Butter Cookies and Writing with Icing

It's not very often that I am called to 'write' with icing and I admit I'm not particuarly good at it, but I will have a go.  Here are a couple of cakes I've made and written on this year.



I chose this Wilton's Make-Any-Message letterpress set as I thought it would be helpful when I have another icing writing project to complete. There is also a Wilton Easy Pipe Script Message Set but I wanted to have the flexibility of making my own messages. The Letterpress is easy to use, you do need to trim the letter pieces after separating them or they don't fit into the slide bar. 


I made a simple Butter Cookie recipe which makes a nice firm cookie for cutting and shaping.  I also had the chance to try out my Salter Heston Blumenthal Precision Rolling Pin as the dough was to be 1/8 in or 3mm thick and it worked brilliantly giving me a nice even dough.  The letters are quite large and only in upper case so I had to choose short words for a my cookies.  A cake would give more opportunities for longer words!


Here are the baked EAT cookies, which would work perfectly well without the icing as well as being a really easy guide for piping the letters, giving a nice even size.

Butter Cookies
2 1/2 cups (350g) plain flour
1 1/2 sticks (180g) butter, cubed
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (140g) icing sugar
1 tbsp lemon zest
1 egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Using a stand mixer with paddle (K) attachment or food processor with dough blade, mix together the flour, butter, salt, icing sugar and lemon zest until crumbs form.
2. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix for 1 minute until all the ingredients are combined and dough forms.
3. Cover the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
4. Preheat oven to 180C (350F).  Wokring on a lightly floured surfcace, roll out dough to a thickness of about 1/8 in/3mm.  Using any cookie fo your choice, cut out rounds of the dough and transfer to abaking sheet lined with parchment paper, spacing 2 ins apart.
5. Bake for 22-25 minutes.  Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
6. Cookies can be stored for up to a week in an airtight container at room termperature.

I also tried the letterpress on some circles of fondant and iced over the letters.  As you see I had more success with HIM, but that was really down to not having cut the end of the piping bag properly as I piped HER first, then trimmed the piping bag and it worked better after that. Again, I think the ability to get the letters so even makes a much more professional finish. 

I made some other toppings for the cookies with some of icing that had been left over from the train cake.  I've had the Gerbera/Sunflower stamp for a while and not used it much, I see that it is also available on the Cake Decorating Store website, along with pretty much everything else you might need to ice and decorate cakes, cupcakes and cakepops.


Many thanks to Cake Decorating Store for the opportunity to review the Wilton Make a Message Letterpress, I was not paid for this review and all opinions are my own.

Labels: butter cookies, cake decorating, Cake Decorating Store, cookies, fondant icing, letterpress, Wilton, writing with icing

posted by Janice @ 14:28 5 Comments

Birthday Cake with Edible Flowers

I don't often make decorated cakes, but with my mother's 80th birthday coming I knew that something special would be expected.  Let me just say that my mother is a superb baker and cake decorator and has won competitions through the ScottishWomen's Rural Institutes (the Scottish equivalent of the WI). 

I picked up a copy of  March, Making Cakes and Bakes for a bit of inspiration and, not only found the Easter Cake by Izzy Pink which inspired the design of the cake, but also a little feature article on Meadowsweet Flowers.  Meadowsweet Flowers sell crystallised flowers for cake decoration and as my Mum loves adding edible flowers to salads and is particularly fond of the little 'faces' of pansies and violas, I ordered a mixed box of violas to decorate the cake.

The flowers come beautifully and carefully packaged, in fact they are double boxed and all arrived intact.  I dare say if I had had more time I could have made my own, but it was lovely to be able to get them like this.

I made the cake last weekend and froze it so I could get straight to decorating today.  I used the Vanilla Birthday Cake from Jo Wheatley's book 'A Passion for Baking'.  As you can see one of the sponges had a little bit of damage, but you would never know by the time I had finished!  I sieved some of my mixed berry jam and spread it onto one of the sponges.


I covered the other sponge with white chocolate buttercream (recipe also in March Making Cakes and Bakes) and placed it on top of the sponge with jam.  Then covered the top and sides with the buttercream.  You will see that I have managed to resurrect my mother-in-law's Kenwood Chef.  I got it checked out and it technically it is absolutely fine, I was told that it just needed to be used regularly!  So I'm doing my best.



