Chocolate Barrel Cake

This is a cake that looks great, but is not too complicated to put together. The idea is that you want a chocolate overload, so take a chocolate cake, and cover in chocolate buttercream (or ganache if you are feeling a bit fancy).

Then buy loads of chocolate fingers (an 8 inch cake needs three boxes), and cover. How will I always remember that in takes three boxes? Cause I only bought two and had to send dad on an emergency shopping trip!

Take a giant box of Maltesers and fill in the top.

With the rest of the chocolate fingers now in place, I made the wire decorations. I just heated the wire up and it pushed into the Malteaser easily.

It is a great cake idea, as you can use whatever you want – like in this version I used Kit Kats, and an assortment of sweeties.

And saying that, I feel inspired to do some kind of fudge or marshmallow barrel cake, with my recent discovery of The Ochil Hill Fudge Pantry, and The Marshmallow Lady… mmm, thinking caps on!

 

Whistler Wedding Cake

I was super excited when my cousin announced she was getting married. I was even more excited when she asked me to make their wedding cake! After some discussion, she and her fiancé were have to give me free reign with the design as long as it represented Whistler, where they met. Now that sounds like a brilliant thing, but when you have complete freedom, you want to do everything you can think of! They had ordered customised cake toppers from Itty Bitty Wood Shoppe, which gave me a starting point for the look of the cake.

I decided to make the cake look like the mountain as well. Not quite a novelty cake shape, but topsy turvy so that it looked like mountains but in a more elegant way.  As an extra challenge, the cake was to be dairy free and low fat. My mum took over the baking and modified the recipes a bit so they would hold up to the carving and stacking needed.

I did some of the advanced decorating myself at home to test out ideas, and roped in dad to help with it too. Making sign posts was more a test of getting the colours right, and came together fairly quickly. Making the right kind of trees was a whole other story. I found this really handy website with 10 ways of making trees which was a great starting point. But even so, none of the trees looked right for the image I was working to.  I had recently purchased an extruder, which lets you make strings of sugarpaste. And so I hit on the idea of using this to make the trees. I might have under estimated exactly how long it would take to make trees this way, so my dad spent a fair bit of time helping to make a miniature forest.

The building of the cake happened at my mum’s house, so I lugged my supplies and ganache over to their house. I was impressed I managed just one trip from the car, mum was surprised by how quickly I took over the whole kitchen.

First up was carving all of the cakes. I judged it by eye especially as I wanted a bit of a rough result to keep the mountain theme going. The top tier had to stay flat for the toppers to go on.

Everything then got covered in ganache, made of either white chocolate or dark chocolate. Quite a bit of the kitchen got covered in ganache as well. It is a scary thing working with dark chocolate next to white chocolate, and next to white sugarpaste, but we managed without any mess.

Sugarpasting the cakes was a bit of a challenge. Not only were they reasonably big – apart from the 6 inch cake, there was a 9 and a 12 inch cake – but the lip from carving them makes it trickier to cover.

With that done, the cakes needed stacked. Although similar to stacking a regular shaped cake, the topsy turvy needs to be stacked so the angles look good as well.

The next stage was the decorating, the less technical and more creative part of doing the cake. The first part was to add the snow, made from royal icing. This also acted as the decoration to hide the joins.

Next up was adding the little Inukshuks and the trees. We had the toppers on so we could see how everything fitted together.

Details like the leaves, snowboard and signs were going to be added at the venue, as they were a bit more fragile. I travelled with my ‘assistants’ before the wedding, equipped with a wee emergency kit just in case of any disasters. Thankfully though, there were no problems. I had ordered an extra strong, large box from Catherine Scott to transport the cake in, much better than the normal thin cake boxes you get.

With the cake set up at The Vu, all that was left was for the bride and groom to see the cake – thankfully they loved it too!

Lemon Meringue Cake

Mothers day weekend was a busy one for me with three cakes on the go. For my mums cake, I did a caramel cake with vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream ruffles. I also made a friends cake for her flat warming, which let me practice with teh airbrush again. The last cake was a lemon meringue cake, which according to the facebook statistics was the most popular of the three.

Last year I made lemon meringue cupcakes for a friends birthday, and I thought the idea would transfer very well to a larger cake.

I started with a lemon sponge, coated in lemon syrup, then  filled and covered with lemon curd.

I decided to do my meringue in rose swirls, using the 1M tip from Wilton. I started off on the sides first.

Then for the top of the cake, I started with one in the middle, and filled round the edge as well.

I filled in the gaps just with some spikes, and the careful use of a toothpick made sure all the little spaces were filled in.

Then it was a case of putting the cake in the oven. In an ideal world I would have had a blow torch, but the board survived going in for a brief spell and the highest temperature.

The finished cake did look lovely but also tasted delicious, lemon and meringue is an unbeatable combination. I made the meringue following these instructions, it worked perfetly for the cake and the spare meringues I made too. Given that it lasted a few days too, cake is the gift that keeps on giving!

 

Christmas 2012

For Christmas this year, I had two cakes and one project on the go. Helpfully, my family’s cake was fruit, so could be done nice and early, leaving me enough time to do the second cake. It was technically in to Christmas day before I got to bed, but not by much, so that is an improvement on previous years!

