Happee Birthdaee Daddee! Coffee Poodle Cake

Looking to make a novelty cake, but have never been very good with fondant? Well, look no further: here is a cute puppy cake, with zero fondant!

My Dad had his birthday on Friday, but actual celebrations with cake and presents were delayed due to all of us having different work commitments. On the Friday night itself, we went to see The Crimes of Grindewald, which was a dull and conflicted piece of cinema.

When we did eventually meet up for cake and presents, I wanted to make a special cake for Dad: he has a pet toy poodle, called Boadecia (well, when I say he has, she dog is actually my mother's but Dad has an extreme fondness for her and carries her around everywhere he goes), so I made a cake in the likeness of a poodle. However, I really dislike working with fondant, and I hate how it tastes.

So, I went with good old fashioned piping.

I made a 9 inch (23 centimetre) deep round coffee cake, and sandwiched and crumb coated it with some coffee buttercream. After a brief trip into the fridge, I spread another thin layer of coffee icing over the top and sides, using a bench knife to get the edges nice and straight. I coated the sides in a dusting of desiccated coconut and piped a scroll design around the top edge. I then popped the cake into the fridge for another 20 or so minutes.

To get the beautiful white surface, I melted 2½ ounces (65 grammes) of white chocolate with 2 teaspoons (10 millilitres) of sunflower oil. I added a pinch of salt to make it taste richer, because sunflower oil is pretty flavourless. I melted them together gently in the microwave and poured it in the top of the cake, where the scroll piping acted as a dam. I gently tilted the cake to get full coverage.

After a half hour rest in the fridge, I piped the features using dark chocolate and pink-tinted glacé icing. I just mixed some icing sugar and milk together to a thick, piping consistency and used pink gel colouring to get a lovely, doggy-tongue shade of pink.

Dad's poodle wears a little baby blue collar, so I thought I'd put a band of paper around the cake, where I would normally pipe a lower border. I think the effect was very pretty, put next time I'll use a ribbon for a better effect.

All in all, I was very pleased with this cake! You could do it with chocolate cake, too, or any flavour you like. Happy baking!

Ten Points to Gryffindor! Quidditch Pitch Birthday Cake

This year was my little sister's 21st birthday! She's a proper grown up now.... although she'll always be little in my mind. I think every big sister feels the same way, no matter how old their little sister gets.

So for this very special birthday, I thought I'd do a very special cake. She loves Harry Potter, and so I thought I'd make her a Quidditch pitch cake. For people who aren't Harry Potter fans, Quidditch is a team sport where the players fly broom sticks and try to throw a ball, called a Quaffle, through their opponents hoops to score points. However, they have to avoid being hit by a Bludger, which is a ball that's deliberately hit at players of the opposite team to dismount them from their broomsticks. The winner of the game is the team that has the most points by full time, and if your team catches the third and most important ball, the Golden Snitch, you get an extra 150 points. The Snitch flies around the pitch of its own accord, and can only be caught by a special teammate called a Seeker.

I'm not a big Harry Potter person, I read all the books and watched all the movies once each and that was enough for me, but my sister is mad for it. So much so that by coincidence we all bought Harry Potter themed presents for her without planning it ahead of time.

Her birthday coincided with my parents' 35th wedding anniversary weekend, so we had a big family celebration; all told there were 12 people, including me, at the party, so I needed a big cake! This cake used half a dozen eggs, and three quarters of a pound of flour and sugar. There was cake leftover after dinner, but I always like to make a cake big enough to be enjoyed the next day too.

I made two 10 by 8 inch (25 by 20 centimetre) rectangular cakes, trimmed off the domes (I didn't have much of a dome on either cake), and sandwiched them together with chocolate buttercream. I crumb coated the cake, allowed it to set in the fridge for 30 minutes before proceeding with decorating.

While I was baking the cakes, I also baked some green tinted shortbread and some plain shortbread to crumble later for decoration. I used biscuits instead of coconut because my sister doesn't like coconut, however if that's not an issue you can just colour some and use that instead.

I made an oval shaped stencil out of non-stick baking paper, and I also made one circular and two semicircular masks. I coated the sides of the cake with a sheer layer of icing before packing a mixture of sugar strands and hundred and thousands (which to my American readers are simply tiny ball-shaped sprinkles) onto all four sides.

