I, Robot

After the abysmal failure that was the jolly jelly cake (a plague o'er both your houses, Aeroplane Jelly), I attempted a different cake tonight that turned out marginally better.

Robert Robot - in this case, Richard Robot.

I didn't have any blue colouring but using my new favourite product, Wilton concentrated colour gel, I made him purple instead.

He was really just a square all trimmed up to look like a robot - with the addition of daisies to commemorate the lives of those lost on Tricky's lawn.

The hardest part was putting on the cachous...the easiest part was opening another can of betty crocker frosting.

Welcome back, Tricky... we missed you.

Girls with bangs*

First things first - happy birthday, Blunt Angel and Syke-O!

Secondly, let me explain the title of the post - the cake is called "the good witch", which to me says "white witch" (as in, white magic), and she has bangs* (well, musk sticks but let's not be too particular), which to me says "Stuff White People Like".

meh, a joke explained is never funny...

Anyway, to celebrate Halloween, and the birthdays of two of the lovely ladies at work, I decided to make the good witch from The Book.

OK, so it looks big but not that hard and there's little fine detail involved so it should be achievable, even if I am wearing a Stackhat and chained to the stove.

I decided to branch out a little from the packet-buttercake path and made a cake from scratch, from the Taste website - butterscotch almond cake. To tell the truth, it didn't taste very butterscotch-y - but the almond meal gave it a really great crumb and icing it was a breeze. It was dense and moist - probably because it was friggin huge that it actually didn't fit in my food processor (another vote for Kitchenaid stand mixer please Mrs Martha), so I don't know how well mixed it really was. Anyway, into the oven it went for about an hour and a half, then because it was so ginormous I let it cool overnight.

This morning comes, and I cut the cake out according to the diagram in the book, cut out all the candy trimmings, and start to make the icing. I decided to also branch out with that, and chose a recipe for white chocolate buttercream. Which tasted fine but was an absolute bitch to get right. First, I whizzed it in the food processor and it just went runny - like the whole thing was made form molten white chocolate. Then I tried beating it by hand, which just made it warmer and runnier. So, about to concede defeat and head to the shops to purchase Frosting of Death, I tried to firm it up in the freezer as a last ditch effort.

Success! I still wouldn't call it light and fluffy, but it would at least take some colour and was spreadable.

The next drama was colouring the bulk of it purple - turns out, doesn't work so well. i don't know how they got the vibrant colour in the book, but it wasn't happening for Martha. I ended up with a dirty sort of mauve.

That was all of the disasters out of the way - the only other thing I had to be creative with was her hair - french fries on cake? Nuh uh. So I used sliced up musk sticks instead, and I couldn't find any plain licorice so used chocolate licorice logs.

Oh and the greatest discovery yet? Black gel icing in a tube. It's supposed to be for writing but zomg, it worked so well as a replacement for licorice on all the decorations! My new favourite thing.

Happy birthday ladies...

The Champs-Élysées is a busy street....

Even though the chapter in The Book from which this cake comes is called "for boys", today we welcome back SW, who is most definitely not a boy.

We did have some debate in our team over whether we should make the "sports car" or the "racing car", but popular opinion chose the sports car and who am I to argue with popular opinion?

So the prototype for the day's efforts:

I have to say, this is one of the many instances where the picture looks deceptively easy and I managed to fuck it up good and proper in the execution. I _think_the car is supposed to be some kind of Saab-y type deal... mine looks more like a monster truck, but we'll get on to that.*

Anyway, I tried something different tonight - a packet Madeira/lemon cake done in a loaf tin (and oh my gosh, it doesn't taste as good as butter cake but wow! so easy to spread icing on the cut side!) and then I made the Vienna butter cream exactly as per the AWW instructions. Pffft. My way of lumping everything in and whizzing up is better.

I think I might gradually have forced my colleagues into realising that the Frosting of Death really is deathly, and luckily I found something to colour my humble homemade butter cream without giving anyone a heart attack:

Wilton concentrated paste ("no taste"), where have you been all my life? It coloured the icing nicely without making it runny, which is about as much as I can ask for, these days.

