The Big French Fancy

I was actually so excited when I saw this! A huge fan of French Fancies, I recently heard that the wonderful people at Mr Kipling have gone futher to make 'The Big French Fancy'. It turns out they've been available since November. How could I have let that happen.

Ok, the covering is sugarpaste and not fondant, but I can forgive that. The only bad news is that I've no reason to buy one for weeks, and it really is too big to eat on your own (serves 10). That is of course assuming anyone finds out..

It comes in pink and yellow.

Birthday Fairy Cakes

Just a few wee fairy cakes showing how 2 cutters and 2 colours of icing can make something quite pretty.

Iron Man Cake

Hello all. I have been busy baking, but just things I've done before so no blogging. Recently though I made a birthday cake for someone who likes comics. I picked an Iron Man theme because it's one of his favourites, plus red and yellow were the 2 colours I had most of. It was meant to look like a stack of comics. I look a few pictures to show you all.

Using a standard victoria sponge recipe, I made 2 sheet cakes in a traybake tin. I cut each of these in two horizontally to make 4 thin layers, which I stacked in a haphazard way, using jam to 'stick' them together. The soft layers draped over one another.



















Next I covered the top in black sugarpaste to be the background to the cover page of the top comic.

To create the plaque for the top, I printed out a picture of Iron Man from the Marvel website. Cutting round it created a stencil for rolled out red sugarpaste. Removing the yellow sections from the stencil, cutting them out of the plaque and creating insets from rolled out yellow sugar paste then meant I could add it to the top of the cake. The sugarpaste was also used to cover the flat sections representing covers in the pile below. I had intended to put more details on these, but ran out of time. I used white to represent the pages, running a knife down the side to show pages. This was really fiddly and I didn't realise how much time it would take until half way through. (It was only when I was finished that I noticed I'd forgotten to add coloured spines, and had used white all the way round but by that point didn't care!)
















The final task was colouring in the plaque with my edible black marker pen. I copied this from the printout. This actually wasn't as tricky as it looked, and waiting for the icing to dry a bit and harden made a big difference, otherwise it created grooves in the surface.




I was really pleased with it in the end, though if I had to make it again I'd make a plain square cake without the misaligned layers and put more detail in. I have to say though. it was a bit awkward to cut but tasted good!

The final cake looked like this:

German biscuits

These have always been known as german biscuits in my house, but it seems that apart from a few others, the rest of the world knows them as empire biscuits. They hail from Scotland and remind me of home bakeries. You can get them from supermarkets but they're always too dry and when I can nab them from a proper bakey I do.


What is basically two layers of shortbread jammed together with a bit of icing is more than the sum of its parts. Yum yum. The picture unfortunately isn't mine, I shamefully didn't have any glace cherries.

The recipe is slightly adapted from a few sites and makes a great moist but not sticky dough. It makes around 6 complete biscuits or 12 rounds.


6oz plain flour
4oz butter or margarine
2oz caster sugar
Jam
Icing to decorate

1) Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs
OR
use a food processor like I did.
2) Stir in sugar
3) Work into a dough and roll out. Use a fluted cutter around 2in/3in wide and place onto a greased baking tray.
4) Bake for around 10 minutes at 180 C


When cool, jam together with the 'bottom' of the biscuits together. I didn't put the amount of jam because that would involved getting everything sticky measuring it and because if I did you'd all think I have a problem! Add icing and a glace cheery and enjoy!

Teapot Cookies

I got a teapot cookie cutter ages ago and had yet to try it out properly. I made some gingerbread (yes again, but it's yummy) to have with what else but a nice cuppa.

I debated over how to decorate them but decided on simplicity in the end. The hearts and stars are great sprinkles, I've used them loads! I think I'll go and put the kettle on...

Easter bunnies

I tried my hand at biscuits again this Easter, using some of my new cutters. I was a bit worried the bunny faces would work out a bit scary but I was quite pleased with the end result.

The vanilla recipe is as follows:

50 caster

75 margarine

125 plain flour

1 eggs

1) Rub butter into flour intil breadcrumb like in texture.

2) Stir in sugar

3) Add in whisked egg a little at a time (not all may be needed)

4) Form into a soft but not sticky dough

5) Roll out about 5 mm thick onto a floured work surace and cut into shapes

6) Brush tops of each shape with milk

7) Put into a 160 C oven for around 20 minutes until golden.

8) Decorate and enjoy!

I kept the decorations simple, and used cocunut to create a 'fuzzy' look. The duckling was first spread with lemon curd, then dipped in coconut. I think the jumping bunny is the cutest :)

Hope everyone had a happy Easter!

Easter Inspiration

I always seem to post things after an event, such as Christmas, cause that's when I get round to blogging, but I'll be quick off the mark this time and offer a few ideas for Easter.

I love Bakerella'a website, and her cakepops always look great. I did attempt to make some bunny ones but for whatever reason they crumbled when dipping them into the icing. my family labelled these 'suicide bunnies' but ate them all the same. I won't distress you with the pictures. Anyway, how cute are these chick cakepops?

Louise at Cakejournal has released an e-book on Easter treats. Check it out to be able to make these lovely biscuits.

For something simple, these nests are really easy and look great!

Away from the small mammels side of things, there are a few religious Easter ideas too:

I've made an Easter Simnel Cake twice before and it's worth the effort. Can't find the pictures though. You really have to like marzipan though, as it's a fruit cake with a layer of marzipan in the middle and some on top. The 11 'balls' on the top represent the disciples (without Judas). When grilling it don't put it too near the top as you'll get lines on the cake and it really only takes less than a minute.

Hot cross buns proved to be my undoing this week. For some reason they just wouldn't rise at all, and they're supposed to at least double in size before baking. I have an inkling that the sachet of yeast was too small, but try out these from the BBC food website to see if you can improve on my attempt: