Christmas gingerbread - 4/12/11

It's been a while since I posted! I have been making a few cakes, but not so many as I used to. I have a recipe for gingerbread houses, so I decided to try out the recipe to make some gingerbread shapes.

I made different shapes including angels, stars, trees and people

Some of the first batch burnt, so I turned the next batch halfway through

If you want to make them yourself, the recipe is from Good Food magazine (I used a quarter of the quantities given to make this many shapes)

I should probably ice them before I eat them all, but they're so tasty...

House cake for a house warming - 24/9/11

My friends moved to a new flat recently, so i made them a cake for their house warming party. I decided to make a chocolate cake because I already had all the ingredients (and also chocolate cake is tasty!) so I made a loaf cake because the recipe for that is quite simple. Then I cut the top of the cake where it had risen to make a steeper roof, and coated the cake with chocolate ganache.
The doors and windows are made out of fondant icing because I didn't think to get any white chocolate for them!

Front of the house

Back & side of the house

The chimney is a piece of cake and the roof has mini marshmallows along it.

The ganache is quite simple to make:
100ml double cream
150g dark chocolate, broken/chopped into small squares (or dark chocolate chips)

Chop up the chocolate and place in a bowl
Bring the cream to the boil in a saucepan
Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir until it is smooth.
If the cream does not melt all the chocolate, you can melt the mixture over a pan of boiling water like normal chocolate, but the cream should be hot enough to melt it all on its own if you pour it over straight away.

The cake is a recipe for a two pound loaf tin, I made it in a tin 20cm by 10cm (8 inches by 4 inches). The ganache will cover a cake this big quite easily.

Sugar Flowers - 31/3/11

As the last cake hasn't been eaten yet, I decided to try out some more sugar flowers. Most of these flowers were made following or adapting instructions from Sugarcraft Flowers by Claire Webb. (Some of the instruction pages can be found on the 'look inside' previews of the book's Amazon page.)

First of all, I tried some 'pulled flowers'. These are made without cutters, and are shaped just using cocktail stick, fingers  and a knife to cut the petals. They are quite small so slightly fiddly to shape but quite simple as filler flowers or to represent small flowers such as violas or primroses.

Three 'pulled flowers' drying on an egg box.
The centres are made of pins which also attach them to the egg box.

A 'pulled' daffodil drying on an upturned egg cup.
I spent too long fiddling with this and the petals went funny.

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This is a small spray carnation. it's quite simple, just three small flower shapes folded and glued to the stamens in the centre.

Carnation drying on a cutter.

Carnation in my hand to show it from a different angle.

Finally, I made a calla lily in the same way as the purple ones I've made previously. This is slightly smaller than the last ones and turned out a bit better:

Calla lily drying in a jug.

I also made some freesias, but they're not joined together so I haven't taken any pictures of those yet.

More flowers and inlaying - 12/2/11

Some more purple flowers and petals on white sugarpaste. These are fruit cake with a layer of marzipan under the icing again.

Some of the leaves come from the cut-outs of the purple cake below.

I also made a cake with purple as the main colour, with white leaves inlaid into it.

The leaves were cut out of the main colour before it was laid on the cake, and then the white ones inserted.

These will be the last small cakes for a while, as i now need to practise covering with larger pieces of icing.

Sugar flowers - 6/2/11

My first sugar flowers are simple five-petal flowers.They are made of five identical petals which are stuck together with water and then left to dry for a while.

Close up of a flower

Flowers and leaves drying. All cut out with the same cutter.

The sugarpaste is coloured with food colouring paste, not liquid, so the colour is much deeper without making the icing too sticky.
Flowers and leaves on madeira cakes:

Edges of the cake are painted with silver dusting powder.

Bottom of the cake edged with twisted strips again.
The edges of the flower petals are highlighted with silver.

More practice - 1/2/11

To make my practising more interesting, these are chocolate cakes. They don't have marzipan on, just a layer of sugarpaste, which got a some chocolatey crumbs mixed up in it. Perhaps next time I should do two layers of sugarpaste if i don't do marzipan.

A different shaped leaf this time to the ivy leaves.Instead of round rope,
I twisted flat strips to make an interesting texture with less work than the twisted rope!

The same cake, from a different angle.
You can see the join on the corner of the cake which annoys me a little.

The second cake has red icing this time, for a change from blue. This came out a bit better as the icing was thicker.

Twisted rope around the base, and twisted flat strips for the sides.

A long leaf this time for variation.

The next post I'll start on sugarpaste flowers as well.

First attempts - 29/1/11

These were the first cakes I made to ice. They are fruit cakes, approximately 3 inches square.
They're iced with sugarpaste (aka fondant or ready to roll icing) over a layer of marzipan.

First cake. 2 ivy leaves with a band around the base.

Second cake. One ivy leaf with twisted ropes around the edge.

Third cake. Two ivy leaves, no other decorations.

You might be able to see how my covering of the cakes improves from the first to the third one!
Stay tuned for more of my cakes.