Thanksgiving Turkey Cupcakes

Thanksgiving Turkey Cupcakes, originally uploaded by Epiphany Cupcakes.

These little little chaps were made for a friend of mine whose daughter is returning home from the states for thanksgiving.

Only my second attempt at figurative modelling - great fun!

Supporting Breast Cancer Research

Supporting Breast Cancer Research, originally uploaded by Epiphany Cupcakes.

I made 48 of these to sell at work on the 'Wear it Pink' day to raise money for Breast Cancer Research.

Vanilla sponge with rose buttercream and fondant.

Sold out by lunchtime!

Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera

Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera, originally uploaded by Epiphany Cupcakes.

What do you give your boss, the man who has everything (including a beautiful Lamborghini Gallardo) for his birthday?

A cake replica of his car of course!

The cake inside is madeira. Carved to shape, covered with vanilla buttercream then draped in orange fondant and brushed all over with yellow lustre dust to replicate the pearlescence of the real car. Then detailed in fondant and colouring paste.

Finished cake was approx 14" long and was a resounding success!

...and yet more flowers

Well, I did indeed manage to get over to Norwich on Friday afternoon and picked up some more flower cutters and a couple of new colours too, and I have spent most of the weekend 'playing' with them.

I managed to produce a nice range of shapes and colours, hand tinting some of them for extra depth, and using pearlised dragees and various nonpareils for the centres. Also baked some rose flavoured cakes with rose flavoured frosting to put them on - yummy!

My confidence boosted, I decide to have a go at the little fondant tortoise tutorial on cakejournal.com, he's so cute and the tutorial is really easy to follow.

I'm now feeling much more confident about flowers in particular, and handling and modelling fondant in general.

All-in-all a good weekends work.

Now to concentrate on my next (big) project - watch this space :)

Mandy

Practicing flowers

These are my Shabby Chic vanilla cuppies with Blueberry and Strawberry buttercream frosting, which I made for my monthly management meeting at work yesterday.

I really need to work more on my flowers, I tend to go for the funky, brightly coloured, flat variety (see Kim's cake below) but I do love the more delicate shapes and textures like these beautiful examples by cupcake d'lights.

This was my first time using a veiner to create the texture on the petals and I was relatively happy with the results, but to achieve that 'posy' look I now need to invest in some more cutters in a variety of shapes and sizes. Looks like I'm off to Norwich again this weekend!

Mandy

A cake for Kim

I recently treated myself to a copy of Lindy Smith's lovely book Cakes to Inspire and Desire, and I was definately inspired! The above is the latest result of that inspiration. It's a three layered lemon madeira cake with lemon buttericing, covered in home made Marshmallow Fondant and decorated with Marshmallow Fondant flowers and butterflies, edible silver and pearlised balls, and edible pink glitter - very girly!

This is my first time using Marshmallow Fondant, I'd read good things about it online, and despite being very sticky and messy to make it was definately worth the effort - the flavour is so much nicer than ordinary fondant.

Big cakes are not really my thing, but when one of your work friends has a birthday it has to be done :)

Happy Birthday Kimmy!

Mandy

Christmas is coming... no really, it is!

If, like me, you work for a printer that produces Christmas Cards (amongst other things), then Christmas is very much in the air at the moment. And what nicer image to grace the front of a Christmas Card than Christmas cupcakes? (Well I think so anyway.)

So, here they are, chocolate sponge, vanilla buttercream, and seasonal decorations. They took me ages to make as I hand-painted gold snow onto all the little Christmas trees, but they are so pretty it was worth it.

Once the cards are available to buy I'll add a link.

Mandy

Flower Cakes

I love some of the beautiful floral cakes that people like Sugarbloom and Eva Blixman have created. I need some more practice before I'm anywhere near that level, but here is my first go.

These are lemon cakes with lemon buttercream frosting, decorated with hand-made flowers, edible pearls and baby pink Edible Glitter.

Pretty

Mandy

A cake is born...

Several months ago I saw a video on YouTube featuring some beautiful butterfly cupcakes, and decided to have a go. The response was fantastic and spurred me on to try more.

Since then the whole cupcake thing has become a bit of an obsession, and the feedback I have had, both from my trusty 'testers' and from friends and colleagues on Twitter and Facebook, has been overwhelming - people are now starting to ask me to do them for parties etc...

So I decided to take the whole cupcake thing more seriously, and Epiphany Cupcakes was born! Not a full-time venture, but evenings and weekends.

I thought a blog would be fun, so watch this space for new designs and updates on how it's going.

Mandy