Butterfly Kisses Cake

The 225 flowers next to a 10p coin

   Today I was at Clare’s for the last time and we were planning to make a 2 tiered birthday cake which I’d seen in a magazine. Clare helped me to level, fill and ice the 2 cakes whilst I got on with making the 225 flowers to cover the cake. 

The flowers with piped centres

   This took a long time and I also made some leaves and 15 different butterflies to use on the cake. To prepare the cake for decoration I put 6 pins, evenly spaced, around the edge of both tiers before draping a necklace over the pins to create a gentle curve for the flowers to follow. I then pricked the icing with a pin, following this curve.

The draped flower garlands

   Then I took the cake home where I prepared some Royal icing using 100g of royal icing sugar and 16ml of water. I put this into a piping bag with a size 2 nozzle before sticking the flowers to the cake. Then I piped dots into the centre of each flower before scattering leaves near the flowers.

The butterflies with their antennae

   Next I made prepared the butterflies by halving stamens for antennae’s and I attached these by royal icing. I finally put these onto the cake. However I wanted to decorate the top of the cakes so I attached a decorated butterfly to the cake and I put a small spray of flowers at the bottom of the butterfly.

The completed Butterfly Kisses Cake

Pink Butterfly Cupcakes

   I made some cherry cupcakes and added some red food colouring to make the cupcakes pink. I cooked the cakes at 180^oC for 20 minutes and left them on a wire rack to cool. Then I cut off the top of the cakes and put them to one side before coring the cakes and spooning Black Cherry jam into the centre. Then I put pink buttercream on the top before halving the cake tops to make butterfly buns. To finish, I put a sprinkling of glitter on top.

Black Cherry Jam

The sparkly cupcakes

Caramel Feast

The finished cupcakes

To decorate these caramel cupcakes, I made some thick buttercream with a dash of caramel essence. Then, using a star nozzle, I piped tall swirls of icing onto the cakes. Next I crushed 3 Werthers sweets in a plastic bag with a rolling pin and I then used some squeezy caramel sauce to stick the crushed sweets to the cakes.

Coffee cake

The shell icing

Today I made an ordinary sponge cake but I added some ground coffee granules to the mixture. After spooning the cake mixture into two tins and baking for 25 minutes the cakes were done. I then left the cake in the tin for 10 minutes before releasing it for the tin. To decorate I made a coffee buttercream by combining margarine and icing sugar and made a coffee paste by dissolving coffee with a small amount of boiling water. I packed the inside of the cake with the buttercream and then made some vanilla buttercream for the outside of the cake. Then I piped a shell pattern all the way around the edge of the cake before putting walnuts next to the icing.