German Chocolate Cake

As you all know, I am working on setting up my own baking business and as part of that I need to get practice. To that end I sent out an email to my friends offering my cake baking services for the price of the ingredients. The response from everyone has been lovely, lots of "Good Lucks" and "Wows" some cake requests, yay! Thanks friends.
The first cake request was a German Chocolate Cake. My friends partner asked people at work if they had any cake needs and one American colleague asked for said German Chocolate Cake. My first thought was, never heard of that before, what is so special about this cake? I immediately turned to the interwebulator and lo and behold many entries and recipes for the German chocolate cake. It turns out that it has nothing to do with Germany the country, it is named after the type of chocolate used to make the cake and is an American sweet treat.
The chocolate used is German's chocolate which is a semi-sweet baking chocolate and apparently the recipe first appeared in 1957 and has been a popular American cake ever since. I looked at many recipes and decided on the one from the Joy of Baking, it gave some history behind the cake and also gave alternatives to the German's chocolate (which is rarely used these days). The cake is a triple chocolate layer cake with a caramel frosting flavoured with pecans and coconut. And so we came up against a problem, I don't own three 8in cake tins. In fact I have three tins that are of a size but are not quite 8in, crazy I know! These are tins that I have bought over the years and they all differ in size by very small amounts, one is 8in, one is just under and the other is about 7.5in!!! I'm sure they were sold to me as 8in tins.....I decided to use them because the thought of dividing the recipe in three and cooking each one separately hurt my head.
There are many ingredients in this cake, melted chocolate (I used a 60% cocoa solids chocolate), coffee, buttermilk and of course the usual butter, sugar, eggs and flour. But all very easy, it uses the creaming method and then all the other ingredients are folded in. I divided the batter between the three tins putting a bit more in the smaller tin to help keep the height the same as the other two, it made sense at the time!
While the cakes were cooling I made the frosting. It is a strange frosting made with egg yolks, sugar and either evaporated milk or double cream. I chose double cream. These are heated and stirred until the mixture thickens, it's almost like a custard. Once it reaches the right consistency it is taken off the heat and chopped pecans and coconut added. This is left for about 60 minutes and then it is ready for spreading.
The assembled cake is a whopper! The other thing about this cake is that it is not frosted all over, seeing the chocolate layers and frosting in between is all part of the fun. I put the smallest cake on the top and once it was iced it looked a bit wonky but I think it passed muster.

I delivered it to my friend and awaited the verdict. I wondered if it would be like the German chocolate cake that her colleague remembered from the US. A couple of days later and apparently it went down very well and reminded them of home! Mission accomplished.
Since then I have purchased two 8in cake tins and will rid myself of the "not quite 8in" ones.

Technical Challenge 3: Apricot Couronne

As I mentioned in my last blog I had a flurry of technical challenges last weekend. The second of my bakes was the Apricot Couronne. As I am not doing them in order I chose this one because I fancied making a yeasty thing and happened to have all the ingredients to hand.
For me the dough wasn't a problem, it is a slightly enriched dough. I always leave my dough for 10 minutes after mixing it before I start to knead it. This comes from Dan Lepard's method, although he then only kneads for 10-15 seconds and leaves it for another 10 minutes and repeats this three times before leaving it for it's first rise. I found that just leaving it for the first 10 minutes the yeast has started it's magic and I only need to knead (!) for about 5 minutes rather than 10-15 minutes. It seems to work for me!
This dough is a bit wet as it has butter, egg and milk in it but once you start working it it becomes less sticky and more manageable. I did one stupid thing and that was to use an egg straight from the fridge!! Really?? I know better, really I do, but sometimes I'm a bit devil may care and just go ahead. It's not even that hard to warm up an egg, put it in warm water for about 10 minutes and it warms up a treat. Could I wait 10 minutes? Apparently not.... As a result the dough didn't rise very well on it's first rise but once I had added the apricot mixture and rolled, cut and twisted it, it behaved much better.
I baked it for the length of time given in the recipe and it looked and smelled like it was baked so I left it to cool. We were having it for lunch and the husband couldn't wait very long so it was still warm when we cut into it. The bit that had the most filling wasn't as well cooked as the bits that had less filling, which makes sense. It was also much better on the second day. If I make it again I would use less butter and sugar as it was a bit sickly. Was it wasted? Oh no it wasn't, every last morsel was enjoyed.

