We hope you all had a lovely Easter and managed to cook up some treats, as well as receiving many too!

This week we’re giving you three tutorials in one, just because we like you. If you haven’t yet seen them, we’ve recently started selling a brand spanking new product – Edible Icing Sheets available with two very different but equally lovely patterns, as seen in our Shabby Chic Cupcake Class. From what we hear you’ve absolutely loved them and we’re struggling to print them fast enough! So we thought we’d show you a few things you could do with yours…

What you’ll need for all of this week’s tutorials…

Ditsy Vintage Rose Edible Icing Sheet
Blue Door Bakery Polkadot Edible Icing Sheet
Scissors
Edible Ink Pen in Liquorice
Edible Glue & Paintbrush
Bow Cutter
White Florist Paste/Sugarpaste mixed with a little CMC Powder
Rolling Pin
Non-Stick Smooth Rolling Mat
Round Cutter (to fit the top of a cupcake)
Cocktail Sticks
Royal Icing for Flag Piping (optional)
Cupcakes
Buttercream (in a piping bag fitted with a 1M nozzle)
Blue Polkadot Cupcake Wrapper

Beautifully Wrapped Parcel Cupcake

1. Make a bow for your parcel using your bow cutter and florist paste/sugarpaste with CMC, plus 2 strips long enough to cover the width of your cupcake top. For an in depth tutorial on how to use your bow cutter please see our YouTube video below…

How To Make An Edible Bow For Cupcakes

2. Roll and cut out a piece of sugarpaste using a round cutter the same size as your cupcake top. Using the same cutter as a guide, cut out a circle of your polkadot Edible Icing Sheet (use your edible pen to draw a circle first if you’re not happy to do it freehand!). Remove the backing on your sheet and glue onto the sugarpaste, then fix your strips and box in place.

3. Pipe a rose swirl on top of a cupcake, then gently place your parcel circle on the top. Add a blue polkadot wrapper to really finish it off!

Edible Cupcake Flags (Minus the Cocktail Stick!)

1. Cut strips out of your Edible Icing Sheets roughly 6.5cm long and 2.5cm wide. Cut out an inverted “V” into one end of the strip and taper the other end. Making sure to remove the backing, glue your flags to the cocktail sticks, so that the tapered end is hidden – it works best if you seal the top just above the top of the cocktail stick to help the flag stay in place.

2. We’ve added a few phrases to ours using Royal icing but they look just as lovely proudly displaying nothing but the patterned icing. You may have to let everyone know that the flag in their cupcake is edible but don’t forget to warn them we haven’t quite managed the edible cocktail stick just yet!

Ditsy Vintage Rose

1. Take your rose Edible Icing Sheet and using your edible ink pen draw a large spiral – don’t worry about how neat your spiral is, the wonkier the rose, the more charm it has!

2. Cut along the line of your spiral. Remove the backing and beginning at the outer most point, start to roll your spiral so that the wider side forms the top of your rose, adding a little edible glue to the first twist to help it stick.

3. When you reach the end of your spiral cut of any excess and edible glue the free end to the side of the rose. You can shape the rose a little as you go, slowly allowing it to splay out a little towards the end. Leave it on a flat surface before adding to your cupcake, keeping one finger underneath whenever moving – it’ll be nice and secure once atop your cake!

We hope we’ve inspired you to get creative with your Edible Icing Sheets, as always they and all of the other products featured in the blog are available from our online shop HERE and you can learn more about using them in our Shabby Chic Cupcakes Class.

Jenny x

Easter is fast approaching, which is a brilliant reason to get creative with our cupcakes! This week is the first of our Easter themed tutorials, to give you plenty of inspiration and time to plan what cakey treats you’ll be gifting!

What you’ll need…

Brown Sugar Paste (either pre-coloured or coloured with lots of Chestnut Gel)
CMC Powder
Edible Glue & Paintbrush
Yellow Florist Paste (coloured with Egg Yellow Gel Colour)
Bow Cutter (we used the medium size from our set of 3)
Non-Stick Rolling Mat
Foam Decoration Drying Pad
Mini Eggs
Grass & Hair Nozzle
Wilton 1M Nozzle
Piping Bags
Cupcake
Green Buttercream (we used a mixture of Party Green and Holly Green)
Chocolate Buttercream

1. First we need to make the handle and rim of our basket. Add a little CMC powder to your brown sugar paste (not too much as we need it to stay pliable while we’re working with it but set stiff!). Section 3 pieces, each roughly the size of a large Malteser! then roll each one very thinly, into very long sausages.

