Autumn Baking

Yes, yes, I am one of those people who love Autumn. Any season that makes it ok for me to get out my hot water bottle and drink hot chocolate in bed is alright by me. And the Autumn colours, obviously! My place of work looks like this in Autumn:

Image copyright English Heritage

If that's not a good enough excuse to get up for work on a dark morning, I don't know what is!

So as Autumn is slowly slipping away from us and the time for sloe gin and Christmas cake is nigh (actually, I don't like Christmas cake so I'll just have extra gin,) let's have a look at what I did with Autumn goodies.

The Food

Brambles, apples, plums & pumpkins. Three of those things I got for free right of the bush/tree! Amazing. 

The brambles came from my own back garden. We discovered the bush last year after we got very little gardening done due to the bad weather; this thing just started taking over the garden and then produce some lovely brambles. It turns out my Mum had taken a cutting from my auntie's garden years ago and forgot about it and had been cutting it back for a number of years, meaning we had no idea it was going to produce some delicious fruit until last year. This year we didn't dare cut it through fear of losing the berries. It is in the corner of the garden affectionately called 'the wild area'.

The plums came from work; we have a small orchard in the grounds that's made up of plum, apple and pear trees and bounty this year has been amazing.

My apples didn't come from the Priory but from a castle! Nearby Richmond Castle was also enjoying a fruitful September and I sweet talked our gardeners into acquiring me some. (When I made a visit to Richmond the branches were far too high for me to get them myself!)

Richmond Castle - Image copyright English Heritage

Sadly I don't have access to a pumpkin patch so my pumpkins came from Tesco.

Hagrid's Pumpkin Patch

The drink

Plum liqueur

After a successful bash at making sloe gin last year, I knew I was going to make more liqueurs this year, and because we had such an abundance of fruit I was able to make a couple.

Blackberry liqueur

I used this recipe for the plum liqueur and this one for the blackberry one. (Note: if you get minute have a look through The Boy's Club site - their cocktails are inspirational!) Nothing to report here as I just followed the recipes and both are still doing their thing! I did run out of vodka for the blackberry so topped it up with white rum. I'm sure it'll be fine...

The Sweet

One word: crumble. In our house the fruit is a necessary evil. We would quite happily (and have been known to) eat a bowl of crumble with some custard. I used James Martin's recipe for the crumble (110g/4oz butter, softened - 110g/4oz demerera sugar - 180-200g/6-7oz plain flour just lightly rubbed together and baked on a baking sheet for 15 mins at 190/170/gas 5) and then I used this BBC Good Food recipe for the fruit. Delicious! I love warm brambles - they remind me of when my Nanna used to make bramble pie. Even the smell gives me that nostalgia. Yum! She should get on that again.

Plum, chocolate & hazelnut cake

Next was this recipe also from BBC Good Food. Can you see I haven't done anything ground breaking? I am afraid using other peoples' recipes was the best I could come up with! I was unsure about the plum, chocolate & hazelnut combo of this cake but it actually was surprisingly lovely. The ground hazelnuts really came though and the texture of the plum was a nice contrast. I would recommend giving this a try for something different.

The Savoury 

Image copyright BBC Good Food

Pumpkin soup!! I have memories of eating pumpkin soup ata German Christmas market around a barrel after a few too many Gluhweins. Perhaps that is why I remember the soup tasting so delicious but it also came in a bowl made out of bread! Uh! Amazing! It was mindblowing.

I had to eat my soup out of a bowl and one day I had to eat it with Ryvita because I didn't have any bread. Not. On.

Guess where I went for my soup recipes? Well done - BBC Good Food. The first one was a little but onion and cream heavy  - maybe it only needed one onion but the onion taste is why my mum liked it so much so each to there own. The Thai one had such an amazing fragrance - it just smelled of Thai  It was little thinner than the first one but I think that's just the style of Thai soup but it certainly had a lot more flavour and a definite kick from the red curry paste but was maybe lacking in the taste of the ginger, although I think that might be my own fault.

So I might not be winning any awards for culinary originality but I have enjoyed baking and eating things that I have foraged for. Ok, so very little foraging took place but I found the process of baking things that I knew to come directly from the source extremely satisfying. And I just can't wait to get my hands on the sloes in a couple of weeks time!

