Ferrero Rocher & Nutella Cake

This is a cake I made for another friend’s 21^st. She is a huge fan on Nutella, so what better way to celebrate her birthday than with this chocolate hazelnut cake, combining both Nutella and Ferrero Rochers in one!

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Ferrero Rocher & Nutella  Cake

You will need:

For the cake:

• 350g margarine
• 350g caster sugar
• 6 large eggs
• 300g self-raising flour, sifted
• 100g of cocoa, sifted
• 2tsp baking powder
• 2tsp vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt

For the Nutella buttercream:

(I used a recipe I found online and love! It’s also really simple to make and the cup measurements make it really quick to put together) 

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 3½ – 4 cups icing sugar, sifted
• ½ cup Nutella
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream or whole milk
• Pinch of salt

For decoration:

• 300g ASDA chocolatey cake topping
• 1 Small pack white chocolate chips
• Chopped roasted hazlenuts
• Ferrero Rocher chocolates

Method: 

For the cake:

1. Heat the oven to 180°C. Grease 4x 18cm round tins with a little margarine.
2. Put all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon or a hand-held mixer for 1 minute, or until just combined.
3. Spoon the mixture into the tins and bake for 35-40 minutes. A skewer to the centre of the cakes should be pulled out clean.
4. Leave the cakes until completely cool before decorating.

For the Nutella buttercream:

1. Cream together the butter with half a cup of icing sugar at a time until fully incorporated. After each cup of sugar has been added, add Nutella 1 tablespoon at a time.
2. Add the vanilla and then beat on high for about 20 seconds to lighten the frosting.
3. Add cream/milk, one tablespoon at a time until the buttercream is able to hold its shape
4. Add pinch of salt and whip on high for a final 20 seconds.

For the decoration:

1. Layer the four cakes with a generous helping of the Nutella buttecream between each layer, leaving the top plain.
2. Melt the chocolatey cake topping. Once melted, remove from the bain marie and leave until mostly cooled.
3. Pour the chocolate evenly over the entire surface of the cake and allow it to run down the sides to create a drizzle effect.
4. Melt the white chocolate also using a bain-marie and drizzle this over the dark chocolate layer.
5. Sprinkle the chocolate with hazelnuts all over the surface of the cake.
6. Leave the chocolate to set, then pipe the remaining buttercream into small swirls around the edge of the cake.
7. Press an entire Ferrero Rocher into each buttcream swirl.

Now the cake is complete, full of chocolate and hazelnut goodness!

Love, Chloe xx

~  Follow me on Twitter @CrumbsCakeBlog ~

Holi Cupcakes

Holi, also known as the Festival of Colour, is a spring festival celebrated in north India. It is celebrated by dancing, singing, and most famously through the throwing of powder paint and coloured water.

I was lucky enough to win a Twitter giveaway last week by PME, JEM & Cakeit (@PMEcake) and get all these goodies:

The colourful lustre powders reminded me of the bright powder paints used during the Holi festival, and inspired me to produce these Festival of Colour Cupcakes!

I wanted to create a large contrast between the intensity of the powders and the icing – so I used the tiniest touch of purple gel food colouring to counteract the pale lemon shade provided by the butter.

These are really easy and a lot of fun to make. Their design is also very imprecise, so these would be perfect to make with children where they can have fun and get messy too!

I hope you enjoy!

~

Festival of Colour Cupcakes

You will need: 

For the cupcakes

• 110g margarine
• 110g golden caster sugar
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 110g self-raising flour
• 1-2 tbsp milk

For the icing

• 40g softened butter
• 280g icing sugar
• 1-2 tbsp milk
• Purple food colouring gel, just enough to cover the tip of a cocktail stick

For the decoration

• Edible lustre powders in a variety of colours

Method:

For the cupcakes:

1. Preheat the oven to Gas 4. Line  a cupcake tin with colourful paper cases.
2. Beat together margarine and caster sugar until light and creamy.
3. Beat in the eggs, a little at a time, then add the vanilla and a spoonful of the flour.
4. Beat again, then fold in the rest of the flour.
5. Spoon the mixture into the cases. (I like to use an ice cream scoop to do this to get identical amounts in each case)
6. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown and “spongy” when lightly pressed. 
7. Leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

For the icing:

1. Beat the butter in a large bowl until soft.
2. Add half of the icing sugar and beat until smooth.
3. Then add the remaining icing sugar with one tablespoon of the milk, adding more milk if necessary, until the mixture is smooth and creamy.
4. Add a single dot of purple gel food colouring and mix thoroughly. More can be added if necessary to enhance the white colour.

