My first competitive bake off!

I’m an avid watcher of programmes like the Great British Bake off and the Ace of Cakes so when I saw that my local food festival was holding a “bake off” I had to enter it!

The theme was Salisbury...which is the city where the food festival is held! I decided to do my cake themed on the local charter market which has been going since 1227!

I started making all the decorations on Wednesday evening and finished the cake on Saturday ready to take along for the festival on the Sunday.

All the decorations were made out of Renshaw’s Sugar and Flower paste. I just bought the white one and coloured it with the Sugarflare pastes. I love the pastes, they give such a vibrant colour and never make the icing sticky.

 

Here are the selection of decorations I made! I warn you, I took a LOT of pics! If you want to know how I made any specific item, leave me a comment and I'll let you know!

 

 

I made two cakes - both were Madeira cakes as it’s a firmer cake, able to take the pressure of the millions of decorations I made!

I flavoured one with lemon (which is apparently the tradition flavouring). This was to become my fruit and veg stall. And the other I actually made a flavour discovery breakthrough!

As the second stall was going to be the “bakers” stall, I wanted to do something nice and sweet so I thought chocolate. As well as using cocoa to make the chocolate flavour though I added a tablespoon of Whittards dark chocolate and Raspberry cocoa drink. The flavour worked SO well and came through nice and strong. I’m going to experiment a bit more with their hot chocolates and see what else I can use!

I then used buttercream icing to give the cakes a “crumb coat” before covering with fondant. This just makes it a bit easier to ice as it’s a smoother surface and it helps the fondant stick too!

 

 

Then the really fun part was seeing everything come together.

I managed to find a box big enough to transport the cake to the guildhall. I actually started to have nightmares on the Wednesday night about getting the cake to the venue in one piece, or without tripping over (I’m pretty clumsy and tend to trip over my own feet a lot)!

 

 

Well luckily I didn’t trip and made it to the Guildhall in one piece, and had to do some of the finishing touches, like add the canopies. I’ve never known myself to shake so much! I really don’t know how the contestants on the GBBO do it!

There was a children’s category and an adult category, and it’s with great pleasure that I can let you know that I won! Yay! My first ever bake off was a success! It’s at this point that I have to let you into the secret that there were only a couple of entries (which I still can’t believe)! But, a win is still a win, and I had so much fun making the cake and decorations!

I won a great goody bag from a local cook shop called dinghams. The best thing in the goody bag – a pineapple peeler! I’ve always wanted one of these and it’s the most amazing gadget ever! I urge you to buy one!

Harry Potter party!

So the last few weeks have been a bit crazy! I seem to have been here there and everywhere! One of the places I was lucky enough to visit over the last few weeks was the new Warner Brothers Studio Tour – The Making of HarryPotter.

I’m a massive Harry Potter fan, I’ve read all the books, watched the films, been lucky enough to visit the Wizarding World in Orlando and have just signed up to Pottermore! However the one thing that I had yet to do was have, or go to a Harry Potter party – what’s up with!

Well luckily this situation has now been rectified! A couple of my friends I work with who tweet over @Stace15  and @princessjrogers are also huge Harry Potter fans so a HP party was planned!

Stacey and Jess are both going to the tour in the next few month and Stacey decided to host the party before we all went (we’ll obviously have to have another once we’ve all been)! We drank Butterbeer, looked at Harry Potter photos and ate Polyjuice potion and pumpkin pasties! And well, all I can say is I feel every night should be Harry Potter night!

For the evening I made Cauldron Cakes which I saw on sale at the Wizarding World. I was really pleased with them and I’ll post a recipe and tutorial as my next post!

For now though, here are the pictures from the Harry Potter party! Hopefully they’ll inspire you to have your own HP party!

The polyjuice potion was scrummy butternut soup squash! Mmmm!

Mmm, hot pumpkin pastys coming out of the oven! Must remember to ask Jess for this recipe!

Bertie botts every flavour beans!

My Cauldron cakes!

YUM!

Felt cupcake decoration

I made this for my friend over at BeautyU’s birthday the other week. She’s a big fan of baking and pretty things so thought this would be perfect!

You’ll need

·         Felt

·         Stuffing
·         Needle and thread
·         Scissors
·         Beads and trimming

Step 1

Draw a cupcake shape onto a piece of paper to use as a template.

Use 2 bits of paper and fold in half and cut out the template. This gives you four pieces the same size (although I only needed 3 in the end)!

Step 2

Take each paper cupcake template and cut into the “layers”.

