Category: Baking

More fondant fancies

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking

I have a confession. This cake is actually the Christmas cake that I didn’t ice in time for the big day. It’s been maturing with lots of brandy sprinkles and feeds since last August and smells divinely fruity, rich and heady. I got to it this morning. It really is a properly rich fruitcake.  with black treacle and lots of dried fruits. It’s covered in marzipan and roll-out fondant (I actually like the Shamrock brand of roll out fondant. Used to hate the stuff for having a plastic flavour but the Shamrock fondant is really nice). The flowers are made from fondant as well and the bibbly-bobblies are piped on using Royal Icing.

Flexilace – The cake topper

A slightly wider view:

The top is a Katie Sue design: Royal Design Mat:

The mat and Flexilace were Christmas presents and today was the first time I’d used them. If you’ve never made Flexilace before, a word to the wise – a little goes a very long way. I made up 50g of Flexilace to 75ml of cooled water and had enough to make all sorts of lace bands and butterflies and other doodahs (another set of silicone moulds received (with joy) for Christmas).The good news is that they keep well in a ‘wallet’ of greaseproof paper. I only intended to make the single mat pictured above, though! I think 12g and 17ml of water would have done.

The lace is a cinch to make. Boil the required volume of water, let it cool then stir into the Flexilace powder. Keep stirring and ‘beating’ for about 3 minutes till it’s blended, smooth and spreadable. Use a spatula to apply it to the mat or fill a mould. Pop into the oven at 160C for about 15 mins or until dry to touch. Let it cool then gently peel the mould away from the set lace. This stuff is fairly resilient but if there are fine lines you need to take a little more care and peel away from the mat very gently.

I used a little squinch of royal icing here and there on the top of the cake to secure it into place then topped it with a final flower. To finish it all off I used a dry paintbrush to flick pearl lustre-dust over the cake to give it a little shimmer. You can see the bokeh effect in the middle picture. They’re not Photoshopped sparkles.

I loved making all the flowers. Very zen, very soothing. Ahhh! So happy it turned out as beautifully as it did.

The two aprons I use regularly are now in the wash so… I’m off to make one of those dead-hip Japanese cross-back aprons that I’ve envied online. I’ve downloaded free patterns and modded them because they were too long or the straps were too skinny and actually made my template from cheap muslin. The template is good and so it’s time to get some of my fabric stash out and make one to wear! More fun!

Spherical cake with raspberry compote buttercream

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking

Here’s the cake I mentioned in the last post. The cake is a Victoria sponge with blackberry/raspberry goo buttercream, thickly crumb-coated with the same buttercream all over then covered with roll out fondant icing dibbled with bobbly royal icing and lots of fondant flowers.

The buttercream is fruity, sweet, smooth and silky. Definitely the nicest buttercream I’ve ever made.

Lemon Curd

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking

Lovely, luscious lemon curd. Two jars of sunshine.  It took 7 eggs – two whole and 5 yolks. T

Ingredients

Juice of 3 lemons (organic, well-washed)

The zest of 1 lemon

5 egg yolks (buy free range, let’s try for happy chickens)

2 whole eggs

110g caster sugar

60g butter (Irish butter, mmmmm)

Method

Over a Bain Marie, dissolve the sugar into the lemon juice.

Add the egg, stirring continuously.

Keep stirring and occasionally beating for about 15 minutes; the mixture will have thickened as the eggs have cooked.

Take off the heat and stir in the butter.

Sieve into a jug. Cover with clingfilm – ensure that the clingfilm lies on the surface of the lemon curd to prevent it from forming a skin).

Sterilise your jars – wash in hot, soapy water and place in an oven, approx. 160°C for 15 mins.

Let the jars and the lemon curd cool then pour the mixture into the jars and pop into the fridge until you’re ready to eat.

You can use the lemon curd on toast, on bread and butter, in buttercream, in Victoria Sponge batters and probably loads of other things, too. You will have to use it within a week or so as there are no preservatives.

