Kitchen Maths

Six eggs from three happy backyard chickens...

Plus six fresh homegrown lemons...

Helps to make one very delicious lemon meringue tart.

Homemade goodies!

Over the past month my husband and I have been busy in the kitchen turning fruit (both home grown and bought at the farmers markets) into tasty treats.

Some of the apricot jam, lemon curd and cherry jam we made.  We also made cordial for the first time - two different types, homegrown elderflower cordial and homegrown rhubarb cordial.  The elderflower tastes just as good as the boutique one from Tasmania.  The rhubarb is really different and tastes great mixed with soda water (and made a nice change from rhubarb cake or rhubarb and apple crumble like I usually make with our rhubarb!).

A couple of years ago we got kilos of free apricots and after we got tired of making jam we made some rustic pies that we froze and then cooked from frozen during the winter.  They were great, so when we had some spare apricots on the weekend I thought I would make another pie.

It is super easy and it is so nice on a cold evening to have a home cooked dessert with no effort!  Make your favourite pasty (I use Stephanie Alexander's shortcrust pastry) line a baking dish with it, sprinkle ground almonds over the base, top with apricots and a sprinkling of sugar.  Finish by folding over the edges of the pastry and freeze.  The next day take the pie out of the dish and seal it in a bag until you are ready to cook and eat it, then just put it back in the dish and straight into a hot oven.  Serve hot with custard or ice cream.  It worked really well for us a couple of years ago so I hope it does again!

We also had some spare plums so I made a plum pie, but used ground hazelnuts instead of almonds.  The plums have a lot more liquid than the apricots, so I'll guess we'll have to wait and see if it works!

A girl's best friend

Two people, two celebrations, one get-together - hmm, do you make one cake or two?  One of my friends is about to move house, another was having a birthday. 

What about one cake that fits both celebrations?!  Hmm, what kind of cake would do that?

Ruby red slippers of course!

"There's no place like home"...

Every woman should have a great pair of red shoes!

Click your heels together and have a great night out!

Oh my goodness - these took soooo long to make!  I didn't take photos of the process, but I probably should have!  If you are interested in the 'technical aspects' - here they are:

• I made a slab cake, but if you have a deep square cake tin that would be better.
• While the cake is cooking prepare your 'shoe' templates - I have fairly small feet, so I traced around a pair of my shoes to get an idea of the shape then I refined the shape, but also made it a bit chunkier so the cake would be stable!
• Because I used a slab cake, to make high shoes I made a complete shoe template and a half template to stack on top.
• Then I made the coloured sugar.  I used raw sugar and some red food colouring - I mixed them together in a small bowl and then spread the sugar onto some baking paper to dry.  It worked really well.
• Once the cake had cooled I cut the shapes.  Icing a cut cake can be a bit tricky because it can be quite crumbly and you end up with cake crumbs all through the icing.  So this time I made a really thin, runny icing to act as a sort of sealant.  As soon as you ice the pieces put them into the fridge to set the icing - otherwise it starts to soak into the cake and makes it really sugary.
• Once that thin icing layer is set you can stack the pieces and ice them properly.  I coloured the icing using 'pillar box red' and the shoes are (were!) much redder in real life than they appear on my computer screen.  I also flavoured the icing with some Chambord (raspberry liqueur).
• As I iced with the red icing I stuck on the coloured sugar - it gave it a bit of sparkle and also added a nice texture.
• I used chocolate ganache to help define the shoes.
• To make the bows I used some sour strap lollies - just folded them over and stuck a (washed and clean!) pearl headed pin from my sewing stash to hold them together.  Make sure you take the pins out before serving the cake!!
• And the finishing touch was the yellow brick road - some wrapping paper with bricks drawn on.

I hope this gives someone some help and inspiration if they decide to venture into Oz!

Cake catchup

A friend came to visit from interstate a couple of weeks ago so I made my favourite 'special' cake for afternoon tea. 

Chocolate, strawberry and meringue gateau.

Today we hosted some friends of my husband.  One of them had a birthday so I made a cake and brightened it up with some candles.

Chocolate cake covered in chocolate ganache.  Strawberries and cream on the side.

