Kitchen Alchemy

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

2019-02-18T11:39:00.002+11:00

For years I have been avoiding the cult of meringue buttercream. I've done this mainly because it just seemed to hard to be bothered. I tried French buttercream years ago, and I found while I could make it on my old Sunbeam Mixmaster, it just never worked on my Kitchenaid.

But I have been watching my old school friend, Gail Turner, using Swiss Meringue Buttercream on many of her creations, and I thought, if Gail can do it, so can I. I humbly asked for her recipe and she shared it with me. Being ever the adventurer, I thought I'd use it for the very first time on my best friend's wedding cake - because living dangerously is fun!

The process of making the meringue buttercream was relatively easy, although there is a point where you think it's gone horribly wrong. Look away at that point, and by the time you turn your head back, a miracle will have happened!

Ingredients
300g egg whites
375g caster sugar
675g unsalted butter (room temperature)
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt

1. Place the egg whites and sugar in a glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water on the stove top. Whisk until the sugar has melted and the mix is warm to the touch. This is important because it cooks the nasties out of the egg white.

2. Transfer the egg white mix to the bowl of your Kitchenaid and whip using the whisk attachment. Beat until soft peaks form - about 10 minutes. Ad the vanilla.

3. Start dropping in cubes of butter - about one tablespoon in size. This is the point where it will begin to go a bit soupy. DO NOT PANIC! Keep adding butter until it's all combined, then keep mixing. Add the pinch of salt.

4. You will see the mix appear to curdle at one point. Again, DON'T PANIC. Keep mixing - the mix will solidify and become beautiful creamy butter.

5. The high butter content of this mix will make it pale yellow. If you want it to be white, add icing whitener (titanium dioxide). You can make it other colours at this point too - but remember there will be a yellow undertone (like with white chocolate ganache). If you whiten the icing and then colour, you may have trouble achieving brilliant colours.

Use right away with either smoothing or piping techniques. If you refrigerate the buttercream, bring it back to room temperature and beat it smooth again before use. Good luck! Try not to eat the buttercream straight from the bowl.

Planet Cake

2016-09-19T08:42:00.001+10:00

When my son requested a space party for his birthday this year, I rubbed my hands together with glee - finally I had an excuse to buy some cool tools from the Evil Cake Genius.

My grand idea for a cake was something that looked like Jupiter. I had seen a hand painted one on Pinterest, and I wondered whether I could create a similar effect with swirling fondant.

So I ordered the hemisphere baking tin and spherical cake combs and waited with baited breath until they arrived. You have got to love a fellow cake baker who shares their secrets with you - the Evil Cake Genius sent extensive instructions on how to create a flawless sphere. I was saddened to discover the bottom of her sphere is made from rice crispy treat. Straight away I knew I was going to be one of those smarty pants cooks who deviates from the well trodden path.

The instructions said to fill the tin to almost full to ensure you get a complete hemisphere. My first attempt was too short. I had to bake again to get it right. Once I had two hemispheres, I carved out a hole in each and filled one side with blue chocolate rocks. Then I stuck the two halves together with chocolate ganache.

Then I transferred the ball to my turntable. I knew it would sit in the almost 1cm depression in the middle - I wanted that so it wouldn't roll away while I coated it with ganache.

It was obvious very quickly that my sphere was too small to use the expensive and dangerous combs I'd bought especially for this occassion. Apart from the fact that I hadn't made the bottom out of rice crispy treat or impaled it on nails on my cake board, I wasn't going to build up as much ganache on the exterior as The Evil Cake Genius does with her buttercream.

I did, however, use the comb to pick away as much ganache as possible on the under side of my sphere to make room for the fondant covering. I set about smoothing the ganache using a hot palette knife. I even covered it with plastic wrap and smoothed it with my hands.

Then it was fondant time. I cut 1cm thick pieces of orange, white and chocolate fondant. I layered them next to each other in an offset fashion, then rolled them up like a snail shell. I stood the roll on its end, then began rolling the fondant out into a big circle.

Once I had the fondant rolled out enough to cover my sphere, I painted the ganache with sugar syrup, then carefully cloaked the cake with the fondant. Talk about exciting! I smoothed it down until all that was left was its "feet".

I trimmed the excess off with a scalpel several times, then manoeuvred the cake to the edge of the turntable to tuck the fondant edge underneath. Once that was done I began smoothing and smoothing and smoothing with my plastic flexible smoothers. This bit was fun!

I stuck the sphere to a black cake board with royal icing and let it sit until it dried.

Next day I was convinced the whole thing would roll off the board in transit. So I made some black royal icing and piped it around the board close to the bottom of the cake and stuck purple chocolate rocks in the icing to act as breaks should there be any movement.

Next, I cut an eight inch round out of the middle of a 10 inch cake board. I covered it with purple fondant, then sprinkled it with silver edible glitter. With the ring positioned on the cake, I added a giant lollipop to look like an orbiting moon, and a black glitter candle in the shape of a seven. And voila: planet cake!

Drip Cake - the low down on the learn!

2016-02-07T15:45:00.001+11:00

If you love cake as much as I do, you were probably astounded by the mergence of Katheryn Sabbath's drip cakes last year. Her use of candy colours combined with common candy decorations are a visual feast that has sent cake aficionados wild all over the world.

I thought I'd have a go at creating a drip cake myself, after seeing a tutorial this week that uses watered down candy melts for the drip component.

I had three seven inch vanilla buttercakes in the freezer. I set out to build a mega tower, which would let me take my 30cm Perspex scraper out for a spin. As I built the layers I quickly realised I'd end up with a cake so high, it wouldn't fit in my fridge and I would have trouble getting someone to eat it. So I went for three layers of two centimetres each.

I painted each layer with raspberry jam, then scattered a few frozen raspberries across each. Then I spread 3/4 cup of what I'm calling royal buttercream - royal icing made from meringue powder with 500g of butter combined into it - onto each layer. Yep - that's half a kilo of butter. The amount of butter in this cake is staggering.

Then I made up a batch of chocolate buttercream. It's really important to state I don't put shortening in my buttercream. While adding a half a cup of vegetable shortening will make the buttercream slide better when you smooth it, to me it gives a horrible mouth feel and even more horrible aftertaste. If a cake doesn't taste good, what's the point, right?

So I began smoothing on my chocolate buttercream. I found anywhere it connected with the royal buttercream it separated. I put the cake in the fridge to firm the chocolate buttercream up, but my first attempt just didn't quite cut the mustard. I decorated this one with chocolate wafers and sent it to a good home.

I put a really bad crumb coat on my second cake and left it in the fridge overnight. When I finally plucked up the energy to plough on today, the buttercream was super solid. I had left the remainder out on the bench over night, covered in glad wrap. It was nice and soft so I beat it with the Kitchenaid and smoothed it onto my chilled cake. I find my buttercream recipe will not smooth easily. It's more suited to piping. The more I try to smooth it, the more dents and grazes and take off marks I get. So after a while I just took a hot knife to it.

I put it in the fridge and prepped the topping. I put a whole bag of blue Wilton candy melts into a mixing bowl with a quarter of a cup of water. Terrifying! This is what the tutorial said to do, but you can't trust anything you see on the internet!