If you compare my Couronne with Paul Hollywood's you will see that his has a bigger hole in the centre. I think my dough wasn't as long as his when he rolled it, hence the bigger hole. Looking at it another way, mine had more tasty Couronne!

Technical Challenge 2: Floating Islands

You wait eight weeks for a technical challenge and then two come along at once! You will remember at the beginning of this years GBBO I said that I wanted to make all the technical bakes? In the same week? Yeah, failed miserably on the latter but I'm still determined to make them all. This weekend I was nursing my husband after a leg operation (nothing serious but he couldn't get around very well so I had to be on hand) and so had a bit of time on my hands. I made two of the technicals, more on the second one later.
Floating islands or Îles Flotante if you are being all French about it was the week three technical. Poached meringues in a creme anglaise with spun sugar on top, easy. I had all the ingredients (eggs, sugar, cream, milk, vanilla bean paste) so I decided to give them a go on Saturday, we could have them for our dessert (a treat for the wounded husband).
Making meringue is ok, done that before. My first challenge was shaping them into quenelles, never done that before. I have seen it done so I made my best attempt, they weren't the smoothest or the shapliest but they did the job. The next hurdle was the poaching. It said to poach over a very low heat and make sure not to let the poaching liquid boil. I put it on the lowest heat but it still boiled and the meringue quenelles puffed up (it was pretty impressive) so I took the pan off the flame, hovering over it until the nine minutes were up. I scooped them out of the liquid and left them to drain.

Now for the creme anglaise, another first. But I have been reading about it and the pitfalls, not heating it to much etc. The poaching liquid is sieved to get rid of any rogue meringue. I beat the egg yolks and sugar until they were pale and fluffy and added the poaching liquid, whisking all the while, and put it in a clean saucepan over a low heat. I cooked it for about three minutes I think, until it reached the right consistency, i.e. coating the back of the spoon and all smooth and silky. I left everything to cool and moved on to the spun sugar (are you kidding me!).
This was the hardest bit of this challenge, another first, but also it's VERY HOT sugar that you are playing with so a bit daunting. I managed to get something that looked ok, but it was really difficult to move it fast enough over the rolling pin to get the very thin strands. There were lots of blobs of sugar rather than gossamer strands of sugar! But I got enough to make sort of balls of sugar to stick atop my floating islands, there was a lot of wastage!! And now to assemble.
Et Voila!

The meringues were light as a feather and my first attempt at creme anglaise wasn't half bad but I don't think it is one of my favourite desserts. However it did test many of my skills as well as my patience (spun sugar, why I oughtta.....)

Black Pepper Rye and Band of Bakers

I watched the Paul Hollywood Bread programme earlier this year (I enjoyed it, good recipes) and in one of the episodes he visited a South East London baking group, Band of Bakers. It was started by two South East Londoners (Naomi and Gemma) and is about people who love to bake getting together and trying each others bakes. Interesting, I thought, at the time and then it went out of my head.
When I was made redundant and started to think about baking a bit more I remembered them and put myself on the email list. The first event was quite soon after I contacted them and I couldn't make it. Then I got an email about an event with Dan Lepard! Being a fan I was excited. The event was to help publicise the publication of Short and Sweet in the Netherlands. They wanted members to make recipes from the book. We had to submit our two favourite recipes and then Band of Bakers chose which bakes would make the cut for the event. I chose the Black Pepper Rye Bread (have made it twice before and loved it) and the Espresso and Brazil Nut Cake (never made it but wanted to!). Given Dan Lepard's reputation I didn't have a lot of confidence that I would make the cut. But a week or so later the email came through, I was in! With the Black Pepper Rye, I was very excited and also filled with trepidation. Making Dan Lepard's bread and having him taste it, maybe!
The day came around and I made the bread as per instructions in Short and Sweet and the bread Gods were with me as it turned out the best I have ever made it, it rose beautifully and was a very handsome loaf. Not being sure about the etiquette of bake club I turned up early (the event was held in a local Nunhead cafe the wonderful Bambuni) without a plate to display my bread or a knife to cut it! Happily the lovely Band of Bakers ladies came to the rescue with a bread board.