I warmed my palette knife in hot water to smooth off the buttercream ready for the fondant.

I was amazed at the difference it made to have proper 'icing smoothers' borrowed from my friend Rachel of Rachel's Cakes.  I'll definitely be getting my own now.




I am not well practiced at piping and writing in icing.  I had a little practice and then decided to go for it!  When I had finished I was quite shaky, I just didn't want to mess up after all that work.

Aren't those flowers just gorgeous?  I made the leaves from green fondant last weekend and left them to dry out during the week, that worked well.  The leaves and flowers were fixed with royal icing made from the ready made mix from Sugar and Crumbs which makes it easy to make up small amounts. 

Now all I have to do it transport it to my mother and wish her happy birthday.

Labels: A Passion for Baking, birthday cake, cake decorating, fondant icing, Jo Wheatley, Making Cakes and Bakes., Meadowsweet Flowers, Sugar and Crumbs

posted by Janice @ 11:00 20 Comments

Cupcake Decorating Masterclass!

I've had a really fun day today, decorating cupcakes!  When Jac from Tinned Tomatoes spied this class at 3D Cakes in Edinburgh, being offered on Groupon, she contacted me to see if I wanted to go too.  We finally found a date which suited us and Claire of A Kiss of Cookies joined us too.

It's a good two hours drive to Edinburgh for me,  I had planned on getting the train which is only an hour but with the Bank Holiday, the trains were disrupted by work on the line.  Luckily my SIL lives just outside Edinburgh, so Brian drove up and took his Mum over to see her after dropping me off at Roseburn Terrace.

Our Cupcake decorating tutor was called Sue and she started by telling us about 3D cakes and some of the unusual cakes they have made, like a lion and lioness for a wedding anniversary cake.

Sue started us off with flowerpaste which we learned to roll very thinly and use cutters to cut out butterflies and daisies.


The dusting and decorating came later, but I was surprised how easy it was to make an effective flower with the cutters.  We then moved on to the trickier rose, again helped by a special cutter for the petals.



Mine is slightly dodgy but it looks rose-like enough for a first try.  The leaf is cut from green flower paste,  the veining is part of the cutter.


We left our flowerpaste efforts to dry and moved on to working with fondant.  I love the little parcels with fondant bows and can see that I will be using these quite a lot.




Again I could probably do this better with more practice, but learning the technique by 'show and tell' followed by making them yourself and getting personal attention from Sue, really made the difference.


We also made some chunky hearts, I didn't use mine on my cakes as I had enough other things to use, they also look a bit rude ;-)


Here are few of the decorations before they were dusted and glittered.  I think I like the parcels better without the glitter.




We then learned how to make ladybirds.  They are rather large but that was how we were shown.  I'd like to try making them smaller, now I  know how.




I also cut out some little hearts with some cutters that were at our work stations.


We then made fondant roses, they took a bit of getting the hang of, but I think I may be making more of them. 




Now it was time to dust and glitter, dry brush for dust, so all that had to be done first, then damp edges and dip in glitter.

Here is Claire, working hard making something, look how fast her hands are moving!!!

And here is Jac, relaxing with her finished decorations.

The next step was to pipe the butter cream onto the 12 cupcakes provided for us to decorate and then place our fondant and flowerpaste on top of the swirls.
I haven't actually eaten any of the cupcakes yet, but  they do look pretty and I am definitely going to have a go at making more. 

Many thanks to Jac for organising the day out and to Sue for creating such a relaxed atmosphere.

Labels: 3D cakes, A Kiss of Cookies, cupcake class, cupcakes, Edinburgh, flowerpaste, fondant icing, Groupon, Tinned Tomatoes

posted by Janice @ 20:55 18 Comments

Gingerbread Man Christmas Cake

As soon as I saw Ruth Clemens Gingerbread Man Christmas Cake at The Pink Whisk, I knew I had to try to make something similar with the cake I made from the Delicious Magazine recipe.  The Gingerbread Man is made from chocolate fondant.

Labels: cake, chocolate fondant, Christmas, Christmas Cake, decoration, fondant icing, Gingerbread men

posted by Janice @ 16:38 20 Comments