2. Glue together the sausages at one end and gently plait them, keeping them as tight as possible without stretching or breaking them – gently squeezing the length together after plaiting will get rid of any gaps and keep your plait neat. Glue together the other ends and cut off any excess.

3. Now cut two pieces of your plait, roughly 2 1/2 inches long and shape on the drying foam, one in a curved shape for the basket handle, and the other in a complete circle, with each end glued together to form the basket rim. Make a bow as per our Youtube tutorial (see below), stick to the rim and leave all pieces to dry overnight.

Bow Cutter Tutorial

4. Once your pieces are set, fit the grass nozzle into a piping bag and fill with green sugarpaste. Flat ice your cupcake with extra green buttercream (optional). Then pipe your grass – hold the piping bag vertical, squeeze gently then stop squeezing and pull away – repeat all over cupcake, leaving the centre a little lower or free of grass.

5. Fit the Wilton 1M nozzle into a piping bag and fill with chocolate buttercream. Pipe a circle just in from the edge of the cake, then pipe a second on top of the first to create a bit of height to your basket.

6. Add 3 Mini Eggs to the centre of your basket (we’ve added a few pearls too, just because they’re pretty!). Then take your basket rim and place it on top of the basket, surrounding the Mini Eggs. Now put your handle in place, fitting it just inside the rim, into the buttercream to hold it steady. Done!

We hope you enjoyed this week’s tutorial. If you’re pushed for time you can substitute the plaited handle for strawberry bootlaces with a small ribbon bow. Whichever way you make your Easter Basket Cupcakes we’d love to see a picture posted on our Facebook wall!

And remember, you can buy all of the equipment we use in each tutorial on our online shop, here… http://bluedoorbakery.highwire.com/

Jenny x

This week our blog aims to raise awareness for a fantastic cause, as well as showing you a few tips and tricks in the cupcake department! We’ll be demonstrating how to make a beautiful sugar paste daffodil in dedication to The Great Daffodil Appeal, run by Marie Curie Cancer Care.

“Each March, the Great Daffodil Appeal aims to get everyone to wear a daffodil in support of our Marie Curie Nurses and raise money to help us provide more free care to people with terminal cancer and other illnesses.” (Marie Curie website, February 2012)

We think its really important to support causes as worthy as this one, so this March we’ll have our very own box of daffodil pins, courtesy of Marie Curie Cancer Care. They’ll be available to all our lovely customers, visiting us for classes or our shop, for a small donation to the charity.

And now to make our daffodil….

What you’ll need

Non-stick Rolling Mat
Rolling Pin
Sugarpaste coloured with a little Egg Yellow Gel Colour
Petunia Cutter & Mould Set
Foam Drying Pad
Lemon Yellow Dusting Colour
Paintbrush
Cocktail Stick
Edible Glue
Cupcake & Buttercream for frosting

1. Roll out the yellow paste reasonably thinly and cut out the petunia shape. Then place the shape in the mould and press down gently to emboss your flower

2. Take your paintbrush and Lemon Yellow dusting colour and dust your flower from the centre outward, applying quite liberally into the centre but leaving the edges pale. Leave the flower to dry on the bumpy side of a foam drying pad, so that it curls in on itself slightly

3. And now to create the trumpet! Take a small piece of the yellow sugarpaste (roughly the size of your little finger nail) and roll into a cone between your thumb and forefinger, gently flattening the bottom with your other forefinger

4. Now take the end of your paintbrush and push your cone onto the top of it so that it sits snugly, with the paintbrush nearly reaching the point

5. Keeping the cone on the end of the paintbrush, gently press the cocktail stick into the side, lengthways. Continue this right the way around the cone so that it gives a “grooved” effect. This will also thin out the trumpet and make it slightly larger

6. Brush the centre of the flower with a little edible glue and place the trumpet in the centre. Leave to dry before dusting the inside of the cone with more lemon yellow

7. Place on a cupcake with a pre-piped swirl and join us in making more people aware of the Great Daffodil Appeal!

We hope you enjoyed the blog this week and that you’ll be wearing a daffodil on your lapel as well as your cupcake.

For more information on the Marie Curie Great Daffodil Appeal, ideas for fundraising, how you can join in, and to donate to a great cause please click HERE

Thank you!

