The Sweetest Sushi

Well I like the normal sort of sushi as it is, but make it out of cake, phew LOVE IT!

My friend Ian is rather keen on his sushi also, so when his birthday this year came about, sushi shaped cake it had to be!

 

 I took a large rectangular shaped vanilla sponge, and cut out circles using espresso cups (I should probably get a wider range of cutters, but oh well, I am nothing if not resourceful!).

I used a cupcake corer to take a chunk out of the middle of each cake piece, then started to decorate each of my pieces of sushi.

I mixed icing sugar with a little water, keeping it quite thick, and poured this over the top to cover the cake pieces, with a little down the sides also.  I then wrapped around green fondant, which stuck to the icing on the sides.  I then coated the tops with white sanding sugar to give it a more grainy, rice like effect, dessicated coconut would also work well for this.  Then filled in the cores with the sushi centres...

The "roe" are just orange chocolate beans, and the sliced coloured bits in the other sushi, were made from thinly sliced strawberries, kiwi and dried mango.  I chose these as they represented a nice range of colours, and because they are just super tasty!

I then plated up the sushi, and the finishing decorative touches were some green buttercream to look like wasabi, and some very finely sliced crystalised ginger, for a sweet version of pickled ginger.  I left out the soy sauce, though I'm sure a little jug of treacle, or molasses would have been perfect. 

Ta-da!  Lovely little sweet sushi rolls

:D

Crochet Cake, and Cake Crochet

Oh boy I really am on blogging catch up about now! 

This cake was made last June :s 11 months ago whoops!  I forgot to take a camera up to coffee to photograph this one, doh!  Luckily I had a friend on hand to save me from this lapse in sense.  … the second lapse in sense was how long it still took for me to do anything further with the picture… doh. 

Anyway, to the cake!

My lovely friend Esther has gotten myself and a large group of our colleagues and friends seriously in to crochet (see my other blog here for my crochet and crafty shenanigans).  Shortly after which it was her birthday, and so I combined the new found crochet skill, with the baking fun to create this little beauty.

Yes this is the crochet cupcake, from my previous post “A Different Kind of Cupcake” (you can find a link to the pattern on this previous post if you feel the urge to try it out yourself).  I crocheted the cupcake and stuffed it, then attached a little extra wool, to run from the top of the cupcake via a cake crochet hook, right up to the cake ball of wool.

The "ball of wool" was made using a mixture of chocolate sour cream cake, crumbled, and added to white chocolate fudge icing.  Insanely decadent.  Seriously tasty.  I used two well-rounded bowls as moulds to create two sphere halves with this cake mixture (a bit like a GIANT cake pop).

This was then coated with white chocolate fudge icing, the top was rounded off as best possible, and then the whole thing was coated in lots and lots of thin strips of pinky-red coloured fondant to make the “wool” type effect.  Hooray for yarn cake!

The crochet hook was cut from the chocolate sour cream cake also, and coated with white chocolate fudge icing, followed by a layer of grey fondant.

Then I placed the whole lot on my cute cupcake chopping board, because it just fit the theme so well! 

Artsy Fartsy (Artist's Palette Cake)

Sort of a nice physical metaphor this, arty bits made out of arty things, in an artistic(ish) way.

One of my closest friends is currently studying an illustration course, which she is incredibly good at!  Thus, I thought for her birthday I would go for something nice and artisty….. et voila a cake made to look like an artist’s palette.

I looked around for inspiration before I started this, and although I found a few artists palettes, I could only find those which were cake paint, on wooden real palettes. 

Pffffft to that I say!

If you going to do it, then go the whole hog…. I made my palette our of a large chocolate sponge baked in a large rectangular baking tray, then trimmed this down to the correct shape and size, and added a little whole for the bit where you put your finger through (very technical term, I know).

I coated the palette with chocolate fudge icing, nom.

I made chocolate cupcakes, removed them from their wrappers, and coated the underneath with various colours of an icing sugar, water and colouring mix.  These were placed upside down on baking paper, to dry for about an hour.