I gave the candy melts three 30 second zaps in the microwave. I had to stir the mix so much to melt the chocolate, it ended up with a lot of air bubbles. If you've ever used candy melts for cake pops, you'll know they are gloppy when melted. The water thinned it out well. But not well enough, I think.

At the ready I had one piping bag of pink royal buttercream and one of mauve, plus some pink pearlescent bubblegum balls and some pink sixlets. I considered silver cachous, but they can turn black in the fridge and can make a cake look unsightly. So I left them out.

I spooned the warm candy melt onto the edge of the cake and pushed it over the side as the tutorial instructed. Because of its thickness, it didn't drip like Kathryn Sabbath's. In fact, it wanted to set really quickly, so repeated attempts to push it over the side only caused bulges.

I piped some royal buttercream puffs onto the surface and placed the gumballs and sixlets in a considered pattern on one side. The result is OKAY but I couldn't give this cake to anyone and feel good about it.

The lesson here, I think, is that a cake design which can seem thrown together is actually art in disguise. Kathryn Sabbath clearly has a secret drip ganache recipe that I'm not privvy to. If I were to do this again, I'd cover the cake in ganache, not buttercream. The interior looks spectacular, but this is an intensely sweet cake.

Royal icing for sugar cookies Pt2

2015-05-19T19:05:00.001+10:00

Okay, so you've got your cookies, you've got your flood icing. Now what?

It's time to choose your colours and fill your piping bags. There really is only one brand of food colour that is used in royal icing. Americolor seems to be the only product that doesn't alter the very delicate liquid balance you've just spent about 15mins adjusting. Trust me, I've tried other brands - liquid colour, gel colour - they just don't produce the same result.

So choose your colours and decant about 200ml of icing into three small mixing bowls. I use ramekins. Add a few drops of colour to each bowl, reserve the icing left in the main bowl for your white supply. I try to stick to four colours per cookie project including white. But there's nothing to stop you from doing more if you have the inclination.

Use a long handled teaspoon to mix the colour through the flood icing, ensuring every last scrap of white is combined. Americolour will dry darker, so with reds and blacks, don't drive yourself nuts trying to get full colour saturation in the wet stage. The colour will be right when it's dried.

Set up your piping bags with piping tube sizes according to whether you are laying down a base colour or layering over the top. Flood icing is no good for pipe work on dry icing so you'll be using these colours for wet on wet techniques or laying down colours next to each other. I use a No. 3 tube for the base because it gives a thick layer, sets hard and gives the cookie a nice crunch.

Fill the piping bag then seal it off. I use cable ties because they seem most effective. But you can also use kitchen string or rubber bands.

Pipe a line around the edge of your cookie. Just do them one at a time. Try not to drag the piping tube through the icing. This needs to be a neat ridge. Hold the piping tube about an inch above the cookie at a 45 degree angle and guide the icing to fall into place. This is called a "dam". Fill in the space inside the dam straight away. You should see the icing connecting up with no "scars" visible. Every part of the cookie top should be filled. Pipe a little extra to get a nice level finish. Some people gently shake their cookies from side to side to help the icing heal. I try not to touch them as I invariably stick my fingers in the icing. Belle sits hers on a tray and shakes the tray.

If you want to do a wet on wet technique, like polka dots, you have to drop the spots into the base layer before the icing can form a skin. This means you have to continue working on one cookie at a time.

It's complicated, isn't it? Now you know why cookie artists charge so much for a single cookie.

Once you have iced all your cookies set them aside to dry for 8-12 hours. That's right! Last minute rush jobs are not possible with sugar cookies. They really do need that amount of time to dry, and putting a fan on them is advised.

Can I suggest, if you're really into this and you want to know more, check out the youtube channels of Sweetambs, Montreal Confections and Haniela. They are such inspirations and can teach you so much more than me. And of course you should check out my dear friend Belleissimo Cookies' youtube videos too. Happy cookie-ing!

Royal icing for sugar cookies Pt1

2015-05-18T18:19:00.001+10:00

If you read my sugar cookies post earlier this week, you're probably waiting with baited breath for the icing recipe. The good news is resting your cookies for one or two days is really good for laying down icing. It gives the butter a chance to drop and reduces the risk of grease absorbing into your icing and discolouring the final finish.

As I mentioned, I am a student of Belleissimo Cookies, so all credit goes to Belle for what I've learned. And Belle will tell you her knowledge is garnered from many masters around the world. There are so many great cookie artists willing to share their knowledge and I have benefitted enormously from their generosity.

You will be shocked, no doubt, when I tell you my royal icing is made out of Pavlova Magic! This is an Australian product based on meringue powder. In other countries meringue powder is easy to get in quantities. Not so much here. So Pavlova Magic is the secret ingredient. Now you know!

Ingredients

2/3 cup warm water

1 Pavlova Magic

1kg pure icing sugar

1. Empty the meringue powder into your Kitchenaid mixer bowl. Add the warm water and whisk with a balloon whisk for 30secs.

2. Add all the icing sugar to the bowl. Using the paddle beater, mix to combine. Increase speed to sixth gear and beat for 10mins. Seriously. Use a timer!

3. Remove about a third of the royal icing and store it in a plastic container in the fridge.

4. Now it's time to thin the icing down. There is no easy way to get this right. It really is trial and error. Start by adding one tablespoon of water and stirring it in by hand. You will see the icing starting to soften. Add another tablespoon of water and mix to combine. You cannot do this on the mixer. It has to be by hand.

5. Now switch to teaspoons. Add another teaspoon of water and mix to combine. After each addition test your icing by dragging a knife through the top. You want to count in seconds how long the icing takes to "heal". Count one-elephant-two-elephant and so on. You are looking for a 10 count icing. 10 seconds for the mark you made to disappear.

6. Now add another teaspoon of icing, making sure all of it is mixed with the water so it's all the same consistency throughout. Are you there yet? Do another check with the knife.

Belle Harris says the icing should be as runny as warm honey. I say it should heal in a ten count. Don't forget - Belle is the master! You will need to find what works best for you. Once you have your icing you can colour it. This a whole other story. Stay tuned for my post on that topic.

Sugar cookies

2015-05-18T13:24:00.000+10:00

In the past two years I've had the great fortune to make friends with Belle Harris of Belleisimo Cookies. Every year in October I shut down cake production because of the hot, humid weather. I don't have aircon in my home and I can't stand the added stress of cake designing in the heat. So Belle suggested I give cookies a go.

Sugar cookies are a whole other art form to sugar craft with fondant. The cookie dough is a soft eating cookie, and you need to go to great lengths to keep your cookie in it's shape and level on the top. Sugar cookies take ages to make because the icing needs eight to 12 hours to dry. I've achieved a level of competence in my cookies, but Belle is at mastery level. You can check some of her cookie instructional a on youtube.

Meanwhile, here is my sugar cookie recipe, which I've adjusted to suit my style.

250g butter

200g pure icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

1 medium egg

425g plain flour

1. Beat the butter and sugar until it is very pale and fluffy.

2. Add the egg and vanilla and continue to beat until combined.

3. Add the flour and stir until combined. It really is best to do this by hand, not with a mixer, if you don't want your cookies to be tough. Stand the cookie dough for 15mins.

