Petalsweet peonies!

As an early birthday/christmas present to myself I booked myself some more lessons with Jaqueline at Petalsweet Cakes. We tackled the peony, and since it was over two days, we were able to try the open and closed peonies.
The open peony is constructed around a set of stamens and the closed is built around a polystyrene ball.

The first task was constructing the petals, you can see how many were needed for this flower, so I got lots of practice in wiring petals. The most important thing to remember is to pinch the petal at the wire to make sure it is fixed. The petals are then laid in an apple tray to dry, and as you can see, there is a right and wrong way!











I also took a picture of the stamens, which were attached to a wire with florists tape in 3 bunches.

For the open peony we used a peach colored sugarpaste, then we used petaldust to color them. I was a little timid at the beginning, it is a bit of a skill to get the color on just so. I may experiment with
airbrushing, but for the moment, these powdered colors looked wonderful, especially once they have been steamed.

For the closed peony we got started on the middle of the flower first, I chose to fold 3 petals together in the center, but jacqueline usually uses 2 and 2, so it looked quite different in the center! We allowed the center to dry overnight, then added layer upon layer of wired petals. It ended up being a huge flower, you'd only need one for a cake, so whilst it is a little time consuming it is all the decoration a cake needs!

I took another picture of the flower from the side, I cant wait for an opportunity to add these to a cake, although they will have to wait a couple of weeks, I have a date to keep with my family in Melbourne, Australia!

Jacqueline is a fantastic teacher based in San Diego, she does private lessons, or if you would like to take a group class with her, bug your local cake decorating shop to ask her to teach there!

Foray into morocco!

We've been regulars at Kous Kous Moroccan Bistro for a few years now, we love the delicious slow braised meats, and I love the tender shrimp brioche and the tasty harissa soup.

I've been on at Moumen for ages to try and expand his dessert menu, and it ended up culminating in me offering to help out with a chocolate dessert.

So here is my flourless ginger chocolate cake with a white chocolate cardamom sauce to accompany it.

Feel free to stop by and give it a try!

Kous Kous Moroccan Bistro

3940 4th Ave #110

San Diego

http://kouskousrestaurant.com/

Gingerbread Pumpkin Muffins

I wanted to share this recipe despite my crummy picture on a gloomy day. These muffins were extremely satisfying yet very healthy. The lack of butter was made up for by pumpkin, lots of spices, molasses and dried fruit. I added in some pecans for a nutty crunch, and subbed some wholemeal flour for a healthier profile.

As you may see, there is an unusual off white countertop, yes, I've finally moved into the new house, and the kitchen is truly wonderful. It deserves its own post soon, once I have it shipshape, suffice to say, I'm delighted!

These muffins perfectly fit the fall drizzle and gloomy weather we've been having lately, and the ginger will give a kick to remind you of the tropics. You could even serve with a cider and caramel sauce or a bit of custard to serve as dessert. If you cant be bothered with measuring all those spices, 3 tsp of pumpkin pie spice could be substituted for most of them, add pepper and ginger though!

Ginger Pumpkin Muffins (recipe adapted from Cooking Light Magazine).
Makes 18 muffins
1/3 cup raisins
1/4 cup chopped pitted dates
3 tbsps chopped candied ginger (adjust to taste)
2 tablespoons (or a litle more!) dark rum

1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large egg whites
1 large egg
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup molasses
1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
2/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground pepper

1 cup canned pumpkin
2/3 cup low fat buttermilk
4 tablespoons/2 oz butter, melted
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350f or 325 convection

Combine the dried fruit and rum and soak for at least 30 minutes

Whisk together the eggs, sugar and molasses, keep whisking for a few minutes. Meanwhile, sieve together the flour, baking soda, salt and spices. Combine the pumpkin, buttermilk and melted butter. Add the flour and the buttermilk mixture in portions, alternating between the two, mix just until combined. Stir in the pecans and the soak fruit. Scoop into cupcake cases and bake for around 18-22 minutes(5 mins less for convection). Check with a toothpick after 15 minutes and if it comes out clean they are done!

Serve warm with caramel sauce or custard as dessert or eat for breakfast with a cup of tea!

