80s Healthy Cakes

It's currently half term and I took Monday off to spend some time with my daughter and her friends. On Sunday, we watched Dancing on Ice on television and it was the 80s themes to celebrate the 25th anniversary that Torvill and Dean won the 1984 Winter Olympic with Bolero. Now these kids haven't got a clue what the 80s were about. So I got all excited telling them about Fame, Leg warmers, rara skirts, power ballads, Steve Davis wining the Snooker Championship, Bolero, big perms, the A Team, Care Bears, Tiffany, Aha and men folding their jacket sleeves. I think they found it very amusing. Anyway, I showed them some of the old books from the 80s (my Dad use to work for a book wholesale company and had 40% off the price), when we came across an old cookery book.

This is what we made, a strawberry cream cake, decorated by myself and the kids. I tried to make a healthier version so I reduced the sugar and bought some low fat cream. We only included a tinny weeny amount of butter and milk. I thought it tasted fine, but Mum was not impressed with the low fat cream......I think I may stick with the normal double cream. Do anyone have any suggestions? Low fat cream cheese?

New Year... New Cakes... !

This is my 步步"糕"昇 New Year's Cake... this is a typical chinese greeting at New Years. [Actually, you could use it anytime really when you would wish someone well...] literally translating to "every step high rising". ie. Making ever increasing steps towards success and steady progression.

Cake-dork that I am, I had a bit of a play on the characters to come up with the design 升(=rise), phonetically sounds like 星(=star) hence the rising star design on the chocolate surround... "糕", the word for cake, sounds phonetically like "高" (=high), which is why there are all sorts of puddings/cake-age type dishes served up at new year, to indicate abundance, superiority, things increasing, going up, overflowing I guess... And so, it was... a decadent affair of berries n baileys, nutty praline... homemade chocolate cups, dark and light, dotted with piped ganache swirls and finished with chocolate curls (though I forgot to get a shot of the cake complete with the shavings)...

This one was for dad's birthday... more of the same, though with a toasted hazelnut cream... and properly glazed strawberries so he wouldn't scrunch his nose up at out of season not so sweet strawberries. I did experiment with a nutty meringue, to add an crunch to the filling, though the duvet of cream just rendered it redundant with it's soft embrace, I suppose the only way around that would be to assemble and serve immediately... though then how to get the charlotte fingers to keep a hold onto the cake without time to set to shape... hmmm...?

Secret Santa and More Cupcakes

Every year at the office we have a Secret Santa and I always get such wonderful pressies. I must be a very good girl......Hee! Hee! Last year I was given a small selection of chocolates from Harrods. Yum......I can still remember the taste.. Look what I got this year:

I'm really please with my present...Thank You Santa! I love it. I took it to the office Christmas party (no I'm not that sad to read it at the bar) so I can take it home for the weekend. Considering the amount of alcohol I had I still remembered my book.

This evening I had the urge to bake some cakes, but I didn't have the ingredients to make anything from the book, so I made the usual cupcakes. My daughter was so please to be able to help me as we haven't bake together for a long time. Instead of cream and icing we used melted Belgium milk chocolate and some sprinkles to decorate the cakes. Hasn't my little rascal done well with the decoration. We will be taking some to my Mums and to a good friend who we will be visiting tomorrow.

Wemake - Webake

What a fantastic day we had last Saturday!

We have been preparing for the Wemake fair since August this year, experimenting with various menus, coming up with different flavours, working out the logistics of how were going to complete our mini challenge...

So we are happy to say that it all came together in the end and I think it was a success ! The most important thing was that we had lots of happy customers and got some great feedback. So a BIG thank you to you all for letting us share our passion for treats with you!

We both took Thursday and Friday off work to prepare for the day. We were baking like mad from Thursday (till Saturday early morning ... I mean very early morning). To ease the stress Mary had some music on and singing at the same time (her poor neighbours had to put up with her singing and the smell of cakes with the torture of not getting any).

Gracie was up to her eyeballs in cake batter... cheesecake mixing and watercolours ! Oh yes, watercolours indeed. In a moment of 'inspiration', she decided that we would bring our cakes to life in a customised menu... she had much fun with it... maybe too much fun, as it detracted from the baking which then had to go on until the wee early hours of Saturday morning... Probably not helped by her typical 'last minute' alterations to her cake designs either ;) - the fiddly work of the chocolate surrounds took longer than she had anticipated, though were definitely worth the effort...!

