After making the Spotlight cake, I got the reputation at work as being “The Cake Decorator”. This amuses me, because most have only seen that one cake, a cake I don’t consider to be especially good.
One of the girls there said I would have to make her a cake one day. After she announced she was leaving, I later had the realisation that I’d never done as I promised.
Time was uber short, so total fondant cake was out of the question. I decided to play with cake picks for the first time.
Here’s for the final instalment of my Christmas bakerage 2010: the cookie tree.
This tree marks a pretty important milestone for me. See, this time last year I was failing with fondant. I couldn’t even get holy leaves to work for the cookie tree. So it had red berries and that was it. While this tree involves minimal fondant work, it reminds me of how much I have learned in a year. It also reminds me that I have so much more to learn, and so much more time in which to learn it. I’m forever getting frustrated at my ‘failures’, never happy unless it’s perfect (which it invariably never is). This reminds me that I haven’t been at this long; so here’s to a chin up and hopefully many more successes (or should it be less failures?) for 2011.
Here’s one that’s slowly becoming an annual tradition. The Truffle Tree. This usually involves a week-long one -[wo]man truffle creating extravaganza that leaves my fridge full of containers hosting hundreds of truffles.
This year, I decided to downsize the effort a little bit. One tree instead of two. Which basically meant a few hundred less truffles than usual. Oops.
Stained-glass cookies are something I have been wanting to do for an age. I was never quite sure what theme I would go for, however. The one time I had seen them done was as targets. Covered in hundreds and thousands, which, I felt, completely cheapened the whole thing. No, my theme would be better.
…
Cue mind blank.
Sometimes, the best thing to do is just store the idea away and wait for inspiration to hit.
Or just a massive excuse to bake. Like Christmas.
Traditionally made as a log cake, I abandoned this idea a little over a year ago for the sake of aesthetics. I wanted the awesomeness of the ripple cake, but I also wanted it to look like an actual cake. Ever since I figured out how to make this as a round cake, I have never gone back.
Here’s a cake that requires more assemblage than baking itself, but the theme atop the cake can be applied to any cake. You can even skip the baking step altogether and just buy biscuits, but home made is always so much nicer. I will skip the cookie-baking step as the best thing really is to simply use your favourite chocolate cookie recipe. Choc chip cookies work really well. ANZAC biscuits are also great to use if you want the resultant cake to be on the more fruity/nutty side – in which case you would omit the peppermint and ganache. You want your cookies to be relatively flat and even, or else you will find it difficult to assemble the finished product. The choices are endless. Which is why the ‘recipe’ will be more of a general guideline. Quantities will differ based on your personal choices, and exactly how tall and wide you want your cake to be.
Here’s a good one for when you’re short on time. I used this quick mix chocolate cake to make two event cakes I had planned, and even had enough batter left over to make a few cupcakes.
Here’s a peepy:
My cousin is pregnant with her very first baby. On the weekend just gone, she had a baby shower for him. This was also my very first baby shower. I wanted to do a little something special for her as a gift, as I wanted to give her something more than just the Baby Bunting voucher my Aunt said she wanted. Of course, any excuse to bake is a good excuse. Hence, these little ones were born:
After posting my Spotlight cake, commented saying saying she'd had trouble with the MMF. I'd heard a lot of people say the same thing in the past. So here's a blow by blow account how I do it, with pictures included.
Disclaimer: I always cook by feel, rather than exact quantities. Fondant especially cannot be measured accurately. Hence, I cannot give you exact amounts, but I can give you a rough ratio from which to go by.
The reason for my prolonged absence from the kitchen, as previously mentioned, is my new job. After 3 weeks of non stop work to get the new store up and running, the end of set up approached and we got a day off before the grand opening. I seized the opportunity to bake a celebratory cake for the occasion:
This was a cake for firsts for me.
First layer cake.
First neapolitan cake.
First time making marshmallow fondant.
First time piping words.
First time not refrigerating a cake (I know I know, but I have some weird compulsion to refrigerate them, so I was wrought with panic over not doing so. You don’t need to tell me how irrational I am)
I could go on. But the main point is, I was a bit of a nervous wreck brining it in. Presentation wise, to be honest, I didn’t like it. I’m not even sure why. But it wasn’t like the picture of perfection I had in my head.
You be the judge.
You know when you have one of those baking days where everything just goes wrong?
Cakecrumbs 