September 2013: Cupcakes and panda roll cake

 September was a quiter month - I made some simple lemon cupcakes piped with a little yellow food colouring to make the 'rose' shape stand out a bit. I'm always impressed at how good they come out. I should have made the butter icing a little smoother though, it was a bit stiff which caused some problems when piping.

I had another go at a picture roll cake, and made a panda - so many possibilities! I love Panda's.

August 2013: Cake picnic!

August was the highly anticipated cake picnic. There were chocolate cupcakes, I made a bundt cake with coloured balls in it (the balls were baked in a cake pop mold, then added to the batter in the bundt cake pan - it looked very colourful!), fruit pasties, brioche and curd sandwiches, pizza cake, apple and marzipan rolls and Earl Grey cake baked in tea cups! All very tasty.

 

Cake balls for the bundt cake

I also made another delicious coconut curd cake.

 

July 2013: Matcha Custard and Chocolate Cake, Strawberry Cream Cake, Chocolate and Strawberry Cream cake, Mille Fuille, Early Grey Profiteroles, Cake Tattoos.

 Yeesh, I am so behind in updating this.

So in July I was in the mood to make fancy cakes.
I got some Organic Matcha powder and experimented with it a bit. I decided to make lots of different things, I made some Matcha Crème Patisserie . It looks a bit grim in the bowl, but it's actually super tasty and looks much nicer in real life, a pale green. If you want it more vivid then add more Matcha powder.

My favourtie combination ended up being Matcha Crème Patisserie and Chocolate cake. So I made a chocolate cup by coating the bottom of a silicone cupcake case with chocolate, putting a circle of chocolate sponge in the bottom and topped it with a swirl of Matcha German butter-cream...which ended up a bit grainy (still working on getting that right). Next time I'll just use whipped cream instead.

I topped it with a strawberry from my garden (Im a terrible gardener so I was super proud I actually got some good strawberries from my plant).

I had a go at making what the French call a Fraisier cake, which is basically just a layer of cake, strawberries and Crème Patisserie and another layer of cake. I tried a few variations. So I had a chocolate cake layer, or a vanilla one, I also tried some of the Matcha crème patisserie with the chocolate cake version which was quite nice.

I made some very messy Mille Fuille as well, which was basically bought puff pasty cooked and layered with creme patisserie topped with water icing and decorated with chocolate. It tasted good but the crème patisserie sort of sploged out the sides a bit, so I think next time I need to experiment with adding some agar agar to set it better. 


I also had a go at some Earl Grey Profiteroles. Which were absolutely heavenly. I just made some choux pastry (pipped into blob shapes) and filled it with Earl Grey flavoured crème patisserie, and topped them with a Lemon and honey drizzle. (water icing made with 1tsp lemon extract and a drizzle of honey) SO GOOD. They tasted of summer, they were so light and delicious the only regret I had was not adding some whipped cream into the crème patisserie as I think that would have made them perfect.

I discovered  a Japanese lady called Junko who makes deco rolls. I think she's amazing - she's so creative and I had never thought about decorating cakes this way before. Essentially you make a roll cake and then colour part of the batter with food colouring, and pipe it on the bottom of the cake pan - cook to set it, then add the rest of the cake batter. It's a brilliant idea and her's are so amazingly cute.

I just used my normal cake batter filled with whipped cream. I printed off a picture about the size I wanted, put it under some greaseproof paper and the traced over it. Sadly my totoro was a bit too complicated to look good, but Hello Kitty came out so well. I was very proud.

I just used my normal cake batter recipe - but whipped the egg whites into a meringue to make it more like a chiffon cake. (So basically make as normal but only add the egg yolks with fat and half the sugar, add the flour and then add the egg whites whipped with the rest of the sugar last).

 Here is an English translation of the recipe she uses for her roll cakes - which I really need to try because they look so fluffy and pretty!

 Junko sells a book, with the recipe and templates in on Amazon but it is in Japanese. I really do want a copy though. Maybe someone will buy it for me one day!