HePPY NeW YEuAr!

Just before New Year’s Eve, as I was trying to plan our dinner with friends (grown-ups, so I felt I had to respect their special needs in terms of the absence of blood and gore when it comes to their food … SIGH!), I learned that the U.N. have declared 2019 the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. (It’s true!)

I thought this should be the cake theme.

(2019 is also UNESCO’s International Year of Indigenous Languages which would have been cool as a theme, too, but that would have required some research, and I didn’t have enough time. Grrr.)

And then I realised that a periodic-table-of-chemical-elements cake would be a lot of work.

I don’t like a lot of work.

(Nah, that’s not entirely true. At least not when it comes to baking. But I was preparing a rather big fancy dinner which was going to keep me busy in the kitchen for a whole day anyway.)

So I decided to incorporate the theme in a different way.

Step 1: an orange quark cake. (Quark! Get it!? Hee!)

Step 2: Periodic table bunting.

I had to cheat a bit because the letters used in the periodic table were not accommodating (which I find quite rude, to be frank!)

So … HePPY NeW YEuAr, everybody!
May the periodic table of chemical elements be with you.

Gin & Tonic Cake for a Big Birthday

 

It was my friend Anne’s 30th birthday yesterday, and for some reason she decided not to hide in a hole to contemplate her old age but opted for a celebration instead. Each to their own, I say!

As our friendship is largely – not solely, but still – based on drinking G&T together, I thought it was the perfect occasion to bake this cake. I’d found the recipe on BBC GoodFood, as ever one of my go-to places for new recipes.

But I added a twist: rather than deciding not to follow the instructions exactly, this time round I simply … screwed up a little bit. Because I am subconsciously creative like that.

As a consequence, the texture was not ideal. But I was really pleasantly surprised that the cake actually tasted somewhat of Gin & Tonic! And I loved how a number of people at the party were really confused by a cake with cucumber decoration. :D

I am definitely going to make this cake again, although I am not a massive fan of the icing. I didn’t use all of it, and I still thought it was bit much, and a bit too sweet. Maybe I’ll experiment with cream-cheese based stuff the next time.

…

This is the point where I’ve run out of mildly interesting things to say. I hate having to come up with closing words.
Er…

Hang on, I’ll think of something in a moment …

 
*scarpers*

 

Volcano Scenery Cake for Dissertation Origami Dinosaurs

This last weekend, we had a double-barrelled party. It is not usually my style to combine two occasions into one party; I am much more likely to have multiple parties for one and the same occasion of course!

But. Life is what happens to other people while you’re busy planning your cakes, as the old saying goes. Also, life gets in the way. Two and a half weeks ago, it was my birthday, but I was living la vida poca at the time and therefore couldn’t celebrate properly.

And then a second party occasion had unfolded in the meantime. I finished the work on my dissertation, which left me exhausted, confused, and in possession of about 700 pages of text printed for proofreading purposes.

What does one do with all that paper? Why, make origami dinosaurs of course!

Raptorus Dissertationis

 

Origamosaurus

 

And then you have to bake a cake volcano so they feel at home. Obviously.

The ground is a white chocolate sheet cake with a dark chocolate cream, green desiccated coconut for the grass and some blue vanilla pudding for the lake.

The volcano is a lovely courgette and hazelnut cake with chocolate icing and orange vanilla pudding lava. (E numbers are your friends, remember!)

 

Getting the volcano shape right proved too difficult for me, as you can see. But it takes all sorts, I have learned, and why shouldn’t this apply to volcanoes as well!?

On the plus side, I had bug-shaped sugar sprinkles to add some more (and also edible) wildlife:

All in all, a cake worthy of the occasions, methinks!

Gingerbread Cake

Happy Christmas!

 

In case you hadn’t noticed: I am  bit different.

And that’s only one of the reasons why I had my Christmas dinner on 22 December this year!

Oh, and what a wonderful dinner it was!

Lots of good food (if I may say so), lovely people, wonderful music, good wine, candles, thoughtful gifts and after dessert – a zombie card game!

Our dessert was a gingerbread cake based on a Polish recipe with a thick chocolatey icing and homemade Christmas spice raspberry jam as filling. Very yum and (almost) as satisfying as killing a playing card zombie, I’d say! ;)

A Monster Wedding Cake

 

So my friends asked me for a special wedding present: to bake their wedding cake. How reckless can one be!?

Yours truly felt insanely flattered though, especially since they specified two kinds of cakes I’ve made a few times before which they wanted. Compliments hardly come any bigger than that, do they?

As cake toppers, they asked me to bake Cookie Monster muffins like I’d done before, and to make one a girl cookie monster. As you know, I am always happy to comply with gender stereotypes, and even happier to dye desiccated coconut pink! :D

Voilà: A Monster Wedding Cake.

 

 

The three layers at the bottom are courgette cake – a hazelnutty cake with a hint of cinnamon, which is all lovely and moist from all the courgettes which go into the cake batter. The bride requested the courgette cake.

And the groom did not request anything.

He demanded my poppyseed cake for the top layers. :) Mr. Groom Man is a seriously massive fan of my poppyseed & yoghurt cake.

 

So I happily complied; I baked three courgette cakes and two poppyseed & yoghurt cakes and made a massive bowl of cream cheese & white chocolate cream to go between the cake layers.

The couple and I had agreed on a semi-naked cake, so I just added some vanilla icing on top of the cake and let it drizzle down the sides of the cake.