For the decoration:

This is the fun bit! Liberally sprinkle the cupcakes with the various lustre powders, ensuring a good distribution of shades to make them as colourful as possible.

Love, Chloe xx

~  Follow me on Twitter @CrumbsCakeBlog ~

Vinyl Player Cake

This is a cake that I made back in November for my boyfriend's 21st birthday as he's a big music fan. (Sorry for the HUGE delay in uploading!!) I wanted to try and make the vinyl player look as authentic as possible, so used a lot of different processes to try and achieve the right colours and textures. 

Each component had a number of different stages before the final assembly and from beginning to end, it probably took about 8 hours! 

Rather than provide a huge list of instructions on how to replicate the cake, I've organised this post as more of a pictorial guide, including details of a few products I used. 

Hope you enjoy! 

~

Vinyl Player Cake 

Firstly, I created the fondant components, as I wanted them to have time to firm up before assembling. 

I used the following templates for the different components, after sketching out the cake and then scaling it up to size:

Black fondant provided the base for the record itself. I used a cocktail stick to scratch in the details by drawing round a number of different cups and bowls. I then used edible glue to stick a circle of rice paper into the centre, and then stuck a small ball of black fondant on top of this. 

Finally, I sprayed the entire vinyl with 3 coats of PME clear edible glaze spray (letting it dry in between each time). The spray is absolutely brilliant and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to provide a glossy sheen to fondant icing. 

Next, I created the dial for the cake. This was also created out of black fondant, and I used Sugarflair edible liquid colour in Silver to mark in the details with a cocktail stick. This colour is great! It has a very intense colour and shine, requiring only a single layer on black fondant to show up.

Finally I sprayed the entire dial with shine spray to obtain the same glossy effect. 

Using yellow fondant, I created switches for the vinyl player, and painted these with Sugarflair edible liquid colour in Gold. Again, this has a very intense colour. It is quite an orangey shade of gold, and there are other shades available, but I quite liked the brightness of this shade, as I intended most of the rest of the cake to be shades of grey, browns and black.

Again, these were finished off with a liberal coating of shine spray! 

I created an arm for the vinyl player out of grey and black fondant, then painting the grey with the silver edible colour to match the other components of the cake. I stuck the two colours of icing together with edible glue and left them to set. 

In the photos below you can see the effect of one coat of shine spray (Left image: uncoated, Right image: 1 coat of shine spray). 

I backed the gold switches onto small rectangles of black fondant to make them stand out. I then stuck these and the dial to a long piece of grey fondant - painted with silver spray and glaze sprayed - with edible glue. 

I also shaped two small round circles of fondant and painted these gold. These are the resting points for the vinyl player "arm." 

I made two layers of sponge in a very large tin and sandwiched them together with strawberry jam and Betty Crocker Vanilla Buttercream Style Icing. This has a really good texture and saved me the trouble of making my own buttercream on top of making all the other components! 

 

I then covered the entire outside of the sponge in buttercream icing and covered it with white fondant. 

Once covered in white fondant, I started to add some more details to start to turn the cake into a vinyl player! 

I bought this selection of different brown shades of fondant on Amazon. I chose a selection of shades to try and get a good wood effect. 

I combined a small amount of all of the shades and mixed them enough so that they were mostly incorporated, but still leaving veins of differing colour throughout. 

I cut lengths of the icing to the size required to each side of the cake. Then I used a special "wood effect" icing embosser that I also bought on Amazon to provide the wood pattern. Using the buttercream, I stuck this lengths of icing to the sides. 

