RCPM Cake

February 23rd, 2010

But is it true it’s always happy hour here?

And if it is I’d like to stay a while.

Well as cliche as it may sound,

I’d like to raise another round,

And if your bottle’s empty,

Help yourself to mine,

Thank you for your time,

And here’s to life.

rcpm

This weekend, Edinburgh was lucky enough to host Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers on their UK tour. In celebration of this momentous occasion I made this cake for my family and friends to enjoy over the weekend. It is a lemon curd cake and unfortunately I was a bit rushed for time so the decoration is not as interesting (or a polished) as I would ideally like. Still, I think it gets the point across. If you’ve never heard of the Peacemakers before (which I suspect is likely to be the case), I thoroughly recommend downloading these tracks for free. I can’t properly express how much I enjoyed the gig on Saturday and I can’t thank the band enough for all their efforts.

COST PRICE CAKE: Chinese New Year Cupcakes

February 14th, 2010



Each flavour is available as a box of 6. As usual, cost price cakes are sold on a first come, first served basis.


Vanilla cupcakes with sweet red bean paste filling and vanilla buttercream
redbean1
redbean2


Green tea and pomegranate cupcakes with white chocolate frosting
greentea1
greentea2

Benjamin the bashful robot

February 13th, 2010

benjamin

COST PRICE CAKE – Vanilla Sponge Cake with Raspberry Jam and Buttercream filling in ‘Garden’ design with Marzipan bugs

February 8th, 2010

garden1

garden2

Just a simple Victoria Sponge cake underneath this icing. The idea was to try out the big, bold ‘garden’ design as a home for my marzipan bugs.


Cost price cakes are sold on a first come, first served basis.

THIS CAKE HAS NOW SOLD

American Kit Kats

February 8th, 2010

American

I’m quite excited to have some American Kit-Kats to try. Up until now I have only had the Japanese imports to write about but the wonderful Laurence picked these up on his travels for inclusion in this little adventure. They are miniature, individually wrapped fingers. Perhaps every so slightly shorter than the British and Japanese varieties, but taller. In fact, they are probably the same height that British Kit- Kats used to be before the great snack shrinkage spread rapidly across all biscuits and confections. You know, when ‘wagon wheels’ were as big as your head and ‘milky ways’ were brown in the middle.


These Kit-Kats come in an assorted pack of dark chocolate, milk chocolate and ‘creme’. While it’s somewhat more mainstream than the Kit-Kats I have been trying up until now, I find the monochrome look of them rather pleasing and think that the mixture gives the whole bag more of a ‘box of chocolates’ feel than ‘bag of biscuits’. The dark and milk varieties were as you would expect, although with a very slight aftertaste which perhaps exposes a slight tailoring to the American taste-bud which has been ruined (as far as chocolate is concerned) by ‘Hershey’s ‘. ‘Creme’, however, is not, as I first though, another word for white chocolate. It is much simpler than that. It appears to mean a creamy taste that is rather mild and undefined. Not bad, and they make a pretty addition to the trio.

COST PRICE CAKE – Green Cardamom and Madagascan Vanilla cake with Mango Buttercream filling

January 31st, 2010

mango2
This is the first of the cost price cakes I’ve made available to friends and acquaintances in the local area. (For more info see the facebook group) Happily (for me anyway) it sold before it was even finished!

I came up with the design primarily as a way to practice my piping and also to try my hand at a slightly more elegant type of cake. I wanted to use a bold colour to contrast the white piped icing and once I settled on orange, I decided on designing a new flavour to match. I hope the cake’s new owners enjoy it, I think it works rather well and only needs a few little tweaks for next time.
mango3
mango4

Vanilla cupcakes with passion-fruit curd filling and white chocolate frosting

January 28th, 2010

passionfruit curd

As you may have already noticed, I am quite excited about filled cupcakes at the moment. The idea for this one came about when my fiance ordered a passion-fruit curd pavlova at a restaurant and while I am not the biggest fan of meringues, the passion-fruit curd was tasty enough to start me thinking about making it myself. I guessed that using my trusty lemon curd recipe, substituting 2 passion-fruits for every one lemon and reducing the sugar content a bit would be all it took. Happily I was right and the passion-fruit curd worked first time. Choosing a frosting took a little more thought. After deciding that passion-fruit icing would be a little too much, I looked for something that wouldn’t overpower the relatively subtle flavour of the passion-fruit but that was also able to bring it’s own dimension to the finished cupcake. I liked the idea of using white chocolate frosting for several reasons. Firstly, it has a mild but distinctive flavour. Secondly, it’s creamy/white colour appealed to me as an aesthetic finishing touch to the cupcake, and thirdly, it is a tried and tested recipe so I could be certain of exactly what it would taste like and I imagined the flavours working well together. And they did!
While the cupcake went well with my morning cup of tea, it actually has puddingy qualities that could allow it to work well as an after dinner cupcake. An individual serving alternative to slicing a gateaux.

passionfruit

Marzipan Monsters

January 26th, 2010

fred

Meet Fred – he is the prototype and is in fact made from left over sugarpaste rather than marzipan (it was a little dry so the joins are not as smooth as I would like). Fred was the result of idle doodles and a brainwave to turn them into edible decorations. Others soon followed.

owl

bugs

penguin

Why, you ask, are the penguins looking askance at their surroundings? Because they have just spotted Nigel and his brethren advancing upon them…

Nigel

…and they look hungry!

When I get some more free time, I am hoping to increase the collection. I have already made some doodles, I just need to translate them into an edible medium.

Jasmine Tea Kit-Kat

January 20th, 2010

This was amazing! It tastes exactly like washing down a kit kat with a cup of jasmine tea. I am in awe.

PB110251

Rainbow Cupcakes

December 11th, 2009


A story in pictures



purple-blue
blue-green
green-yellow
yellow-orange
orange-red
red
rainbow



Some shrewd readers may notice that this last picture differs somewhat in quality from my usual shots. It is in fact courtesy of the customer, the very talented Alice. The original, and the rest of Alice’s flickr stream can be found here – Only Alice