4. Roll small batches of cookie dough out on baking paper lightly dusted with more flour. Your dough needs to be about 4mm thick. I use wooden skewers as spacers to get the height right.

Carefully press your preferred cookie cutter into the dough. Do not lift it! Slide a large palette knife under the cutter and dough, lift the two together and transfer to a cookie sheet lined with baking paper. Position the cookie, remove the cutter and go again! Keep repeating until all the dough is used.

5. Bake in moderate oven for 22mins or until golden brown. You may find your oven cooks the cookies faster or slower than my oven. You'll need to work out what is best for you.

6. When you first take the cookies out of the oven smooth their tops with a fondant smoother. This is to flatten their tops and pop any air bubbles. Transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool.

I'll write another post later this week to explain how to do the flood icing.

Sharp edges on big cakes

2015-05-17T17:05:00.001+10:00

So what have I been doing all this time? Deepening my big cake skills mostly. I found an amazing cake designer named Jessica Harris, who was an interior designer in a former life. She has an amazing eye for geometric design. I took her Craftsy class, Clean & Simple Design, in which Jessica teaches some of her most popular designs. But she also teaches her technique for getting the sharp edge on a fondant cake. Would you believe she turns her cakes upside down? It's not for the feint hearted. Ganache must have been set for a day to attempt this technique. But it works! As you can see from this bee themed cake.

So what's the trick? You prepare you ganache layer as normal, making sure you get the top level and the edges sharp. Here's what mine looks like when I'm satisfied with the finish.

I roll out the fondant and apply it in the same way as usual. I still panic every time I do this. You'd think I'd be over that by now as every job always works out! Jessica suggests trimming the fondant to about 1cm of the bottom of the cake. This is your first chance to turn ithe cake upside down.

Get a piece of baking paper and put it on the top of the cake. Put a cake board on top of the paper then carefully get your hand under the cake and flip. This should be no problem as you have a perfectly sized board under the cake too, right?

Flip the cake and put it on the bench. Smooth the excess fondant skirt upwards so that it is perpendicular. Then trim it to the height of the bottom of your cake using a one sided razor blade or a scalpel. Flip it back over and continue smoothing the fondant the same way as usual, making sure the sides are straight and the top is level. Now flip the cake again.

Use your straight edged smoother to smooth the fondant on the edges downwards. That is, in the direction of the top (your cake is upside down). At this point check the tiny space between the edge of your cake and the bench top. Do you see a shadow? The round edge of the cake casts a shadow. Continue smoothing the fondant downwards until you can't see a shadow any more. Switch to fondant smoothing plastic squares if you have them to put the final polish on your fondant. When you turn your cake back over it should look like this:

It takes time to get this technique right. But it's worth it. If you try it let me know how you go!

Tiramisu

2015-05-13T15:37:00.002+10:00

The word “tiramisu” literally translates as “pick me up”. This layered dessert probably earned it’s name because of the delicious coffee syrup soaked sponge that make up its base. It is believed tiramisu originates from Tuscany, which is famous for other layered cakes, however, it doesn’t appear to be a very old recipe. Tiramisu often includes a liqueur in the coffee syrup, which is why many people regard it as the Italian equivalent to trifle. The best tiramisus leak coffee syrup onto your plate, and always taste better the day after they are made. I came up with this recipe a few years ago when I was commissioned to write a children's international cookbook. Sadly, the book never eventuated, but this recipe has become legend in my house, with even my non-dessert eating husband slurping it up!

3 egg yolks
¼ cup caster sugar
1 tblsp corn flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
250ml milk
500ml marscarpone cheese
2 tblsp instant coffee powder
2 tblsp sugar
500ml boiling water

1/4 cup Marsala wine
one nine inch sponge cake, cut into four layers
¼ cup cocoa powder
300ml whipped cream

1. Combine the egg yolks, sugar, flour and vanilla in a medium saucepan. Whisk until the mixture turns pale.
2. Add the milk and whisk to combine with the egg mix. Place the saucepan over a medium heat and stir continuously with a wooden spoon until the mixture begins to thicken and bubble. Cook through for one minute. Pour the custard into a glass bowl and set aside until completely cool.
3. Place the coffee powder and sugar in a measuring jug. Add 300ml boiling water and stir to dissolve the sugar. Set aside to cool.
4. Beat the marscarpone cheese in the large bowl of an electric mixer for 1 minute. Spoon in the custard and mix on slow to combine.
5. Line the cake tin you baked the sponge cake in with Glad wrap, ensuring there's plenty of overhang. Place the layer that will be the top face down in the tin. Soak the sponge with a quarter of the coffee syrup, then cover with marscapone mix. Repeat with all other layers. Seal the cake with the Glad wrap and refrigerate for two hours.
6. Turn the cake out onto a serving plater or cake stand and ease the Glad wrap away. Spread a thin layer of whipped cream over the top and dust heavily with extra cocoa.

Makes 10 serves.

Where is the Kitchen Alchemist?

2015-05-13T15:30:00.001+10:00

Long time no blog, right? I haven't been doing nothing though! Like most bloggers, I gave up on the big stories and went for micro blogging sites like Facebook and Twitter. I have been keeping the world up to date over there. Not so much here.

I have been churning out big cake after big cake. I've also taught myself how to make sugar cookies. I'll taking a moment over coming weeks to put some new posts up.

Cooking wise, when you have a kid there's a whole lots less fun cooking, I can tell ya! But there have been a few inventions. I'll share those too.

Road Test: Coloured Fondant

2013-05-21T16:55:00.000+10:00

It wasn’t such a long time ago when the only colours cake decorating fondant came in were white and ivory. Then Cake Art came on the scene and introduced vibrant red, brilliant green and black fondant.

In the past couple of years two new players have entered the market – Satin Ice and Bakel’s Pettinice, and I think it’s high time we took a look at coloured fondant and how it has performed in the jobs I’ve completed over the past year.

I first bought Cake Art’s red fondant when I thought I would decorate a Christmas cake with all red instead of traditional white. I chickened out at the last minute, not confident I could pull it in the dead heat of summer. When I finally got around to using the 1 kilo roll of red fondant, I noticed it was very wet and somewhat grainy. My supplier (Hollywood Cake Decoration) told me it was possible to add up to one third white fondant to Cake Art’s intense red fondant, and it would still have the same deep colour. I didn’t need to expand the bulk so I didn’t try it, but I’ve since tested this idea and found it to be true.

About two years ago I began to read about Satin Ice pre-coloured fondant on various American cake decorating websites. I was excited by the range of colours Satin Ice was offering. The next thing I knew, Robert’s Confectionary in Australia was offering Satin Ice and bringing out specialists from America to help us learn how to make our fondant go further. I bought a one kilo bucket of yellow Satin Ice, intending to make a cake in the shape of a wedge of Swiss cheese for a friend. But she changed her mind at the last minute and asked for a dessert cake instead.

