Sunday, April 17, 2011

Easter Egg Nests with Rose Fairy Floss Cupcake Toppers


My lovely friend Sandy surprised me the other day with a packet of super cute striped cupcake papers, some rosewater and beautiful rose persian fairy floss.

Oooohhh I thought to myself, what a lovely bunch of cakey things I'll have to make something special with them, and so I did.

They inspired me to make these very sweet Easter Egg nest Cupcake Toppers.


I am in love with the rose Persian Fairy Floss, it is so silky and stringy looking, it has a different texture to normal fairy floss. However sadly just like real floss it does not last long once out of it's packet and after a few hours my toppers had melted into a soggy nest. They still looked ok just not as spectacularly fluffy as when I originally made them. I would say make them just before your about to pop them out on display.

Also the Robert Gordon Paper Cups.....soooooo cute, however they do look a bit greasy when baked with a high butter content vanilla cupcake (and really do you want any other sort?) I just popped another one over the top and it looked fine. They are a significant improvement on the older, yet still super pretty ones.  I'm wondering if the Australian regulations limit the amount of plastic/waxish coating they can use I remember reading somewhere an issue with the Wilton nut cups in the US.

They do make cute containers regardless, see them with the mini Easter eggs.


Tutorial for Easter Egg Nest Cupcake Toppers

Ingredients
Cupcakes topped with a buttercream swirl
Fondant in various pastel colours
Persian Fairy Floss ( www.pariya.com)
mini Easter eggs - these ones were from Big W in Australia

Using a blossom cutter cut out fondant in the desired colour. My Blossom cutter was 6cm and I used a variety of pastel colours. Place the cut out shapes onto parchment paper and allow to set for a few days.


Make cucpakes and decorate with a swirl of buttercream.


Top each cupcake with a fondant disk.


Pull out small sections of the fairy floss ensuring your hands are clean and very dry. Shape the floss into small nests to fit on top of the fondant blossom disks.


Finally place a couple of small Easter eggs into the nests.

Friday, April 15, 2011

And the winner is........

OK I have a winner.

I used Random Org and the result was:

74 Powered by RANDOM.ORG

So I counted through the comments 3 times and it looks like the winning comment was:

Jeanne who said....and now I follow you on Facebook!!

Her previous comment she said she would choose the Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook and the Whimsical Bakehouse which are really nice choices.

Jeanne if you could email me @ bubbleandsweet@hotmail.com and confirm that those are the 2 cookbooks you would like and provide me with your address I will have them ordered for you asap.

Sorry to all those who missed out but if you click on the links below they will take you to fishpond who have free Australian shipping and pretty good prices.


The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook
The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook

Secrets of Macarons
Secrets of Macarons

More From Magnolia: Recipes from the World Famous Bakery and Allysa Torey's Home Kitchen
More From Magnolia: Recipes from the World Famous Bakery and Allysa Torey's Home Kitchen

Whoopie Pies
Whoopie Pies

Planet Cake: A Beginner's Guide to Decorating Incredible Cakes
Planet Cake: A Beginner's Guide to Decorating Incredible Cakes

50 Easy Party Cakes
50 Easy Party Cakes

Romantic Cakes
Romantic Cakes

Whimsical Bakehouse: Fun-to-make Cakes That Taste as Good as They Look
Whimsical Bakehouse: Fun-to-make Cakes That Taste as Good as They Look

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Hot Cross Bun Cake Pops for Easter



Ok so I've been having a little bit of trouble getting into the Easter decorating groove.

I love a cute bunny cookie as much as the next person, but honestly there are so many really great ones already out there I just don't think I can add anything amazingly inspirational just at the moment.

So instead I'm going with super yummy.

These were supposed to be a lightly spiced cake ball based on the Hot Cross Muffin recipe of mine published HERE in the March 2011 Peekaboo magazine.


Instead they ended up being chocolate cake. I decorated a cake for my niece's 7th birthday on the weekend and carved a bit off to make a bag shape, and we all know that cake pops are the perfect way to use up all that excess cake and frosting.


Here is a quick peek of the cake I made for my niece. The instructions to make this cake is from 50 Easy Party Cakes by Debbie Brown. If you'd like to win the cookbook so you can make your very own make up bag cake like this one CLICK HERE as I have a competition running until the 14th of April 2011 to win 2 cookbooks.

Oh and here is my token bunny.....but he's not edible, my daughter stuck him on while I was taking the pictures and I kinda though it was cute.


Instructions after jump