Bake Along With Bake Off - Results!

As promised I spent my weekend baking the cakes that were thrown at the 12 new contestants who were initiated into the Great British Bake Off tents last Wednesday.

The challenges: Madeira, walnut cake and Black Forest gateaux

Challenge 1: Madeira cake

My spin on this was apricot within the cake and candied apricot on top with salted caramel sugar work. The bake actually went quite well and to my delight it came out of the oven with a massive Madeira crack! A little shallow for my liking but I think my tin was bigger than specified. Candying the apricot I innocently followed the technique for candying Orange peel... They definitely don't behave in the same way. Sticky and gooey yes but would never have passed Mary's drop on a plate sound effect test. After a lot of googling I found a new technique which required boiling the fruit three times then boiling again in simple syrup. This time I let them dry over a rack and half an hour later... Dink! Passes the Mary berry sound test!!! CONFESSION: in an attempt to cut corners I made caramel and dipped my walnuts from the next recipe in it then added salt got this recipes sugar work... That extra time on the heat meant my salted caramel burnt but hey... Looks nice! Note to self: put in more apricot elements next time - as my mum tasted this "mmm lemony!"... Where'd the apricot go?!

Next challenge: Walnut Cake

Yuk! Can't stand nuts but hey ho. I followed the Bake Off Recipe for this - as it was the technical challenge I wanted to give it a proper go. Pretty easy mix to do and the cakes came out beautifully flat and even! Win! A simple buttercream sandwiched between and onto the next challenge boiled icing... Sorry what? This was completely new to me and required whisking egg whites, sugar, water and cream of tartare (which I had to google) over a pan of boiling water for 10 minutes. The end product was great but after ten minutes of holding an electric whisk my whole hand was numb! Topped with caramelised walnuts (beware handling these caramel is hot hot hot!), and actually... Not too shabby!

And finally: Black Forest Gateaux

Now I don't mean to brag but as chocolate cake is my favourite thing to eat (in vast quantities) I can make a chocolate sponge with my eyes closed. The challenge here was getting cherry incorporated. I used Nadiya's recipe for cherry jam, which seemed to be going well until I decided it was too chunky and took the cherrys out of the syryp. That's all well and good but the consequence of that was a syrup/unset jelly consistency rather than a nice jam. As I sandwiched my chocolate sponge with the "jam" and buttercream (which I added blended tinned pears to - this was very yum!), it was like jamgeddon... Purple stickiness leaking out everywhere. Nervously I threw it in the fridge and hoped for the best. Half an hour later whilst adding the white chocolate ganache the jam kept on splodging out of the edges! What have I learnt from this? Practice your jams! And don't touch jam whilst cooking - it is effectively boiling hot sugar! Overall the cake looked nice, but taste wise if you're after a chocolate cake then it was perfect... if you're after a black forest gateaux - stick to Iceland's freezer section.

So overall what I learnt - sponges are easy..... caramels are hot...... jam is impossible.... don't put caramel in the fridge, it doesn't like it.... and just because I don't love cherries, they still belong in a black forest gateaux....

Next week - biscuits. Comfort zone well and truly evacuated.



The Return Of GBBO

Who's excited? I'm excited.

Yesterday was like the arrival of Christmas... only better! The drool-inducing baking programme that has become a firm fixture in the living rooms of Britain is back with a vengeance. IT'S GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF TIME!

DISCLAIMER: I will not be available on Wednesday evenings until further notice.

I have literally been counting down to the return of my beloved Mary Berry, the slightly terrifying Paul Hollywood (don't be tricked by his beautiful eyes)... and the delightful, yet risque innuendo of Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins.

Yes it's the time of year when I watch from my kitchen stool thinking "I could bake biscuits, or tarts, or pastry if I tired", as I ice yet another celebration sponge cake. As my tweet yesterday revealed, I watched the whole episode with a shop bought eclair... because I never said I was a patissier did I.

The Great British Bake Off is so much more than cake, with so many challenges, sweet and savoury along the way... but yesterday was my realm of baking - CAKE WEEK!

Whilst watching people shovel betroot and cardamom into their cakes, and battling with burning caramel before wrapping their pieces de resistance in choclate collars (yum), it dawned on me that what I do... isn't that amazing!

So with a quiet trepidation after watching Dorret's mousse disaster, I will be taking it upon myself to introduce some new ingredients to my Kitchen Aid! This year... I'm gonna be playing a new game each week....

Bake-A-Long with Bake Off

Providing I have no other cakes on in that week (and next week I have two), I'm going to be taking on Mary Berry/Paul Hollywood sized challenges! I've written down the challenges of the tent this week and have a Saturday of Madeira, Gateaux and Walnut Cake ahead of me!

Signature Bake: Madeira Cake
I will be trying to incorporate apricot into my Madeira cake, sweet juicy fruit... could be in for a soggy bottom disaster. Then I'm going to attempt to crystalise some apricot pieces for the top, and if I've not burnt the house down by this point... some salted caramel sugarwork.

