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.