I have an obsessive personality, and lately I have been micromanaging my apartment into the perfect blend of ‘accidental’ chic and purposeful perfection.
As a break from all of that, I decided to hop into the kitchen to make some jam drops.
First step is to gather up all the ingredients. Story about the butter – Simon Johnson left Echire butter that was 2 days before the expiry date on their shelves and we bought some unknowingly. As an apology they gave us a block of Lescure for free because there wasn’t any Echire left. Not complaining!
Vanilla from Heilala – supposedly award winning and whatnot. I haven’t tried out enough pastes to make a proper comment but seems good so far.
Also, in line with the chia craze, I got a bottle of raspberry jam with chia from Henry Jones & Co. Yes – I’m always searching for the new and novel. That makes this recipe vaguely healthy, no?
Recently, a friend had a birthday and I baked a simple batch of chocolate cupcakes for her. Because it was such a plain project I thought I’d try to photograph it a little differently and decided to style it sitting on a SOMA cube motif. I like how the shadows turned out.
There’s my set up – light coming from the right from my apartment window, black board at the back. Taken with a 60mm 2.8f lens.
Yes, I know that my supposed every Monday and Thursday posts have not been forthcoming for an entire four months. The truth is, life caught up with me and the other truth is that I was lazy. I didn’t want to face the mountain of dirty dishes that comes with baking and decorating, particularly with the more complex projects that I embark on.
Anyway, last night I decided to push myself and baked off a quick and easy batch of friands and they turned out great!
These took almost no time at all to make and best of all, very little dishes to wash up because there was no creaming or whisking or anything fancy involved. And berries makes everything look pretty.
Raspberry Friands
Ingredients (makes 6)
1/4 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup almond meal
2 egg whites
1/3 cup self raising flour
1/4 cup raspberries
Method
Heat oven to 180 Celcius.
Pour all ingredients except the raspberries into a bowl and mix well together.
Spoon mixture into friand tins or cupcake ones if you don’t have them.
Press the raspberries into the top.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden and springs back when pressed.
I have this bright idea of decorating my Christmas tree with edible objects every year. I decided on pretzel wreaths this year – simple, effective and long-lasting.
This isn’t a particularly original idea – I saw this on Pinterest a while ago but wanted to make my own and put my own spin on them. I used up my extra leaves and flowers from a different project and did some of the others with a variety of sprinkles.
Pretzel Wreaths
Ingredients and Materials
Chocolate, melted (read how I melt chocolate the easy way) Mini pretzels Waxed paper Sprinkles or desired decorations Ribbon
Method
Watch the YouTube video I made below:
And here they are on my Christmas tree! I thoroughly enjoyed the process and I hope you did as well!
I am sorry I have not been posting – I went away to Europe (thoroughly enjoyed myself – I now want to move to Germany for 6 months if I have the chance!) and have just been so busy catching up with everything when I got back that I just did not have the time or energy to come up with any inspiration. Things have changed though and today I finally got round to making something.
To be honest, I am not the most talented when it comes to Swiss rolls – more often than not they become cake sandwiches. This was a slightly fancier version as well as I had decided to pipe holly leaves and cranberries as a motif.
Recipe as follows:
Christmas Swiss Roll
Ingredients and equipment
2 eggs 110g optima flour (an Asian sponge cake mix) 15ml water 1 tsp vanilla essence 30g butter, melted Food colouring of choice 20cm x 30cm baking pan Silicone coated baking paper Disposable piping bags
Method
Line tin with silicone coated baking paper.
Whisk eggs, flour, water and vanilla together until light in colour and double in volume – this may take up to 5-10 minutes depending on the speed of your mixer.
Add melted butter to the mixture and fold in until full incorporated.
Remove a tablespoon of mixture and add colour as desired – in my case I made one tablespoon red and the other green. Place coloured mixture into piping bags.
Pipe patterns as desired onto the baking paper in the tin. Place in freezer until fully set (1-2 hours).
Preheat oven to 160°C (fan-forced).
Pour remaining batter over frozen pattern and even out with spatula. Bake for 8-10 minutes.
Remove from oven and roll. Fill with desired filling.
Tip: Roll the cake as soon as it is out of the oven to prevent cracks from forming and make sure the cake is not over baked.
Just a simple project – hopefully I get into more complex things in the near future but for now – that’s it! Glad to be back.
Do you like my chocolate boy and girl? I came up with the idea for it because I wanted to use up my sugar flowers and edible pearls. I have great plans for it – plans that hopefully become reality tomorrow if I can find it in me to get it done.
My sincere apologies – I have tried and failed to juggle working 6 days, looking after a blog, planning a trip to Europe as well as attempting to have a semblance of a social life on top of all of that. Am hoping I will have more time once I return from my trip to get back to regular posting but until then, posts may extremely sporadic.
