Firefly has always been a favourite show of ours. Neither of us discovered it until it had sadly ended but it hooked us in and is a show we can happily re-watch (when we have that elusive thing known as free time).

Apologies to anyone not familiar with the show Firefly, a lot of this post is going to seem like gibberish, guess you’ll just have to go and watch the show to find out what I’m talking about! *grins*

The cake needed to be relatively simple so we were left with the brief of Firefly “themed” and just make sure it feeds the right number of people… And make sure it’s chocolate, lots of chocolate! (it’s chocolate cake with a rum syrup and chocolate buttercream).

Size wise we went for a half-sheet cake (12″x17″) with a 10″ round cake on top. This splitting of layers meant that we could incorporate a couple of different elements into the cake. We decided early on that the round cake would be turned into the Serenity logo. The metallic red disc with a burnished gold centre and Chinese characters (that we assume actually say “serenity”).

What then to do with the sheet cake underneath? Finally we settled on decorating it to look like a metal hull (of a ship), albeit a rather rusted one.. maybe it’s a Reaver ship! *grins*

Then we added two logos onto that cake. The Browncoats and Blue Sun, both influential in the plot lines. I wish I’d taken a picture of the full Blue Sun logo before half of it got covered!

A banner at the front declared Happy Birthday to the birthday girls, in both English and Chinese since language in the series contains Chinese elements.. at least I hope the banner says Happy Birthday in Chinese.. I’m going on what google translate told me!

A finishing touch of blue gloves for the “hands of blue, two by two” and the cake was done.

It’s the first time we’ve used fabric to cover a cake board and we’ll definitely be doing it again. We really loved how the textured red looked under the cake.

We got a request for a peanut butter cup cake, it didn’t need to be huge, the shape and flavour were the important bits.

We umm-ed and ahh-ed over trying to make a peanut butter flavoured cake but finally settled on a chocolate cake with a peanut butter flavoured icing.

The cake had some mild carving to give it it’s distinctive shape.

Fondant or buttercream was of course not going to do the trick so we covered the cake with milk modelling chocolate to replicate the chocolate coating.

As a finishing touch we made a wrapper for it out of, well, wrapping paper. Painting it with tempera paint in a logo very reminiscent to a famous brand but using the recipient’s name instead.

Reviews were glowing, and despite being a chocolate cake the flavour was spot-on. Hooray for peanut butter and chocolate!

We had a fun cake to make this week, one we were looking forward to as soon as we knew what they wanted. We are both fans of the films of Hayao Miyazaki, so a cake based off of Ponyo his latest, more child friendly, film excited us.

They wanted the main focus to be based around the scene with Ponyo running on the waves…

So, off we got to baking, a moist chocolate cake, four layers tall, with our rich buttercream icing (chocolate of course!).

The cake was initially covered in a layer of white fondant and then the scene on the top was pieced together from fondant. We scored some of the fondant to make more details (like the creases on her dress) and painted a few accents (facial features).

The trouble was, the sides looked blank. So they got painted with “waves” in the style of the end credits from the film. Some royal icing borders were piped to neaten the cake up.

All that was left was the writing. The line “tiny little fishy, who could you really be?” is in the main theme song so to reflect the baby shower theme that was changed to “tiny little baby, who could you really be?”

There were 2 dozen cupcakes to go with the cake, you’ll see them later this week!

Saint Patrick’s Day is a National holiday in Ireland, I can’t explain it’s phenomenon worldwide however. It is widely celebrated in America by Irish and non-Irish alike. It’s apparently one of the leading days for consumption of alcohol in the US, and is typically one of the busiest days of the year for bars and restaurants. Many people, regardless of ethnic background, wear green clothing and items. Traditionally, those who are caught not wearing green are pinched affectionately (or not!). Many cities across the country hold parades and Chicago even dyes it’s river green for the day!

This year I decided to go with Irish Cream, I used Baileys since it was what I had on hand though go ahead and use Carolans, St Brendans or whichever you can find. You could even go ahead and use Merlyn, though that’s a Welsh cream so you’ll have to make them on Saint David’s Day instead! *grins*

The cupcake itself has both coffee and chocolate in it which pairs with the Baileys really nicely. When you add the silky smooth Baileys buttercream on to the top it’s a flavour very reminiscent of an Irish coffee.

To make the cupcakes the butter is melted and the cocoa, water and espresso powder are whisked in.

Once the sugar, eggs and Baileys are added it’s beginning to thicken up.

And by the time the flour and baking powder are added the batter has a brownie like consistency.

They don’t take long to bake or cool so I went right ahead and made the buttercream. It’s my usual recipe, proportions all the same, I just added Baileys to taste. I love “to taste” as a quantity, it leaves it so open. You can tailor them to give just a hint, be super boozy or somewhere in the middle. 3oz to enough buttercream for 12 cupcakes gives a solid flavour without being horrendously alcohol.. You don’t really want your driving impaired by a cupcake!

