My first fondant fancies

Earlier this month, we went to visit some friends in their new house, and as they'd helped me out with some graphic design earlier in the year, I'd promised them some cake. I usually bake cupcakes, but this time I wanted to try something new. 

Earlier this year, I enjoyed watching the latest series of the Great British Bake Off, and one of the challenges in the final was fondant fancies. Even though the technique they used for the icing looked a bit faffy (slightly dissolving a block of fondant icing so it became runny), I decided I'd really like a go at making my own, and when the GBBO book came out, I just had to try the recipe for the fondant fancies.

The recipe is for a delicious orange and cardamom flavoured cake with a delicately flavoured orange icing. I'd never made a genoise cake before, and other than the time it takes to get the eggs nice and fluffy, it was pretty simple to do. I ended up with a few lumps of flour because I disobeyed one of the instructions, but they weren't noticeable to eat, and I've learnt my lesson to follow the recipe more closely!

The cake was made on a Friday evening, as I'd read a tip from Mary Berry on the BBC Food website to make the cake the night before so it was less crumbly. I then prepared the marzipan for the top in the morning, and iced on Saturday afternoon. The only trouble I had was I made the icing slightly too runny. This meant that once it had dripped off, it was quite thin and you could see the cake through it. Next time I will trust a thicker icing to spread over the cake more slowly.

My little fondant fancies iced and ready to go.

But, once they were in their paper cases, packed in to a box (12 of these fit perfectly into a 6 cupcake box without the holder in), they look really lovely.

All boxed up and ready to go!

The basic recipe seems like it would be easy to adapt to other flavours, and I'm already planning my next batch. Watch this space...

Hello Kitty Hat

I'm not really much of a fan of cats (or rather they're not too fond of me!), and am definitely more of a little-dog person. Having said that, in a twist of logic, I am rather fond of Hello Kitty, and have a mini collection of things with her cute little face on.

My other half's neice is also a fan of Kitty, so when I stumbled upon a knitted Hello Kitty hat on Ravelry, I knew it would make the perfect Christmas present.

The hat itself is knitted in the round in chunky wool, making it super quick and easy to do, and I had it finished in one evening. Ears and now were done in another couple of evenings, and that just left making up. I must admit I put off making up til Christmas Eve (I started the hat in October), mainly because I was terrified I would mess up the little face and embroider an eye on wonky or something. As it turned out it wasn't as tricky as I thought, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

As is Ruby, who as you can see was delighted with her new hat! 

Kitty Hat ready for wrapping!!!

Ruby in her new hat (best photo we could get of both!).

Modelling chocolate

I love cake. I love eating cake. I love making cake. And I love watching other people make cakes - specifically very talented people making incredible cakes. For this reason, I really, really enjoy watching Ace of Cakes on Good Food and any other digital channel it pops up on.

In Ace of Cakes, Ace and his team make the most incredible creations for people who want something epic in a cake. (You really should search for some of his creations - the Hogwarts cake for one of the HP premieres is particularly spectacular). The material they use most for this is modelling chocolate. I had never heard of this stuff til I started watching a few years ago, and to be honest I assumed is was an American thing. Which it is, but it's becoming more and more popular over here with bakers, because it seems to be such a fabulous material.

Modelling chocolate is basically like modelling clay: only made of chocolate! It tastes like chocolate but behaves like clay, meaning you can use it to sculpt figures and things. Bakers use it wherever they might use sugar paste.

I've been thinking it must be time for me to have a go at using this, and in the last 24 hours I kept coming across posts about it. First on facebook when a cake supplier I follow announced they now stock it. Then on Pinterest someone I follow posted a link to a post with a recipe to make some. So, given that I had some birthday cupcakes to make, and with no time to order any, I thought I'd have a go.

The ingredients are very, very simple. Chocolate, and golden syrup. In the USA they use Corn starch, which is a specialist product here, so you can substitute golden syrup or glucose syrup. I already had some golden syrup, so that was an easy decision.

There are loads of recipes on the internet, so I picked one (you can find it here), and got on with it. I melted 100g of white chocolate (I wanted white so I can try colouring it later), and left it to cool slightly (although probably not enough), and then added just under 50g of golden syrup which I'd warmed a little to make runny. Then I mixed hard until it came into a soft lump. At this point it looked VERY oily, but the instructions said this was fine, so I poured it onto some foil and popped it in the fridge. Two hours later, I had this to play with!

