Daring Bakers Bakewell Tart.

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

I was really happy this month that one of my favourite pastries from home was picked as the daring bakers challenge! I love almonds and I love pastry, so this was a total winner!

I was also happy that it was a nice quick challenge since I was a little under the weather when I made them.

This seemed like a perfect candidate for my little mini quiche pan. I cut the pastry down by half, and the frangipane to a third and it made 12 little mini bakewells and 3 larger ones in tart cases.

Thanks very much for the recipe!

Please stop by the daring kitchen to join us or to check out pictures of the challenge, or stop by and get the recipe from Jasmine or Anne Marie!

Foray into Sugarwork with Orchids

I had the pleasure this weekend of meeting up with one of my cake classmates and going for a sugar class with the immensely talented and busy Tami Utley.

It was a lot more involved than I realised, and I was pretty exhausted by the end, but now that I look at the end product, I'm really happy with it and its great learning a new skill.

These flowers are made on wires, so they are not technically food safe and the wire shouldnt actually touch the cake, so one has to make sure it is placed in a plastic flower holder.

I hope someone wants me to make them a pretty flower cake soon as I'd love to practice my new skills!!

Tami does lots of different classes, at Do it with icing, and also privately, as well as on DVD. I'd love to hear from people as to how they've got on with DVD lessons as its not a medium I've tried.

Daring Cooks Potstickers

The june challenge for the daring cooks was chinese dumplings/potstickers from one of my favourite bloggers, Jenyu at use real butter.

This was a really fun challenge for us. We made them together, which was unusual but very enjoyable as we sipped sake, mixed up the dough, and the filling and then took it in turns to roll out and shape the little potstickers. It was also a lot easier and quicker than I expected.

Since I dont eat meat I improvised a little with the filling. I halved the recipe, taking a tin of crabmeat, a tin of water chestnuts, an egg and some panko breadcrumbs in addition to the cornstarch and chopped scallions. I added a little soy sauce and siracha for flavor.

We decided on the fried route since we knew that would be tasty! It was totally simple. I'm glad I have a nonstick pan! Thankfully I've already had experience with caramel, so it wasnt too much of a shock when the water boiled up. We were also in luck that a saucepan lid fitted the frying pan perfectly!

Thanks so much Jen for this great idea, we'd never have tried this if it wasnt for you, I'll be making these for guests sometime soon! Very impressive looking recipe that is much easier than it sounds!!

Here are the assembled stickers













Fry for a couple of minutes












Very carefully adding the water












Pop a lid on












Cook for another 2-3 minutes to dry out a little

Butter Cake

Thank you sunset magazine, I've been looking for a vanilla cake to add to my repertoire, this worked very well. I made 2 9 inch cakes and then sliced them into thin layers and sandwiched them with a chocolate buttercream. I didnt follow their recipe, I just made my usual chocolate buttercream. It was yummy.

The only downside with it is that it uses cake flour, and that makes it much more expensive than a cake with all purpose flour. If anyone knows a good cheap source for cake flour I would be eternally grateful, the only stores that carry it are ralphs, vons and albertsons and its hellish expensive.

I made it for a friend, so I didnt obsess about getting the decoration perfect, I had my first play with modelling chocolate and I really like working with it, and it has the added benefit of being much more palatable than fondant, especially the dark chocolate version. Soo easy to make too!!

Visit sunset for the recipe and some variations!

Chocolate buttercream- makes enough for more than this cake!!
1 lb butter-soft
1 lb confectioners sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 oz cocoa powder
3 oz melted chocolate (I used a mixture of milk and dark)
milk-as needed

Sift the cocoa powder and sugar. Beat the butter until fluffy, add vanilla, beat, then add the cocoa and powdered sugar in two batches, starting off really slowly to begin! Add the chocolate and beat again. If the mix looks too thick, add some milk until as soft as desired.

Modelling chocolate
1 part chocolate to 1 part corn syrup. Melt chocolate then add corn syrup and mix together. Put in fridge then knead. Keep in fridge wrapped in plastic until needed. Warm with hands before use.

Sitting out

I feel all left out this month, I just didnt have the time and energy for the daring bakers strudel. Here's some stuff I was doing instead.

Boston Terrier cupcakes -chocolate mocha mudcake with chocolate kahlua ganache

Chocolate mud cakes with peanut butter/caramel filling and peanut butter frosting, a test for a retirement party. These were so good I'm glad I had one and gave them away immediately!!

Please see the daring cooks website for some of the strudel that everyone made.

