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!