Sugarcraft Flowers 101: Upsadaisy!

This may not be the sort of thing normal eighteen year olds do on an everyday basis, but when I am not busy drinking, raving and ...voting?... I've always wanted to be able to make those fantastically delicate edible flowers you see adorning professional cakes. You know, the really beautiful tiny ones you can't believe are made of sugarpaste or whatever.

My friend Alex knows this (what, I said she was a good friend. She knows this and she hasn't left me in a skip yet) and as it happens her granny happens to have the aforementioned Mad Skillz. So the other week she invited me round to hers for a sugarpaste flower tutorial (while Alex presumeably went off drinking/raving/voting. Actually I suspect she was making icecream, with the odd interval for coming over and laughing at the 'enraptured' expression on my face).

(For future reference, Alex has two grannies. One is ridiculously posh (I have a pretty posh voice, and next to her I feel like a Cockney rascal), and one has Mad Cake Skillz. Obviously, all the following took place with the latter. The former may feature in the future should I ever need to prepare afternoon tea, or perhaps own a mansion).

I don't claim any experience at all at flower-making; I'm genuinely just relaying Alex's granny's wisdom here. Don't laugh at me if you have loads of decorating experience, kids: this is a from-scratch guide, okay?

This post is being split into two, on grounds of being so epic. This week (bear in mind here I'm never going to be organised to make this weekly): daisies and primroses.

These were the first, and simplest things we made. You will need: a small quantity of sugarpaste (I suspect this has a different name in American. Damned if I know what) - I'd only ever used fondant before -, icing colours (paste/gel), cornflour for dusting (Alex's Granny's Handy Hint: better than icing sugar as it doesn't go sticky when you've got water around. The woman's a genius. Don't tell me you all already use cornflour rather than icing sugar or I'll cry), small or medium blossom cutter (for daisies) and a medium primrose cutter (for primroses, obviously), a ball ended modelling tool for daisies and cone ended for primroses, a small rolling pin, a few sticks of florists' wire, and some sort of foam mat. And possibly some stamen-type things.

Sounds rather complicated. It isn't.

The daisies are hugely simple: you basically roll out a small quantity of dyed sugarpaste (far, far thinner than I expected) then use your blossom cutter to cut lots of small/medium flowers out. Roll over them briefly with the rolling pin again, and then you use the end of your ball-ended modelling tool to just press them into the foam - and when they spring up again they've shaped round it into little semi-circles (top right of the above picture). Cute, no? And dead speedy.

You can then use a little more sugarpaste in a darker or contrasting colour and make tiiiny little versions to go inside, like below. Which, let's face it, wins at life. In the ones below little tiny stamens have been threaded through the daisies to pin the two together. Don't eat the stamens, haha, but they're cute.

If you don't want to use stamens, or you're just putting these on top of a cake and not flinging them around anywhere, or else you just have icing on hand, you could use a little blob of royal icing to go inside these instead. Or (Alex's Granny's Handy Hint #2) a dot of egg white will secure the flower to the stamen. Huzzah!

Do I love how easy these are? Yes I do. Am I sort of obsessed with Alex's Granny? Yes I am. She is my new hero.

Primroses are also pretty simple (I'm saving the more tricksy roses for next time XD). For these, you make a little oblong of yellow sugarpaste (or, you know, it doesn't have to be yellow. Primroses are, but don't feel like I'm limiting you as women or anything. Or men. I'm not limiting men either), and then use a tiiny skewer - I didn't put skewers on the list, did I? I'm sure you've got skewers, or something similar) to flatten the bottom as you rotate it round. There's an ACTION SHOT! of Alex's Granny in action just below. Don't you just love her hands?

Then once your primrose is fine enough, you use the cutter to get the basic shape. You can either pinch the bottom or press it into a little hole - below, Alex's Granny is using a mat with little holes like this one. She's also using the ball-ended modelling tool to give the petals a bit of shape; you can roll the end of your skewer in a triangle along each petal, as well.

Below, you can see the shape this has given the petals. You can then use the cone-ended modelling tool to imprint the middle - you see it's like a little star shape? Don't go too deep or you'll puncture it; it needs to be intact cause you're going to push a little length of florists' wire through the middle. Wet the end of the wire first so it doesn't drop out, and you can press a stamen in after that too, if you want.

That is possibly my favourite picture in the world.

And voila! Primroses and daisies galore!

...Oh, you want to know how to make the roses now? Watch this space.

