Frosting a Cup Cake: Beautiful Ideas

I was looking for some new ways to decorate my cupcakes, and I stoped by stumbleupon, to make easier my search, and I found a lot of cupcakes designs, simples, complicated, elaborated, colorful, in other words, there is lot of creativity out there and this mini-cake or cupcake have enough room to do many designs.

I took some ideas from the net, here my favorites, this is a drop on the ocean, because there are so many beautiful things and techniques that it is impossible to even reproduce 10%v  of them.

I hope you enjoy may selection, if you click on the picture you will be taken to the website where I took the picture from, the good thing is that some of them have "How's to"

Blessings.

Cupcake decorated with fondant

Cupcake decorated with butter cream

Cupcake decorated with butter cream and fondant

               

Cupcakes for formal wedding

This look very delicious

Perfect for baby shower

a sweet way to say thank you

Simple but Effective

My favorite, it is simply cute

    



           

Eating Phoulorie and Sahiena in Savanha Park

A while ago, I went to the Queen's Savanah Park in Port of Spain, with my son and husband, wee do not go out often, so that made this occasion memorable.
I carried my camera with me to take some pick of the street food that you can find around the Savannah, real Trinidadian food, more Indian style, like phoulorie and sahiena. We stop ed by the Phoulorie man and buy some to go.

It is nice to see that  here you do not need much to make business as long as you have your food batch and a permit to place your stand (temporary) on the Savannah park. all food is fresh made right there in front of your eyes. Check the advertising above....

Sajina & Polourie

Phoulorie, just coming out from the fryer.

Phoulorie with some mango sauce, yummy!!!

Sahiena

If you cannot come to the Queen's Savanah Park in Trinidad, but you  want to enjoy these Trinidadian treats, check our recipes here.

Trinidad food

Chocolate Cake Recipe for Beginners

Chocolate Cake -  only for reference

I really wanted to share this recipe with my readers. I really enjoyed making this chocolate cake last weekend in house of my friend Francisco. I own you the pictures, but my camera was without batteries at the time of the making (I was taking pictures of my son the entire day).

Francisco's wife called me early last week to help her making a cake for Francisco's birthday, that we were going to celebrate over the weekend. My friend Francisco is Venezuelan  and a chef, and he wanted a chocolate cake Venezuelan style. Venezuelan style means for us very soft and moist, the sponge cake from Trinidad is a little bit heavy for what we are use to.

This cake was fantastic, I borrowed the recipe from my mom, she found the recipe I do not where, and the result was fantastic. Even more I can call it the foolproof Chocolate Cake. This is the perfect cake for whom do not have much expericen baking.


CHOCOLATE CAKE (difficulty: NONE)

2-1/4 cup of flour
1-2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cacao (powder)
1-1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1-1/4 cup of water
3/4 cup of butter
2 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla
2 tbsp of butter to grease the molds
2 tbsp of cocoa in powder to cover the molds.
Pre-heat oven at 350 F (180 C)

1. Prepare two cake molds (6" x 2") with the butter and sprinkler with cacao.  Another way to prepare the molds is grease the molds with butter and line them with wax paper.
2. Measure carefully all ingredients.
3. Put all the ingredients together in the mixer's bowl with the exception of the eggs. Do not break the eggs on the bowl's mixer, break them on another bowl and then add to the rest of the ingredients.
4. Beat the mix for half minute at low velocity; increase the velocity to medium speed and beat the mix for three (3) more minutes.
5. Pour half of the the mix in each mold.
6. Bake for 30 minuts or push a skewer in the centre, it should come out clean and the top should feel firm.
7. Leave to cool in the tin, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completly.
8. when the cake is cold, decorate it with buttercream.

See recipe for buttercream here. I did a variation of this buttercream recipe (coffee buttercream, I love tha coffee flavour with chocolate)  adding 2 tsp of instant coffee disolved in 2 tbsp of water.

I hope you enjoy it!!!

Romantic Cake

My very own "Sweet Heart" Cake

Hi, It has been a while since the last time that  I wrote in my blog. Things have been busy around here. I finished my Cake Decoration classes. I was struggling with the Gum Paste flowers, we had an exam and an exhibition.

We were requested to make basically three (03) cakes, one decorated with Butter cream, one decorated with Royal icing and another with fondant. We had about one week to prepare everything. The exhibition was last July 30, 2011. You may think that one week is more than enough, but when you reach home at 6:30 everyday and have to see a baby and the house, then you soon realize that you do not have one week.

Let me tell you that was stressful. My oven had the thermostat damaged and I found that when I was baking, so I got some burned cakes after 15 minutes in the oven, and baking at 10 pm. So imagine, how frustrating and painful it was. Finally I made my cakes and I was ready for the exhibition. that's important.

I was very much under stress that I went to my books to get inspired because my mind was in blank to create anything new, from the book Romantic Cakes by Peggy Porschen  I got some ideas and I started to decorate my cake.

I made my own version of one of the cake "American Sweet Heart"  You can see below.

American Sweet Heart by Peggy Porschen

I love Peggy's work, it is first romantic, well done and it is not complicated. She has wrote three books, Pretty Cakes, Romantic Cakes and  Beautiful Cakes. If you like romantic, beautiful and colorful cakes her books are excellent to get inspiration.

I did not make the heart in flowers due to the lack of time. Next time I will try to put more details. People see a cake and they do not think how many our take to finish a cake that you will eat in seconds, my small cake took me like 3 hours, from the time that I started to make the fondant to the time that I said, no more, I finish, let's go ... Decorate a cake is not "a piece of cake".

My work below.