Pinspired Project - LOVE inspired

My Pinterest projects this week are celebrating love.

I love showing people how much I care about them but rather than head to the shops, I prefer to go DIY.

I LOVE baking (and my hubby loves eating = perfect match)

 so when I came across this pin from Bake it in a Cake...

 I was so keen to try it.  Step-by-step instuctions here.



Here's my finished product...

Not quite like the original, but if you squint you can kinda tell what it's meant to be... and if you can't at least it tastes yummy.


Basic Steps

• I used a basic packet cake mix, mix it up as per instructions (of course you can make one from scratch) and divide mixture into half.
• colour one half of the mixture (I chose red for one half, and left the other half plain).
• Pour the mixture you want the hearts to be into a small cake pan or slice tray and bake (being careful not to overcook).
• Wait until cooled completely and use cookie cutter to cut out shapes.
• Pour mixture into cupcake liners then place shapes into batter.
• Spoon mixture over hearts and cook.

Lessons learned along the way...

•  Wait until the coloured cake has cooled completely before you cut out the shapes.  I was a bit impatient and I think that's why it was a bit crumbly when I cut out the hearts.  Maybe I should have put it in the fridge?

• I'm not quite sure what happened but a couple of my hearts floated to the top!  Perhaps I didn't cover them with enough batter??  I did catch some early though and managed to push them back in so if you are giving it a go - maybe check them after a couple a minutes to make sure they haven't floated to the top.  Or you can just leave it as a design feature??

• Make sure you put a mark on the cupcake liner where to cut otherwise it will turn into a guessing game and you may end up with a rectangle instead of a heart - lesson learned.

•  I think my hearts were too big for the cupcake liners, next time I will try a smaller cutter or cut them out freehand.

• You can cover up just about any cupcake mishap with icing!

Other DIY inspiration
I'm being treated to a night off cooking (chinese take-away) this Valentine's Day so I thought I might make these cute little felt fortune cookies from the curly birds blog...

...and fill with messages of love or cute little love quotes (the blog has really clear instructions and they look really easy to make - only takes a circle of felt and 3 stitches).


*PROJECT UPDATE
Here's what I ended up making...

I also LOVE this idea that was shared by Katie on the Moorea Seal blog.

...you make little fabric hearts and hide them in all sorts of secret places and when the person finds them they put them in a jar and are reminded of how much you love them. So cute!

Hope your day has been filled with love!

Ana's Birthday celebrations

I LOVE a tea party so when my friend Julianna asked me to help create a garden tea party for her daughter Ana's 6th Birthday I said ABSOLUTELY!!!


There was lots of yummy food to eat - plates of fruit, sandwiches and some yummy sweet treats.

Here's the sweet stuff...

I decorated cupcakes with little crowns on top and tri-colour swirl buttercream icing.

Biscuits were made as thank you gifts for the party guests with custom tags.

 

Little sandwiches cut out in the shape of crowns.

 
 The Cake
I had seen this icing technique and have been wanting to try it out for a while so this seemed like the perfect opportunity

and on the inside.....

 .....3 yummy pink layers - all different shades (another technique I've been wanting to try).


The decorations were kept quite simple.  The party was held in the yard of my church which has a lovely big overhanging tree.  We held a ladies high tea there recently and I'd made a bunch of tissue paper pom poms to hang from the tree.

 There were little handmade touches like these cute little personalised bonbons which held little gifts for the party guests.

Everyone had a wonderful time including the Birthday girl!

 Happy Birthday Ana...xxxooo

Birthday celebrations and two-tone icing tutorial

My little man Nathaniel was 5 yesterday!!
It seemed like he had a week long celebration with cupcakes at preschool Wednesday then cupcakes at Early Intervention Friday then more cake with the family yesterday....he loved it!

Here are the cupcakes we took to Early Intervention.

The group had really loved reading a fire engine book earlier in the week and always love the fireman puzzles so we went with fire engine cupcakes.


I wanted to make the icing look like fire so I used yellow and red two tone icing.  The fire engine was made from fondant and white chocolate

How I made the two tone icing:

1.  Mix up two (or more) different colours of icing (I just used a buttercream icing).

2.  I used a medium star nozzle with my piping bag (see pic below).

3.  I then spooned one colour down half of the piping bag and the other colour down the other half.  

I forgot to take a photo so I drew up this diagram of what it kinda looked like when I put the icing in the piping bag, although mine was nowhere near as neat as this...

NB.  I have seen some tutorials that put the different coloured icing into separate piping bags (that don't have nozzles) and then put those bags into another piping bag (with nozzle) and pipe that way which probable gives a more uniform finish but seems like too much cleaning up to me.

4.  Pipe out some icing (onto a plate or small bowl) until the desired two-tone effect comes through.

5. Starting from the outside of the cupcake, spiral around until you reached the centre. 

NB.  If it doesn't come out how you want, just scrape it off and try again.



Here are the cupcakes that Nanny made...

Nathaniel just LOVES Mario so Nanny (and Poppy) printed out some Mario images, laminated them and stuck them onto sticks to make Mario cupcake toppers (and because Nanny is so good she did 3 colours in her icing).  The best thing was they made 2 of each image so now he has a set of Mario cards that we can play snap or memory with....great idea Nanny and Poppy!!

The last cake was a dinosaur cake to have with the family after dinner...

The dinosaurs were shaped from fondant....and didn't last very long!

poor dinosaur!

Well we are definitely caked out for the time being!  luckily we have another couple of months before our next birthday celebrations. 

If the instructions aren't clear or if you have any questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Happy creating!!

Creating.....cupcakes!

Well Charlotte's 1st birthday is coming up very soon and so I got to thinking I might have a go at making her birthday cake or some cupcakes for it - so yesterday I made up a batch of cupcakes and decided to have a trial run.

I have always wanted to try making the little edible roses so off I went and came up with these...

Still needs some practise but not too bad for a first timer (I thought anyway).

I had been to a wedding expo last weekend and saw some embossed cupcakes and thought what a great idea - so I got out my cuttlebug embossing folders, some stamps (all freshly cleaned of course), cookie cutters and some ready-made icing and got experimenting.

and here's the results.....

I love how they turned out and they were so much fun to make.

Will definitely be making some for Charlotte's birthday!

Have a great weekend!!