blog amnesty post: recent cakelicious adventures of Martha*

OK so it's been a while since either of us updated this blog, and while I wouldn't say we've kept powering through the cakes, we haven't exactly stopped.

So, here are some recent cakes from The Book:

Lion (a twist on the theme - he's savoury! made from cheese, corn and chive muffin baked into a square, with a mane of sausage rolls)

Next on the list is Olly Elephant, a vanilla butter cake with vienna cream frosting. He was meant to be pink but I liked the purpley-grey better:

Next comes the kitteh, as our way of saying goodbye to Jeff:

And finally, a couple of shots of my WIP, vegan green tea cupcakes from Post Punk Kitchen:

That's all...

Martha XO

Update: final product

*amnesty idea shamelessly stolen from Melbourne Gastronome

Quarter of a centrury

Milestones are by nature a cause for celebration, and for sister Betty, 25 years was cause for a par-tay!

Now I have noticed that the numbers have been unaccounted for to date, so I thought I’d knock out two cakes at once (three if you count the fact the decoration is from the number 10 cake) and go with a 2 and a 5.

Being a wonderful sister, I totally forgot I had offered to bake until the afternoon of the party, so something simple was in order. ‘A simple chocolate cake, even a child can make’ was the obvious choice, for its simplicity in recipe, in method and in crowd-pleasing deliciousness.

The only tricky thing was making the right shapes. I actually wound up ignoring the suggested multiple loaves and bunts (as I didn’t have the right tins) and went with one rectangle one square and one round cake. Trouble was, my oven didn’t quite fit all three at once. Not being one to wait, I jammed them all in and the door closed – problem solved! – until I got them out – and the round and square cakes had tipped up on an angle and all the mixture had tipped to the side. Small disaster.

With my baking reputation was on the line, defeat was not an option. As they weren’t quite cooked yet, I gave them a bit of a shake and stuffed them back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Unfortunately, there was no masking what came out of the over. The cakes were completely uneven. The square cake was ok on the thick end and burnt on the thin end. The round cake had waves of different heights and differently cooked mixture. Not a pretty site. Luckily, decoration was in order.

With only hours until the party, I blasted the cakes cool in the freezer while I prepared the icing. The number 10 cake called for a lamington type icing, with whipped cream on top. This was my first time working with lamingtons and it was pretty damn tasty! The icing was super chocolately and super runny, with apricot jam as the secret ingredient that just pulled everything together – beautiful taste and glaze.

Meanwhile, creating the shapes was a salvage operation. The number 2 was cut out of the rectangle luckily I was able to cut the burnt corner right off. The number 5 was a little more tricky – only half the square cake was useable – this became the top, the highest three quarters of the round cake was selected (with the middle cut out – no need for a bunt tin!) and some off-cut number 2 managed to fill the missing piece. Phew!

What I didn’t think through was how I would dip a whole cake into the icing. Lets just say the cakes stayed together for the most part and thank god there was coconut to cover the cracks.

And I am pleased to say that the finished version tuned out all right, in fact it looked pretty good – Sister Betty loved it! And it got eaten – always a good sign!

Betty xx

In celebration of our nation

In the last few years, Australia Day has been growing, but this year, it seems to have reached a whole new level. Little flags were flying on utes and micro cars everywhere. (Apparently a freebie in the Herald Sun goes a long way.)

On a side note, it’s interesting how strong our attachment to a symbol from our past. Which is probably going to get new again with the royal wedding this year – a cause for celebration to reunite the colonies…

Anyway, back to our Australia Day celebrations, and we all know that every good celebration requires cake. So of course I jumped on the symbolic bandwagon to make an aussie flag cake.

The recipe was largely determined by ingredients around the kitchen, and two very ripe bananas that were begging to be cooked. Due to previous popularity, the honey yoghurt banana cake recipe was selected, and with only one small hitch (only two instead of four bananas – worked out fine anyway) I had a cake to decorate.

The great thing about making a flag cake is that all you need is a rectangle – for once, so simple. What wasn’t so great was the fact that I still couldn’t find my piping bag – so the union jack came out pretty demented. With my Aussie flag to model off, the stars all made it to the right position – even if they didn’t all have the right number of points (that really wreaked of effort!).

As is tradition, our BBQ had more than enough food on offer, and following way too many snags, lamb, burgers and delightful salads it was time for dessert. While the pavs were the traditional favourite, the banana cake was certainly the photo favourite – and nobody turned down a serving of both!

Betty xx

Professional Courtesy

Happy Birthday Dan - the shark was billed as "smiley" in The Book, but my version (not unusually) turned out angry. However, who's ever seen a shark with eyelashes? Not me.