Cake class-final

Today was our last class with Chef Foran at Grossmont College. I was sad because it was an awesome class and I learned so much. My confidence has really grown and I've learned so much. I'm hoping to start some work experience soon so I can use some of my skills and learn much more.

We were given 4 tiers of dummy cakes, I was really keen to try the square cakes, my team were very apprehensive, but I thought we might as well challenge ourselves as much as possible since we're learning.

I think they were very thankful in the end. We decided on a white cake with red accents, which we saw in a book, which I've forgotten the title of! Jessica made some awesome gumpaste roses, I'd love to learn them, they were spectacular! We all had a go at piping the designs, which we traced on with a pin and then piped over the dots. We also used gumpaste cutouts and some pearls.

Here are most of the cakes all together, amazing how all of the groups came up with such different designs! All very pretty though.

My favourite cake (apart from ours!!) was this one with the beautiful purple flowers and painted vines. This was a really pretty technique and I noticed it seemed relatively quick too, which is always a bonus!

This is the other cake which didnt fit on the main table. An amazingly cheery yellow cake with pretty piping and lots of great flowers. I thought it was a really interesting design too. It would be a bit scary to do with real cake!

This was another fun design which looked like maybe a baby shower cake. They chose to put the top tier on its side, which I thought was in interesting look.

Please see http://www.grossmont.edu/ for more details about culinary classes at grossmont college.

Cake Class at Confetti Cakes

I had a really fun time in New York with my Mum, but one of the main reasons I was there was for a class with Elise at Confetti Cakes.

We built a 2 tiered square cake in my class. I was really disappointed that I didnt get to decorate it and on reflection I think it might have been more fun to have done a smaller cake and had time for decoration.

Elise is a wonderful teacher, incredibly patient and a total perfectionist. I realised that her cakes are so solid because she takes the time and care to construct them very carefully. I didnt take pictures at every step, but I thought I'd go through the process to remind myself for my next cake.

First we took particle board and cut it to exactly 6" and 9" square for the cakes to rest on. We then took 4 sheets of cardboard and wrapped with foil, dull side up.

We took the frozen cakes and cut them into 3 lots of 9" cake and 3 lots of 6". The middle layer was actually two lots of cake put together, but it stayed together fine. We carefully piped a 1/2 inch layer of swiss buttercream with no gaps, then put the cake together and put in the freezer again to firm up for a couple of minutes.

We cut the cake to make sure it was uniform and left a small gap between the board and the cake for the icing to be flush wi

th the board. This is important, even with round cakes and I realise now that it is very important. It creates a really clean line and really saves time and trouble later.


The next phase was a 'crumb coat' of buttercream. I was reminded never to lift the spatula from the cake, and also to smooth away from the edges. This was tricky and time consuming. A bench scraper was then used to get a really clean line, and the cake was returned to the freezer. For the top layer of frosting, I learned a little trick. We put the buttercream in the microwave until quite runny, it was really easy to apply as a top layer and meant that we didnt have to fiddle around with a hot spatula as the icing was so runny. The cake was put in the fridge to firm up.


The next step was to cover the bottom board with fondant. I'm torn on this, it gives a really nice presentation, but I hate wasting things and it just seems a really expensive waste for me at the moment. I'm glad I learned this, as it is always a nice option for people who would like to spend extra.

Start by rolling the fondant into a square. Be careful to get the thickness even. Roll onto the pin, brush off excess cornstarch.

Place on board and smooth out from the center outwards.

Push the fondant into the board with a fondant smoother until you see a line. Cut with a knife.

If you want to get a knife edge finish to the fondant, you can pinch the edges together.

The cakes were then covered with fondant, which was really hard work. It was really hard to get the fondant smoothed over the corners of the cake. One of the keys is to smooth the fondant on the top, then work downwards. Working with the back of the hand, smooth the fondant down, make sure not to create any creases. This is where Elise became completely exasperated with me being incapable of smoothing down with no creases.

We used a non-toxic glue on top of the fondant base to stick the cake to the base.

A dowel was cut to size and put in the cake to support the top layer. Buttercream was put on the top of the cake to attach the top cake, then the cake was carefully placed on top.

When doing large cakes, it is good to place a wooden dowel right through the middle of the cake. This was actually hammered into the cardboard base for extra stability.

A small piece of fondant was wettened, and added to the top to hide the hole.

Here is my finished cake, very pretty but a bit frustrating since all I can see is the imperfections in the fondant! Thanks so much to Elise for being so patient with me, its given me so much to work with for my future cakes.