As it was only the buttercream I was intending to flavour differently I began as i alwasy do with my trusty cupcake recipe, a simple light vanilla sponge but this time I chose to colour it a nice pale pink.

Quick tip....use an ice cream scoop to get an even amount of cake mix into each case, this will help give a nice uniform look to your baked cakes.

After 20-25 minutes in the oven the cakes came out to cool...and my kitchen was smelling lovely!

As these were testers the decoration was kept simple.

But I can honestly say they went down well and were delicious!

Foodie Flavours can be purchased from http://www.foodieflavours.com/ 
I will DEFINITELY be getting more of these!

So the baking part of the large cake (now lovingly nicknamed the Beast) went well...now i moved into the mammoth task of filling, crumbcoating and decorating it

This first part was easy...layer with strawberry jam and buttercream and stack

I then do the first layer of crumbcoat and chill it in the fridge for about 30-60mins, I then apply the 2nd layer of buttercream to it.
This helps level it properly and smooth out the sides and edges ready to cover.
You know it is a "beast" of a cake when it barely fits in your fridge!

This was actually going to be the biggest cake I have covered to date, so to say I was a little nervous about it would not be an understatement.

All I can say I am SO HAPPY I bought the large mat at Cake International for rolling out fondant! Using this I only had to flip it over the cake and peel it off instead of having to try and lift the rolled out fondant by hand or using the rolling pin, this helped eliminate and tearing and elephant skin when I smoothed it on the cake.

I strip covered the edges of the board and added the ribbons.
I had chosen a wide ribbon for the cake itself as I was not planning on adding any decoration to the sides, and at almost 4" high that would have been a LOT of blank space.

Now to add the decorations that I had made previously for it, working out best placement so I could fit the writing in neatly.
Once the train was added (using toothpicks cut in half to anchor them in place) I was able to start laying out and sticking the writing...and it wasn't just a simple name this time, it looked like I was trying to solve an anagram!

With one of the largest cakes i have produced to date i decided it was better safe than sorry and used a flower nail in the tin.
For those who haven't used this method before, the idea is the nail is placed in the middle of the tin and the batter is poured around it, then as it cooks it helps conduct heat to the centre of the cake.

90 minutes later...PERFECT!

A beautiful evenly baked sponge inside

Now the mammoth task of decorating it. Watch this space...

Well one recipe I have yet to try properly from scratch is a true red velvet cake, now with a couple of orders coming up later in the year it is time to experiment (The office girls at my day job have been warned they got a test cake coming in haha)
Right...ingredients at the ready...

The recipe I have chose to try this time is the Hummingbird Bakery Red Velvet cake (thought it was found via a different source).
One of the reasons to test this as a giant cupcake is to see if I had the correct quantities needed for the size of the molds.

This made a "wet" mixture, as you can see i filled the molds generously, yet allowing enough space for a rise...and did it rise!

Note to self...lower oven temperature for a longer bake to try and prevent the volcano top.

I also tried a different spray to grease the mold and for some reason this made the outside edge of the cake very "holey"...the inside is perfect though, and usually the outside would be covered with a chocolate or candy melt shell and the buttercream or frosting anyways.

It was very well received by my work colleagues

One of the youtube videos circulating the cake boards at the moment is Cupcake Addiction's Checkerboard rainbow cake. I had several people post this on my personal Facebook page or tag me in it somewhere, so I thought why not give it a go...on a mini scale.

This also gave me a chance to use the owl set of cutters I purchased at Cake International recently from Patchwork Cutters

I am now just waiting to receive the pictures of the cut cake to share out :)
EDIT: Picture now received....