Anyway, it wouldn't be an AWW cake without candy and coloured coconut. Not only did I buy the wrong kind of coconut (shredded not dessicated, argh) but I also forgot Wilson's helpful tip of the freezer bag. So it was a mess all round. The licence plate, rear view mirror and door handle are made from the fondant part of a licorice allsort, the headlights are a jellybean/smarties creation and I am not entirely sure, to be honest, what the musk sticks are supposed to represent - but I just followed the instructions. Carving the cake turned out to be easy and instead of chucking out the off cuts I just used them underneath the car to give it more height.

I had to improvise a little with the aerial, because do you know how hard it is to buy friggin' pipe cleaners? so I coloured in a wooden skewer with a black texta and shoved it in the front. Now it's all done and ready for the return of the lead footed SW.

Anyway, the final product (it actually looks a bit better in real life, from a distance)

                                           Back:

                                           Front

                                           Side

PS SW - the price you pay for eating cake is a swear jar. every time you mention the words "France", "holiday" or "retirement" you pay Navonod in blood. Or so he tells me.


*It occurred to me last night that baking my way through The Book is pretty reflective of life. You do it a couple of times and think how had it is, then you get a couple of easy ones or you get on roll and start getting cocky, thinking that being a grown up isn't actually that hard and what's everyone complaining about and then wham. you go right back to the drawing board and the easiest thing is impossible. stupid lack of mad decorating skillz.

Fame is corrupting

Or is that power? Either way, I'm squeaky clean.

Betty and I have had our first taste of stardom, including the paparazzi. My work has an internal newsletter and Bakey Cakelicious rated a menion. Hurrah!

It was good for a giggle, anyway...

Something else that's good for a giggle? This webcomic, funniest thing I've read in ages.Who knew what magic you could weave with stick figures!

Hyperbole and a Half - God of Cake

The friendly ghost

What could be fitting to farewell another office fav, and a big fan of the baking?

The ghost jumped out at me as the perfect treat for someone who was disappearing from our ranks!

Another last-minute baking effort meant packet mix, (loving the excuse that the book actually recommends them!) and two beautiful butter cakes were selected and whipped into one large rectangular tin.

With no time to waste, the decorating started the minute it came out of the oven. My second attempt at fluffy frosting proved even messier – it was much harder without a second pair of hand to mix while I poured the toffee in evenly to get just the right sticky, fluffy consistency.

The greatest thing about fluffy frosting is that it makes icing so easy – it practically spread itself into a delicious, gooey, fluffy covering. The final touches were big blue eyes, a strange green smartie mouth, pink coconut (still in the fridge, left over from the pink elephant – again, I hope nobody actually ate that!) and the ultimate finishing touch – the Chief’s hat! (I think the new chief was even a bit jealous!)

A suitably sugary, sweet farewell!

Nine posts and 10 cakes posted - I'm done! - Betty xx

Cake takes flight

(Two cakes to go, and I am determined to get there!)

Over the past five weeks, I had been so lucky to be part of a fantastic leadership program under the inspired coachings of the lovely George and Simon.

I had promised the group a cake the previous week, (I even bought gluten-free flour for Kate!) but was overcome with too many late nights!

Down to the wire and the final week of the course, and only the helicopter would do!

The gluten-free cake turned out to be fantastic to work with, it had a beautiful moist texture, and minus the bloating of regular flour, was positively more-ish!

With limited time, I decided to cheat and use my trusty name sakes’s ready-made icing, with the addition of some particularly vibrant colours. The helicopter turned out the be surprisingly easy to mould; the gluten-free cake took shape easily.

Unfortunately though, the heaviness of the cake proved disastrous in the car on the way to work, with the whole helicopter taking a tumble during the drive, not once but twice!

Luckily though, the cake made it, (with only minor icing damage) and like our ideas, it took off!

Footy fever

 Two Melbourne teams were in the grand final and Melbourne was all a-hype!

Having scored some free tix to the previous weeks’ convincing victory over Geelong, I was back out and proud as a pies supporter and ready for a big win!

