Dear Readers

The snow finally arrived in the South of England and has kept me in my cosy house recently so I have had plenty of time to cook up some great new ideas for you all. We have some exciting news too, as well as being at Cake International at the ExCel Centre, 27th to 29th April, we will also be at the new and wonderful Cake & Bake Show at Earls Court on 22nd and 23rd September. Sugarcraft skills will take centre stage at the Cake & Bake Show and anyone looking to learn or improve their cake decorating skills will be spoilt for choice, with demos from the industry's most respected cake artists plus hands on workshops and short courses and most importantly....we are there! Come and say hello to us on our stand (more details nearer the time). Thank you for your photos this month, I received so many that I couldn't possibly include them all in the newsletter but I will make sure that they are all in our Hall of Fame on the website.

This month celebrates St. Patrick's Day so I have a special little recipe for you to try, plus some taster ideas for the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee. We are also launching a new range of fantastic flavourings including flavoured sugarpaste, yummy! Lace seems to be the order of the day so we have come up with a couple of designs for you to try out, don't forget you can personalise these cakes with your own colour schemes.

I hope you enjoy the newsletter, keep your photos coming in to me at louise@cakecraftworld.com and I will catch up with you next month.

Happy Baking

Having quite a lot of Irish blood running through my veins, I am partial to a little celebration on St. Patrick's Day. Growing up, my Grandmother taught me how to bake but she never really followed any recipes; it was much more a case of 'a little bit of this and a little bit of that'. As a result, I am totally useless when passing on my recipes because everyone wants to know quantities and to tell the truth, I'm never quite sure of them! To celebrate this famous Irish day, I am going to share with you my chocolate Guinness cake recipe which works well as a loaf bake or as cupcakes. I have made an 'educated guess' at the quantities!

Makes 12 cupcakes or a 2lb loaf bake

• 125ml Guinness
• 125g butter, cut into pieces
• 40g cocoa
• 200g caster sugar
• 70ml sour cream
• 1 egg
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 135g plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• For the topping
• 150g Philadelphia cream cheese
• 75g icing sugar
• 60ml double or whipping cream

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180˚C/fan oven 160˚C. Line a muffin tray with cupcake cases. Pour the Guinness into a large saucepan and add the butter. Heat until melted and then whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream, eggs and vanilla in a separate bowl and pour into the pan of brown, buttery beer. Whisk in the flour and bicarbonate of soda. Pour the batter into the cupcake cases ¾ of the way up and bake for 18 to 20 minutes. Leave to cool in the tins for 20 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack. When the cupcakes are cold, lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and then beat them both together. Add the cream and beat again until it is a spreadable consistency.

I like to use this frosting as it looks just like the white top of the famous Guinness drink. Sprinkle with Shamrock Sprinkles, Green Magic Sparkles or Green Sugar. If you are feeling adventurous, you could even try the design below.

If you are less adventurous than this, you can always bake your own cupcakes and decorate with these Shamrock Fun Pix.

Having a St. Patrick's day party? Why not present your goodies in these fun Shamrock Party Bags and tie with Emerald Green Ribbon.

A Taste of What's To Come...

No-one can deny how truly beautiful a decorated cupcake looks with all its sugary fondant on the top. However, not everyone is a fan of the taste of sugarpaste and it is those people that will be very glad of the news that I bring......flavoured sugarpaste!

As an innovative company we are proud to offer you a superb sugarpaste that now comes in exciting flavours. With a luxurious finish and delicious taste, this sugarpaste is perfect for covering all types of cakes, biscuits and cupcakes or using as a modelling paste for moulds and cutters.

The 250g tubs are available in 6 delicious flavours and colours including...

• Candy Floss flavour in pink
• Champagne flavour in cream
• Orange Fizz flavour in pastel orange
• Peppermint flavour in white
• Sherbet Lemon flavour in pastel yellow
• Violet flavour in lilac

Clockwise from the top: Extra Large Flower Plunger Blossom Cutter,

Small Sweet in Wrapper Cutter, Karen Davies Teddy Face Mould,

Karen Davies Baby & Teddy Mould, Heart Leaves Set of 2 Large,

Karen Davies Baby & Teddy Mould, Small Gingerbread Man Cutter

If that wasn't fabulous enough, we also have a superb collection of concentrated food flavourings too. These are ideal for cakes, creams, fondants, icings, chocolate, custards, sweet making recipes and cupcakes. They come in 11 mouth watering flavours: Cappuccino, Champagne, Coconut, Cream Soda, English Toffee, Irish Cream, Lemon, Orange, Raspberry, Madagascan Vanilla Extract and Tropical Delight! After some experimenting in the kitchen with our new flavours, we can now confirm that they are truly scrumptious! We also tried out the Cupcake Filling Tube(currently on special offer). The filling of cupcakes is done AFTER baking them and allowing them to cool!

