Sugar Flowers in a Vase

The first half of this half term on my sugar craft course we made a vase filled with sugar flowers. 

Flower Vase

The vase was made using petal paste, rolled and stuck together. It was then left to dry before using royal icing to pipe the pattern on to it. 

The flowers are very simple to make and are a variety of 5 and 6 petaled flowers. These are made without any cutters or tools. I'll try and post a tutorial on these later in the week. They are attached to wire, decorated with powder and then placed in the vase. 

Top view of flowers

The whole vase is very easy to make and only took a few hours to put together. It is very effective and looks good, however, I have no idea what I'd actually use this for!! Anyway I've learnt to make some flowers and my mum has a vase on her new window ledge for the cats to eat. (Our cat eat some of the flowers I made!!). Making these flowers has also made me look forwards to my sugar flower diploma with more excitement. I start this on 29th April and can't wait. I hope that I'll learn some really great skills. The plan is to complete this by July and then start the next diploma in September, final one in January to have obtained my masters by March next year. 

In other news, the location of my new cake business has changed. We are now looking at heading a little further east and will, hopefully, be based in Stone Cross. Hopefully we'll be moving in the coming months and I can finally register as a business and start making a profit. I've had a couple of orders in the past few weeks so hopefully my name is starting to spread. If you know of anyone that wants a cake, for any occasion, then please pass on my details. 

Lime Cupcakes

I was asked to create some sample cupcakes this weekend, one of the flavours was lime, so I set about thinking what the best way to put this in was. I decided to try a few different methods and leave it to the couple to decide which their favourite was. 

For all the cupcakes I made a lime basic cupcake:

300g Butter

300g Caster Sugar

300g Self raising flour

6 Eggs

I baked these at 180oC for around 30 minutes and then left to cool. 

Cooling cupcakes

While they were cooling I made a lemon and lime curd for the centre of the cakes. 

Zest and Juice of 2 limes

Zest and Juice of 3 lemons

250g Caster Sugar

125g Butter

4 Eggs

Combine the zest, juice, sugar and butter in a bowl over gently simmering water. Stir until the sugar and butter have melted. 

Lightly whisk the eggs and then add to the mixture. Continue stirring until the mixture has started to thicken and is coating the back of the spoon. Set aside and leave to cool, as it cools it'll thicken even further. 

Lemon and lime curd

I cut the tops of the cupcakes off, so they were level, and a small disc in the centre. I filled this with some of the curd. 

The topping is where the cakes differed. I decided to try two varieties of meringue and one with butter cream. 

Firstly I made a soft merringue. I combined 1 egg white with 50g Caster Sugar in a bowl over simmering water. I whisked this until the sugar had dissolved. Took it off the heat and whisked until the mixture was forming soft peaks. This was then piped onto the prepared cupcakes. 

Secondly I made a baked meringue topping. 1 egg white was combined with 50g Caster sugar and whisked until forming soft peaks. This was piped onto the cakes and then placed under a hot grill until the top was golden. 

Finally I made Italian meringue buttercream and stirred in some lime curd, from above. I piped this onto the cakes. 

Baked and soft meringue lime cupcakes

I used little coloured sugar paste shapes to distinguish between the cakes and have sent them off to Wales for the testing. The verdict from this kitchen is the baked meringue is the favourite but we shall see which they prefer.