What I Love About The Weekend... Food!

Home Made!

Hopefully Mr Ward might treat me to one of his wonderful pizzas again this weekend!

The Big Cake!

Although i haven't been baking every week i did go all out in April for a friends engagement party. I'm not quite sure what you get a couple for their engagement so i opted to use my skills and make a cake for their party.

The Finished Product

After a few weeks of trial runs (some really bad) and people telling me i'd put too much pressure on myself it all ended quite well and i learnt how to make sugar paste roses!

After a chocolate cake disaster i opted for a White Chocolate & Cardamom recipe from my favourite Fiona Cairns book. A proper grown ups cake, sweetened with a rosewater cream filling.

Practise Run - White Choc & Cardamom

Then to decorate it, well i always wanted to try the sugar paste roses so i built my cake around this. Next was the colour, the party was going to be in a Moroccan style room so lots of oranges and my friends support Hull City FC who are amber and black so orange it was, with some amber and yellow too.

Sugar Paste Roses

The roses where a lot easier than i expected and i was pretty pleased with myself so i made loads! These can be made in advance and stored for a while so it's a good skill to learn.

Actually icing the cake was my biggest hurdle, if anyone knows where you can buy pre-rolled Royal Icing for anything bigger than a 20cm cake please let me know. After several attempts the bigger, orange, layer of my cake did look a bit ropey so after a quick visit to Hobby Craft all sins where hidden with the shimmering orange ribbon. Phew! I also picked up a bit of bling with the gold leaves and beautiful butterflies, this really turned it into a celebration cake!

Ribbon & Gold Leaf Accessories

The Finishing Touches On Top

Then all that was left was getting it to the venue, this entailed my dad driving very slowly and me being an extremely nervous passenger! Then i got to surprise my friend and show off for most of the night that "Yes it was me who made the cake"!

Chocolate Cake Challenge

Finally (only 3 months late) I have taken up the challenge that I set myself at Christmas...

My favourite Christmas gift was a recipe book called "Bake and Decorate" by Fiona Cairns which is filled with gorgeous cake, biscuit and muffin recipes and then shows you how to decorate them beautifully too.

Everything in the book looks so wonderful i just wanted to make it all, so that's what i'm going to do... One cake every weekend - everyone will be getting a bespoke birthday cake this year!

I decided to start at the beginning with the Chocolate Celebration Cake, a simple but delicious recipe which could be used as a dessert too. This went down a treat in the office, but i'm sure my colleagues will be complaining about cake in a couple of weeks down the line!

I've visited Fiona Cairns' website which is beautiful too and has inspired me to put that much care and attention into my baking. I didn't quite have time to get to the decorate section on this one, but bearing in mind the attention to detail that goes into all of Fiona Cairns products i did make an effort with the presentation.

Hopefully by the end of my challenge i will have succeeded in making every recipe and master the art of sugar paste roses and edible flowers... Watch this cake shaped space!

Afternooon Tea with an American Twist

I have had some cranberries hanging around in my fridge - bought by the other half, no idea what to do with them - and i was inspired by Bake Lady's Blog to use them in scones. So here i am taking part in the Scone Recipe Challenge!

As cranberries are the American berry I looked to the first lady of American cooking, Martha Stewart, for recipe advice. After some conversion dilemmas (hate the cup system) and a few tweaks I ended up with this;

Makes 12 small scones

• 450g Plain Flour
• 60g Caster Sugar
• 1 tbsp Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 85g Chilled Butter
• 180ml Semi-Skimmed Milk (a bit more than Martha suggests as the mixture was  dry)
• 110g fresh cranberries halved (you could use frozen as well)

I had never eaten these gorgeous jewel berries fresh before, only in juice or as craisins and they tasted like tiny tart apples, with the same type of texture and sound as when you slice an apple. I was a bit nervous that the sugar in the recipe wasn't enough to balance out the tang so i made sure to do a nice dusting afterwards!

Tiny Tarty Berries

Method;

1. Mix together all of the dry ingredients
2. Add the chilled butter in small cubes and use your hands to rub it together and create a crumb like texture
3. Toss in your halved cranberries if using frozen dry them on kitchen paper first.
4. Add the milk and knead the mixture together
5. Dust your surface and rolling pin with flour and roll your dough to 1" thick and use a cutter of your choice

6. Finish your scones by brushing with milk and dusting with caster sugar

        7. Bake at 180c for around 20minutes

Here's what i ended up with...

Could be mistaken for my favourite cherry scone

Lovely with salted butter!