Brummie Wedding Cake!

What a crazy and fun experience it was making and decorating a cake for my friend in my home country! It was a considerable risk, since I dont know the ingredients, wasnt exactly sure of the location that I would be working in, and I had serious doubts about my ability to pull it off.

Thankfully it all turned out well, my lovely patient long suffering Mum was my sous chef, she also found me a huge and wonderful kitchen, with tons of space, great ovens, a giant
mixer, and a very helpful manager who found us whatever we needed!

We were actually working in the Masonic Lodge's kitchen. I dont know much about what goes on but I do know that they love their meat! The chef was preparing masses of devilled kidneys for a function the following day, and they also made some heavenly smelling steak and kidney pies. I guess that funny handshaking needs a lot of protein for fortification!

Mum was completely amazed by the amount of ingredients we needed as I swept a whole shelf of chocolate from the display at Asda. I normally use callebut chocolate but didnt come across any, so I used a combination of cadbury and green and blacks chocolate with a little galaxy mixed in there.

We got to work on the first day, baked all the cakes in sheets, wrapped them up and then prepared the ganaches. I made a mixture of white and milk chocolate ganaches. These were an excellent complement to a dark mud cake(the bottom tier) and a solid chocolate cake(the top two cakes). We also had to make gallons of chocolate ganache to use as a covering. I'd decided this was going to be the most elegant presentation, and I didnt want to work with new fondant, or worry about buttercream melting.

The next day we came back and cut the cakes to size, then stacked four layers of cake filled with three layers of filling. I carefully measured the cake to ensure it was completely straight, then cut to eliminate any high spots. This is extremely important to produce a neat uniform cake, with a square there are more angles to compare, so just a little bit of a wrong angle looks terrible.

I then crumb coated each cake with a layer of ganache. It was so cold that day that I needed to work very quickly, the ganache started setting almost as soon as I started working! I followed that with another two layers to try and get a smooth finish. This was the trickiest part. I used a bench scraper to get a nice clean line, not as clean as I'd have liked, since the ganache kept setting so quickly, but I had to remember the famous quote 'dont let the perfect be the enemy of the good' which is turning into my mantra.

I stacked all the cakes with plenty of support, then added a fondant ribbon. We heaved a heavy sigh of relief once the behemoth was in the fridge, and went home for a much needed rest!

There were plenty of offcuts of cake left, so I took some home with the chocolate ganache around to my friend's house for dessert and I could tell we'd made a good cake when complete silcence descended upon us until we'd cleared our plates!

The wedding was at the beautiful Highbury Hall, somewhere I'd probably been past a million times but never set foot in! We set the cake up on a dramatic pewter stand and it started to really take shape.



I added the characters and some flowers and it looked great, if a little odd! I'd made all the requested characters, robot, monkey, dinosaur, giraffe, cat and some ninjas, and I decided it would be fun to have two of them as the couple, so added a bow tie to the robot and a little veil to the giraffe.

I also took the other side of the cake as a different perspective and added some sugar flowers that I'd copied from some very blurry pictures of the brides dress.



Everyone was extremely excited by the cake, and it was really fun being able to be a part of my dear friend's day. I did have a little worry, the cake was placed in front of a giant radiator, and I think the insides were a little melty by the time it was served. Thankfully the ganache stood up well to the heat, I dont think buttercream would have survived.



I took the remainder of the ganache and diluted it with cream to make a delicious pouring sauce.



As always with these kind of events, I'll raise a glass (or a cup of tea) to the happy couple, Em and Daz. They were just glowing that day, and I'm so glad that they've found each other, they complement each other perfectly.


The speeches were wonderful, there was so much love in the room for them and support for their union it was really touching. As they return from their honeymoon, I hope they will look back on their day with as much happiness as I do.

Daring bakers make sugar cookies!

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

I was so happy that the bloggers this month chose a challenge that I was planning to do that week anyway! I had a try of the recipe, made loads of cookies and then tried some new icing techniques, as well as decorating some with little fondant mickeys for a birthday party.



