New Cutters!

 My other half loved my fondant covered cupcakes so much that I decided to make some more as I had some new plunger cutters to try out. I LOVE getting new stuff, it's like the postie is bringing me a present and I can't rest until I've used my new goodies.

First I decided to do the same as my previous fondant covered cakes and scoop out some cake so you get a lovely bite of buttercream inside, then I went for a Valentine's theme although they would be perfect for someone special all year round.

Then I thought I'd do some yellow butterflies with a Happy Birthday message:

I used some glitter writing icing to embellish the butterfly wings a bit and for centres on the flowers. They came out pretty well, I dusted both sets with some rainbow glitter for a bit of extra sparkle, I'm really liking the glitter, looks beautiful when the light catches it!

As the new website will enable customers to choose and pay for their cakes completely online, I'm thinking of offering these cakes for personal customisation - choose the wording, the base colour, the decoration colour, the decoration style and even the cake/filling flavour. That way, every order will be bespoke exactly as the customer chooses!

For inquiries or orders, please contact me at bakerloucakes@hotmail.com - or leave a comment :)

Baking Frenzy!

I'm still designing products for the new website so I've been baking lots of different things so I can take photos for the product images. Yesterday I couldn't make up my mind which flavours to try out, the choice was between sticky toffee, chocolate orange and mint choc chip. Being a woman and hormonal, I kept dithering and ended up baking all three flavours!

This is the chocolate orange cupcake, I just adapted my usual rich chocolate recipe by adding fresh orange zest and juice, same with the icing:

I'm not a fan of chocolate orange personally but I must admit this one was good!

Next I tried the mint choc chip, I've always been a bit dubious about this flavour as I kinda thought it would be a bit like cake smeared with toothpaste, so I decided to really up the chocolate content by adding choc chips to the cake as well as using them as a topping. And it worked, really pleased with how they came out :)

Finally it was time to experiment with sticky toffee. When I make this as a pudding, it always goes down a storm so I was hoping it would work well in cupcake form. I used my usual trusty recipe for a moist toffee flavour sponge, when cooled I scooped a bit of cake from the top of each one and filled it with a gooey toffee sauce (after I'd tested it a few times, naturally!) To finish off, I piped on a small amount of buttercream as I didn't want to overdo the sweetness and scattered a few mini fudge chunks on top.

The sticky toffee was so yummy although next time I think I would make the sauce thicker as it did kind of sink into the cake, still fabulous though!

Fondant Cupcakes

I made these cute cupcakes as part of my gift range for the new website, many more designs to come! As they are covered with fondant rather than buttercream, these cakes should travel better so will be offered for sale nationwide (will do a test run first to make sure they arrive intact!)

I only intended to make these for photographic purposes but they were sold in minutes as they caught the eye of a customer collecting another cake! 

As my new packaging isn't quite ready yet, I used a standard cupcake box and prettied it up a bit, love this ribbon!

Please leave a comment if there are any particular themes or ideas that you'd like to see in the new range, I'd love to hear from you :)

Keep going!

I must admit I've kind of had enough of editing photos for the website now but needs must, I really want the new website to look fabulous and need photos that really show off the cakes properly. However, it was really good to get back to some basic cake decorating - after all I'm a baker not a computer genius!

This cake is being picked up this afternoon: (by a very gorgeous customer, yum!!)

These cakes are so simple, yet so effective and hugely popular! I've lost count of how many of these I've made, I guess it's because it's more of a gift than just a cake!

The website is coming along in fits and starts, I'm constantly baking and getting great images for the products and coming up with new ideas all the time. This is a mock up of how the packaging is going to look, I'm so pleased with it!

Here is another peek at the new range...

Such a shame that I have to watermark everything now, so many people these days seem to think nothing of using other people's work and passing it off as their own, I wouldn't have the nerve personally! More in earlier post on this subject!

Anyway, back to Photoshop for me, hope everyone has a great weekend despite the downpour :)

Celebration Cakes

I've been quite a busy bee lately editing photos for the new BakerLou website, I'm finding my vision going a bit funny from time to time -  definitely prefer baking to peering at a computer screen!

The website is going to be mainly dedicated to cupcakes but I thought it would be good to still have the option of ordering the bigger celebration cakes and rather than list each design individually, I decided to make a montage of various styles so that customers can get an idea of what I can do and get a bit of inspiration for how they want their cake to look.

Still seems a bit strange to have a website rather than customers flicking through my photo albums but I guess I should move with the times!

This first montage is a few of the children's cakes I've made over the years:

Now on to cakes for special occasions: (the cakes with bottles in are so popular, I could probably do them in my sleep now!)

and finally, novelty cakes:

I must admit that I prefer doing the more unusual cakes, it's great to have a bit of a challenge and really gets the creative juices flowing!

Going through all my photo files, it surprised me just how many cakes I have done through the years, I came across ones that I had actually forgotten making - is it that I've simply done too many or am I just getting old?!

Handbag Cake

Woo hoo, it's finished! This is a Paul's Boutique handbag cake made with sponge, jam, buttercream and sugarpaste icing. I'm pretty chuffed with it :)

As I usually forget to take lots of photos, I decided to really make sure this cake was photographed at each stage so here is a step-by-step montage of how this cake came together:

So happy with how it came out, hope the customer loves it!

Now back to cupcakes...

P.S. My mum received her money from The Bakery today, just waiting on paperwork now (full story here) so some progress!

Sneak Peek!!

The website is coming together, the packaging branding is coming along nicely (with a little bit of help from my friend at jellypark) so all is going well for BakerLou!!

Of course, just as I'm dying to get going on my new venture, the celebration cake orders are flooding in. Typical but good to know I'm still in demand :) This is what I have to make into a cake today:

Lots of nice fiddly bits to do, looking forward to it! Will post a pic when it's finished (if it turns out good lol)

So, anyway, here is a sneak peek of my new cupcake range, rather excited I have to say....

Let me know your favourite flavours!!