Russian Doll cake

It was my friend Catherines birthday so I wanted to make her a special cake. Catherine has this little suitcase that she trundells between liverpool and manchester and it has little russian dolls on it so I thought that was good inspiration for a cake.

I did a bit of undercover work and found out from Catherines boyfriend that she liked chocolate cake, I needed to keep it quite simple so that I could carve the cake into the right shape so went for a generic chocolate sponge. I baked it in a square tin and carved a little doll shape out.

I made a simple chocolate buttercream and then covered it in white fondant.

I used a little paintbrush that I use for cake purposes, and used my gel colours slightly watered down to add the colour. Note the sneaky glass of wine...

I was quite scared doing the face, there would be no covering it up if it went wrong, but I was really pleased at how it came out. I used food colouring pens for the smaller details like the eyes and lips and then outlined the rest of the colour with the black food colour pen.

I bought some flower and leaf plungers so thought now was a good time to try them out. I get most of my baking stuff on ebay, it's so much cheaper, I think the flower plungers were about £4 for all four including postage. I got the leaf cutter from a shop in the trafford centre, I cant remember the name of it but its pretty much all tkmaxx homewares, an absolute dreamboat! I always thought that using plungers and cutters was a bit like cheating, but i'm a total convert, there is no point in spending absolutely ages cutting or sculpting things when you can cut it out instantly. Plus they look way better than anything I could do by hand.

By this point I was running really late to get ready for the night out so everything was pulled together pretty quickly, I glued the flowers down with some royal icing and added a little bit of glitter (of course!). I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

 As was the birthday girl! (excuse my closed eyes the flash was mega bright!)

Soph x



Passion fruit marshmallow chicks

Easter is my favourite time ever, chicks, bunnies, lambs, chocolate, its all great. So I wanted to make some special easter treats, this was the start of many!

I've made marshmallows loads of times, but always stuck to simple vanilla ones, so wanted to try my hand at something a bit more exciting! Passionfruits are one of my favourites, plus they are yellow so perfect for chicks. I ordered some nice little easter cutters from ebay (amongst a few other things...) so thought i'd put them to good use.

The recipe is quite simple;

450g sugar

1 tablespoon of glucose

200ml of water

9 sheets of gelatine

2 egg whites

Juice of around 4 passionfruits

Soak the gelatine in 140ml of water

Put the sugar glucose and 200ml of water in a pan and bring to 127 degrees (you will need a sugar thermometer but can get them for a couple of quid on ebay)

Meanwhile whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks.

Once the syrup is up to temperature, slide in the gelatine, mix gently and then pour slowly into the egg whites with the machine still running.

Whisk for around 10-15mins, adding the passionfruit juice around half way in. I added a tiny bit of yellow food colouring to enhance the colour of the passionfruits.

Then pour the mixture into tins dusted with icing sugar and leave to set, which only takes about an hour.

I dyed some granulated sugar with food colouring, just mixed the food colouring in with the tiniest bit of water then left to dry. Had to sieve it a good few times to get rid of clumps but was left with some great chick yellow sugar to coat the marshmallows in! I used food colouring pens for eyes and noses.

I also made a couple of bunnies with some vanilla marshmallow for good measure...

This was all done in one night, alongside a cake for cake club (post to follow) and a good deal of sitting outside drinking wine in the unusually lovely weather, so they weren't anywhere near as neat as I wanted them to be, but they did taste good...

Soph x

Clandestine Cake Club- Mad hatters tea party

My second cake club! When I first heard the theme of Mad Hatters tea party, my mind went into overdrive as the decorating possibilities were endless. I had an idea in my head of making a cup of tea, so I began by making what was essentially a massive cup of tea in a pan, and then setting it with gelatine, and pouring it into teacups to create a solid cup of tea, which I was then going to cover in fondant and place on top of my cake. However, half way through this, I totally rethought my plan, this is cake club, not cake decorating club, so I decided to do simple decoration and focus on the cake itself. There was only one cake to do in my head, rainbow cake!

This is the second time I have made a rainbow cake, I just love the way it looks, but also love the cream cheese frosting, its so much nicer than buttercream and kinda turns the cake into a cheesecake-cake. I kept the decoration really simple, but as I wanted it to be perfect I actually did 3 coats of the frosting, one of which was at 8am before I went to work, but it was worth it as there were no tell-tale crumbs to give away the cake inside.

My cake had to survive a journey from my house in Chorlton all the way into town, I was going to drive but the parking is just so extortionate that I got the tram- bit of a mistake as my cake was so heavy and fragile, but it made it (after we stopped for a swift half in the castle pub of course)

This months clandestine cake club was at North Star Deli in the northern quarter. I had actually been in the chorlton branch on Saturday so was interested in seeing what the town version was like, and I actually think I liked it more. There were so many of us there, must have been close to 30, and so many amazing cakes...