I coated the top in a sheery coating of icing before setting down my oval stencil. I then placed the circular mask in the centre, and the semicircular masks on either narrow end. I sprinkled on crushed green biscuits even inside the stencil, then removed the masks and filled in the gaps with plain crushed biscuits. I removed the stencil, then piped on some remaining icing into all the un-biscuited areas.

I piped on some simple glacé icing to represent the white grass paint that marks out the different parts of the field.

 To make the golden snitch, I made a cake truffle out of the dome trimmings and some icing, rolled it into a ball, and rolled it round some gold lustre dust. I allowed it to set and crust completely in the fridge.

I made some little white card wings and stuck them in the top, and also used paper straws and loops of white card to make the hoops.

I was extremely pleased with the results of this cake. The cake itself was fluffy and delicious, and the icing was thick and creamy. But my favourite thing about it was the look on my sister's face when she saw it!

Two novelty cake in one year?! I think I might be getting the taste for novelty cakes after all these years....

Having Fun with Dough: Biscuit Creatures

Baking is all about fun, so let's have fun! Here are some little creatures I made using the biscuit dough I shared in my last post.

This isn't so much a recipe as it is just showing off my modelling skills: does it show that I studied ceramics in college? Seems my skills of working with clay are quite transferable to baking. However, it's important not to overwork the dough, and if it starts to get to soft and oily, pop it back in the fridge for 20 to 30 minutes. These biscuits have to be cold before they're cooked so they keep their shape.

I just started colouring some bits of lemon biscuit dough and started playing around. I found the best way of incorporating gel food colouring into the premade dough is using the French sablée technique, which is smearing the dough across the work surface and gathering it back up. It works the gluten in the flour the less than kneading it in. I also used cocoa powder mixed to a paste with boiling water to colour the brown dough.

I'll share with you how I made the hedgehogs, tortoises, and snakes.

To make the hedgehogs, I took a piece of brown dough, and a piece of white dough about a third of the size. I rolled them together to make a cone, and then stuck black sesame seeds in to make the face.

I allow the little hedgies to chill out in the fridge for half an hour before using the tip of a cocktail stick to rough up the brown dough to emulate spines. I then baked them for 12 minutes.













To make the snakes, I took two equal parts of coloured dough, in this case red and green, and rolled them each into a rope. I then rolled the ropes together and twisted them together to make stripes, keep one end thicker to make the head. I then pointed its nose and gave it two black sesame seed eyes.

Next time, I'll add a glacé cherry tongue.

I baked the snakes for a shorter time, about 10 minutes, because they're more fragile than the hedgehogs.










To make the tortoises, I rolled a piece of coloured dough into a ball and slightly flattened it to make a dome. I then took smaller pieces of dough, maybe a fifth of the size of the shell, and made the head and legs; the head is slightly larger than the legs.

Like the others, I used black sesame seeds for eyes, and after a half-hour rest in the fridge I used the back of a table knife to score shell markings into each tortoise's back.

I baked them for roughly 12 minutes.








I have a whole lot of ideas now for further biscuit creature ideas: maybe some bears, or little rabbits. Maybe I can hide pieces of chocolate inside, or marshmallow. Also, designs can be embellished and refined with icing or melted chocolate. I still like the traditional 2D cut out biscuits, of course, but the new 3D angle has a lot of interesting possibilities.

It's really opened up a whole lotta doors and a whole rake of new ideas for birthday gifts and party favours.....

Zesteratops: the Return of the Novelty Dinnersaurus!

Say hello to Zesteratops!

When I launched my blog back in 2013, I made a dinosaur shaped cake for my mother's birthday that year. It's my blog's most popular blog post, racking up over 1000 views so far!

As such, I thought an update of my technique was well overdue. I'm not really a novelty cake person, which you could probably tell from the fact that I've only ever done a 3D dinosaur and a 3D panda cake in the past. However, my attitude towards novelty cakes has been changing: recently my parents decided to foster an eleven year old boy, and having a child in the family again really changes to chemistry of family gatherings! (He actually named this cake: I was originally going to call it Lemonpleurodon)

Mum loves lemon or orange flavour cakes, and the previous dinnersaurus was orange flavoured so this time I went for lemon. I also decided to decorate with buttercream rather than fondant. I absolutely hate working with fondant, but I used it to design the details, like the back sails, tail spikes, eyes, and smiling face.

