My own British Bake Off

A short while ago my beloved bought me a book providing all the hints and tips you need to create show-stopping cakes. Some would take offence. Baking? Moi? Ardent feminist that I am? Get out. But not I. While - to borrow a phrase from Caitlin Moran - I am a strident feminist, I also like crafting and baking and traditional housewifely pastimes. So I took it as a hint that he would appreciate a show-stopping cake for his birthday.

I started with standard victoria sponge mix - putting a generous amount of blue food dye in one cake tin, and a good glug of orange in the other - then popped them in the oven for about 15-20 mins. Once cooked, cooled and sandwiched together with butter icing and jam, I got to work crafting the icing.

Ready to roll regal icing is really easy. It does exactly what it says on the box. I covered the whole cake in a thin layer of butter icing, piling a bit more on top (I hate marzipan) then gently layered on the icing rolled to around 5mm thickness. You use your palms to smooth it out, not your fingertips, as this will make sure it's dimple free.

Then the tricky stuff happens. Creating the 'ribbon' was a matter of dying the icing orange and then cutting out thin strips. The bow was a little challenging but also not as tough as it looks. You cut out five strips the same thickness, but two about double the length. Slice a triangle out of the bottom of these longer strips and they become your 'trailing ribbons'. For the bow, wrap the two next strips around a bit of rolled up kitchen roll to give them their shape. Carefully slide them off, pinch the ends and then place them together, wrapping the last strip around the middle. Et Voila, your bow. Now it's just a case of carefully transferring it onto the cake.

Finally I made the dots by dying the remaining white icing blue, using a small shape cutter and then attaching them to the cake with a tiny dab of water. Then I presented it to the birthday boy. He was thrilled, but a little alarmed that the dye job hadn't worked out quite as planned...

Perhaps a little more dye was needed? Oh well. Happy baking!

Creepy Cake

A few weeks ago our office went all out for Halloween this year. Everyone dressed up, we had cakes and creepy music. It was amazing.
OK, so not everyone dressed up.
Well, a few people dressed up.
Alright! Five people dressed up and it was pretty mediocre. But the thought was there! And to mark the occassion I embraced my inner Nigella and hit the kitchen.

My vision involved a beautiful bright orange cake with a ghoulish ghost and scary black spiders. I hit only two stumbling blocks in my efforts. Number one - enough food dye to make ready to roll regal icing turn that perfect shade of orange will also make it incredibly sticky and soft. Number two - I neglected to buy any black food dye, so had to make do with gallons of blue in the hopes it would be close enough. It wasn't.

The cake went down well at work and I think made up for my lacklustre costume. On an unrelated aside, it is very difficult to have serious meeting with your manager about resourcing when dressed as a skeleton.

Oh and by the way, those are spiders. Not crabs. Obviously.

Shamefaced apology...

There has been a severe lack of blogging in the last two months - alas myself and Bethany have been very busy bees and have let things slide. Big style. But that's all going to stop from now on (hopefully. Unless I get really busy... y'know...).
Despite the lack of posts, we have not had a lack of creating beautiful homemade goods - well I have been making beautiful homemade goods, Bethany has been working about 15 jobs and seemingly only appearing long enough to email me stories about cats and Helen Flanagan. Sometimes both. So, staying on that theme, here is a picture of a kitten to illustrate how heartfelt our apologies are.

In the last couple of months I have been spending most weekends planning my upcoming nuptials. So much to do from venues to flowers. I am also making all of the invitations which I am in two minds about whether to blog about.
On the one hand, it is a large project and is taking up a lot of my time and skill. However, I want them to be a wonderful handmade surprise for those lucky enough to get one (you lucky, lucky people, you). I will probably do a step by step once they have all been sent but for now I will cryptically tell you it involves card, fabric, wool, thread, wax and double-sided sticky tape (obv).
To tide all you keenos over until then, I'll do a couple of blogs about my recent cake creations. I was given the Great British Bake Off Showstoppers cookbook for my birthday which inspired me to try my hand at creativity in the kitchen for once.