Purple and Pearls

I have a rather wedding packed weekend on the cards!  Tomorrow I shall be visiting Hobby Crafts to see if I can find the materials to make chalkboard place names. If I get time I’ll also have a go at putting one together.

The it’s off to Suzie’s house to drop off something special… what could it be!?  Not telling!  If Suzie spies this post the surprise will be ruined!  I promise to post about it once she has it!

I’m also out with some friends tomorrow night for pizza, drinks and dancing so I may as well kill two birds so to speak and curl my hair and play around with some wedding styles.

Then Sunday bright and early (depending on hangovers) we shall be eating cake from Blue Door Bakery.  The lovely Sarah will be at the Stone Manor Hotel Wedding Fair.  Hopefully I’ll be able to cross off another “to do” item from my January list.  I’m really looking forward to meeting her, we’ve chatted over email and twitter so it’ll be nice to put a face to the tweets!

Jealous?  You should be!!

Happy Weekend! x

So I found a template online, bought some cute paper and spent about 30 minutes making my own cupcake wrappers.

Ok so they’re not fabulous, but I think they look quite good for half an hours worth of work.  I used left over bits and bobs from other craft projects just to see how easy they would be to make.

It turns out pretty easy!

I couldn’t find my hole punches but they would look really sweet with different shapes punched out.  A great idea to jazz up any shop bought cupcakes for parties.  It just goes to show you don’t need to spend a lot to get cute looking wrappers!

I seem to have cupcakes on the brain today!

I’ve been thinking about the cupcake flags and cute sayings to put on them.  So far I have

“Eat me!”
“Let there be cake!”
“Love is sweet!”
“The best is yet to come!”
“Be happy, eat cake!”
“Be mine!”
“Sweets for my sweet!”
“Delish!”
“Yummy!”
“Enjoy!”
“Cute as a cupcake!”

Can you think of any more?

They’ll be super easy to make, I just think they’ll be one of those things that will be really worth it!

found these super cute cupcake liners on Etsy yesterday, I’ve been looking for alternatives to the boring generic white cases most cupcakes come in and Esty didn’t let me down!

I haven’t even booked a cupcake supplier yet or even discussed the possibility of them being wrapped in gorgeous cases but these are seriously too cute not to mention!

These have to be my personal favourite.

I absolutely adore the embellished cases from Sugar Cat Studio.

Friday night Suzie and I made Christmas Cupcakes.

They were incredibly yummy and so easy to make.

Christmas Cupcakes.
2 large eggs, cracked open
1 tsp vanilla essence
125g/4oz caster sugar
125g/4oz soft margarine
125g/4oz self-raising flour

A sprinkle of white chocolate chips

• Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. 
• Put all the ingredients in a bowl and beat them together until the mixture is smooth and slightly lighter in colour.
• Line a bun tin or cupcake tin with paper cake cases and half-fill each case with the cake mixture.  Suzie and I made bite-sized cupcakes so our mixture obviously went a long way
• Cook the cakes for 10-12 minutes.  (Cook for 18-20 minutes for normal sized cupcakes) You can tell they are done when they have risen up, are golden in colour, and spring back into shape when lightly pressed.

To decorate

140g/5oz butter, softened
280g/10oz icing sugar
1-2 tbsp milk
a few drops food colouring

• Beat the butter in a large bowl until soft. Add half the icing sugar and beat until smooth.
• Then add the remaining icing sugar with one tablespoon of the milk.
• Beat until creamy then add the food colouring and mix well. 
• Add extra icing sugar to thicken or a little extra milk to make more runny if necessary.

We split our icing in half to make both red and green icing and then we used an icing tube to decorate our cupcakes.

We added silver balls and a star on top of our Christmas Tree Cupcakes and sprinkles icing sugar over our Christmas Poinsettia Cupcakes.

And because we hadn’t had enough sugar that evening Suzie tested her new candy floss machine out on me!

Mmmmmm Sugary!

I’m not a huge fan of cake toppers but I’ve seen a few recently that are so cute they may be changing my mind.

Like these

from Sarah and Jaime’s Wedding

They are so sweet without being cheesy plus they’d make lovely little keepsakes from the day.

I’m thinking about having mini cupcakes on our candy table.  The first lady we spoke to about cupcakes makes to most adorable mini cakes.  If we do go ahead with this idea I really want to add cupcake flags like these.

I’ve found another company today who make cupcakes.  Blue Door Bakery.

I have emailed Sarah and asked her about prices and whether we can go round for a tasting session (Yummy!)

Look away now if you’re on a diet!

I’ve found my cupcake lady!

After the wedding fayre where we met Leanne, I lost her details somewhere amongst the wedding chaos!  I managed to get in touch with the company who organised the event and they gave me her contact details.

I have since emailed her and have arranged to meet up sometime in the New Year.  Hopefully she will prepare a few samples for us to try.  I want Has to understand just how amazing her cupcakes are!

These are her cupcakes

Yummy!

Her name is Leanne and her company is called The Natural Cake Kitchen.  She doesn’t have a website yet but she does have a Facebook Fan Page.

P.S I tried one of the pink cupcakes in the bottom photo! Delicious!