Last winter when I was working in the markets and shopping at Hollywood every week, I was excited to find my favourite fondant, Bakel’s Pettinice, has introduced coloured fondant. They included blue, black, red, pink, green, yellow and purple in their coloured range, all in handy 750g packs. And then there was still the trusty 7kg bucket of white or ivory still available for big jobs.

Over the past year I’ve made lots of different big cakes and I’ve used these coloured fondants to save me time and elbow grease when multiple colours were needed. Here’s my basic low down on the three different brands offering coloured fondant:

Colour: All have a great colour range, including Cake Art, who were clearly threatened by the entrance of Satin Ice into the Australian market. But I’ve found if you have a primary colour and a load of white fondant you can basically create any colour you like. The hardest colour to make is purple – mixing red and blue to get purple results in a dark and dirty purple. Cake Art offers several tones of mauve and purple, so if you need delicate colour, it’s probably best to go for their product.

The Bakel’s Pettinice colours are INTENSE. If you want to create light anything, you only need to add a little pinch of coloured fondant to white to get a pretty pastel.

Texture: All these coloured fondants seem wetter than normal white fondant. In summer they all need a bit of corn flour added to dry them out and prevent them from turning to tacky paste. But be careful not too add too much – it will create cracks and scars when you bend the fondant over the corners of your cake.

The Pettinice and Satin Ice textures are comparable – smooth to work with and easy to give a final polish to, but the Satin Ice seems to stay tacky for a lot longer. Cake Art seems to be grainy, and there is nothing I’ve been able to do to change this other than work corn flour into it. Because of this I never use Cake Art to cover a big cake.

Flavour: I’ll be straight with you. Cake Art tastes yuk. Satin Ice is supposed to be vanilla flavoured but tastes like medicine in my opinion. The hands down winner in the flavour department for me is Bakel’s Pettinice.

So there you go – I hope my insights help you know which coloured fondant to use when and how to handle them to get the best results. I’ll make no bones about it – I favour Bakel’s Pettinice above all others. Happy cake decorating!

Barnacle! Quasi! Peso!

2013-04-09T17:15:00.000+10:00

When I was asked to make an Octonauts cake for a little boy's fourth birthday, I was very relieved to have all the coloured fondants from the Bakel's Pettinice range on hand to use. A year ago I would have had to mix up all the colours myself, which is incredibly time consuming. Having pre-coloured fondant to work with saved me a massive amount of time in creating the colourful characters from the cartoon series, Octonauts.

I made this cake on the same day as the purple 30th birthday cake, so I still had to struggle with the hot weather. Once again the ganached cake had to be set in the fridge. And I also had to work cornflour into the fondant to ensure it would go on the cake. Unfortunately, I think I put a bit too much conflour which changed the chemical composition of the fondant, which in turn caused cracking and scarring on the sharp edge. While I was able to recover the fondant this time, I found out a couple of weeks later that too much cornflour can actually wreck the fondant all together.

The thing that took the most time with this cake was making all the creatures, including the Captain Barnacles, Quasi and Peso figurines. They each had to be the same size, and needed to have the little details on them to complete their likeness. I have to say, as with all cake art, you're really just trying to create an impression rather than an exact replica. And these guys impressed enough for the little boy whose birthday it was to ban everybody from eating them.

My special tip after doing this cake is to try and complete your cake the day before it has to be delivered. This one had shiny patches on it because of the cold ganache, and I'm convinced it might have dried out if it had been left to sit overnight like the purple one.

Oh - and both of these cakes had to travel a good distance to be delivered. I was thrilled that neither one came to grief in the car, but I'm sure this was out of pure luck than anything else!

Birthday cake with a bow

2013-04-09T16:51:00.000+10:00

I haven't been blogging a lot lately because it has been a summer of utter cake avalanches. Some weekends I have been doing two or three cake jobs and had absolutely no time to share photos or stories about it. One of the greatest challenges has been keeping the cakes under control in the hot Australian summer. I work from home and I do not have airconditioning, so I've had to work out how to get cakes to stabilise instead of turning to mush.

I made this cake for a 30th birthday and got myself very tangled up trying to get the ganache to set. I made it about 12 hours before I needed to use it, which normally would be enough in winter to get it to the right consistency. But in summer it never achieved better consistency than thickened cream, so I had to put it in the fridge. Once I started covering the cake it had to go in the fridge every 20 minutes to get each layer to set. Overall this took me two hours, but remove the waiting time and, using the barrel ganaching technique, this really wouldn't have been more than 30 minutes.

In winter fondant is rock hard and I sometimes zap it in the microwave to get it soft enough to work with. But in summer it is very soft and sticky. Anthea Leonard, director of Sweet Art, recommended I add cornflour to the fondant to dry it out enough to handle. While this helped me get the fondant onto the cake and bought me enough time to smooth the fondant down, I found because the ganache had been set in the fridge the coldness of the cake caused the fondant to go shiny and sticky. With this cake I finished it early enought to put it in a room to stand overnight. I was relieved the next day to see it had dried out and had a typical matte look.

A word on the fondant bow - this one took me eight goes to get right. Apart from the fondant being very soft, it was surprisingly difficult to get it to look like a bow and not a big white mess. I had to try several different shape cutting technicques to find something that would work - I ended up with a shape similar to a bow tie. The lesson for me was to never stop trying to get things right until they are. You'd be surprised what results you can achieve when you push yourself that little bit further.

Caking in extreme weather

2013-02-11T15:40:00.000+11:00

If you live in Sydney, Australia, you will know that it has been a summer of extreme weather. We’ve had two extraordinary heat waves where the temperature has reached over 45 degree Celsius. And then there have been a few occasions when we’ve suffered through extreme monsoon rains.

Both types of weather create conditions for cake baking which change almost everything I know to do in the kitchen. During the heat I left the butter on the bench and it warmed to almost melting, then I used it to bake cupcakes. The result was an incredibly rich, thick cake batter which produced about six more cupcakes than usual – a surprising, good result.

In the monsoon rain I created a selection of cupcakes as samples for a wedding, with four different designs using buttercream, fondant and royal icing. The buttercream never set – never even formed a shell on it which is really necessary to help it hold its form. Mean while, the fondant absorbed the moisture from the air until it became sticky and glossy. The decorations (a fondant bow) absorbed so much moisture they began to lose their form and droop. I noticed the strong colour also began to run.

As a producer of cakes for others, for which I am paid, I have needed to find ways to make sure my cakes can reach my customers in good, food-safe condition. Here are my top tips for dealing with the weather:

1. Keep the butter chilled until 20mins before you need to use it.
2. Bake late at night if you can, and ice early in the morning (seriously I’ve gotten up at 5am to do some jobs in summer).
3. Work additional corn flour into soft fondant to help it firm up. Avoid pure icing sugar - seriously this tip has recently saved me from disaster.
4. Dry decorated cakes in the coolest room in the house.
5. Add about half a cup of extra icing sugar to butter cream to help it keep its form.
6. Pipe in tighter circles to compensate for icing that might “relax”.
7. Make pastillage sugar charms as far ahead of time as possible to help them dry out.
8. If you have air conditioning in your house – use it!

Good luck and happy cupcaking.

