2013

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New Year's Eve is one of the first casualties of parenthood. I am pretty sure that I was asleep on the sofa in front of Jools Holland by 11pm last year. My own sofa. Nobody wants to babysit, nobody wants to imagine a way home across town at whatever-o-clock when the cabs are scarce and pricey . From about October I start to have little fantasies about countryside new years eves, snug and up to our eyeballs in wine and food with friends whilst the squids snooze upstairs. It's not quite raving but it's as close as I can hope for. WELL...The most magical invitation sailed our way this year - welcoming 2013 in Cornwall, staying with my awesome schoolfriend and king of comedy Felix in the most beautiful giant house with views of the sea. By the second day Pablo was trying to haggle for extra nights:
"How many more sleeps can we stay?"
"Three more."
"How about Five?"
He was in heaven with daily walks to see fairy toadstools and hunt out crabs, spot pirate ships on the horizon, play pinball, swim or watch Avengers on the giant television screen with our adoring fellow guests, who doted on him and fed him Haribo endlessly. What a treat.  

New Year's Eve we did feasted on chilli and Katie D's perfect pavlova with cherries, plus my first ever (and definitely delicious) chocolate mousse. Pablo (aka Spiderman) was allowed up late to wander down to the local pub to see the pirate fancy dress competition and midnight fireworks. New Years day was pancakes, leftover puddings, swimming and a Dark Knight marathon. Nothing could be finer. 

Christmas bake

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The couple of weeks leading up to Christmas were INTENSE, mostly due to baking commitments (ok, and whims...) Here's a few things we got up to:

L-R from top...

  1. cutting heart shaped doughnuts
  2. double choc 70th birthday cake
  3. making christmas biscuits with Elton John
  4. incredible rolls by Konch
  5. red velvet christmas cake
  6. finished doughnut heart
  7. cassis mince pies (with cinnamon-chic ice cream)
  8. our gingerbread cabin
  9. proud biscuit baker
  10. all iced and packed up for the school party
  11. cinnamon-choc ice cream getting going
  12. satisfying gingerbread poke by Pablo

kiss me cake

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Just had a major weekend of parties, I think I may now have more prosecco running through my veins than anything else. Despite the hours of sleep I can never recover, and the sense of impending doom that accompanies most of my 30-something hangovers, it's always worth it for the chance of a long, rambling catch up with beloved old friends. Had to make little cakes for them too of course, and as I've been dying to make some meringues I thought I'd make this my excuse. 

Both cakes were 6" versions of this recipe (1 x that recipe made both these 6" 3-layer cakes), though I made Chris's yellow cake funfetti inside and Liz's pink one was three layers of different pink. The meringues were strawberry and black pepper from this recipe by the amazing Meringue Girls:

Strawberry & Black Pepper Meringue Kisses

150g egg whites
300g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
50g frozen strawberries
1/4 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper

This recipe makes about 50 (I still have a whole tub of them and have eaten LOADS, but also hoping they'll double for toadstools around the gingerbread house I may never get round to making...) so you can definitely attempt less. Also I played around with different sizes, which is fine if you are keeping an eye on them whilst cooking.

Make the strawberry coulis by heating the strawberries with a pinch of sugar until they break down, then whizz them into a paste and cool.

Heat oven to 200C. Line a deep baking tray with greaseproof paper and heat the 300g caster sugar until the edges start to melt. This is apparently to help the sugar to dissolve into the egg whites. I am pretty sure I overheated my sugar because the edges were melted solid and I had to chuck them away. Still, it was only about 50g sugar and I just replaced it straight from the packet and all was FINE! Turn the oven down to 100C.

Wipe your mixing bowl & whisk attachment dry with lemon juice & paper towel to remove any possible grease, then add egg whites. Whisk slowly at first, allowing bubbles to form, then turn up the speed and whisk until you have medium peaks of fluffy meringue. At this point start adding the sugar spoon by spoon and continue whisking until you have a stiff, glossy meringue - about 5 minutes. Stir through the coulis and add black pepper to taste. I hardly added any black pepper and the taste was pretty strong, just as a heads up... 

ready to pipe!

ready to pipe!

Turn a disposable icing bag inside out and paint some lines in red, pink - or, in my case, electric pink - up the side. Turn back the right way out (awkward!) and fill with yummy meringue. Cut a hole approx 1/2in in diameter and pipe meringue kisses onto a lined baking sheet. Mine came out great, but in hindsight I could have put a bit more into my stripes as some were very feint, so don't be shy with the gel colours. 

Bake 30-40 minutes at 100C. To ensure they stay a bit mallowy in the middle, be sure to take them out as soon as they lift cleanly from the baking sheet. 

I thought these were so easy to make, lots of fun and make fantastic cake toppers. Definitely going to experiment with more colours and flavours... in the imaginary universe where I have infinite spare time. 

