Love

Love <3

 

People can say I love you in so many different ways now... they can use cupcakes do this...

 

 

I think receiving a box of cupcakes that spell out "I love you" is so cute and meaningful... 

 

 

 



Receiving a cupcake bouquet is also very cute and meaningful, its very original and shows to your loved one that you have put a lot of thought into being different and showing your creative and not just boring...

 

 

 

These are also very cute to give to your mum or grandmother on mothers day, its something pretty to look at and also a very yummy treat for afternoon tea or coffee... 

 

 

 

diandra xx 

 

How to Make Ice Cream Filled Cupcakes

Step 1: Make the cupcakes.

Make them according to package instructions or use your recipe from scratch.

Step 2: Use an ice cream cupcake tool to cut a core from the cupcakes.

The tool will cut a plug from each cupcake with a simple twist of the wrist.  Unless you are making mini cupcakes, use the larger corer.

Step 3: Fill them with ice cream.

Use the cupcake tool to cut plugs from a block of ice cream just as you did with the cupcakes.  Place the tip of the tool in each cupcake hole and press the plunger button.  The plunger will insert the ice cream plug in the cupcakes.

Step 4: Frost them and freeze them.

Cover the holes with frosting and freeze them.  That’s all there is to it. 

Hanan Alasiri

Graduation Cupcakes {and How To Make Fondant Graduation Caps}

~ How to make a fondant Graduation Cap ~

If you’re not familiar with working with fondant, start with my Fondant 101 post.

1.  Color your fondant as desired (more detailed instructions HERE).

2.  Roll out the color of fondant you plan to use for the hat.

3. and 4.  Cut fondant into strips about 3/4 inches wide and 3 3/4 inches long.

5.  Roll up a strip of fondant to create a ring (overlapping slightly).  Use a teeny, tiny bit of water or corn syrup to help the ends stay together.  Set aside to dry.

6.  Cut a square (for the top of the hat) about 1 3/4 inches x 1 3/4 inches.

7.  Allow hat bases (the rings) and tops (squares) to dry for several hours or overnight.  They should be totally firm before moving to the next step.

8.  When the pieces have dried, use a tiny bit of “edible glue”- made with a few tablespoons of powdered sugar and a tiny bit of water (it should be the thickness of toothpaste) and apply with a (clean) paintbrush along the top edge of one ring.  Set the top of the hat (a fondant square) on top, and set aside to dry.

9.  Once the top of the hat has been secured to the base of the hat, make a tassel.  For the tassels, simply roll a tiny piece of fondant into a little “snake”.  I used my finger to press down one end just a bit, then used a knife to create just a bit of texture to represent the individual strings at the end of a tassel.

10.  Add just a drop of your ”edible glue” to the center of the hat, and attach the tassel.  Bend tassel over the side of the cap just a bit.  Set aside to dry (at least 1 hour).  Add toppers to cupcakes right before serving (up to a few hours before).   Fondant decorations added more than a few hours before serving will begin to get soft and lose their shape.

Congratulations graduates!

Hanan Alasiri

cupcake towers

cupcakes are phenomenal on there own but when they have original and unique stands to go with them make them extra special.. I like to call them cupcake towers..

 

 

all these stands have something about them that make the cake stand more appealing and appetising... 

cupcakes have grown a lot recently and there is more diverse and a lot more options for stands and towers, then there used to be...


till next time, diandra xx

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Ingredients

• Nonstick coating
  
• 1/2 cup hot water
  
• 1/2 cup dark raisins
  
• 6 1/2 ounces all-purpose flour
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cocoa powder
  
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  
• 4 1/2 ounces corn oil
  
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
  
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 8 ounces carrots, shredded
  
• 2/3 cup walnuts, toasted, chopped
  
• Maple Cinnamon Pastry Cream Filling, recipe follows
  
• Cream Cheese Frosting, recipe follows
  
• Orange and green food coloring, for garnish, optional
  
• Marizpan or almond paste, for garnish, optional

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare the cupcake pans by spraying with nonstick coating and using cupcake liners.
In a small bowl, pour the hot water over the raisins to rehydrate and set aside.
In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder and cinnamon, and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, combine the corn oil, dark brown sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla and eggs. Mix well to fully incorporate. Combine the wet and the dry ingredients, stirring to fully incorporate. Drain the raisins and squeeze out the moisture. Fold them in to the batter with the carrots and walnuts.
Scoop the batter into the prepared cupcake pans and bake until the cupcakes spring back when lightly touched with a finger, about 20 minutes. Cool.
To assemble: Core and fill the cupcakes with the Maple Cinnamon Pastry Cream Filling after they have cooled. Frost the cupcakes with the Cream Cheese Frosting using a pastry bag or offset spatula.
Optional garnish: Using orange and green food color and some marzipan or almond paste, form carrots by rolling a ball of marzipan in the palms of your hand. Use a knife to make marks in the carrots and make a small batch of greens to attach to each carrot.
Enjoy..
Hanan Alasiri

Fight animal cruelty with cupcakes!

