celebration

It's been a while since I have posted tales of my baking skills on here so I thought I'd share with you some birthday fun that I made today for my good friend Holly. You may remember the rainbow cake that I made for Amber - this time I decided to try some rainbow cupcakes. I used the same cake recipe from the Whisk Kid blog that's mentioned in the former blog post, but this time instead of baking separate layers of cake you simply layer the different mixes in your paper cases. I suggest that you use piping bags to do this - I used tea spoons and it took me about an hour! The final cakes came out super though, and I finished them with some american 'carnival' sprinkles that I purchased from Home Sense. Enjoy!

truffles

Today I've been doing a little bit of painting pictures of food (no change there then) ready for some of my Christmas gifts. I had a go at making truffles (sorry if you are getting these and your surprise is spoilt) so I needed some images of them for the... I suppose you'd call it a chocolate menu? The fillings guide!

I found that making chocolates from scratch was actually pretty fun and not as insanely hard as I thought. I made a traditional style ganache truffle as well as two others with unique fillings. 

The recipes for the unusual fillings were from a book by the rather fabulous Hope & Greenwood that my brother got for me for my birthday last year, and beside the sumptuous recipes the actual writing in there is worth buying the book for alone - a very witty style that kept me entertained whilst endlessly dipping chocolates! You can find the book here (it also features some fantastic photography and lovely fifties style illustrations. It's basically the kind of book I would design if I were a publisher!) 

Here's some sneak previews of the actual chocolates - don't look, friends! The stars I used on the white truffles are Dr Oetker and you can get them from most good supermarkets or online here. I got the edible red glitter from a specialist baking shop in my local town but I found some online here if you'd like to experiment! 

I won't tell you what's in these - I shall save that until after Christmas! 

Update: Now that Christmas is over I can share with you the finished 'choccy menu', complete with details of the chocolate fillings...

festive

Hand drawn Christmas holly themed typography

Continuing on the theme of being way too prepared for Christmas, I wanted to share with you a little of the work I've been doing on my own gifts ready for the big festive season. I designed a Christmas-themed font for all of the different elements of my gifts, and have been busy designing labels for different things just to give my gifts a more personal edge. I can never get away from my love of Typography so this was the perfect chance to get some festive designs ready.

 (Anyone reading this who I will be giving the following gift to - I hope this doesn't spoil the fun when you receive yours! it tastes good, trust me I've tried it!)

Handmade Mincemeat in personalised jars

This year I decided to make my own mincemeat, as I have often wondered if it would be really that difficult. Turns out it's not, at all! I opted for our national treasure Delia Smith's recipe which can be found here. Then I simply customised the jars with Christmassy fabric, print out labels and festive ribbon.  

bakery

It's been a bit of a large break in between blogs at the moment as I have been working on lots of different things. Today though, I can reveal something I have been cooking up 'Willy Wonka' style for my friend Amber's 18th birthday. A few months ago, she found an image of a rainbow cake and asked me if I thought it was possible to make - so I decided to make one for her birthday. I settled on a brilliant recipe from a blog called The Whisk Kid, whose recipe was not only fantastically written and easy to follow, but the photographs were to die for! So much so that it made me want to be a food photographer for a long time after I read this recipe...

 Anyway, I managed to get some Sugarflair gel food colouring from a brilliant local shop called Angel Cake (which you can also get online at places like this) and after two days of mixing with six separate wooden spoons and icing with a massive spatula, I arrived at the cake. Here's a few pictures of my progress (sorry for the quality, ridiculously bright cake batter and camera lenses don't mix!)

Part of the mixing process - it's a good job our kitchen is heavily overstocked when it comes to bowls and wooden spoons!

The finished cake - I opted for a lilac buttercream over a white crumb coating to hide the cake's gloriously colourful centre.

The offcuts of the trimming process demonstrate how bright the final product was!

 I presented the cake to her this morning in a custom cakebox, with a logo on the lid that I designed myself (above) so that she has something of the epic cake to keep once she has eaten it all. I even managed to sneak a piece of cake for myself and managed to get a couple of better quality photos for you.