Watching the first grand-final undid all good yoga relaxation work of the morning, despite feeling sick, it was impossible not to be on the edge of my seat from half-time onwards!

And what a result! My victory cake – the footy field – had to be transformed into a something appropriate for a draw!

AS the final played out, I decided another hedgehog would make a perfect ground for the G, topped with green coconut. A clinker was the only possibility for the ball, and it had to be a pink one. (I had to do a lot of checking, just to get the right one!) Painting skewers seemed like way too much work, and when I couldn’t even find them in Coles, drinking straws saved the day as a much cheaper and simpler solution!

What a strange afternoon, as we all realised we would be back next week!

And back we were, ready for a result. Sadly I didn’t get to watch the re-play (being far too relaxed in an all-day yoga workshop) but boy was I ready to celebrate with a pies premiership cake!

A simple choc cake, this one was for my fav pies supporter, my little sis – Oh, the premierships a CAKEwalk – yes, it was! GO PIES!!

A monster for my fav little monster

T’was the birthday of my little Saraj, and only something outrageous would do! It came down to the jelly cake or the monster. (I decided the jelly cake would be a bit too difficult to take to the pub.) 

This cake needed to be just as ugly inside, so I decided that rather than a cake I would bake hedgehog slice. (The rectangular tin was also the perfect shape for the “cake”.)

 So it turns out Hegehog slice is possibly the easiest thing ever to make – just melt the butter and mix it all in! And very difficult not to eat while baking.

Some VERY buttery choc icing started ‘decorating in the tin’ meaning that I didn’t even have to find a plate. (I will admit I was concerned it would fall apart if I tipped it out.) Surviving a day in the car, and a trip to the show (where multiple Bertie Beetle bags were purchased as b’day pressies and general pressies) and overcoming a bartender who was reluctant to give us a knife to cut it, we managed, at long last, to consume the delicious, crunchy non-cake.

Aaargh! Tis the pirate!

Talk like a pirate challenge: accepted! 19 September be always a favourite on me calendar – International Talk Like a Pirate Day! 
If you haven’t discovered this website already, it be worth a look – me fav part be t' pirate translator. (I actually once even submitted a resignation in pirate speak … ) "

So talk like a pirate day was on t' Sunday, and I had it all ready t' take into work on t' Monday – except I forgot t' brin' t' cake! Whoops! T' one bonus was this did give me time t' track down a gold doubloons – t' piece de resistance that me bucko in Canberra didn’t quite manage. 
In all modesty, I officially award meself t' winner in t' challenge, for findin' t' starboard piece o' eight, and t' special ‘Freddo o' t' sea’ insignia on pirate’s hat! "

Nobody mention the pink elephant in the room

Ahhh the day to bake my way to a payrise … the boss’s birthday! Sadly, I failed on that account, it might have had something to do with the fact that I didn’t actually bake and cheated by buying two Coles choc mud cakes. (He did say they were his favourites!)

It was all relatively easy from there, some clever cutting and the elephant quickly took shape, while pink coconut required a hands-on approach (and pink hands for a few days). 

I must admit I slacked off on icing the sides – I kinda ran out of icing, and the mud cake wasn’t the easiest to ice.

A strategically positioned ear and tusk and Mr pink elephant looked ready to dance right out of the tray and celebrate an unwanted b’day. (That might have been my other mistake … )

Farewell to a clown

It doesn’t take long for the farewells to roll around, and before we knew it we were saying goodbye to Arnie! That left me with a Thursday night dilemma of what to make, and again, I went with the simple option, that could be made out of one round butter cake (which was in the freezer from the last baking session!)

A few improvisations were made in lieu of decorations I didn’t have on hand – an ice-cream cone covered in sprinkles replaced the party hat, while silver ribbon curls made for much more fun hair! Wafer biscuits took the place of ice-cream wafers and the lillipops were multi coloured (and about a year old – I think they were in a Bertie Beetle showbag from last year – I really hope nobody ate them!)

A fitting farewell cake for an office fav!

Little miss muffet

Back to work after three blissful weeks of holiday and it was time to get back to baking.

