Saturday, 13 April 2013

Lemon Meringue Pies!

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I attempted to make another type of pie a couple weeks ago. I decided on lemon meringue because I was going to give a couple to Jasmine who was in the last couple days of her dissertation and yummy things at that stage is usually always helpful! Anyway, she loves lemon and when I mentioned this flavour to the boyfriend he also seemed to like that idea!

So this was from a set of 2 recipe books that I got from Christmas and both were on mini desserts and pies- how cute!!

The base was a biscuit base which you would make for a cheesecake and that is always my favourite part of a cheesecake so I was really excited! With this one you have to bake the base- I usually only refrigerate mines when I make a cheesecake or a banoffi pie so I was excited to try out this. I did end up putting wayyyy more in each base than I was supposed too because I was scared that they would fall apart if they would be too thin- that and I totally looooooovvvveeee the biscuit base =D

The lemon curd was quite fun to make as well and very tart so very nice if you love lemon! All this was topped off with a big dollop of meringue and since I love meringue this was also my favourite part =D Because I totally messed up one part of the lemon curd just by mixing the wrong thing....what a silly moment!...it took a bit longer than I had hoped for but still it turned out well :)

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, baking, pies | 0 comments

Monday, 8 April 2013

Chickpea Curry!

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So I have actually been keeping up with eating more vegetarian foods even though I haven't blogged about all of them. The most recent meal was a chickpea curry I made since I had bought a jar of korma sauce ages ago that I had not gotten around to cooking yet. So instead of chicken I used 2 cans of chickpeas, added a couple of peppers, an onion and sweetcorn!

Heat some oil in a pan and fry the chopped onion until golden, add the chickpeas and then cook for a bit before adding the sauce, peppers and sweetcorn until the peppers have softened a bit. Add any seasonings that you like and leave to simmer and cook through. Serve with rice or naan bread =D

I actually need to think of new ideas for vegetarian foods that don't include chickpeas for a bit of variety so any ideas would be appreciated =D

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, vegetarian | 0 comments

Saturday, 6 April 2013

Mother's Day Cake!

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This Mother’s day I was actually really busy with flat hunting and working so this cake actually I only spent about 6 hours over the night and morning but I did have a big helping hand from my lovely boyfriend =D

 

 

 

 

I had no idea what kind of cake I was going to do even once the cakes came out of the oven so it was a bit of a crazy mad rush! I eventually decided on making a present cake with a bow on the top. I have actually done this style of cake before in this post for a birthday cake so the idea is one that can be make for lots of different occasions! I ended up making it super girly and actually it would have been more suited to my style because I am quite a bit more girly and love pink!

 

 

 

 

 

I chose to do an apple cake spiced with cinnamon mainly because my mum likes eating apples and although I have tried an apple cake before it didn’t turn out right and so I needed a new apple cake recipe. I made a new style of icing actually called the Swiss Meringue Buttercream, flavoured with maple syrup and that was interesting to try out.  It is a meringue based buttercream, made by whisking egg whites and sugar over a heat and then adding your butter and flavourings. Both the cake recipe and the icing recipe were from the same website at Raspberri Cupcakes. She also has other amazingly gorgeous looking recipes to try!

 

There are a lot of tutorials on how to do the bow and I will probably do a bow tutorial the next time I do such a cake =) I guess it would have worked a bit better with gumpaste, as does most finiky icing work, but I think that marshmallow fondant is actually edible and yummy =)

 

 

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, bow, cake, present | 0 comments

Monday, 1 April 2013

Marbled Cake Pops!

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I made these when I was meeting my boyfriend’s sister for the first time and I wanted to make something yummy to take with me! At least then she might enjoy my baking if she didn’t like me =P 

 

 

 

 I wanted to try and make cake pops, just without the sticks, to see if that was possible because I was concerned about how to get a smooth finish on the chocolate if they had to dry on a baking sheet. I made a chocolate cake with a cream cheese icing. This combo in cake pop form seems to be a favourite as everyone seems to really like it!

I decided on a marble finish to it just because I wanted something funky looking that I could try that I hadn’t done before. I found a couple different photos of other peoples marble cake pops so I gave it ago. It is pretty easy!

 

 

 

 

 

Make the cake pops in the standard way by crumbling a cake up and then mix through some buttercream so it binds it together.  Take about a tablespoon of the cake mix and shape it into a ball. Pop them on a baking try and pop them in the freezer so that they harden up- usually takes about 10-15 mins. While that is happening, melt the chocolate. I used white chocolate but in 2 different mugs- one just plain and the other with blue food colouring in it. I usually add a bit of oil to my chocolate so that it goes a bit thinner and it is easier to cover the cake pops. Since I didn’t put these on sticks I used a fork to lower the cake pops into the chocolate and while the first chocolate colour is running off of the cake I then drizzled on the second type of chocolate. Move the cake pop around so that it creates different shapes and lines and it should start drying quite soon. Then pop them back on the baking tray and leave until they are dry!

I didn’t like that they ‘smudged’ a lot when they came off the fork and were put on the baking tray so I am going to have to figure out how to stop that from happening- any tips then that would be much appreciated =D

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, cake pops | 0 comments

Sunday, 31 March 2013

Valentine's Cupcakes!