(yes, they do look like nipples)

leafy goodness

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So pleased with how my Thanksgiving decorations have turned out... I've made a zillion chains for our pop up dinner. I drew a maple leaf onto some foam board and then cut out about 20 at a time from Pablo's IKEA drawing paper roll. After sewing together 40 per chain, I folded them back into a stack and dipped them in orange, pink, brown and green inks and popped them on the radiator to dry. So quick! What to do with them for the rest of the year...

Halloweenies

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Excuse for a party at Edie's...

sunday sunday

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Overjoyed to be invited to a Mexican birthday brunch today, and commissioned to provide the cake! I spent the week constructing a rad sugar skull to go on top (another red velvet cake was requested). ​ Felix & Catherine (the birthday girl) live in a big warehouse apartment built for parties, and had made a giant pot of hot chilli for us all. Pablo got stuck into the pinatas (multiple!) and thought all his Christmases had come at once. 

A highlight was Katie D's incredible margarita meringue cake, which I'm going to try and beg the recipe for. Watch this space... ​

october-fest

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Why is everyone born in October? The obvious answer is because we are all AWESOME, but either way I am struggling to cope with the amount of celebrating going on. It's just not possible to ever catch up on the sleep lost to a night of excessive prosecco and destroying Heart songs at Karaoke, all for the worthy cause of a birthday or ten. And then there are the cakes to be baked, decorations to do, gifts to forget, heart-to-hearts to cringe over the next day... My super soul sister Antonia's big fat 30th was particularly unmissable and especially messy. The theme was Brazil & samba and gorgeous Chris turned up topless and painted gold, there were lots of feathered headdresses and tons of lovely, loved up friends who are more like family. I made a giant red velvet two tier megacake topped with a feathered Carnivalesque Ryan Gosling (obvs), and many, many tassels and banners and sparkly things! This one was just about worth the suffering...

eating rainbows

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The most delicious one year old in all the land was celebrating her very first birthday, and I got to make the cake! Holly isn't a super fluffy pink girl, but I thought I'd indulge and make a mega-pink cake regardless, because I'd been wanting to for AGES, and I was certain Holly wouldn't mind at all. The word "ombre" has been annoying me everywhere lately, so I thought I'd be bang on trend and copy this beautiful cake and this beautiful cake (I just realised both of those are from February - once again I have failed to be bang on trend...) 

I was going for neon...​

I was going for neon...​

Holly's birthday cake

The recipe I used is this one and I have to say I've been looking for a really all-American white birthday cake recipe forEVER, and this ticks all the boxes. I've reproduced it below, doubled for the purposes of this cake, and with conversions for the UK. I've also altered it for use with plain flour (cake flour isn't available over here, anyone know why?!)

440g plain flour 
8 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
8 egg whites (i bought a carton of liquid egg white and used 240g)
675g caster sugar
340g butter (room temperature)
1 pint/473ml milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons almond extract

Heat oven to 170C, line four 9in round pans (I only have one so I had to do four rounds in the oven! Fun.)

Measure the sifted flour, baking powder and salt. Then sift together three times. Beat the egg whites until they are foamy, then gradually add half a cup of the sugar until soft peaks form. 

Cream the butter and once it's definitely creamy add the remaining sugar and cream them together until light and fluffy (this can take a while.) Alternate adding the dry mixture and the milk a little bit at a time, beating until smooth in between each addition. Mix in the almond and vanilla and then beat in the meringue until all is well combined. 

Weigh your mix and then use the scales to split it evenly between 4 bowls. Add varying degrees of gel food colour and mix each thoroughly (I used Americolor Electric Pink). Pour each different colour into a different tin and bake 30-35 minutes. Leave to cool in tin for 10 mins before transferring to a wire rack and cooling completely. 

Once the cakes are completely cool you can begin to ice. I wanted a reliable, yummy buttercream so used Sweetapolita's whipped vanilla frosting - it's super easy and delicious and perfect for birthday cakes. The link above gives you exactly the right amount for this four layer cake. Once made I iced the cake between layers with a little vanilla frosting and a little raspberry jam, to offset the almond in the cake. Then I stacked and crumb-coated the cake and sat it in the fridge for an hour or so.  

To do the rainbow swirly icing I split the icing into three bowls and mixed each with different colour gel icing (Americolor Electric Pink and Electric Blue, I think, but barely any of each). I started with the top of the cake, smoothing it so that the icing hung over the sides a little, then I very roughly added rows in different colours to the sides. Once the icing was on, I vaguely followed these instructions from Apt 2B Baking Co to swirl the icing upwards using the end of the palette knife and the cake turntable. Topped with some garish sprinkles and edible gold stars it was pretty much PERFECT! 

We had to miss the party and zip off on holiday to Wales, but I hear Holly ate the entire cake, and loved it.

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