No Bake Lemon Slice

2013-01-20T12:04:00.000+11:00

What can I say about lemon that I haven't said before?

I've told the story of my mother's lemon tree that fruited three seasons of the year. And I think I've told the story of the minature lemon tree my husband and I were given for our wedding (which incidentally has fruited more lemons this year than we've ever had from it before).

Lemon is one of those classic flavours that just cannot be outdone. It's up there with chocolate and vanilla in my opinion.

When I was pregnant, I was surprised to find I craved lemon (and tomato). I would happily have eaten nothing else, which probably wouldn't have agreed with me since both are so high in acid. Yet those were the two flavours I wanted most.

I've had friends say in the past that a vanilla cake with lemon icing is the next best thing to heaven. Lemon when it is allowed to retain it's simple nature is a beautiful thing in cooking. So all hail the humble lemon! Here is my mornng snack tribute to lemon.

Ingredients
500g Milk Arrowroot biscuits
2 cups desicated coconut
2 tsp finely grated lemon rind
250g butter, melted
1 cup condensed milk

1. Finely crush the biscuits and combine them in a large bowl with the coconut and lemon rind.
2. Gently heat the melted butter and condensed milk.
3. Pout over the biscuit mix and stir until combined - make sure all crumbs are wet.
4. Pour into a 30cm x 20cm brownie tin and press to compact. Keep pressing until the biscuit base becomes firm. Make sure you press the mixture evenly and fill the corners so that the base is level. If you have a small rolling pin you could you it to finish the top to make it smooth. I used a rice spoon which has a wide flate back.
5. Chill the biscuit base for half an hour.

Icing
2 cups pure icing sugar
3 tblsp lemon juice
3 tblsp desicated coconut

1. Combine the icing sugar and lemon juice and mix until combined. Make sure there are no lemon seeds in the juice.
2. Spread the icing over the top of the biscuit base.
3. Sprinkle the coconut liberally over the top.
4. Allow to stand for an hour so that the icing sets. Return the slice to the fridge if you like - this will help it cut better.
5. Carefully loosen the sides of the slide from the tin and slide it out onto a chopping board. Cut into 16 rectangles or 32 smaller ones.

Note: I think this slice is best stored in the fridge but you can also freeze it and thaw before eating.

Chocolate Coconut Slice

2013-01-06T18:38:00.000+11:00

One of the odd things about being a part time baker is, while I'm busy supplying quality baked treats to cafes and customers, I then get a cafe cake from the espresso bar where I get my coffee at work. I always find the choice limited and the quality questionable.

So this year, I've decided to be my own customer for cafe cakes. It means I get a treat to go with my coffee that I know will be good, I'll save about $3.50 a day which adds up to $17.50 a week. Plus I will keep my husband supplied with morning snacks too - although I think he eats the snackies I make him in the afternoon.

So here is my first cafe cake for the year - chocolate coconut slice, which has yielded 18 slices. We only need 10 for the week, so eight can go in the freezer and be enjoyed some other time.

Ingredients
2 cups plain flour
2 cups desicated coconut
1 cup caster sugar
4 tblsp dutch cocoa powder
370g butter, melted
1 tblsp vanilla essence

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celcius and line a 30cm x 20cm brownie tray with greaseproof paper and set aside.
2. Place all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix until thoroughly combined. Pour into the prepared tin and press to cover the enitre area. Try and get it as flat on top as you can. Pressing it with your fingers is best.
3. Bake in the oven for 30mins. Allow to cool completely in the tray and then carefully transfer to a wire wrack.

Icing
1.5 cups pure icing sugar
2 tblsp cocoa
45g softened butter
3 tblsp hot water
2 tblsp desicated coconut - for decoration

1. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl with an electric hand mixer until thoroughly combined.
2. Spread the icing evenly across the slice.
3. Sprinkle with the coconut and allow the icing to set - at least an hour.
4. Cut into 18 slices.

Three Cheese Potato Bake

2013-01-04T17:53:00.000+11:00

In 1998 my friend Sophie came to visit from France. It was the second time we met face to face, having been penpals since we were high school kids.

Sophie came armed with a swathe of genuine French recipes, which we attempted to cook for a dinner at my mother's house. While Potatoes Au Gratin had been served in our home before, the recipe we'd used was not like Sophie's. Hers was based on beef stock and creme fraiche, which unfortunately was unknown in Australia at that time (or at least in Penrith). It also had bacon interspersed through the layers of potato, and if I remember correctly, needed topping up with more creamy stock as the potatoes cooked.

My mother and I messed with Sophie's recipe so much, I don't think it resembled the French version much at all. And don't even get me started on the disaster of a cherry clafoutis, which we had no idea how to handle! It turned out rubbery and we could tell by the look on Sophie's face that it wasn't right. Needless to say cherry clafoutis is now produced by every would be Masterchef who is trying to impress which I simply cannot understand.

Potatoes au gratin is very common in Australia these days but has degenerated into "potato bake". Not very glamorous! When it's cooked with respect to French tradition it can be heavenly, but thanks to the cream in it, one serving always fills me with guilt. So I've developed this recipe which is light on fat but plentiful on cheese. I hope you like it.

Ingredients
6 medium waxy potatoes
1 chicken stock cube made into 2/3 cup of stock
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup grated mozarella
1 tblsp parmesan cheese
1 tblsp grate tastey cheese

1. Slice the potatoes thinly on the mandolin (or with a knife).
2. Arrange in a loaf sized baking dish. I put the potatoes on their side for a pretty effect.
3. Pour the milky stock over the potatoes, leaving the edges of the potatoes peeping above the fluid.
4. Sprinkle the cheeses over the potatoes.
5. Bake in an oven preheated to 180 degree celcius for one hour.
6. Allow to stand for 10 minnutes before serving.

Serves six.

Fondant Covered Cupcakes

2012-12-28T09:16:00.001+11:00

A couple of weeks ago I was scraping around looking for inspiration for some baby shower cupcakes. The weather was hot and I knew my usual piped buttercream wasn't going to cut it.

At the same time I was tooling around on the internet looking for decoration ideas, when I came across a blog where a woman was putting fondant onto cupcakes with a thin layer of buttercream underneath. Back in 2009 when I first tried fondanting cupcakes I'd used white chocolate ganache as the under layer. It was really hard to get the ganache to behave well and I spent a lot of time smoothing it to form a neat dome shape. The lighbulb went on for me when I saw the buttercream under layer and I thought I'd give it a go.

In addition, I have a texture mat that I really haven't put to good use in the years since I bought. I thought why not emboss a small amount of fondant on the texture mat and see what happens? It turned out to be a winning combination.

Here are my tips for this cupcake decorating technique:

1. Fill any space left at the top of the cupcake paper with buttercream so that the fondant will rest on the very edge of the paper.

2. Use a round cookie cutter that is about 3mm wider in diameter than the cupcake. You will think the round will be too big, but the height of the domed buttercream will use up the excess.

3. Keep your hands free of any buttercream when handling the fondant. Otherwise it leaves a wet and shiny patch on the fondant.

4. Gently seal the edge of the fondant to the top edge of the cupcake paper.

5. Carefully smooth the fondant onto the buttercream to create a domed top. If you've used a texture mat don't press too hard or you'll lose your pattern.

