School Themed Teacher Appreciation Day Cupcakes

Well it was "Teacher Appreciation Day" here on the 30th October & I would like to start by saying that in my humble opinion all teachers do an incredible job & are often undervalued & definitely underpaid, so a great big thank you to all teachers everywhere, you do a great job!

This order was prepared in two gift boxes of 5 cupcakes each, one for the class teacher & one for the school principal.

They were the classic & very yummy combination of 'Killer Chocolate' (chocolate flavour butter sponge cake) with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. This is one of the simplest but best combos I think whether it is chocolate cake with vanilla frosting or vanilla cake with chocolate frosting, you just can't go wrong.

I modeled the custom toppers in a school theme using marshmallow fondant, black edible marker was used on the ruler & crayons & I piped white royal icing for the sum on the chalk board.  If you can't quite see from the photo the pink banner was embossed with the words thank you.

These were great fun to create & I really hope they were enjoyed by the teachers they were sent to.

Ben 10 Birthday Cake

Ben 10 seems to be all the rage with young boys at the moment & I have to admit that even though I have 3 small children I have never actually seen the cartoon myself but after a bit of research into the characters I was able to create this great Ben 10 cake for a lucky boys 4th birthday.

The predominant colours in Ben 10 are green, white & black so of course I stuck with those for the colour scheme of the cake.  I chose to use black to cover the cake board to symbolise the night sky & space as Ben 10 is sort of about space & aliens (as I now know) & I used fondant stars which I painted in edible silver paint to further this look.

This cake was another 'Midnight Delight', lovely rich, moist chocolate mud cakes with a whipped chocolate ganache filling & frosting (a very popular flavour at the moment), all covered in yummy homemade marshmallow fondant.  It was a 10" square (approx 50 regular serves).

I used the Ben 10 logo as a guide to create the child's name & age.  The gradient colour effect was achieved using different colour petal dusts & then I finished it all off with some lustre dust to create a nice shimmer on it.

As always all of the characters were hand modeled by me using homemade marshmallow fondant.  Here we have one of the characters from the show called Grey Matter I think this guy was my favourite one.

& this charming little guy is Up Chuck!

I also thought I would make a large model of Ben 10's famous watch the Omnitricks because you can't have a Ben 10 cake without the Omnitricks as it is such a intricate part of the show.

Butterfly & Blossom Birthday Cupcakes & Cookies

This latest order was to celebrate a special little girls 1st birthday with some very special cupcakes & cookies.

The client requested a theme of lots of pretty pink & butterflies & also pointed out some flowers that she had seen & loved on a previous post for vanilla floral cupcakes.  I also incorporated just a small amount of purple to give a little contrast to the pinks. They turned out so beautiful & girly, just right for a gorgeous little princess' 1st birthday I think.

There were 5 dozen cupcakes all up I couldn't quite get them all in the photo but don't they look totally yummy all lined up in rows like that.

The cake for these cupcakes was 'Confetti' (speckled vanilla butter cake).  The 'confetti' effect meant that there are little tiny flecks of bright colours all through the cake which looks like confetti, this was a great choice as it is always a big hit with children.  The frosting was a smooth & silky vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream.

As well as all the butterfly & blossom toppers I also included a set of 3 special toppers with a message which read HAPPY BIRTHDAY 1 on top of a flower shaped cutouts & were then finished with tiny flowers & butterflies.

The delicate blossoms & butterflies that topped each cupcake I created using homemade marshmallow sugarpaste & finished with accents & highlights using edible petal dusts, lustre dusts, & sugar pearls.

I made a few different styles flowers but mainly focused on the one which the client had seen before & liked so much & made it in a variety of sizes & in 2 shades of pink.

The butterflies I crafted in 3 different sizes in order to compliment the various size flowers.  The largest butterflies had room for the most detail & decorations & I finished these in a more 'whimsical' style complete with little eyes & smiles as I thought this would be more appropriate for a young child's cake.

This order also included lots of wonderful cookie gift/favour bags for the party guests to take as a really lovely & unique way to say thank you for celebrating our little girls birthday with us.

The pink & butterfly theme was continued on with the cookies.  They were almond flavoured sugar cookies flooded with pink raspberry flavoured royal icing.  I made the butterflies bodies using marshmallow fondant & decorated the spots on the wings with tiny sugar pearls.

Each individual cookie was placed into it's own cellophane sleeve, tied with a matching ribbon & finished with a tag featuring a thank you message.

For this order they also hired one of my large cupcake stands to display the cupcakes in a lovely cupcake tower fashion & they were kind enough to forward on some great photos to me of the cupcakes all set up on the stand.  Thank you.

I just love this one with young lady checking out the cupcakes.  Hopefully she is thinking I can't wait to have one of those.  Perhaps she is picking out the one she wants.

If you look very carefully in these shots you can see the confetti effect in the cake.

The customer was very happy with the cupcakes & cookies & I received some fantastic feedback as well as a lot of word of mouth orders from her daughter's birthday party.