As everyone arrived there were amazing bakes from about 30 people, mostly cakes but there were a few savoury items too. All looked amazingly professional.
We then waited for the guest of honour. Dan arrived with five Dutch food journalists, his Dutch publicist and his husband. He was lovely, introduced himself to everyone and was overwhelmed by the array of bakes from the book. Then we tucked in! It all tasted as good as it looked and I got to take home a goody lunchbox! Everyone was very complementary about my bread, all the jornalists loved it and one even took a photo of me with the bread! Who knows I may turn up in a Dutch food magazine.... But the highlight of the night was when Dan's partner came over to me and said that the bread was exactly the same as when Dan makes it and that it was "amazing", his word. I have to say I felt very flattered, I think I even blushed!!
So, a great success and I met some lovely people who love to bake. Hopefully I will be able to go to future events.

Courgette Cupcakes aka Vehicle for Italian Meringue Buttercream

As you know, I have been doing some research into baking over the last few weeks. Trying to hone my skills in the basics, creme patisserie, creme anglaise, pastry and buttercream icing. Who knew there were so many varieties of the buttercream icing? And so many better tasting buttercreams too! Of course I have made the classic, butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract and the cream cheese variety but the Italian Meringue buttercream and the French butter cream are new to me. I started with the former, the IMBC and boy is it dreamy.
I wanted to make it but had to have something to put it on, you can't just eat it by the spoonful can you? No? Ok, yes you're right, mustn't eat it by the spoonful!
We have recently been getting a fruit and veg box from Abel & Cole and the week before last we got two courgettes. Now, I am in two minds about the courgette. Cooked in the right way it can be delicious but get it wrong and it can be a very tasteless. One of my favourite ways of cooking the courgette is to put it in a cake, it makes a great alternative to the carrot cake. One of the signing up gifts from Abel & Cole was their cook book. All you have to do is go to the index, look up your fruit or veg and there are some lovely recipes to open. Italian Courgette Cupcakes was where I stopped under the courgette. I replaced the honey and nut topping with the IMBC.
I found this recipe for the IMBC, it was very clear, the pictures helped. The basis of this buttercream is a meringue made with a hot sugar syrup. You get a very thick and silky meringue and then add your butter whisking all the while. At first I thought that it wouldn't work, the addition of the butter makes it split but you just whisk on through and you end up with this thick, unctuous, creamy icing that you can use on anything. The thing you have to remember, again, is that you shouldn't just eat it by the spoonful. It's hard to remember when you are faced with the finished product.

I then piped it on to the courgette cupcakes. The cakes were lovely (a nod to the healthy) but the thing that my husband remarked on the the icing, he liked it, a lot!

Leith's British Baking Masterclass

As you know I was recently made redundant from my day job and my lovely work friends were very generous with my leaving gifts. I got a set of Orla Kiely cake tins, a great necklace with an oven glove, grater, whisk and frying pan charms and (the reason for this post) a voucher for Leith's Cookery School. I chose to do the British Baking Masterclass, a one day course that covered all the basics. I thought it would be a good class to make sure I was solid in all the cake techniques.
I did the course two weeks ago. I really enjoyed the day, everyone was very helpful. What it showed me was that I am pretty ok on the basics, now I need to start using those skills to experiment.

The things I learned that I sort of already knew:
1. Creaming the butter and sugar until it is really, really, really pale and fluffy, you can never do this too much.
2. Always fold in the flour to your batter, not over-working it.
3. Oven temperature is key, "know your oven".
4. I'm pretty good on all the techniques.
5. Always have the eggs at room temperature.

The things I learned that I didn't know:
1. When making a sponge beat all the eggs together first and then add them a tablespoon at a time to your creamed butter and sugar, whisking them well in between each addition. This makes for a lighter sponge, you get more air into the mixture.
2. Whatever raising agent you are using (Baking Powder, Bicarbonate of Soda) once this added to your mixture the chemical reaction starts immediately so it's important to get the cake in the oven as soon as possible to take advantage of that rising.

As I knew, baking is a science. It's about chemical reactions, the the ingredients you use as well as how you use them will determine the outcome of your cake. I also got a book recommendation from one of the chefs. It is all about the science The Science of Good Cooking . I want to learn the science behind all these reactions and then I can use that knowledge to experiment and be creative. Well, that's the idea anyway!

Below are the fruits of my labour: Victoria sponge with a passion fruit butter icing, lemon and blueberry friands, sun-dried tomato and basil scones and cherry and chocolate cookies. I have to say that the sponge was probably one of the best I have ever made so the course was worth it just to master that.

I also got a certificate! It came in the post yesterday, to get it framed or not?!!!

