A Throwback Cake

A Facebook memory from five years ago surfaced, and I realised I didn't have a picture of this cake on my blog. As I rather like this cake design, I wanted to include it.

It was brilliant seeing people's reaction to the cake. Many little heads turned to stare at the cake. Older people broke into smiles. Some people thought it was made from PlayDoh. Others thought it was a couple of stacked cake tins, and were very happy to be wrong.

It's a very simple design, but such fun.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday, David and Ben.

This year's cake has two tiers. The pink top one is luscious lemon, and the white bottom layer is a rich, dark fruitcake. The lemon layer has lemon cream cheese icing, and the fruitcake has been marzipan-ed. Both have been covered in fondant, and the cake decorated with licorice allsorts.

Christmas Cakes 2018

This year's Christmas cake was chocolate sponge, sandwiched with fresh cream. It was decorated with chocolate ganache and chocolate trees. The trunk of the trees were Matchmakers, and the branches were white chocolate dyed green (using an oil-based food colour). Before the tree branches had set, they were sprinkled with tiny multicoloured sugar balls, an topped with a tiny white chocolate star.

I can't decide if I like this cake or not. The idea was originally to impress a design on the top, and allow the colouring to fill the grooves. I think it would have worked if I had used alcohol with the food colouring powder, but as a friend who is a recovering alcoholic was coming round, I decided not to use alcohol. The result was a liquid that was too thick to drip into the groves, and too wet. Instead of being groovy, I decide to go for a smear. 

The leaves were made using my holly and plunge cutters, and by mixing up different colours of fondant. The Elder Offspring gave me some wibbly wobbly packing foam. After the leaves were cut they were draped over the foam to give them some life and shape. The leaves look great!  Still not sure about the blood smear.

Pigs in Mud

Pink fondant pig playing in a mud pond of chocolate ganache. The pond is sitting on top of vanilla sponges sandwiched together with whipped cream and ganache. The gluten-free Kit-Kat substitutes are glued in place with more ganache.

Happy birthday, birthday people.

The Castle and The Dragon

Yesterday was all about the baking. My fruit cake recipe bakes for 3 hours! 

And today it was all about decorating the cake. The castle is a deep, rich, moist, dark fruit cake. Well, I say fruit cake, but really, it's about a kilo of fruit held together with a little matrix of spiced cake. The towers are flapjack, and the conical roofs are marzipan. But, don't eat the red dragon. It has toothpicks in its neck!

It was a wonderful moment when the Offsping and the Beloved came home and let out a 'Woah. That's brilliant!'  However, the real magic is that the dining room has been in use for hours, and it has been returned to its pre-decorating state.

Ha-bee Birthday to You

It was my Italian tutor's birthday a few days ago. I made this to take along to class today. 

It's a four layer sponge cake with lemon simple syrup, lemon curd and lemon buttercream. The bee theme is because her company is 'Busy Bee'.

Birthday Money: Spent

It often takes me time to spend birthday money, and today, I finally spent all of it.  The Amazon voucher was spent a little while back on new e-books, and a paper-book of "First 1,000 Words in Italian".

Today's purchase was far more expensive, and it is a course at italymadeeasy.com The idea is to use this course to supplement and revise the studies I am doing with Anna at Buzy Bee - Italian Language and Culture.

Coke Bottle Cake

We have guests coming for dinner. It is roast chicken, boiled potatoes, carrots, broccoli, red cabbage, lingon berry sauce and gravy. For pudding, there's a baked cheesecake topped with raspberries, and also a Coke Bottle Cake. 

I saw the Coke Bottle Cake on How to Cook That, and thought I'd give it a try. Yup. I've tried it, and once is enough! It was a nightmare getting it out of the mould.

It all starts off with a plastic Coke Bottle and a very sharp knife. The label is removed, and the bottle cut in half from the area where the label was. After washing and drying the bottle, it's given a bit of melted white chocolate at the neck, and then later some dark (or milk) chocolate for the body. Foolishly, I didn't think about how much chocolate I would need. It ended up being half a kilo! When the bottle was set it was removed from the mould, and I filled it with ganache and a chocolate marble cake. The two halves were joined, and the label re-attached to hide the join.

It was so much work, and I don't think it justifies the amount of effort. 

Christmas Cake

Yesterday afternoon the Elder Offspring and made penguins to decorate our Christmas cake. There's a great deal of joy to be had in shaping bits of fondant into manic penguins. There may even have been a few cackles. 

The Christmas tree is layers of shortbread, buttercream and fondant, with a fondant star, and the coloured baubles made from mini M&Ms. Inside, it's chocolate sponge, sandwiched with vanilla buttercream and a bit of Nutella. It's all gluten-free.

October Craftings

Baby Hat
Started: 1st October 2017
Finished: 1st October 2017
Status: Finished

Baby Hat
Started: 1st October 2017
Finished: 1st October 2017
Status: Finished

Baby Rainbow Hat
Started: 2nd October 2017
Finished: 2nd October 2017
Status: Finished

Baby Rainbow Hat
Started: 2nd October 2017
Finished: 4th October 2017
Status: Finished

Hatathon Hats
Started: 15th September 2017
Finished: 9th October 2017
Status: Finished

Child's Socks
Started: 7th October 2017
Finished: 9th October 2017
Status: Finished

Birthday Cake
Started: 13th October 2017
Finished: 13th October 2017
Status: Eaten!