Leftovers

What more can I say but "yum!"

Happy Birthday!

It was my husband's birthday this week so I made a divine cake using two of his favourite ingredients - chocolate and raspberries.

Baked chocolate cheesecake topped with raspberry, Chambord and cream filled profiteroles, whipped cream and a mountain of raspberries.

Oops, forgot to take a photo before they were all gone!  Three tiers of extra raspberry, Chambord and cream filled profiteroles and some Cointreau and cream filled chocolate eclairs. 

Happy birthday!

Melbourne!

Hello everyone, so much to tell, so little time!  I've still had hardly any time for knitting, but lots of sewing in class in the final weeks of the course (photos and info soon).

We spent the past weekend in Melbourne soaking up culture and eating far too much chocolate.

Breakfast at the fabulous Ganache Chocolate Lounge (South Yarra).

Hazelnut hot chocolate (at Ganache).

Incredible embroidery - part of the ManStyle exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).

More amazing embroidery.  (ManStyle)

Check out the lapel on this jacket!! (ManStyle)

Gorgeous piece of Australian furniture (1906).  So beautiful that it caught my eye over all pieces in one room in the NGV - that is saying something since the paintings below were in the same room.

Frederick McCubbin's 'The Pioneer' 1904 - considered one of the masterpieces of Australian art. 

A Micronesian celebration

You probably can't tell without an explanation - but this is a cake representation of the Rock Islands of Palau!  I made this for a morning tea at work to celebrate the successful completion of a project I have been managing for the past year with Palau. 

The Rock Islands (chocolate hazelnut cakes with whipped chocolate ganache icing) are limestone islands (the coconut) covered in forests (the green sprinkles) and with a large number of marine lakes (the green and blue sprinkles) in the beautiful Pacific Ocean (the blue jelly).

Chocolate Easter Egg Cake

A simple chocolate cake, cut into a vaguely egg-like shape, iced with ganache and decorated with chocolate buttons.  A cheery and easy cake for an Easter BBQ (barbecue) with friends.

Almond cake

My husband really likes this cake, but I don't.  It reminds me too much of the marzipan cake I used to eat when I lived in Denmark (not sure why I ate so much of it.  I think it just became a habit..!).  It's a good cake if you love almonds.  It is also flourless.

Buttery almond and coconut cake - from 'Mix and Bake' by Belinda Jeffrey.

This week's cake

Every week I make a sweet, tasty treat to keep us happy at snack time.  Here is this week's treat...

Macadamia and choc chip cookies

A new cake

This week I made a wonderfully delicious cake.  Chocolate, almond and cardamon.  I've never made it before, but I will definitely make it again.  It is beautiful and moist inside, with a crisp top and a lovely soft cardamon flavour.

How many cakes can a cake lover eat in one weekend?

This trip I had the cookies'n'cream cheesecake and the lemon burst cake.  My husband had the Toblerone cheesecake and the chocolate ripple cake.   But as you can see - there are so many cakes we didn't get to try, so I guess that means we'll have to go to the coast again soon...!

The cake display at the Merimbula RSL.

Mid-week baking

I try to bake something every week so we have something for snacks each day.  We finished off some choc-chip cookies today, so I needed something quick and easy that I could make after a long day.  Honeyjoys may seem like a children's party treat, but they are welcomed at grown up get-togethers and work morning teas too.  Oh, and they are Tansy's favourite human snack - she always gets a couple of flakes if she is around when we eat them!

There are lots of recipes for Honeyjoys on the internet, this is the one I use:
In a large saucepan melt together:
 - 90g butter
 - 75g sugar (I use raw sugar)
 - 1 tablespoon of honey
When the sugar is dissolved take the saucepan off the heat and add:
 - 140g cornflakes
Spoon the mix into patty pans and bake at 150oC for 10 minutes.
Leave them to cool so they set, and then try not to eat too many at once!

A harvest with a twist

Our afternoon harvest.

 

In case you couldn't see it - a twisted zucchini and the first eggplant of the season!

 And a monster parsnip.  My husband cut it before I took the photo - but I'm sure you can imagine how big it was before he cut up part of it for chips...!  I put my hand in the photo for size comparison.  We aren't sure how it got quite so big - it must have grown very fast!