Creme Patissiere vs Creme Anglaise

Watching GBBO always put me in mind of creme pat, don't you find that? No? Just me then... It was the floating islands in their creme anglaise that got me thinking about it (I haven't made them yet but they are on the agenda soon) and the difference between them.
It seems that the difference is that creme pat uses a thickening agent (flour, cornflour or a mixture of both) and is therefore a lot thicker and can be used in tarts etc. Creme anglaise just uses the eggs to thicken it and therefore has more of a pouring texture.
I have made creme pat twice recently. The first time was a few weeks ago when I made a Boston Cream Pie. This is a sponge sandwich with creme pat in the centre covered in a chocolate ganache. No pictures I'm afraid but it was yum despite the sponge being undercooked and the creme pat not being quite thick enough. It would appear that I am having a few issues in the kitchen at the moment what with Muffingate last week! In fact one of my friends said that it was the nicest thing she had tasted in a long time so disaster disschmaster!! I used a recipe from the BBC website for the creme pat and it used cornflour to thicken it. I think I may have taken it off the heat too soon, hence the lack of thickness.
The second time was last week. After doing some research online and in Master the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child I found that there were many recipes and many different ways of making it. The recipe I went with was from the Cordon Blue website.

Ingredients:
250mls Milk
1 vanilla pod
2 egg yolks
60g sugar
30g flour

I wanted to see if I could make a cardamom custard so I replaced the vanilla pod with a cardamom pod, I used just one as I wasn't sure. It had a hint of cardamom flavour but not enough so next time I would use at least 4. The milk is heated with the pod and a third of the sugar until almost boiling. Whisk the egg yolks with the remaining sugar until pale and fluffy then add the flour and mix well. This is where it gets tricky. Add about a third of the almost boiling milk to the egg mixture, this tempers the eggs. Whisk well and then add this back into the rest of the milk whisking all the time. Put back on the heat and and cook until bubbling, let it cook for a minute to cook out the flour. This recipe called for butter to be patted along the surface of the custard once it is off the heat, to stop a skin forming. Other recipes say to whisk in the butter once it is off the heat and then cover with clingfilm before refrigerating it. I did the latter, not sure why, it seemed more logical!
As I said above it had a hint of cardamom but not enough and again it wasn't very thick. A lot of the websites warn against heating it too much in case of curdling and I think I was too quick to take it off the heat, it needed another few minutes and it would have been fine, I need to take my courage in my hands the next time. I used it to make two mini tarts with kiwi atop and they went down very nicely.
Next up is the creme anglaise which will be attempted as part of my GBBO technical challenge challenge!

Technical Challenge Failure

Great British Bake Off is back, very excited here at Cakes and Cardies, very excited. I have mentioned my love of GBBO before and if you can stretch back into the mists of time (2011) you will remember my attempt to bake the technical challenges from series 2. I did three (Iced fingers, Tart au Citron and Miniature Pork Pies), blogged about the first two but not the third (can't remember why). Then my personal life took a turn for the worse and blogging silence ensued. But as you can see from the last couple of months I am now back in earnest.
So as series 4 of Bake Off gets of to a start so does my new challenge to make all the technical bakes from this series. I want to try to do them in the week after they are aired if possible. As I only decided to do this as the second week started I am already behind, not a great start, but hopefully I will catch up by the end of this week. Week 1 was Angel Food Cake, I will be making this on Friday.
And so to my failure. Week 2 was English muffins, bread week. Bread is good for me, I have been making it for a couple of years now and feel comfortable with it so this should be easy....oh dear. To cut to the chase, these were a disaster. So many things went wrong and I'm not sure why.
First I decided to make half the mixture as 8 muffins are a lot for two people to consume, four on the other hand is perfect, two each. Halving the ingredients was fine apart from the egg, how to halve an egg? I have done this before but it isn't an exact science. I pretty much beat the egg and then added half using the that-looks-about-right method. The dough was a bit sticky but that's not usually a problem, I think I may not have kneaded it for long enough because it didn't really rise very much. Then instead of rolling out the dough (as specified in the recipe!) I did it by hand and so the dough wasn't even. I should have started again but I carried on regardless. I cut out two muffins which were very thin and then rolled the dough again and cut out a huge one and used the remaining dough to fashion the fourth muffin.
As you can see, flying by the seat of my pants, not very Bake Off. They rested for 30 minutes and then came the cooking. I used my heavy based frying pan and heated it to a high temperature before putting in the muffins. I lowered the temperature once they were on and gave them 6 minutes on each side. But, they were all different sizes so some were done before and the big one....well lets just say Paul would not have eaten it!! See what you think...