I found the recipe was great, although when I tasted a cookie it was on the dry side. I guess you en

d up sacrificing a little of the buttery goodness for a cookie that is super easy to roll out, and that doesnt spread when baking, so I made sure to use lots of icing with a kick of lime juice to increase the flavor.

I tried some different techniques here. Firstly, I tried piping a border around the cookies to make sure the outside of the icing was neat, then I filled in with white icing and used dots or swirls of red icing to create various effects. This was easier than I expected!

With another batch, I added a dollop of the sugar icing, then a cute fondant mickey, with a letter 'c' for the birthday boy!

Make sure to check out the other daring bakers, I'm sure there will be some wonderful designs!!

Slow blogging times

I've been terribly slow with the blogging lately, life has really got in the way. I've had some great foodie things going on with fun cakes, the ICES conference, and a house remodel. Thats all got in the way! I thought I'd share some of my cakes that I've been making, its been a fun time and I think I've made some progress.

My dear friend is getting married in a couple of weeks, and I've been working hard on my cake skills to make sure I can make her a great cake. Since its going to be square, I've been practicing square cakes. I had a fun time creating this little display with a yo gabba gabba theme.

This 'little mermaid' themed cake was a lot of fun. I dont like doing human characters so I cheated with a cute little birthday candle from Toys R Us and then added lots of my own touches. It was a lot of fun getting the disco dust and shimmering powders out for lots of girly glitter!

I also had a request from a friend to make a 'mighty boosh' cake for her husband. His favourite episode involved a pac-man game, so I thought it would be fun to add that as a border.

It was also really fun to make a wedding cake, always a happy occasion, the bride was super sweet and wanted something really simple. I loved how this came out.

My most recent cake was quite a project! My friend stealthily had to 'borrow' her sons favourite toy for me to take pictures and measurements of, then I set about making this big garbage truck out of cake. I knew it was a success as soon as I got to the party, everyone was very excited with it, especially the birthday boy, I saw a picture on facebook him standing next to the cake with the biggest grin I've ever seen!

I'm really enjoying making these cakes, I'm hoping to start a small side project selling them soon, once I've got a kitchen space organised. If you're interested in my cakes then feel free to follow me on facebook at www.facebook.com/jennywennycakes to hear more, or email me at jennywennycakes at gmail dot com.

That will all have to wait though, I'm jetting off to the UK for a week and I'll have lots of stories about chip butties, curry, and hopefully an incredible wedding cake for my friend!

Foray into 3D cakes with Lauren Kitchens

Today was one of the most fun days I've had in a while. I managed to get a day off work and sneak out to take Lauren Kitchens' class on making a 3D muppet. The class was held at 'Do it with Icing' in Clairemont, San Diego.

Lauren and Ashley were just the most lovely people, and I'm starting to think that the more people I meet who do great cakes, the more I love the cake community.

She gave us all the basic setup, the supports which would be holding up our cakes, which consisted of a masonite board with some sprinkler parts screwed into it, copper piping and a dowel to hold up the head.

We then set apart carving the little body, which turned out to be the only cake. This was covered in white chocolate to make it smooth.

A head was fashioned out of rice krispy treats, which was covered in modelling chocolate (a mixture of seized chocolate and corn syrup). This is great to work with as you can just keep smoothing it. It is a little difficult to work with when warm.

We carved a mouth out of the head, then put it in the fridge as we finished our bodies and arms, and covered the legs with modelling chocolate.

People did some lovely details here, frilly dresses, labcoats with pens in the pockets!

We then stuck the heads on the bodies and went to work on the faces. This is when things started getting fun, the characters really came to life! The most amazing character was this Gene Symonds, what a hoot! He still retained his muppet features, but was so original!

Everyones characters came out absolutely fantastic, they were all super pleased with them and Lauren and Ashley were very clever at coming around and tweaking our characters, and jumping in whenever we had a problem. I'd highly recommend this class to anyone.

We're also hoping that Linda gets lots more of these types of classes at 'Do it with Icing', definitely call and lobby if there is anyone you're interested in learning from. I'm hoping that James Roselle will be next!

I based my character on my husband, I think he was pretty happy with the results!