Jenny x

One of the questions we get asked most often is the difference between florist paste and sugar paste, so we thought this week we’d share the low down and give you some tips.

Florist Paste

Florist paste is the best product to use for making any delicate decorations, including flowers and cut out shapes. It’s very tough and can (and should!) be rolled very thinly. It feels like a relatively expensive product when you first start cake decorating (about £5 per 250g) but because you roll it so thinly and can make mountains of decorations from a small pack, it’s actually really good value. You need to use florist paste if you want to shape your flowers using a ball tool or similar as it’s tough elasticity allows you to do this.

Florist paste dries very hard, decorations made from it should be left to dry (ideally) for a day or two before use. This allows them to dry out fully so you won’t be in fear of the drooping at a crucial moment!

Adding vegetable shortening to florist paste makes it lots easier to use. Always store florist paste in a completely sealed container with no air to avoid it drying out.

Our preferred florist paste brand is Squires Kitchen. If you’re buying a different brand, do check it is edible as they aren’t all safe to eat! You can buy florist paste here from our online shop.

Sugar Paste

Sugar paste (or sugarpaste – either is okay!) is also known as rolled fondant, ready to roll icing, covering paste or Regalice. It’s rolled out and used to cover cakes as icing, rather than for making decorations. It has the consistency of play-doh.

It’s sweet, quite soft and is rolled much thicker than florist paste. It should always be kneaded until warm and pliable before use (especially when covering large cakes).

You can use sugar paste to make decorations but it’s unstable as it doesn’t dry hard enough and as it’s very soft, you can’t roll it thinly enough to make anything delicate. It is good fun to use to make decorations with children though!

You can buy sugar paste from cake decorating shops, when we move to our new premises in the next few weeks, you’ll also be able to buy it in person from us.

Happy cake decorating!

Jenny x

Halloween is just around the corner so to make your haunting cupcake collection complete we thought we’d show you how to make our favourite sugarpaste pumpkin!

You’ll need:

Sugarpaste coloured orange (we like Sugarflair Gel Colour in Tangerine/Apricot)
Sugarpaste coloured green (we used a mixture of Sugarflair Gel Colour in Holly Green and Party Green)
CMC Powder
Palette Knife
Rolling Pin
Daisy Plunger Cutter
Ball Tool
Edible Glue
Paintbrush

1. Mix a little CMC powder in with both your orange and green sugarpaste to stiffen it up and help it hold its pumpkin shape better.

2. Take your orange sugarpaste and in the palm of your hand, roll it into a ball.

3. Place it onto a flat surface and gently squash it down a little to make your pumpkin nice and plump.

4. Using your palette knife carefully mark the sides of your pumpkin to create indents around it, leaving the top side of the pumpkin smooth.

5. Put your pumpkin to one side and roll out your green sugar paste. Cut out your daisy shape and put to one side.

6. Using a peanut sized amount of green sugar paste create your stalk, gently rolling it into a thin sausage shape, with one end slightly thicker than the other. Curl the thinner end around to give it a bit of character and tidy up the thicker end by trimming with your palette knife.

7. Now glue your daisy to the top of your pumpkin.

8. Using the smaller end of your ball tool, make an indent in the centre of your daisy, large enough to hold your stalk.

9. Brush with a little bit of glue and add your stalk.

10. Add to cupcakes to wow your friends at any ghoulish gathering of ghosts and ghouls.

Happy Halloween!

Jenny x

Halloween is nearly here! It’s such a brilliant cupcake decorating occasion. We love an excuse to make some grizzly, gruesome cupcakes which hardly ever see the light of day during the other 364 days of the year.

We thought we’d shared the ghoulish cupcake love and show you how to make our favourite little cupcake ghosts.

You’ll need:

- Cupcakes
- Buttercream
- Angled palette knife
- Piping bags
- Piping nozzle (we used a Wilton 1M but it doesn’t really matter too much as the piped part it won’t be seen.)
- Sugarpaste
- Large circle cutter
- Edible pen

1. Top your cupcake with flat buttercream icing using the angled palette knife.

2. Pipe a tall, slim swirl in the centre of the cupcake.

3. Roll out your white sugarpaste and cut a large circle out.

4. Use the end of your rolling pin to shape the circle into a ghostly shape. Pinch the ‘skirt’ to give it shape.

5. Sit the ghost on top of your buttercream swirl and give him some eyes using your edible pen.

The products we used are available from our online shop.

Enjoy your spooky cupcakes! x