If I had produced these on Bake Off last week it would have been me leaving, definitely. So I need to try again and see if I can get it right. I have to say that they tasted good and had a light airy texture (apart from the giant one, I still ate it though). Many lessons to learn. I don't know how they do it on the show without all the instructions and to a time limit, pretty impressive.

Chocolate Guinness Cupcakes

It seems that the Chocolate Guinness Cake is becoming my signature cake. Not just that I have made it a few times now but that it is just yummy and I guess that is why I keep going back to it. There may be an Irish thing too, can't be sure about that though....
A few weeks ago someone posted a link on facebook to a Guinness Cupcake round-up which I duly perused, something to try at a later date. Last weekend became that later date.
We had a BBQ with some friends and as well as making many salads (Ottolenghi to the rescue) I also made a chocolate Brioche, vanilla fairy cakes for the kids (although many adults seemed to be attracted to the jelly tot/smartie be-decked cakes!) and for the adults Chocolate Guinness cupcakes. I went back to the round-up but in the end I used Nigella's Feast recipe, why mess with the classic?
I wanted to make 2 dozen cakes and I figured the recipe in Feast for a 23cm cake would probably do the trick. The batter is very wet so I put it in a jug and poured it into the cases, about three quarters of the way, and it made 24 with a little dribble to spare. They cooked for 20 minutes @ 200 degrees, left to cool in the tin for 10 minutes an then cooled completely on my grill tray. I had some cupcake boxes leftover from the dog cupcakes and used them to store overnight and iced them the morning of the the BBQ.
I made the amount of icing in the recipe and wasn't sure if it would be enough to pipe icing on to all the cakes so I spread icing on the first 12 cakes with a palatte knife and then piped the other 12.

Once I put the cakes out at the BBQ what followed was an interesting experiment in peoples choices. I told everyone that both batches were exactly the same apart from how they were iced but it was the piped cakes that went first! I have to say they did look prettier than the other ones, nothing like a bit of good piping.

Here's the chocolate brioche I made too....

Lemon Curd Sandwich Cake

Being in need of practising my cake making I have to take every opportunity. The problem with not working is that I can't bring my cakes into work and you know what happens if the stay here? Yes, my husband and I have to eat them and that isn't conducive to healthy eating (I do try with the healthy eating, honest). Knitting group was at my house yesterday, opportunity knocks!
Having watched Great British Bake Off (SO EXCITED that it's back) that afternoon I thought a sandwich cake was the order of the day. I kept it fairly simple, vanilla sponge sandwich (from How to Be a Domestic Goddess) filled with lemon curd, lemon curd cream and lemon curd cream with blueberries for decoration.
It was a bit like GBBO in the my kitchen yesterday (apart from the fact that Paul, Mary, Mel and Sue weren't there!), I burned myself on the cooker ring and then stabbed myself with a knife when I was removing the nozzle from the piping bag! Not as bad as some on GBBO but getting there.
The sponges came out well with no sinking, you never do know. The lemon curd cream filling came from my Lemon Macaron making of two weeks ago. I mixed 200mls of whipped double cream with 4 tbsp of lemon curd. I think I might up the lemon curd next time, it needed a bit more of a kick. I then piped this over the lemon curd spread on the first sponge and then piped swirls on top. I thought the swirls needed some decoration so I popped a blueberry on each one. A sprinkling of icing sugar later, voila.

It went down well with the knitting girls and was a treat this afternoon with a little cappuccino.

Basil, Sun-Dried Tomato and Parmesan Twister Bread

Last Sunday morning I was enjoying a mornings reading in the conservatory, as you do. As the morning wore on I began to think about lunch, food never being far away from my mind. We didn't really have much in so I needed to be creative. As I looked up my eye caught our basil plant. This was just one of those plants you buy at the supermarket and rather than chucking it after using it we decided to keep it and it has done us proud over the summer. All it needs is a bit of water every day and to be used once a week and it will keep you in basil, well for the summer.
So I had basil. I also remembered that I bought some sun-dried tomatoes a while ago for some recipe or other and they had been languishing in the fridge ever since. Basil and sun-dried tomatoes, a culinary match made in heaven. But they needed to be in something substantial, a bread? I recently made a Lorraine Pascale recipe for a twister bread which had a sesame oil and sesame seed filling. What was to stop me from putting basil and sun-dried tomatoes in it instead? The answer, nothing. Once I started rummaging in the fridge I found some parmesan and some Italian cold meats, I do believe we have lunch!
The twister bread recipe is very simple, if a bit messy and doesn't take long in the rising department. Once I had my dough rolled out I brushed it with olive oil, scattered the chopped basil, tomatoes and grated parmesan on top. Then it was just a case of cutting it into six lengths, twisting each one individually and then twisting all six to form the ring. The join wasn't very pretty but the rest looked good. It then has a rise for 45 minutes and baked for about 35 minutes.

