Happy Pretend Birthday to Me!

I love sharing new tips and techniques I pick up along the way.  This one was truly one of those "why did I never think of that" moments.  I have always greased and floured my cake tins.  If you bake as often as I do, you get through alot of butter.  Save those butter wrappers and use them for lining your cake tins.  I was skeptical so I had to try it out.  

 I made some Swiss Meringue Buttercream and had a couple of wrappers left.

I pressed the wrapper in my tin and went around the edges with a sharp knife to trim the wrapper to the size of my tin.  

 And placed it Butter side up in my tin.

Then baked my cake.  

 I went around the sides with a knife to loosen them before tipping out onto my cooling rack.  

The wrapper peeled write off and my cake was perfect and did not stick to the tin at all.

I was recently the lucky recipient of a Dinkydoodle Airbrush :)  So this was my practice cake to get the feel for using my new airbrush.  The airbrush is amazing.  Love that I can get multitone effects on the icing.  You just couldn't get this effect colouring the icing the old fashion way.  I can't wait to have more projects and really get into using this amazing new tool.  Thank You Dawn!

LOL, I just had to share.  My daughter came up to me while I was typing this to inform me it is my pretend Birthday today.  I told her that was amazing and lucky because we have a pretend Birthday Cake.  So I guess we need to celebrate.

Happy Pretend Birthday to Me!

  

 

Chocolate Transfer Cupcake Wrap

 

 At Cake International in London a few weeks ago I picked up some chocolate transfer sheets for the first time.  I decided to try making a cupcake wrapper to experiment with them.  It was surprisingly easy and a very visually pretty and effect way to simply decorate a cake.  

You can find templates for cupcake wrappers online, but to be sure mine fit my cupcake I simply cut out one of the cases I was using to bake my cakes and traced around it. 

 

  

I traced 2 wrappers and made my outlines slightly taller and longer than my actual case.  

I cut out  both shaped and taped one together.  Set the taped one to the side, you will use this to help your wrapper hold its shape while it dries later. 

Take the other cut out and use it as a template to cut out your chocolate transfer sheet.  

Place the transfer sheet on a piece of baking paper.  Melt you chocolate and spread it as evenly as possible over your transfer.  Here I have used candy melts.  Please note if you are using actual chocolate you will want to temper your chocolate before using it on your transfer.

Leave to dry slightly for a couple of minutes, then carefully lift your transfer off the baking paper and place in the paper cup you made earlier to form your wrapper.  Slightly overlap where the ends meet.  Place in the fridge for 15 minutes to set. 

 When set, remove from the fridge and carefully remove the plastic backing from your transfer.  Note I said carefully :)  I manged to slightly damage mine at the end where the pieces overlap.  But it was OK, once it is iced it will still look lovely.   

 Remove the paper case from your cupcake and place your cupcake in your new edible chocolate wrapper.  

 Ice decorate and enjoy :)