Tear-And-Share Cake

Ceremonial Madness

Having made it past the ladybird and found the bar we spent an enjoyable hour catching up with friends (some of whom we hadn't seen in years) and watching the wedding cake being assembled. The cake was apparently a last minute surprise for both Rob and Rhona, as they hadn't intended to have one. Two of the guests (apologies for not being able to remember your names) decided that wasn't right and so set about baking. Rather than a traditional layered wedding cake, they had baked what seemed like hundreds of cupcakes, all decorated with hand painted sugar flowers. Apparently it took two days just to make the flowers! Now I'm not sure which of the cake stand, table or floor were uneven but there were a few nervous moments as everything was put together when it resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa. fortunately it all got leveled out and survived quite a few knocks throughout the evening.

Unfortunately we didn't take any photos of the barn set out for the wedding. We were on one end of a row, away from the aisle and so not in the best place for taking photos as Rhona arrived, and then we were all asked not to take photos at any point during the service in order to not distract the professionals. This photo should give you a good idea as to how nicely the barn was decorated though.

Now I've been to a few civil services, and they usually consist of a couple of readings (strictly non-religious in content) and the playing of three pieces of classical music (arrival, signing, departure). This wedding was, however, quite a bit different.

Firstly the music was different. There wasn't a CD player pumping out classical music, but rather a choir and a keyboard player. During the service there were five pieces of music. Rhona arrived to the choir singing "If" by Bread which apparently is a favourite song of Rhona's. We then joined the choir to sing "It Must Be Love" by Madness. Topical and I know that Madness are one of Rob's favourite bands. the choir then sang Oscar Hammerstein's "Some Enchanted Evening". While the register was being signed we listened to a rendition of "Fields Of Gold" (this also made an appearance at our wedding as the music for our first dance). And then the ceremony concluded with "You've Got A friend In Me" taken from the Toy Story films. All together a distinctly different musical approach from any other wedding I've been to. Church weddings often include hymns that you are supposed to join in with, but hardly anyone knows the words/tune and they all sing quietly. You really needed to be there to see what a difference be asked to sing Madness makes!

Civil weddings usually include a reading or two. These are usually poems or something that any guest with a good grasp of English can recite. Rob and Rhona went for a completely different approach and asked two friends to talk rather than read. Firstly we had one of Rhona's friends who talked about Love. This was cleverly done and focused on the impact that love has on not just the couple but the people around them. Later in the ceremony one of Rob's old school friends then talked about Marriage. This talk included some funny tips on marriage from some antique books he had recently been given as a wedding present. Both talks were brilliant and I'm really glad I wasn't asked to give one of them!

All together it was a wonderful ceremony, that was so totally different to any I've ever been to, and one that I'm sure none of the guests will forget in a hurry.

And The Words Became Flesh

For the last two years Bryony's birthday cake has involved bees in one form or another. Back in 2009 there were the bees that wouldn't set, and then last year I was actually in China on her birthday but left a tin full of baby beehives for her and my family to enjoy. This year we were away for her birthday at Rob and Rhona's wedding, so she had to wait until today for her birthday cake.

As you may remember, one of the presents I got for my birthday was a book on how to make sugarpaste characters for decorating cakes. Over a few weeks I had fun making pink elephants, pigs, and mice. So my plan was to put these new found skills to use in decorating Bryony's birthday cake.

Among the many cookery books we have in the house there are two on cake decorating written by Debbie Brown (Magical Cakes and Lovable Character Cakes). A quick flick through both books and the cake started to take shape in my head. The magical cakes book included a large dragon wrapped around a castle, and given Bryony's love of dragons I knew that would work well. I was, however, unsure if I could pull of both an elaborate shaped cake as well as a large sugarpaste dragon. Flicking through the other book, I came across a cake in the shape of an open book with Barney (yes, the purple dinosaur) sitting on it. The book appeared to be easy to make and ice and so my idea was to make a spell book from which a baby dragon had just been summoned.

So I set about buying the necessary ingredients and equipment. There was a cake box and board, orange, black and white sugarpaste, some edible glue, paint brushes and a pot of gum tragacanth to help the sugarpaste hold it's shape. As I had hoped, icing the cake was fairly straightforward although I'm sure it could have been neater. Making the dragon, however, was quite a challenge.

I hadn't realised quite how long the gum tragacanth would take to work and so I started to make the dragon's head while the sugarpaste was still too soft. In the end I gave up and scrunched it back into a ball and left it to harden for an hour before trying again. The wings were also tricky as I had to shape them and then leave them to harden overnight before I could glue them onto the dragons back. All told it probably took me somewhere between 4 and 5 hours to fully assemble the cake, but the look on Bryony's face when she saw it for the first time this morning made it all worthwhile. I just hope it tastes as good as it looks!

Iced Bees

Click To Play

Some of you may remember that back in 2009 I baked a beehive shaped cake for Bryony's birthday and had problems getting the bees to set. The runny bees were not the only problem though; I had issues with the instructions and converting from American to English units. Added to that the fact that without the cake tin you couldn't really re-produce the cake I didn't include the recipe in the post. Well I've now played around with the recipe a little more and have a solution to all the problems!