6. When you've finished leave your cupcakes out to dry overnight if you can. Try not to keep them sealed in boxes as this makes the fondant gor sticky.

Christmas Cocktail Party

2012-12-02T20:41:00.002+11:00

Well it is that time of year again - when there's parties a plenty, with lots of fancy drinks and of course loads of festive fare to enjoy as well.

I've kicked off what we fondly call "the silly season" with a cocktail party in my backyard. We had been thinking about doing this for a couple of years but were concerned we'd have planes landing all night, since we live under the Sydney flight path. Instead we had to battle appallingly hot weather on the very first day of summer. I must say I don't cope well with heat, and my face was flushed for the entire day. In fact I wasn't sure if I would ever return to my normal colouring again. But when we woke this morning, a cool change had blown in and some light rain had cooled things down.

I so enjoyed preparing canapes for my guests I thought I'd share them with you.

Rare Roast Beef Crostini

Ingredients
1 French bread stick
1 tblsp olive oil
1 large clove garlic
250g rare roast beef, sliced paper thin
Rocket leaves
100g creme fraiche
2 tsp horseradish cream

1. Cut the French stick into 5mm thick slices. Just cut straight across - you don't want the crostini too wide.
2. Brush one side of each crostini with a little olive oil.
3. Slice the garlic in half and rub over the entire surface of each crostini.
4. Bake in a moderate oven for 5mins or til a little golden and very crusty.
5. Cool on wire racks then set aside until serving time.
6. Lay a rocket leaf on each crostini. If you mistakenly buy baby rocket like I did lay a couple of leaves on the crostini.
7. Fold the beef into a decorative ball/knob/lump - whatever you want to call it. You want to be able to see the dark edge and the pink middle.
8. Stir the horseradish cream into the creme fraiche and then spoon it into a piping bag with a small round nozzle. Pipe about half a teaspoon of cream onto each crostini and serve. I managed to make 32 pieces with the above ingredients.

Salmon & Cucumber Canapes

Ingredients
3 Lebanese cucumbers
200g smoked salmon
100g cream cheese
juice of 1/2 a lime
32 baby capers

1. Slice each cucumber into 10 or 11 pieces about 8mm thick. The Lebanese cucumbers are nice because they have less seeds and more flesh.
2. Beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer until it's soft. Add the lime juice and combine thoroughly.
2. Fit a piping bag with a 1cm closed star tube and fill it with the cream cheese mixture. Pipe a decorative star of cheese onto each cucumber piece.
3. Separate the slices of salmon and roll each into a tube. Slice through the middle then cut 1cm wide tubes and place them end up on top of the cream cheese,
4. Position a caper in the middle of each piece of salmon.
5. Refrigerate until you serve. I made 32 pieces with these ingredients.

Mushroon Pate Mini Pies

Ingredients
300g chopped mushrooms
1.5 cups almond meal
75g butter
1/2 cup water
2 cloves crushed garlic
salt and pepper to taste
6 sheets ready rolled frozen puff pastry
1 egg yolk, beaten

1. Chop the mushrooms even more until they are very finely diced.
2. Melt the butter in a pan and add the garlic. Lightly sautee then add the mushrooms and water. Continue to sautee until the mushrooms have reduced down and there's no liquid left.
3. Transfer to a bowl and set aside until the mushrooms are cool.
4. Stir in the ground almonds.
5. Lay a sheet of pastry on a pastry mat and mark out nine squares using a sharp knife. You don't need to cut all the way through.
6. Position a teaspoon of mushroom pate in the middle of each square. Using a pastry brush, paint around each ball of mixture with milk.
7. Position another sheet of pastry over the top and gently press down to cloak each ball of pate. Make sure you don't trap any air in the pocket and try very hard to seal the two sheets of pastry together.
8. Using a 6cm pastry cutter cut each ball out of the pastry sheet. I used a round cutter because it seemed easy, but you could use a heart or a star shape. As you cut each piece be sure to check all sides of the pastry are sealed. Brush the top of each piece with the egg yolk.
9. Place on a baking sheet and bake in the oven at 190 degrees celcius for 20 minutes.
10. Serve hot or cold. I served these with sweet chilli sauce.

Vegetable Gyoza

My sneaky canape of the night was these vegetable gyoza. My local supermarket sells these in boxes of 16 for $7.00. A bargain I say! I still had to steam them and their fry them to make their bottoms crisp. But they were a welcome addition and helped me set my catering numbers for the other canapes. I served these with light Japanese soy sauce.

Granville Markets, Vancouver, BC

2012-11-11T08:48:00.001+11:00

Recently I took a trip to Canada to attend a course and had the great fortune to spend a couple of days in Vancouver. Of course Vancouver is all about the Canuks! The big foodie highlight for me was Granville Island, the location of the public market.

With autumn falling across Canada, many shop windows showed displays of their harvest produce. I was concerned that there really wouldn't be much good food available, but boy was I surprised! Here is a selection of the great fresh produce I found on Granville Island.

Granville Island was originally a swamp and was converted into an industrial island where the main product being produced was iron and steel. It fell into dilapidation after the second world war, and was reclaimed by the city and turned into an urban redevelopment in the late seventies. You get there by taking the bus from downtown, or you can catch the Aquabus which docks right outside the market. You can find out more about Granville Island by checking out their website.

The first sight that greeted me in the public market was capsicums as far as the eye could see and of every colour. I really would have liked to buy a big load of these and get to work cooking traffic light ratatouille with some delicious pasta and meatballs. In Australia the most common coloured capsicums are red and green. Granville Island has red, green, orange and yellow capsicums. Apparently red capsicums are just rippened green ones, but the orange and yellow ones are actually a different variety and are grown from different seeds. In Canada they probably call these bell peppers.

There was also an abundance of tomatoes. Every shape, every colour. Under the tables were bags of cherry tomatoes - red, yellow and orange. I have never seen so many varieties of cherry tomatoes. They also had them on the truss, which is highly covetted in Australia. I had the feeling that one could cook up an enormous Italian feast with the foods I found on the very first stall.

Asparagus is typically a delicacy in Australia, and we pay a lot for it. Granville Island had bunch after bunch of asparagus. Can you imagine all of this lightly steamed and served with beautiful hollandaise sauce and freshly cracked pepper? Or how about if it was tossed in garlic butter and garnished with roast hazelnuts? Or maybe even wrapped in a lovely slice of proscuitto and baked in the oven then drizzled in light olive oil. Mmmmm!

This stack of strawberries amounted to a pound, which I actually bought and attempted to eat. I polished off six for lunch, another six for afternoon snack and another six for breakfast the next day and I still hadn't put a dent in the big pile. The flavour was amazing - even better than English strawberries. Clearly they were grown in a field not a hot house. Sadly, I had to leave at least half a pound of strawberries behind because I simply couldn't finish them. I won't mention the maple syrup seller who offered me a free sample to enjoy with my strawberries and then put it back on the shelf. Because that might give the markets a bad reputation!

