Cakes: take 4 - Raspberry, Almond and Ricotta revisited.
July 01, 2008
I made the cakes I first posted about here for a second time this weekend, but tried a different icing. This time I made raspberry mousse to put on top! I had to improvise the recipe, because I am vegetarian and the mousse couldn't have any gelatin in it. Also I didn't really like the idea of a tofu mousse - sounds a bit odd. Anyway, I made a nice one using agar agar, but I think it could be even better, so I'll post the recipe when I've perfected it!
Here are the cakes:
I originally planned to fill them, using the cream cheese frosting from the first attempt, but I decided if a raspberry got in the way of cutting out a cone, the whole thing might fall to pieces. So I didn't bother.
When I first tried to ice the cakes, the mousse was too cold from the fridge and too firm - the tube of icing coming from the piping bag kept breaking when it bent round the edge of the cake, and the whole experiment was frankly a shambles. I used a spoon to smooth it instead:
I left the mousse out for an hour and tried again - it worked better, but I think the tips I'm using are too large. I thought bigger was better - but it's too thick to curl it around the cake, and does result in a spectacularly large quantity of icing. I will go down a size and keep practicing!
These are definitely an improvement though? And the topping was lovely - I will try another mousse next time with more raspberries and less whipped cream - it might be pinker and have more raspberry flavour.
I am also currently making a beaded wire tiara for a friend who is getting married, so it's not only cakes at the moment!
Posted by jen at 12:37 PM | Comments (14)
Third cake experiment - Dark Chocolate and Lemon
June 26, 2008
This is the third, and so far the best, cake experiment. Thanks for all your comments on the cakes so far, and the sympathies for giving cakes to those losers last week.
I thought about the cakes I'd made so far, and having read loads of recipes, I finally came up with some of my own ideas for cakes. I'm not terribly individual, and will still be using components of other people's recipes!
This week I decided to try a very dark chocolate cake, filled with tangy lemon curd, and covered in a big swirl of chocolate ganache. I also found some little jelly (vegetarian jelly!) lemon slices to put on top.
I used the recipe here to make the chocolate cakes - I used some incredible chocolate that was on offer in the shops, 85% organic dark chocolate! Here are the cakes:
Then I bought some posh lemon curd, although I will probably make my own for the real thing (and use the leftover lemon peel to make my own candied lemon to put on top) and filled the cupcakes.
I fitted in about 1.5 teaspoons of filling. I thought it was divine, but some testers thought there was too much - maybe I'll make a smaller hole next time and just put in 1 teaspoon. Next I made chocolate ganache, and let it sit until it was thick enough to pipe, and put some swirls on top. I didn't do a very good job - this one was the best:
I realised as I was icing that the ganache was too rich to have a big swirl on each cake, and it was hard to do it neatly. So I decided to just have a layer of smooth icing instead:
For the real thing, I won't let the ganache sit until it's quite firm before icing, so it will be smoother, neater and shinier.
These cakes scored 86.6% of all available marks - very pleased with that! The highest score was for taste of frosting and the lowest was for texture of frosting (I told everyone my idea to have it shinier next time and they agreed).
I only have one week left at work now before I move to the Southampton office! So probably only one more official trial of cakes to go - I'll be too shy of the people in the new office as I don't know them to make them fill out forms!
Posted by jen at 11:15 AM | Comments (10)
More cupcakes, and a RANT.
June 18, 2008
But first, the cupcakes!
Yesterday I had a go at the Caramel Apple Cupcakes, recipe here. They are (I think) enormously tasty, but some how I didn't get the caramel quite right. The topping turned out much more like fudge on mine (lovely, grainy, homemade fudge), and it was setting like a bugger while I was trying to frost the cakes with it, so the first 10 cakes came out smooth on top, if not shiny, while the last 4 looked like someone had rubbed fudge all over them, which was essentially what had happened! My god were they scrummy though...
Little cakes:
Cutting a cone out to put in the filling:
Filling!
Top back on:
Smothered in fudge:
All the little cakes - you can see them go from smooth on the right to rough on the left!
And here is a cross section of a cake - looks pretty cool!
The cakes scored highest for smell, which is fair enough, as they were full of spice etc, and lowest for presentation, which is also fair enough. The average score for all reviewers against all criteria was 7.9, so slightly less than last weeks cakes, but more on that below.
