My First Baking Competition

Last weekend we headed off to the Essex Food and Drink Festival for a family day out. It was the cloudiest day we've had in months and yet I managed to get sunburn... no idea how that happened!

Our main reason for going to the event, apart from wanting to stuff our faces, was to see Paul Hollywood who was going to be doing some bread demos. I also decided to enter the baking competition as he was judging. It seems the competition was a great attraction as there were about 60 lemon drizzle cakes entered (the category was pre-determined)! Sadly I didn't win, which is ok considering the competition. But if there was a prize for presentation, I would have deserved to win as my cake was the only one displayed on a fine bone china plate. Just saying.

My lovely plate and cake

These are some of the other entries:

Yes, that would be HALF a cake at the bottom! Who does that?!

Some folk didn't even take them out the boxes they brought them in!

The bread category wasn't very popular

The youth category was scones and this little cake stand was so cute!

The man himself put on a great show, he told loads of funny stories about Bake Off and had many anecdotes about Mary Berry too which amused us all. He demonstrated flat breads as that's about all you can make in terms of bread, in just 45 mins. He's a pretty cool guy, regardless of whatever the tabloids have said about him. He knows his stuff and did a Q&A session at the end which was good. He was particularly impressed with the 12 year old boy who makes all the bread for his family on a weekly basis and the 11 year old boy who makes the 8 strand plaited loaf on a regular basis. The boys both asked very good detailed questions which really amazed everyone. Good for them, I say!

The rest of the day was good too but I have no pictures of that as I was too busy looking and eating my way round the stalls. It's certainly worth the £8 entry ticket! I wonder who they'll have there next year?

Babycakes

My babyshower had an afternoon tea theme and I just had to share some pics of the scrummy cakes we had which my mum, sister and aunt made.

Creamy meringues

Pram shaped cookies for thank you gifts

Chocolate and coconut strawberries

Cupcakes!

Iced ginger loaf

Scones, cream and jam

Cake and snow

What was your weekend like? Mine was punctuated by two things: cake and snow.

I made the Ultimate Chocolate Cake from The Boy Who Bakes book in honour of Mr PC's birthday and boy was it good!!

 

I found the recipe a bit faffy as there were a few stages, but it was worth it in the end. This cake was delicious and needless to say there is none left! It ended up being a two tier because the third tier had a run in with the greaseproof paper...

Vintage cake plates are far nicer than cake boards! 

Sunday was a really lazy and quiet day as we got about 6-8 inches of snow during the night and the roads were a bit of a state around our area. I love snow (deprived of it as child) and really hate it when someone spoils it by tramping great big foot prints in it. So I made Mr PC retrace his steps when he had to go out to the shed so that there were only one set of footprints in the garden! We did go out for a bit and cleared the cars so we could get them out if we needed to. I made a snow angel but by the time I got back up off the ground it looked more like a snow hippo! And my coat got totally soaked in the process. I don't remember this happening when I was a kid... We also had a fit of a snowball fight but I called a truce when I got hit right in the face!

Here's a few pics of what the snow was looking like yesterday:

Great indication of how deep it was!

I love how snow clings to everything, even hanging baskets!

Bimbling along

The last week or so I've been bimbling along doing a bit of this and that but in general not a lot of anything! I'm still in my 'lazy mode' and I don't mind it really cos I know that soon enough it will be all systems go. I'm still relishing the fact that most weekends we are waking up saying 'what shall we do today' rather than 'what are we doing and where are we going today'.

I've been baking a fair bit recently too which is great but maybe not so great for our waistlines! Oh well, life's to short to deprive yourself of quality baked goods! The latest has been pink chocolate chip cookies which I baked on a whim the other night and I must say they are so moreish that there aren't many left!

I also made a chicken and asparagus pie which was pretty amazing!

And in other cake news, this is my latest 'big cake' - a madeira sponge with vanilla icing.

I have still been crocheting the last few weeks but I'm working on a couple of secret projects which is why I've not posted about my latest makes recently. I will share all when the time is right!

Also, I have been updating my Etsy shop with some new products now that I have the time to do the listings. So go take a look and see what you fancy! If there's a new baby in your life or soon to be a baby, You might be particularly interested in the knitted items section of the shop!

Pink chocolate cakey goodness

At the weekend, I made a cake (my first in a while) for a birthday celebration. It was for an 8 year old girl so what else was I going to make than a chocolate cake with pink frosting?! She loved it!

I realised one thing when making this cake - When you make a cake for someone else, you generally have to wait til the next day before you can eat it! We were watching telly and all I could smell was chocolate yuminess wafting from the kitchen as the cake cooled. Note to self next time make extra cake for eating!!

I was aiming for magenta pink icing but stopped at this shade as the amount of food colouring was getting to be quite alarming! Mr PC said he thought it looked like the colour of Angel Delight...

A few sprinkles around the edge kept it simple.

Pink glittery candles and these cute heart and start cake toppers made it totally girly!

And as it's Mr PC's birthday in a couple of weeks and most of the family were together, we relit the candles and sang happy birthday to him too! Here he is blowing out the candles on the girliest cake he's ever had!

Decorating tip: When putting the frosting on, if you pipe it on using a wide flat nozzle, it goes on a lot better than doing it with a palette knife. Then, use a metal palette knife to smooth it out. Dip the knife in cold water from time to time to stop the frosting sticking to it and after a few sweeps it will be smooth. I'm still practising this method but each time I do it it comes out better.

