Pretty cupcakes using Sugar Sheets from Craft Company - a review

Recently was given the opportunity to carry out a review post for the Craft Company, an on line company which specialises in cake baking and cake decorating products. I had to choose £10 of goods for review so after much browsing on their website I plumped for a selection of sugar sheets. I have never used sugar sheets and was intrigued as to how they would perform in a domestic setting.

As regular readers of my blog will know I am not a fantastic decorator and prefer a more homestyle form of decoration for my bakes, the sugar sheets looked like something that might be useful and where a little different from the usual, when I am decorating I tend to use fondants and cutters.

Butterfly printed sugar sheet

Red polka dot sugar sheet

Pink blossom printed sugar sheet

The delivery service from the Craft Company was excellent and my chosen products arrived the next day well packaged and in one piece. It was recommended to use the sheets in a warm kitchen which is what I did, I decided to bake some basic vanilla cupcakes and dress them with a simple vanilla and rose buttercream using the shapes I cut from the sugar sheets to decorate them.

The sheets varied slightly in thickness and I found some to be more difficult to cut than others and had to resort to using a meat mallet to cut the shapes with the cutter, the resultant shapes could be used to decorate biscuits, cupcakes or larger cakes. After a while the sheets did become a little more brittle so you need to work quickly to get the best results, all in all I probably wouldn't buy sugar sheets again as I tend towards a simpler finish for my cakes but think they would be useful if you had a lot of the same type of decoration to produce.

The Craft Companies website has some useful video tutorials on using this and other products so for cake decorating supplies the company is definitely worth checking out, the prices look competitive and the delivery service is good.

Quick and easy mincemeat christmas cake

Want to have a home baked Christmas cake for your festive celebrations, but you've left it too late !

Over the years I have made various versions of mincemeat cakes when this predicament has occurred in our household, the mincemeat is a quick way to provide the moist fruitiness needed for celebration cakes, this recipe is by far the easiest I have tried. The other thing that is good about this recipe is that it doesn't actually require as long a bake unlike a traditional fruit cake.

I 'll cover decorating later in the post but first lets bake the cake.

Ingredients

• 1 jar of mincemeat ( ideally homemade or if buying a luxury type) - approx 400g
• 150g butter - softened
• 150g light muscovado sugar
• 2 eggs - free range
• 225g self raising flour
• 50g glace cherries (rinsed, dried and chopped)
• 100g currants or raisins

You will need an approx 8" round deep cake tin, ideally loose bottomed or springform, butter and line with double thickness greaseproof paper.

Preheat the oven to 160c

Method

• Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl or your food mixer
• Now add all other ingredients
• Mix throughly
• Turn into your prepared tin, level the top
• Bake for approx 1 1/2 hours , until tested cooked with a skewer, watch the top if browning too quickly cover with foil
• Allow to cool slightly in tin before removing to wire rack
• Once cool wrap with greaseproof and store in a cool dry place, until ready to decorate

Quick decoration with marzipan, regal ice and silver balls and star cutters of various sizes, I found some silver ribbon and wrapped it in some cellophane. Very festive if I do say so myself.