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 They still looked ok just not as spectacularly fluffy as when I originally made them.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.

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

OK I have a winner.

I used Random Org and the result was:

Result: 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


Secrets of Macarons


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


Whoopie Pies


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


50 Easy Party Cakes


Romantic Cakes


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

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

Cookbooks giveaway, WIN 2 cookbooks to celebrate my 1year Blogivesary

How time flies when your having fun. My 1 year Blogiversary is coming up at the end of the month and I'm so excited about it I would like to offer one of you the chance to win 2 cookbooks from the ones listed below.


The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook


Secrets of Macarons


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


Whoopie Pies


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


50 Easy Party Cakes


Romantic Cakes


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

Open to my lovely readers everywhere. Entries open until the 14th of April 2011.  

YES this is open Internationally.

To enter you must complete step 1 and enter a comment to let me know. Step 2 and 3 are optional but if you do them add a separate comment for an extra entry.

1. Follow this blog and then tell me which of the 2 listed cookbooks you would like to win. Existing followers just say in the comment

2. Step 1 and also follow me on facebook

3. Step 1 above and tell your friends on your facebook page or blog about this giveaway.

Prize is 2 cookbooks from the ones listed above to be chosen by the winner including postage to the winners address. Winner will be chosen using radom org and the winner will be announced on this blog.

Ben Ten cake pops with mini M &M's

I'm having a bit of bloggers block at the moment.

Yup I have been a bad blogger, nothing inspiring cooked around here the last week of so. Well I did make some of my triple chocolate cookies but y'all have seen those done so I didn't take any pictures.

oh and I did make a cake for my nephew but it was a last minute thing the night before and I used a Harry Potter cake box mix that someone had given me.

So I went back through my archives to try and rustle up some photo's to share with you and found these.

OK the reason I never posted these before is not because they were not totally awesome, it's because I took pretty awful photo's which often happens when I am making something for someone else.

These are some Ben Ten Pop's I made last year for the owner and designer of Australian Made kids fashion line Little Miss J and Mister TJ, well for her son really.

I made the pops with chocolate cake and mini M & M's, which I think is perfect for little boys. Just make up your chocolate cake, add enough frosting so it will be moist and holds it's shape remember not sloppy and the add a handful of mini m&m,s.

OK you need to be a little restrained on the M & M's too many and you will have difficulty popping you lollipop stick into the pop.

Here is a picture of the pop's, I shaped them using a small round fondant cutter and pressing the cake pop mixture in and flattening the top. Then I chilled the mixture and went through and popped the lollipop stick into each one to make a hole, this is pretty important with the M & M pops because if you poke into one of the candies there is no getting through you just need to start in another spot. Some times it's easier to scrap the whole pop and reshape it.

(If you look closely you can see where I had to make a second hole as I could not push through the candy)

Chill the pops again and in the meantime melt your chocolate/ candy melts. Take the pops out of the fridge and insert the lollipop sticks by dipping them into the melted chocolate and pushing them into the pre-made holes. Chill them in the fridge again.

One the lollipop sticks are set you can dip the whole pop in the melted chocolate and set standing up in styrofoam.

With these Ben Ten pops I had pre-made rounds of fondant using the same round fondant cutter and cutting the triangle shapes using a pizza cutter wheel, after the chocolate on the pops were dry I attached the fondant rounds with a little melted chocolate and held them a couple of seconds until secure.

In Love with.........Miette the cookbook

Miette: Recipes from San Francisco's Most Charming Pastry Shop

I am totally in love with the cover of this book.

It looks like the kind of simple but sooo amazing baking that I like, the basics if you will behind all the decorating. Reminds me of some of my other favourite cookbooks that I talked about previously (click here for link)

and of course it doesn't hurt that it's from a renowned patisserie in San Francisco.
I have already pre-ordered my copy and can't wait for it to turn up so I can try out all the recipes.

Orange and Poppy Seed Macarons for MacTweets

The MacTweets challenge #17 for March 2011 was Sugar & Spice and Everything….Fruity… with a requirement to make sure the macarons incorporate both a spice and a fruit, at least one of each.

I have to admit I nearly didn't make this challenge, I have been a bit busy and although I had quite a few great ideas I just wasn't feeling spicy this month.
Then I noticed poppy seeds in the spice section of the supermarket and I was inspired.

Poppy seed macarons filled with an orange curd based buttercream, just the perfect thing for a refreshing afternoon pick me up.
 

I'm sure the rest of the MacTweets crowd will have a great bunch of macarons in the end of month line up, looking forward to seeing what they come up with on this one.

Recipe after the jump.