The Great British Bake Off

A bit behind the times I know, but I'm enjoying the Great British Bake Off on BBC's I Player. There were so many yummy recipes it's made me want to run to the kitchen and try out something new.

Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake book is my 'go to' book for recipes, so seeing her on the show was good. She's just how I imagined from her picture on the book, kind but takes no nonsense!

My only quibble was that for a show about baking they didn't show you much about how to bake a cake, though I suppose they don't teach you how to sing.

Cake Transporting

Transporting a cake recently I pondered on the skills and tactics needed to bring it safely on its journey.

It really does depend on the cake. A sturdy fruit or Madeira cake for example will happily slide around the footwell of the passenger seat without coming to much harm. This is the best place for it, as it can’t drop off the seat and come to harm, and the seats usually have a camber, so decorations may slide. I have a random paranoia that it’ll slip sideways on top of the gearstick, but that may just be me :)
Delicate decorations or layered cakes usually need a willing passengers lap. Cake boards are great, provided that you have secured your cake to it (royal icing does the trick). Trays help too, as they have a lip round the side restricting it moving too much. For important occasions spare decorations and a piping bag of icing to reattach parts should be taken.

One good solution for transporting and storing cakes is to set it on the lid of the tin and put the main body over the top. That way, when you get there you don’t have to risk dropping it getting it out of the tin again. It’s usually helpful to write ‘TOP’ on the bottom of the tin, so no-one accidentally turns it ‘right-side’ up. Roses or Quality Street tins are perfect for the most popular cake sizes. I normally lose a few throughout the year to friends, but gain more (filled with sweets!) at Christmas.

If you fancy something a bit more fancy these are good, but to all intents and purposes are cardboard boxes. They do allow you to take the sides apart and slide it off however, which is a big advantage. I'm sometimes tempted to get one of these cupcake caddys, but I'd prefer something a bit more multipurpose.

The closest to disaster I came is when I was the passenger and trying to keep a pavlova on the plate. Bouncy along on the twisty back roads trying to act as a human gyroscope was no easy feat. Unfortunately in the half-hour trip, the cream softened the meringue resulting in a mini avalanche all over my arm, which I wasn’t able to get at to clean up. Luckily the rest remained intact, and was a success when we made it to our destination.

So the next time you despair at the snail-like pace of the car in front, stop and consider that, just possibly, they may be transporting a pavlova.

Tardis Cake

Apologies from the delay, but I've been busy baking so I hope you can forgive me.

I bought this cake for a birthday, and thought I'd show you all. I was planning to make it myself but seen this and thought I couldn't do much better! It was from Sainsbury's and was a jam filled madeira cake. It was cut into small bits luckily, as I'm sure the blue icing wouldn't do you much good!

Holiday Food and Chocolate Buns

Well I'm back and enjoyed my holiday, thanks for all your patience! My favourite things are the little jammy buns which seem to be called Madeleines, but aren't. There are some things I always miss though, and bread from home is one of them.Oh and Tetley tea.

Here are a few buns that I made for a family party before I went. They're chocolate sponge with some of the same ganache as the the chocolate cake. I spent some time on the decorations, using lustre dust to give a more natural colour. Definately time consuming and for special occasions only!

Chocolate cake

This was another birthday cake, but I went back to my old favourite recipe after the dissapointing outcome of the masquerade cake . The recipe for the cake and chocolate ganache can be found here.


This was a lovely cake, with light sponge layers and a (very) sweet fudge icing. The two textures went together really well. Definately an improvement. The cake itself is an easy all in one method and the only trouble with the icing was deciding when to spread it on the cake; too warm and it'll run off the cake, too cold and it'll be too hard to spread. I like to have it slightly too runny so that most of the marks on the surface settle leaving a smooth glossy surface.




I used fluted sandwich tins and added a few decorations. It was my first time using dusting powders as shading to make the flowers look more realistic and while I think I need more practise, I learnt alot too :)

Masquerade Cake

My friend was having a masquerade party for her birthdayand I thought it would be fun to make a matching cake. The masks were popular for costumed balls in renaissance italy, particularly in Venice, deriving from the Venice Carnival. They're beautiful , ideally wearable, masks with amazingly intricate designs. Also they often have featers or collars, lik the ones below


I started with a 22cm/9in round chocolate cake, using the recipe from my cake decorating book. To be honest I was a little dissapointed with the outcome. It wasn't very chocolatey and was slightly more moist in the centre. I think I'll stick to my usual recipe in the future.
Next I cut it into a 'face' shape by trimming the edges. Personally I think it looked a bit like an Easter Island statue! I've seen one in the British Museum and they're really amazing things.

Before covering it with the white sugarpaste I cut it into two layers and added some Nutella (chocolate spread) to sandwich them together. I also used some jam on the top layer to make the sugarpaste stick. It was now ready for decorating!

Here it is:

The colours are rolled out sugarpaste, stuck on with royal icing. I also used the royal icing to outline some of the shapes and add some decoration to the forehead. Silver balls (dragees) added some sparkle. Sitting with the piping bag in my hand I couldn't help but add a border, I managed to stop there before I went really crazy!

The birthday girl loved it and a day later I still don't think it's been cut :

Present Cake

This cake was made for a birthday. It's a simple madeira cake, since almost everyone likes that, and is covered in sugarpaste.

The recipe and the design idea are from a decorating book I got recently "The Home Guide to Cake Decorating by Jane Price". It's a fantastic book, explaining a wide range of techniques and suitable for all levels. I plan to work my way through some of the things, such as runouts and practising my piping. The are some brilliant ideas, and all are explained well.




.
The cake itself was a lovely moist cake, probably due to the high amount of milk in it. It would be good for a novelty cake as it cut well and neatly.

The 'tag' is a piece of leftover sugarpaste written on with my ever trusty food colouring pen.

If I were to make it again, I'd probably spend more time cutting the sides to the perfectly vertical. Also, since it was my first time covering a square cake I need a bit more practise doing the corners!

Brain Cake

Ruth over at justaddeggs.blogspot.com sent me a link to this cake

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-an-Anatomically-Correct-Brain-Cake

It prompted me to share a few of the cakes I've come across that were just amazing.

Just google mario cake for this one

And not amazing technically, but really pretty

I'd love an excuse to make a topsy turvey cake.

Rubix Cube Cake

These are old photos of a cake I did for an 80's birthday party. Not sure if the colours are right, but it's all I had in the cupboard.

Its two madeira cakes on top of each other. they're actually round ones cut into squares. A bit of a mad way of doing it I know, but I didn't have the deep enough square tins. We got to eat the excess bits though. It's called quailty control :)

By this point I hadn't discovered that you can get coloured fondant, and had to make do with supermarket white, painted with food colouring using a pastry brush. Also, I did each square seperatley, and then joined them together. Can't really remember the reason, possibly to have clear lines between the colours. Don't try this at home, it took ages, and I ended up with rainbow hands!

The black lines are dark chocolate matchmakers,as our local corner shop didn't have licorice laces. (how strange was that?)

A but messy and the icing was quite sickening, but the cake was yummy and looked good in the end.