Technical challenge: Walnut Cake
Surely I have the recipe for this somewhere in one of my fifty Mary Berry books. New challenges - that marshmallow looking frosting. Tip to myself: chop your nuts fine or face the wrath of Paul Hollywood.

Showstopper: Black Forest Gateau
Or Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte as the Deutsch say. Normally I get my Black Forest Gateaux in a box from Iceland and pick off the cherries. Challenge 1: work with an ingredient you don't like. I'm plotting chocolate sponge sandwiched with black cherry jam, and pear - yes pear buttercream (not at all influenced by the pear fruitella I'm currently chewing on). Then if the purse strings stretch coat the cake in white chocolate ganache.

SIMPLES! GBBO 2016.... I'm coming for ya!

The Tools Of The Trade

Hi all

So I'm on a very short cake lull at the minute and although I do have some posts I could do of previous cakes I got very excited about a new purchase over the weekend.

For those who don't bake cakes you might not be aware just how much cake equipment there is out there - and if I'm honest I would love it all! But it all comes at a price so slowly I am filling up a cupboard in my kitchen with cake equipment. When I first started baking more seriously I often stood in the aisles of Hobbycraft or my local Cake Craft Store thinking... what the hell does that contraption do?! So here is what I have accumulated over the past year. My tools of the trade.

In front of my lovely KitchenAid what I love are the very basic tools. On the left are my smoothers, flat edged and round edged. In my next post I'll show these in practice smoothing all the lumps and bumps from sugarpaste when it's been popped onto your cake. In the middle is my cake leveller. You can't see in this pic but there is a thin wire that you can move up and down and slices through your cake to create the levels which you sandwich with jam and buttercream yum! Before I had this is was a wobbly knife jobby, with my leveller cutting cakes is a breeze. Also my small spatula for slathering buttercream onto cakes to create a nice smooth base for the sugarpaste. I could do with more sizes of this but equipment don't come cheap. Next the two white strips are 'marzipan spacers' - these come in handy to roll sugarpaste out to an even thickness all over if you have one on each side of your sugarpaste and roll your rolling pin across the spacers to get no lumps and bumps. Great little tools! On the right we have a superlong PVC rolling pin which is non-stick so loves sugarpaste and doesn't need to be cornfloured/icing sugared to use. Sugarpaste life saver.

This is what most of the clutter looks like in my cupboard! Cutters of all shapes and sizes, alphabet cutters (I have two sets with different fonts). Also a piping bag for buttercream and a few tips I've collected including one for a grass effect! Then I've got snowflake and butterfly cutters with plungers, florist tape (for tying together the wires of individually made modelling paste flowers), and an impression mat for rolling texture into your sugarpaste.

And this is my steadily growing colour collection. Wilton's gel colours are by far the best I have used - only a tiny dot will get you a lovely strong colour. I've got an artists palette for painting onto cakes because gel colour + vodka = cake paint! And an assortment of brushes. Theres edible glitters, icing strengthening gum tragacanth (still can't pronounce that) and edible glues!

The pieces of equipment that I lust after most are modelling tools. These are normally packaged individually and can cost around £6 a pop. I bought a cutting wheel in the early days and a straight line cutter which I promptly lost so when I saw a whole set of modelling tools for £6.99 in steamer trading company I had to have them! And when I got home I couldn't wait to play with them. These will come in so handy for decorating cakes or making my own little models. There's a shell effect, star effects, dotted line cutter and so on. also some round tipped tools on the far right which will come in so handy for manipulating small pieces of sugarpaste when my podgy fingers are too big and warm for the job. So here are some pictures of my play time with my new tools!

So ladies and gents.... if you ever want to know what to get me for Christmas or birthdays........ Cake tools!

Love

Kirsty xxx

A Pretty In Pink Christening Cake (and 50 cupcakes while you're at it)

Hi cakefaces,

So I've given you a little bit of back story so far. Why I love cake (obvious), my manic days of throwing together cake-coctions leading up to my cake lesson with Jayne! But now what?

By now I had started to bother my Facebook friends with posts about baking, or selfies with an icing sugar covered face. People were starting to notice.... hey, looks like Kirsty can bake. And so came my first official order!! I must admit the message terrified me, the sister of a good school friend popped up on my Facebook messenger asking me to make her a cake, and cupcakes for her beautiful little girl's christening. Nooooo pressure then. Although I was now petrified and regretting all my cake-bragging statuses, I love the sound of a challenge and this certainly was that.

Problemo number 1 - normally if a cake collapses or sinks or ends up looking like a dog has had a good chew on it, it's not worries, it's only for family... we will laugh it off together.

Problemo number 2 - cupcakes are those things what I referred to in post numero 1 - up until this point cupcakes had mostly gone into the oven with raisins in, and come out of the oven straight into my gob.

