy, but that was totally my fault for not being more careful with piping it.

This is the first time I've ever attempted to decorate a cake with buttercream like this, so I'm really pleased with how it turned out! And now I know what to do (and what not to do) for Adam's birthday in July.

Wedding Cupcakes

Back in 2011 when my sister got married she asked me to make cupcakes for the reception. I agreed to do it because what she hadn't told me was that she wanted four dozen cupcakes in three flavours. I think the biggest challenge was trying to keep the icing cool enough to pipe it without losing its shape (in July!) and trying to find enough space in the fridge to fit 48 cupcakes. Andy and I had a mini production line where I would ice the swirls and he sprinkled the toppings and threw them in the fridge. Luckily we didn't have too much of a melting problem (although some were flatter than I would have liked).

Chocolate Orange

These were chocolate orange cupcakes with orange icing and chocolate sprinkles. I can't remember if I flavoured the icing orange as well as colouring it, but I don't think I did.

Lemon

These were lemon cupcakes with yellow lemon flavoured icing and white and pink butterfly sprinkles.

Vanilla

These were my favourite. Vanilla cupcakes with pink icing and pink edible glitter.

This was the first time I had used a piping bag, so I was pleased at how well they came out. Everyone thought they looked and tasted fantastic too, which obviously put a big smile on my face!