Vicky xx

Cake Time: Spongebob Squarepants

Oh Spongebob, you crazy…sponge! You are my most favourite character to make for cakes because you are square and that makes me happy. Ol’ Bob is also a character that comes to life very quickly after only a few details and I enjoy watching that transformation.

The first Spongebob cake I made was this one for my cousin’s birthday last year and I was super pleased with it.

I think everyone else enjoyed it too…

This second one was for a work colleague of my mum (well, not actually for her but you know what I mean!) This time we got to do a 2 tier, under the sea style cake, and got to include Patrick on it too.

As usual, mum was in charge of background scenery and did an awesome job. Love the Spongebob-esque flower things floating about.

I was in charge of modelling. I have started to put a bit of Mexican sugar paste or petal paste into my fondant when making characters. It makes makes the figures a little harder but you end up with something with a better finish and less sagging.

My favourite part of Bob is dusting his sponge hole thingys with green lustre dust – that just makes him come alive! There's those details again! They are my favourite – even the simplest ones.

Patrick’s shape was easier than I thought and I didn’t have to fiddle on with it too much. I missed off his flowers on his shorts due to wanting to wait until the paste had dried and then putting him on the cake and not having enough space. I don’t think it ruins him too much but a finished off pair of shorts would have been nice!

This cake makes me happy! I just love doing colourful children's cake! More please :)

Vicky xx

Cake Time: Angry Birds

My cousin Oliver wanted an Angry Birds cake for his birthday. On his birthday he got Angry Birds everything. Apparently Angry Birds has sky rocketed from being a simple, free phone app to some kind of phenomenon. I think there’s even a cartoon and the birds have names!

But this also means that there is lots of inspiration out there for Angry Birds cakes.

Left to right: Nest, Slingshot, Kaboom!

My Mum, being ahead of the times as she is, made an Angry Birds cake about 18 months ago. What a trendsetter.

I wanted to do a cake with a bit of depth and up and downy-ness and ended up with something quite mammoth, even though I hadn’t actually baked that much cake.

The idea of using Kit Kats as the wooden hiding places was not mine; I saw the idea on another cake that has since disappeared in to thin air. But props to you if it was your idea.

The pigs and birds were almost fun to make; I would have enjoyed them a lot more if it hadn’t been a sweltering day in July and the icing hadn’t melted whenever I went near it.

I know I have been going on a lot about details but they really are my favourite thing at the minute and this cake was no exception! The small details of a snout, some eyes and a crooked smile transforms a green blob into a mutant pig that wants to take over the world! Or steal eggs… I think that’s what they do.

And the birds turned out ok too but they were even more melty because they require a bit more handling to get them in to shape. And getting them to hold their shape in the heat was a nightmare.

But overall it was a fun and effective cake. Best part? Left over KitKats.

Vicky xx

Cake Time: Birthday Cakes

By friend-of-a-friend links and a touch of coincidence I was asked if I would take on a job for a local marketing and branding company, Better Branding Agency.

As many offices do, they celebrate employees’ birthdays with cake but this lot don’t do it by halves. In place of a chocolate cake from Tesco, they make a big deal of it and have proper, full on, decorated birthday cakes. And I think it’s a fantastic idea.

The lady who had been doing the cakes previously had to give it up due to being so busy she was unable to commit to the orders. Good for her and good for me.

This came about through doing a cake for a friend’s family member’s son, who is friends with a boy whose mum works for Better and who approached me to do the cakes. After a bit of discussion and nervousness on my part I was away with my first request.

They’ve been pretty specific with what the want on the cakes which is great but it also meant I was a little bit lost doing the first one. My first order was for Julie who likes tea, credit cards, Seabrooks prawn cocktail crisps, diamonds and stationary. And the end result looked a bit like this:

I have to be honest. I wasn’t really sure how this was going to turn out but I think taking time to get the detail on the various items made it work; it was a random cake with random bits but (hopefully) everything looked like it was meant to.

The next brief was pretty similar: Mark likes tanning oil and the 80s:

How much 80s paraphernalia can you fit on a cake? (Probably loads more!)

PacMan 4 life.

The most recent one I did was for a member of staff who doesn’t like cake. (I didn’t think those people actually existed.) So instead he got a flapjack smothered in melted milk chocolate. I wish I had a picture of this one because it looked so yummy I wanted to put my face in it. I think it was just nice to have a break from cake, and to be honest I’d put my face in anything covered in melted chocolate.

