If you’ve been to visit for a cupcake class and enjoyed our little library during lunch, you’ll know that one of our obsessions is baking books. We can’t get enough, so we thought we’d share the love!

Every month we’re going to be giving away a new release baking, cooking or cake decorating book. All we ask is that if you win the book, you write us a little review of it for us the following month, so we can share it with our blog followers. Simple!

This month the new release book we’re giving away is Paul Hollywood’s How to Bake.

To enter you need to do one or more of the following:

1. Comment below on this blog post, tell us what’s your favourite cake!

2. Click ‘Share’ on our Facebook post about this blog post to share it with your friends.

3. Comment on our Facebook post about this blog post, telling us what you’ll be baking this weekend!

For each of the above, you’ll receive an entry (you can enter in each of the 3 ways for 3 entries) and we’ll pick a winner on the first Friday of the month.

Good luck!

With the Olympic Torch making its way round the UK we felt it was time for another appropriately themed cupcake! Perfect for torch parties or the official start of the Olympics!

What you’ll need…

White Sugarpaste
Round Cutter (the same size as the top of your cupcake)
Pre-Coloured Sugarpaste in the following colours: Atlantic Blue, Yellow, Black, Lincoln Green and Red
OR Sugarpaste coloured with the following Sugarflair Gel Colours: Navy, Egg Yellow, Liquorice, Holly Green & Christmas Red
CMC Powder
Non-Stick Rolling Mat
Rolling Pin
Mini Round Plunger Cutter Set
Cupcake & Buttercream
1M Nozzle fitted into Piping Bag
Cocktail Stick
Edible Glue and thin paintbrush

1. Mix all of your sugarpastes with some CMC powder until they become stiffer in consistency. Then roll and cut out a circle from your white sugarpaste to form the base of your cupcake top and put to one side to dry out.

2. Now take one of your coloured pastes and roll out until its quite thin but not very thin! Take the largest of your mini round cutters and cut out a circle. Then take the middle cutter and cut again inside your first circle, making the ring as even as possible.

Tip! To keep the ring nice and neat, try to only move it with your cocktail stick and move as little as possible. Then when you’re happy with the shape leave to dry for about an hour so the CMC starts to work its magic but there’s still a little give in the paste!

3. Repeat Step 2 with your remaining 4 colours.

4. Now to place the rings! To make sure they’re centred, first glue the black ring about a third of the way down your circle in the centre. Then place the blue ring to the right of the black ring and the red to the right.

5. Now take the largest of your mini round plunger cutters. Hold the plunger down and just slightly indent into the existing rings where the last two will go so that they sit flat against the cake when applied.

6. Add the last two rings – yellow on the left and green on the right. Leave to dry.

7. Pipe a rose swirl on your cupcake and gently press your topper into place. Done!

Jenny x

This is the single most often asked question in our Cupcakes Start to Finish Class, so we thought we’d try to shed a little bit of light onto the matter for our Tuesday Tutorial this week.

Unfortunately there isn’t a simple answer to this question. Some people swear it’s one thing or another, but we’ve taught over 3,000 students and opinion is completely split on why and when this happens to people.

In our opinion, the cases don’t make a great deal of difference – as long as they are decent quality and stiff enough to keep their shape and not go greasy. (Like our fabulous cases for example! Quick plug – you can find them here!) Often people use the same brand or batch of cases and some say their cakes were perfect and some are cursing them.

We’ve baked about 50,000 cupcakes over the last few years, and here are what we consider to be the 4 main causes of the problem…

1. Storing baked cupcakes in plastic or sealed containers. This almost ALWAYS causes the cases to come away as the cakes ‘sweat’. Store baked cases in cardboard cupcake boxes or if you must store them in plastic boxes, sit them onto kitchen towel or clean tea towels (so they aren’t touching the plastic) and leave the lid ajar.

2. Over beating the cake batter. This depends on which recipe you use, but for the recipe we teach in our Cupcakes Start to Finish Class, it needs to be beaten so briefly our students can hardly believe it. When you beat cake mixture, working the flour in them can cause them to get tougher when cooked. This obviously makes them not as nice to eat, but it also makes them contract away from the case.

3. Not putting enough cake mixture into the case. If you don’t fill the cases about two thirds full, there just isn’t enough cake to grip the case. Simple!

4. Fat content is too high. If you use a recipe that has quite a lot of butter this can also cause the cases to come away, as the mixture is just too greasy to hold onto the case. It is important to have enough fat in the batter to keep your cupcakes moist and rich though – we think we’ve found the perfect balance in our Cupcakes Start to Finish recipe, with just the right combination of butter and milk!

What do you think? Do you agree? We’d love to know what makes you think makes your cases stick or sag!

The BDB Gurus x