This project is very time consuming: from the moment I started mixing the cake, to the moment I put on the last tail spike, it took 6 hours. So keep this in mind when you go to make it!

~~ ^ _ ^ ~~

DIFFICULTY

Requires cake shaping and novelty decorating

TIME

About 6 hours

RECIPE RATING

Needs experience

~~ ^ _ ^ ~~

INGREDIMENTS

To make a dinosaur cake that will serve 16 to 20 people

One deep 9 inch (23 centimetre) round lemon flavoured cake

Some rolling fondant (sugarpaste) icing, to make decorative details

Food colouring

For the lemon curd

1 medium egg

4 teaspoons (20 millilitres) cornflour

2 large lemons

4 ounces (115 grammes) caster sugar

2 ounces (55 grammes) unsalted butter

Pinch or two of salt

For the icing

5 ounces (140 grammes) unsalted butter

5 ounces (140 grammes) Greek yoghurt

5 ounces (140 grammes) caster sugar

Zest of 1 lemon, see Method

10 ounces (280 grammes) white chocolate

Two pinches of salt

Yellow food colouring

~~ ^ _ ^ ~~

METHOD

• Before assembly, prepare the icing and the lemon curd. This recipe makes twice as much lemon curd as you need, so you can use the remainder for another project.

To make the lemon curd

• Zest the two lemons, and place the zest of one of the lemons into a measuring jug. Use the zest of the other lemon for the icing later.
• Into the jug, squeeze the two lemons and then top up with water to make 8 fluid ounces (240 millilitres) of liquid.
• In a small saucepan, blend the cornflour, sugar, and egg. Slowly mix in the diluted lemon juice until you have a fully combined mixture.
• Cook the mixture over medium high heat, mixing constantly, until it comes to the boil. Boil for a full minute or so until thickened and it loses some of its opacity.
• Sieve the mixture into a bowl, and then mix in the butter and a pinch of salt. To make the lemon curd taste richer, you might need to add an extra pinch of salt.
• Allow to cool to room temperature before covering with cling film, making sure the film touches the curd, and chilling in the fridge for about an hour.

While the curd is cooling, make the icing

• Follow the instructions in my Simnel cake recipe to make the icing, including the lemon zest in the cooked yoghurt and sugar mixture and omitting the lemon juice. Allow to cool as instructed.
• Tint the icing a pale yellow colour to represent the lemon flavour. Or, you can make it any summery colour you like.

Assembly

• Take the cake, and cut it in half horizontally. Don't cut off the dome: you'll need that to help the shape of the dinosaur.
• Cut each half in half vertically. Now you will have 4 semicircles: two flat ones, and two with domes.
• Take the two domed semicircles and sandwich a flat semicircle between them. Use lemon curd to secure the shapes together.

• Take the remaining flat semicircle and cut it into thirds. You will have two rounded shapes, and one long, rectangular shape. The rectangular shape will be used later for the tail.
• Take the two rounded pieces and sandwich them together with the lemon curd to make the head.

• You now have a body piece, a head piece, and a tail piece. Secure all the elements together as shown using some icing, and then trim the cake to make it more dinosaur shaped.
• After all the cutting and trimming, you'll have roughly 4 ounces (115 grammes) of cake trimmings. Use these and some more lemon curd to make some cake truffle mixture, and use this to make some legs. If you don't have enough cake crumbs to make all four legs, just make two legs and form the remaining legs out of fondant.

• Fix the legs to the body with icing, cover the entire cake in a crumb coat, and then chill in the fridge for about 20 minutes before decorating however you like! I used a petal piping technique to make scales, but you could use fondant if you like.

THIS TIME IN 2017: American Style: Chocolate Fudge Tart
THIS TIME IN 2016: Chocolate Biscuit Cake, a.k.a: Rocky Road
THIS TIME IN 2015: Zingy Lemon Gâteau (Wheat Free)
THIS TIME IN 2013: Experiment: Homemade Sprinkles
There was no blog on this day in 2014.

