Heart in a cupcake.

I had a little bit of spare time on my hands the other day and decided to whip up a batch of yummy cupcakes. These may look like any other ordinary cupcakes but wait……….

Cut these beauties in half to reveal a hidden heart inside of the cupcake. They definitely look like they were made with love.

Whilst browsing one of my favourite sites Bake it in a cake  a while ago i came across these little gems and i have been dying to give them a go ever since. These would be perfect to make for Valentines day, after all who wouldn’t want cupcakes?

Here’s how to make these lovely hidden heart cupcakes.

1) First of all you need to bake a cake to cut out your love hearts from. I made mine a lovely red/dark pink shade but really anything goes and you can make your cake any colour you like.

2) Next take a small heart cutter, this one measures approximately 1.5″

It is always a good idea to check that the hearts are not going to be too big for your cupcake cases. You can check this by placing the heart cutter inside one of the cupcake cases to get a rough idea of the size. Once you have checked the size, cut heart shapes out of the cake and set to one side on a piece of baking/greaseproof paper.

3) Line a cupcake/muffin tin with cupcake cases of your choice. I used red cases to match the colour of the hearts inside of the cupcakes but i also loved the boldness of the red cases against the softer colours of the love heart sweets, that in my opinion finished the cupcakes off perfectly.

4) Next spoon some cupcake mixture into the bottom of the cupcake cases and place one of the sponge hearts inside. Push the heart down gently until it touches the bottom. I made my cupcake mixture vanilla because i wanted to see the heart inside really stand out but once again you can use what ever flavour and colour of cupcakes you prefer.  Important please take notice of which way the hearts are sitting in the cupcake cases because if they are not facing forward, once the cupcakes are sliced open there would not be a heart shape.

5) Spoon some more cupcake mixture on top of the hearts. Don’t worry if it is not even as once they are baking the cupcakes will rise around the hearts.

6) Bake in the oven for the amount of time that your cupcake recipe requires.

7) Once baked and cooled your cupcakes are ready to be decorated in which ever style, theme or colour your would like. When the cupcakes are finished slice one in half with a sharp knife to reveal the hidden heart inside.

Like i said before with Valentines day just around the corner, these would be perfect to bake as a gift.

I personally never need an occasion or excuse to bake. For me it’s all about the excitement of trying out new ideas and nothing at all to do with the taste testing……..honest! You do believe me…don’t you?  Enjoy!

Cocktail theme cake.

I made this cake for a young lady who was celebrating her 21st birthday. I was asked to make a cake by her sister. Her sister told me that the birthday girls favourite colour was green and could she also have a cocktail glass on top of the cake. This is the design I came up with.

The cocktails were made from gelatin as I didn’t have any piping gel, here is what I did.

First get together a collection of cocktail glasses. I chose to use plastic rather than glass as I figured they would be lighter and also safer should one of them take a tumble.

Then you need some gelatine. Packets of gelatine like the one shown below are usually readily available in most supermarkets.

Follow the instructions provided to make up the gelatine.

Now for the fun bit, playing with colours. To do this I poured smaller amounts of the made up liquid gelatine into separate smaller bowls.I then added some food colouring by dipping the tip of a cocktail stick into the paste colour and adding tiny amounts at a time. I continued repeating this until I was happy with the colour and shade I had achieved. For my colour I used Sugarflair paste colours.

These are available from most cake decorating shops and can also be purchased online.

Next fill the cocktail glasses with the coloured gelatine. I did this in stages and added one colour to each glass.

Once the first layer has set, add another layer of coloured gelatine on top of the set first layer.

For the ice cubes I used uncoloured gelatin that I poured into an ice-cube tray. Once this had set I removed the gelatine cubes one at a time and cut them down to size. Smaller cubes for the small glasses and larger ones for the biggest glass.

Foxes glacier mints also make fantastic looking shaped ice cubes but I don’t seem to have much luck with them as they seem to slightly melt. This is how I thought of making the gelatine ice cubes, it is always worth having a plan b.