It took a good hour to set up the stand with some help and artistic direction from the lovely boys (thanks Jackson and both Alex's!). All whilst Mary was quickly piping away to finish off her cupcakes...

Our first customer was a toddler girl who had been curiously watching this flurry of activity with her father whilst we were setting up... She picked the 'OoOoo Chocolate' cupcakes - which turned out to be a shrewd choice as it ended up being our best seller and were quickly sold out before we knew it! As the day progressed, our cakes, truffles and other sweet temptations were rapidly disappearing before our eyes. We received positive feedback throughout the event, with many asking us whether we have our own cafe/shop... So that was very encouraging !

By the end of it all we were both completely shattered and ready for a good night's sleep ! :) Once again, thanks for all the great feedback... would love to hear what you the rest of you thought !

Birthday cakes birthday cakes...

Even though am supposedly focusing efforts for the fair - I did had a couple of distractions last week - 2 birthday cakes... and one that I was only given notice of in the morning, for the very same evening - yep, so I only had a couple of hours after work to come up with an idea, make it and deliver... I really should be more stringent about lead times... :)

Last minute madness: White chocolate and praline decorated with fresh Strawberries and a mixed berry creme.

Second Cake: A twist on the blackened forest - with the addition of a praline sponge, Baileys creme filling and decorated with special kirsch laced chocolate surprise cups (I loved making those!)

Final Preparations and Nigella

I've managed to upload my photo of Nigella ('the' Domestic Goddess) from my phone, don't you think she is so pretty and I like her fluffy white coat. I wanted to get a signed copy of her Christmas book, but the queue was so long and it was pouring down with rain outside....nevermind.

Last Sunday went really well, we got very good feedback from our tasters (thank you darlings) and we have now finalised our menu. Yay. Grace even popped over to my place for a quality inspection of my green tea cake today.....Hee! Hee! My favourite cake last Sunday has to be the Black Forest Cake (photo above) which I only got a bite from my husband's portion (Grace, you must make me some more, otherwise you may find one missing next week from our stock :)).

Most of the packaging has been bought and organised, this is just a sample:

The pretty apron was given to us by Alex and we will be wearing this on the day. I'm looking forward to next Saturday.

First snow

So, it was the first snow yesterday, what luck! Could it get any more festive for our Great Tasting afternoon! :)

BIG THANKS to all our tasters and cake munchers... it was a really fun afternoon, the cakes were in abundance and the mulled wine was flowing... Of course, there were some feedback forms on hand to help us on our way... afterall, "there's no such thing as a free cake !";)

CakeRoll...

Cupcakes Galore:

* Matcha Green Tea cupcakes

* Chocolate Chestnut

* Lemon Glazed and white cherry

* Carrot Cake

* Choco-Banaramel

Other Cakes:

* Cranberry Walnut Brownies

* Cheesecake Brownie bites

* Pistachio and white chocolate mousse mini gateaux

* Mini Blackforest Gateaux

* Baked Vanilla-Caramel-Raspberry Cheesecake

* Mincepie Streusel slices - (I made a batch of these, and put them back in the oven just as people were arriving, to warm through... and of course - me with my less than effective memory forgot all about them, and they didn't make it out for the party ! Doh! Sucha muppet! )

Non-Seasonal...

So I had an idea... well, it's a been on my mind for a while, though I had't found the key ingredient until Saturday...! Okay, I may have been a bit casual in my efforts to track it down, though still... it has been on the to do list for sometime...!

What is the big idea? Well... since we decided that we would be predominantly cupcakes, you may have noticed that I do tend to veer a lot from the brief. Well, who wants to be too predictable and is so much fun coming up with new ideas. Anyways - as usual I am digressing... So, whilst thinking about cupcakes and cupcake cases... I have been wondering what I could use other than your usual paper muffin/cake cases. Then it came to me... cake and ice cream, cake and ice cream... what about an ice cream cone as the shell for my cupcakes! Though obviously I needed the sort that could stand up on their own... hence the search for the right cone...

Best of both worlds... especially as the weather turns a little too chilly for the real thing... I hope you agree...! All that is missing is the 99 Flake... next time perhaps... and what about neopolitan sponge... :)