Boob Pie

Dear all,

Another Wednesday, another pie!

This time a friend and I got real creative for another friend's birthday. My friend suggested making a cake in the shape of boobs, for the birthday girl who god has been so generous to. Of course I had to take this challenge!

First off, we decided to use carrot cake, just because it's soo yummy! So off I went grating carrots and chopping walnuts. In retrospect maybe the walnuts were not the best idea because they are annoying when sculpting cake, but as you shall see, it all worked out.



After making a massive amount of carrot cake, baked in one square and one rectangular baking tin, it was time to sculpt. We cut the square cake in half to create the shoulders, by placing the two halves next to eachother, and the rectangular cake was sculpted into the full bosom.



A good idea of my partner in crime was to use marsipan to cover the cake. So after covering the fully sculpted cake with butter cream icing, my friend rolled out the marsipan and covered the cake, giving it its 'skin'. So here you see a block of marsipan, and how it turns a simple carrot cake into a creation. It's starting to look good!



The birthday girl also happens to keep pet rats, and so my creative partner used food colouring to colour some more marsipan, and made 2 rather cute yet devilish red-eyed rats to go with the cake!



After turning the cake into pasty boobs, it was time to transport the cake to the birthday girl's building, where my friend also lives, to finish off the decoration. After (barely?) surviving the cycle ride over, it was time for some cream cheese icing. Fuchsia coloured, cream cheese icing. Oh yeah baby!



So off I went covering the cake in cream cheese icing to make it look like a very bright pink shirt. We finished the cake off with the 2 cute rats and a boob pie was made!
















Look, it's actually life-size!!! ;)



Of course the cake looked just as good on the inside as it did on the outside, and it was generally de-licious!



One more happy customer! Here's the birthday girl and my creative partner in crime enjoying the fruits of our labour (what an icky experession).



Until next week!

xoxo Jennifer

Housewarming Pie

Dear all,

It's another Wednesday with another post. Today I would like to tell you about these housewarming pies I made. A friend of mine had requested a Key Lime Pie and a Mississippi Mud Pie a while a go, and of course, her wish is my command!

The Key Lime Pie first of all is a egg yolk-rich lime, creamy kind of pie. The version I mad had a lovely, buttery digestive biscuit base with a zesty lime filling.



I then topped the whole thing off with some freshly grated lime zest. Tadaa!



The Hummingbird bakery recipe says their version doesn't need any food colouring because the lime itself makes it go that colour. I think mine was still more yellow-ish than lime green, but as the flavours were balanced I think we'll leave it like this. No need for funny artificial colouring.



Next item on the menu: the Mississippi Mud Pie, a creamy mud cake type pie on a drier shortcrust type of base. I have no found several recipes, including a pear pie that will feature later on in this blog, which use this kind of pastry. I myself find it too dry so I think next time I will use my own shortcrust pastry recipe to make this pie even better. Because it sure was good!




After pre-baking the pie crust I baked the chocolate pie until it was just firm to the touch. It leaves a crispy topping but the inside was as creamy as the key lime pie. Topped with whipped cream as well and some hand-grated chocolate as well as some sugar decorations this pie looked like a dream as well!



And of course, it tasted great too! Happy friend Roxy was happy!



xoxo Jennifer

Chocolate Orange pt 3 (final)

Dear all,

So here's part three of the Chocolate Orange adventure! Today I present: "Marquise with chocolate and orange" or what I call the Jasper cake. Jasper made me this cake two years ago for my birthday and I finally felt up to making it as the recipient was apparently very fond of the chocolate orange combination. So, I set to work, first melting a massive amount of chocolate.

What was special, or difficult? about this cake is that when baking it in the oven the tin has to be place in water, to keep the temperature constant. First off I hadn't really thought about this enough so when the cake was ready to go in the oven I was short an oven dish large enough to put the cake tin in! I improvised well, I thought, until after well past the alotted time the cake still wasn't done... And this included several attempts at taking the cake out of the tin because a skewer came out clean and finding out just in time that well.. it really wasn't done! No one wants a runny cake. So after 2 (!!) hours of changing the temperature, taking the cake out of the water etc etc the cake was finally done. Thank goodness!!!



By this time my kitchen was an absolute disaster site. Making three desserts in 1 day is not ideal - as I found out that day. Anyway, the next step for the cake was making candied orange peel, another technique I had never tried before - but succeeded at!!



With a lot of help and tips from Jasper I cut the orange peel, and boiled the strips in water and sugar until it looked like syrup. I then let it cool, which actually turned the whole into one massive block of orange and sugar. Heating it up again a bit allowed me to take out the orange peel, which was now beautifully candied!!



Here is a picture of the end result: a beautifully moist and rich orange chocolate cake with candied orange peel as decoration on top!




