Cake decorating class #2- parcel cake

My second cake decorating class - and the first time we actually made anything - resulted in this parcel cake, above. I think it turned out really well and it's definitely something I could make for someone's birthday!

We were told to bring a square cake to the class with us, so I used a Jamie Oliver recipe which I found here. Unfortunately the cake was quite flat - probably only 1.5 inches or so thick - so I ended up making two, and sandwiching them together with buttercream.

At the beginning of the class, I was told to spread a thin layer of buttercream around the sides of the cake. It hadn't occured to me to turn the cake upside down so the top was perfectly flat until Lorna told me to!

Some people in the class had already covered their cake with buttercream and fondant but I didn't see the point of doing that in advance when I wasn't entirely confident about doing it and would rather Lorna showed me how - I'd only ever done it once before, whereas I got the impression some of the other people had done it countless times.

I used Dr Oetker's roll-out icing in chocolate flavour as I thought it would go nicely with the chocolate cake.

Next we made the ribbon to go on the top. Below is Lorna's ribbon cutter which I borrowed, on a piece of green rolled-out fondant. You could just use a knife or a pizza cutter would work quite well.

A piece of 'ribbon'

Cut out two and lay them across the cake.

These are bow cutters - again I borrowed Lorna's. You could just cut the shapes out with a knife but this way made sure they were the same size and shape.

Take the bottom two pieces of the bow - which are angled at the end - and fold over the tops to make them look like a fan. Stick those ends onto the centre of the ribbon. Then fold over the top pieces so you have a loop. Stick the loop on the cake, standing up, to make the top part of the bow. Finally fold a small piece of fondant over the knot in the middle of the bow.

I think I will also enter this in We Should Cocoa as the challenge from Chele  this month is "something green".

Mothers' Day Card

My Mothers' Day card unfortunately wasn't quite as successful as the cake... I bought a pack of five pop-up cards that came with a flower insert, but absolutely no instructions on how to make them pop up! I looked online for tips and tutorials and tried folding the card every which way, but just couldn't do it!

 
This is about as far as I got... it stands out from the card a bit but doesn't really pop up! I covered the base of the flower pot with stripey paper, and shaded the flowers with coloured pencils and added a sticky glitter heart to the centre of each one.

This is the front of the card. I covered the top half in pink paper and the bottom half in the same stripey paper as the inside, and added a piece of ribbon along the join. I used a "happy Mothers' Day" outline sticker and some flower outline stickers on the top.

Mothers' Day Mimosa Cake

When the random letter generator picked out M as the letter of the month for Alphabakes, I was really pleased. It's not difficult to think of ingredients or cakes beginning with the letter M, and it's perfect timing as Mother's Day is in March! I'd already decided to take my mum a cake when I go down to see her (even though I'd have to be careful, with the journey involving a 15 minute walk, two trains and a car) and I'd also bought a new cake mould I wanted to try out, from www.siliconmoulds.com. They sell silicon moulds (duh) in all sorts of shapes, including individual alphabet letters. For just a couple of pounds I bought myself an M and a U.... So I could spell out mum!

I had loads of ideas for cakes beginning with M - even though I could have just entered a "mum" cake into Alphabakes, I wanted the actual cake to begin with M as well. Maltesers popped into my mind right away, but I can definitely remember from my childhood that my mum has strong feelings about maltesers - only I can't remember if it's because she really likes them, or if it's the one type of chocolate she hates! I had a horrible feeling it was the latter so thought I'd better not make a malteser cake. Though mum, if you're reading this and you do like them - you can have one next time! (Editor's note - I checked and she doesn't like them, phew!)

I also thought of millefeuille - but that wouldn't have worked in this mould - and mississippi mud pie, but my dad doesn't like chocolate. I kept coming back to one particular word - mimosa. I knew it was a type of cocktail and also a type of flower, but couldn't remember any more about it. It was interesting to find via google that there are two types of mimosa cake - one that is based on the yellow flower, and appears to be a traditional Italian dessert containing chantilly cream and is lemon flavoured, and the other a type of cake that uses the ingredients from a mimosa cocktail - champagne and orange juice! I decided to go with the latter as it seemed more of a treat and quite good for Mothers' Day.

