Dutch cake

Dear all,

For Christmas two friends of mine gave me some Dutch sugar decoration and some white fondant icing... this called for a cake of course! And so for our new years party I made a cake using these awesome Christmas gifts.

Of course because the sugar decorations were Dutch I decided to make a Dutch cake. So I made a speculaas cake! Normally I really associate that with "Sinterklaas", sometimes explained as the Dutch Christmas, but I figured it just had to be done.

So what I did is I made a square speculaas cake.



I then cut the cake in half once it had cooled down and smeared the middle part with 'speculoos', which is a kind of speculaas flavoured peanut butter. This should make a nice gooey center for the cake.



I then stuck the two halves back together and covered the whole cake with speculaas flavoured butter cream icing. This layer of butter cream icing is both delicious and practical - it will help the fondant icing stick to the cake!



Next I refrigerated the cake so that the butter cream icing wouldn't be too smudgy when putting on the fondant icing. This also helped me smooth it out further. I took the cake out of the fridge in plenty of time before starting work on the fondant so that it wouldn't start to 'sweat'. I first started with white icing.



Next I coloured part of the white icing blue, with food colouring. I did this because the sugar decorations are blue and white (resembling 'Delfts blauw') and so that I could create a type of tile pattern. This to emulate typical Dutch Delft blue tiles. I did this right before I wanted to use the icing, which was not great timing! It required a lot of adding food colouring, then maizena to make it less sticky, recolour it (not deep enough blue), add maizena etc. And in the mean time my hands resembled that of a smurf (and did so for several days after!). However, I succeeded, and I started covering the cake.




I smoothed out the icing with a special tool and got a beautifully smooth, white, square cake! Pretty awesome I say! Not done yet though of course. After struggling quite a bit with the blue icing and its consistency I finally had it almost manageable. It wasn't perfect, and it did crumble a bit, but definitely did not take away from the impact of the blue and white contrast. Pretty! Time to add the sugar decorations too.





And then finally the time had come - I took the cake to my friends' house, we had a lovely dinner with this super cake for dessert!! Check out the inside as well, doesn't that look scrumptious!?



Well I had a blast making this cake, thank you again friends who gave me the decorations and fondant icing, you know who you are. I love how gifts like that can send me on an inspired baking adventure, succesfully too!!

Coming up soon, some spicy baking adventures. Stay tuned ;)

xoxo Jennifer

Korean Bibimbap

Dear all,

My friend Roxy and I (among several other of our friends) are just a little crazy about Korean food as well as Japanese food (I studied Japanese at University). We love Korean tv too, but oh the food! So when a Korean food workshop was discovered, we had to go. Here are the results of the first Korean food workshop we went to. Make sure you have a tissue ready to mop up your drewl.

First, Yuk'we, Korean Carpaccio with a sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic and ginger marinade. Served with cucumber and pear, and peanuts (though I wasn't a fan of the peanut addition).


Next up, cucumber kimchi and spring onion omelet (the last one either served as a side dish or served with the bibimbap).



Next, the main course, the bibimbap!! Marinated beef, blanched carrot and tauge, mushrooms and spinach. And of course, Korean chilli paste!! Original presentation and after the big hussle ;)





As you can see I'm well pleased with my first home made korean dish! And then we were surprised with some delicous ginseng tea and Korean cupcake for desert, woohoo!








Unfortunately there are no pictures of the next food workshop we went to (kim'bap, boulgogi and daikon kimchi!) but this should be enough to keep you going for a while! (and us, the workshop is full up for the next two months!!)

xoxo Jennifer

Xmas cake 2010

Dear all,

For Christmas this year it was up to me to make a cake (no better excuse to get baking of course!). Last year for Christmas I was given a tree cake tin, featured in one of my very first posts on this blog. As I made it for Christmas then as well, I thought I'd make it again as maybe the start of a little Christmas tradition?



This Christmas however I had a whole year of baking experience to back me up, as well as a lot more tools and fancy decorations. In fact, my grandma had been over before Christmas and gave me lots of cute winter/Christmas decorations which I gladly used! I really love the effect of icing sugar on a cake like this, it looks like snow, and so I went with that theme. On a round plate I scattered more icing sugar to make it look like a snowy landscape. I then added some fluffy white mini-marshmallows for texture and some candy mushrooms. Then I added an extra touch by drizzling white icing on the tree tops. Not my best move, but I made it work!





As you can see this year I didn't have the cool tree in a tree pattern (I guess it was just luck and not skill after all!) but it was de-li-cious none the less! Check out the cute little sugar snowmen and silver decorations as well. Thank you grandma!!!



I hope you all had amazing christmas cake(s) as well, because this one sure was lovely! Check back next week for my new years cake. Definitely worth a look, I promise!

xoxo Jennifer

Half-Moon biscuits

Dear all,

A new year, more baking!

To start you off a remnant of 2010, half-moon biscuits. Chocolate chip and hazelnut half moon biscuits that is, dipped in chocolate. YUM.





To follow soon: christmas and new year's cake. Bear with me for just a bit longer!!

xoxo Jennifer

Tiramisu cupcake

Dear all,

Last week I showed you the Yeti cakes, this week I want to show you the other birthday cupcakes: tiramisu cupcakes with mascarpone topping. First off I chose some cute birthday theme cupcake papers, super cute! Next up was whipping up the egg whites and the egg yolks (with coffee en a generous dash of coffee liqueur) and then mixing them together to bake cupcakes that filled my room with the lovely smell of coffee and chocolate (I added chocolate chips to the mix as well).



Next up I made a lush mascarpone topping. Mixing the mascarpone with some coffee liqueur gave it an awesome flavour. But before I dolloped it on I poked some holes in the cupcakes and drizzled some more coffee liqueur on, infusing them with it so to speak. Oof!



To decorate I made some chocolate curls (with a block of dark chocolate and a potato peeler!) and I added some little gold sugar balls. I can't say anything but they looked gorgeous!



And here is a closeup of the final product. Mmm my mouth starts watering just remembering those cupcakes. Sorry to all of you out there who did not get the chance to have any!! But the birthday boy sure was happy with his alcoholic cupcakes!



Hope you all had a good christmas!

xoxo Jennifer

Yeti cake

Dear all,

Recently 2 friends of mine celebrated their birthdays. One of them is called Jettie, which is pronounced the same as Yeti, the abominable snowman. This was a running joke for a while right after we first met, and now, some 5 years later I wanted to make a tribute to that, so I made Yeti cakes for her!

My yeti cupcake recipe is from a book that actually got me into cupcake making 2 years ago. They are little vanilla cupcakes with marshmallow mixed in, with a lovely and sticky white marshmallow (home made!) topping. Also check out the supercute cupcake papers I used~!



Without going into too much detail, I can tell you I transformed these golden brown sticky cakes into winter wonderland big foot cupcakes by making my own marshmallow like icing. This required dissolving some sugar and honey in egg whites over a low heat, adding a bit of vanilla essence and then beating the hell (excuse my french) out of it until it formed a thick sticky consistency. I then added a whole lot of grated coconut to give it some texture.



For the final touch I sprinkled on some more grated coconut (it also kept the marshmallow from gooying all over the place I think). Then I finished them off with some silver sugar balls and white snowflake like candy to make them pretty.



Happy Birthday Jettie!

Next week, her boyfriend's counterpart Tiramisu cupcakes. YUM!

Oh, and MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!

xoxo Jennifer