So I’ve got…

1 – front and back

2 – bun case and cake
3 – icing and cherry!

Step 3

Use the templates to cut the correct size out of felt. (apologies for my hand shadows...stupid spotlights)!

Step 4

Check all your pieces fit together

Step 5

Using a simple running stitch sew all the pieces together, using the stitch to add the detail.

Step 6

Add extra detail. So I added some of my bargain trimming and beads to look like sprinkles!

Step 7

Use a blanket stitch to sew the front and back together, then add the stuffing and sew up and knot! I also added the hanger at this stage so the loose ends were sewn neatly inside.

Step 8

Hang up and admire!!

Baking with Trex part 2 - Strawberry Fondant Fancies

Following on from my chocolate orange cupcakes I also made Strawberry Fondant Fancies using my new favourite ingredient - Trex.

Well, they were meant to be fancy but I lovingly renamed them messies! Not so much because of the way they turned out, more because of the mess I managed to make in the kitchen whilst icing!

I used the same recipe I used in part one but I added pink colouring to the sponge mixture. I didn’t flavour the mixture as I added the strawberry flavouring in a different way as you’ll see later!

I used a square cake tin as this would make it it easier to get the classic square fondant fancy shape.

I think I should have used a little more colouring as there was a slight “regular sponge” colour coming through too, which mixed with the pink seemed to look a little green!

I cut the cake into 18 smaller squares.

Then I used my Wilton nozel icing kit to fill the centres of each square with a generous squirt of strawberry jam. This is where the mess started!

I also covered the top and sides with strawberry jam to allow the icing to stick.

Then I used fondant icing sugar  (I used Tate and Lyle) to cover the cakes. Just drizzle the icing over (again, more mess)! I then finished with white fondant icing drizzled in lines and little sugar paste flowers.

I just used normal round cupcake cases to put them in and pinched the corners to make into squares.

I took thwm into work the next day and the icing had soaked into the cake a little, although it didn't affect the taste luckily. So I’d recommend either eating on the same day, or, what I’m going to try next time is icing them with buttercream then rolled fondant icing!

Baking with Trex - Part 1, Choc orange cupcakes

I’m sure loads of people have heard about Trex but until last week (during my cupcake course) I’d never heard of the stuff. Well this has now become a must in my baking going forward!

It was my birthday last weekend so I wanted to take cakes into work. I wanted to get Trex to make the frosting I’d learnt in the cupcake workshop.

On the Trex packaging though it said it was perfect for all sorts of baking so instead of buying butter I thought I’d use Trex for EVERYTHING!

At £1.28 for 500g it also works out much cheaper than butter (£1.19 for Sainsburys basic unsalted 250g). This makes me like it even more!

I wanted to make chocolate orange cupcakes and strawberry fondant fancies.

In part 1 of Baking with Trex I’m going to show you how I made my chocolate orange cupcakes.

I used a basic Victoria sponge recipe for the basis of each recipe.

• 150g Trex

• 150g Caster Sugar

• 3 eggs

• 150g Self raising flour

Cream the sugar and Trex together. As you can see, when it came to creaming the Trex and sugar it doesn’t look very appealing! It is softer than butter though so that makes life easier!

Once creamed add the other ingredients (as per my cupcake course post I whisked the eggs first and added a spoonful of flour to stop the curdling which always seems to happen to me)!

I then added the rind of two oranges to add the orangey flavour.

I added my mixture in to these cute cupcake cases that I found in TK Max- £3.99 for 80! They’re really good quality too.

In my cupcake course post I also said about getting to know your oven. Most recipes call for 180degs to bake cupcakes but I did a couple of test cakes and mine baked evenly and flat at 150degs! Quite a difference.

Then the rest went into the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Then my favourite part, the icing! I got to use my new icing set which also came from TK Max. This is a Wilton set which had the nozel that creates cute icing roses (Wilton 1M). This set was £9.99 but came with 4 nozels and 8 good quality icing bags so I didn’t think that was too bad.  

I then made the icing with…Trex!

• 200g Trex

• 500g Icing sugar

• 4 table spoons of milk

• Freshly squeezed orange juice

• 50g Cocoa

To create the rose use the 1M nozel and start in the centre and swirl out to the edge.

I then added little sugar paste flowers to hide where the icing swirl finished!

I personally think that the cakes I've made with Trex tasted nicer than with butter. I think Trex gives a smoother batter and a "softer" spongier cake! Trex is the way forward people!

Part 2 – Strawberry fondant fancies will be on the way soon!