THE RANT:
This week a lot of my friends weren't in the office, so I took some cupcakes to another floor. I ended up giving some to people who were:
a) unappreciative (if I ask you if you want a cake, don't just say "suppose" and grab one out of my tin with your greedy little fingers);
b) made me feel like a dork ("do I have to fill out a form?", yes you do, loser, didn't I just explain to you what I was doing? How come everyone last week thought it was fun but you're scowling at me - you do get something out of it for yourself too! And you don't have to eat one if you don't want!);
c) then made meaningless comments on my forms, eg "the idea of cupcakes as a wedding cake is unusual so hard to judge", well firstly it's not unusual (SEE?!), and secondly I explained they were for a wedding, so why take one if you thought you would find it so hard to say if it's tasty or not, or "not sure fudge is the correct flavour" - what? Correct?
It all reminds me a bit of people asking me to knit them a jumper, but then considering it too much effort to come to the shops with me to pick yarn. I fully explained what I was doing and why, they were getting a yummy snack out of it, they should have taken part properly. And if they thought I was a dork, then don't take advantage of my good nature and waste my cakes.
Last week everyone was so lovely and gave me loads of great ideas and constructive criticism. I know who will get cakes on my next experiment.
Posted by jen at 07:37 PM | Comments (13)
The first cupcake experiment!
June 12, 2008
Yesterday I baked a batch of almond, ricotta and raspberry cupcakes, with cream cheese frosting, from the recipe here. Thanks so much to the owner of that site for all the recipes to choose from!
I only used raspberries, no blueberries, and no colouring in the icing. They turned out pretty fabulous!
Here are the baked cupcakes:
You can kind of see one in the back is a bit smooshed, it has too many raspberries in and I couldn't get it out in one piece! It still tasted fab but 0 marks for presentation.
And here are the iced cupcakes:
They are neat but nothing spectacular - I need to get one of those icing bags with the tips to make it look fancier.
Half eaten cupcake:
To make the testing more useful, I took 10 to work, and made people fill in a form to mark the cupcakes against various criteria! Everyone seemed very much into it, and took it very seriously!
Here are the returned forms:
Even one of the partners at work filled one out, and took it very seriously indeed, taking 5 minutes out to talk to me about his responses afterwards! It was great, there were lots of useful comments.
Here are a couple of sample forms:
The cupcake scored highest on average for taste of cake - this was 9.1 out of 10.
The highest overall scoring card got 99% of the available points, and the lowest got 71%. The average mark, for all scorecards against all criteria was 8.5 out of 10 - not bad!
The biggest point of contention was the frosting. Some people felt there was too much and it was too sweet, while some wanted even more. I thought there was too much when I was making them - I used all the frosting the recipe made, and I would never normally put that much on a cake - maybe that's the american style of baking? Since I plan to use the recipes on that website again, I will always decrease the frosting to 1/2 - 2/3 of what is recommended.
Everyone agreed the frosting was a bit soft - probably my fault as I used half fat cream cheese, it was all there was in the shop!
I will try another recipe next week!
Posted by jen at 09:25 PM | Comments (11)
I'm still here!
June 10, 2008
Hello internet!
Thank you all so so much for all the lovely comments on my last entry! You are all too kind, and I hope you understand if I don't reply to them all individually - I definitely appreciated every single one!
I have been very busy lately, hence the lack of posting. We are trying to organise me moving to Southampton, buying a house, getting a new job, and planning the wedding ALL AT ONCE. You can see why I haven't been blogging/reading blogs...
Now we have picked a venue though, and a date (14th March 2009) I think I need to start thinking more seriously about the crafting I want to do for the wedding. And here is where I could do with some tips!
I found a dress that I really like - you can see it here, also you can make the bottom removeable so it can also look like this. It's actually a very simple shape, a strapless dress with a straight skirt section, but I cannot for the life of me find a pattern for a dress like this, that I can then adapt it to have the extra skirt bit and the flowers. I have looked a lot already, but if anyone knows of a simple pattern like that, please could you let me know - I would be very greatful.
I am also planning that my dad and I will take care of the cake! We decided to have a giant tower of cupcakes instead of the traditional sort - I absolutely love fruitcake, I just don't like the heavy covering of icing. I am currently browsing all the recipes on the Cupcake Blog to see which ones to experiment with! I'll show you my experiments and not disappear for so long again - I hope!
Posted by jen at 07:45 PM | Comments (11)
Best Friends Forever!
