Engagement cupcakes

Made these for some dear friends' engagement party. The recipe is here. 

Ladurée (again)

I've blogged about Ladurée before. This visit was JUST AS GOOD. 

They make their own champagne: who knew. 

I blogged about having a rustic kouign amman in St Malo a few years ago.

My favourite every pastry: the palmier (front left). The thing in the middle is a Paris Brest. 

Kugelhopf

This is Dorie Greenspan's recipe for kugelhopf: I made the recipe as written here.

It's technically a kugelhopf made in the wrong pan. This is a rose-shaped bundt pan. A kugelhopf is traditionally supposed to be in a tall swirly turban-like shaped pan.

I found out a few things while planning this cake:

1. A bundt cake in modern parlance is an American term for anything baked in a bundt tin of whatever shape, typically some sort of pound cake or heavy cake in any flavour. You can get bizarro bastardised versions in sour cream and carrot, black forest, pecan caramel, etc.

2. A bundt cake in the traditional sense is a German chocolate-laden thing, still in the fancy shape but with cinnamon-coffee-mocha-type flavouring.

3. A kugelhopf is not a bundt cake. It is like a brioche, but not. It has raisins in it and runs on yeast, not self-raising flour. So it is like a half-bread, half-cake bakery mutant.

I also learned that flour can Do Things I Did Not Know It Could Do. When the dough was first mixed, it was super-sloppy, almost like pancake batter. I was all like "whatever, it's screwed, I put too much milk in it". Then Dorie was all like "beat it in the mixer until the end of time." I was like "whatever Dorie, that's never going to become a cake, or even remotely dough-like. Good luck, lady." But anyway, I did the eternal mixing, and slowly it came together and all the gluten strands stretched and stretched and eventually it was like smooth stretchy chewing gum. No joke. I was amazed. Then it had to rise and be knocked back about six times, then sit overnight, then rise again for hours. By the end of all that I was like "THIS BETTER BE WORTH IT". Anyway, it totally was.

This thing came out of the oven and it was light, richly flavoured (no doubt from maturing and rising and yeasting for so long) and the raisins were soft and juicy, and it was awesome. I also dusted it with cinnamon along with the sugar. It was delicious with coffee.  Perfect for afternoon tea. Or breakfast. Or dessert. Incredible.

My tip: if you use a bundt pan or a rose pan or anything with tons of ridges or moulded detail, butter it real good, butter it again and then lightly flour the tin as well. I hate it when things stick to pans.

Birthday cake 2011

Quadruple-layer strawberries and cream sponge... bliss.

Lady date

French Twist at the Barracks: coffee, tea and a beautifully mini apple crumble to share. Lovely chinaware, lovely company, lovely position.

Beautiful tiered birthday cake

So it was my sister's 25th birthday. I wanted to make the cake from Sleeping Beauty, except not blue. I'd never tried to make a tiered cake before, but my saviour was the Cake and Icing Centre at Samford. They sold me the three sizes of tins, the boards, dowels, and icing flowers and leaves I needed. They also gave me very clear instructions and helpful tips.
I baked three cakes the day before the party. The smallest cake was vanilla pound cake (butter cake is a bit feeble) and the other two were lemon pound. All three had strawberry jam filling. Then I wrapped them in foil when they were cold. The next morning I started to assemble and decorate the cake.

You use boards and dowels to support the weight of each layer on the one below it. It did involve a fair bit of measuring and cutting and slicing, and even then my layers weren't perfectly level, but it seemed to work OK. The Cake Centre sells base boards and layer boards that are already the correct size for each tin.

Once it was assembled, I covered the whole thing in pink buttercream icing and used a hot knife to smooth it out. I made small white balls from packet fondant icing rolled in icing sugar and used them to circle each layer. Then the icing flowers and leaves filled in the gaps and went on the top. Not a bad effort for my first time... next time I will try a smooth fondant finish instead of buttercream.

Buche de Noel 2010

With mini snowmen on top.

Buche de Noel

Sponge cake

50g cocoa

pinch sea salt

3 large eggs

75g light muscovado sugar, or a mixture of caster and brown sugar

Filling

375g sweetened chestnut puree

75g dark chocolate, broken into pieces

180ml whipping cream

Icing sugar

Christmas figurines or other decorations

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Butter a Swiss roll tin (approx. 23cm x 32cm), line it, and butter the lining.

2. Put eggs and sugar into electric mixer and whisk for 8 to 10 mins, or until pale and moussey.

Sift cocoa and salt into bowl and fold in lightly.

3. Pour into tin, tap on bench to knock out any air bubbles. Bake for 8 to 10 mins or until set and springy.

4. Turn cake out onto a clean tea towel dusted with icing sugar. Leave the paper on and carefully roll up the sponge, using the tea towel to help. Roll from the short end. Leave it to cool.

5. Whip the cream. Melt the chocolate over hot water. Combine both with the chestnut puree to taste.

6. Unroll the sponge, remove paper. Spread with half the filling mixture. Roll it back up. If the sponge cracks or breaks, just stuff it back together or ignore it.

7. Tip sponge onto serving plate, seam down. Spread it with the rest of the filling. Use fork to make lines and swirls, like a tree branch. Add decorations.

8. Chill in the fridge for an hour or longer. Bring it back to room temperature before serving, then sift over icing sugar.

Little ghost cakes

The ghost-shaped moulds are from Aldi, but they were selling out fast. Plain lemon pound cake recipe, topped with plain lemon icing and yellow icing eyes and mouths. Not my finest effort, but an OK start to Halloween Week...