The baking bug

... has definitely bitten again. Well, it has been coming. I ordered some new Wilton goodies which arrived today, plus on Saturday I bought David Herbert's 'The Really Useful Cookbook' which has some delish-looking recipes for biscuits and cakes, and yesterday I picked up Rachel Allen's 'Bake'. I think first on my to do list will be Rachel's peanut butter and white chocolate blondies - I saw a clip of her making them online last week, which is what inspired me to hunt down her book 'Bake'.

I am very excited about my new Wilton goodies. I really want to get into doing some cake decorating. I think I should eventually do a course. My mum studied cake decorating when I was young and we were living in Perth, and she is great. She made both my wedding cake and my brother's wedding cake, and when my brother and I were young, we always got to pick out a cake from the Women's Weekly birthday book for her to make for our birthday cake. She isn't doing as much now and has promised me her icing equipment :). But for now I am trying to get together a few Wilton tips and bags and things. The most I have done with piping work is piping swirls on cupcakes - not very challenging!


Practice cupcakes for the cupcakes I made last year for DS2's christening. I used a Wilton 1M tip for the swirls, with bought icing flowers and in the background you can see some of the chocolate toppers I made for the cupcakes for the big day. The cupcake recipe is Nigella's (from How To Be a Domestic Goddess), iced with buttercream (recipe from Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook) - the icing was supposed to be blue but the yellow from the butter turned it aqua.


Here are some of the cupcakes I made for DS2's christening. I ended up deciding to use Betty Crocker vanilla frosting, thickened with some pure icing sugar so that I could get a true blue colour. The toppings are white or milk chocolate shaped in a mould made by Wilton (teddy bears, prams, rattles and booties). Some I added 100s and 1000s (non pareils) to the chocolate for some colour - this was my own idea and I was quite pleased with the effect.







Birthday cake I made for DS2's 1st birthday this year. The bow loops are made from plastic icing (fondant). Unfortunately despite having made them 48 hours in advance, the weather was humid, and they didn't dry enough to stay in the this nice shape and had flattened somewhat by the time it came to cut the cake :(. The colour dots are just Wilton giant sprinkles. Here I did use buttercream made with butter, hence the aqua tint despite having beaten the butter until it was as pale as possible.


My new Wilton goodies which arrived today :)

I am particularly happy I managed to get the snowflake pan, which I think is gorgeous. I saw it on the Wilton site last year, but couldn't find it available in Australia and was so disappointed. I may well make something as a bit of a Christmas in July thing...


outside of Wilton Dimensions snowflake pan


inside of pan