Among our visiting friends was a birthday girl, so naturally we had to bake her a cake. One of my favourite cakes ever is the traditional red velvet. I know it's wrong, all that colouring just can't be good for you, but I really like the taste of it and the dramatic effect when you cut through it. The weekend before, Simon Rimmer was presenting his version of the red velvet cake on Sunday Brunch (Channel 4) so I thought I'd try his recipe. As I was making it, I couldn't help but feel the proportions were all wrong. The cake came out looking ok but when I tasted it, I was quite disappointed. It was quite dense and quite dry, not at all what I'd want from a red velvet. In saying that, it was perfectly edible and our birthday girl loved it but in our household, baking is a skill and we're pretty critical. I certainly won't be using this recipe again.
While I was baking a cake, hubby did what he does best and baked a bread, but not just any bread, a "Fries Suikerbrood" otherwise known in English as a Frisian sugar bread. I used to have a craving for these during pregnancy but we hadn't made any since. As you can imagine, this is loaded with calories but it is oh so moorish and delicious! Especially when made by the master baker himself.
I mentioned in my previous update that I was preparing for a baking competition. Well, the time came this week. I can't remember if I've said before that I'm a member of the WI but this was our local WI's bake off. I'd planned to put in two entries: red velvet cake pops in the shape of apples and the rhubarb and custard cake I'd been practising. As there was a category for jams and chutneys, I made the last minute decision to enter a pot of the grapefruit marmalade I made a few weeks back.
The baking prep actually started with some... painting. I knew how I wanted to present my cake pops and I'd gotten these flower pot shaped holders online but they needed a touch of colour so I spent an entire evening experimenting with watercolours then building up the layers until I had the result I wanted.
The following day/evening, I baked and decorated my cake pops. As experimenting with a new recipe hadn't paid off, I went back to my old and trusted red velvet recipe. I reduced the cocoa content and increased the red colouring slightly for effect and everything turned out perfectly. It was a hot day however and the candy melt coating gave me an awful lot of grief. I'd planned on making red and green apples but I messed up the red candy melt so badly it became unworkable and I was left with just the green. Looking back, it probably wasn't such a bad thing, the effect of biting in an apple green pop to discover a bright red cake inside was really quite dramatic.
On the day of the competition, I bought a load of organic rhubarb, the pinkest, prettiest one I could find and set to work making custard and baking my best ever cake. After I'd finished, I was left with quite a lot of the pink stuff and just enough time to spare to bake another entry, so a rhubarb crumble traybake made it into the oven.
As I displayed my entries and looked at what I was up against, I hoped I'd get at least one prize (runner up was good enough) and that none of my entries qualified for the "epic fail" (good effort but didn't quite hit the mark) prize.
But I didn't win just one prize, I won three! OK, so clearly the jury wasn't as enamoured as I am with rhubarb because none of my rhubarb bakes got a mention. My cake pops however hit the home run. Not only were they best in their category (Small but Perfectly Formed), they also raked in the "Showstopper" prize which was picked by the jury out of all the entries. I think I did quite a few leaps of joy when my name was called out. The biggest surprise for me though was that my marmalade won the runner up prize. Considering this is only the second time ever that I've tried my hand at jam making and that I didn't actually follow a recipe, that's a fab result and one I'm still pretty chuffed about!
This win means I'm now a bona fide baker in our house and I no longer have to hide in my husband's shadow. We're officially a baking power couple :-)
In other news, I've been playing with plastic beads these past two weeks. I'd seen somewhere that by baking cheap plastic beads for a relatively short time, you can melt them and create accessories. I had a first go and it really worked. I chose to glue the little flowers to hairbands for my daughter but you could easily turn them into rings, brooches or hairclips.
I also had my nails re-done and opted for a 3D design. I'd been oggling those for a while so it was time to give it a go. I was worried I wouldn't be able to stop picking at it but so far I've been really good and a week in, they're still intact.
I'm currently working on a number of yarn based projects but you'll have to wait until next week to find out more. Have a lovely week folks!
While I was baking a cake, hubby did what he does best and baked a bread, but not just any bread, a "Fries Suikerbrood" otherwise known in English as a Frisian sugar bread. I used to have a craving for these during pregnancy but we hadn't made any since. As you can imagine, this is loaded with calories but it is oh so moorish and delicious! Especially when made by the master baker himself.
I mentioned in my previous update that I was preparing for a baking competition. Well, the time came this week. I can't remember if I've said before that I'm a member of the WI but this was our local WI's bake off. I'd planned to put in two entries: red velvet cake pops in the shape of apples and the rhubarb and custard cake I'd been practising. As there was a category for jams and chutneys, I made the last minute decision to enter a pot of the grapefruit marmalade I made a few weeks back.
The baking prep actually started with some... painting. I knew how I wanted to present my cake pops and I'd gotten these flower pot shaped holders online but they needed a touch of colour so I spent an entire evening experimenting with watercolours then building up the layers until I had the result I wanted.
The following day/evening, I baked and decorated my cake pops. As experimenting with a new recipe hadn't paid off, I went back to my old and trusted red velvet recipe. I reduced the cocoa content and increased the red colouring slightly for effect and everything turned out perfectly. It was a hot day however and the candy melt coating gave me an awful lot of grief. I'd planned on making red and green apples but I messed up the red candy melt so badly it became unworkable and I was left with just the green. Looking back, it probably wasn't such a bad thing, the effect of biting in an apple green pop to discover a bright red cake inside was really quite dramatic.
On the day of the competition, I bought a load of organic rhubarb, the pinkest, prettiest one I could find and set to work making custard and baking my best ever cake. After I'd finished, I was left with quite a lot of the pink stuff and just enough time to spare to bake another entry, so a rhubarb crumble traybake made it into the oven.
As I displayed my entries and looked at what I was up against, I hoped I'd get at least one prize (runner up was good enough) and that none of my entries qualified for the "epic fail" (good effort but didn't quite hit the mark) prize.
But I didn't win just one prize, I won three! OK, so clearly the jury wasn't as enamoured as I am with rhubarb because none of my rhubarb bakes got a mention. My cake pops however hit the home run. Not only were they best in their category (Small but Perfectly Formed), they also raked in the "Showstopper" prize which was picked by the jury out of all the entries. I think I did quite a few leaps of joy when my name was called out. The biggest surprise for me though was that my marmalade won the runner up prize. Considering this is only the second time ever that I've tried my hand at jam making and that I didn't actually follow a recipe, that's a fab result and one I'm still pretty chuffed about!
This win means I'm now a bona fide baker in our house and I no longer have to hide in my husband's shadow. We're officially a baking power couple :-)
In other news, I've been playing with plastic beads these past two weeks. I'd seen somewhere that by baking cheap plastic beads for a relatively short time, you can melt them and create accessories. I had a first go and it really worked. I chose to glue the little flowers to hairbands for my daughter but you could easily turn them into rings, brooches or hairclips.
I also had my nails re-done and opted for a 3D design. I'd been oggling those for a while so it was time to give it a go. I was worried I wouldn't be able to stop picking at it but so far I've been really good and a week in, they're still intact.
I'm currently working on a number of yarn based projects but you'll have to wait until next week to find out more. Have a lovely week folks!
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