So that’s what I have done so far and am anxious to see what the next cake brings!

Vicky xx

Cake Time: Chocolate Fudge Cake

Samantha likes chocolate fudge cake. Just chocolate fudge cake. No icing. No messing around.

Which meant I got to have a go at my first (semi) naked cake.

Naked cakes aren't to everyone's taste; some people find them scruffy, plain and unfinished. I, however, find them pretty, simple and rustic. My only concern about them is the drying out of the cake due to there not being an icing barrier around the cake, but as this one was being made and then being eaten almost straight away, it wasn't too much of a worry.

I mean, look how pretty! Left to right: Cloche, Ivy

As my usual chocolate sponge recipe doesn't really count as a chocolate fudge cake, I tested 2 other cake recipes. The first was Nigella's (get the recipes here) and the second was a good ol' BeRo one.

Nigella's chocolate fudge cake is delicious! I whole heartedly recommend you have a go at it because it is scrummy; light, moist, chocolately and yummy. But it was so light that there was no way it could be used to build up a 2 tier cake.

The BeRo recipes also produced a cake that was moist and tasty but had a denser texture which meant it made better building material.

For this cake, the bottom tier was left plain with just some chocolate fudge sauce and a thin layer of buttercream to hold it together. (N.B. This combo is not good in a hot car on a hot day. For real. Nightmare.)

The second tier, on Samantha's Mum's request, was coated in a lovely chocolate buttercream, which added a lovely dimension of colour and texture to the cake.

When it came to decoration we kept it simple with a few flowers and a pop of colour. I was over the moon when I was asked to use red because I think it works so well with chocolate. I also added some black accents (the board) to add a bit of drama. The shot glass was added at their request.

Side line: did you know you can't get a shot glass with '18' on it ANYWHERE! All the card shops in all the world have gone classy; if I'd needed a Martini glass there wouldn't have been an issue.

The whole thing went down a chocolatey treat. It even almost got me a job at the restaurant I was delivering it to. That is until I nearly dropped my car keys on it as we were leaving. Keeping it graceful.

Vicky xx

A Brief 3 Month Update!

Oh my gosh and goodness, what a few months I have had. All dreams of keeping up what was becoming a regular and semi-organised blog were dashed this month due to general busyness both at work and with cake making.

We’ve had birthday cakes, christening cakes, wedding cakes, macaroon towers (piles,) cupcakes and ordination cakes, cups of tea, 80s flashbacks, sharks, lions, dogs, and Angry birds. It has been mostly calm, mostly enjoyable and definitely an excellent learning curve.

There have been a few disasters, some absolute tragedies, near misses, getting lost in the dark, and periods of serious overheating. Never a dull moment. It’s been a big test for me, and my worrying and penchant for the over-dramatics but I have learned that I can manage quite well when I set my mind in the right place and just get on with it. I have literally had no time (well, I made a bit of time) to worry!

Now things have settled down I have had some time to look back and see that maybe the cake universe was simply testing my cake-stamina. I think I passed.

A self-proclaimed control freak, I have learned a valuable lesson these past months about not having to do everything, mostly through not actually being able to do everything and, once again, I have no idea what I would have done without my mum and her dedication to Tallulah’s. I literally wouldn’t have been able to take on half the stuff I did and, of course, she has done a fabulous job.

If anyone epitomises the ‘keep calm and carry on’ ideal it’s her. (Not that I’m comparing cake baking to being on the front line… Although there have been times my brother hasn’t dared enter the kitchen.) She was able to re-do a wedding cake in 6 hours after accidentally leaving the original one in the conservatory all day during that week of scorching days. It would have had a lesser woman (me!) on her knees!

I thought things would have slowed down as we got into September but a few last minute orders means I won’t be without something to do for the rest of this month. But I am back down to a 5 day week now so everything seems much more manageable. Hopefully I will be able to find some time to fit in some lovely autumn baking and creating between cakes (we have more brambles than Tesco thanks to a very wild bramble bush in the garden) and find some time to show you what I have been doing with my time!

I will end on some very exciting news: I had a food safety inspection last week, which I passed! It still seems a little surreal at the moment that I now have nothing holding me back and no excuse not to push full force into my little business adventure! Let's see what the next few months bring...

Until next time,

Vicky xx

Still here!

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Please bear with me... Normal blogging should (hopefully) resume shortly!

Vicky xx