Everyone had been really inventive with the theme which was nice to see, a lot of variation and quite interesting cakes- candyfloss cake that actually tasted like candy floss, an amazing layer cake that had me absolutely puzzled as to how it was baked (apparently each layer was grilled), Jules' amazing malted marshmallow cake, a great spicy tomato cake and so many more amazing treats, it really is a dream come true to have a whole table of cakes and be allowed to try every single one (dream is more specifically being locked in a patisserie overnight). I brought my friend and flatmate Rosie and we got a bit over-excited and loaded our plates up, perhaps a bit much...

We ate so much cake that I thought I might actually pass away, as did Rosie...

 

So we mingled, ate cake, chatted, Rosie drank about a million cups of tea (as North Star had put on an offer for endless cups of many different teas for just £3.50) and then we all gathered up the leftovers and took them home. I crammed as much cake as I could into my little cake tin as I had promised people in the office that I would bring cake in the next day, it certainly went down well.

My rainbow cake has quite a simple recipe, I adapted a traditional recipe to ensure that it was enough to make 6 decent sized layers, as follows:

335g/11.82oz of butter
335g/11.82oz of caster sugar
335G/11.82oz of self raising flour
6 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Dash of milk
Wilton gel food colours

Traditional method, cream butter and sugar add eggs and flour etc. In order to ensure the layers were uniform I weighed the mixture as a whole and then divided it by 6, which worked out as roughly 8oz  (226g) per layer. I then divided the mixture up into bowls, and coloured with the gel colours, these are still my favourite baking item, you need so little and the colour is just so much better than supermarket food colourings. I then baked each layer individually, I only have two cake tins the right size so had to bake them in twos, but they only need around 10-15mins at gas 4 as they are so thin.

I often find cream cheese frosting to be far too sweet, so have adapted a recipe I found:

500g (17oz) of cream cheese
450g (15oz) of icing sugar (though I always just taste as I go along and adapt as needed)
50g (1.74oz) of butter
Splash of vanilla extract

You need to soften the butter, gradually add the sugar until its a sandy texture, then start adding the cream cheese and the rest of the sugar, adding the vanilla at the end.

PS, converting grams to ounces is my new favourite thing as I just got an iphone4s and can just tell it to do this. Although it doesn't understand my northern Irish accent for some things so I have to say "ounces" in a silly mock-English accent.

And that's it!
Really really enjoyed cake club this week, can't wait to hear what the next theme is!

Soph x

Clandestine Cake Club Manchester

I had geard a lot about clandestine cake clubs over the last couple of months, but when friends Jules and Bailey went and featured it on their excellent food blog http://www.goodgobble.blogspot.com/ i knew I had to get involved!

This months Clandestine Cake Clubs theme was Valentines day, I didn't want to make anything too complex for my first one, and also being on a Wednesday night I knew I was going to have to bake after work so decided to make a relatively simple cake.

So I made a chocolate caramel cake!

I kept it all quite simple, so just made a few white chocolate hearts coloured with gel food colours.

The cake itself had quite a different sponge, made with natural yoghurt and ground almonds, it had a chocolate layer, chocolate caramel layer, caramel layer and vanilla layer, all sandwhiched together with caramel and the richest chocolate ganache...

My lovely vintage apron given to me by my sister Kathryn.

By this point it was pretty late and I was not quite in the baking zone anymore so the decoration didn't get my full attention but I think it turned out ok...

I had to steatbelt the cake into the back of my car as it had to get from Chorlton to Altrincham with no-one to hold it.

Now for the actual cake club! This month was slightly different as there was a demonstration from excellent pastry chef Brett Pistorius, where he made a chocolate hazelnut cake with a passionfruit french buttercream. I really really enjoyed the demonstration, so many little tips that you just wouldn't get from a book. There is also something really therapeutic about watching someone else cook.
Also I have never actually made a french buttercream, probably due to laziness, but after having seen it done and tasted the difference I would say I was a convert.

The decorating part was also great, Brett also demonstrated some relatively simple chocolate decoration but it looked stunning, and all came together so quickly.

His amazing cake nearly overshadowed the rest of our cakes, but there were some amazing creations. This was pretty much a dream come true for me, loads of cakes and the opportunity to try every single one of them, dreamboat.

I was quite reserved and had the tiniest bite of each cake, but it is unbelievable how quickly you can feel sick when doing this, I was on a complete sugar high by the end of it and had to drink a lot of water.



The amazing thing about the Clandestine Cake Club is that everyone takes cake home at the end, I had two boxes of tupperware stuffed full of cake, much to the delight of my flatmate and colleagues.

Definitely planning on going next month.

Soph
x