Now, I'd read people saying things about this stuff that it was a joy to work with - I must admit I thought it was a bit of exaggeration. But no! It really is fabulous. It's quite hard at first, but softens up nicely in your hands. I wore gloves as suggested and glad I did as it's quite oily. I added some pink colour gel to mine (a bit too much if I'm honest), and it took about the same amount of time as colouring sugar paste.

But when it came to rolling it out it was a revelation. I had run out of icing sugar so I had nothing to dust with, but on a plastic mat it rolled out nicely WITHOUT STICKING. Very pliable too, mre so than sugarpaste, and much more forgiving. I cut out some shapes and put them on some foil to pop in the fridge. I experimented with shaping the flowers a bit and adding some white centres, and it was SO easy. It holds it's shape beautifully. Then I put it back in the fridge to harden for use later.

The final result looked lovely. I urge you to have a go at this because it's SO easy. And if you need cake decorations at the last minute, it's perfect, because unlike sugar paste shapes, you don't need to leave them for days to dry - half an hour in the fridge and off you go. Brilliant!

I added these to some lovely chocolate cupcakes I'd made for my friend's 30th bithday present. I hope she likes them...

Crochet baby elephant

I am 32. In general, this means my partying days are sadly pretty much all done with as I'm too poor (thanks mortgage), and nightclubs are loud noisy places (yes, 32 going on 62!). It also means that not only are lots of my friends getting married, but nowadays lots of them are starting families too.

So, inevitably I'm getting more and more invitations to baby showers. I love a nice baby shower - gossip with the girls, yummy food, and an opportunity to buy or make cute presents for mum and/or baby. And for the baby shower I went to this weekend, I really want to make use of my new crochet skills.

I don't yet have a book or any patterns (although my first book is due this week from The Book People), so I turned to the trusty internet to find the perfect pattern. I eventually chose this baby elephant pattern from the Red Heart Yarns website.

Given the trials of my rose and mouse patterns learning the correct terminology for the stitches I needed, the first thing I did was check which region it was. It was US, so I made sure that the reference sites I picked for reminding me how to do particular stitches were from the US. I had to do this a couple of times, and made a few errors along the way! Particularly with the body (see picture below), and the bonnet, which I abandoned when I realised it was so small it was for an elephant at least half his size!

Rather than buy the branded wool suggested, I went to a couple of the wool shops on Leeds Kirkgate Market, and chose a lovely grey double knit (100g), and some smaller balls (25g each) of a different brand for the bonnet and eyes. This proved to be a mistake which I will explain later.

The pattern itself was fairly simple, but required me to count the stitches a lot as they were in rounds. I taught myself an adjustable ring, which is simple to do, but fiddly to hold. I also found a video on YouTube which suggested using a contrasting scrap of wool as a marker so you don't have to count so precisely. This was a particularly good tip for crocheting in the evening in front of the TV so as long as you get the rhythm right (e.g. sc in next 2 sc, 2 sc in next sc, repeat x5 etc) you don't need to worry about the counting so much. Event better, if you do lose count you can just go back to the start of the row/round and then you can carry on. More than once I had to bin bits I'd started before I started using a marker. Never again!

The Pattern consisted of a head piece:

...body piece: (shown here on the left next to the one I did wrong! Was using slipstitches and only going through one side of each stitch (this will make sense to fellow crocheters)) 

...and four arms/legs:

Ears were added straight onto the head. So far, so simple. The stuffing of the head was added before the trunk was crocheted, as was the stuffing of each arm/leg. The body was stuffed later just before stitching the sections together.

Most of these were made just with single crochet (US). The bonnet was made in a round again, but this time with half double crochet (US). It had been a while since I had done this stitch (in the rose) so after messing up the first version I made a quick trip to the learn to crochet webpage from Lion brand again to remind me how to do it. Then I was off. I also had to add a second colour for the tie, and gaps for the ears.

When finished, it looked too small for the ele's head! Then I realised - by using different brands of wool, I had inadvertantly bought wool which was thinner than the grey, resulting in smaller stitches and guage. However, it stretched just enough to fit on his head. I added a yellow gingham ribbon for extra cuteness!

I was quite pleased overall, even though at first I was worried he wasn't as cute as the picture (possibly down to me moving away from recommended wool, guage too loose or stuffing him a teeny bit too tightly). But he went down a charm with the parents-to-be, and that's the main thing. Hopefully their "Lentil" will like him too when he or she arrives!

I REALLY enjoyed making him, and I cannot wait to stuck into my new crochet book (bought more wool in Leeds this weekend!). Watch this space...