Home Farm Cakes

Oh dear, poor old blog.  This time last year I said I was going to start blogging again... and now, a year later, I still keep telling myself I should.  I'm just checking in, really.  I'm still here.  I've been busy, and many many crappy things have happened this year, but the year is nearly over and I'm hopeful that 2014 will be a much better year.  Maybe I'll even find time to blog properly again, who knows? 

In the meantime, I happened to have a spare five minutes and set up a little Facebook page for the celebration cakes and cupcakes I make and decorate.  I don't do it as a business, just as a hobby for friends and family, and I certainly don't claim to be any good, but I do enjoy it.  Check it out, if you have a minute - the address is www.facebook.com/homefarmcakes (named after where we live).  

Olympic gold - these cookies are winners!

This house renovation business is turning out to be a much bigger deal than I thought it was going to be.  It's been about six weeks since we got the keys, but we are still living in a building site and I'm sure it's getting worse before it gets better.  There really hasn't been a lot of time for baking... in fact there hasn't been much time for anything fun, and I'm starting to wish we'd bought a new property (and probably bankrupted ourselves in the process).  At least I'd have a living room.  And a bath.  Still, it'll all be worth it in the end... I hope! 

I did manage to find a bit of time last week to whip up some cookies for an Olympic-themed baking competition at work.  These were fairly quick to make, although royal icing can be a little bit fiddly until you've got the hang of it (judging by my piping skills, I need a LOT more practice).  I think these would be great for a child's birthday party, maybe one with the initials of each guest, or as prizes for party games.  I had hoped to enter them into this month's Calendar Cakes blog challenge, but sadly time ran away with me!

Lovely Steenbergs vanilla paste on top of the pile

I didn't manage to take any step by step photos, as I made them in a hurry very late at night (hence the hastily-snapped iPhone photos)!  But the recipe comes from The Biscuiteers book and can be found here, with apologies for the Daily Mail link. You just roll out the dough, cut out your shapes, and bake them at 170ºC for about 14 minutes.  If you want to use the biscuits as medals, cut a hole in them before baking.  

This recipe is really tasty - all that golden syrup makes for a delicious cookie - but I also added a teaspoon of Steenberg's Organic Vanilla Paste.  If you're read any of my previous posts, you'll know that I'm extremely fussy about what vanilla extract I use, so I was really interested to try this - it's a paste made from real bourbon vanilla pods and vanilla powder and gives a wonderful deep vanilla flavour.  Not to mention it smells absolutely divine!  It's definitely the next best thing I've tried to using vanilla pods, but a lot more convenient and cost-effective.

One of these makes mixing royal icing much easier.

When it comes to icing the cookies, you want to mix up some royal icing.  I use ready made royal icing sugar - all you need to do is add water, and give it a really good beating with a food mixer if you have one.  Make sure you keep royal icing covered when you're not using it, because it dries out very quickly.  And if you're using a piping bag, push the piping nozzle into a damp cloth when you're not working with it to stop the end drying out. Put some in a separate bowl and water it down to a runnier consistency.  Pipe the outline with the thicker icing, and then use the runnier icing to fill it in.  When it dries, you can pipe letters, numbers or whatever you like over the top.  I wrote BA (the initials of my team at work) and 2012, plus attempted to draw the Olympic rings and failed miserably as you can see!

Now for the clever bit.  When the icing is completely dry, spray the whole lot with edible gold or silver spray paint.  I used Dr Oetker Shimmer Spray, which I bought from Waitrose but I believe it's available in most supermarkets, and I think they even do a bronze version.  Spray the cookies one at a time and place them on a sheet of kitchen paper while you spray, to avoid turning your entire kitchen gold.

I bought some red, white and blue ribbon from ebay to thread through the cookies, which finished them off nicely.  If only my piping skills were better!

Cake class

I just found these photos on a memory card and thought I'd share them with you, even though they're really rather poor.  

A month or two ago I attended a class at Sugar Celebrations in Swindon, which was a belated Christmas present to myself.  It was an all day class where we learned how to carve a cake, stack it up with dowels and buttercream, decorate it with sugarpaste/fondant as well as some royal icing, and do a bit of modelling.  Lots of techniques in one day.  I was quite pleased with the results; I just wish I had a close up of the little people to show you because I really liked their little faces!  I had to buy a 30cm tin from Lakeland to bake the cake in because I didn't have one big enough, but hopefully I'll get plenty of use from it.

The cake accompanied my husband to work on the Monday morning where it was devoured by his colleagues!

I've done plenty of very simple one-tier cakes, but now I have a better idea of how to stack them, I really fancy doing a wedding cake or multi-layer birthday cake.  Perhaps I should throw a party just to have an excuse to make a big, awesome cake - what do you think?

My first ever attempt at icing a cake

Tomorrow is my boss's birthday. She's a cake decorator by trade, and I thought maybe she'd like someone to make her a cake for a change. However I had never iced a cake before in my life and really had no idea how. I tell you what - it's not as easy as it looks. The first layer of sugarpaste (fondant) went totally wrong and I tore huge holes in it trying to get it onto the cake. I covered it up with a second layer which is full of cracks and creases but at least it covers the whole thing... and at least it's not right at the front! Also the letters were very hard to cut out and use without pulling them out of shape or putting dents in them, so if anyone has any tips please let me know.



Anyway here's the cake, my first attempt. I'm pleased with it and disappointed with it at the same time, but hopefully my boss will appreciate the thought!

I made all the little white flowers with a plunger cutter, and rolled the yellow middles by hand. The icing is just white ready made sugarpaste from Sainsburys which I dyed myself with gel food colouring. The grass is made from buttercream and piped with my Wilton grass/hair tube.

What do you think? I need someone else to have a birthday soon so I have an excuse to have another go!

What I made in cake decorating class

I started a cake decorating class four weeks ago, and so far it's been great fun. So far we've learned to make roses, freesias, leaves and how to tape it all together. Last night I managed to put together my first spray of roses, and I'm so proud of it that I can't resist showing it off! I'm sure to someone who knows anything about cake decorating it would look very amateurish and a bit messy but I really don't care, it's my first attempt and I love it.

One of the petals shattered when I was a bit careless with it, but I don't think you can notice it.


Now all I need is a lot more practice and an excuse to make a flower-covered cake!