Youth's Socks
Started: 10th October 2017
Finished: 17th October 2017
Status: Finished

Youth's Socks
Started: 17th October 2017
Status: WIP


Autumnal Candles
Started: 18th October 2017
Finished: 18th October 2017
Status: Finished

Works in Progress
Chequered Baby Blanket
Started: 8th September 2017
Status: WIP

Muppet Quilt
Started: 2nd September 2017
Status: WIP

May the Farce be with You!

The Beloved's sister and brother-in-law are over visiting. We will be heading out for a celebration meal tonight. There's two birthdays this weekend, and here's the cake. Yoda has conquered the Death Star!

Marshmallow flowers

Some of the cakes from Friday were decorated using marshmallow flowers. 

Place a third of a cup of granulated sugar in a ziplock bag. Add some gel colouring on the side of the bag. Close the bag and work the colour through by massaging the bag. Using scissors, cut marshmallows in half, and add them to the bag of coloured sugar. The cut surface will pick up the coloured sugar crystals. If you make the petals the night before the food colouring seeps into the marshmallow a little, tinting it. This gives a rather lovely effect.

Use the 'petals' to decorate a cake, and mini Smarties or M&Ms for the centres of the flowers. Pipe a swirl of butter cream onto the cake and arrange the petals and centre.

Christmas Cake

The cake is made to a recipe my Mam has been cooking for 55 years, a very tasty, rich, dark, moist fruit cake. It's dense and juicy, with the cake part being a matrix to hold all of the fruit in place. The cake was marzipan-ed, then iced using fondant.  The holly and ivy were made from a mix of flower paste and fondant. The leaves were glued in place using royal icing, and the berries were also made from royal icing. 'Noel' was created by pressing in an embosser whilst the white fondant was still very soft. Later when the fondant had dried, Noel was painted using powdered food dye/pigment mixed with alcohol. (The alcohol evaporates very quickly, leaving behind the pigment.) A little Scani-inspired ribbon finished it off.

This cake will donated to a local charity that works with elderly people, providing friendship, lunch clubs, social activities, etc.

Christmas Cake recipe

175g butter

175g sugar

225g plain flour (I used Dove Farm's gluten-free flour)

1tsp mixed spice

1/2 tsp baking powder

4 medium eggs

700g mixed fruit

1 Tsp ground almonds

1 Tsp rich dark treacle

Oven temps: 180C and 150C

Method

Cream the butter and sugar. Sieve the flour, baking powder and spice together. Beat the eggs. Add the flour and eggs to the butter and cream, a little at a time, alternating. Add the almonds and treacle. The bake in a lined tin. Bake at 180C for 1 hour, then at 150C for 2 hours.

This quantity makes a 20cm round cake, about 10cm high.

Cake Decorating Classes

I've been going to cake decorating classes, and here's a couple of cakes (and a penguin) I have made at home.

Cake Decorating

C and I have enrolled in cake decorating classes. Last night was our first class, and it was great fun. People were there to learn, and to have fun whilst do so.

A neighbour is coming round for tea at 5-ish today. We have decided to make some biscuits and to use our new royal icing skills to decorate them.

The recipe I'm using for the biscuits is:

• 50g butter (soft)

• 75g caster sugar

• 1 medium eggs

• 1 tsp of vanilla extract

• 250g gluten-free plain flour

• 1 tsp gluten-free baking powder

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 180C.

2.  Cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla.

3.  Add the flour and baking powder.

4.  When the mixture has come together, chill for 10 minutes.

5.  Gently kneed the dough, then roll out to 1cm thick.

6.  Use cutters, and place biscuits on baking sheet.

7.  Bake for about 12 minutes until golden brown.

As usual, my attempts at following a recipe weren't spot on. The royal icing I made earlier used 2 and a bit egg whites. I combined the 3 egg yolks and the left over egg white and substituted them for 2 whole eggs. The rest of the ingredients were doubled. The mixture was split into two, and two heaped dessert spoons of Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate were added to one of the batches.

The chocolate dough was a bit dry, and the vanilla one a bit too soft. I cut out the vanilla biscuits, and then combined the leftovers into the chocolate dough. This gave a much better texture to the chocolate dough.

Birthday cake

A birthday cake made by the wonderful offspring.  When they brought it through, they were like two little children again, full of gleeful delight in their creation.

100 Crafty Days: Day 6

Two very different activities today, gardening and baking.  Oh, a bit of knitting got knut.

After planting a new rhubarb plant my hands and nails were absolutely filthy!  To get those hand ready for baking I washed them, then the dishes,  and some handknitted socks, and then scrubbed them again!

A sponge cake was made, and tomorrow cream and strawberries will be added.

Oh, a bit of knitting got knut.

It was whilst the cake was being mixed I realised that I hadn't used a recipe.  I do seem to have been making a number of cakes recently.  This is one that was made earlier this month.

Spring Cakes

A few lemon cup cakes with fondant flowers and leaves.

Minion Time

My delightful children are asking for interesting birthday cakes.  Here's the latest.

Christmas Cake - Decorating Lesson

J and I have just spent a wonderful morning with Ruth,  playing with fondant icing, butter cream and cake.  Ruth is a very talented woman, and I'm sure if the need ever arose she could be serious, but a smile and a laugh are never far away.

Here's our cake.