I must admit the back to work blues meant I wasn’t very inspired, but when Aaron brought me in a spider, I really couldn’t put it off any longer!

I chose little miss muffet because it seemed the simplest – one round cake, plus a bonus cupcake for miss muffet’s tuffet! I didn’t really think about how difficult it would be to find the right doll, however, and had to make do with a try-hard barbie from Coles.

For this cake I went back to the classic basic butter cake from the recipe book, topped with some electrifying blue icing!

A near disaster was just averted when I discovered I had no idea where my piping bag or nozzles were – a make-shift bag made from baking paper and no nozzle wasn’t ideal, but I managed the design despite being a bot thicker than intended.

Another tasty treat for the workmates to enjoy!

Run, run as fast as you can … !

Ok, so you may (or may not) have noticed that I am a bit behind in my blogging. Ten cakes behind to be precise - time to catch up in a hurry!

July 2010 – The gingerbread man

The focus of July’s baking challenge was on a BIG gingerbread biscuit. It had been years since I had last made gingerbread men, and I had certainly never made one as big!

Following the gingerbread recipe in the AWWCBC cookbook, it was all going smoothly, I had made my pattern from tracing paper and cut it out with a knife … to find it stuck to the bench! I had forgotten how fragile the necks can be!

Take two and I rolled the gingerbread out onto tracing paper, so that it could easily be lifted onto the tray. The leftover gingerbread was also a great chance to test out the little gingerbread cooking cutter that I got at the show last year.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a cake without cake, so gigantic chocolate cake it was!

Chocolate icing sealed the gingerbread man to the cake, while liquorice strips, smarties and icing pens made light work of decorating the man.

The perfect man to say happy birthday to Becky Boo!

I sphinx it's a pyramid

I (Martha) strayed once again from the book into, as Mr Graham would say, "avant garde" territory today, to welcome back a much-missed member of our team, Wilson.

Since Wilson returned today from her Egyptian holiday, the really happy frood in our team convinced me (after a brief debate about the differences between iced vovos and strawberry mallow biscuits which ended in my defeat) to construct a pyramid in celebration.

What the frood didn't realise though was that I have no spatial awareness and don't do too well with shapes, either. Or carving/sculpture. Luckily, the frood has a slightly more impressive cranial capacity than Martha so was able to not only find a template, but do the legwork.

I mixed up the biggest fuck off cake mixture I've ever seen - 8 eggs, 500g butter and practically a whole bag of sugar and flour. I decided at the last minute to make a rainbow cake, so I divided the mixture into three parts, coloured one part pink and flavoured it with strawberry essence, the other with cocoa and I left the other plain. I had to bake it in two deep square tins, and it took ages. So much for an early Sunday night!

I left the cakes to cool overnight and in the meantime, crushed up two packets of scotch finger biscuits to use as sand and packed two cans of frosting of death, colouring, a bread knife, a box of matches and a little bag of cocoa (for the bricks).

The frood and I set to work as soon as we got in in the morning, with the frood starting out with carving while I mixed up some sand-coloured (kinda) icing:

The first cut is the deepest... BABY*

 
 The two cakes were stacked on top of each other, then the frood carved down the sides at the precise angle of 51 degrees (well, it would have been precise if we'd remembered the protractor) and fashioned some of the off-cuts into a peak. I then bollixed that up by frosting it too enthusiastically and making it slump >:

I used the first can of frosting-of-death to dirty ice the pyramid after we spackled it together, before covering it in the sand coloured mixture. The frood arranged the "sand" (crumbs) on the iced board while I made brick lines using the ole matchbox-dipped-in-cocoa trick (thanks, AWW!).

Work in progress:

And then the frood found a little green army man and Blunt Angel found another, and we had ourselves a diorama. Add in King Kong to the scene and it became nothing like an Egyptian pyramid but it was still pretty fun - and I think quite tasty.

The final product:

*that one's for you, LVV.

Boom boom sexy time (Happy Birthday Tricky)

Today marks the momentous occasion of Tricky’s birth, 21 years ago. On that day, in 1989, did Ma Tricky realise what a lad she was about to raise? What a devastatingly handsome, debonair, smooth ladies’ man she had?
Probably not.