This is a great sharing bread, you just pull it apart and eat. With the Italian meats it was perfect and it made a starring roll in Wednesdays dinner when it went into a Panzanella (a tomato and bread Tuscan salad). Bread is indeed the food of the Gods.

The Macaro(o)n

I have now made macarons four times. The first time they worked out ok, see here, the second time they were a disaster (nothing to see here, go back to your homes). My third attempt was a couple of months ago. I had some egg whites left over (can't remember from what) and decided to put the previous failure behind me and try again. This time I used a recipe from the Hairy Bikers Big Book of Baking (the one from their TV series Bakeation, which is full of many splendid things).
This recipe is from their time in France, so these would be macarons as opposed to macaroons, in this case a Raspberry macaron. However, when I came to make them I didn't have the ingredients, i.e. the raspberries. The filling has rose water in it and this gave me an idea. I would make rose water macarons with a pistachio filling (I did have rose water and pistachios). These were a triumph, I gave some to the neighbours and brought the rest in to work.

Ok, so we are on a roll. A couple of weeks ago I made a Boston Cream Pie which calls for a pastry cream filling (my first attempt at this, I will be trying again and will let you know how I get on) and I was left with egg whites. I turned to the Hairy Bikers again and this time a Lemon Macaron. I seem to be fine with the method (having the Kicthenaid helps) it is the piping that seems to be the problem. They either come out too big or too small, although that isn't really a problem I guess. The main thing is getting them lovely and smooth and shiny as per the picture and every other macaron I have seen. I followed all the instructions (use
water on your fingers to smooth the top, bang the tray on the surface a few times, leave them for 30-60 minutes to create a shiny crust) but they still came out lumpy. They tasted lovely, the filling of cream and lemon curd was dreamy but in the looks department they had failed miserably, see what you think.

They made lovely gifts for friends at our recent dining club, despite their imperfections. No feedback yet on taste but they seemed pleased to receive them!

From Little Acorns.....

I love making cakes, you know this about me. I love it, love it. Recently I have made some more elaborate cakes. A wedding cake (yawn!) and a couple of friends birthday cakes (one involving a frog on a lily pad and one with very bad writing!). But none of my cakes have ever been made for public consumption i.e. for people I don't know, until recently.
I was at a friends birthday party (the bad writing cake) when another friend asked me to make a cake for her daughter's upcoming 5th birthday. Her daughter likes dogs, well actually she LOVES dogs, obsessed. The commission was to make a dog based cake for a five year old and some cupcakes for the adults attending the party. My friend insisted that she would pay me, I demurred, she insisted again and I said "well, let's talk about that later" (not good at the taking of the money from friends, you know what I mean?). I came away from the party with a hangover and a job, not too shabby for a Sunday night in Camberwell.
I had a few weeks before the big day and spent some time researching dog cakes on the internet, as you can imagine there was a lot to see. In the end I decided on dalmatian cake, the dalmatian being Ella's favourite of all the dogs. The cake itself was a chocolate cake (from Nigella's Feast), two layers with a vanilla butter cream in the middle, covered with white fondant icing and decorated with black spots. The crowning glory was a fondant dalmatian (with red scarf) sat atop the cake. After getting approval for my design it was just a matter of waiting until the week before to make the fondant dog and ice the cake board and the night before to make the cake.
The morning of the party I made 2 dozen cupcakes (12 vanilla, 12 chocolate) and decorated them with fondant icing paws (see below). All that was left to do was to get them safely to the party, that's where a husband with a car comes in handy (especially when I don't drive). We delivered the cakes and stayed to enjoy the festivities (5 year olds birthday parties a very tiring...) and saw the cake delivered to Ella with candles. She was very happy with her doggie cake and there were compliments from the adults for the cupcakes. My first foray into paid cake making was a success.

Since then I have been made redundant from my day job and one of my ideas is to start a Cakes and Cardies business, to somehow turn my love of baking into a job. It is a challenge, daunting etc but if I don't try it now when will I? Onwards and upwards.

Sorry

..about the earlier technical difficulties. The publish button is next to the save button! Full post to follow.