I found a recipe I liked the sound of here by Shayla Ebsen - check out the site.

It's a US recipe so all the measurements are in cups. Luckily, my boyfriend's mum bought me a handy set of measuring cups on her holiday to America last year - each one is marked "one cup", "half cup", "quarter cup" and so on, right down to a quarter teaspoon. So that made measuring out the ingredients really easy!

The recipe called for a cup of champagne so I used cava. It bubbled when I added it to the cake mix!

Folding the whisked egg whites into the cake mix

Here are the moulds I bought - they are about six inches big and two inches deep, roughly

They're justified, and they're ancient.....

I can't spell....

Only kidding! I decided I wanted to sandwich two cakes together rather than slice one in half to fill it, so I made two of each letter. However as I only had one 'M', this meant putting the mould in the oven four times over, so the process took a fair while!

The only problem I had was with the filling. I followed the recipe, which involved: mixing sugar, cornstarch, grated orange peel and salt. Adding freshly squeezed orange juice, water and egg yolks.  Cook over medium heat until the mixture begins to thicken, stirring constantly. Continue to cook for two more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted and combined. Allow the filling to cool completely before spreading it between the cake layers.



Sounds fine, right? Even though the mixture seemed quite thick when it had cooled, it was still pretty soft, unlike buttercream which I would say is comparatively stiff. When I sandwiches the two pieces of the cake together, the filling totally squidged out (technical term there) and looked rubbish! So to rectify it I whipped up some orange-flavoured buttercream and added some of the orange filling to it. I then spread a thin layer of the original orange filling over the cake and then added the buttercream on top.

I decided to decorate the cake with flowers and used mainly wafer flowers from Dr Oetker. I also used a flower plunger cutter with some fondant icing

 I also used a butterfly cutter with some fondant, but the fondant was too soft, even though I did mix it with some gum tragacanth. Maybe I didn't do it right - hopefully this is something I will learn on my cake decorating course!

Even so I think it looks pretty cute

The cake tasted nice - it was quite dense and not too sweet and there was definitely a hint of orange. Not sure whether I would have tasted the champagne/cava if I didn't know it was in there, but I thought the cake turned out pretty well, and my mum liked it!

So obviously I am entering my Mothers' Day Mimosa 'Mum' cake into this month's Alphabakes!

I'm updating this to send it to Vadrhini's Bake Fest, as the theme is Mother's Day and baking for our mums. For some reason Mother's Day is March in the UK but it seems to be in May in a lot of other countries! The blog event is hosted by TangyMind and  Vardhini.

The birthday boys are 2

My boyfriend's nephews turn 2 tomorrow and I wanted to make them each a birthday card (they are twin boys) -but had to bear in mind the cards couldn't involve any small pieces that might fall off and get swallowed!

So I decided it was best to stick to die-cuts and stickers. For the first card, I bought some glitter 'outer space' stickers and covered a square card blank in blue paper. I added the stickers, including one that is a speech bubble, and on that I put an outline sticker of 'happy birthday' and the number 2.

For the animal card, I bought a decoupage set that just needed the shapes cutting out. I used foam adhesive pads between each layer to make a 3D effect. I covered a white square card blank in yellow paper, and I already had a packet of die-cut balloons at home so I overlapped three of them at the top of the card, and added a 'happy birthday' outline sticker and a red number 2.

I think this is the first time I've made a birthday card for a child so it's hard to know what a 2-year old would like - I thought I would stick to bright colours, simple shapes, and while I think the animals are good, I'm not sure if the space theme is a bit too grown-up for a 2-year old - but I'm sure he won't care!

Novelty cake decorating course: lesson 1, the equipment

Cake decorating classes can be great fun and so useful if you want to expand your repertoire of cakes or techniques. I signed up for an 8-week evening class at my local adult education college - which incidentally is a lot cheaper than taking a private course, as adult education is government-subsidised. I think I'm paying around £70 for 8 two-hour sessions - a bargain! Though that was before I found out what equipment I would need to buy....