Christmas Prep: Christmas Cake Eaten!

Hope you all had a splendid Christmas with lots of great food and drink and merriment with friends and family. I thought I'd share a few pics of the finished Christmas cakes as I mentioned before here and here.

And for those of you into 'food porn', here's a pic of the inside. Can you smell the brandy and taste the fruit? I can!!

These are the images that inspired our designs, and I think Mr PC did a great job of laying the decorations on both the cakes!

via pinterest

via pinterest

Christmas Prep: Christmas Cake in Progress

Christmas is not Christmas without a decent Christmas cake. All the better if it is home baked, but I have had some nice shop bought ones too. The other night I covered the cakes in marzipan ready for the fondant icing. And, as there were trimmings, we ate them whilst watching the telly! I was going to use the spare marzipan to make something but...

Over the next day or two I'll be decorating these lovelies and then they will be ready for the Christmas festivities!

After Eight Cupcakes

After the baking experiment the other week, I decided to make the After Eight Cupcakes again, but make them better. I made sure to have all the ingredients ahead of time (don't you hate it when you get halway through and then have to run to the shop for more eggs, or icing sugar?) and even got some proper After Eights to decorate with. Here they are on my sister's rose plate.

The original cupcakes were a bit slap dash but these have a more polished look (or at least I think so) and the After Eight on the top really sets them off! These might just become one of my 'signature' cakes...

Baking Experiment

Today I invented a new cupcake! I'm calling it After Eight flavour. Ok, so maybe someone else in the world has already made these, but they it's a new flavour in my world therefore I'm gonna take the credit for it!

I felt the need to bake this morning and I wanted to do something a bit different, so when I found the peppermint flavouring in the cupboard, I had a lightbulb moment and created what has turned out to be some rather delicious cupcakes. The sponge is a light peppermint flavour and the frosting is dark chocolate and peppermint flavoured - absolutely to die for!

After Eight Cupcake

I used an icing nozzle to decorate and then popped a wee silver sugar ball on the top to give them a touch of colour. There's loads of spare frosting so I'm thinking what else I can use it for, altho I see myself baking some more mint sponges to spread it on!

Dodgy piping, need more practice!

What baking experiments have you done, and did they work?

Cakey yumminess

I've realised it's been a while since I last posted about one of my favourite topics: CAKE. This doesn't mean I haven't been eating making cakes, but the lack of cake related posts is really due to some of them being disasters and generally scoffing them before remembering to take any pics!

The most recent baking success was the batch of cupcakes I made for Mr PC in honour of our 3rd wedding anniversary last week. I made Fizzy Orange Cupcakes as per the Cake Days recipe and I must say they turned out rather nicely. You actually use soda stream syrup to get the flavour! I'm not a fan of fizzy orange drinks but Mr PC is and I knew he'd like them so I got baking while he was at work (like a proper housewife). I even had little jelly orange segments to put on the top!

The icing was a bit dodgy in parts as the lemon zest in it was clogging the nozzle, but who cares once you've taken a bite out of it?! (Yes, I used lemon zest in orange flavoured icing cos I didn't have any real oranges)

Other recent baking adventures include the Coconut Meringue Cake from The Humming Bird Bakery Cookbook (predecessor to Cake Days). What a disaster that was!! Right from the beginning it was going wrong. I found the recipe convoluted due to having to fiddle about with the fresh coconut, baking it in the oven and grating it etc. I always wanted to make this cake and was so disappointed in how it turned out that I'm not sure I could even face trying it again. It tasted ok but it wasn't amazing. The meringue frosting separated and then went runny when I mixed it again so that caused some real problems. But as it required 9 egg whites and nearly a whole bag of sugar, I wasn't prepared to throw it out and start again. Needless to say, the cake turned out to be just 2 layers with a bit of frosting on the top, which actually soaked into the sponge before we got a chance to eat it. And the worst part is, I was asked to make it for my father-in-law's birthday... (and I don't have any pics to show how awful it looked)

I've also made some amazing chocolate brownies and these cookies from A Thrifty Mrs but there are no pics as they all got eaten within an hour of them coming out the oven! I will leave you with one pic though, of a victoria sandwich I made for mum-in-law's birthday which looked rather splendid on my posh pink cake plate, even if I do say so myself!

Victoria sandwich with whipped cream and fresh strawberries

You can read more of my cakey stories here.

Apple and Raspberry Cake

Since we moved into our house three years ago, Mr PC has developed an interest in gardening and mainly 'growing food' as he puts it. This year we have had a bumper crop of raspberries and we can hardly pick and eat them quick enough! I love rasps but rarely buy them as they are expensive and generally tasteless, so having an endless (free) supply has been fab! 7 kilos of fruit and counting!

Rampant rasps

Aside from scoffing them straight off the plants (who, me?) or eating them in a flan, I've been keen to find some other uses for them so when A Thrifty Mrs posted a few days ago with a new cake recipe, I jumped at the chance to get baking! As if I need an excuse...

Apple and raspberry cake = num yummy

And let me just say, it was so good, that there is none left! It didn't even last a whole 24 hours. I urge you to make it!

On the subject of cake, I also made a raspberry cheesecake at the weekend from Cake Days and while it tasted great, it looked rather sloppy. I think this was to do with the bain marie you cook it in which I think caused some water to get in the mixture, making it slightly loose. I guess I'll just have to make it again to get it right...

What have you been baking recently?