Sad to say goodbye

Dear all,

My gym closed recently, and I miss it dearly (consider all the cake tasting I do ;) ). I couldn't say goodbye without cake of course, so I made the gym owner a carrot cake. The photo collage was made by a good friend (I'm rubbish at that sort of thing, leave the cake to me, that's all) and printed on frosty sheet.

Going to miss this place and the people!

xoxo Jennifer

Gingerbread house

Dear all,

For my mum's birthday I made her a gingerbread house! I've never made one before, it was so much fun! And tasty too (says my mum, I didn't get a chance to have any). It was something I wanted to do because she was the one that gave me the mould but also, my parents are moving, so a gingerbread house seemed especially appropriate!

Here it is.

The basics of house-building: the pieces! Including a mummy, a daddy and... a tree. And then gluing time. I made my own royal icing for this, easier than expected and perfect for gluing the house together.

The first bit was a bit tricky, but the icing dried quick enough and really there was no danger of 'collapsing', so I went ahead and put the whole thing together in one go. Walls first, let that dry, then I put the roof on. Which I let dry before moving on to candy decorations.

I used a combination of the left over royal icing (of which I had tons!), cake decorations and candy I got in town to make the decorations.


My dad bought a boat because the new house is on the water - so I made a little fondant boat to go with the house. How cute is that!?

All done, I built a house! I wonder what next week will bring...

xoxo Jennifer

Zebra birthday

Dear all,

Sometimes I bake cakes with a certain person in mind, like last week, and other times I bake cakes because I want to try out new techniques (and I think the recipient will appreciate it!). This week I thought I'd take a 'walk on the wild side' and bake a zebra cake for a friend's birthday. It worked a treat!

So what is a zebra cake? It must surely involve stripes, and it wouldn't be a cake of mine if that didn't apply to both the inside and outside. So start with 3 colours (because a 2 coloured zebra would just be boring, no? hehe).

I went for a 'punk' zebra because I figured that would suit my friend: so black, white and pink! The black mix has cocoa in it, the pink mix simply vanilla batter with pink colouring. And then off you go, scooping the mixes into the middle one at a time.

This results in lots of rings of colour which eventually form the stripes. What this looks like you will see below, and above is also my black and white fondant zebra pattern.

So black white and pink stripes it is, punk zebra! With a big bow on top!

I love making these fondant bows, such a show stopper (and not that difficult to make, but shhh). The finished product didn't only look fantastic, it was extremely tasty. Very good cake mix that I will surely come back to. And I've already had a request for another zebra cake, so definitely a success!

Next week I'm building a house. Stay tuned!

xoxo Jennifer

Brother birthday cake

Dear all,

My brother is a big fan of chocolate cake. So for his birthday this year he picked out one he'd like, and of course, I delivered. It really was TOO much chocolate if you ask me, but my brother enjoyed it. And that was the point of the exercise. I have to say I really like the finishing!

My brother's cakes involve a lot of gooey chocolate. So here you have melted chocolate and a chocolate digestive cookie base.

Mix the chocolate with cream cheese and you get a VERY rich cheesecake. I would mix in some whipping cream or something lighter next time. The finishing was fantastic however. I poured over some melty dark chocolate, melty white chocolate stripes, and then made this pattern. Excellent stuff!!


The rest is easy - let it set. And you get a crisp base, gooey center and crisp chocolate topping. A flavour and texture sensation. Happy Birthday!

xoxo Jennifer

Re-launch

Dear all,

I'm back! Had to write a thesis and go on work-related trips to Japan and stuff. Occupational hazard! But to get things back on track, some things I've worked on recently:

First up, an apricot and cinnamon cake with a cream cheese/cinnamon topping. So I had a little accident with the cinnamon on top and due to lack of pictures you will have to take my word for it that there are apricots inside. Interesting point to this cake was it was made with olive oil. Very tasty (though couldn't tell it was olive oil...)

Next up Roxy's birthday cake! This was a baked lemon cheesecake with a plum and bramble topping. Again, you'll have to take my word on the contents, suffice to say it tasted fantastic!

 Next week: more birthday cake!

xoxo Jennifer

Strawberry Cheesecake

Dear all,

For a friend's dinner party I made a strawberry cheesecake. This was the first time I made a no-bake cheesecake. I didn't want to mess about with gelatine, so it's pure cream cheese + whipped cream. Yum!





Decorated with fresh strawberries, some dipped in chocolate.




I used pureed strawberries to give the cheesecake its strawberry flavour.
I also added some white chocolate to the mix, though that didn't really pop out.



Beautiful, if I say so myself! And delicious.

xoxo Jennifer

BIG birthday cake

Dear all,

As I mentioned before I had a big cake project coming up. This was to make cakes for 80 people to hand out at my father's work. Well I certainly had my work cut out for me!

I decided to do tray bakes, as those would be easy to transport + feed lots of people. I decided to do 5 cakes in the end: apple cake, carrot cake, coffee & walnut cake, ginger treacle cake and a chocolate & orange cake. I used big roasting tines for the cakes, worked quite well I might say! Here is the photographic evidence:

The way I went to work was to have one cake in the oven while working on the next batch. I especially bought 2 roasting tins to get this kind of efficiency, and a good thing too! 



A good friend of mine designed a really cool design for the (edible) picture decoration. Check it out! How awesome is that! I added a bit of decoration myself, making marzipan apples and carrots to help distinguish the cakes. Cute!



Once all the cakes were baked and cooled I started with the icing. Each cake had its own special icing. The ginger treacle cake for example had a melty lemon icing:



The apple cake had a whipped cream topping:



And so on... so what did they look like? Like this!

 

Coffee and walnut cake with coffee butter cream

 

 

Dorset apple cake with whipped cream

 

Carrot cake with orange cream cheese icing

Chocolate orange cake with chocolate ganache

Ginger Treacle cake with drizzly lemon icing

 Had a fantastic time handing this out as well. Happy Birthday Dad!

xoxo Jennifer