Book Review- Hello, Cupcake!

It has finally arrived! Yay! I ordered this book using a dstore.com.au voucher and it has finally arrived. It was recommended to me on ravelry.com and I was immediately excited when I saw it was available on dstore.

To be honest, I love the concept, but not being in the US I can already see it's going to be hard to source some of the "find them everywhere" candy ingredients. I love the way everyday items are used, I just can't imagine Coles stocking them all. I guess I'll have to test the idea out next time I'm shopping before I can pass judgement.

The ideas are incredible, I think even if I can't find the exact ingredients, I should be able to come close with substitutes. The pictures as well are quite inspiring- the bowling cupcakes have already gotten me inspired for my husband's birthday- he used to bowl every Sunday night!

I love the cupcakes with the bunnies bottoms! Such a cute idea! Realistically, something like that could be achieved with fondant if I can't get the right bits for their feet.

Would I recommend buying it? Yes, the ideas would be great for children and parties for children as they are quick and easy to put together and bright and cheery. I just don't know if they fit with what I'm doing with cupcakes as I like their colours to be slightly more subtle. Having said that- I'm definitely glad I bought it though, and I'm sure I'll use many of the ideas.

The cupcaketress warms up!

Cake decorating has always been a dream for me. I love cake. Well who doesn't? More importantly I love decorating, embellishing and make things look to good to eat.

Why have I taken up cake blogging? Well....

It all began a couple of months back. With the cupcake bake-off at work. One of my colleagues was leaving to go overseas and I decided to bake some cupcakes. I did them the night before, banana cupcakes with yellow sprinkles, vanilla raspberry cupcakes with pink frosting and marshmallows and chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles. One of my other colleagues made perfectly iced vanilla cupcakes. PERFECTLY ICED.

So I enrolled in a cake decorating course. My first cupcakes are documented here:






They were vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting and a layer of fondant. Not so bad for attempt 1.

But there is something lacking in vanilla cupcakes. I like flavour. In fact I love flavour.

So next came the double-choc raspberry cupcakes:






The ones with the brown tops are iced with chocolate fondant as well as the decorations.

This week however, I was inspired by autumn leaves and have created these beauties.





These were a vanilla and chocolate marble base covered with fondant.