And here's a detail picture of the candied orange, because it's so pretty, and the seriously happy recipient. Boy that was good cake. Marquise. YUM!



Absolutely definitely for sure a cake I want to make again. It's THAT good.

xoxo Jennifer

Chocolate Orange pt 2

Dear all,

And so the Chocolate Orange adventure continues, time for part 2! Another friend of mine who is leaving once introduced me to what is now one of my favourite drinks: Licor 43 (a vanilla liqueur). I couldn't find a more fitting way to say good-bye to him than by making... *insert drumroll*.... Licor 43 tartlets! Oh yes. I found the recipe on the official Licor 43 website. Unfortunately it didn't come with a picture, so I have no idea what they were supposed to look like, but I think mine turned out more than alright! Let's have a look:

For the base I smashed some digestive biscuits (and actually broke my rolling pin in the process - in the mean time I figured out I can do the same thing with my mini blender..sigh) and mixed them up with melted butter. After placing a small bit of baking paper at the bottom of each cup I filled a muffin tray with the cookie crumble mixture, shaping it so that they would be little cups. After leaving them in the fridge for a couple of hours I filled them with a chocolate/licor 43/gelatine mixture and again, let that sit in the fridge for a few hours.



What came out were really cute little chocolate mousse-like tartlets! Unfortunately getting them OUT of the muffin tray is something I hadn't thought about quite as much as I should have! They came out, though a little crumbly.



Inspired by some friends' pictures I couldn't resist when I found this sugar alphabet sprinkles in the shops. I had bought it a while ago, and figured this was the perfect occasion to use them. Decorating the tartlets in another way would take away from the effect and I wanted to do something cute. So I wrote my friend a goodbye-cake message :D And for the remaining tartles I might or might not have used left over ganache from the earl grey cupcakes. Shhtttt :P




I think this "stuffing-his-face" picture attests to the success of the Chocolate Orange adventure, part 2! (and don't mind creepy dude in the background ;) ;) )

xoxo

Jennifer

Chocolate Orange pt. 1

Dear all,

Due to lack of proper internet connections I'm a little behind on my blog posting. Luckily for you this means that I have a back log of posts to be finished, which gives you all something to look forward to! First off is the Chocolate Orange baking adventure, part one!

Last week was a busy baking week, with a long promised congratulatory cake and some good bye yummies. First up, Earl Grey cupcakes for a friend who is leaving to study abroad for a year. I have made these cupcakes before but I added a topping. So what's chocolate orange about earl grey cupcakes? The Terry's Chocolate Orange chunks! As well as the chocolate orange ganache topping. Yum!


I thenk baked the Earl Grey cupcakes. They are made with earl grey loose leaf too steeped in milk, giving the cupcakes a subtle but distinct earl grey flavour. I added chunks of terry's chocolate orange to the mixture as a fancy extra. It makes the cupcakes slightly more interesting, and as my earl grey tea was already infused with orange blossom I thought it would be a perfect match (which it was!)




I finished the cupcakes off with a chocolate/earl grey/orange ganache I had made the day before. It again uses earl grey loose leaf tea steeped in milk, and I added some orange zest for fun. The ganache turned out perfectly which I dolloped on and turned into a pretty swirl. To finish the whole thing off I sprinkled on some gold sugar balls and eadable glitter. Fancy Smancy!!

So far for Chocolate Orange pt 1. Part two will follow soon!

xoxo Jennifer

Tarte Tatin Failures

Dear all,

Yes, sometimes I too fail (more often than I let on on this blog anyway XD). Either way, the other day a friend asked me to bake cupcakes for him to take to a pot luck. I was foolish enough to think I could try out a new recipe for that, because it failed, miserably! But so that you can all share in my misery (or have a good laugh at my expense), here is what happened:

I saw a recipe for Tarte Tatin cupcakes, which involved caramelised apples and making caramel. Making the cupcakes themselves was easy, a nice falvoursome vanilla-y cupcakes. Then the drama started. The apples burned, turned soggy, were too big/too small to go on the cupcakes, and did not caramelise.



In the end however I got a nice set of apple slices that at least looked decent enough to go on the cupcakes. Then disaster part two: the caramel. Judging from the pictures in the book I thought I would get a nice clear caramel-like substance, maybe a little treacle like. I was wrong. It was semi-solid light brown opaque muck (which tasted quite nice actually!).



Anyway, so I thought the idea was to dribble some on, but that looked terrible.



After some deliberation I decided the caramel was to be used as icing with the non-caramelised apples on top. I'm so sorry for ruining the cupcakes friend, you know who you are. I hope I didn't kill anyone with them or put them off my baking forever :(

My result:



And on the right, what is was
supposed to look like XD




I'm not giving up however, I will try this recipe again someday and make it work for me, muahaha.

Until next time!

xoxo Jennifer