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So this year for Valentine’s Day I went with the theme of ‘Bee Mine!’ Unfortunately my cupcakes did not turn out quite as planned because I had lots of things to do and as usual I left it until the last minute. But anyway, here are my Bee Mine cupcakes:

 

  

 

As always my icing let me down! I swear one day I will have absolutely perfect icing! Had my icing been more compatible with me then I would have done a bee hive with the bee in the side of it! =D

I made the cake carrot and the icing was a vanilla buttercream with some cream cheese in it as well and then with yellow food gel it was dyed.

 

The bees and the fondant were made out of MarshmallowFondant. The heart was just with a cutter and then using black colouring with the writing. For the bees here is a really awesome tutorial on it!

 

Labels: cupcakes, Valentine's | 0 comments

Monday, 25 March 2013

Irish Coffee Cupcakes!

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These were made by me and an Irish friend who wanted to make a cupcake that had both whisky and coffee in them. I actually don’t like coffee at all and whisky I can tolerate to a small extent so I wasn’t super excited about this, but I wanted to try it out anyway! We actually used this recipe from Martha Stewart’s website and I guess that if it is good enough for her then I would be willing to try it!

The cakes actually turned out to be very tasty and I would recommend this recipe for anyone that wanted to try out a coffee cake! We did fill the cases too high so the cakes ended up spilling out a little but apart from that they were a success. 

The only problem I had was piping the icing on. For some reason piping bags and me just don’t get along whatsoever and my piping always looks shocking! Obviously the only solution will be to keep making more icing and then practise piping =D But if people do have tips on maybe what consistency is best for piping or how they make nice icing on their cupcakes then that would be fabulous! As you can see from above, there were some half decent ones and then I just gave up and slathered on the rest of the icing =P

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, cupcakes | 5 comments

Sunday, 24 March 2013

High Heel Shoe Cake!

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I am finally starting to go back through all of my cake photos and making blog posts about them. It is about time because this cake was made back in January!!!

                                      

So this was made for my best friend Jasmine for her birthday! Here is a link to her blog - you should totally follow her if you want to make lots of awesome, creative homemade things!

So I decided a while ago that I wanted to try and make a high heel out fondant. Most of the heels that I had seen online had been made out of gumpaste which I have never tried to make before. Although I would like to make it one day I much prefer working with Marshmallow Fondant and wanted to try and make it out of that even though I knew that it would be a lot trickier to stay totally hard. So, here are the steps I took to make the shoe:

 

My idea for the shoe was a red shoe with gold glitter on top because Jasmine had previously glittered some of her shoes before so I knew that she liked that effect. My glitter didn’t work out as well as I had hoped and the effect turned out to be more like lustre dust on it. 

One site I would highly recommend for tips and advice on making gumpaste shoes with lots of examples in case you don’t know what time of shoe you are going to do would be this site by sugarteachers.blogspot.co.uk.

I would recommend making the heel first. This gives it time to hard up so once you put the sole on top it doesn’t fall. Remember and stick a dowel, or depending how tall the heel is, a cocktail stick so that you can stick the heel onto a polystyrene stand and the sole can have something to stick onto.  I ended up using a flat shoe for the template- size 6- and using the same method as the trainer shoe cake. I drew around the shoe and then cut a bit of cardboard out for the template. Using the cardboard template again for a guide you are going to want to cute the same shape out but with about 1cm off the edge so you get the inner sole- I used a light pink for mine. This can be stuck on the main sole with edible glue or even a little bit of water. As you can see in the 2^nd photo I put something underneath the heel because I wanted to support it. This was a 2litre bottle I believe that I cut a section out of so it would stay round and then got the size right so that it could fit under the shoe.

This was the finished shoe just drying off and ready to be put on the cake! I based my design on one that I had seen on the sugar teacher’s site and I think that it didn’t turn out too bad. The heel of the shoe was made purely with trial and error- figuring how tall I wanted the back to be and then tapering this down until it met with the sole of the shoe. The front was done in pretty much the same way- getting a rough idea how much to put on the shoe and cutting it down until I got it to a shape that I wanted. When I put the front bit on I left it to harden up by rolling up some kitchen roll and putting it under to that the shape would stay ‘up’ and it worked for me!

I wanted it to say Vivienne Westwood just because that is one of Jasmine’s favourite designers! And the red stripe on the front of the shoe was made by painting on red food colouring with a little bit of vodka.

The cake that I had actually made was a beetroot and pistachio cake and this was definitely not my choice! I was not best impressed that I would be making a cake with beetroot but actually I had to swallow my words because tasting the batter before it even went in the oven was so fabulous! And look at that colour! >>>>>

The cake did not turn out that bright after being in the oven but the taste was still so fine and with the pistachios it was gorgeous! I ended up just adapting a carrot cake recipe that I liked- substituting the beetroot instead of carrot obviously and adding in chopped pistachios. I would definitely recommend using beetroot in cakes!

I did add other things onto the cake: It was supposed to be a shoebox cake but next time I will work on it to make it more like a shoebox! And I also added in some make up, nail polish, ‘tacky’ rings and some pearls to make it more girly!

Labels: 101 things in 1001 days, cake, shoes | 0 comments