Christmas cake

Every year I make a Christmas cake. I really enjoy baking it and I always do it at the same time every year, the last weekend of October, which is the same weekend my mum has always made hers. My birthday is also at the end of October so for me, much like Americans see the day after Thanksgiving as the start of the run-up to Christmas, I always see the my birthday as being the same (in fact, Christmas Day is exactly eight weeks after my birthday). For years now I've used Delia's recipe, just as my mum did.

The decorating, however, is a different thing. This is the part of making the Christmas cake that I find most stressful. As long as I can remember my mum has used Royal icing to top her cake, whipped up to look like snow and with much-loved plastic figures plonked on top to decorate. I tried this one year but I found the Royal icing too sweet and have otherwise always plumped for ready-to-roll fondant icing which is readily available in cake decorating shops and large supermarkets (or even small ones, I found mine this year in the Tesco Metro in Hammersmith station after the enormo-Tesco in Watford let me down).

So how to decorate? I wish I had pictures of past cakes but for some reason I either didn't bother or they're not on this laptop but I remember stars and silver balls, and holly and ivy. One of my favourites which I adapted from a design in a magazine was last year's (see above). The snowmen I already had but the Christmas trees, snow balls and snow were made from fondant icing. I dusted some edible glitter freely about - it looked much better in the flesh but just looks like dirt in the picture. And the path is made from chopped hazelnuts. I was pretty pleased with the overall result.

This year however, I just didn't have a clue what I was going to do. I thought, I pondered, but I made not definite decisions, didn't buy anything in and so was standing over the freshly iced Christmas cake on Christmas Eve thinking 'What now?!' In the end my Blue Peter watching of old came to the rescue and I decided to get creative. With just a piece of A4 paper, a pair of scissors and a large drink I started to cut, and cut, and cut! And I made a snowflake! I then used drawing pins to pin the snowflake to the top of the cake, brushed the holes with edible glue and then brushed over that with edible Magic Dust. When the doily/snowflake came off I was just left with the problem of the holes the drawing pins had made, so I painted a little edible glue over each one and plopped in a gold ball. Ta-da! Not the best decorated Christmas cake I've ever come up with but appropriately sparkly and rather festive.

Red velvet cupcakes

As I mentioned in my last post I've been thinking about Valentine's Day and so I thought it was about time I actually tried baking the cupcakes I am planning to sell. I decided on red velvet because of their name, their taste and their fantastic colour. They also seem a little bit more indulgent than normal vanilla, chocolate or lemon.

The recipe I used came from the Hummingbird Bakery via a telegraph.co.uk article and while a little more of a faff than my usual throw-everything-into-the-KitchenAid-and-turn-it-on recipes, it wasn't difficult. It also had more exotic ingredients than I'm used to with buttermilk, vinegar, bicarb of soda and, gasp, a whole tablespoon of red food colouring (of which more later).

My special little helper gave me a hand with the cakes, which mainly consists of pouring things into the mixing bowl. She gets very frustrated with me making cakes to sell because I've decided it's probably best if she doesn't help me with those. She's still much more keen on sneezing into the bowl than a tissue and I'm not all that keen on scrapping batches of cake batter. So today Betty got to play at baking with me. The biggest difference about these cakes to my usual all-in method was the careful mixing of a bit here and a bit there that the recipe demands. I'm sure at some point I'll think 'to hell with it!' and fling it all in the bowl and hope for the best but I decided to do as I was told for once and follow the recipe to the letter. This decision led directly to the most exciting part of the batter-making and the near-disaster of the frosting making, but again, more of that later.

At one point you have to mix the buttermilk with the vinegar, vanilla extract and food colouring. The vivid red of the resultant mixture was an absolute joy to behold. It was also a thick paint-like texture that was really, really satisfying. I only wish I'd been able to photograph it but my husband had taken the digital camera into work so you'll have to take my word for it until I make another batch . Honestly, I stood looking at the bright red mixture for ages until Betty tugged my arm and said, pointedly, 'Shall we mix it then, Mummy?!'

The cakes came out fabulously - just the right height in the case, springy to the touch. Ace! Then it was time to make the cream cheese frosting. I've only made this once before and it tasted great but was very gloopy. The recipe I used (which I thought was the Hummingbird one but have subsequently been told wasn't) said to stick everything in a processor and whizz it, so I did. BIG mistake. The butter had been out of the fridge all day but obviously wasn't soft enough because the frosting ended up with little lumps of butter in. Gah! It didn't affect the taste but it didn't look great. It was also still really gloopy, even after two hours in the fridge, and there was no way I would be able to pipe it, which is my usual decorating style. On speaking to other cupcakers I've discovered that cream cheese frosting is probably not going to be viable for cupcakes that I sell, so I've decided to use normal buttercream. But I got to use some of my new decorations on them and now I know that the sponge recipe is a winner.

RED VELVET CUPCAKES (from the Hummingbird Bakery book)
5oz/140g self-raising flour
2tbsp cocoa
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4floz/110ml buttermilk
1tsp vinegar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1tbsp red food colouring
2oz/60g butter at room temperature
6oz/170g caster sugar
1 large egg

1 Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/gas mark 3. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with cases.

2 In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, bicarb and a pinch of salt.

3 In a mug, mix the buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and red food colouring.

4 Beat the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Beat in the egg a little at a time.

5 Mix in a third of the flour mixture, followed by half the buttermilk mixture, then another third of the flour, the rest of the buttermilk and finally the rest of the flour mixture.