And today's cake - there were lots of blood plums at the farmers market yesterday, so we knew what cake I would be making!  Blood plum and yoghurt.

Happy New Year!

I hope you are all having a wonderful start to 2011 and have been able to start the year with something lovely.  I started the year baking (and a bit of knitting).  

A friend had her birthday back in October, but she was overseas at the time and later lamented that she didn't get a cake.  I think there is something very special about someone taking the time to make you a birthday cake, and it is that time spent rather than the cake itself that makes birthday cakes special.  I knew my friend would appreciate a beautiful cake, so this time I went for elegance over theme.  Here is the Chocolate, Meringue and Strawberry Gateau...

The two cakes before final assembly.

The finished product.  From the bottom up, the layers are:  chocolate cake, meringue, chocolate cream, strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate cake, meringue.  With almond flakes around the sides and on top of the meringue layers.  This cake made the birthday girl feel very spoilt and 9 other people very happy!

Looked better in my imagination

We have friends coming over for lunch, so while the lemon tart for afternoon tea is in the oven I will quickly post some photos of the Christmas Tree Surprise Cake I made yesterday.

I made this for no other reason than I had an idea in my head of a Christmas tree cake and I wanted to see how it would turn out.  Unfortunately it didn't turn out quite how my imagination hoped and when we took it to a friend's place last night my friend initially thought it was guacamole!  Oh well. 

It was inspired by the recent Darlek Tank Cake, but I didn't do any research before creating it.  You should always research before creating a new cake.  It does help.

It is a chocolate cake with white chocolate ganache icing laced with Cointreau and green food colouring.  And why is it a 'surprise' cake?  See what's inside...

The template.

The leftovers for later!

Surprise!

The chocolate tree.

A strawberry star, marshmallow lights and smartie baubles.

A desert dessert

Part of the high tea at the Abu Dhabi Emirates Palace Hotel.  (We didn't stay at that hotel, but we did pop in for delightful sweets and a delicious drink).

Darlek Tank Cake

A friend recently had their birthday, so yesterday I made a cake to help celebrate.  I was asked to make a 'futuristic tank'.  From what I could see of 'futuristic tanks' the world of modern warfare is more advanced than my cake making ability, so the design had to be simplified.

Yesterday morning my husband and I sketched some cake ideas (thanks to my friends who helped with ideas - no idea was ignored in our quest for a suitable cake).  We finally settled on a 'Darlek Tank Cake' and M&Ms were duly bought.

Here is the cake...

 I used my standard 'Rich Dark Chocolate Cake' recipe, but made it in a tray rather than a round cake tin.  I then made a paper template before cutting the cake to measure.  (The little 'L' shape was not needed for the design).

I coated each layer in ganache before adding the next layer.  Then lots of chocolate biscuits, M&Ms and a blue sherbet filled lolly created a darlek masterpiece.  If I had thought of it I sooner, I would have added something inside the cake as 'Davros' for an extra surprise.

The cake was "Exterminated" last night.

By the way, I bought some glow in the dark candles at the supermarket, they are quite effective.  I wish I knew they existed last year when I made the zombie castle cake, they would have added a nice eerie effect.

Memories of Cakes Past

I've loved baking for years, and have recently started making 'theme' cakes.  Here they are...

 My husbands birthday cake last year, the 'Zombie Massacre Cake'!  This is just a progress photo, I finished assembling this at a friends house and forgot to take the camera.  But I finished off the cake with a chopped up red jelly moat filled with snakes and alligators.

A close up of some of the 'zombies'.  It was my (mild mannered) Dad's idea to rip off the heads and dip them in red icing for blood.

 The 'Werewolf Cake' for a friends birthday earlier this year.  I think I deserve a degree in musk stick engineering for creating this one.

And before you think I make nothing but gory cakes -  the 'Rock Band Guitar Cake' for another friends birthday.  It took half a bottle of red food colouring to get that colour.  The icing on this one was a cream cheese flavoured with Cointreau.  So it looked like a children's cake, but it was very grown up!  (Well, as grown up as 30+ year olds playing Rock Band can be!).