The first cake is more traditional, although I think the burst in the middle gives it a more modern twist.

The second cake is a novelty one, Rudolph stuck in the snow, with chocolate antlers.

And finally I did this project for the British Sugarcraft Guild forum – it was to be a Christmas table centrepiece, and I drew some inspiration from my pre- Christmas post.

I hope everyone had a good time over the holidays, I just remembered that I have some fruit cake left over, so am off to enjoy that!

Christmas Baking Inspiration

One of the best things about Christmas, like most holidays, is the food. Savoury wise, I have a hankering for roast parsnips. Sweet wise, I want to make everything! Time always escapes me though, so if I manage just one or two things I will be very happy.

I tried marshmallows the other week, and whether it was the unintentional use of vegetarian gelatine, or not beating them for long enough, I was left with green goo rather than festive green marshmallows.

If you want successful marshmallows, without having to do it yourself, the Edinburgh based Marshmallow Lady comes highly recommended, and I would love to try some myself! I’m not convinced that eggnog marshmallows are the way to go, but toffee apple or millionaire shortbread, yes please!

If you want to do something creative yet easy, this marshmallow tree from Planning With Kids (instructions here) looks like a good idea – easy and quick enough that it might even make it into my baking schedule.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Delia Smith –I suppose the same could be said for Americans of Martha Stewart, just looking at these candy cane marshmallows is making me jealous! If you want to give home-made marshmallows a go, the recipe is here.

Actually, I might need to go stock up on a lot of marshmallows – melted snowman cookies (or cupcakes) are always hugely popular at this time of year. With misshapen half – melted marshmallows, this tutorial from Truly Custom Cakery looks good.

Or, you could just stick with these traditional snowmen cookies, from the Pink Momma. If you don’t have a snow man cutter, cut two circles and then cut them so they fit together – they will bake together and be pretty solid!

The best festive bake I have seen this year though? These Hot Chocolate Truffles from Your Cup of Cake, that I doubt will make it onto my baking list this time round. I think any chocolate ganche recipe would do the job though, and then you can decorate to your hearts content.

As for Christmas cakes, if you need any last-minute inspiration, the Edinburgh branch of the British Sugarcraft Guild came up with plenty of designs to get you thinking at our November meeting, which you can see here. Hopefully everyone has a lovely Chrsitmas, and keep an eye on my facebook page for my Christmas cake pictures.

Halloween Monster Cupcakes

I love Halloween. Not the dressing up part, but the food. There is so much inspiration to be found for all kinds of drinks, cookies, and of course, cakes. I have had my eye on monster cupcakes for a while, as they look great but are fairly quick to complete.

I made a batch of vanilla cupcakes using a victoria sponge recipe, and then a traditional buttercream for the monstery-ness. It took a mix of 8oz butter and 16oz icing sugar (plus the cocoa and food colour for the different monsters) to do these 12 cakes, with a little left over.

The first monsters I did were yellow ones (vanilla), using what is called a grass tip. The second lot were brown (chocolate), and I used a star tip. I also have an icing syringe, which is much easier on my hands than using a piping bag.

 

I gave each cupcake a base coat of buttercream, before adding the first layer of fur, starting from the middle.

Then I did a second layer of fur, and because of the thickness in the middle, the monster gained its body.

For the brown monsters I changed to the star tip to make the fur. The more pressure you apply, and the slower you move, the thicker the icing comes out. I went for making the fur a bit thicker, to avoid making a big body of icing in the middle. Again each cupcake got a base coat of buttercream, then the lines of fur.

I just went round these cupcakes once with the icing, so they are a bit flatter.

After fur, came the eyes. For these, I just rolled balls of sugarpaste, which I left for a few minutes just to skin over, so they would be less likely to squash when I touched them. I have also seen them done with marshmallows or white chocolate buttons as eyes rather than sugarpaste. To make the pupils, I made an indentation with a thick straw. I did this to give me a guide for where to paint, but I also liked the look it gave to the eye balls, as the middle stood out a little. I used some edible paint from rainbow dust for the colours, but you could just use food dye and alcohol to make the paint or use more sugarpaste. you can see some shiney spots on the pink eyes – this is where i used a little vodka to clear up some smudges, but it dries away fairly quickly.

The blue eyes were rounded so just sat on top of the monsters. For the pink ones which more disc like, I used some spaghetti for support, putting it into the cupcake first and then putting the eyes on top.

And hey presto that was my little monster family made and ready to be eaten as well! Since monsters are imaginary, and unique, you can use any piping tip you want to make the fur, and it doesn’t matter if the fur is messy or the eyes are squint, so it is a great project to have a go at!

 

 

 

National Chocolate Week 2012

It was national chocolate week between the 8^th and 14^th of October. I do love chocolate, and could have fancied doing something quite special, but with limited time and ingredients I decided to honour the week by making something nice and simple – chocolate covered marshmallows! A lack of smarties meant that the normal top hat style was out so these went a little ‘gourmet’.

Start with your chocolate and marshmallows.

Melt the chocolate. Try not to eat the chocolate as you go.

Dunk the marshmallows in the chocolate, and apply sprinkles. You might need to eat the sprinkles that don’t stick (you might be standing on the hundreds and thousands that have escaped for at least a week too).

Ta-da!