Design Your Own Cupcake Tool

As you may know I have launched a new business called Print Cakes! Print Cakes delivers branded logo cupcakes and cupcake gift boxes across the UK. You can find out more about it in this post.

Design Your Own Cupcakes!

We have now added a Design Your Own Cupcake Tool to the website. The tool allows you to upload photos from Facebook, Instagram or your device, as well as images, messages and clip art designs. You can create truly personalised cupcakes, and see the final result before you order. It’s really simple to use! Create personalised cupcakes for birthday presents and events such as weddings, engagements parties and christenings.

Our new cupcake tool allows you to design your own cupcakes!

How about uploading a vintage photo of your grandparents on their wedding day for that special golden anniversary gift? Or you could upload your children’s drawings for a birthday gift for their dad? Write a special congratulations message for some new parents and upload a photo of their new bundle of joy.

Corporate Logo Cupcakes

As well as personalised cupcakes, we have our branded logo cupcakes! Businesses can now create their corporate cupcakes online, see how they will look and then have them delivered across the UK. If you would like to have a go, visit our Corporate Cupcake page here!

You can now preview your corporate cupcakes online before you order!

We would love to see your designs! You can tag us on Facebook, Instagram or Tweet us.

 

 

New York Gucci Cake

I’ve been taking a break from baking novelty cakes to concentrate on my new business PrintCakes.co.uk (more on that in the previous post), but this cake was for a regular customer and I couldn’t say no. Especially as I had made her daughters 16th and 18th birthday cake, and this new commission was to do her 21st!

The brief was to create a sophisticated New York themed birthday cake for her daughter who was visiting the big apple to buy her dream handbag, the Gucci Marmont!

So before I waffle on forever, here is the cake!

 

New York Skyline Cake with Gucci Handbag on top by Baked Cupcakery

New York Themed Gucci Marmont Hand Bag Cake

 

The cake was a 10″ victoria sponge, and the handbag on top was also made from carved cake. The New York Skyline was cut from Squires Kitchen black flower paste using a scalpel knife, following a template I made. The apple was made from rice crispy treats and covered in sugar paste.

I ordered a handbag chain mould for the cake but the bad weather held up the delivery and so I had to make it by hand. This created a great effect, but it took a lot longer to do as each chain link was individually made. They were cut using small circle cutters, then linked together with edible glue. It was also quite delicate as really it should have been left to dry over night, but there just wasn’t time! Once it was finished I dusted it with gold lustre.

Hand made handbag chain for a handbag cake

Thankfully the customer loved the cake, as did her daughter. I really hope you like it too, let me know what you think!

Find out more about us at Baked. Cupcakery!

PRINT CAKES IS LAUNCHED!

We are so excited to announce the launch of our new online printed cupcake shop “Print Cakes.” Local orders can still be placed at Baked Cupcakery, but Print Cakes can send our personalised cupcakes across the UK!

We have been baking logo and photo cupcakes for years at Baked and we thought it was about time we shared them with the whole UK. During our time in the kitchen, we have created thousands of branded cupcakes for lots of companies, even Sir Richard Branson has had a bite. Last year we made over 7000 to celebrate the launch of the new Transpennine Express, now that is a lot of cake. See our corporate cupcakes here.

Print Cakes will not only continue supplying logo cupcakes for businesses but also create personalised cupcakes for birthdays, gifts and well… pretty much any occasion (there’s always and excuse for cake). It has a large selection of ready made designs, some of which can be personalised with names. There are also photo upload and message cupcakes available, is there anything better than eating a cupcake with your face on it?! See our personalised cupcakes here.

They are available in boxes of 6 and 12 for smaller gifts, or you can order up to 100 online for parties and larger celebrations. If you require even more cupcakes (7000?!) then you can get in touch at hello@printcakes.co.uk or give us a call and we will sort it all out for you.

Please check it out and give us some support on our new venture here –> PRINT CAKES

Hundreds of cupcakes!

Cake for Sir Richard Branson!

Hello!! I haven’t posted in a while as there just always seems to be so much going on. I’ve finally managed to grab a few minutes, all the cakes are with their owners and no doubt getting demolished as we speak. So a few weeks ago we made cakes for Sir Richard Branson (again! He must love them) to celebrate Virgin Money’s 20th birthday. We baked 2500 logo cupcakes and sent them across the country to all the stores, with the majority going to the Gosforth headquarters in Newcastle. We were surrounded (literally as you can see from the photo below!)

Helena surrounded by thousands of logo cupcakes for Virgin Money

Hundreds of cupcakes!

Then at the last minute we were tasked with creating a HUGE cake for Sir Richard Branson to cut. Only a massive cake would do for such an event, so we went for a 28″. This was quite an undertaking but I was so pleased with the results.