Problemo number 3 - THIS IS SOMEBODY'S CHRISTENING. There are bound to be photos, people are going to eat my cake.... what if someone gets ill? ... should I immigrate and hope that Amy forgets she ever asked me.

So after my head had finished spinning I agreed.... two tier cake. Pink. Flowers scattered. Diamante cross. 50 matching cupcakes. Challenge accepted. Here's what was new about this particular caking challenge....

- New cutters! For a nice scattering of flowers a total of 5 different shaped and sized metal flower cutters were purchased. I had plenty of practice goes on how best to shape these flat sugarpaste cutouts into vaguely realistic petals.

- New edibles! After a good amount of research I discovered the beautifully coloured Sattina Sugarpaste in blush pink - perfectly pale and just the right tone for a christening.

- New strategy! This cake would not be thrown together like my previous bakes. I set aside three evenings to get the two-tiered cake baked, ganached, then decorated. This left me with the morning of delivery day to knock out 50 cupcakes.

 

- New techniques! Time to try ganache. This was my first attempt at this (save for a few practice runs). Made from cream and melted white chocolate it sets hard, gives a great solid base for sugarpaste, and tastes delicious!

So here are the results... not bad eh? Total flowers individually cut and shaped.... 200+ !

 

 

 

And here's the feedback, which made for a very happy Kirsty - Amy said:

 

"Kirsty made our daughter's christening cake in March this year. We asked for a two tier cake as well as 50 matching cupcakes and were thrilled with the final result. The cakes all looked so professional and neat and we lost count of the number of friends and family who commented on the cakes and asked where they had been made. Kirsty took the time before starting our cakes to research exactly what we wanted to achieve the right look, and her research paid off... they were perfect. More importantly, they were absolutely delicious! In particular the cupcakes, which in my past experience when buying from a shop, can be incredibly sickly, but we didn't have that problem! They were the perfect flavour and texture... one just wasn't enough. We have already put in our next order."

 

Lots of love

 

Kirsty

The Cake Bug

Hi all,

So my interest for making and decorating cakes really sky-rocketed last year after my own wedding. We had a beautiful and very tasty cake from a very talented lady called Jayne. At five tiers high it was the size of a small child and the most impressive of edible things I have ever seen. 

I had made some cakes before our wedding day, birthdays here or there, an anniversary cake for a family friend but to be honest I was guessing my way through the process. 

From around January 2014 I started out making cakes at any opportunity, then after seeing my wedding cake in July 2014 I was like a mad lady, knocking out cakes left right and centre - even without an occasion. Gatsby inspired black and gold cakes, colour layer cakes, golf cakes - why not, cake pops, anything I could do I attempted with varying levels of success. I definitely had a serious case of the Cake Bug.

I think by now my husband had noticed that I was spending most of my money and time making a sugary mess of the kitchen, and that whenever he needed an egg for an omlette I was dementedly mixing the last remaining eggs in a mixing bowl for my next experiment. In order to tame the mad professor, Alex sent me to the professional, Jayne, who had made our wedding cake. I spent the day with her learning the skills of icing cakes and jotting down any tips I could along the way. This was such a rewarding day and without it I wouldn't be doing the things that I can now do (blog posts to come!). 

So this is how Peasweet Cakes started.... with a crazy lady, covered head to toe in icing sugar, knocking cake after cake out of her small oven. Thanks to Jayney Cakes for reigning in my talent. I am ever grateful! This is the product of her expertise on my decorating lesson.

For now this is my hobby, and something that I will do for loved ones when they need.... but watch this space...........

Lots of love

Kirsty

Welcome!

Hi there and welcome to Peasweet Cakes!

My name is Kirsty and I have been making tasty cakes and messy kitchens since a young age. People have started to notice my talent and I am so fortunate to be able to make cakes for celebrations of all kinds. This blog is so that I can share my creations and tips with the worldwide web!

About me: I have early memories of baking with my paternal grandmother who was famous for her perfect Victoria sponges. My mum and I always baked together at birthdays, my favourite being raisin cupcakes as I would sit on the kitchen side and eat half of the batch. I also built up a pretty good resistence to raw egg in the form of cake mix! My cakey highlight of this year was when my wonderful husband walked through the door with the candy red Kitchen Aid that I had long lusted after - now the sky is my limit!

About Peasweet Cakes: My dream is to turn my passion and hobby into a business and I have the full support of my family... perhaps as they just want me to bake more cakes that they can eat the offcuts of. Peasweet is an unfortunate nickname from my younger days but I love it and it depicts all things sweet! So this is me.

About this blog: Caking and baking is definitely not a chore for me and hopefully that comes across in the finished product, but with a degree in English behind me and some journalism experience I want to share my baking process with you! Cakes are gone in a flash and all that's left is the crumbs so this blog is my place to do that.

Please bear with me whilst I get the blog up and running....... cakes coming your way!

Lots of love

Kirsty

P.S. I would love to hear from you. You can contact me on: peasweetcakes@hotmail.com