Hello!

Hello Cake Lovers, long time no speak!

To answer some questions:

a) I'm still here
b) I'm still making cakes
c) My website is currently offline, but I will be making a new one shortly

I hope all of you are well and happy in blogland. Here are some pictures of some of my cakey creations over the past year or two that I hope will brighten up your day:

Vanilla and cinnamon cupcakes with blueberry frosting

Chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting

Maple and pecan cupcakes and banoffee cupcakes

Chocolate and peanut butter Chococat cupcakes

Strawberry and vanilla cupcakes

Coffee cupcakes and lemon sherbet cupcakes

Chocolate fudge layer cake with chocolate buttercream

Hope you enjoyed!

Lots of love, Claire xxx

Halloween Special!

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL!!!

Just for this month, we are offering our special Ginger cupcakes with Cinnamon buttercream frosting. 9 for £15 and 12 for £18.00!

Why not order some today through our website?

Happy Halloween cupcake fans!

xxx

National Cupcake Week

To celebrate National Cupcake Week, we are offering 10% off all cupcake orders placed with us this week! Check out our available flavours at:

www.calaveracakes.co.uk

To order simply message us at our email address: orders@calaveracakes.co.uk with your selection. We look forward to hearing from you! ♥

L'Orange du Chocolat

A while back, I decided to offer some "cakes for materials cost" to all my Facebook fans, in order to build up my portfolio. My first order came from my landlady, Jessa, who wanted some cupcakes for her boyfriend's birthday party. She wasn't too fussed on which flavours, so I suggested chocolate cakes with orange frosting, as I'd been wanting to try out orange buttercream for a while. She agreed and so I set to work.

I had also recently purchased some Regalice chocolate fondant and some star cutters, so I made chocolate cakes from my trusted recipe, topped them with a thick swirl of orange buttercream and finished them off with a chocolate fondant star and a small sprinkle of edible glitter. This is how they turned out:

Jessa took them to a garden party where they were happily devoured and as a result, a couple of her friends placed orders with me. So for any budding cupcake maker out there who is considering a way to drum up some business and build up their portfolio, I would heartily recommend offering to bake for materials cost to start you off :)

Cakes for colleagues!

Wow, goodness it has been a while since our last post! Apologies for our absence, we've just been so busy getting the new website together and since the launch of our facebook page, we've had regular orders over the past couple of months, which is fantastic news!

Thank you everyone who has become a fan of us so far, you are all wonderful people :)

Back in late June/early July, I did what every good baker does and I took some of my wares into the office to share with my colleagues. A very sweet girl who was temping with us bought me a present to thank me for training her up over the past month, and I was so touched that I couldn't very well not give something back. So, I made a batch of 12 strawberries and cream cupcakes for her last day:

A light and fluffy vanilla sponge (back to my old favourite recipe this time) with a strawberry jam centre, topped with a heavily whipped buttercream and a fresh strawberry, sprinkled with edible glitter.

They went down exceedingly well, so for our annual staff BBQ I was coerced into making some cupcakes.. I had recently bought some excellent pure peppermint extract, so I decided to take in a dozen chocolate mint cupcakes:

These consisted of the Primrose chocolate cake recipe for the sponge, a peppermint buttercream and sprinkled with dark chocolate sprinkles and edible glitter. These also received many compliments, and were set to become one of our initial range of flavours.

We've been busy making lots of cakes for you to drool over, so do pop back soon for another update!

And if you'd like to see how our website is progressing, check it out at:

www.calaveracakes.co.uk

Thank you for your support!

Claire xxx

Chocolatey goodness for Dean

On the 15th of June it was the birthday of our good friend Dean, who had graciously invited myself and my other half to go and spend the weekend at his new house with him and his fiance. As it was his birthday, I offered to bake him some cupcakes, and was given creative control.
I decided on a basic vanilla/chocolate combo - heavy on the chocolate - as it's always a crowd pleaser, even for the fussiest of tastes. I received The Hummingbird Bakery book for my birthday, so I thought I would try their recipes for vanilla cupcakes and chocolate buttercream. I bought one of those combo packs of chocolate sprinkles and used a combination of all four types to decorate these little bundles of sugar:




The vanilla cupcake mixture turned out... interesting, to say the least. It was quite runny to work with, and I found it didn't quite make enough to give a generous dozen portion in the muffin cakes. When I pulled the cakes out of the oven, they had shrunk away from the muffin tin during baking so turned out quite small, more like fairy cakes. The tops also turned out completely level, rather than the domed top I get with the Primrose Bakery recipe. The cakes were small and hadn't risen very much, I felt as though the recipe could have done with being a bit drier and to make them a bit fluffier and after reading several reviews of the Hummingbird book, I found a lot of other bakers have said they needed to adapt recipes in order to make them successful as well.

Still, I persevered and made the chocolate buttercream. This was a lot lighter than the chocolate buttercream recipe in Primrose's book, as it requires the use of cocoa powder rather than a bar of dark chocolate. The texture was almost mousse-like, and it was very tasty and easy to pipe. I think it would be ideal for use within a layer cake.

The cakes went down a treat and I will definitely use the buttercream recipe again and perhaps if I decide to use the vanilla cake recipe again, I will use it for mini cupcakes instead.

Our temporary website...

We've launched a website for ordering delicious cakes from us, but it's just temporary until we get our proper domain name and web hosting, so don't get too used to it ;)

Calavera Cakes

Check it out and let us know what you think! We aim to have our proper website launched in August.

In the meantime you can also become a fan of us on Facebook

Thanks to everyone who has become a fan so far, you will be rewarded with discounts and offers exclusive to our Facebook friends <3