Dolgellau Craft Fair Saturday October 22nd 2011

It was really nice to get together with a bunch of girls, hire out a hall and throw a craft market. Pauline came with her cards, Nia and Lesley with their lovely jewellery. Cross stitch from Llinos. Soaps, lotions and essential oils from Kathy and Gemma. Not forgetting Bekki and her stall in aid of the British Heart Foundation. We had a lot of fun and hopefully the people that popped in to see us liked it, too.

Half of our table was our other business 'Siop Gardd' and the other half was 'Patti's Cupcakes' Here are some pictures of the cakes we sold:

And finally, our very popular, extra buttery, Welsh cakes!

Girly Cupcakes

It's kind of scary when you get an order for cupcakes from the wife of the Health Inspector (the man that inspected my kitchen, no less) who also happens to work in Trading Standards and the cakes are going to be eaten in the Trading Standards office because two people have birthdays! No pressure, then!!!

Although we have, as anyone handling food for public consumption does, a rigorous regime in our kitchen as per Health & Safety guidelines it was still scary and I won't feel okay until they give me some feedback -- if they do, that is. We always eat a couple of cakes out of each batch as a sort of quality control (well, that's our excuse, anyway)

The theme was 'girly' cupcakes and these are photos of the cupcakes we made:

Cupcakes at the Farmers Market

It's been awhile since we got the chance to take cupcakes to a farmers market as pretty much all markets already have someone doing cake and we can never get a look in. But patience won out at the farmers market we started attending three months ago (we had been selling things from our other business - Siop Gardd.) Noticing that the other cake stalls were not exactly regular in attending, we took the plunge and asked if we might bring cupcakes to the next one. Luckily the organizer said yes and Stefan I made up a couple of boxes to see how they would go.

We debated over which nozzle to use for decorating. I favoured the 3M but Stefan finds the 1A easier to use and I must say on DC Cupcakes (our favourite cupcake show) they tend to use this one. However, they use a cream cheese icing which gives a lovely effect to the cake and with buttercream icing we find it doesn't look as effective.

Nevertheless, the cupcakes turned out lovely and sold really well, too. They looked fab and tasted great, and as I keep telling everyone, Welsh butter definitely makes the best cakes!!! Here are a few photos of our cakes boxed up and ready to go.

We made vanilla and strawberry cupcakes. Some of the vanilla cupcakes were decorated with coconut and cherries, others with edible flowers. The strawberry cupcakes were dusted with edible glitter and topped with an edible fondant strawberry.

The chocolate cupcakes were made using Cadbury's Bournville cocoa. It makes a delicious, rich icing, too.

Cappuccino Bars

We're not all about cupcakes at Patti's Cupcakes, but we are all about 'cake'!!!
Here is one of our favourites. These moreish bars can be frozen, without their topping, for up to 2 months. So why not make some and stick them in the freezer?

INGREDIENTS:

1 teaspoon cocoa powder, plus a little extra for dusting.
2 rounded tablespoons coffee granules
225g softened butter
225g castor sugar
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

FOR THE WHITE CHOCOLATE ICING:
100g white chocolate, broken into pieces
(plus a little extra to grate on top of the cake)
50g softened butter
3 tablespoons milk
175g icing sugar

METHOD:
Preheat oven to 180C/Gas 4/fan oven 160C
butter and line the bottom of a shallow 28 x 18cm oblong tin.
Mix the cocoa and coffee granules into 2 tablespoons warm water. Put in a large
bowl with the other cake ingredients.
Whisk for about 2 minutes with an electric mixer to combine, then tip into the tin and level out. Bake for 35-40 minutes until risen and firm to the touch. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then cool on a rack. Peel off the paper.
For the icing, melt the chocolate, butter and milk in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Remove the bowl and sift in the icing sugar. Beat until smooth, then spread over the cake. Finish with a dusting of cocoa powder and a little grated white chocolate. Cut into 24 bars.

Cupcake Update

I've been a bit remiss in putting my cupcake pictures on my blog, so here are a few I've made recently.

A couple of giant cupcakes

I'm getting the hang of this giant cupcake thing. Here's one we did for ourselves last week.

It's a basic cupcake mixture with buttercream icing and lots of chocolate sprinkles and a cherry. Yummy!



We were asked to make a cupcake for a child's birthday and decided to go for butterflies and bees. We also forgot to take a photo until we were walking out of the door with it, so the pictures aren't that great as we had put it in the only container we could find - does anybody do cake boxes for giant cupcakes? We can't find them anywhere. The cake however, looked fabulous.

I just wish I'd remembered to take a proper photo because I think this is our best giant cupcake so far. Oh well - next time!

Cupcakes that Care

It was the first public outing for Patti's Cupcakes in our home town as all the other craft markets have been elsewhere. We wanted to make them not only as colourful as possible but delicious, too. We always use British butter and eggs from happy hens. We can't bear thinking that our eggs come from battery farm hens who barely have feathers on them let alone a decent life, so we make sure our eggs are from hens that are free to roam and roost and have a good life and mostly we get them from a farm not too far away from where we live. Fairtrade sugar is also important to us. If we are going to make cupcakes then we're going to make cupcakes that care!

Everyone seemed to enjoy them!