Will you be my bridesmaid?

No, I'm not announcing my sudden engagement before anyone gets their hopes up.

This will probably be a shorter post than my previous ones, to people's relief I'm sure, but I couldn't not show off these White Chocolate and Raspberry Cupcakes!

After getting engaged, my sister naturally needed to ask her chosen friends to be her bridesmaids. She decided she wanted to use cakes with personalised toppers to ask the question. White chocolate and raspberry is a knock-out combination, and I'm so glad it's the flavour my sister chose, and I'm also glad that she came to me!

I had a lot of fun making these cakes. The recipe came from Jane's Patisserie, obviously, whilst the toppers were ordered by my sister from a seller on Etsy. 
The sponge itself was very easy to make. You simply beat together equal quantities of unsalted butter and sugar until lovely and creamy, then gently whisk in the same quantity of self-raising flour and eggs. To finish, you fold in fresh raspberries and white chocolate chips.  

Not the clearest of photos, but how cute are these 
boxes that my sister found!

I felt a certain amount of pressure when making these cakes. Even if they are only a small part of the overall wedding planning process, I still wanted them to be as close to perfect as I could achieve. As a result, I learned quite a lot about even the steps in cake baking that seem the most straight forward. For example, I didn't realise that whisking and beating the flour too much would begin to stretch out the gluten and lead to a potentially chewer and more dense cake!  

These cakes also gave me the chance to practice my piping. It wasn't until I made my first batch of these cakes (of which there were 5 batches!) that I invested in some new piping nozzles and piping bags. Before, the nozzles I used were too small, and rather than just one large neat swirl on top of the cupcake the designs were a lot scruffier. 
The buttercream for these cakes was probably my favourite buttercream to date. It was incredibly light and practically melted in the mouth, and it was so easy! The recipe is simply an American buttercream (one part butter to two parts icing sugar) with melted white chocolate added to it. When whisked up with an electric mixer, the texture is incredible!

Although my sister has already asked all of her bridesmaids (and they all said yes by the way), I'm keen to revisit these cakes with some fresh ideas for decoration. 
I kept the decoration simple for these, as I have a tendency to try and overcomplicate things before I've grasped the basics. However, I'd like to try these again with different cases and different chocolate decorations, as well as maybe filling them with raspberry jam for an extra raspberry hit!

Gibby x