I think everybody is a bit perplexed by my (Martha) choice of cake decoration. It is a replica of this cake that I first found on Cake Wrecks and thought was just odd and kind of inappropriate but also kind of funny:

However, even given the state of perplexedness (perplexment? Perplexion?) I’m pretty sure the cake itself is still good.

The funnest part of this cake was revisiting what I thought was a Nanny-special cake, the simplicity chocolate cake. It’s essentially a melt and mix cake and it always turns out awesome and chocolate-y. I only learnt a couple of years ago when I was flicking through Mum’s PMWU cookbook that my Nan stole the recipe from there.

So after baking the cake in a loaf tin and chucking in some extra chocolate chips (it’s his birthday after all) I left the cake to cool overnight.

I’m totally sure that Mr and Mrs Martha didn’t mind in the least picking up butter, icing sugar and milk on their way home from the airport after 6 weeks in Canadia. And I’m almost positive that whipping up the Vienna cream at 6.30 this morning didn’t disturb them, either.

I couldn’t get the butter icing as snow white as I wanted, but I did manage to get a pretty light colour thanks to some fairly vigorous whipping and the use of this Wilton product:

Overall I think it was a fairly faithful replica of the original – even though I have managed somehow to tear a huge fuck off hole in my piping bag.

Happy Birthday, Tricky. Hope you had a boom boom sexy day.

Duh.... I'm the captain. My son is Bart*

Sunday 19 September was International Talk Like a Pirate Day and to celebrate, Betty and I decided to bake the sad pirate cake in The Book. I can’t speak to Betty’s experience, but I found him really quite easy – the only issue being my own stupidity. You see, I baked the cake (thank you, Green’s Classic Chocolate cake mix) and made the amateur mistake of trying to carve out the pirate hat while the cake was still warmish. Turns out it was too soft and crumbly, but I think I managed to salvage it, mainly. I left the ear and the cake out to cool down and dry out a bit overnight and cut up all the candy for our sad pirate’s face.

I tried using my leftover fruit sticks to make his hair but alas! They too had dried up and were too stiff to trim. I think it’s time to have a candy audit of my bucket and get rid of some old stuff. Anyway, I had two yellow snakes left which I used to good effect, had a trimmed down Monte biscuit for his eye patch, smarties for his nose and good eye, and liquorice (red and back) for the rest of the details.

After making a complete abortion of a skull and crossbones from liquorice allsorts, I resorted to the black construction paper originally recommended in The Book.

I also have to admit to pretty bad laziness here – not only did I use a packet mix (which was completely legitimate, bootcamp wiped me out) but I also decided to finish up the Frosting of Death to decorate it (hence, I can only believe my colleagues when they told me he tasted good – I am not going near that stuff ever again). It has a pretty great texture for spreading, and it gets even more pliable when it’s adulterated with buckets of food colouring.
Overall, I think he ended up looking pretty cute – now I’ll leave it up to Betty to follow up with her awesome version.

My version:

The Book version:

*for Simpsons fans...

Arriving on a jet plane

Today marked the momentous occasion of The Big Boss's return. Not that there was much to return to - no election results and no government. However, there was new carpet and there was a cake, which always makes things better!

I asked the gang at work what cake we should use as inspiration for LVV's return and we decided on the "jet plane" (I say "jet plane" because it looks more like a cartoon than an actual plane!). The jet plane is in the chapter titled "For boys" (I couldn't tell you why, except that possibly in 1983, at least in Women's Weekly land, girls still did the sewing and cooking while boys kicked it James Bond style).

Anyway, back to the point. The prototype:

And the result, made using the basic buttercake recipe, vanilla flavoured, with plain blue Vienna frosting. You'll see I had to improvise with some of the lollies for decoration, having eaten all the bullets and chocolate peanuts previously. I found halved jelly beans and trimmed musk sticks worked just as well!

I did have two issues though:
1) I used what was obviously too big a loaf tin, as the cake was not as risen as it looked in the picture and was consequently harder to shape into a round
2) My Vienna frosting split. I don't know why, except perhaps I used too much colouring and ran out of butter, so had to use margarine.A lesson for next time, I guess.