By registering, baking and fundraising for Cupcake Day for the RSPCA, you will be part of an exceptional group of supporters who understand the importance of pets in our lives. Your cupcakes will help give a surrendered puppy a home, rescue a neglected pony, provide emergency surgery to an injured kitten and save thousands of lives.

Funds raised from Cupcake Day go back to help the shelters, clinics, Inspectors and animals in your home state. For example: if you are raising funds in Tasmania, your donations will help RSPCA Tasmania.

Nationally, the RSPCA received less than 3% of its funding from government so fundraising initiatives like Cupcake Day are vital to increasing donations and awareness of the fight to prevent animal cruelty.

 

 

 

How your cupcakes can change lives:

$10         provides an enrichment toy for a cat which assists in their behavioural development

$30         provides bales of hay to feed the farm animals in our care

$40         microchips a cat or dog to ensure that they always find their way home

$50         subsidises the emergency boarding costs of the animals of victims of domestic violence*

$60         provides warm bedding, heat pads and lamps to keep a puppy warm

$100       subsidises medical treatment for an injured dog or cat

$200       keeps an RSPCA Inspector on the road  fighting cruelty

 XINYUE ZHANG

It’s the Stanley Cup Made Out of Cupcakes

Cupcakes are making one last, desperate push to stay relevant: Crumbs is partnering with the National Hockey League and NBC Sports to sell limited-edition "Stanley Cup(cakes)." Despite this being a good portmanteau, this is an awful idea.

 Hockey needs all the good press it can get — why associate with a dying dessert? Is it hockey fans who are going to save cupcakes? No one is going to be happy with you for bringing cupcakes to a playoff party. Nobody. But if you feel the need to purchase these, Crumbs is selling cupcakes bearing the logos of sixteen teams at each of its remaining 69 retail locations around the country — and driving a cupcake truck around certain playoff cities. At this point, it's more like a funeral procession.

XINYUE ZHANG

Fun Facts About Cupcakes






The first talk about “cupcakes” can be traced back to 1796, when a recipe of “a cake to be baked in small cups “ was writted in a book by Amelia Simms. The earliest use of the term “cupcake” was in “Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats” in 1828.
Cupcakes (and other baked goodies) are banned in New York City’s schools as a way of curtailing rising obesity rates.
Cupcake liners do more than make it easy to remove them from the pan. Traditionally, sides of tins are greased for easy removal, but also floured because the batter needs to have something to cling to. A cupcake liner takes care of both.
Suzanne Rutland claims to have eaten over 50,000 Hostess cupcakes and even founded a Hostess Cup Cake Club. This iconic cupcake has been around since 1919, but became hugely popular with the addition of a creamy filling in 1950.

Several attempts have been made to create the World’s Largest Cupcake. However, by definition, these would indeed just be large cakes iced together mimicking the classic fluted shape of the true small stature of a cupcake. The current holder of the record: GourmetGiftBaskets.com for their 1224-lb., 2 million calorie creation baked on August 15, 2009.
If giant cupcakes are imposters, then the World’s Smallest Cupcake is a sure winner.
Baked in Great Britain in celebration of National Cupcake Week, this mini-mini measured 1.5 centimeters high and 3 centimeters wide.

While not edible, the $25,000 cupcake car featured by Neiman-Marcus in 2009 is perhaps the oddest cupcake.
29 cupcakes in 30 seconds is the record for eating the little treats.
A resurgence in the popularity of the red velvet cupcake is partly attributed to the 1989 film Steel Magnolias in which the groom's cake (a southern tradition) is a red velvet cake made in the shape of an armadillo.
One of the most popular cupcake bakery's in the U.S. is Crumbs in New York City. They have reported $23.5 million in cupcake revenue last year alone!
1 cupcake without frosting averages about 130 calories. Low fat varieties have also come out so that we can enjoy the tasty delight not worrying about our fat intake.
Cupcakes can come in many varieties. Some cupcakes can contain fruit like banana and blueberry cupcakes. Some contain vegetables like carrot cupcakes. Some can contain cheese, butter or chocolate.
Cupcake baking pans are available in three sizes. Small (mini), medium (regular), and large. This variety allows for experimentation with different cupcake forms. Recipes on this site can be baked in any size pan, although the baking time will need to be adjusted for mini and large pans.
Mini cupcakes usually take 5-7 minutes less than medium-size cupcakes and large cupcakes usually take 5-10 minutes more.

XINYUE ZHANG

Review of Cupcake Bakery

 

when visting the cupcake bakery i garentuee you will be very pleased with your purchase and the experience. i will never forget my first experiene, it was my birthday and my brother took me to get me a giant cupcake birthday cake. i hadn't been before so he choose all the flavours and toppings. luckily for me that we are very simillar and like the same sorts of things. he chose a red velvet giant cupcake with all different colour icing on the top. it was so special. every year now its a tradition that on my birthday my brother will take me to get a gaint cupcake. out of the whole experience i take out of it the train ride home (before he had a license) how we would try so hard not to drop it or squish it, but more recently when we go we drive into the city and it almost every time will have its own car seat in the back and a seat belt wrapped around it for extra support just in case it moves on the journey home. i am very lucky to say we have never dropped it or ruined it.