Happy 18th Birthday Amber!

crafty

Let it Snow

Well, if you are living in Britain and are not living under a rock, you may have noticed that it's snowing. A lot. And when it snows in Britain, everything has to stop - trains, planes, roads, deliveries, the works. Which means I have plenty of time to go taking pictures of the snow and getting on with lots of crafty projects to keep me occupied! The bulk of the white stuff came on Saturday, which is when I took the previous picture. It's a photo of our front path covered in its blanket of ice white snow, which looks rather festive. Lovely to look at, not so lovely to go walking in.. might be time to invest in some new wellies I think.

My mother has been as crafty as me of late, and she has delightfully fashioned a heart-shaped Christmas wreath for our front door which is entwined with Christmas berries, spices and fairy lights.

Mum's festive door wreath

I have also been making gift bags this week - I got hold of some cheap brown paper bags from home bargains and decorated them with illustrations of Christmassy characters such as snowmen and reindeer, and added some shiny curly ribbons and luggage tags. These are for the children of family friends, and will be filled with luscious Gingerbread and chocolate goodies (when I have finished making them!) I also made one or two for my best friends to hold their Christmas presents, I think these bags would be just as fun for adults as they are for children.

Selection of festive characters - Reindeer, Snowmen, Gingerbread men, Robins and Christmas Trees.

All personalised with each child's name on a label, which says Merry Christmas on the reverse

Festive Snowman

Yesterday I had a go at some little chocolatey fairy cakes to match the gift bags. Each one is a simple chocolate fudge cupcake, decorated with snowmen and crisp sugar on some melted milk chocolate. I had great fun picking the decorations and the cases from our collection of pretty treats!

Sweet chocolatey treats

So it really has been a crafty few days. I ventured out into the winter wonderland and picked up some materials to make my boyfriend a birthday present (birthdays in January, the present buying doesn't stop!) and so that will be under construction in the next few days. Soon it'll be Christmas day, and I intend to sit back, perhaps with my Nightmare Before Christmas DVD on (how traditional) and maybe eat many Mince Pies. I am still waiting to see if my recipe for mince pies gets featured on the They Draw and Cook blog, fingers crossed it gets on there soon!

more

I have changed my mind. I want to be a food photographer. At least I do for now after making these little fellows...

I got the recipe for these from the Hummingbird Bakery book. They were the spiciest gingerbread men I had ever made, but their dark colour made for a brilliant contrast with the bright white icing (which was very hard to pipe, hence their slightly manic expressions). They were a lot of fun to make but even more fun to photograph, so here's a selection of images from the process -

Lots of flour everywhere

gingerbread

I think this poor fellow's expression speaks for itself. My icing is not great, I did hope for some celebrity gingerbread but this pretty much sums up how much harder icing with a piping bag is than it looks.

I need to do some work. Sigh.

lapse

so you can probably tell I'm no good at sticking to things. The only thing I've really managed to stick at is drawing and my relationship, both of which I have a soulful of passion for, and even then my passion for drawing sometimes wanes.

But I have seen a fair few awesome blogs again recently and it's given me another jolt to start writing this again. Plus the fact that I have to fulfil the cliché of having a new year's resolution - hey it's a bit late coming but I did it.

New year, new projects, new horizons. Currently embarking on an informational illustration project revolving around cakes (shockingly) and it's getting me involved with photography more. I recently purchased a Nikon D40 and I am rather in love with it, I'm still learning the subtlety of controlling the settings but I think I'm getting there.

also, I've been reading a lot of film magazines recently and I have become very excited about a number of films that will be hitting screens in 2010, namely -

• Up In The Air
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I
• Eclipse
• Food, Inc.
• Alice in Wonderland
• The Prince of Persia
• Precious

and there are loads of others. If I get to see all of them I'll let you know how good they are. But for now, here I am back on blogger, and hopefully won't lapse for three months again. enjoy

cupcake

Since I have been back at uni I have been hankering for some baking, I really do miss making cupcakes. Since buying a new cookery book over summer, I really got into baking and I made loads and loads of things so I just thought I would post a few photos of my creations from over summer, and hopefully in the future if I manage to make something special in our oven I will get a snap of it for you.