6 Divide the mixture between the paper cases. Bake for 20 minutes or until risen and springy - don't overcook them.

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING (from who knows where?!)
11oz/300g cream cheese
2oz/60g butter at room temperature
1tsp vanilla extract
12oz/340g icing sugar

1 Whizz all the ingredients together in a food processor. Chill or an hour or so before using.

NB. If I make the frosting again (which I probably will, it did taste lovely) I'll play about with the measurements of the ingredients a bit. And I'll definitely blitz the hell out of the butter first, then mix in the cream cheese, then add the icing sugar and vanilla extract. Oh, and I was advised by others not to overmix it because that's what makes it really gloopy.

Happy Valentine's Day!

OK, I'm a little ahead of myself but in much the same way as M&S are already planning what pants that charming popsy is going to be wearing in next year's Christmas ads, I've got to think about what marketing I'm going to be doing for Valentine's Day.

I've decided to give myself as little work as possible in terms of different orders and will be sticking to one flavour of cupcake - red velvet (you can read about them here at my friend Mrs M's blog), and offering half a dozen for a tenner. Cheaper than anything you could buy at Tiffany's, I would imagine. I think the fact that I've never made red velvet cupcakes shouldn't be a problem... should it? But I've already started buying the sprinkles to go on top. They are, from the left, silver 'smarties', gold heart-shaped dragees, red heart-shaped dragees, silver heart-shaped dragees, sugar butterflies (which I probably won't actually use for Valentine's cupcakes), and at the front little red lips. I already have some fabulous little heart sprinkles and I'll be baking the cupcakes in my favourite red foil cases. The other alternative is just to make roses like the one at the top, but that's quite labour-intensive and making one of them can reduce me to crying and swearing. Not much fun.

The most important thing really is to get the name of the Terraced House Bakery out there a bit more. Since I started in August I've had three orders from people who Googled for cupcakers in my local area and one of these customers has pushed at least six other orders my way. I think I'm going to have to do a craft fair in the New Year but the thought of it makes me want to cry. I've already been to the one I think I'm going to do and although I didn't think the cupcakes there were anything I couldn't do (better!), I'd still feel a little bit of a fraud. It's almost like I feel that because I'm just baking out of my kitchen I'm not legit.

Anyhoo, I've got a cupcake order for Saturday and a cake to bake for my nephew's 3rd birthday on Sunday, so hopefully it'll be next week for the first test samples. Yum, yum, yum.

Look at the purdy flowers!

I had a cupcake order to bake for the weekend and as is my wont I decided baking lemon cupcakes with lemon buttercream, coconut cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and vanilla cupcakes with lilac-coloured vanilla buttercream just wasn't enough work for one day alongside entertaining my father for an hour or so, picking Betty up from pre-school at lunchtime, picking Henry up from school at 3pm and then making them dinner. Oh no, far too easy a day! I decided I also wanted to make sugarpaste flowers for some of the cupcakes, this despite the fact that the customer had told me that she didn't want the cupcakes to be too girly (hence the lilac buttercream instead of, say, pink). My mum had rung and asked me to make cupcakes for Saturday evening and kindly matched the flavours I was already baking and as I always baked too many cakes in case of decorating disasters, I decided that I'd take a few to the school fayre on Saturday afternoon.

I have a note on my website that says that the minimum order is 12 so that I don't end up getting loads of annoying orders for three or four, unfortunately it doesn't specify how many flavours you can choose, which still leads to orders like the one above where I had to make four of each flavour. I really must work out a firm but polite way of asking people to limit their flavours to two per dozen (or if you like, a minimum of six cakes per flavour).

Anyhoo, I finally finished decorating the cakes on Friday night after a brief respite to watch the previous night's Curb Your Enthusiasm and eat a rather nice Chinese Takeaway (thank you the Magic Wok of Northwood!). I ended up taking the ones above to my mum's house. As I mentioned previously my customer didn't want her cakes too girly and Simon didn't think the school cake stall would let me put a few business cards next to my cakes so I wasn't going to waste the fancy ones on them. So it was left to my family to coo over my flowers. (Oh, and I can't take all the credit for them - the idea of decorating the centre of the cakes was 'borrowed' from a fellow cupcaker, but she's in the Bristol/Bath area and I'm in NW London, so we're not competitors.)

Oh Father Christmas!

My daughter brings all sorts of splendid and lovely bits of artwork (ie, old tutt) home from pre-school, but this one really did catch my eye. No, it's not the beautiful pencil-work, nor the splendid use of colour. No, it's the image it puts in my mind. Given the legend at the bottom of the page I just can't help but picture, just out of shot, Mrs Christmas wearing nothing but a Father Christmas hat and a festive smile...

And just in case you can't read what it says at the bottom, here it is in its full glory (gory?!)...

The great mince pie massacre

I hate pastry. Actually, that's a complete lie, I love pastry I just hate making it. I'm a whizz with baked goods generally. I'm very proud of my focaccia, my cakes are top notch (http://www.terracedhousebakery.co.uk) and I've even mastered the chocolate fondant that seems to defeat so many Masterchef contestants. But I have so far been beaten by pastry. It's either too sloppy or too dry, I can't roll it out without everything sticking to the counter top and/or the rolling pin and if I do manage to get it into the oven it invariably doesn't taste all that great. I just don't know what I'm doing wrong and it's getting to be an 'issue'.

Betty and I have just had an incident with the mince pies that never were. I'd made the pastry easily enough but, as I've already mentioned, it all turns to crap at the rolling out stage. I started effing and jeffing at the pastry, the rolling pin, the counter top and Betty just started crying. Harumph. I hate letting her down but it just wasn't happening. I'm going to have to throw myself onto the mercy of my mother and ask her to come round and show me how to do it properly.

I shall not be defeated! And I SHALL make my own mince pies this year!