 

i rate the cupcake bakery out of 10, 15. Because it is truley an amazing place. you get to chose what flavour you want and what colour icing you want. so if your not happy its your fault. but im pretty sure you will be happy because you designed it yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

till next time, diandra xx

 

Giant Cupcakes in weddings..

Certainly, you would know that cupcakes are not just about the icing and designs that cover the cupcake itself. This, for one, is a perfect addition to a wedding cake.
As a part of a whole wedding cake, this cupcake looks lovelier with all the other cupcakes surrounding it. Simple yet elegant, that’s how I would describe this cupcake. It doesn’t have too much going on, so it probably looks even yummier.

Raspberry white choc and banana caramel surprise cupcakes with piped buttercream rose swirls and handmade fondant rose petals.
Topper cake: White choc mud with palette iced white chocolate buttercream and fresh roses.

 Soft Romantic Giant Cupcake Wedding..

Wedding Cupcakes in Navy with Giant Cupcake Top Tier.

Ivory and Diamanté Wedding Cupcakes with Giant Cupcake Top Tier.

Here are some pictures about putting the giant cupcake in weddings.

  Hanan Alasiri



{Cupcake Decorating} Basic Icing/Frosting Piping Techniques: How To Frost Cupcakes With Piping Tips.

I am sure everyone loves it:
Standing in front of a cupcake shop and almost pressing your nose flat against the window because all you see are these beautiful frosted cupcakes and you ask yourself:
Can I do that too? Of course you can!

All you need is a piping bag, frosting and great piping tips of your choice and a little practice.

Decorating cupcakes with piping tips is not that hard at all!

If you are completely new to decorating cupcakes, I will show you a couple of must have piping tips/nozzles and how their designs look frosted on a cupcake.
I personally love large decorating tips, definitely prefer them over smaller ones.

Remember: You can never ever have too many decorating tips!

What I usually recommend is to first practice piping on a board first, to get the hang of it.

This is a great basic but oh so wonderful piping tip: A Large Round Decorating Tip.

Use a pastry bag, fitted with a large round tip to pipe, beginning in the center, swirl the tip and release as you pull up to form a peak and soft top. It depends on what you prefer on “how high” you want to pipe.

the star tip is used very often as well.

Starting in the centre, swirl around with even pressure and leave a cute peaky top at the top again.
This decorating tip is awesome to create an “ice cream” look

My absolute favorite of them all cannot be missed here

I got this tip from a special friend (wink, wink sweetie) and I fell in love with it right when I first used it. It’s an ateco tip (no. 848), which creates wonderful swirls!

As you can see in the photo:
Depends on how much frosting you pipe and with how much pressure: It changes the look from very bold and thick, to a rather “slimmer” look. Just pipe as you like it best.
I usually pipe huge swirls (because I am in LOVE with huge swirls) when I use the cupcakes as home decor. Yes, you heard it. I do not eat my cuppies all the time, a lot of them I place all around the house :-)
Imagine you decorate your house for Easter. All these lovely pastel color shades…
What’s better than adding cupcakes to the scene? Absolutely stunning and beautiful. If you use a lot of icing sugar in the frosting, it hardens really well and you can keep the cupcake for months!
It gets as hard as a stone, I tell you. But the look, won’t change.

You can use a different piping technique with Ateco's 848 tip and create this cute design, same tip, different look:

Say hello to the Walton Decorating drop flower.

It is pretty cute! When you frost it like I did, it leaves a little hole on the very top.
I would suggest to place a cute candy heart etc. on top to hide the hole.

Now here comes a classic!

Star tip (Wilton).

You can make a classic swirl or create a beautiful rose on top of your cupcake. I absolutely love those, they look so real and they are so easy to make:

Start in the center and slowly, but with even pressure, move your decorating tip in a circular pattern around your center.

I adore Wilton's 6B star tip.

Again, you have the option to frost a classic swirl, like I’ve mentioned above (Ateco tip 848) – absolutely cute!
Or just pipe in the center of the cupcake and as you go up, with even pressure, leave a cute peak at the top.
Just like with the large round tip I introduced at the beginning. 

Note:
You will create such swirls etc. if your frosting has the right consistency. Make sure it does not become too soft and runny.
If your frosting is too runny and soft, just add in a little bit more icing sugar and mix again. If it ends up being way too thick, you can add a little milk to it.

Here’s a little overview for you guys, feel free to save it.

What are your personal favourite piping tips?
Do you have a certain technique that you absolutely love?
Feel free to share your thoughts below in the comment section.

Now let’s get it started!
Pipe it, ladies and gents!

Many blessings,
 

ABRAR ALSHAIKH.. ;)