I would also point out that this is not the first cake decorating class I've done. I did a one-off cupcake decorating class, which was my first foray into the world of cake decorating, but is a million miles away from the level of skill I want to achieve. I also did a four-week evening class last year, which I haven't yet blogged about - I hadn't started this blog at the time, and I was saving the posts for a rainy day! They will go up soon - but it would help if Alphabakes came out with I, B or D any time soon! My point is though that the class I'm now taking didn't require any previous level of experience, but novelty cakes are obviously a step above standard cake decorating. There was one person in the class who didn't seem to have done anything before and was aware that she might struggle; at the other end of the scale there were some women who had taken every course on offer at this college and made passing references to covering their cake with sugarpaste at home to save time- which is something I think I will probably need help with! So there is clearly a range of abilities in the class and for anyone considering a cake decoration class, I would recommend one specifically aimed at beginners if you haven't done it before.

So last night was the first class and it didn't start too well. We'd been given a list of things to bring for the first session - a cake drum, a cake dummy, some sugarpaste, a rolling pin, icing sugar and food paste colouring - but some people had forgotten, so the tutor decided we wouldn't actually make anything this week and would go through the class plan and equipment list instead. I was a bit disappointed as it seemed a waste of a lesson and I'd been hoping to get started making something, even though in the end I did learn some useful stuff about different pieces of equipment.

The class is taught by Lorna, who seemed to really know her stuff, and was also willing to listen to what types of cake we wanted to make over the next few weeks. This particular course is a novelty cake decorating course, so we would be focusing on shaping cakes and creating cakes that look like... well, I don't want to give it away just yet! But let's just say shoes will feature heavily in the next few weeks' blogging :-)

So after introducing ourselves and explaining what we wanted to get out of the course, Lorna launched into the list of equipment. She was very good at answering questions and passing on tips, so in the absence of any photos from this week's class, I thought I'd share some of her insights here.

So for the novelty cake course I will need:

- CMC/tylose powder. CMC is Sodium Carboxymethyl Cellulose Gum, an artificial product that is used as a thickener. For instance you add it to sugarpaste to make it hard (i.e. turning it into modelling paste). The rough quantity is half a teaspoon of CMC to 250g sugarpaste.

- Cornflour. Random tip when using sugarpaste: when rolling it out, dust the board with icing sugar to stop it sticking. However when rolling out any other kind of paste, such as modelling or flower paste, use cornflour. This is because cornflour is tasteless but you can't use it with sugarpaste as there is some sort of fermentation reaction! However you can also use Trex - a vegetable shortening (i.e. lard) that is white in colour, as it won't dry out the sugarpaste or leave marks like icing sugar could.

- Food paste colours - colours that come as a paste, gel or powder are better to use than liquid ones

- Gum tragacanth. This is a natural substance similar to CMC with the same purpose of thickening and stiffening icing, but some people prefer to use it as it's a natural product. It is also used to make mexican paste (don't ask me what that is, I haven't found out yet!) and also to make sugar glue.

- Icing sugar

- Marzipan. This is optional - some people like to cover their cakes with marzipan before using sugarpaste, as you do when you make a Christmas cake. It can make for a smoother overall effect, but not everyone likes the taste of marzipan and you don't need to use it on a normal cake. On a Christmas cake it is needed to stop the alcohol in the cake soaking through to the icing.

- Mexican paste. OK, I gave in and googled it... it's apparently a soft fondant used for cutting out shapes and modelling. It's better than fondant or flower paste as it does not stretch or lose its shape.

- Sugar glue - edible glue to stick on icing

- Trex/ vegetable fat - see above

- Cake smoother/ polisher: this is a flat piece of plastic with a handle that you use to, well, smooth over the top of the cake once it has been iced

- Craft knife - for cutting out shapes

- Crank knife - a knife with a 'step' in it. Good for spreading buttercream and for picking things up like icing you have cut out. Because the blade lies flat on the table or the cake you're not using the point of the knife.

