Monday, 24 August 2015

Today i made a big fondant fancy.

On Sunday it was my pal Amy's birthday and last week at work i said I'd make her a cake for work this week. I wanted to try and make a big fondant fancy so she requested a pink one.

Challenge accepted :-)

I figured out i was going to use my mum's old massive tin, and initially was going to make a few cakes and layer them. However. I soon realised that was going to take hours so decided just to make one big cake and cut it and layer the bits.
So in with the pink food colouring (slightly too much, i know no limits!!!) And cake was made.

Except it wasn't. Because my lovely boyfriend, who was making his tea at the same time,  switched the oven off when he was finished frying his damn sausages.

Livid.

I didn't notice until i went to check the cake and by then the oven was bloody cold.

The house was not a pleasant place to be tonight.

But he went out, and i shoved the oven back on. Angrily. But 30 mins later it was ready.

Good job or i would have had the police called on me!!!!

Anyway. While the cake was cooking i made some pink butter icing and chucked some in a bowl wrapped in cling film for the wee bump at the top of the fancy. I popped it in the fridge and waited for everything to get cold!

So. The layering. I cut the cake into 4 (i used a tape measure and everything) and made 3 tiers with the icing and then tried to ice the sides to make the other icing stick.

Ooh i forgot to say about the other icing! I got a block of white fondant from the coop and put even more pink colouring in. I kneaded it until the colour was even and rolled it out-with great difficulty i may add- and left it til i was ready.

Soooo, the cake was layered, icing was on and the wee bump was in the top.

Fondant icing is not simple to use.

After a lot of patting and patching the cake was covered :-) finally, i had some iof that writing chocolate that i wanted to use to make the stripy bits on top.

This didn't really go to plan either, if I'm honest.

I had to melt the stuff under hot water, which i did. Then had to cut the nib off, which i did. Then i tried to use it, which i didn't. I dont know how it's meant to work, so there was blobs of chocolate all over the shop.

Eventually it sort of worked, and i had stripes of a sort!

And then it was finished :-) i sent Am a 2 second snapchat of the cake to give her a glimpse but she's not replied yet so i have no idea what she thinks! ! I'll find out tomorrow when we get tasting it!

That's all for now!

(I've handily included a packet of chewing gum fir size reference lol. I couldn't find anything else!!!)

Sunday, 16 August 2015

This weekend i made loads of cakes

Now. About a month ago my pal Gemma asked me to make some cakes for her wedding celebration in August. I jumped at the chance! I immediately started thinking about what kind i could make and how I'd go about doing it with timings etc.

So, as always, i left it til the night before and done all the shopping and baking. 5 hours i was at it. I knew I'd have no room in my freezer to prebake all the cakes so i thought bugger it! Night before it is!

My plan was chocolate (using the dr oetker recipe on the website); choc chip and lemon (using normal 6/6/6/3 recipes); carrot and finally red velvet. 3 out of the 5 iwas happy with, but ive never attempted red velvet or carrot before. I ended up using Nigellas red velvet recipe (buttermilk substitue = milk and lemon juice!! Who knew?!) and some Google carrot cake recipe that looked the simplest (but with normal SR flour rather than wholemeal because i wasn't bloody spending £2 on a bag of flour!!!)

Raging success!! I've never been so proud! I ended up making 69 altogether  (i was originally planned to make 30 bit that went straight out the window when i got excited!!)
And... im pleased to say that there weren't too many left when we tumbled out the party at 1am this morning :-)

Totally chuffed!

So today i woke up feeling fresher than i expected and decided i wanted to bake more. The girls at work will hate me, i think I'm a feeder.
I had stuff left over so another red velvet was to be made (well, technically fuscia velvet because the Nigella recipe used a whole bloody pot of colouring paste, and it was either fuscia or sky blue). 
I made a whole cake this time rather than cupcakes so want really sure of the timings. I think it ended up a wee bit dry but its bloody lovely!

As an aside, i bought spices from the website curryfrenzy this week and decided i would make a naga curry for tea.

I'm not sure if my bum will tolerate the aftermath tomorrow...

Til next time :-)
Chocolate and lemon
I broke my whisk :(
~Iced
~
Iced
Todays Fuscia Velvet
A slice of fuscia velvet :)
Wedding red velvet cupckae
Doesn't it look pretty!!!