Swiss Meringue

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking

The cake is a 4-layered chocolate sponge with coffee buttercream. I covered it in various sprinkles and topped it with mini piped Italian meringues.

Italian meringue has hot sugar syrup gradually beaten into the egg whites then whisked till it forms firm glossy peaks. This is the meringue mix I use in Macarons.

Swiss meringue is made by stirring sugar and egg whites together over a bain marie (a pot of simmering water) until they are warm then whipping them up to glossy firm peaks.

Swiss meringue with golden syrup

260g caster sugar

3 free range egg whites

100 ml golden syrup

1/4 tsp of cream of tartar

2 Tbsp water

1 tsp vanilla

Put all of the ingredients in a large bowl. Place the bowl over a pan of simmering water making sure that the base of the bowl doesn’t actually touch the water.

Use a hand whisk and beat for 5 mins.

Take off the heat and beat for a minute more or until the meringue is glossy, white, stiffish and will form soft peaks.

Use it as the topping for lemon meringue or to make chocolate dipped marshmallow topping for cupcakes (pipe the meringue onto a batch of cupcakes, melt some chocolate and while still warm enough to be liquid but not so warm as to melt the meringue, dip the cupcakes into the chocolate).

Macarons

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking

First time I made macarons was with macha tea ganache covered in sprinkles. I was surprised. They were delicious.

That was all the motivation I needed to make another batch. Inspired and confident, the process was easier second time round.

The latest batch were decorated with spots of gold food colouring and filled with chocolate orange ganache.

They were left in the fridge overnight and bagged up this morning. My neighbour loved them 🙂

My recipe and method
If you want the piping template as well

Be mindful at every stage of the preparation. They are temperamental.

Ganache drip cake with meringue kisses

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking

The basic meringue mixture is a ratio of exactly 1 egg white to 2 of sugar. Add a tsp of vanilla essence or extract and a pinch of salt to flavour the mixture.

Get a piping bag and draw lines of food colouring inside it using a long-handled paintbrus (reserved for cakes only :))

Fill the piping bag with meringue.The food colouring will streak the meringue as it’s piped onto the tray.

Get a baking sheet (or two) and pipe the meringue vertically leaving a good inch between them as they will spread as they cook.

Put them in the oven (130 for approx. 35 mins) then get them out and leave them to cool.

Lessons learned:

1. Make 1.5 times the usual amount of buttercream, not double.

2. Ditto gananche. Only needed 150g choc and 75 g of cream (converted from ml).

3. Less is more when it comes to drip cakes. Too much ends up pooling on the cakeboard or running over.

4. Plan to make this cake! Get the butter out the night before so it’s soft. Check the ingredients and get in what you need before you start.

5. Think ahead about how to use up the egg yolks. We had a Spanish Omelette for tea.

Ganache

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking

Movember is a big thing in Ireland, and UK, as well I think. It’s the month where the chaps grow a moustache for charity to help raise awareness of testicular and prostate cancer. I sponsored a couple of guys to have their legs waxed.

There were two baking fund raisers – I made the chocolate biscuit cake Christmas pudding for one of them (last post) and a rich sponge with brandy buttercream filling topped with white chocolate ganache with chocolate stars, chocolate silver balls and a ring of Malteasers for the latest one.

Ganache

Ganache is very easy to make. It’s just double cream and chocolate – generally a ratio of 2 choc to 1 cream.

Weigh the cream to tare it in grams then break the chocolate into a bowl.

Pour the cream into a saucepan and bring it to the boil; stir it so it doesn’t burn and stick to the pan.

When it’s broiling and roiling, take it off the heat and pour over the chocolate. Leave for 30s or so.

Stir until it’s melted and blended together. Let it cool a bit if it’s on the hotter side of warm then use it on your cake.

On the way in there was some minor damage.

S

Some of the Malteasers got dislodged but were quickly pressed back into position and a few stars got broken.

My cakes sales (the two together) raised nearly €100 so delighted they were enjoyed and raised money.