I then topped the cupcakes with similarly garish coloured white chocolate fudge icing, and arranged them on the palette.

The brush was a cheat I’m afraid, I realised what it was missing whilst my friend was ascending the stairs in my flat building so I did a quick stick it down job with a real brush :s needs must!

And thus you have a pretty quick (this is definitely a relative term!! i.e. quick by comparison to say making the golden gate bridge out of small pieces of cake and icing to be a precise model... not so quick if you compare to a normal Victoria sponge with the one type of icing, or such) artsy birthday cake. 

Valentine Cupcakes

One of life's many contradictions, I refuse to celebrate Valentine's day, yet this year found me making a batch of time and love intensive cupcakes.  Hmmmm, go figure. 

Whilst I am entirely an un-romantic soul, probably upsetting other people frequently with my tirades against valentine's day, I did have fun making these. 

I was asked to make them by a lady that I work with, who unlike me is not a git about V day.

The large cakes are a red velvet cupcake (mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm) which seemed to suit the occassion perfectly with that lovely rich romantic colouring. 

These were then topped with cream cheese icing, and nice big, rather heavy chocolate love hearts.   I made these myself from white chocolate which I coloured.  I then hand moulded each one separately.

The finishing touches were to then sprinkle a few little sugar love hearts around and about over each one.  6 large red velvet in total, in red foil cases. Perfect.

I also made chocolate roses out of the same colour dyed white chocolate, which I placed on top of vanilla, smaller cupcakes, which had a swirl of marshmallow icing on top. 

 The third and final cake type, was a chocolate sponge which I piped high and swirly marshmallow icing over, then sprinkled again with the sugar love hearts.  

I think the three sets together made a lovely selection that would melt any romatic heart! 

And, I rather enjoyed myself!  Maybe next year I will allow valentine's Day into my house .... but just for the cake!

There's something wriggling on my plate...

I would like to start this post very immediately, very firmly, by stating, THIS IS NOT one of mine! 

On the other hand, could I pass up the opportunity to share? ... I think the answer, evidently, is no!

For all those who's names are not Peter Bickerton, and do not already know what the above is... it is a chocolate meal worm cake.

My my what an interesting world it is that we live in!

I work with Peter, and recently he gave a public talk titled Inr-Edible Insects.

Peter is mad incredibly passionate about Thought for Food, an organisation attempting to think outside of the box about ways in which we can improve the world's food sources, and the crisis which many areas of the world face leading to hunger and starvation.

The organisation can be found on facebook or at http://www.tffchallenge.com

But I will leave it there as to the cause, before I turn those who are disinterested bored.  Suffice to say it is a fascinating area, incredible to learn more about, and the talk is well worth watching (available on youtube).

Peter is also quite passionate about eating insects, and so alongside the talk Peter gave, he provided refreshments....

not the usual sort.

There were sweet chilli locusts.

Sweet and sour crickets.

Some other kind of cricket.

and once done with the savoury, the cake.  And well, I had to put it on here!

This lead to somewhat a moral dilemma for me.  I have been vegetarian for about 15 years, with a short blip around 9 years ago where I ate meat for around 3 months duration, before returning to the veggie ways.
However, I am generally of the opinion that if someone provides you the opportunity to try something that you will only get to do once or at the very least not again for  very very long time, I firmly believe that you should take that opportunity.  (Clearly here the old adage "if your friend Joe Bloggs jumped off a cliff/stuck hand in fire (etc)  would you do it too? suggests that some things are better left unexperienced, but you get the picture, within reason, I like to try new things!)

Sadly I couldn't quite bring myself to take this opportunity, and alongside feeling like a fraud having just said you should always take such opportunity, I had to be informed by others of the experience.

I am informed that the mealworm cake tasted like it just had crunchy bits like hazelnuts in it.  And apparently the crickets and locusts were pretty good too.

All in all a fascinating afternoon! and some new taste sensations for a lot of my colleagues.