Hope that was okay: this is a bit of a departure from my regular blog posts, and I'll feel an idiot if everyone's like, 'er, everyone knows how to do this,' or 'this is crap, this way is better..'. Like I said, I have zero experience, so I hope that all made sense.

Can we have a moment of collective love for Alex's Granny as well, please? She now thinks I'm a maniac, admittedly, but you know it was worth it.

Greedy Spice (or: So Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want)

You know how it is. You're in the house on your own, watching DVD boxsets with hair like a flowerpot man and making the most of your day off work, and you decide it's the perfect time to bake something warm and simple while no one's around to interrupt. Like, say, bread. Freshly baked bread; and cause it takes so long with all the rising and proving (are rising and proving the same thing? Whatever) it'll be ready right on time for your family to get back in and devour.

And then you remember that you're horribly lazy and --wait, is this just me? Alright. Then I remembered that I'm horribly lazy and slightly suspicious of yeast .

(I was one of those children who was emotionally scarred when it was explained that yeast was a Living Thing and that when you put it in the oven you Killed It Dead. I mean, emotionally scarred for about ten minutes, until I got hungry and ate a piece of toast.)

If you want to keep your kitchen a massacre-free zone (or you just can't be bothered with kneading, rising or proving (or both?)) this recipe is perfect. And it also means that what could have taken an entire day takes an hour, tops, and that's with fifty minutes baking time during which you can go back to series two of Buffy or brush your hair or something (okay, maybe most people brush their hair more often than I do. I'm told it shouldn't take fifty minutes).

But the main difference between slaving all day over a crusty artisan loaf and just baking a sweet spice bread is that the first one gives you bread at the end of the day.

The second option gives you a soft, honeyed, warm, cinnamon and ginger flavoured loaf. Right now.

Sitting in a house with it all day is probably not the answer if you intend your family to have some.

...But of course, they don't have to know you baked it...

Spice bread
Adapted from http://flagrantedelicia.com/

250 g honey
250 g bread flour
5 g baking powder
100 g dark brown sugar
100 g butter
2 eggs
100ml milk
a pinch of salt
Vanilla
Cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg.

Pre-heat the oven to 160ºC. Grease a 19x9cm (7.5"x3.5") loaf pan and line with parchment paper.

Mix the ingredients together and pour the batter into the pan. Bake for 50 minutes.

Easiest instructions in the world? Yessir. My laziness extends in all directions.

At Last!

A picture-heavy post today, while I get all the pre-Nikon photos out of my system (oh, those childish days of yore!). And yes, this is mostly an excuse to get over-excited over the food from my party, which I'm sure no one is as interested about as I am XD. So let's kick off.

1. Cake balls! And let me point out that Morgana made it look far to easy in this post to do other shapes. My cupcake bites turned out fine, but I struggled to get more ambitious. I did find out I had a previously undiscovered knack for making skulls out of pieces of cake! -- which I'm sure any decent psychologist could draw a conclusion from, haha.

'Chocolate cake covering' is a bit of an unknown entity to me (probably a cross-Atlantic thing) so I had to use actual chocolate; obviously damn expensive in the quantity I needed. I improvised a bit and was a bit stingy in places, and for the red hearts I tried using royal icing, which mostly worked. It did look great and hardened up fine, but one was enough to make your head literally buzz from the sugar rush, heh. I'd cut down the sugar in the cream cheese frosting if I was going to coat with royal icing again.

I do admit I began to doubt that the effort was worth it, right up until my friend Leah grabbed me mid-party brandishing a cupcake bite and announced, 'this is-- this is a FOODGASM, that's what this is!!'. Whaat, I like feedback.

Cake balls recipe here.

2. Jam tarts. With frozen pastry and bought jam, obviously, but I admit I kind of love how simple and cute these are. The heart tarts are made with raspberry jam, and the spades are black cherry.

You don't need a recipe for these, but aren't they adorable?

3. Chequercake. This wasn't for my actual party, but I said I'd tell you how to make it, so here it is. You'll just need one chocolate cake and one regular sponge, and a load of buttercream (I can't remember the proportions I used, but you can improvise that and just make more if you need it).

You'll also need round cookie cutters in various sizes and/or a small plate or bowl to cut around. You use these to cut both cakes into circles, keeping all your cut-out pieces to one side. Then you should be able to slot your alternating colours of cake into each other, like below.