To add a touch of festiveness I sprinkled the tops with some bright green dragees.

If you still need some inspiration for St Paddy’s themed baking take a look at the Guinness ice cream I made last year, the chocolate stout ice cream, Irish coffee muffins and the Irish coffee panna cotta. There’s still time to get something made for tomorrow!

AKA – Cutesey Valentines Cupcakes!

Of course we needed something cute and adorable to mark the day. These cupcakes have the bonus of being quick and easy to make too so you can whip some out for your sweet.

They started out life as just plain white chocolate cupcakes.. Obviously I needed something pink, strawberry seems to be traditional but I am a fan of raspberry. Raspberry buttercream was the plan but then I wanted some raspberry in the cake too, just to tie it together a little more. So a dollop of jam was put in the centre of the cake, adding some extra flavour and moistness.

Start by melting the white chocolate and butter together with a little water, over a double boiler. While that’s melting mix together the flour, sugar and salt.

Pour the chocolate into the flour and start to mix. Before it’s fully incorporated add in the sour cream and egg. It’s a rather loose, liquid batter so don’t be worried!

I half filled my cupcake liners, added a little bit of the jam and then finished filling them. They baked for about 20 minutes.

Once they were cool I made my buttercream and added a good amount of the jam to it for flavour. I would have preferred seedless jam but they didn’t hurt at all. I also added a drop of red food colouring just to give it a boost!

And they all got topped with heart sprinkles, because, why not!

I think in future I’ll let the cakes cook then cut out the core and put the jam in that way. Putting it in before baking led it to all sink to the bottom. They were super tasty though, they’ll definitely make an appearance in our kitchen again.

Our centrepiece cake this year was a pumpkin cake.

Well, actually it was a butter cake, but it was shaped like a pumpkin.. that still counts as a pumpkin cake right?

We were attempting not to be left with too much leftover cake so we just made it an 8 inch round cake, 3 layers tall to get a good pumpkin shape that wasn’t too squat. So he was knocking 6 inches tall.

We made the butter cake a day ahead. It got stacked with vanilla buttercream and raspberry jam. Next up came the carving. I prefer to use a short serrated knife when carving cake, but find the knife you’re comfortable with and go with that, with some practice you’ll find what fits you best.

I put a few deep grooves in so they would really stand out and then crumb coated with a thin layer of buttercream. The cake was put in the fridge for the buttercream to firm up.

First up came a layer of yellow fondant, work quick to smooth it down and press it into those deep grooves.

Next came a layer of orange fondant. Once it’s smoothed down I used a ball tool to do the rest of the grooves, coming back with an airbrush to accentuate the shadows, it’s barely noticeable and that’s the point, but it makes the pumpkin look more natural.

Once the airbrush dye had dried I used an exacto (with a new sharp blade) to cut out a jack-o-lantern face, peeling out the orange fondant leaving the yellow showing through.

Dark green fondant was shaped to form the stem and then a fresher green made vines and tendrils curling around the base. I added some tylose to the fondant to form the tendrils so it would dry quickly, forming the shape around the handles of paint brushes.

He took pride of place on our dessert table for Halloween!

The first known recipe using the term “cupcake” appeared in an American cookbook in 1826, although they were probably made long before then. It became revolutionary because of the short length of time it took to cook, their size meaning that the outside was not burnt before the inside was baked. In recent years the U.S. has had something of a great cupcake awakening, as blogs and bakeries have devoted themselves to its pleasures (with at least a half dozen bakeries dedicated to cupcakes in Austin alone). Some attribute this renewed popularity to the cupcake-indulging characters of HBO’s Sex and the City, and food historian Susan Purdy also credits dietary awareness – “you can have your low-calorie cake and eat it, too.”

Either way, this was to be no ordinary cupcake. This was to be a giant cupcake, standing at 10 inches wide, and almost a foot tall.

Sadly the entire thing is not cake, it wasn’t meant to feed that many people, the cup portion is made entirely from styrofoam, covered in fondant.

The top portion is all cake. We took a standard round cake and carved it into a dome. Using fondant we made the swirls that would later form the detail of the “icing” on top. Covered in a layer of pink fondant we  made inch long “sprinkles” and a little cherry to go on top!

This was a new flavour combination for us, chocolate mint. They wanted it to taste like a peppermint patty. Both the cake and the buttercream was chocolate mint flavour, we did consider splitting it up and having a chocolate cake with mint icing, but felt that having both of them the same flavour would work better.

The stars are pearl dragees and royal icing, for some variety in size, then we added some large stars on wires.

The main challenge was how to decorate buttercream to look like marble, after a few practices we found a method that seems to work for now, giving light and dark variances in colour, and veins running through it.

We added the age in Roman numerals around the side and then researched the Latin equivalent for Happy Birthday (as I discovered, the Romans didn’t celebrate birthdays as we do, so there’s no direct translation, the inscription we found appears to approximately mean ‘congratulations on the moment of your birth/natality’

The cake was a vanilla butter cake with black raspberry filling.