The prototype:

(sorry about the reflection)

The work in progress:

And, finally, the end product:

Off with her head!

This latest installment comes from "something for everyone" and is called the Cake of Hearts. I decided to make this for Gma Martha's 92nd birthday, and the subsequent cakeslide was just a taster for the whole evening.

Being lazy and also incapable of making a successful sponge, I should admit upfront that not only did I not have the dexterity to carve the round sponge into a heart shape as per the book, I also cheated. Big time.
 

However, it tasted fine and it meant that I only needed the oven on briefly while I dried out the meringue hearts.

Anyway, the idea of the cake is it's filled with jam and cream in two layers, then iced with whipped cream and decorated with heart-shaped meringues that were coated with 100s & 1000s before baking. They were the easy part (although I tried out the recommended method - tracing hearts on baking papers and spreading the meringue mixture around with a teaspoon - did not work. I turned to my trusty piping bag and that hit the spot).

So far, so good. Then to assembly, and that too goes smoothly and we end up with the final product (next to the prototype for comparison):

So, what then is the problem?

Well, a hot day and soft cream and some inattentive packing for transport. Behold:

Yeah. Happy Birthday, Gma.

The Queen of Hearts

She made some tarts,

    All on a summer's day;

The Knave of Hearts

He stole those tarts,

    And took them clean away.

The King of Hearts

Called for the tarts,

    And beat the knave full sore;

The Knave of Hearts

Brought back the tarts,

    And vowed he'd steal no more.

the telephone game

How is this for an embarrassing admission... back in the day, I went to a few "Girls' Brigade" meetings *blush*. Even more embarrassing - it was just now when I looked up where the apostrophe goes in that organisation's name that I realised it is Christian.

Anyway, one of the games we played, apart from "Who stole the cookie..." was the telephone game. Which involved pretty much the same thing as the cookie one, but you had to handball a call to someone else around the circle. Looking back, it taught pretty bad telephone habits because the response was always "If it isn't [insert name here] then I'm not home". These days, caller ID and mobs have pretty much taken care of the need to screen.

Back to the point. I've sadly neglected my candy supplies recently and when I remembered that it was Debilitator's birthday during the first week back at work, my choice of cakes was limited by the availability of decorations. So, the old fashioned telephone got the gig.

 I made two cakes - a simple vanilla cake in a loaf tin for the handle, and a chocolate cake for the base of the phone. The icing was easy as and the decorations were not demanding - my only fault was forgetting the licorice cord, but I remedied that quickly before I took the cake in. No pics, though.

Happy (very belated) birthday, Debilitator.

xxMartha
 

Timothy Tiger

For Timothy Tiger’s namesake’s birthday, it was time to pounce!

One small problem however – I had no eggs. Cakes need eggs. Multiple eggs. Even packet mixes.

Google to the rescue: chocolate cake no eggs. Millions of results. So I chose the first one.

Which turned out to be great (despite questionable vinegar ingredient); moist and soooooooo yummy!

Only catch to the tasteful texture was that it was also quite crumbly – making cutting it to shape a very careful operation. With this in mind, I prepared about double the amont of icing I normally would, so I could be very liberal with it and catch all the crumbs. I also learned form the honey icing that whipping it up with beater gave it a much lighter texture – way to go from now on!

With icing applied, Timothy Tiger had taken on a striking shade of orange (he would have been a real hero back in November in that colour) and it was time for the licorice stripes.

I didn’t have crinkle-cut scissors, so I improvised with the edge of a crinkle-cut scone cutter. It didn’t quite come up the same as the one in the book, but it was close enough.

Tim’s verdict – yum!

This cake is bananas B-A-N-A-N-A-S

With so much going on in the lead-up to Christmas, baking had taken a bit of a back seat. But with a cake promised for Miss N’s b’day, it was time for Betty to get her nose into the Birthday Cake Book.

On the time poor note, ‘three easy cakes’ looked the most appealing, however Coles didn’t have any farm animals or Indians. Improvisations had to be made. Starting with the bananas that were going dead in my neglected fruit bowl.  Not so good for eating but perfect for banana cake.

Now Miss N likes to keep healthy, so yoghurt banana cake with honey icing seemed the perfect healthy birthday treat. (I just didn’t tell her how much butter was also in it … !)

In the spirit of three easy cakes, malt stick TV snacks were a must, however the rest of the decorations followed the essence of the cake – bananas.

With the honey icing practically singing to be eaten, this was a cake worthy of the board room for birthday morning tea – happy birthday Miss N!

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!