I’m sorry there was no post on Thursday. The cake in the photo above is the reason for the delay. I got a last minute call requesting for a pillow cake for 42 people and pretty much spent my week either at work being a dentist and managing a practice at the peak period of school holidays and coming home to work on this cake. To say that I am exhausted is an understatement. Truth be told, I don’t even know how I managed to get both jobs done. Adrenaline, I assume.
As a result of that experience, I have decided that I will only be posting once a week on Sunday instead of twice as I was doing previously. The reason is obvious – I just don’t have enough time and as my posts and projects increase in complexity it takes more and more time to complete as well.
Anyway, on to the cake! It was not my original idea as the client had this cake in mind, so the structure and colour scheme of the cake was already prescribed. However, the finishing touches were and my favourite part of it was definitely the tiara which I designed from scratch at 1am on Thursday in bed, trying not to fall asleep.
Zoe’s Pillow Cake
Chocolate Tiara
Ingredients and Materials
40g white chocolate, melted Disposable piping bag Waxed paper Tiara template (available for download here) Edible pearls Tweezers
Method
Watch the YouTube video below for full instructions:
Chocolate Cake Recipe
Ingredients (for 2 tiers, one 8 inch round and one 10 inch square)
LIST A
750g dark chocolate, chopped 750ml water 840g brown sugar
LIST B
600g butter, room temperature 840g brown sugar 12 eggs 1080g self raising flour 60g cocoa powder
Method
Preheat oven to 160°C (fan forced).
Line all baking tins with baking paper.
Combine all ingredients from List A in a microwave safe bowl and cook in 30 second intervals until ingredients are melted, stirring in between each interval. Mixture may look like it has split slightly but that is okay. Set aside.
Working off the ingredients from List B, cream butter and sugar in a food processor until light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time, beating and scraping the sides of the bowl down between each addition.
Pour warm mixture prepared from List A into the bowl and mix. Add self-raising flour and cocoa powder and mix until well combined. Mixture will be fairly runny.
Bake in baking tins – two 8-inch rounds and two 10-inch squares. Baking time will vary – about 50-75 minutes depending on the size of the cake. Cake is done when a skewer when inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Wrap cakes immediately in cling wrap after they are removed from the baking tins and freeze.
Chocolate Buttercream
Ingredients
500g butter, softened 500g icing sugar 125g dark chocolate, melted (my favourite method for melting chocolate outlined here)
Method
Cream butter and sugar together in mixer until light and fluffy.
Pour melted chocolate in and mix until well incorporated.
Assembly
Ingredients and Materials
3.5kg fondant (I used Satin Ice) Dowels Decorations as desired 6 inch round cardboard base 8 inch square cardboard base 13 inch square cake board
Method
Roll 1kg fondant into a 14 inch square and use that to cover the cake board. Leave to set for at least a day before placing the cake on top of it.
Stack round cakes fill with buttercream. Cake should be sitting on a 6 inch round cardboard base with a punched hole at the center for dowel to go through
Trim into a shape of a pillow using a serrated knife and cover with buttercream. Put into fridge to firm up. Roll 1kg of fondant into a 17 inch disc and cover the cake.
Repeat with square cakes, rolling 1.4kg of fondant into a 19 inch square before covering.
Place 4 dowels into the square cake to support the weight of the round cake above.
Place square cake on cake board. Insert a taller dowel that spans both tiers into the cake and slide round cake down onto it to prevent movement of tiers.
Decorate as desired.
And that’s it! Other decorations that I used included fondant flowers, quilting the fondant with a stitch tool and ropes for the tassels and trim of the white pillow. The pink pillow was trimmed with royal icing.
I apologize – the photography of this cake was not what it should have been. I had about 10 minutes to photograph it before delivering it thus the very substandard image!
It was quite an experience, but what is going to be an even more exciting experience is when I go to London in a couple of weeks! I will be attending a cake decorating course there so it’s going to be pretty exciting to learn more techniques and improve my skills. Can’t wait to go – I fully intend to check myself into a day spa for a couple of days to unwind. The last few months have been overwhelming.
I have an obsessive personality, and lately I have been micromanaging my apartment into the perfect blend of ‘accidental’ chic and purposeful perfection.
I’m sorry there was no post on Thursday. The cake in the photo above is the reason for the delay. I got a last minute call requesting for a pillow cake for 42 people and pretty much spent my week either at work being a dentist and managing a practice at the peak period of school holidays and coming home to work on this cake. To say that I am exhausted is an understatement. Truth be told, I don’t even know how I managed to get both jobs done. Adrenaline, I assume.
