From Valentine's Day pops to Pancake Day cupcakes, turn the simple into the spectacular...

WE LOVE… RED VELVET MINI CAKES p66 // OREO POPS pg68 // PANCAKE DAY CUPCAKES pg70 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

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TECHNIQUES EMBOSSING CAKES, PAINTING CAKES, PIPING BUTTERCREAM★ ★ ★

RED VELVET MINI CAKES

Dani Brazier from Blue Door Bakery (www.bluedoorbakery.co.uk) uses her red velvet cake recipe (on page 10) for the cake. If you halve the recipe, this is perfect for these 3 mini cakes. Follow the recipe and cook in a 23x30cm (9x12in) tray. By creating a tray bake of cake, this is much easier to cut out whatever size cake you would like, and it also saves on storing all different sizes of cake tins.

YOU WILL NEED

• tray bake of red velvet cake

• 7.5cm (3in) round circle cutter

• piping bags

• 100g (3½oz) fondant

• cornflour, for dusting

• Jem 2D nozzle (or any similar)

• small 0 paintbrush

• Mill Pink colour

• Valentine’s sprinkles (we used Halo Sprinkles)

• Sweet Stamp Valentine’s embossers

• Sweet Sticks lustre paint

1 Once your tray bake is cooked and cooled, level the top dome. You can do this with a cerated knife or a cake leveller.

2 Next, cut out 6 circles using your 7.5cm (3in) circle cutter.

3 Make up some buttercream and colour using colour Mill pink. I also left some plain. Add this into piping bags with a nozzle. Leave just a plain piping bag with no nozzle for the other colour.

4 Pipe onto the layers on the cake. As this is a naked cake, you want to ensure the piping is neat at the edges. 5 Pop the top cake on the piping and gently press down.

6 Repeat the same piping effect on the top of the mini cakes, again ensuring the edges look neat. Add on some sprinkles to the top.