There were so many gorgeous little cakes that would have been great to try - but they were very expensive. And lets face it, you can't eat every cake, right? Well at least that's what I tell myself. Pictured here are mini lemon cheesecakes, chocolate cheesecakes, mango cheesecakes and strawberry tarts.

Spooky halloween cookies.

Fresh raspberries and fresh blackberries. Really we don't get them in this kind of quantity in Australia. And we're more likely to get them frozen rather than fresh. It just seems to work out cheaper that way. But I found raspberries in particular were served fresh all the time in Canada. I truly would have loved a chance to cook with these beautiful berries. French style flans I think!

In Canada I found the cult of toast to be extremely lacking. Most commonly I saw bagels, likes these beautiful fresh bagels at the Granville Island market. Or there were "breakfast sandwiches" which we would call Egg & Bacon McMuffin! But rarely was there toast offered. When I ordered toast in a cafe, they said they could make it for me but then they scrambled to locate the bread?? Whereas here all the loaves would be lined up next to the toaster waiting. It was good to de-toast for a while, but the result has been a week long vegemite toast fest since I got home.

All over Granville Island were signs of Canada preparing for halloween, a festival which is tied in my mind to the autumn harvest. As it turns out, halloween is based on the ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain, which is also known as All Saints Day. On October 31 to November 1, it was believed the doors to the other world opened and allowed spirits and fairies and the like to enter our world. Maybe I won't be so "thingy" about halloween now that I know this. I like the idea of connecting to the other world, but really, has it got to be so gruesome?

Apart from all the beautiful fresh produce on Granville Island, there's also many sellers of freshly cooked takeaway meals. You can buy your lunch and seat yourself at a table inside, or you can head outside to sit by the harbour if you don't mind battling the seagulls. Which incidentally are about three times the size of the seagulls in Australia. I offered them strawberries but they clearly weren't to their taste. But that didn't stop them from noisily demanding I come up with their snack. If you are ever in Vancouver, make sure you don't miss Granville Island - it's definitely worth the visit.

Melting Moments

2012-08-25T20:32:00.000+10:00

When I set up shop at the markets again this year, I decided a couple of different things on the table would help pique the interest of the Double Bay shoppers. I added gingerbread men for the kids and decided Melting Moments were a great option for mums to have with their coffee.

I had tried out the recipe a few weeks before and my husband and I found them irrestible. The fat buttery biscuits with a gorgeous dob of lemony frosting in the middle. And they didn't take that long to make either, which as I found, was extremely important on production day.

These biscuits are a classic in Australia. And I had customers who live in the USA saying they couldn't get them there. Well now you can just make your own.

Ingredients
250g salt reduced butter
1.5 cups plain flour
1/2 cup pure icing sugar (powdered sugar)
2/3 cup corn flour
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celcius. Line a large baking tray with bakiing paper and set aside.
2. Combine the butter, icing sugar, flour, corn flour and lemon zest in the bowl of your Kitchenaid. The butter must be at room temperature for this to work. Using the paddle beater mix on first gear until the mixture forms a dough. There will be a point where you think it's not going to work and you need to add liquid of some kind. Do not be tempted! Just let it mix and it will come together.
3. Form teaspoonfuls of the mixture into small balls and place evenly across the baking sheet. Try to get 20 balls onto the sheet - you should still have half the mixture left. I use my small icecream scoop to make these balls. It means every biscuit is almost exactly the same size.
4. Use a fork to press each ball down into a disc. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until the bottoms are very light golden brown. Do not over cook! These biscuits are meant to be blonde.
5. Repeat with the remaining mixture. You want to have 40 pieces in total.
6. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

Frosting
90g salt reduced butter
1.5 cups icing sugar
3 tsp lemon juice

1. Place all the ingredients in the bowl of your Kitchenaid and mix on sixth gear until thoroughly combined. Continue beating for one minute so that the frosting is nicely whipped.

Assembly
1. Fit a plastic piping bage with a 1cm star piping tube. Don't even try to use the old fabric piping bags. The water from the butter will squeeze right through and leave your hands feeling horrible.
2. Squeeze a small amout of frosting onto 20 of the biscuits the sandwich a second biscuit on top of each one. Try to match shapes and sizes (even though you've made them all perfectly identical.
3. Allow to set for 30 minutes, then scoff!

Makes 20 biscuits which keep for a week in an airtight container.

More big cakes

2012-08-25T20:05:00.001+10:00

Well it seems every time I go to the markets I get less blogging done. Which is surprising because I am always cooking until I virtually drop. I came out of the corporate for a while again this year and decided to go back to market with my cupcakes. It's been an awesome time, and in between I've had some cool big cake jobs which I thought you'd like to see.

This is The Batman Cake. Aka The Dark Knight Rises Cakes. It was made for a former colleague whose son was turning 21. It was an awesome pleasure making this cake because it really struck the right mood for the last Batman movie. The photo doesn't really show how cool the colour of the cake was - a mixture of cyan, grey and black icing.

I made this cake for my little boy's third birthday. Despite his love of robots and cars he insisted that he wanted a duck cake. I had to make sure the duck design wasn't twee - otherwise it would have looked quite babyish. The interior of both the cake and the barn is chocolate cake with chocolate ganache. I had the same interior for the Batman cake.

This is Dorothy the Dinosaur. I made her for a little girl who was having two birthday parties and two cakes. Her mum wanted to be able to put Dorothy on one cake then transfer her to the other. Dorothy is made entirely of fondant, which I think I was lucky to get away with. Next time I will take a leaf out of Planet Cake's book and make the middle of the figurine out of caramel fudge.

Fairy Cake

2012-07-06T15:58:00.000+10:00

Even before I did the "Lia" wedding cake last week, I had great fun creating this fairy themed cake for a friend's little girl. I love it when people give me a very loose brief because it means I can let my imagination run wild. For this cake, I was asked to make it fairy theme. I knew straight away it had to have a toad stool on it - the white dots against the red top are always striking. Then I knew there had to be a fairy and of course some green tendrils and loads of flowers.

So I assembled all the pieces I needed, covered the cake in fondant, and began adding bits on. As I completed each new addition, I stepped back, took and look, and then decided if anything more was needed. In my opinion, cakes like this reveal themselves - you just have to be prepared to go with with the flow. Right up until I added the ribbon, I felt the cake wasn't quite done. But once the ribbon went on, ta-dah! It's cakes like this that make decorating so much fun. In a couple of weeks I'm going to make a duck themed cake for my little boy. Despite his love of cars and robots he is adamant he wants a duck cake. Who knows - maybe I'll venture into the realm of square cakes for that one!

The "Lia" Wedding Cake

2012-07-02T10:46:00.001+10:00

I'm almost at the point now where I can make any big cake I can dream of and it will turn out pretty much as I planned. Last week I made this big cake for a wedding, and I am naming it "The Lia" after the bride. She asked for a chocolate cake, white on the outside with red flowers, but pretty much left the rest up to me. The wedding reception only had 30 guests, so there was no need for a multi-tiered construction. But I didn't want the cake to be a flat thing on a table for the photo with the bride and groom, so I made a stacked chocolate cake - two eight inch cakes both 4 inches high, covered in chocolate ganache then covered in fondant.

