Iron Cupcake marshmallow smores...

Theme for November's Iron Cupcake was obviously Bonfire Night.
I tried to avoid the obvious toffee apples and parkin as I sometimes feel that if my cakes are different from the rest they will stand out more.
I went for smores flavour and ever a fan of the pun I came up with the name - gimme smore!
I used Martha Stewart's one bowl chocolate cupcakes mix for the sponge.
I will definately use this recipe again as it was moist and very tasty.
I adapted it by putting some homemade oat biscuit at the bottom of the liner, I also put a dollop of marshmallow fluff (from a jar I admit!) in the middle.
When it baked I thought it was a disaster as it exploded out - like an earthquake cake.
But then I decided it looked good and oozey and burnt like a real smore.
Here's a pic:

 Then I whipped up some super easy marshmallow frosting. I had tried the hummingbird recipe before and it was quite tricky and very, very sticky and could not be piped. I wanted mine piped as I prefer the look. So I was so lucky to find this recipe. Some of the marshmallows I had were pink so I put a bit of red food colouring in to up the colour. It looks brown in this pic but the lighting at the venue is not the best for pics.

Here is my sign - I even brought my little easel from Ikea which I usually use to snap layouts with. I came third overall and was pleased with this as I did think they were quite good.

 A close-up. I sprinkled biscuit crumbs on top.

 These cuties came second...

 These parkin cupcakes won the night. I tried them and they were very tasty - even though I am not a big fan of the stuff (not being a Yorkshire lass and all!)

 Here is Sarah modelling one of her very own cupcakes - she was a first time baker.

 Leanne helped her with the icing, but also did a bit of judging. She was voting for the other colour though!

Roll on December. Any good tips or recipes for Christmas cupcakes bloggers??

IRON Cupcake Summer Berries...

My somewhat 'wilted' cupcakes with their straw hearts

With my scrapbooked sign - they used to do a prize for signage - wish they still did!

Wimbledon inspired Eaton Mess cupcakes - I was thinking of this kind of idea

Don't these look summery?

These rasberry cuties came second I think

These came third but were alcoholic so I didn't try them.

Well Iron Cupcake it had been too long. I enjoy meeting up with all my baking pals. I was even true to my diet and didn't indulge much. My recipe is from this blog.  I can highly recommend it, it is very dense though and without the strawberry extract the curd was creamy rather than strawberryish. I was a little bit in love with the lemon cream cheese frosting and did lick the bowl!
How do you stop cream cheese frosting being so gloopy and unable to pipe??

Choc bar cupcakes...paradise!

It was another fab afternoon at The Adelphi. There were 18 entries and the competition was very fierce! Some real effort had gone into all the entries - the challenge was chocolate bars. The above little creme egg cuties were the winner - she won a huge goodie bag with a £30 Aggra voucher (love that place!) and all sorts of cupcakey goodness! She has won three times now and so we all need to up the ante! Above were the wonka bars with a golden ticket. This lady has a special printer with edible ink - so that is how you put pictures on cakes. Gems - remember when Murray had Alex's head off the cake! The toffe crisp entry was very tasty and the chocolate orange ones were very tasty too. I didn't try these as they looked rich ,but they were very nicely presented. The picnic basket was a nice touch with the paper plate and plastic cutlery. Below are my babies, which sadly did not feature in the top 3, but I really enjoyed them and Arne said they were my best entry yet. (which is a great accolade bu a cupcake hater!) I used my sisters recipe (found here) and they were quite time consumming with three different types of filling, frosting and topping! Don't you just love the little fruit and nut bar below. I flew solo as all the teacher folk were busy, but I made friends with this great Australian couple who were great company and we round tasting together. It was a fab afternoon out!

Love cupcakes?

It was February's Iron Cupake contest and obvs the theme was love. I racked my brains over it and decided to avoid the obvious reds and pinks and go for gold with a Romeo and Juliet themed cupcake. I called it "star crossed lovers" and had fondant stars shooting from the cake (the display one!) and gold edible glitter. Above were the winners for the night. I never got to try them as I was all cupcaked out as I always indulge in some of my frosting and then feel all sugared out! Doesn't the sign below remind you of scrapping??! Here are my babies. I used wrappers from Morrissons as they have a really good baking range now, my mom got me them for Christmas. My sign was written in gold pen and star shaped - it was a bit of a rush job and I have big ideas for it too! A close-up of the examplar one which they grade the appearence on. My sisters went on a baking course and saw the idea of winding wire round a cocktail stick to make a little spring. It was tricky to get the fondant star to stick to the wire as it had already dried. Here they were before I started decorating them. Naked. Sorry this post goes backwards (I always forget which order to load them up in) The sponge was chocolate and honeycomb. Just a basic vanilla sponge with a cup of blitzed crunchie bits and a tablespoon of cocoa and two tablespoons of maple syrup. Then it was chocolate frosting (but not very chocolately) and then added glitter and honeycomb crumbs. It was really tasty and different to the others. I came...in third place and so was quite pleased with that!