Moving On Week 3: Jealousy

 

What will become of this?

So it is week 3 of my cake decorating course and am I progressing?

Well, I think so!

It took me ‘only’ three hours to create three lines on my base cake and am I happy with them?

I think not!

Subject to change!

I started to get jealous of everyone else’s cake design and kept changing my mind as to what I actually want on my cakes.  I guess it would help if I actually look at some cake design books, as many other students had brought in books for inspiration.

 

Another students cake

Oh-well, you live and you learn!  Don’t you?

 

Baked & Delicious

Vanilla Cupcakes from first edition of the Baked & Delicious magazine

First stop: Vanilla Cupcakes!

Baked & Delicous Vol 1

 

Moving on week 2: Making trex indeed!

Used intead of Icing Sugar to roll ou the sugarpaste

Making trex indeed!

It is now the second week of my course and I have already spent so much money on what isn’t even a real cake! (I chose to decorate dummy cakes)

Who knew that decorating cakes would be this difficult??  Especially when if like my class, you have a teacher that is not shy in telling you ‘your cake looks rubbish’.  Don’t get me wrong – its fun, but very time consuming!

 

Cover base cake with plain sugar-paste

 

Base cake attached to drums with inserted dowel

Covering top cake with colored sugarpaste

 

 

 

Moving On week 1: Say hello to the professional!

Finally my Sugarpaste is one colour.

 

Following on from my earlier nowhere-near-perfect attempts at making cakes ‘look pretty’, I have decided to enrol on a six weeks cake decorating course. Rather than start from the beginning and enrol on the beginners course, in true ‘me’ style, I have instead opted for the ‘Cake decorating moving on course‘.  I figure that as I pick things up pretty quickly, I can just ‘blag’ my way through and learn as I go along!

Using sugar-paste,flower-paste, marzipan, butter-cream and a whole list of utensils I will learn the techniques of how to fill, split, cover and stack a two tiered cake. So say goodbye to the lumpy bumpy uneven cakes of previous posts and hello to the all new professional! (Well, at least professional looking!)

Week 1

After 3 hours, I managed to cover my sugar-paste and cover ‘only’ 1 board!  Maybe I will speed up in week 2?

After all that only managed to cover one nine inch board!

 

Where have I been?

Me at Sea enjoying my time away!

Hello Blog,

So here it is – my first post after my four month hiatus!

Sorry it has taken me so long to make another post. It will not take me this long again, I promise! My love and passion for food hasn’t gone away as I have actually been making dishes and having dinner parties. It’s just…. Err I know, no excuses. I just need to post!

Here is a quick update as to what I have been up to food wise over the past few months. (Excuse the pics, will be investing in a new camera shortly)

Freshly Salted Cod

I went on a family trip to Mallorca in September, but wasn’t too impressed with the food at the hotel or any of the restaurants (too touristy). The only pictures that I did take of food were of some salted cod at the Sunday Market in Porto Cristo, oh and of the sea!

Hmmm

In November I took my second trip for the year to Lisbon (Portugal). I ate Bifanas, Farturas, Bacalhau, lovely fresh bread, drank Ginjinha and Sagres beer.

Cafe in Libon where i had my Bifana

The rest of months were spent baking and entertaining family and friends.

I am again excited about my blog and will post more frequently. I have also enrolled on a new course, so should have lots of cool stuff to blog about….

 

Fancy a spot of bank holiday baking?

My bread ready for the oven with visible Rosemary sprigs

Over the bank holiday period I decided that it would be fun to make my own bread.  I was really feeling for some fresh bread and began trawling the internet for ideas.  I stumbled upon a recipe for Rosemary Focaccia bread which really tickled my taste buds and I thought would challenge me a little.

Why, oh-why did I choose to make this bread?  It is not that the bread was extremely difficult to make. More the fact that the whole process took almost 6 hours!  Yup that’s right, 6 hours and that’s a whole load of hours to wait for anything.

I am always a little apprehensive when making bread as I don’t want to see it go wrong.  This time, I thought that I would put the experimentation aside, making sure that I have all the ingredients and followed the recipe to a T.

Is there anything more delicious than the smell of fresh bread from the oven?   There was no exception with this bread either. You could especially smell the rosemary in the bread which was so fragrant.

The taste I cannot even describe. It was aromatic, fluffy, salty and olive oily.  It tasted like a pizza base, I loved it and would recommend the recipe!

Just Out Of the oven Rosemary Focaccia Bread

 

 

It’s Boo Boo’s Birthday!

 

It was my nieces first birthday a couple of weeks back for which I was asked to make a chocolate cake ‘Only’ for the adult guests.  Ooh, I love making chocolate cake.  I especially enjoy using this particular recipe, taken from a  book I bought a couple of years ago, by Tessa Kiros .  Again, like with all recipes, I only use it as a guide.  I like to experiment with the ingredients, this time  by adding dark rum! mmmmmmmm….

Strawberry Cheesecakes

The cake turned out light, fluffy and really moist.   The added extra of dark rum really worked with the Lyndtt dark chocolate and made the cake seem that  little bit more grown-up.  I split the cake and added Chantilly Creme which is a mixture of whipped double cream and icing sugar.  I covered the cake with an improvised, yet delicious, chocolate butter cream recipe of dark chocolate, cocoa powder, golden syrup, clarified butter and solid butter.

Err, is it just me, but every time I make butter cream icing, I seem to always end up with little butter specs left in the mixture!  I think people are starting to think that it is deliberate as it always happens.  Help!!!!

 

Not for the faint hearted Chocolate Cake

There is actually a cake board under all that chocolate. However I did transfer the cake onto a bigger board which wasn’t too difficult or too messy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was on a roll that night and thought that I would make a few more goodies for all to enjoy.  This included two baked strawberry cheesecakes and a big batch of chocolate and raspberry brownies.

Dangerous Chocolate and Raspberry Brownies

 

 

 

Am I really good enough!

My first real attempt at decorating a cake

OOOhhh! Ok, let me begin!

I come from a background of really good Caribbean cooks and bakers. It is their food and fusion of flavours that has helped develop my passion and appreciation of food. Hopefully I too am a good cook, I pray that I have inherited their technical prowess and it hasn’t skipped a generation.

Recently, I was asked by my mother to decorate a cake for a family function (a christening). Now, it’s great that my mother actually believes in me, but I am hardly the worlds best cake decorator. Nonetheless, I was still very much excited and agreed to do it, but as my first foray into royal icing and marzipan did not go so well, I did experience a spot of self doubt.

All doubts aside, I asked my grandmother for a royal icing recipe and away I was!

Here is my first real attempt, not perfect, but it was well received.

Let me know your thoughts:

Why is it still lumpy???

 

Here is the Royal Icing recipe that I used.

2 Egg Whites

1/2 tsp lime juice ( I actually used a little more.  Alternatively, I am sure that you could use lemon juice)

675g Royal Icing Sugar (Guide amount, I actually used 2 boxes)

1tsp Glycerine to stop the icing becoming rock hard

1tsp Almond Essence

This is just a guide, you could add or omit according to your own taste buds.