- Crimpers. For making decorative edging around a cake covered in sugarpaste. You sort of pinch them together to make a pattern.

- Dusting brush - any flat brush you can use for dusting over edible lustre and so on

- FMM Tappit alphabet set. FMM is the brand but you can buy others. These are effectively stencils you use with Mexican paste to make lettering for cakes. This one is called 'tappit' as you tap it to get the shapes out. We were told this was optional but Lorna added that professional lettering can make a huge difference to a cake - and as I've never tried to ice words by hand, I have a feeling it would ruin the effect!

- Garrett frill cutter. I've never heard of this; Lorna had one to show us and the best way I can describe it is as a sort of wheel. It makes a frill to go around the edge of a cake, though I don't really understand how!

- Long and short non-stick rolling pin. Lorna's long rolling pin was a fair bit longer than mine, and made of what looked like fibreglass or silicon or something whereas mine is wooden (and not non-stick). But she said that hers cost around £30 and not to go to the expense of buying one at this stage. I will however need a short rolling pin - about sic or seven inches long - which is used for detailed work.

- Marzipan spacers. I'd never seen these before either - they look like two long rods that you put on the table while you are rolling out sugarpaste or marzipan, to keep the rolling pin at a uniform height - that ensures your marzipan is rolled out to exactly the same thickness all over.

- Mini palette knife

- Patchwork cutters -these are a special kind of cutter used with Mexican paste. I'm not going to buy any though until I know what shape we need!

 

- Jem shoe cutter - luckily I already had this, as it costs about £15. I bought it on a whim last year and still haven't used it as it looked a bit complicated, so I'm very pleased that Lorna will now show me how!

- Cocktail sticks. Good for getting a tiny amount of colour paste out of the pot, amongst other things.

- Clingfilm - to wrap any open sugarpaste in, so it doesn't go hard

- Greaseproof paper - I think Lorna said we would use this when rolling things out

- Paper kitchen towels - always useful

- Scissors

- Small plastic bags - the resealable kind are good to store small cutters and also when you have made up quantities of sugar paste or Mexican paste

-Box to transport our work. Incidentally when you have made models to go on a cake, you should store them in a cardboard rather than plastic box, as they will sweat in the plastic.

- Non-stick rolling board

- Anti-bacterial kitchen surface spray: to use on the worktops especially if we're not rolling out on a board. And frankly I'll have so much to carry I don't think I can bring a board as well!

- Apron

- Cloth to wipe down your work surface

- Tea towel

And that's it! Crikey, that's a long list....

I went on the internet as soon as I got home and bought what I thought I needed. I already had a few things, and some things Lorna had said were optional, so I didn't need to buy everything. I realised it would take too long to shop around and if I bought things from different websites I would end up paying multiple amounts of p&p. Someone in the class recommended Ebay as well which was a great idea. I used one site primarily which Lorna recommended, called Design-a-cake.co.uk. They had a huge range and the prices seemed pretty good, though I had to pay £6.49 p&p which seemed a little expensive (though I guess sugarpaste is heavy...) but I did also check on Ebay if I could find anything cheaper and bought a few things from there. In total I think I spent about £50, which isn't quite as bad as I thought when I saw the equipment list, but I already had some of the things on it and also decided I would do as Lorna suggested and make my own Mexican paste rather than buying any.

Lorna also mentioned a local cake decorating shop, and that TK Maxx often sells cake decorating items - but I can't get to either of these shops, as I don't drive and am not in the local area during the day, and I don't tend to go shopping at the weekends - in any case I'm away this weekend so wouldn't be able to get anything before next Tuesday's class anyway. I've realised being the only person in the class who didn't come by car is a pain for another reason - having to carry everything! At least this course is near my house so I can get home from work, grab something to eat and pick up what I need for the class, rather than coming straight from work (when I took the other cake class last year, I had to take everything into work on the train, including a big cake, and then carry it from work all the way to the class then all the way home again - and it was a long way!). But it's still a good 20 minute walk carrying what seems to be a lot of equipment - plus a cake to decorate! So as well as learning some new cake decorating techniques, it looks like I'll be building up some muscles as well!

