Love of cooking

Dear all,

This week no baking (but just you wait 'til next week!) but some other delicious home made food.

First up, home made udon. Soy sauce broth with mushrooms, spinach, bean sprouts, cabbage topped with spring onion and a bit of daikon. Dee-licious!



And then on to home made curry! I bought a whole bunch of sweet potatoes at the market over the weekend for no money really, and decided to make some sweet potato and carrot curry. The curry powder may have been pre-mixed, but I chopped that fresh garlic and ginger myself! Bit of coriander on top and it was on of the best curries I ever made!



Alright, see you next week for (hopefully) my first attempt at pumpkin pie. It is almost Halloween after all!!

xoxo Jennifer

Battenburg engineering

Dear all,

Another dinner party, another cake! This time I opted for a Battenburg cake:

This is a chocolate and orange version of the Battenburg cake (rather than the more common pink and yellow version). Getting started requires a little engineering: I had to set up an aluminium foil divider in a square tin. Then make sure it stays in place when scooping in the cake batter...



My bit of engineering was successful! I then cut the two rectangles in half, and cut them to the same length. I had to shave off a little extra of the chocolate part as I hadn't dividded the mixture evenly enough, but there was plenty left! Then more engineering: sticking them together with hazelnut spread.



Finally the whole thing is covered in white marzipan. For a little extra fun I added some quick decorations (I was in a hurry - not bad though ey?)


xoxo Jennifer

ps. sorry for the crappy pictures, most were taken with my phone (all except the one where I had just finished decoration).

And three makes a square

Dear all,

Last week I mentioned making two cakes for the same day with late nights bla bla. Here is number two!

It's the same delicious ginger cake as last week but with a different topping. I opted for a lighter lemon cream cheese icing.



I added some fresh lemon rind, some cute fondant icing stars, pretty cute!







The cake didn't completely survive it's long trip on the train and bus and then a day at work etc., but it certainly didn't lose any of its flavour.

In fact, the only comment I got was that the cake really didn't need icing it was so good! I can highly recommend this cake.

xoxo Jennifer

It's a... baby!

Dear all,

Another week, another baby shower! This time for a colleague going on maternity leave. She has not disclosed the gender of her baby yet, so it's a unisex cake (in as far as that goes).

For the cake I used a recipe I had been dying to try: a ginger cake! The recipe was given to me by a very special someone (hello Grandma!) who insisted I give it a try, and boy do I know why now! It was scrumptious. And it looked good too! So here it goes:

Because it's a nice easy cake to decorate and cut into even pieces, I went for the square cake again. Single layer this time - less time to bake this week you see (making 2 cakes for the same day with late night working days is not a good combination I discovered). Either way, it was the perfect size anyway! Dab a bit of buttercream icing on to make the fondant icing stick, and it looks a little like the cake on the left. Smooth the (green = unisex!) fondant icing out and you got the beginning of a baby cake.



Using different pastel coloured icings I decided to spell out what this cake was all about: a baby! Stick it on the cake and it looks a little like this:



As for the finishing touches: she is one lucky lady to be having this, what I'm sure will be, lovely baby, so congrats!



And congrats to me on the final product. I'm pretttty please with myself on this one! (notice the little pink foot I made from scratch! ow yeah!!)



Until next week everyone!

xoxo Jennifer

It's a boy!

Dear all,

I just completed my first cake on demand! A friend of my mother's was celebrating the birth of her grandson. That of course calls for cake and my mother asked if I would make one... of course!

The request was to keep the cake simple, preferably vanilla cake with apricots. Your wish is my command! I made two Victoria sponge cakes with apricot jam filling. Here we go:

Like I said, I made two cakes, square ones in this case. I shaved off a little bit to make them fit. I then stuck them together with a generous helping of apricot jam (shop bought due to time constraints I'm afraid).



I decided to decorate the cake with fondant icing which requires a bit of buttercream icing to make it stick. My "customer" is not a big fan of lots of buttercream (and neither am I to be honest - a necessary evil) so I tried to use it sparingly:



Now for the good stuff! Decorating this cake was so much fun! I decided to make it look like a parcel with a big bow on top. So with some pretty baby blue icing I put together this bow. To keep it from going flat I used some cotton wool (which I took it out once it had set). Then I covered the cake with white fondant icing embossed with a festive pattern.




Putting the cake together: adding ribbons and eventually sticking on the bow: success! Starting to look good, no? I made the ribbon and bow extra pretty with some pearl sheen powder. Woohoo!



The finishing touch was the text ribbon along the bottom and the cute baby boy decorations. Here is the cake from all sides!




I had such a good time with this cake, even though it was a little scary to make something like that for someone I don't really know. And I'm definitely getting better at the fondant icing thing, though I need more practice finishing it off (invisible seems etc - difficult with a pattern on it as well). On to the next baby-shower cake next week, exciting! I better start brainstorming...

xoxo Jennifer

Upside down cake

Dear all,

For a dinner party recently I made an upside down cake with nectarines. I think it was supposed to be peaches, but I didn't have any of those!

Anyway, both the bombay potato pies and the cake were quite a treat, but unfortunately I only have pictures of the cake. Enjoy!

Key to the upside down cake is that the nice stuff goes... on the bottom! (to start with anyway. In this case some muscovado sugar, melted butter and flaked almonds. Add halved nectarines to the equation and it starts to look like this...



I washed and stoned the nectarines, but did not peel them. No need, you can barely tell the skin is still on when the cake is done! For now though adding the cake mix hides the beautiful fruits... until you turn it upside down!



Here is the end result, a lovely fruit and simple cake. The top looked a bit soggy to me when I turned it over (all the juices were caught by the aluminium foil I put in the bottom I think) so as I made the cake the day before, I had time to think of a solution. What I did on the day itself is add some more flaked almonds and just popped it in the oven which added a crispy toasted almonds toppig to it. Perfect!



Lovely lovely cake.

xoxo Jennifer

Wedding Cake

Dear all,

I went to a family wedding a couple of weeks ago and saw this splendid wedding cake - had to share! (Though they did steal my dog on a cake concept, how dare they! haha)

THE CAKE












THE DETAIL