Friday 5 September 2008

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.

23 comments:

Clumbsy Cookie said...

WOW! How many hours did you spend on those cookies? They are adorable! But my favourite was that skull!

Natasha said...

Everything looks just brilliant!! It must have been so much fun!

steph- whisk/spoon said...

must have been some party! i'm a huge fan of the cake skulls!

Abitofafoodie said...

Those cookies are amazing! You must have the world's largest collection of cookie cutters, no?

My Sweet & Saucy said...

What fun photos! Loved looking at them all!

Anonymous said...

Lucky of your guests who got to enjoy all that food! Everything looks amazing!

Anonymous said...

i love those dalek cookies!

Sweet Bird said...

That giraffe cookie makes my heart go pitter-pat. I love it!

grace said...

indigo! goodness gracious! what fabulous work you do. cake balls and jam tarts and checkercakes are all well and good (and you did a masterful job with each), but those cookies are incredible! i wish i had even one shred of your artistic talent. bravo! :)

Anonymous said...

You are amazing, holy moley batman.

You do some fab work, everything is just gorgeous.

Anna said...

Antonia - actually, not at all XD! More or less all the animals (other than the rabbit and duck) were originally from the same scottie dog cutter and just shaped differently/given trunks, and anything like the teapot/dalek/planets/whale &c. &c. are just variations on circle cutters. I like to improvise, haha.

Clumbsy cookie - Too many hours! My sister will testify that I need a new hobby XD.

Thankyou to everyone else as well!

Jules said...

I love the dalek & tardis cookie!

maybelles mom said...

great post. adorable cookies.

Natasha said...

Hey, I have an award for you! Come by and pick it up!

Anonymous said...

These are such cute cookies! I especially love the giraffe that I saw on Tastespotting because it reminds me of my old sorority who has a giraffe as their symbol. I should make these cookies for them!

shanna said...

I just want you to know, I was going through Tastespotting on my lunch break, when my co-worker, across the office, screamed: "Is that a giraffe cookie?"

And thus I came here. Awesome cookies!

Anonymous said...

The reason why you should never invite me to your party is because you'd end up with a tray full of headless animal cookies. I have my eye on the giraffe and rabbit specifically.

Now I don't know what a psychiatrist would make of that. :P

Anonymous said...

To quote a food-loving friend of ours (*cough* leah *cough*), the mini cupcake things were FOODGASMIC!!!!

And I sooo totally agree...even if Clare ate MY sheeep...lucky she likes sheep just as much as I do...lol!

Gorgeous as ever!

Missing you!
Clair.x

Rosie said...

Everything looks brilliant!! I just adore those cookies al iced so cute :)

Rosie x

Anonymous said...

Foodgasms all round, my friend: Now that's genorosity for you!
Btw how much fun did you have making all those cookie photos? You child you. I'd love to set Freud on you with his mad psychology SKILLZ but we all know he's too lusty to be alone with so beautiful and talented a baker as you <3

Anonymous said...

Congrats!!! Those skulls and hearts look great! I thought about covering cake balls in royal icing but, as you said... maybe the whole thing is just too sweet.

But, hey, your cookies are funtastic! ;-) I love them all!

Lore said...

Hi Indigo,

I am planning to write a post on what I consider to be the most original September food photos. I will be posting the 10 photos on Culinarty (my blog) with a link back to the authors. This is actually the fifth edition of "10 Original Food Photos". I really like the dalek cookie photo and I would very much like to include it in my post. Would that be ok with you? Please let me know.

Anonymous said...

Lovely giraffe! You should send it to http://olahelland.net/giraffes/.

I loved all the other animals as well. Brilliant.