Vanilla Sugar Christmas Gift

 

A very inexpensive handmade Christmas gift.

 

Take 250g of caster sugar and one vanilla pod. Scrape the vanilla into the sugar and stir to mix well. Transfer to blender and blitz for a few seconds. Transfer to your gift container and decorate with gift tags, ribbons, etc.

 

 

We're off to see the wizard

This weekend we followed the yellow brick road to babypuddleduck's 4th birthday.

She is a huge fan of The Wizard of Oz film and loves to wear her 'ruby slippers' (tasteful) and have her hair in plaits 'like Dorothy'.

Thanks again must go to mum who looked after the kids, did the hoovering and worked through a pile of ironing whilst I faffed in the kitchen making a scarecrow hat and a wicked witch 's legs.

The cake was a two tier sponge cake (see my earlier post for a revelation in baking ensuring the edges don't burn!) covered in green and white icing. The green layer had four faces round the outside; the scarecrow, Dorothy, the tin man and the lion. There was the wicked witch of the west's hat and the wicked witch of the east being squashed by the house. The yellow brick road led up to the snowy poppy field white tier where the rainbow in the clouds towered over the ruby slippers.

Toto caused a few problems though. My attempt looked more like a bear and just as I finished the other half looked quizzically and asked if that was going on the cake. His tone was clear and implied that this sorry excuse for a dog just wouldn't cut it. I asked him to help and he crafted a rather cute incarnation of Toto even if he did look more like a sausage dog. When babypuddleduck woke up on her birthday morning and saw the finished cake, her first exclamation was "is that Toto? It doesn't look like Toto. It's not very good is it!". After that I felt we had to keep him!

I'm fairly pleased with the finished result. I still had a few problems with the icing cracking on the initial covering. This seemed to be down to the amount of icing sugar I put down before rolling it out and covering the rolling pin to top sticking. I do have some trex so will try that next time instead of the sugar.

Burn baby burn

During the making of the mammoth 4th birthday cake project, I made a real a baking breakthrough.

I did a bit of googling before I embarked on the six hour bakeathon (two 8 inch and two 6 inch madeira sponges that need baking separately thanks to a tiny and unpredictable oven) and I'm sorry to say I cannot remember where I discovered these little gems but thank you to all sources, whoever you may be!

I wanted some tips on the age old question of how to stop the edges of a sponge cake burning during cooking. Mine have always turned out lovely in the middle but very hard and crisp on the outside.

 Initially I lined the tins with Wilton cake release and baking paper and I used the madeira cake recipe from my book by The Pink Whisk - 'The Busy Girl's Guide to Cake Decorating'.

Some of the tips I found mentioned wrapping newspaper round the outside of the cake tin too. However, as I never have any spare time to read a newspaper we don't buy them and so this wasn't an option! I just made sure the baking paper was high enough round the sides.

I poured the mixture into the tins and then made a well in the middle so that the majority of the cake mix was around the sides of the tin and you could almost see the bottom of the cake tin in the middle.

Then - THE IMPORTANT BIT - place the cake on the middle shelf and put a baking tray on the top shelf, above the cake. Then bake the cake as per the recipe but lower the temp by about half a gas mark (I'm guessing about 15-20 degrees celcius) and bake for the time indicated. Once the time is up, check on the cake with a cocktail stick or scewer inserted in the middle. If it comes out clean it's ready, if the sponge is still moist, it needs longer. Keep your eye on it. It's not an exact science, some ovens will take longer, some will be hotter than others; an oven thermometer is the only way to know the exact temperature when cooking.

As you can see from the naked cakes, the mixture has stil risen in the middle, despite there being hardly any mixture here. If you bake it with the mixture evenly spread in the tin, they will rise even more and you end up wasting (or eating) a lot of cake when you have to level them off.

So try this and leave a comment letting me know if this worked for you.

Happy and successful baking!

Mom's birthday - yellow and grey theme

Topaz is the birthstone for November so I chose a yellow theme for my Mom's 60th birthday dessert table. I think it is nice and bright and perfect for a party.

I also added a few horses because Mom is mad about them and had a trekking holiday for her present - I was asked at one point to settle an argument over whether the toppers were cows or hippos! I hope everyone else recognised they were horses.

This was my first large iced cake. I actually did two layers (the bigger one was a pain to ice) but forgot to take the dowel supports to construct it when I got to mom's so I just used the top layer on the table.

I made the yellow buttercream lemon flavour. The rest, and the biscuits, were vanilla.

These are no trick; definitely a treat

Halowe'en cupcakes made for babypuddleduck's ballet class hallowe'en party. Shame it was cancelled when we got there!

Still they were fun to make and a good trial run for making more for nursery on Wednesday.

I'm doing ghosts then too -  here they are waiting for faces.

Brocton Hall Wedding Show

Today my cakes will be making an appearance at the Wedding Show at Brocton Hall Golf Club in Staffordshire: http://www.broctonhall.com/the-wedding-show.html

They will be used on vintage china specialist High Tea Hire, a wonderful collection of vintage tea sets, plates, cake stands, teapots, sugar bowls and glassware.

We took some nicer photos, this is just one off the phone so will update later with more images.

Christmas Baking

This blog used to have a separate gallery page, but now I'm using Pinterest as my gallery I have moved the images here.

This is the collection of festive baking goodies.

If you've been directed here from Pinterest, please leave a comment to say hi and if you want to see the gallery it is at www.pinterest.com/mummypuddleduck/mummypuddleduck-cakes.

Pinterest Gallery Update

This is a collection of images that used to be on the 'Cookies and Biscuits' page of this blog.

I am now using Pinterest as my gallery but don't want to lose these images off the blog so here they are in their own post.

If you're visiting from Pinterest, please leave a comment to say hello. You can visit the Pinterest gallery at www.pinterest.com/mummypuddleduck/mummypuddleduck-cakes.

Blasts from the past

I'm moving some of my images here, to a blog post, so that I can update the pages.  These are all large celebration cakes.

The images are linked from Pinterest so I still want them on the blog but not on a page all to themselves.

If you've found this site via Pinterest, please leave a comment to say hello.

Soldier and tent army birthday cake

Jubilee Union Flag Victoria Sponge Cake

Gruffalo Birthday Cake

New lighting equipment

My problem has always been that I can bake and decorate the cakes, but I let the side down at the end with the photography.

My pictures never seem to do the cakes justice and are inconsistent and amateur.

Hopefully that is a thing of the past as we have invested in some professional photographer's lights. Here are the results. The photo booth is coming at the weekend so they'll look even better then.

National Cupcake Week

Despite being back at work after maternity leave and the house being a state, the ironing piling up and nothing in the fridge that's still in its sell by date, I couldn't let National Cupcake Week go by without my own bake off.

On Thursday it was my boss's birthday and what better way to suck up to the boss than a dozen cupcakes? I think the results show that yellow and grey even works for cakes. I love this colour combination.

I took over mum's kitchen again this morning to do a birthday batch, choosing a purple and lilac theme.

Both batches were inspired by my new baking bible, Ruth Clements' Busy Girls's Guide to Cake Decorating. Ruth was in the first series of Great British Bake Off and has her own blog www.thepinkwhisk.co.uk.

Yum, yum, happy National Cupcake Week.