This is the huge cake board required for the 28″ corporate cake. The cupcake shows the size!

Making the large corporate cake for Virgin Money

Icing the 28″ cake for Virgin Money

Helena with the 28″ Virgin Money Logo Birthday Cake

And the icing on the cake was seeing Sir Richard Branson with it, I only wish we could have been there too. The event went really well and I’m looking forward to more of the same in the future. If you are a business needing logo cupcakes or a corporate cake (large or small!) for your next event then please get in touch to see what we can do for you. We are based in the North East but we can deliver our extra large logo cakes and branded cupcakes across the UK. To see more of our work, check out our website – www.bakedcupcakery.co.uk

Great shot of Sir Richard Branson ready to cut the cake

Cupcakes all set up at Virgin Money in Gosforth, Newcastle

Oh, and we made it into the Sunderland Echo…

#famous

Baking a Website

I’m so pleased to say I have finally completed my new website! It has taken 9 months as I have had to fit it into quite a hectic scheduel.  I used to be a Graphic Designer and I designed my last website over 3 years ago. It had got really dated and I wanted a much fresher modern look. I’d never done web design before I made my last one and I can tell you it’s a lot different from baking! I’ve made things up as I went along and Google has been a lifesaver. I’ve worked on the website since October, as even the small things have taken me triple the time to work out. In hindsight, I think my time would have been better spent elsewhere and I should have just paid someone to do it, but I got in too deep! I’m also a bit of a control freak and love the fact that I have eveything how I want it (apart from a couple of small tweaks I’m still working out how to do).

Here are a couple of screen shots of the last website:

Screen shot of old website home page

Screen shot of old website Gallery page which linked out to Flickr which was not ideal.

Screen shot of old website about us page

Although I’m quite fond of the old design for nostalgic reasons, I’m pretty sure I’ve made the right decision to give it a overhaul. If you have time to have a quick look and let me know what you think I would really appeciate it (and if you find any mistakes or have any suggestions that would be great!). It would be great to hear if anyone else has had similar expeiences of taking on things that you probably shouldn’t!

Here is the new sight: “Baked Cupcakery: http://www.bakedcupcakery.co.uk”;

I don’t know what I’ll do with all my spare time now… maybe bake a cake!

Mother’s Day 2014!

Well I managed to sqeeze in some new Mother’s Day Designs! The are available for free collection on Saturday 29th March or £5.00 delivery within 20 miles of Sunderland on the 30th of March. Head over to our Facebook Page for all the info.

7 Rose Cupcakes on a presentation board for Mother’s Day £30.00

Rose Mother’s Day Cupcakes £10 for box of 6 or £18 for box of 12

Cupcakes with buttercream rose for Mother’s Day £10 for box of 6 or £18.00 for box of 12

Vintage Mother’s Day Cupcakes £35 for box of 12

Vintage Mother’s Day Cupcakes £35 for box of 12

Vintage Mother’s Day Cupcakes £35 for Box of 12

Cupcake Bouquet in pink and cream. £25.00

Baked Cupcakery 2014 Update

The fact I haven’t posted in over a year will back up how busy I have been for the last couple of years! 2013 was mostly taken up with renovating my new house from top to bottom – which has been no small task. It was an absolute wreck when my fiancé and I bought it and we have had to learn a lot of new skills since. I was lumbered with the labour intensive task of titling our whole bathroom and kitchen as “it’s similar to icing cakes and you’re good at that”. It’s all just about finished and the new kitchen is fantastic! Two ovens to increase capacity and lots of bench space (although I still manage to use it all at the same time).

The business has gone from strength to strength, with that comes the burden of less time to spend on business development and more time on doing lots of cake orders and keeping on top of admin! This is no bad position to be in, but I need to redress the balance so I can show my customers what Baked can do and take the business forward.

This will all be starting with the launch of a new design website with more up to date images and new designs. I’m really excited to create some new Baked exclusive designs for Weddings and Christenings in particular, hopefully I can reveal it all soon! I would love to start doing classes (this has been in the pipeline for a ages  but finding the time to plan has been a problem). There will also be some tutorials – I have just finished taking photos for a Tea Pot cake tutorial.

I will be uploading some new images and progress blogs in the coming months so watch this space! In the meantime here are some of my recent work.

Las Vegas hemed two tier birthday cake

Shaun the Sheep Birthday Cake

Love Bird Engagement Cake

Converse Cupcakes

 

THE Ferrero Rocher Cake

… so I have been a bad blogger, it’s been 4 months since my last blog! The summer has been crazy in the bakery with back to back weddings keeping me out of mischief and the sun (not that we have had much of that). Hopefully this cake will make up for it!