All the flowers are edible, and again, I made them all myself. It's the first time I've ever put sugar flowers on a wire and I must say there is a trick to it, which I don't think I'm privy to. If you are every wondering why wedding cakes like this cost so much, it's because the handmade sugar flowers take many many hours to make. They can't actually be made in one go either - they need to be created layer upon layer, sometimes with a days drying time in between each. I spent a lot of time talking to my mum about making these flowers. I used pre-prepped flower moulding paste, and I really think it is a poor replacement for the pastillage my mum and Aunty used on the flowers they made for my birthday cake (when I was five!). Those flowers "clinked" like china. These ones just never dried to that point. But all in all, I am very pleased with this result.

Black Forest Cherry Cake

2012-07-01T13:55:00.001+10:00

When we moved to Penrith in 1980, the housing estate we lived in was brand new. We had lived in Newcastle all of my life until then, and we knew everyone in the neighbourhood. But in Penrith, everyone and everything was new.

My sister made friends with a German girl in her school, who happened to live in a house kind of over our back fence. We had never met anybody from Germany before, and we were very lucky to be invited to afternoon tea, where Mum, my sister and I were served hot butter cake cut in thick rectangular slabs.

Not long after, my sister was given a piece of her school mate's birthday cake. She said it was called Schwartzwalder Kirsch Torte - Black Forest Cherry Cake. This type of cake was unknown in Australia at the time. Now it is a staple of any cafe cake selection. We loved it, and I requested it for my birthday that year. In fact it became the standard birthday cake in our home for the rest of my childhood. And of course, I made sure I learned how to cook it.

I was delighted recently when a good friend recently asked me to make a Black Forest Cherry Cake for her friend's birthday. I can make that cake with my eyes shut. She said she wanted the cake to be chocolate sponge, not chocolate cake. We were taught by the Germans to make a dense chocolate cake, but hey - I'm flexible! So chocolate sponge cake it was!

Ingredients
6 large eggs
1 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup corn flour
3 tblsp fine cocoa powder

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius. Grease and line a 10 inch round cake tin.
2. Crack all the eggs into the bowl of your Kitchenaid and beat them with the whisk attachment on 10th gear until they are foamy.
3. Gradually add the sugar, then continue to beat for a further 10 minutes.
4. Sift the three flours and the cocoa together. Stir to combine then add to the egg mixture one third at a time, gently folding the dry ingredients through until they are fully combined. Take your time with this step - gently folding will produce a fluffier sponge.
5. Pour the sponge mix into the cake tin and bake in the oven for about one hour - or until the sponge springs back at the touch. If you are unsure if the sponge is cooked, insert a skewer through the middle. If it comes out clean the sponge is cooked.
6. Cool for five minutes in the tin, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Filling & Assembly
200g high quality cooking chocolate
1.2L thickened cream
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp sugar
2x 400g tins pitted black cherries
60ml Kirsch (cherry liqueur)
16 fresh black cherries

1. Melt the chocolate carefully in the microwave - about 2 minutes. Be careful not to burn it! Try 30 second bursts then stirring until its ready.
2. Spread the chocolate along a sheet of baking paper that is about 15cm high and 1.2m long. Using a pen or the handle of a wooden spoon, carefully roll the paper up into a tube. Yes - the chocolate will be touching the paper as you roll. Trust me - this is a good trick.
3. Place in the fridge for an hour or until the chocolate is solid.
4. With the chocolate roll sitting on a tray, hold the leading edge of the paper and carefully unroll the chocolate. Shards will break into the tray as you go. Set chocolate shards aside.
5. Split the cake into three layers. Be very careful not to break the cake.
6. Pour all the cream into the bowl of your Kitchenaid. Add the vanilla and sugar and beat with the whisk attachment until the cream is whipped. Do not over mix or the cream will look buttery. I stop and check over and over as it approaches completion to make sure all the cream is whipped to the same consistency.
7. Drain all the cherries and retain the juice in a glass jug.
4. Add the Kirsch to the cherry juice.
8. Position the bottom layer of the sponge on a cake board or presentation plate. Spoon the cherry juice over the cake until it appears adequately soaked - about one third of the juice should do it.
9. Arrange half the cherries over the sponge and then cover them with about a quarter of the cream.
10. Place the second layer of sponge over the first and repeat the juice, cherry and cream steps.
11. Place the final layer of sponge over the second. Gently press down on the top to seal all the layers. Make sure the top is level.
12. Use a dinner knife to smooth any cream that bulges out around the sides. Continue to cover the sides with cream. Cover the top with cream, being careful to make a nice smooth top. Don't let any cake show through the cream.
13. Position chocolate curls around the sides of the cake. Arrange the fresh cherries on the top of the cake so that they are evenly spaced out around the edges. Pile any remaing chocolate flakes in the centre of the top of the cake.
14. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve.

Makes 16-20 serves.

Chocolate Ginger Bread

2012-06-23T13:21:00.002+10:00

Now that my little son is a bit bigger, there are increasing chances to enjoy time creating in the kitchen with him. A couple of weeks ago I bought him a bakery set, with 20 items items a kid could use in the kitchen. My intention, of course, was to divert him to his own utensils every time he gets mine out of the cupboard.

Today, however, I really felt he could put the rolling pin and cookie cutters to work. So I whipped up a batch of ginger bread, but making it more chocolate than ginger. Surprisingly my little boy didn't want to roll the dough. He did want to do all the cutting out of the shapes, but again was happy to let me transfer each cookie to the baking tray.

After lunch I started piping royal icing onto the cookies and let my son go wild with sprinkles. Of course one bowl was inevitably knocked flying, to the tune of little sugar balls bouncing all over the floor. But who cares!? My little boy had buckets of fun. With every cookies decorated, he decided it was his job to lick all the decorations off. But not before we got a photo of the finished product!

Ingredients
125g butter
1/4 cup treacle
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1/4 tsp ground ginger
3 tsp cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp bicarb soda

1. Beat the butter, treacle and brown sugar in the large bowl of your Kitchenaid until it is pale and creamy.
2. Add the eggs, one at a time, combining thoroughly after each addition. The mix will look wrong at this point. Don't worry - it will come together.
3. Add the ginger, cocoa, plain flour and bicarb soda and mix on first gear until the dough comes together - about 30 seconds. Do not over mix or the dough will be tough!
4. Gather the dough up into a ball, knead a little, then wrap in cling film and chill for 30 minutes.
5. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degree celcius.
6. Take the dough out of the fridge and cut it into quarters. Roll each piece out until it is 3mm thick and cut shapes using your favourite cookie cutters. Last year we used this dough to make pick-up truck cookies for my son's birthday, so really it can work with any shape.
7. Arrange on a cookie tray lined with baking paper and bake for 6 minutes. These cookies burn easily so watch out!
8. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

Royal Icing
1/2 an egg white
2/3 cup pure icing sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

1. Combine all the ingredients and mix until you get a thick paste. Add more icing sugar if necessary.
2. Pipe or spread onto cookies and decorate immediately with sprinkles or silver cachous.

Makes loads of cookies, depending on the size of your cutter. We got 20 little cookies and a further 20 gingerbread men out of this batch.