After a little break I’m back with another blog. So in the past two weeks my first year of uni is finished and I’m back home. I did try and make some caramel treats last week, when I had no baking stuff left at uni but to be quite honest it just didn’t look appealing at all, but I definitely learnt a thing or two. I think I was just saving myself for this week’s bake which I’m so happy with. So obviously with two weeks to plan what to do, it wasn’t until last minute when I finally committed to what I was going to do. It was just like staring at a wall thinking of what I was going to do, and to be honest I was looking at half the ideas thinking that would never work. At the end of the day the only thing I could do was to try and see what happened. My only goal was for someone to think they were real plants and not cupcakes. I guess I just took a leaf of faith…
As soon as I bought the plant pot moulds I was so excited at the different possibilities that could be made from them. I bought the moulds from Lakeland and they are the perfect size. I was going to do chocolate cakes, but after a massive clear out at the weekend I didn’t have any cocoa powder. Somehow organising all my baking stuff made me more motivated to bake, it reminded me of what I had (66 piping nozzles for example) and actually inspired me for bakes in the coming weeks. So I just stuck to a standard cupcake recipe 175g self-raising flour, sugar, butter, 3 eggs , 1 teaspoon baking powder and a few drops of caramel flavouring. The flavouring just makes it smell lush. It was complete guesswork how much to fill the pots, I filled them just over half way because I didn’t want them flowing over the top. Obviously, they would be hot when they come out the oven so to make it easier I used a 6 hole cupcake tray and put a plant pot in each one. I even had enough to make 7 more normal cupcakes. I baked them for 12 minutes at 175 degrees. Thankfully they didn’t overflow and I just levelled the tops of all of them.
I left them to cool and started thinking how I could make the cacti or succulents. I made some vanilla buttercream using 250g butter and 500g icing sugar. Using some Oreos I scraped out the filling and crushed the biscuits using a rolling pin. I crushed the biscuits until it was really fine, it looked really realistic. I added a layer of buttercream to the cakes and sprinkled on the Oreos. So for the designs I did 3 different things which I will explain.
For this design I put 2 marshmallows on a toothpick. I placed the toothpick in the top of the cake. This gave the cactus height without having to use a sickly amount of buttercream. I coloured some buttercream forest green and used a really small star nozzle. I started from the bottom and piped up the marshmallow. The lines were really thin and gave a really realistic design. I continued to do this until the whole marshmallows were covered. As some cacti have flowers I thought why not add some colour and added a pink flower on top using buttercream. I also had some small decorative flowers that I added on another cactus.
For this design pretty similar to the one above, however I only used one marshmallow instead of two. I only used toothpicks because I didn’t want to marshmallows moving when I piped buttercream on them. Instead of piping lines up the marshmallows I just piped little stars all the way around. Again I added a little red flower, I think this one is probably my favourite.
This one was a little different as I used icing which I would normally want to use but I thought it would be good to make a little succulent or sucCUTElent whichever you prefer. So I used daisy flower cutters of different sizes. I pinched the round edges all the way around. Then I stacked the daisies on top of each other largest on the bottom and used a little water to stick them together. I just thought they looked really cute and I used 3 different sizes on one and 4 on another. They ended up being the perfect size for the top of the plant pots.
It’s amazing how much mess I seem to make but then to produce something like this, which I think look quite realistic always blows my mind. I’ve honestly loved the reaction I’ve had to them so far, it’s nice when really talented bakers say they’re fantastic. I’m so excited to be finished uni for the year because I know that over the next couple of months I’m just going to be able to bake. I just think my plants look pretty sharp. I hope you’ve been able to withstand my sad attempt at puns throughout this blog. I think it’s probably been one of my favourite ones I’ve done so far, I’m glad I pricked it (last one I promise). I hope you have a lovely week and enjoyed my blog as much as I did.
Lots of love,
Hannah x
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