Bat 'n' Burg Cake (Wheat and Dairy Free)

 

In my world, everyday is Halloween: I usually wear black with spiders and bats and spikes (gotta love a Goth stereotype), but when it's actual real-life calendar accurate Halloween, it's essentially my Christmas.

So, as my first offering of the Halloween season, I present to you this punderful delight: the Bat 'n' Burg! I think it's appropriate in two ways, as this is a delicious seasonal retelling of a traditional tea time classic, and also the name is a nice visual homage to Dr Frank 'n' Furter, who--for those of you in the know--is so fittingly seasonal. Credit to my lovely companion for coining the name of this delight...

Although this is a mini cake which would give a little slice to four people, a bigger version would be a delicious centre piece for any party table! Speaking of a bigger version, keep your eyes peeled for this Bat 'n' Burg's bigger brother in my upcoming Halloween video!

~~ ^ _ ^ ~~

DIFFICULTY

Requires cutting cake into layers,
shaping, and coating with marzipan

TIME

About 3 hours

RECIPE RATING

Experienced

~~ ^ _ ^ ~~

INGREDIMENTS

For each 4 inch (10 centimetre) cake

2 ounces (55 grammes) white spelt flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

2 ounces (55 grammes) caster sugar

1 medium (US Large) egg

1 fluid ounce (30 millilitres) sunflower oil

1 tablespoon (15 millilitres) milk

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

A few drops almond essence

Green and orange food colouring

To decorate

6 or 8 ounces (170 to 225 grammes) white marzipan, bought or homemade

Purple and black paste food colouring

Raspberry or apricot jam, warmed

~~ ^ _ ^ ~~

FREE FROM

Dairy, nuts, wheat

CONTAINS

Spelt, eggs, refined sugar, almonds

~~ ^ _ ^ ~~

METHOD

First, bake the cakes.

• Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease the bottom and sides, line the bottom of the tin with non-stick baking paper, and flour your 4 inch (10 centimetre) round deep cake tin.
• Separate the egg, put the whites into a mixing bowl, and mix the yolk with the oil in a jug.
• Whip the egg white, adding the sugar gradually, until you have a meringue that holds soft peaks. Mix in the vanilla, a few drops of almond essence, and orange food colouring. You want a nice shade of colour, but the colour will darken slightly after baking.
• Sieve in the flour and baking powder and add the milk, then fold gently until well blended, making sure not to knock out the air.
• Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and tap a few times on the work surface. Bake in the centre of the oven for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the surface feels springy to the touch, and a cocktail stick poked into the centre comes out clean.
• Allow the cake to cool for 15 minutes on a wire rack before loosening from the sides of the tin and turning out onto the rack to cool completely.
• Wash the tin so you can grease, line, and flour it for the next cake. If you have two tins, you can cook both cakes together.
• Repeat the whole procedure for the second cake, this time colour it with the green colouring.

Next, decorate!

• Cut the domes off both cakes and cut evenly into two layers each: all layers should be very close in height.
• Using a 2½ (6 centimetre) inch and a 1½ (4 centimetre) inch cutter, cut each layer into concentric circles. Take the concentric circles apart, brush the insides with warm jam, and put them back together again with alternating colours.
• Take the best three layers, and sandwich them together in alternating colours, using the jam to join them. Brush the entire cake with jam.
• Dust the surface with icing sugar, and pinch off a tiny bit of white marzipan to use later. Knead purple colouring into the rest of the marzipan. Roll it out to about a quarter inch (5 millimetres) thick, and cover the cake completely and evenly. Cut off the excess.
• Knead some black colour into the remaining marzipan and roll it out again to the same thickness. Cut out two wings, two eyes, two heat shapes, and a smiley mouth. Stick a cocktail stick onto the wings and fix in place with some more marzipan. Fix some cocktail sticks onto the hearts, making sure the pointy end is pointing out, and then pinch the two rounded bits together to make ears. Leave everything to dry completely before assembly.
• Using the little bit of white marzipan, put shines on the eyes and make two little pointed teeth.
• Assemble the bat face, fixing the black marzipan on with water. Stick the wings and ears into the cake using the cocktail sticks.