You're going to want to seal these up with a pretty decent amount of frosting, or the cake'll just collapse when it's cut. Do this with both cakes, then slather the top with frosting and put the second, alternate layer on top:

Decorate the cake however you want, and when you cut it it should look like a chessboard (left). I was going to decorate it with chess pieces over the top, but we only have tiny little ones or my dad's enormous marble set, which I thought might punch straight through the cake, haha. Siigh.

4. My favourite last: sugar cookies! Simplest thing ever, use your own favourite recipe &c. &c. ad nauseum. But I spent far too many happy hours playing with these.

My favourite: dalek cookie!


Vvworp, vworp!

Noah's ark?

...This is why you should never eat the food I offer you. There's a high chance I've acted out the plot of several Doctor Who episodes and a couple of biblical tales with them.

DB5: Dragging Arses Out Of Hiding Since 2008

Unexpected hiatus abounds!

I break my sorry silence with August's Daring Baker challenge - after totally failing to find the time to blog for two weeks, my long-standing fear of the DBers finally got me scurrying from my hiding place. You know how to get me to do whatever you want now; the threat of those Daring Baker hitmen always gets me moving...

In actual fact, it's not exactly the reveal date anymore, but I've decided it's still the 31st by virtue of the fact that I've not been to bed yet (late shift at work, sigh. And er, a trip to the pub afterwards, involving three separate people all trying and failing to teach me to play snooker. I managed to pot three balls eventually -out of about five games- but that does include the white one, twice). Besides, I couldn't let this post go by, not after all the effort to get it done.

In short: I woke up in a cold sweat two nights ago thinking the DB ninjas were lurking round my bedroom. Usually for a challenge I do it in parts throughout the month to minimise hyperventilation - for this one, I dragged my friend Alex round first thing in the morning and enlisted her aid asap.

(Alex gets a special mention today as Vice-President Camera-Owner; you may have remember me mentioning that my usual one died rather spectactularly a couple of weeks ago. It's now lying downstairs, practically with its feet in the air and its tongue stuck out. And yes, I could have got it fixed... but hello, I had eighteenth-birthday money to spend. In short: say hello to my new, shiny, beautiful Nikon D40. She is my soulmate. And also, apparently, female).

...But back to this month's challenge: chocolate eclairs.

Complete with choux pastry recipe with the fateful instructions: After the 7 minutes, slip the handle of a wooden spoon into the door to keep in ajar. When the éclairs have been in the oven for a total of 12 minutes, rotate the sheets top to bottom and front to back. Continue baking for a further 8 minutes or until the éclairs are puffed, golden and firm.

Oh. Oh, REALLY.

There is no 'slip a wooden spoon handle into the door' when you're cooking on an Aga, Daring Bakers. It just doesn't happen like that. What does happen is improvising shifts of two baking sheets of blobby pastry between the roasting and baking ovens - at which point they did look rather impressive - while pretending you can't hear your friend Alex going, 'my mum always puts slits in them now so the steam can get out, so they don't collapse or go soggy' ('THE DARING BAKERS KNOW EVERYTHING, THANK YOU ALEX.') I am apparently a stressful person to bake with.

Predictably, my choux pastry then collapsed and went soggy.

Alex is too good a friend to sit around laughing smugly (after five minutes or so, obviously), so we left the flat and soggy eclairs in the simmering oven to dry out (at a very low temperature) for a couple of hours. They did go crispy and over-baked, yes, but at least I could pick them up by then. If you were wondering; this is why my eclairs are all ugly and mis-shapen. Sigh.

I'm not a total failure. I decided not to make the pastry cream chocolate flavoured, simply because I'm not a big fan of chocolate cream, and instead added the hazelnut praline paste of last month's challenge. And the chocolate glaze on these things is to die for, though admittedly Alex did most of the work on that, while I was flailing around and breaking my mother's sink.

And maybe I'm a sucker for punishment, but yes. I will try choux pastry again. Just on a real oven. A real oven, with a door I can leave open. I dream of such things.

Recipe for Pierre Hermé’s Chocolate Éclairs here.

...I hope Alex helping is okay with the Daring Bakers, on reflection. Don't hurt her. Please don't hurt her. Or me. Or my camera.

Welcome To Wonderland: The Round-up!

Yeah, you all knew it would happen eventually, and here it is - the Welcome To Wonderland blog event round-up!

Hooray, &c. &c.

Before I go on, thank you so much to everyone who entered or even just expressed an interest; it really means a lot to me and I'm so chuffed that even one person wanted to get involved. I mean, obviously more than one person got involved (this would be a short round-up otherwise. I would be the only entrant). But you know what I mean.

So here goes!