Moroccan lamb and sweet potato bake

Here's a simple dinner I made this evening inspired by a recipe in the Weightwatchers cookbook "Cook, Eat, Enjoy" - though I adapted it quite substantially!

Slice a sweet potato - I used half of a large one, as I was only cooking for one. Mix some lemon juice, chilli flakes, cumin and garlic puree. Layer the sweet potato slices and pour over the marinade. Bake in the oven for half an hour or so.

 Place a lamb steak on top and continue to cook

Very straightforward - the whole thing cooks in one tin and you can forget about it for an hour while it's in the oven. That's my kind of dinner!

Sewing machine class

My late grandmother was a professional seamstress so it's ironic - but really a shame - that I'm hopeless with a needle and thread, and have never been near a sewing machine. I decided to rectify this last year when I took a sewing class at the Make Lounge. I learnt how to shorten and hem trousers and sew on a button, but it was still a time-consuming, laborious process, and my stitches were not exactly neat. Since then I've still taken trousers and dresses to the dry cleaner to be shortened - which has sometimes cost more than the garment cost in the first place! So I wanted to learn how to use a sewing machine, thinking it might be quicker and easier than sewing by hand. I also got some John Lewis vouchers when I left my last job, and had thought about using them to buy a sewing machibne, but thought it was a bit of a risk when I'd never used one before!

I saw a LivingSocial deal for a half price beginners' sewing machine class, so purchased the voucher.... and found I had to wait almost three months before there was a space available in a class! So last Sunday I trekked to the heart of Bermondsey - which took about an hour and a half - to get to the Creative Sewing Studio.

We each sat down in front of a sewing machine, which seemed to have an awful lot of buttons and settings!

A little daunting considering the one that I was used to seeing my grandmother use looks like this!

 To begin we were shown how to thread the machine, which is fine once you get the hang of it but it not as straightforward as you might think! And there is all sorts of terminology to get used to - like feet - and knowing which setting to use and when.

Sewing in a straight line is harder than it looks - and sewing in a curved line is even harder! Maybe that's just me though - I never expected to be a natural. When the sewing machine is going at full speed it's actually very fast, and the material zips through and if you're not careful you've gone off at an angle.

We practised sewing on pieces of muslin first, to try out the different stitches. My needle managed to come unthreaded right away and I kept forgetting to put the feet down!

 These photos are a bit dark as I didn't want to disturb the other people by using the camera flash. Hopefully you can make out some of the detail of the different stitches though.

 After learning other techniques and things like how to change the bobbin, we moved on to making our own pincushion. All we had to do was sew together two pieces of heart-shaped material, attach a piece of ribbon to hang it, stuff it with some filling and sew up the gap. I found going round the curve at the top of the heart a bit tricky so took my foot off the pedal and used the wheel to do one individual stitch at a time - which takes a lot longer but at least I could see where I was going!

 The finished pin cushion looks more of a triangle than a heart, as I didn't sew far enough down on the curve at the top. But it was the first thing I've ever made with a sewing machine, so I was still quite proud of it!

The Creative Sewing Studio - and other places like the Make Lounge - offer a lot of classes focusing on making a specific item, like a cushion, an apron or a skirt, but you need to have got to grips with the basic operation of a sewing machine first. So I definitely recommend this class! I also decided that I would indeed use my John Lewis vouchers to buy a sewing machine, so watch this space!

Frugal Frittata - inspired by Slimming World

I was working from home one day recently and wanted to make myself a healthy "low Syn" (Slimming World) lunch. This idea was partly inspired by the Spanish tortilla my boyfriend's mum makes, partly inspired by a recipe on the Slimming World website and partly inspired by things I needed to use up in my fridge - some leftover potato and a red pepper that had seen better days in particular! Firstly I roughly chopped the potato, pepper and some red onion, and added to them in the frying pan in reverse order.

 Frying everything together - with some low cal spray oil

 Beat two eggs and pour over the top, and continue to cook

 Turn upside down on a plate to serve. A nice, filling, Syn-free lunch!

