Caking and Baking
Ever since I could first reach the kitchen counter I liked to bake cakes, cookies--messing about with sugar, just messing about with sugar, don't you know. And when I had children, such birthday cakes! I had a lot of fun and still do, baking the cakes/tarts/cookies. This page shows more recent ones, plus HERE are a bunch I made back when I had a lot more time for caking. I even did it professionally for a while!
Here is a list of delectable items you'll find below
The one magazine I still get is Cook's Illustrated--I CANNOT resist the recipes. This last issue had a chocolate cake filled with CARAMEL and frosted with ganache--is it any wonder I instantly invited some friends over for dinner and proceeded to make this cake. WELL WELL WELL. It turned out that this cake was too sweet for even my younger son--a hero in these endeavours.So, my advice is, resist the urge to make this cake. But here is how you make the caramel, which is incredibly delish.You could just drink it if you have no other plans for it. (go to top of page) 8/15/2015
For Daniel's birthday, I made the usual basic yellow cake and basic buttercream, with a gelatine thickened orange flavored filling-- the frosting was tinted a pale orange. Each of the 3 layers were cut in half, soaked in rum syrup and spread with jam before filling. Which made them HARD TO MOVE and very breakable. Sigh.Still, tasty. (go to top of page) 8/2/2015
This Patriotic cake was actually SERVED on July 5th, what with the horrid weather on the 4th this year.
To make this cake,you have to bake two layers each of red and white, and two layers of blue cake. It looks better if you cut the red and white layers in half before you stack/ice them, but if you just can't stand it, don't. The blue layer goes on top, and the main TRICK is that you cut a round hole out of the blue layer and insert into that hole a round cut out of the red and white layers. Just glue everything together with frosting, all shall be well!
You will be left with a stacked red/white layer with a hole cut in and a very small blue cake. OH MY! You could make a reverse flag cake! I wish I'd thought of that at the time....
Here is a link to instructions , and here are my own simple, tried and true cake and frosting recipes.(go to top of page)
7/5/2015
This birthday cake was made of plain cake layers with a lovely raspberry mousse filling. Raspberries were sieved, there was whipped cream, possibly eggs? I found recipe somewhere online. There are MANY raspberry mousse recipes online. The cakes were moistened with sugar syrup, then placed in spring form pan, then the mousse, then the second layer. After a night spent reposing in the fridge, it was iced. And I decorated it with lines of icing dots and cunning little stars cut out of sugar paste! Which inspired the stars in the Patriotic Cake above.(go to top of page)
6/13/2015
The neighbors were so good about taking care of the cats when I was away, that I wanted to thank them. With COOKIES, of course. I ordered some fine cookie cutters from Amazon, and once they arrived, set to work.(go to top of page)
6/5/2015
Last year Lois entertained us with fabulous images of the French summer classic, Gateau Fraisier--a lovely cake with strawberries, carefully placed between the layers in a decorative way held in place by pastry cream. I tried it and was not very successful. So, this year I decided to use raspberries instead, and cream instead of pastry cream. Top is glazed with raspberry jelly. Nice, rather. (go to top of page)
6/1/2015
Thanks to my friend Serena's excellent lamb mold, I was able to make this fine lambie cake. The mold comes in two VERY HEAVY halves, which you fill, clip together, and bake--having greased, floured and prayed over the mold first, hoping against hope that the cake will come out of the mold. It did, as you see. (go to top of page)
3/29/2015
I saw this charming technique online somewhere, and Arabella kindly gave me the stencils for my birthday. It is not a quick and easy procedure--indeed, I am ASTONISHED how much time people are prepared to devote to the decoration of ONE cookie. You must make, roll and cut out the dough, bake the cookies. THEN, ice them (royal icing of course), let that layer dry hard. ONLY THEN are you ready to stencil the cookies. Holding the stencil firmly against the cookie, scrape a layer of icing across it, and lift up stencil. Behold! A blurry image of the stencil is revealed! If you practice for hours and hours, your cookies may begin to achieve a more professional appearance. These TASTED good, even if they lacked beauty. (go to top of page)
3/15/2015
Jenny's birthday is a week after mine, so we generally party together. She can't eat chocolate, so I always have fun devising a non-chocolate and yet FABULOUS cake for us. This one was lemony, with billowy buttercream, and I used the ancient birthday candle holders from when I was a little girl.(go to top of page)
3/15/2015
I was entranced by the charming idea of Surprise Cakes--cut into them and see a surprise! NOT so easy to do, however. I tried two different ways. Thank you to my gallant family, who bravely ate all the experiments! (go to top of page)
But the cookie dough had a displeasing texture,so I decided to try another method, using cake for the insert instead of cookie dough.