STORAGE

This cake will keep for up to 10 days in an airtight container at room temperature, but is best enjoyed within a week of making.

3D Teddy Bear Cake! Part III: Decoration

And now for the final home stretch! If you've completed parts one and two, you're ready for part three. By the end of this step, your cake should look something like this:

Now, I've decorated my teddy bear cake to look like a panda, but you could do whatever kind of bear you like. You could make up some more chocolate icing and make him a simple teddy bear, or you could go completely mental with decorations. I've kept it nice and simple.

You will need:

• 10 ounces (300 grammes) white buttercream icing
• 10 ounces (300 grammes) chocolate buttercream icing, dyed black
• About 2 ounces (55 grammes) fondant icing
• Black and green food colouring
• A wafer stick
• A grass piping nozzle, or a clean toothbrush
• Any other decorations you'd like

What to do with them:

Spread or pipe the white and black icing onto the bear to mimic the colouring of a panda. I spread mine on then textured it with a toothbrush once it had set a little, but you can also use a grass nozzle to pipe on individual tufts of fur. That takes far too long for me, and gives me a cramp in my hand, so I use go low-tech.

If you're going the spreading and texturing route, use a new clean toothbrush with soft bristles. Also, it really helps if you have an offset palette knife to get into all the corners.

Dye a small amount of fondant green to make some leaves, and then dye a larger amount black to make his eye patches (rolled and cut out), nose (moulded with my fingertips) and mouth (made out of a thin fondant rope). Place the eye patches, nose, and mouth on the icing while it's still a little wet, then add in the eyes, which are made out of small discs of white and black fondant.

Place the wafer stick in place, and then decorate it with the leaves. If you like, you could make fondant bows, or little bugs or things to add extra interest. If you want to skip on the fondant altogether, you can just pipe on the appropriately coloured buttercream to make the facial features and leaves.

As you can see from the three parts of this tutorial, this is a long-winded and ambitious project. The results are cool, however I'll be returning to my traditional gateaux after this, and probably won't do another novelty cake for a while....

3D Teddy Bear Cake! Part II: Assembly

Following on from part one, where you made the cakes and the icing, it's time to move onto part two here we assemble the cakes, so you have something that looks like this by the end!

So, if you completed part one fully, you should now have roughly a butt-tonne of icing, two 7 inch (16 centimetre) bowl shaped cakes, one 4 inch (10 centimetre) tall round cake, and one 8 inch (20 centimetre) sandwich cake. With that, let's begin!

I thought instead of taking photos of the whole process, which sometimes can be hard to understand, I would draw a series of brightly colour coordinated diagrams in Photoshop, which took me two whole hours. To see each picture expanded, click on it.

Here are the diagrams for the Head and Body. Please click 

on the pictures to expand them.

Here is the diagram for the overall assembly.

Please click on the picture to expand it.

Here is how to assemble the overall teddy cake. Please

click on the picture to expand.

IMPORTANT
If making this cake for children, do not use cocktail sticks! Use pieces of dry spaghetti to fix the cake together. I usually do that anyway, regardless of the age group, because if someone accidentally eats one it won't do them much harm.

Now we've assembled the cake, it's time to decorate! Click here for Part III.

3D Teddy Bear Cake! Part I: Designing, and Baking the Cakes

For the first time since 2013, I had made a novelty 3D shaped cake! It's been a whole four years, but I present to you Novelty Cake № 2: Panda Bear!

Being a bitter cynic, I generally don't like novelty cakes: I feel like they're cheap tricks in comparison to a perfectly crafted, technically challenging traditional gâteau. However, that doesn't mean that others don't like them, or appreciate them, or enjoy receiving them as gifts.

For the past few years, I've been making the same kinds of cakes for my sister and this year I was motivated to do something completely different for her, and also to do another novelty cake for all my lovely readers! (Seeing as the Dinnersaurus is the most read post on my blog.)

This one was a serious challenge, and took pretty much two days to make it from scratch from cake mixture to finished cake model. And in this two part post, I'll explain the process from start to finish how I did it!

Research

Once I decided to do the 3D cake, I researched how people had already made it. So, I looked at many videos online, from this sped up version using multiple 6 inch (16 centimetre) cakes which are then trimmed and shaped, Ann Reardon's version using different shapes of cake on How To Cook That, and I even watched a German video from Nicoles Zuckerwerk. 

