Shelter's Cake Time

I've been looking forward to Shelter's Cake Time for a while now as I had organised a small event in the office. I signed early this month and got the fund raiser pack filled with posters, stickers, a collection box and recipe suggestions. How cool is that! We decided that one person will bake two batches of cakes/cupcakes for one day of the week. I started first with a batch of carrot cupcakes and orange cupcakes this Wednesday.

[baking late at night]

[I had to take these photos quickly as there were hungry colleague to feed ...Hee! Hee! That explains why someone appears to have poked their finger in one of them...Hee hee hee!]

The carrot cupcakes were all sold out before lunchtime and the orange cupcakes sold out in the afternoon. The little collection box is half full already. What a result!

Anyway today, my lovely colleague and fellow knitter baked a Coffee and Brazil Nuts cake and a Walnut and Date Loaf. The coffee cakes sold out late morning and there is just a teeny bit of the loaf left.

[Left the camera at home so had to use my mobile]

The money will go to Shelter helping homeless people or people facing loosing their home, especially in the current economic situation. I've asked one of my colleague to count the money and will post this later.

Jigglety pigglety

This weekend was a pretty busy one for me, lots of bakes and not enough time !

Mother's day is a wonderful celebration of mum's everywhere! It reminds us all how we probably spend too much time taking our mother's for granted - and allows us this reprieve to show our unspoken gratitude on this one day in March. How easily we are let off for the other 364 days of our careless offspring behaviours... ;)

Mum was treated to the beautiful displays at the orchid show in Victoria this weekend. It was a lot of fun with us girls, me mum and Maria... cheekily pointing out some of the less obviously attractive breeds of orchids in a very childish fashion - think mum enjoyed the day!

Bakes - mum got one of my Swiss apple pies. I have no idea if it is at all swiss, though it got it's name, as it is my version of an apple pie my dad used to get at the old Swiss Centre in Leicester Square. Baring in mind I was pretty young- I don't even remember if I was even 10 when they used to have them - it was always going to be a bit hit 'n miss to see if I could recreate this old gem. It has taken a couple of refinements, though it's not a bad interpretation, considering it is based entirely on a childhood memory. Chunky apple, topped with an almond meringue crust and toasted flaked almonds and lovingly presented on a suitably retro plate.

Alex's mum got something a little different - a little more ornate. I didn't have time to think up a new cake combo, so it was a mixed berries and white chocolate mousse cake for her. Topped with juicy berries... Not a big leap from previous offerings, but it's still kind of pretty, though those darned strawberries - just won't stand up straight and created a slightly wonky border... :)

What's baking...?

It has been a while,though still been busy baking... 

A few new experimentations, many first times, molton chocolate soufflé, pear and almond frangipane. mochi and even tried my hand at sugarpaste roses. :) These made very cute decorations for my citrus cupcakes, not really a fan of sweet sweet icing, though I figured the lemony citrus would cut through the sugar, I think it works... 

Mochi was a different no-bake experiment, I have made them before with varying degrees of success, as the sticky sticky glutinous rice flour is just too fiddly and sticky to handle, though I was hankering for the delicate soft

 texture, so soft and satisfying when you bite into freshy made mochi. Yummy! My fillings: the usual red aduki bean filling, and also made the chinese variety - fresh toasted peanuts, sesame and coconut.

 The contrast of the fragrant crunchy crushed nuts and sesame against the squidgy soft mochiness... mMMmmm... 

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!)