I am entering this in Frugal Food Fridays, as the ingredients are cheap and I was using up leftovers in my fridge. This month Frugal Food Fridays is hosted by Tales of Pigling Bland

Liebster blog award

Thank you Baking Addict from TheMoreThanOccasionalBaker for giving me my first blog award. She's a good friend and my partner in crime for the Alphabakes challenge, and her blog is full of amazing bakes - I can't believe she has time to bake so much!

Apparently, "The origins of the Liebster Blog award are somewhat unclear but the general consensus is that it originated in Germany, Liebster meaning favorite or dearest, to showcase bloggers with fewer than 200 followers. Upon accepting the award the recipient must then pass it on to five more blogs of note."

Here are the rules:

• Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.
• Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you.
• Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.
• Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed.
• Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment at their blog.

So to keep the Liebster award going, I am giving out the Liebster blog award to the following 5 amazing blogs which you should also check out if you haven't already:

(I should just say at this point that I have tried to choose blogs with less than 200 followers but in some cases I wasn't able to see how many followers they had).

1. http://www.i-lostinausten.blogspot.com - her beautiful bakes are interspersed with passages from Jane Austen's works which makes a wonderful treat!
2. http://www.catscupcakes.blogspot.com - I must get the recipe for her oreo brownies!
3. http://katemakescakes.blogspot.com - this woman has an icing printer, I'm so jealous! And her cakes are amazing - check out the 80s one!
4. http://www.craftstorming.com - a trio of bloggers. I love their macarons, which I find particularly hard myself!
5. http://thatskinnychickcanbake.blogspot.com - great photos and an amazing chocolate mousse cake!

It was really hard to choose just five - there are so many wonderful blogs out there that put mine to shame! And of course I want to give an honorary Liebster award to TheMoreThanOccasionalBaker but as she has already chosen her five favourite blogs, I thought I'd pass it on to five other people :-)

Alphabakes Challenge - March 2012

AlphaBakes has proved to be a resounding success! We've had some amazing entries to our first ever monthly challenge - 33 altogether! For the full round-up, pop on over to my co-host Baking Addict's blog.

I hope everyone who entered enjoyed the challenge, and I'm looking forward to seeing March's entries! I am hosting the challenge this month, and the magic letter randomly generated for March is.....

M

I think this is a little harder than last month's challenge, which as you will remember was the letter L, as for many people lemons immediately sprang to mind. But we had some extremely creative entries last month (and there's nothing wrong with using the most obvious ingredient!) and I think there are plenty of ingredients - or types of cake - beginning with the letter M. And as an unexpected bonus, it's Mothers' Day this month too!

So get your thinking caps on, get baking, and send us those wonderfully tempting recipes and pictures! Don't forget you have until March 25th. Then I'll post a round-up here on my blog, and Baking Addict will kick off the challenge for April at the beginning of next month.

Just as a reminder, here are the rules below:

1. Post your recipe on your blog and link it to The More than Occasional Baker and Caroline Makes, stating the relevant month's host. If you do not have a blog, email us a picture and a brief description of your entry which we will  include in the round-up at the end of the month. 

2. You can use your own recipe or someone else's recipe. The recipe can be sweet, savoury or a mixture!  Anything goes as long as the random letter is predominantly featured in the recipe as one of the main ingredients or flavours or in the name of the bake itself (i .e . not as a garnish , or using 'flour' for the letter F!)  You can also republish old posts/recipes but you must include the information for this challenge as stated in these rules. 

3. Add the logo to your post and add 'alphabakes' as a label to your post. 

4. Email your entries to alphabakes@gmail.com by midnight (GMT) 25th of each month. Please include: 

• Your name (that you want included in the round up or we will use the name of your blog)
• Your blog post URL
• Recipe title
• Photo of recipe (to be included in the round up)

5. You can submit as many entries as you like.

6. You do not have to participate every month to join in.

7. You may submit your entry to other challenges as long as it complies with their rules.

8. If you use twitter, please use the tag #alphabakes and mention @bakingaddict and @Caroline_Makes. We will retweet all those that we see. 

9. Have fun! :)