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!).