The main problem was the bees. In this new incarnation I've switched from using royal icing to make large bees, to using writing icing to make small bees. After a fair amount of practice I've figured out the easiest way of making the bees which you can see in the accompanying video (I won't be directing movies anytime soon).

As for the lack of a suitable cake tin, well I've solved that by making individual cakes using a muffin tin instead. Of course the smaller cakes means the smaller bees work perfectly.

For the full recipe and to see exactly what the finished cakes look like, head on over to the cookbook.

A Sense Of Scale

I assumed that of the three edible star foods I blogged about, the cupcakes would excite the most interest. Apparently I was wrong. From comments, both on and off the blog, it seems that the cookie Christmas tree was the most interesting, so I thought I'd elaborate a little on it's construction, especially as the photo I posted didn't really give any sense of scale.

We used the Wilton Christmas Cookie Tree Kit to cut out stars of ten different sizes. We actually used two of most of the sizes to build the tree (we only used one of the biggest and some of the smaller stars to make the tree tapper to a point quicker). We also used the cookie dough recipe which came with the kit. Unfortunately the recipe was written in cups and I think I got the conversion wrong as it was so wet we had to keep adding flour for what seemed like ages. Also the cooking times given for the different cookie sizes didn't really match up with reality. Fortunately even with all those problems the cookies turned out to be more than edible!

So here is a photo of a single layer -- in fact the largest star. It measures a whopping 22cm across and weighs just over 12oz! Fortunately cookies, if stored properly, last a while and I'm thinking it's going to take us quite a few sittings to eat our way through this one star.

If you happen to want to add the forensic science touch to your photos then I printed out the measuring corner you can see in the photo from a PDF produced by Steve at Destinys Agent. The PDF is published under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share alike licence so feel free to have fun with them.

Edible Stars

If the moon is made of cheese then, going on the food we ate at Christmas, stars are made from ready-to-roll icing!

There was a cookie Christmas tree, Christmas cupcakes and then a star burst on the Christmas cake. All were good fun to make and exceptionally enjoyable to eat.

The cookies were made using a basic recipe and my Mum made the Christmas cake, but you can find the recipe for the cupcakes in the cookbook.

My Bees Wouldn't Set!

A few weeks ago I baked a birthday cake for Bryony. Whilst I might spend hours icing a cake I usually just bake simple round or square cakes. This time though I thought I'd use one of the novelty cake tins we seem to have acquired recently. Specifically the tin for making a bee hive shaped cake.

Once I'd converted the recipe into something that could be understood (poor English and American amounts don't make for easy baking) the cake itself was easy to bake and assemble. What you can't see from the photo is that there is a back to the cake and so the two halves have to be stuck together with honey flavoured butter icing. Everything was really straightforward apart from the fact that the bees wouldn't set!

The bees were made by piping three different colours of royal icing onto greaseproof paper and letting them set -- unfortunately they didn't. The problem was that making the black icing for the bodies of the bees takes quite a lot of food colouring in comparison to coloring the yellow icing. When I had eventually made black icing I piped the bodies onto the paper and then the yellow stripes and wings. A few hours later when I was ready to assemble the cake I found that while the yellow and white icing had set solid the black icing was still very runny. In the end we left the bees overnight to set. Unfortunately this didn't help much and the black icing was more jelly like than anything else.

In the end I managed to gently lift a few of the bees onto the cake without ruining their shape too much and even if they were a little soft the whole thing still tasted pretty good. I'll certainly be using the cake recipe again, even if I don't use the tin for a while.

It's Christmas.... At Starbucks

I hate the way that holiday treats are no longer confined to their holiday. For example, a Cadbury Creme Egg isn't a special Easter treat if I can buy them the first week of January. I have, however, been waiting since the first week of January for Starbucks to think it's Christmas!

Yesterday I walked into Starbucks and noticed that the usual paper cups had been replaced by red cups with snowflakes ready for Christmas. Why is this important? Christmas means they sell Cranberry and Orange Muffins! If you haven't tried one before then you really should stop whatever you are doing and find your nearest Starbucks as soon as humanly possible -- they really are that good.

(Werid Note: Starbucks is in the dictionary Blogger uses but Cadbury isn't. I wonder how much Starbucks coffee the Blogger staff drink?)

Realising the Semantic Web

It has often been said that the lofty goals of the semantic web community, embodied in the well known layer cake diagram, will never be fully realised. Well I have proof to the contrary. Here is a copy of the diagram and photographic proof that it can be successfully baked.

I'd love to be able to tell you that it tasted great as well, but unfortunately the colouring was marzipan and Nutella had been used to stick the layers together.

Penguins in a Snowball Fight

I thought I did quite well icing the Christmas cake last year. My mother has already iced their cake this year so my icing skills won't be required. Anyway I don't think I could have matched my mother-in-laws "penguins in a snowball fight" Christmas cake.

Christmas Cake

Unfortunately the last few days have been a little stressful. Colds and broken cars do not make for an easy weekend, especially not just before Christmas.

Anyway to de-stress this morning I iced the Christmas cake.

No idea what it will taste like (although from past experience very nice!) but at least for half an hour I wasn't worrying about anything else.