May 07, 2008
I had a pretty wonderful bank holiday weekend! Adam arrived on Friday night and presented me with roses:
Balloons:
And a very sparkly diamond ring!
I have been wanting to marry Adam pretty much since I met him and realised he was the nicest man ever, so I was obviously over the moon!
We immediately drank an extremely expensive bottle of champagne my Grandad gave me at Christmas, and I can't think of a better occasion to do it!
We don't have a date yet because we haven't found a venue, but hopefully it will be soonish, and you can all watch me attempting to sew my own wedding dress and going mad with stress! But I wouldn't have it any other way.
Posted by jen at 09:14 PM | Comments (81)
It's here!
April 30, 2008
My Nectar book arrived today!
My favourite project is still the Dapple dress, but I also like a lot of the cardigans and the Flicker hat. I should probably start with the hat, since if I tried to make a dress right now the odds of finishing it would be slim.
It's a lovely book though, and I like the flower theme, it makes me feel Summery!
These are some of the books I've read this year so far. Well actually it is most of them - Adam has borrowed 2. I wanted to document the leaning tower before it falls over - one more book and I think it will topple:
I wanted to read 52 books this year, but I'm actually a bit behind. I think it's because I keep picking 800 page monsters! Some of these were great, some were good and some were decidedly OK. I'd like to make a quick note on each one before I forget, but that's for another day!
Back soon with Mexico photos, if I ever get them all uploaded!
Posted by jen at 07:16 PM | Comments (6)
Kim Hargreaves <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
April 24, 2008
The new Kim Hargreaves book is here!
Check it out here. Kim Hargreaves never fails to make me want to knit everything she designs - I still look through the last book lustfully even though I've already knitted 2 things and am not actually knitting at the moment!
I never thought I would want to knit a dress, but this one, Dapple, is delicious. I also love Enchant and Jasmine - very elegant. I like them all though, so I bought the book already! I suppose I'd better start knitting again soon if I want to justify new yarn purchases!
Posted by jen at 07:43 PM | Comments (7)
Magknits Patterns
April 23, 2008
Well! I know if you haven't got anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all, but I find it hard! I was VERY ANNOYED when I realised Magknits had been deleted forever. No, that's not true, because it is Kerrie's site to do what she wants with, but I was annoyed not to be given any warning.
The only way I found out is because I suddenly got a load of emails requesting a copy of the Hug pattern. Then I read all about it on Ravelry and found out the details. I have just spent the evening searching through the internet archive site, copying my patterns down, tidying them up, putting them into pdfs and uploading them - which I am more than happy to do (I would hate to see my designs die a sudden death if nothing else!) but yes, as I said, it would have been nice to be warned, so I could do it at my leisure and not from some massive cache that kept crashing and making me panic.
So here they are! In the next day or so I will update the information on Ravelry and on my free patterns page so everyone can find them without confusion, but in the meantime here are the links to the pdfs:
For Hug, click here.
For Kidsilk, click here.
For Tropical Sunset, click here.
For Nimbus, click here.
For Jessica, click here.
For Colleen, click here.
And now it is time to have a glass of wine and breathe a sigh of relief.
I just read this through and thought I should mention that these are all old patterns of mine - all the word docs disappeared with my old laptop, and since I thought they would be online for the forseeable future I didn't back them up - hence the panic!
Posted by jen at 08:59 PM | Comments (9)
Slacker!
Suddenly the urge stuck me to update my neglected website, and I thought I'd better so it right away in case I didn't want to again for another month!
I just got back from 2 weeks in Mexico. I will put some photos up here really soon - they are massive and it's taking me a while to get them onto flickr. If you know where my flickr page is obviously you can see the ones I uploaded so far! It was a fantastic trip, and felt far longer than 2 weeks.
I have been reading like crazy this year, instead of knitting. I don't know how people have time for more than 1 hobby! I will want to knit again though, especially as it looks like Kim Hargreaves is about to bring out another book and I'm sure I'll want to make everything in it!
In the mean time though, I really want to clear out my stash, and finished projects that I don't wear. I am planning to sell some projects, unused yarn and fabric, and give the proceeds to charity.
So if anyone is still reading down this photoless post, tell me what you think - is there anything I've knitted that you would like for your own? I'll try and get that going on this website pretty soon. Don't even think about offering to buy the caterpillars though, they aren't going anywhere!
Posted by jen at 12:38 PM | Comments (3)