Around the edges of the surface of the cake, I stuck half-inch wide lengths of brown fondant as a continuation from the sides to complete the wood effect. I then gave all of the "wood" a liberal coating of shine spray 

I then assembled all of the components of the cake on the surface, sticking them with buttercream. 

And here is the completed cake! 

Hope you enjoyed this post! 

Love, Chloe xx 

~  Follow me on Twitter @CrumbsCakeBlog ~

Gemstone Cupcakes & Product Review

This post is a little different to usual. I wanted to create some very girly and glamorous cupcakes for a friend's 21st birthday and ended up using a few products that I had never used before, so I decided that this post should be more of a review of those products (with a few photos of the finished cupcakes!).

~ 

Gemstone Cupcakes 

Products used:

• Cake decor strawberry & vanilla two colour stripes frosting

Purchased from: ASDA

Price: £2.69 for 1 tube (275g)

Rating: 4/5

This was a great product which created very distinct white/pink dual icing stripes. It was really easy to use, you just remove the lid and the piping nozzle is in place ready. The pink was very vibrant and had a strong strawberry flavour. I managed to ice 8 cupcakes with one tube, so it probably isn't ideal for icing large numbers as buying enough to cover a large batch would be quite expensive. That's the only reason I haven't given it 5/5, but otherwise I was really impressed.

• Jane Asher pale pink edible glitter

Purchased from: Poundland

Price: £1 for small pot (5g)

Rating: 4/5

Poundland is currently stocking a wide range of Jane Asher bakeware and cake decorating products. I bought this as an impulse buy, and I finally got to use it on this bake. I scattered it over the top of the icing from the tip of a teaspoon handle, and that worked quite well to achieve an even distribution. Unfortunately it didn't show up very well, due to the intensity of the pink icing I used, so when I use this again it will be on white buttercream to get the best effect. Overall, I was really happy with this product and think I'll be popping back to 
Poundland to purchase the other colours they 
stock!

• Culpitt edible gems - clear

Purchased from: P A SugarCraft on Amazon

Price: £4.25 for 1 pack of 24

Rating: 5/5

I didn't really know what to expect when I ordered these, but was really happy when they arrived in the post. The gems measure 1cm across and are made of soft jelly. They are really shiny and catch the light well. I was a bit concerned as a few reviews complained that they were hard to remove from the packet (they come set into a plastic sheet), but I found them easy to remove if peeled out gently from their casing. If you need to transport the cakes you've decorated with these gems, try and refrain from covering the cakes until the last minute, as the 
moisture can make the gems a little sticky. I 
accidentally covered them too early, but the 
stickiness soon dried out once they were 
exposed to the air again. I really liked this 
product and am trying to think up ways to use 
the remaining few I have!

• Disney princess pearl crispies

Purchased from: ASDA

Price: £1.25 for 1 pack (35g)

Rating: 5/5

Despite the fact that I found these in the child baking section, I thought they were brilliant! (Maybe that says more about my mental age more than the product...) These had a really nice pearlised shimmer to the outside and came in a white and pale pink shade (I only used the white ones on these cupcakes as they were more like pearls). Their rice crispy-like texture was also nice, rather than the often very hard texture you can get with sugar decorations. Also the tube they came in is covered in Disney Princess animations - what more could you want?!

• V&A lace cupcake cases

Purchased from: Lakeland

Price: £3.99 for 100

Rating: 2/5

I purchased these based on their pretty design and lovely pastel colours. However, after baking they seemed to have absorbed a lot of oil from the mix, leaving a greasy level mark about 1cm above the cakes. As the cakes cooled it subsided a little, but the design was not as sharp as it was pre-bake. Thinking this might just have been my recipe, I looked online and the only review available for this product complained of oil absorption too. This is such a shame as they have such a lovely design, but unfortunately I won't be using these for cakes intended as gifts 
again.



Hope you enjoyed this post, I will try and do a few reviews alongside my usual recipes in the future. Here are a few more photos of the finished cupcakes...

Love, Chloe xx 

~  Follow me on Twitter @CrumbsCakeBlog ~