First to the party is Sarah in Oshawa, ON, Canada, from What Smells So Good? Since you ask: Carnival Cookies (toffee pieces and amazing-coloured chocolate sunflower seeds? I'm there).

Savoury food has been in the minority of the WWW entries, as Nidhi in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA correctly predicted. She made these amazing marbled tea eggs on her blog, Charche Chauke Ke.

By merit of using a sushi-rolling technique to make these incredible patterned cookies, I hereby declare Rita from Portugal the official coolest person in the universe. Her blog is Clumbsy Cookie, and she made Shikai-Maki Cookies!

I love the colours in this Steam Layer Rice Cake on My Kitchen Snippets. This entry comes from Gertrude in the USA; definitely perfect Wonderland food ^__^.

Another person awarded coolness points now: Joelen from Chicago for making sandwiches with alcohol in them. These are Margarita Chicken sandwiches, and yes; now I'm eighteen all my food will involve alcohol in some shape or form. Take a look at Joelen's Culinary Adventures!

Another amazing cookie rolling technique now from CookeMila in Madrid, Spain. Thankfully with pictures as my Spanish isn't so hot; but Google tools tell me that the name of these cookies translates as Ode To Spring - Oda A La Primavera! So cute XD.

I have to admit I saw these Pac-man Cheese Crackers on Tastorama and totally fell in love; as an added bonus Natasha from Serbia shares my love for Noel Fielding (be glad it's me hosting here; she would have you all dressing up for this XD)

Isa in Santiago, Chile has combined two of my favourite things on her blog, Isa's Cooking, for this one (no, not Noel Fielding this time); cupcakes and miniature food! Her Red Velvet Cupcake Bites are completely adorable, particularly when dwarfed by a full-sized cake stand. All together now: awww... She's also right to guess I've never had a red velvet cake; really got to do that!

A small interval now for the story of a girl with a foodie dream... Simran of Bombay Foodie may not have been able to put her supercute mice together but I think I'll let her off for her great post. If you have any ideas how to stick ears onto hardboiled eggs...!

Cakelaw in Australia had completely the right idea when she turned to Hello Cupcake for decorating ideas - I think I need this book! She made these amazing Dali-esque Sunflower Cupcakes on Laws of the Kitchen. And can the girl have a round of applause - three and a half hours decorating time?! That's dedication.

I love these Chocolate Buttons by Rhyleysgranny in Ireland - so simple, but so adorable! And paired with pink milk, I think my life may be complete. They can be found on Tea And Wheaten Bread!

Great food for a party now (and actually, who needs a party; I'm just in the mood for one of these) - Aloo Samosas on Annarasa - Essence of Food, made by Apu in the USA!

All the fun of recreational drugs with none of the negative side effects now (unless you count a sugar high?); Psychedelic Pinwheel Cookies from Linda in the Netherlands on her blog, Make Life Sweeter. Is there seriously a book called 'Wacky Cakes and Kooky Cookies'? Why don't I own it?

...And because there's always a point in a party where clear instructions become necessary; 'Eat Me' Cookies from SilverMoon in Australia on her blog, Dragon Musings. I also love her idea of little meringue mushrooms with gummy caterpillers; you'll know who to credit if I can't resist making some!

Okay, so I went with two pictures for the next entry - from Morgana in Madrid, Spain - because there were so many options to go with and I couldn't decide which I loved most! She submits Cake... Anything But Balls and has taken the 'cake ball' idea to a whole new level - cake mushrooms? Cake whales? Cake... cakes? I'm so blown away, here.

Yes, these are mini cake ice cream cones!

As if I wasn't over-excited enough here, the fantastic colours of the Rainbow Cupcakes on Epicurean Escapism will have me on the roof. These come from Zhulaiha in Singapore, and I am in love with them, for obvious reasons. Truly a tale of rainbows and Wonderland.

And finally, my own entry - Chequerboard Cake! I apologise for the horrible photo (my camera, displaying its typical perfect timing, decided to break, so I had to use my sister's) but you can expect a post on how to put this cake together in the very near future ^__^.

...Okay, I'm exhausted (whaat? Constant partying takes it all out of me). But once again - thank you so much to all entrants, I've loved everything you sent me and all the effort people have gone to. All in all; a pretty great birthday present! I'll blog with the chequerboard cake later this week (perhaps on my actual blogiversary, if I'm organised enough XD) though it's a bit of a busy one : A-Level results, Driving Theory test, and of course, a real-life party to plan.

Thank you everyone!