The idea came as my lovely boyfriends birthday approached. Even though he told me not to make a cake as he knew how busy I had been, I just couldn’t leave him out. Now as far his favourite things go, it’s football, football and football. Last year I made him a Sunderland AFC shirt cake which went down well but I needed a change of theme. He  loves Ferrero Rochers… so I got to thinking. What could be better than a giant Ferrero Rocher! So there you have it.

Giant Ferrero Rocher Cake

The cake had a real chocolate case filled with delicious, moist chocolate sponge. The sponge was sandwiched with a hazelnut/chocolate frosting and covered in crushed Ferrero Rochers. It then had a thin layer of gold icing to finish it off. And just in case there wasn’t enough Ferrero Rocher goodness, I put some extra little treats in a ring around the cake. Heaven!

Giant Ferrero Rocher Cake from Baked Cupcakery

Top view of the Giant Ferrero Rocher Cake

 

Bake the Nation!

A few weeks ago I was contacted by the Happy Egg Company (those free range eggs in the cute little yellow boxes) about a competition they were running with the Jamie Oliver Magazine. We always use free range eggs at Baked and I love a chance to get creative so it sounded promising. The competition is called ‘Bake The Nation‘ and they want people to make them a baked masterpiece that sums up the UK. The bakery is very busy at the moment (at some point I’m sure I’m going to end up trying to put a cake in the computer and my phone in the mixer) but I was definitely up for the challenge!

I got my thinking cap on and then waited for a break in the baking to give it a go. I decided to take the ‘Bake the Nation’ title as inspiration and chose to literally bake the nation. As Baked Cupcakery specialises in cupcakes (you probably guessed that from the name), it had to be a cupcake creation. As much as I love London and all the things that go on there, I wanted to celebrate the whole of the nation. I looked at the 12 regions of the UK (12 is a good baking number so I thought that was a good sign) and came up with a design to represent each one. What resulted is below…

Cupcakes to celebrate the UK in 2012 for the Happy Egg Co. Bake the Nation competition.

Cupcakes to celebrate each region of the UK for the Happy Egg Co. Competition.

Here are the photos of all the regions… from the top!

Scotland

Traditional tartan cupcake with mini sporran to represent Scotland

North East

My home region! I have used the iconic Angel of the North to represent the North East.

North West

To celebrate the North West I chose a Lake District inspired scene with a Beatles Yellow Submarine!

Yorkshire & the Humber

Rolling hills and of course Yorkshire puddings with a full Sunday dinner (even the gravy!) to represent Yorkshire & the Humber.

East Midlands

The historic Sherwood forest and Robbin Hood for the East Midlands!

West Midlands

Spaghetti Junction cupcake for the West Midlands!

Wales

Welsh cupcake creation with rugby ball and daffodils.

East of England

Norfolk Broads cupcake to represent the East of England

South East

To celebrate the beautiful beaches we have in the UK!

South West

I took the iconic Eden project to represent this South West of the UK

Northern Ireland

Shamrock decoration on grassy cliff top for the Northern Ireland cupcake

And of course, not forgetting our Capital!

London

As the home of the Queen and with the Diamond Jubilee coming up in June, this seemed the best way to celebrate London!

I hope you enjoyed your tour of the UK through cupcakes. If you would like to enter the Happy Egg competition the closing date is the 1st of June… so plenty of time to get baking! Check out the other entries at the Happy Egg Co Facebook page, or to keep up to date with all of our baking creations, take a look at the Baked Cupcakery Facebook page (and give it a like if you wish :o)

A collection of cupcakes to represent each of the regions of the UK for the Jamie Oliver Magazine, Happy Egg Co. competition!

More Tea?

So recently I have been eating my own weight in scones… Afternoon tea is my new big thing. Lovely little treats on pretty stands and plates is all I have been dreaming about. After making an afternoon tea for my friends to enjoy on my birthday, I began to think this would be a great service to offer to other people (because it is a bit of a faff to put together!)… and so Baked Afternoon Tea Service was born!

Fruit scone, cupcake and finger sandwich from out Afternoon Tea selection.

Baked has two spreads on offer with a minimum of 6 servings per order (that doesn’t mean to say you have to have 6 people eat it!). From finger sandwiches to macaroons and our delicious cupcakes of course, it is sure to go down a treat with friends and family. So whether it’s a girls night in or a family celebration – Afternoon tea is definitely the way to go

See more on our website!

There are two spreads on offer the ‘Dainty Spread’ and the ‘Splendid Spread’. You can choose to hire our beautiful, pink polka dot tea set and stands from just £18.00.

If you choose to hire our tea set then don’t worry about the washing up – we come and take all your jam covered dishes away!

Afternoon tea served on our pretty pink polka dot tea set.

Pink macaroon, strawberry, cupcake and finger sandwich.

Pretty in pink

What better way to spend the afternoon?