The cake on the right has been filled twice, one side with jam and the other side with buttercream. You must be careful when filling your cupcake with 2 fillings as they are only very small and therefore pushing too much filling inside may cause them to split. Have a go yourself and see what lovely combinations you can come up with, we tried lime and coconut. The cake on the left has been filled with lime curd and the buttercream flavoured using our new Coconut Flavouring. We also coloured the buttercream a pale mint colour and finished the cake with a sprinkling of shredded coconut.

Fashion Alert!

The cake above was made with the Flower Lace Moulds and PME Butterfly Plunger Cutters. The cake is covered in Baby Blue Regalice sugarpaste and mounted on two 12mm Cake Boards to create the floating effect at the bottom. The lace pieces are easy to make as long as you use the correct paste mix and each mould comes with full step-by-step instructions. I use ½ florist paste to ½ sugarpaste but you can use Mexican Modelling Paste instead.   All the decorations are attached to the cake whilst still soft so that you can mould them over the curves and they are best stuck on with Edible Glue (applied with a paintbrush). To add a touch of detail to the board, decorate with Pearlised Oyster Sugar Pearls, again sticking with a tiny amount of Edible Glue. To create a romantic shimmer, spray the whole cake with Pearl Edible Lustre Spray. It is best to do this with the cake on a turntable so that the coating is light and even. To finish off, attach a matching 15mm wide Baby Blue Satin Ribbon to the board and bow it at the front for added prettiness! To complement the cake, we have baked some cupcakes in our Silver Embossed Muffin Cases and decorated them using the same techniques.

Vintage Chic

The softness of this cake almost oozes from the screen. Gentle and clever colour choices make this cake very in vogue at the moment. The cake is covered in Shell Pink Regalice which should be done a couple of days before you start decorating to ensure no fingerprints or dents ruin the perfectly smooth look. Starting from the bottom tier, I used set 1 from the FMM Straight Frill Cutter Set and the large PME Blossom Plunger Cutter. For the middle tier I used the Lace Maker Latticed Border Mould, and the extra large PME Blossom Plunger Cutter. It really is worth investing in the set of 4 PME Flower Blossom Plunger Cutters as they are very versatile in cake decorating. Whilst the swags of pearls are cut from our non-edible Ivory Beading, the set of 3 pearls hanging from each blossom are edible Pearlised Blush Sugar Pearls, stuck on separately with Edible Glue. This task is made so much easier if you own a pair of Stainless Steel Angled Tweezers (essential for all fiddly work). The large rose is made from White Cocoform that has been tinted with Ivory Paste Colour and finished with our Pale Pink Lace Ribbon. The top tier uses the Lace Maker scalloped Border Mould and is finished with hearts made from the leftover ivory Cocoform mix cut out using the large PME Heart Plunger Cutter. You can edge each tier with either the non-edible Ivory Beading or, as I have here, edible Sugar Pearls. There is a lot of detail in this cake but the lace moulds do make your work so much easier.

Warming Up For The Winter Olympics

These cupcakes totally capture the whole essence of our great city. Bold, elegant and very strong! Invest in these Extra Large Alphabet Patchwork Cutters and you can start having some fun making up your own phrases. You may wonder how they stand up so straight and soldier like on the cupcakes, I used the fantastic Beau florist paste which comes in many colours including poinsettia red, brilliant white and kad berry blue as used here. The Tudor rose on the end is made using 3 sizes of the FMM 5 Petal Rose Cutter. You choose how big you would like it.

Louise's top tip - Roll the florist paste out as thinly as you can and then leave for about 15 minutes to start hardening up before cutting out the letters. It will make getting them out of the cutters so much easier!

5 different ideas for 5 coloured rings

From left: Plastic Star Plunger Cutter,

Tub of Pastel Yellow Sugar Pearls, Bag of Silver Dragees,

Rainbow Chocolate Drops, Medium Heart Plunger Cutter 

As we are unable to use any of the logos associated with the London Olympics, we are all going to have to get our thinking caps on for some new and original ideas for this spectacular event. I have created the 5 rings using different coloured cupcake cases and pretty much what I had in the cupboard. What ideas can you come up with?

Hall of Fame

Thank you for all your photos and please do keep them coming in to louise@cakecraftworld.com