Wind Rose

Spoon Graphic blog posted a free set of treasure map assets for Illustrator. There’s an Illustrator tutorial here:Wind Rose Compass that’s easy to follow and the end result works well with the map; this is how mine turned out:

Call the midwife!

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking, Crochet

Nothing finished but getting there. Sums up where I am with Everything at the moment!

The blanket is growing. I’m going to continue until the whole ball of wool is used up (providing there’s enough to complete a ‘block’ of pattern). I swear the ball gets no smaller no matter how many rows I do. It’s like when Prometheus stole fire from the Gods. Zeus had him bound to a rock and an eagle ate his liver… every single day. Imagine eating liver EVERY day! I swear the ball grows back every night and will never diminish.

** Update: Finished the blanket!!***

I posted the pattern here.

I tried a new recipe and made a bakewell-flavoured bundt cake. Bundt cakes aren’t the easiest to make. You have to cook the cake for longer than in conventional shallow cake tins. They can end up crusty and dry on the outside and still mush on the inside. The recipe came from Dolly Bakes: Bundts on the brain

The cake molded beautifully; I coated the Bundt tin with melted coconut oil followed by sieved icing sugar (turned upside-down and tapped to dislodge the excess). Perfect. The flavour was really nice but I confess to finishing it in the microwave because I wasn’t convinced the middle was cooked.

The Christmas Pudding mold came in useful to create a Chocolate Biscuit Cake to look like a Christmas pudding. The holly is real and pinched from Shouty Man – his holly grows over into my garden. Not complaining – it’s lovely.

And getting more and more into the Christmas spirit, I made some Coffee Cream Liqueur. I posted the recipe a long time ago, you may remember it. If not, here you go:

And tree decorations! Love finding pretty new decs for the trees! These lovely hearts came from The Flying Tiger:

The reindeer are from Penneys – little and cute!

A robin on a post box (from Mr Dunnes – I added some red to his breast as he was a bit orange).

Am in love with this glass robin. It is far prettier iRL; my photo doesn’t do it justice at all.

And that’s about it!

Chocolate cake with Maltesers on top

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking

A very indulgent chocolate drip cake. Three tiers of Victoria sponge, sandwiched together with buttercream icing, covered with buttercream icing with white chocolate ganache poured over the top with lots of Maltesers for decoration – oh – and some edible glitter as well.  My dripping went a little too far but stopped short of running over.

Pink, green and purple. Not brilliant but am getting used to the food colouring gels – they don’t match the colour of the label on the pot.

The cupcakes and chocolate sponge with coffee buttercream topping.

Here’s little Gracie. I recently posted about shouty man who said ‘He’d know what to do about her if she came into his garden again’ after finding a dead bird and believing her to be responsible and how less than a week later she had a length of her tail degloved. She is, of course, the only cat for miles and miles – said nobody round here ever. He obviously doesn’t see the 50-odd cats line dancing round his flower beds and plant pots every day.

Anyway, the fur is growing back now, just as the vet said it would. I thought she was going to have a bald patch. You can see where her tail looks thinner in the middle but it’s so much better now.

This is Gracie in front of the fire.

Her and Jess have a comfy, squashy bed right beside the hearth.

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I went hookey again and made another pair of these dolly-sized bootees. The wool is a mohair mix with sequins. Sparkles.

Crochet baby hat

by Irish Bees Don't Do Mondays, posted in Baking, Crochet

The yarn is Elann Pippilongcolor  (*update 2019 – the yarn has been rebranded to Impromptu Lite*) in Crystal Spring shades, perfect for a pair of crocodile stitch bootees and a little hat.  The pattern is a free download from MyLittleCityGirl.

I made some apple, blueberry and cinnamon cupcakes, using muscavado sugar instead of the usual castor for some extra rich flavour. The blueberry colour turned the butter icing a lovely shade of deep raspberry which was enhanced with a drizzle of  imperial purple edible food glitter.

Papercut L for Lisa.

xoxoxo