Iced Baked Bunnies

Day 40 - Iced Baked Bunnies

Well, here we are - Day 40, my last project.  I've decided to bake again and today I'm making iced baked bunnies.  The baked bunnies are really just bread and I'm cheating a little by using a 'simply add water' bread mix.

I've made the mix as recommended on the packet and definitely added the optional butter. Having kneaded the bread for a full ten minutes I've first torn off balls of dough and rolled them out into long thin sausage shapes.  I'm really not sure how large the bunnies will end up being so I've made a mixture of sizes.

I've then made a twist in the middle of the dough leaving a hole in the middle. This is the bunny body.

I've made a second twist above the first but this time left no hole - this will be the bunny head and ears.

Lastly I've filled the hole with a small ball of dough to be the bunny tail.

Currently I've left the bunnies on baking trays, covered with clean tea towels, to rise before I can cook them.  I'll be putting them in the oven in about an hour.

In fact they did rise quite a bit!


Now they're out of the oven, I've left them to cool before glazing them with a little icing. Another tasty treat!

Some look like bunnies more than others!

Gingerbread Bunnies

Day 33 - Gingerbread Bunnies

I love cooking gingerbread.  The smell is warming and wonderful. Here's the recipe I use:

Plain flour 8oz/225g
Bicarbonate of Soda 1 1/2 tsp
Ground Ginger 1 tsp
Ground Cinnamon 1/4 tsp

Butter/Margarine 2oz/4tbsp
Brown Sugar 4oz/115g
Golden Syrup 3 tbsp

Milk 2 tbsp

I've melted the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan and mixed the flour, bicarbonate and spices in another bowl. Once the butter, sugar and syrup had melted I added the dry ingredients and the milk and mixed it all together to make a dough. I then left the in the fridge to chill for half an hour.

When I took the dough out of the fridge, I rolled it out onto a floured surface.  I decided to make my own rabbit head stencil to cut around, particularly as my only rabbit cutter snapped as I got it out to use. 










The bunnies then went for a 10-15 minute spell in a warm oven.


I left the bunnies to cool before piping on some ears, nose and whiskers and using smarties for eyes.  Yum!

Cake Pops

Day 22 - Cake Pops

Thought it was about time I made another edible craft!  I first saw this idea a while ago but have never quite got around to trying it.  After I made the chick cupcakes I kept a little cake leftover and had a practice at making a cake pop recipe.

Cake pops are deliciously moist little bites of cake mixed with some cream cheese frosting.  You can use ready made ingredients - cake and frosting which would be quicker but today I'm going to make them from scratch.

First I've used the following basic recipe to make the cake: butter 120g, caster sugar 150g, 1 tsp vanilla essence, 2 eggs, SR flour 180g, 4 tbsp milk.


While this was cooking I mixed up the following frosting recipe: butter 80g, cream cheese 40g, icing sugar 20g, 1 tsp vanilla essence.






Once the cake had cooled I could break it into small crumbs and then mixed the cake crumbs with the frosting mixture.  At this point you can decide what shape you want to make your cake pops into.  As my challenge has to be Easter themed, I thought I'd simply roll them into balls to make Easter chicks. Once rolled I put them in the fridge for a short while.








When the cake pop balls were a little firmer, I melted a small amount of specially bought candy melts according to instructions.  Again you could probably use other kinds of melted chocolate but I think you'd have to experiment.  The candy melts were bought from Hobbycraft where you can get a full range of colours. Next I needed to stick the lolly sticks into the cake balls. As I've wanted to try this for a while I had already bought lollipop sticks (cake making, not the wooden craft type!). Taking advice from the internet, I put some melted chocolate onto the end of the sticks, pushed the sticks into the cake balls and then left these to set for a while.


Finally, what I assumed would be the most tricky bit!  I melted the rest of the candy melts in a large bowl and then took out the cake pops one at a time and dipped them in the chocolate. After dipping I stood them in glasses.









I didn't expect the cake pops to come out perfectly as this is the first time I've dipped chocolate. I think they're ok! To make small chick heads I've decorated the balls with red icing and food colouring to draw on faces

As I decided to go the whole hog, I also bought some professional looking cake pop covers and ties. I suppose if you are going to eat them pretty soon after then you wouldn't need these. Yummy!!



P.S. I did use the cake pop covers for some BUT the glace icing I'd used and the food colouring started to come off! Oops! I guess if you use fondant icing it'd probably be ok.

Cupcakes

Day 10 - Easter Chick Cupcakes

As it's my daughter's birthday party today and I'd be making cupcakes anyway, I had decided to double up and make some Easter chick cupcakes.  I baked traditional vanilla flavoured cupcakes but the most fun was in the decorating.

I've used ready made yellow fondant icing to make the chicks. I've rolled the icing into larger and smaller balls and then used a touch of water to join them on top of each other.  Next I rolled out the icing and cut it into tiny wings for the chicks - this was a little labour intensive, 46 wings required for 23 cakes - again sticking with a bit of water.  

To make the beaks I used small scissors to make a little nick in the 'head' ball. The chicks were finished off with a bit of food colouring for inside the mouth and the eyes.




Once I'd made about thirteen chicks I had to stop to take my daughter to Fired4U for her party! They all had a great time enamelling jewellery and then came back for tea.  So, I didn't get back to the cakes until about 8 o'clock.  

I 'd made some pale green butter icing which I piped onto the cakes and then sat the chicks on top.

Luckily my daughter has a cake stand to display them on.  They're all going to church tomorrow - hopefully there will not be many left.  Don't they look too cute to eat?!!