Soft Furnishings

We have lived in our house for almost 4 years (my husband) and almost 3 years (me) and we are slowly (very slowly) sorting out each of the rooms. You know when you move in somewhere you just make do with what you have? You think, this will do until I settle in and decide what I want.....suddenly it's 4 years later and you haven't done very much at all. That's where we are at the moment.
But the lounge room is about to have a complete makeover: new curtains (went up at the weekend), new sofa (being delivered today), new dining table (being delivered on Friday) and chairs (put together over the weekend). In a very girly way I am very excited!
Just putting up the new curtains has made all the difference. They are a wonderful 50s inspired print from Sanderson, Dandelion Clocks. As you can see the material is cream with wonderful splashes of green, grey and mustard. And this is where I sought my inspiration for the soft furnishings i.e. cushion covers. We did buy 2 cushions in the same pattern but I also wanted to knit some and the bought cushions were too expensive to be buying more than two. I bought a couple of basic cream cushions for £5.99 instead, much more cost effective.
I wanted to use the Celtic knot cable pattern that I had used on the shawl I didn't wear for my wedding (sorry, it was only a matter of time!) and discovered a simple but impactful one on Ravelry, Aran Pillow. Unfortunately it doesn't come with the cat!! I had some cream wool in my stash that I thought would work. It was a lighter weight than the pattern called for so I had to add some stitches either end to get it to the requisite 40cm but nothing too onerous. I'm not the best at adjusting patterns but something as simple as a square is hard to mess up, she says.
I finished the first cushion on Saturday, sewn up and ready for positioning on the sofa. I bought some Debbie Bliss aran wool in a green/grey colour for the other cushion cover and started that one yesterday. I think this one will knit up quicker because of the aran weight. It does seem strange to be knitting in the weather but the cushions won't make them selves. Here is a picture of it in progress.

I want to add a couple of more cushions and with that in mind I bought an off-cut of the Dandelion material from ebay, quite a sizeable piece for about £12. The idea (it is nothing more than an idea at the moment!) is to use the above-mentioned shawl as the front of the cushion cover and back it with the material. What I think I will do is sew the shawl to the material and then make the cushion cover from there. Not sure if that makes sense, in my head it does. I don't have a sewing machine so I will have to do it all by hand which makes it trickier but not impossible. More on that later. Meanwhile here is the first cushion in situ on the new sofa with her shop bought siblings, aaaah.

The Cardies Part of the Wedding

This will be the last time I mention my wedding, honest....well it may come up again but promise it will only be in passing.
We have had the cakes bit of the wedding now for the cardies bit. I wanted to add a knitting element to the day and one of the things I decided was to knit a shawl to wear with my dress. I wanted to use cable and found a pattern on Ravelry for a beautiful shawl with a Celtic love knot cable running the length of the shawl. I chose a cream wool and began the 600 odd rows of cable. I finished it fairly quickly but it soon became obvious that it wasn't going to work. It was too small and didn't really go with the dress. So I have put it away for the moment but it will re-appear under another guise at some point (watch this space).
With the shawl a no-go I wanted some knitting to feature and after some internet surfing I came upon some knitted bunting, aha, this could be it. The pattern was very simple, stocking stitch with a garter stitch border. My dress was red so I used cream and red (from my wool stash) and knitted 18 flags so I could alternate red and cream. I then sewed them together and using duplicate stitch embellished them with SHARON + PAUL. I bought a bag of random vintage cream buttons from ebay and sewed them on to the flags, et voila.

All it cost was my time (not that long really, a few nights in front of the telly) and the buttons (about £5). It was hung on the top table at the wedding, I was very pleased with it I have to say.
Here endeth the Cakes and Cardies wedding.

Wedding Cake (Volume 2)

Having decided on everything for the wedding cake I then had to wait, months (well three or four) before putting any of it into action. The nature of the cake being that it is a last minute thing. But I did want to test out the cake tins and see if I could cook the cakes in advance and then freeze them thus saving myself any last minute dramas. Work were very happy with me in the months before the wedding, they all got to have chocolate Guinness cake on a regular basis. The 14in cake was the one I was worried about most but it proved very easy.
I used the Cakeometer to size up and down from the recipe, a great tool for any baker. It also turns out that the cooking time for a 14in cake is not that much different from a 9in one (the original size in the recipe), who knew? Well, lots of people really! It cooked for about 10 minutes longer in the end. I cut this into quarters, half made it's way into work, one quarter went in the freezer and then went to a friends house and the last quarter.....well I had to check that it was ok! I made the 10in one too and froze it for two weeks, my testers at work couldn't tell the difference so I knew that I could do some advance work. The 14in wouldn't fit in my freezer so that had to be made a couple of days before but I made the other two layers two weeks before.
In the month before the wedding I assembled all the extra things I would need: cake boxes, cake boards, ribbon, food colours, lily forming set etc, everything was ready. The week before the wedding I iced the cake boards and made the calla lilies for the bottom two layers.