 

The worst part was transporting the cake to the restaurant where they had their reception! I am sure my man would have turned grey (if he still had any hair on his head) driving at about walking speed on a dual carriageway, and I had a heart attack, or two, or seventeen, every time we had to go around bends in the road or, even worse, roundabouts!

But we and the cake made it to the restaurant safely. Phew!

And it was a wonderful wedding, and a beautiful day starring a beautiful bride and a dashing groom.

 

No, not them. I was talking about the actual bride and groom.

So here’s to a very happy married life for Alex and Evelien, who, if they ask me to bake a cake for their wedding anniversary, will have to transport it themselves! :-Þ

Half-Birthday Cake

I’ve baked a Half-Birthday Cake! Because I can!

No time to write much; I reckon you can guess the occasion for the cake. This is the recipe I used for this small cake, and I added one peeled and chopped pear to the batter.

Kthxbai!

Swedish-ish Almond Cake

Tradition demands that my mad friends and I get drunk on Eurovision night. So we have motto parties every year to accommodate this tradition. :)

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest host country was Sweden, so we had an Ikea-themed party. I dressed up as a hex key, a costume I can definitely recommend to anyone who is desperate to feel really uncomfortable for an evening!

And I baked a Swedish-ish almond cake:

It’s Swedish-ish firstly because I didn’t stick to any original Swedish recipe but made my own variation of it. The reasons for this are threefold:

1. I can.
2. See above.
3. I had a very specific idea for the “interior look” of my cake, which required a specific texture etc.

And this is also the second way in which my cake is only Swedish-ish: my beloved food colouring has let me down! The blue colouring made the cake turquoise. :(

I like to think, however, that seeing as the whole event was in no way PC, a turquoise-and-yellow Swedish flag just goes with the theme…

Texture was mentioned earlier – I was surprised (and a bit disappointed) how much the weight of the top two layers squashed the bottom layer. The top and the bottom layers were originally of equal height. I must make a note of this for future flag cakes…

Oh, and Denmark won this year’s Eurovision! Vikings ahoy for next year’s party!

Dagobah Cake for Star Wars Day 2013

Eat the swamp you must!

 

Happy belated Star Wars Day!

I am late blogging this but I sincerely hope you all had a very Star-Wars-y day last Saturday!

A few friends and I got together, threw some meat on the barbecue and pretended it was fresh Ewok ;) – and then we watched The Empire Strikes Back and ate lovely swamp cake.

Last year, we watched A New Hope, and I made Death Star Cakes.

For this year’s project I baked a chocolate tray bake and created the swamp from several layers of thickened green custard and chocolate cream. I loved how “swampy” the result looked!

And I accessorized the cutlery to go with the cake:

Finally, my friend’s son contributed his fighter to make the ensemble perfect:

What more could you want for a proper celebration of this very special holiday!? :)

 

May the Fourth Be With You!

 

(Yes, I am already making plans for next year’s Return of the Jedi Cake. How’d you guess!?)

This is not even baked! How dare she post this!? (Cookie Dough Balls)

In case you are as shocked and angry as whoever wrote the title of this post, let me explain: I am such a rebel I even break my own rules! Or I keep forgetting the rules I’d made up. One of those two.

So. I have a friend who’s done me more favours and helped me out more often lately than I can count. Not that I can count very high… But still. She’s helped me out big time. Again and again. And she was there when others let me down.

And saying thank you is nice, but saying thank you with cake is nicer. Or with cookies. Or cookie dough! :)

This friend I’m talking about shares my passion for pinching bits of cake batter or cookie dough. (You HAVE to do this. Constant quality control is the key to success, and you never know when the batter or dough is going to go bad!) She claims she could just eat a whole bowl of cookie dough instead of actually baking cookies. So I made a batch of cookie dough balls for her.

I hear cookie dough balls have been around in the United States and elsewhere for quite a while but I had never had or even seem them outside the blogosphere. They’re not to everybody’s taste. They do really taste like uncooked dough. I liked them! And so did my friend. Mission accomplished!

Bloody band-aids & bloody bones

Zombie film night baking, huzzah!

It’s actually a bit weird that I am still calling them zombie film nights, seeing as we haven’t watched any proper zombie films in ages. But I think today may be the day we’re going back to our roots – we have Incubo sulla città contaminata on our to-do list.

In any case, this week’s film night baking project is bloody band-aid biscuits.

They are almond biscuits (my grandmother’s recipe, usually made for Christmas; I am aware that my use of the recipe is quite sacrilegious…) with a bit of vanilla cake icing and red liquid food colouring.

The biscuits aren’t perfect, and they don’t look as disgusting as I had expected/planned/hoped, so for the photo I’ve placed them on a very cool chopping board my friend gave me as a present to make them look cooler.

 

And when the deed was done, I had some egg whites left over…

Bloody bones meringues

 

… what else was I supposed to do!? :)

The idea for the meringue bones is Martha Stewart’s, and I added some strained cherry jam because bones have to be bloody. Full stop.

This was the first time I’ve ever made meringue, by the way. Not as tricky as I’d feared, hooray. I am not a big fan of the stuff myself but then I rarely bake for myself anyway.

Finally, a rare polite note from yours truly:
I’d like to thank Matthias for the great photos. Every single good picture on this blog was taken by him; the boring/blurred/under- or overexposed ones are mine. Because I’m artistic like that. ;)