Most 3D teddy recipes use cake truffles to make the arms, legs, ears, and tail, but I didn't want to do that because I thought it would be too sickly. I decided that I would make as many aspects of the bear out of cake, and only resort to fondant if absolutely necessary.

I also researched what teddy bears look like when sitting down by turning to my very helpful model: Val. He was bought for me by my companion for Valentine's Day, and he's a lovely. My companion helped me visualise some aspects of the bear model, but mostly it's pretty straightforward.

Tin Shapes and Sizes

Instead of making a load of layers of round cake and cutting to size, thus wasting a lot of cake, I thought about how I could make cakes that are as close to the actual bear component shapes as possible. I originally contemplated getting a terracotta pot that would make a conical cake, but thought against it once I realised how much preparation a terracotta pot needs to be used for baking.

I decided to use traditional round cakes, and cakes cooked in a small Pyrex baking dish. I used one tall 4 inch (10 centimetre)  round tin, a 7x2 inch (16x5 centimetre) Pyrex pudding dish, and an 8 inch (20 centimetre) round sandwich tin.

Baking the Cakes
The issue with novelty cakes is that they need a good, firm, dry cake that's easily cut and moulded. This means the cake keeps its shape, but it's not—in my opinion—the nicest cake to eat. If you like, throughout assembly you can sprinkle the cakes with a nice simple syrup to keep them moist.

Round 1
In round one, I made a cake mixture by creaming together 4 ounces (115 grammes) soft butter and 3 ounces (85 grammes) caster sugar, until light and fluffy. In a small cup, I beat 4 egg yolks with 2 fluid ounces (60 millilitres) room temperature milk, and gradually beat it into the butter mixture in 4 increments, beating very well after each addition. Onto a sheet of baking paper, I sifted 7½ (210 grammes) ounces of white spelt flour, ½ ounce (15 grammes) of cocoa powder, and 2 teaspoons (10 millilitres) of baking powder. In a separate bowl, I whipped the 4 egg whites with another 3 ounces (85 grammes) of caster sugar until it reached stiff peaks. I added half of this to the butter mixture, along with half of the dry ingredients. I mixed this through halfway, then added the remaining half of the whites and dry ingredients. I then finally folded it through carefully but thoroughly until there were no streaks of egg white or flour left.

I divided this mixture between the 4 inch (10 centimetre) tin, and the 7 inch (16 centimetre) dish, making sure to fill each one no more than three-quarters full; the tin will need less mixture than the dish. I baked them in an oven preheated to 180°C (350°F, Gas Mk.3) for 25 to 30 minutes-ish, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of each cake came out clean. I took the smaller cake out about 2 or 3 minutes earlier than the larger one.

Round 2
Once the cakes were cooked, I made the same amount of mixture again, but with half the amount of baking powder. I needed the first lot to have big domes, because they come in handy later. I divided the mixture once again, but this time equally between the Pyrex dish and the sandwich tin.

I then allowed all the cakes to cool completely before assembly.

Making the Icing
Similarly with the icing, you need a good thick, rich icing that sets firm. This helps you with any trimming you might need to do, and helps keep the overall shape in place.

To make the icing, I melted 1 pound (445 grammes) of plain chocolate, half a pound (225 grammes) of unsalted butter, and 4 fluid ounces (120 millilitres) of whole milk together. I allowed them to set to room temperature (about an hour), then beat in 1 pound (445 grammes) of icing sugar to make a rich, thick, decadent chocolate icing. If you find the icing begins to set in the bowl while you're working on the cake, just give it the odd whisk every now and again.

Now we've made the cakes and the icing, it's time to assemble! Click here to see Part II of this tutorial, which includes fully colour coordinated diagrams!

Kitchen Experiment: DIY Bundt Tin

Time for another one of my kitchen experiments, and this time it's an equipment trial. This was my last minute fix for a DIY Bundt tin.

 You can't move a pace on Pinterest without running into a ring shaped cake. Some of them are plain with straight sides, some are even square, and then others are made in beautifully ornate tins, some of which are heirloom items. Once the Germans brought the ring cake to America, it took on a whole life of its own.