Here is the final product! The photo isn't very good but by this point I was rushing to finish.
xx Martha 

Tears before bed time

The title of this post pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

On Saturday, I (Martha) hung out with my friend Mrs Duffman and her daughter (my "god"daughter) The Divine Miss O. Miss O is 18 months old and is the cutest baby ever - but I don't think we really anticipated the pull that marshmallows, smarties and cake batter would have over Miss O's temperament.

We decided to make this cake, although we ran out of time to do every detail of the picture, we did manage to make some pretty darn good cupcakes and they looked pretty too!

We started off with a basic buttercake mixture, kind of made from memory... and we were out of baking powder, but substituting bicarb resulted in fluffy and well-risen cupcakes - a minor catastrophe averted! although we did manage to create two mutants:

Apparently, not putting the patty cases in the tins is a bad idea. Still, these gave up the opportunity to make rainbow mutants, which I understand went down very well with Miss O. We also made the fatal mistake of giving Miss O a taste of cake batter:

Which was a mistake only because once she had a taste of the sugary, soft, mushy goodness, she then refused to eat anything else and we had a very teary and frustrated little girl continually pointing at the decorations and cakes and putting tiny, sticky little fingerprints on our pants :) which was exceedingly cute but I did feel a little bit mean!

Once the cakes were done, we made a nice big batch of Vienna frosting and separated it into 3 bowls, and added copious amounts of food colouring to produce blue, pink and yellow icing.

Then, we cut up little marshmallows to make petals and dipped the sticky side in bright green and pink jelly crystals:

And finished by decorating the cupcakes like this!

(note the rainbow mutant cakes, above)

All that was left was to spread the benefits of our baking and do some cleaning up!

So, while there were indeed tears before bed time, everybody ended up relatively unscathed!

ETA: Why toddlers are so cute! Miss O v Cupcake:

The very hungry caterpillar and other hilarious anecdotes

OK so actually, there's no anecdotes here. Also, no story about a caterpillar, but whatever.

Monday 16 August was RSPCA cupcake day! And by happy coincidence, there is one - just one - cupcake-cake (ptooey!) in The Book.

And it's this one!

Which is totally rad because not only is it made from cupcakes, but it also looks like a "critter" and thereby fulfilled the main criteria for the day.

The cake? Simple butter cake (from scratch, this time). The frosting? Fluffy Vienna coloured green and flavoured with strawberry just for fun. I actually made the cakes into mini cupcakes but i think it could have worked just as well with full sized ones. The baked cakes are completely covered with the frosting, then rolled into green-dyed coconut. It's pretty simply after that - the cupcakes got stuck to the board with icing, little feet made from chopped up snakes and a face made from licorice and a snake head.

And there you go! or as BN taught me today QED. Which is slightly out of context but meh.

The next cake coming is to celebrate the return of the Big Boss, which is awesome but - I wish it could also be a celebratory reprise of the redheads...
xxMartha

My "action" contract

It's taken a while to be able to face blogging about my (Martha's) Tony Abbott cake - the experience was vaguely disturbing for all involved, including the birthday girls and boys who were the main beneficiaries of his chocolate tastiness.

There's just something really wrong about eating the Liberal leader... *gag*

On the bright side, I did get to give my stupidly expensive, collectors edition "Edward Cullen" Barbie (complete with sparkly torso skin) an Abbott-esque makeover. Which largely involved painting on red budgie smugglers, trimming his hair and sticking it to his sparkly, well-muscled chest. And then trying to avoid eating that hair as it fell from his body to the frosting.

The cake was the AWW's Crowd Pleaser Chocolate Cake and the inspiration for the design came from my old favourite, Cake Wrecks. Something I should point out at the beginning is that i could not find, anywhere, a regular Ken doll, nor the reclining "hey bebeh" style doll that the Cake Wrecks feature.

There's not much more to say apart from here are some pictures (the white thing is the bearskin rug!). In order to make him look like he was reclining, we actually dug his arm into the cake after it was iced.

xx Martha