I chose calla lilies because I was having them in my bouquet, they are so simple and elegant. I followed instructions on the Wilton website for these and used the forming kit to make three different sizes. They were very easy to make and looked rather lovely, even if I do say so myself. I made the 14in cake three days before the wedding (picture above) and took the other two layers out of the freezer 24 hours before I iced them.

So all was ready, just the hard part to do now!
We got married on a Saturday and had to deliver the cakes to the venue on Friday afternoon so started the icing on the Wednesday to give me some time in case of disasters. Well, you never know and it would have to be perfect given that 90 odd people would be looking/photographing/eating it! As it turned out it was fairly easy and stress-free. My mother had arrived the night before so she was my able assistant and between us we were finished by lunchtime on Wednesday! Iced, be-ribboned and boxed ready for delivery on Friday. This meant we could go for afternoon tea on Thursday (at the British Museum) and have a fairly easy run-up to the big day.

We delivered the cakes safely and then I had to trust the hotel to assemble it all correctly, but they are used to that sort of thing....sometimes you have to relinquish the control!
The cake looked fantastic on the day and the bottom two layers were finished (people left with lots of goodie bags the next day!) and we have the top layer in the freezer. There is a tradition, apparently, of keeping the top layer of your wedding cake to have on your one year anniversary. So we shall see if it holds up to a year in the freezer! Although it was a lot of work and planning I wouldn't have had it any other way, I'm glad I could make my own wedding cake. I never thought in a million years I would ever do something like that but, as they say, never say never.

Wedding Cake (Volume 1)

As some of you may know, I recently got married. It wasn't a flashy, expensive wedding so the organisation wasn't too onerous. But there was one thing that I really wanted to do and that was make my own cake. Are you crazy? What were you thinking? Yes, I know, with all the other things to organise why would I want to put myself through this? Many of my friends thought the same thing but then they realised that I was going to do it whatever. You see for me this wasn't a huge stressful thing, it was the one thing that I knew I could do the way I wanted. Baking isn't stressful, in fact it helps me to de-stress. Once I'm in the kitchen with flour, butter, eggs and sugar I'm happy.
It would take a lot of thinking, planning and head scratching but I knew that I had to do it. I didn't know anything about this sort of cake making, the big presentation, iced, be-ribboned creation so I needed to do some learning. I chose to do a short cake decorating course, it was five weeks and gave me the basics that I needed. Then a couple of books were donated by two friends (The Cake Decorating Bible and Cake Decorating for Every Occasion) which helped with ideas and techniques. I didn't want anything too fancy, not least because this was my first foray into the celebration cake but it was good to get some ideas.
The main decision was what sort of cake it would be and for me chocolate is the best and so I went with Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Guinness cake. I hava made this many times and it is a rich, moist and earthy cake that is easy to make because everything is melted together. I also had to decide on the size, layers etc and decided on three layers. I found a cake stand that I liked, a Wilton floating cake stand, each layer sits on a base with a back support (the picture will give you a better idea) so the cakes look like they are floating. This way there wouldn't be any need for dowels. The stand then dictated the sizes, they would be 14in, 10in and 6in.
Every decision then lead to another one, now for the cake tins. I wanted something foolproof, loose-bottomed and easy to use. I found these brilliant tins on Lakeland, endorsed by Mary Berry and after much research chose these Pushpans. They proved to be as good as advertised.
Now I had to decide on the decoration. The Guinness cake is usually topped with a creamy head of butter icing but that would be impractical for a wedding cake what with the layers. Having done the cake decorating course I chose to go with simple and elegant, white sugarpaste with red ribbons on the bottom two layers (my husband is English) and green ribbon for the top layer (I am Irish). I wanted to add a little detail, a spray of calla lilies make from sugarpaste for the bottom two layers and a perspex cake topper in red that read Mr & Mrs.
That was all the planning, research and decisions made, tune in to volume 2 for the making and decorating (and some pictures!).