However, the rung shaped cake tins can be incredibly expensive, or difficult to find. Especially here in Ireland, where the only walk in cake supply shops are in major cities, or sometimes not at all; for example, there isn't one in Limerick since it closed down in February.

So, what's a girl to do?

I thought'd I'd experiment with ways of making a traditional round cake tin into a ring tin by putting things in the middle. The first thing I tried was a glass, but it wasn't very effective: the crust from inside the hole came off on the glass.

I then tried an empty can, washed and dried thoroughly with all labels removed, and filled it with rice to hold it in place. I greased everything really well, and this method worked much better. Even though the inside crust still didn't fully form, it was much straighter and easier to get out.

In both attempts, the hole never properly crusted. I wonder if it has something to do with the rice weights: maybe the heat can't flow through the centre tube well enough when it's full of rice. A quick trip onto the aforementioned Pinterest shows that a crustless hole is no big deal: there's many a Bundt and tube cake without an interior crust.

Eating a cake in the shape of a ring is a novelty, but it doesn't really change the flavour or texture than much. I do understand that some kinds of cake mixture bake better in a tube pan, where the centre doesn't stay soggy. But, to me, this is merely a novelty.

Maybe I'll try this technique to make a nice German kugelhopf, which is a yeast risen ring shaped cake.

No blogs on this day in previous years.

Christmas Cake Decoration Idea

Merry Christmas, everyone! In this post, I'm going to provide you not with a recipe, but with a decoration idea for Christmas cake.

I have many different Christmas cake recipes on this blog, which I will list. If rich fruit cake is not something you would like, you could make a chocolate cake, or a gingerbread spiced cake. You don't need to honour tradition every year!

This year, I decorated the cake with a little Christmas tree and presents scene, using meringues and marzipan models. I started the process three days before Christmas, and used:

• One 8 inch (22 centimetre) round rich fruit cake
• Marzipan, as prepared below
• Meringue trees, as prepared below
• One 12 ounce (350 gramme) bag of instant royal icing powder
• Red, purple, blue, green, and yellow gel colouring
• Icing sugar

To make the meringue trees, I separated one medium egg into white and yolk, and kept the yolk for a different project. I whipped the egg white with a few drops of lemon juice until it became foamy, then gradually added 2 ounces (55 grammes) of white caster sugar while whipping until it reached stiff peaks. I mixed in a few drops of green colouring gel to get a delicate slightly minty green. I lined a baking tray with non-stick paper, and put the meringue mixture into a piping bag fitted with a star tip. I piped little swirls, about an inch and a half (4 centimetres) tall, sprinkled them with coloured hundreds and thousands, and some star shaped and snowflake shaped decorations. I baked them in an oven preheated to 120°C (250°F, Gas Mk.½) for 45 minutes. When cooked, I allowed them to cool slightly on the tray before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

I made some homemade marzipan, following this recipe but upping the almond to icing sugar ratio to 3:4, as opposed to 1:1, and adding a few extra drops of water to account for the extra sugar. I used 6 ounces (170 grammes) of ground almonds, and 8 ounces (225 grames) of icing sugar.

I rolled the marzipan to a half inch (1 centimetre) thickness, cut a circle to fit the top of the cake, and fixed it to the cake with a simple icing sugar and water glaze. Using the remaining marzipan, I divided into 5 parts, colouring each part red, purple, green, blue, and yellow. Using the marzipan, I made a selection of little presents, varying from an inch (2½ centimetres) to a quarter inch (5 millilmetres) in size, and in a few different shapes, like ovals and rectangles.

I made some royal icing (from a bag; yes, I cheated) to cover the 8 inch (22 centimetre) round fruit cake. I set aside about 3 tablespoons (45 millilitres) of the icing to ice the presents, and used the rest to coat the cake. I hit the icing with the back of a metal spoon to peak it.

I arranged the trees onto the icing while it was still wet. I filled a small greaseproof icing bag with the remaining royal icing, and arranged the marzipan presents in piles, using the icing to fix them together and decorate them with a tied ribbon effect. 

After everything was fixed to the cake, I sprinkled everything lightly with some icing sugar, to simulate some now.

Here are some more photographs of the finished cake:

 

 

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