Gloverly Cupcakes

I spent most of the weekend in the kitchen. This would be some people’s worst nightmare, but for me it’s a pretty perfect weekend. It was also snowing/sleeting for most of the weekend so being inside was definitely the best place to be. Sunday’s challenge was to make something caramel related for the Sunday Baking Club weekly theme – so I spent most of the day stirring caramel while it thickened, and then waiting for ages for it to cool down (look out for the recipe next week). However, the task for Saturday was very differentA couple of weeks ago one of the girls at work asked if I’d be able to do her a massive favour and make a cake for her nephew’s first birthday. I said yes – I’d happily spend all day in the kitchen making a cake for somebody, especially if I get to make something I’ve never done before. This cake was one of them. I’d never made a first birthday cake before and I’d also never done zig zags on a cake. As well as making the cake, I also made the bunting (not edible!) out of card, string and wooden kebab sticks.   Initially I cut each zig zags out as one strip. However, this turned out to be a nightmare and I struggled to get them even. So I took off what I’d done, tried to wipe off the marks, and started again creating the zig zags out of individual strips. It probably didn’t look as neat as if I’d managed to get each colour as one piece, but it was much easier and looked more uniform.

If I was to make them again, I’d roll the fondant out a bit thinner and cut out narrower stripes – I ended up making them wider than I’d planned to hide the marks from my first attempt!