Dont forget to check out Thought for Food!  And keep an eye out for those locust peddling lads!

Plum and Pomegranate Upside Down Cake

I am currently situated in a gorgeous kitchen, overlooking mountains, pomegranate fields and a beautiful private pool ... mmmm villa holidays are wonderful. 

My boyfriend and I, are in Turkey on holiday with my family (I know, a wonderful form of mild torture/pleasure which he is being subjected too ... going well so far, mostly he is having fun creating havoc with my younger brothers and drinking beer... seems like a good way to go I guess).   However, my Dad just can't cope without cake in his life, and well, none of us veer that far from this same point if view, so to speak,  ourselves.  So I had a first experiment using the facilities here to make a cake.

Along with the jeopardy of an unknown oven, there was the added issues created by my complete ignorance regarding Turkish language, and some differences in ingredient availability.  Luckily, we have wonderful hosts, who have helped me out massively by telling me about these things, and writing down "baking powder" in Turkish (as there is no self-raising flour here), and explained that instead of vanilla essence, I will have to use vanilla sugar.

My ingredients looked a little unfathomable to me, but I think I worked it out!  (Turns out, I may have used a yeasted raising agent, but we will gloss over that ...)

It turns out that it is pomegranate harvesting time here, oh what a happy coincidence!  And the couple who own the villa have stocked us up with some pomegranates which they have been given by the farmer owning the fields surrounding the villa.  I kid you not, some of these pomegranates rival my head for the largest spherical object in the house!  They are beautiful, and so fresh.  Of course I couldn't waste this opportunity, so along with some fresh local plums, I thought ... upside down cake!!!

I haven't previously made an upside down cake, so I had a quick google search and looked around at recipes for general guidance, then went ahead and made it up as I went along.  I put melted butter and sugar in the tin then laid out the fruit elegantly, and made a sponge mix, which was then placed over the top.

The cake was then baked, which took longer than I had anticipated (about an hour total), but with the aid of some interesting foil backed with some kind of brown paper (I have no idea what this is?? But it seemed to work ok as a non stick lining, having gotten this one completely wrong, thinking it was normal baking paper), I managed to get there in the end.  The cake rose well (phew) and tasted rather pleasant indeed!  I can certainly recommend pomegranate with plum as a combination, and doesn't it just look sooo appetising!  

Mmmmmmmm cake.

Thanks for reading!

Peppa Pig Cake

Hooray I got to get back to some novelty caking with this one.  A cake I made for a lady at work, for her Grandaughter's 3rd birthday.  It was quite time intensive, but I think it was worth the end result.  There are a few bits I would certainly like to have improved and would like to work on. But overall a hit!

I made two large rectangular vanilla victoria sandwich type sponges. Cut the edges off of one to get a really neat rectangle.  The second one I cut into a 3.  They were then covered with a thin layer of buttercream, which was smoothed to within an inch of it's life!  I made the edges as sharp as I could possibly manage.  I don't think I have ever spent so much time on buttercream!  But I can tell you, it was well worth it!

I left these in sealed containers overnight for the buttercream to get a bit more solid and form a good foundation over which to lay the fondant.

The following day I did all of the decorating ...

I started out by covering both of the sponges separately with a layer of rolled out green fondant.  This took a little while to get right, as I had to cut extra strips and patch together the fondant around the 3 quite a bit, but again, it was well worth taking the extra time and care for a better end result.  And the bits where it went really wrong and I failed to rescue ...  I covered with decorative sugar flowers and fondant mud puddles etc!

The flowers were bought ready made in a small packet, but the remaining decorations (mud puddles, lake and ducks, Peppa and George) were all made with fondant, rolled and cut or moulded into shape.

I attached everything using royal icing, and iced the lettering of the birthday message in the same. 

I have had some really lovely compliments for this one, and I am quite proud of it.  It was really nice to have a good excuse to make a good novelty cake! and I am looking forward to my next cake creating adventure now.

Thanks for reading.