Kitchen Alchemy

For years I have been avoiding the cult of meringue buttercream.  I've done this mainly because it just seemed to hard to be bothered.  I tried French buttercream years ago, and I found while I could make it on my old Sunbeam Mixmaster, it just never worked on my Kitchenaid. But I have been watching my old school friend, Gail Turner, using Swiss Meringue Buttercream on many of her creations, and I thought, if Gail can do it, so can I.  I humbly asked for her recipe and she shared it with me.  Being ever the adventurer, I thought I'd use it for the very first time on my best friend's wedding cake - because living dangerously is fun! The process of making the meringue buttercream was relatively easy, although there is a point where you think it's gone horribly wrong.  Look away at that point, and by the time you turn your head back, a miracle will have happened! Ingredients 300g egg whites 375g caster sugar 675g unsalted butter (room temperature) 1 tsp vani

When my son requested a space party for his birthday this year, I rubbed my hands together with glee - finally I had an excuse to buy some cool tools from the Evil Cake Genius .  My grand idea for a cake was something that looked like Jupiter. I had seen a hand painted one on Pinterest, and I wondered whether I could create a similar effect with swirling fondant.  So I ordered the hemisphere baking tin and spherical cake combs and waited with baited breath until they arrived. You have got to love a fellow cake baker who shares their secrets with you - the Evil Cake Genius sent extensive instructions on how to create a flawless sphere. I was saddened to discover the bottom of her sphere is made from rice crispy treat. Straight away I knew I was going to be one of those smarty pants cooks who deviates from the well trodden path.  The instructions said to fill the tin to almost full to ensure you get a complete hemisphere. My first attempt was too short. I had to bake a

If you love cake as much as I do, you were probably astounded by the mergence of Katheryn Sabbath's drip cakes last year. Her use of candy colours combined with common candy decorations are a visual feast that has sent cake aficionados wild all over the world.  I thought I'd have a go at creating a drip cake myself, after seeing a tutorial this week that uses watered down candy melts for the drip component.  I had three seven inch vanilla buttercakes in the freezer. I set out to build a mega tower, which would let me take my 30cm Perspex scraper out for a spin. As I built the layers I quickly realised I'd end up with a cake so high, it wouldn't fit in my fridge and I would have trouble getting someone to eat it. So I went for three layers of two centimetres each.  I painted each layer with raspberry jam, then scattered a few frozen raspberries across each. Then I spread 3/4 cup of what I'm calling royal buttercream - royal icing made from meringue powder with 500g o

Okay, so you've got your cookies, you've got your flood icing. Now what? It's time to choose your colours and fill your piping bags. There really is only one brand of food colour that is used in royal icing. Americolor seems to be the only product that doesn't alter the very delicate liquid balance you've just spent about 15mins adjusting. Trust me, I've tried other brands - liquid colour, gel colour - they just don't produce the same result.  So choose your colours and decant about 200ml of icing into three small mixing bowls. I use ramekins. Add a few drops of colour to each bowl, reserve the icing left in the main bowl for your white supply. I try to stick to four colours per cookie project including white. But there's nothing to stop you from doing more if you have the inclination.  Use a long handled teaspoon to mix the colour through the flood icing, ensuring every last scrap of white is combined. Americolour will dry darker, so wit

If you read my sugar cookies post earlier this week, you're probably waiting with baited breath for the icing recipe. The good news is resting your cookies for one or two days is really good for laying down icing. It gives the butter a chance to drop and reduces the risk of grease absorbing into your icing and discolouring the final finish.  As I mentioned, I am a student of Belleissimo Cookies, so all credit goes to Belle for what I've learned. And Belle will tell you her knowledge is garnered from many masters around the world. There are so many great cookie artists willing to share their knowledge and I have benefitted enormously from their generosity.  You will be shocked, no doubt, when I tell you my royal icing is made out of Pavlova Magic! This is an Australian product based on meringue powder. In other countries meringue powder is easy to get in quantities. Not so much here. So Pavlova Magic is the secret ingredient. Now you know! Ingredients 2/3 cup warm water 1 Pavlov

In the past two years I've had the great fortune to make friends with Belle Harris of Belleisimo Cookies . Every year in October I shut down cake production because of the hot, humid weather. I don't have aircon in my home and I can't stand the added stress of cake designing  in the heat. So Belle suggested I give cookies a go.  Sugar cookies are a whole other art form to sugar craft with fondant. The cookie dough is a soft eating cookie, and you need to go to great lengths to keep your cookie in it's shape and level on the top. Sugar cookies take ages to make because the icing needs eight to 12 hours to dry. I've achieved a level of competence in my cookies, but Belle is at mastery level. You can check some of her cookie instructional a on youtube.  Meanwhile, here is my sugar cookie recipe, which I've adjusted to suit my style.  250g butter 200g pure icing sugar 1 tsp vanilla bean paste 1 medium egg 425g plain flour  1. Beat the butter and sugar until it

   So what have I been doing all this time?  Deepening my big cake skills mostly.  I found an amazing cake designer named Jessica Harris, who was an interior designer in a former life. She has an amazing eye for geometric design. I took her Craftsy class, Clean & Simple Design, in which Jessica teaches some of her most popular designs. But she also teaches her technique for getting the sharp edge on a fondant cake. Would you believe she turns her cakes upside down?  It's not for the feint hearted. Ganache must have been set for a day to attempt this technique. But it works! As you can see from this bee themed cake. So what's the trick? You prepare you ganache layer as normal, making sure you get the top level and the edges sharp. Here's what mine looks like when I'm satisfied with the finish.  I roll out the fondant and apply it in the same way as usual. I still panic every time I do this. You'd think I'd be over that by now as every job always wo

The word “tiramisu” literally translates as “pick me up”. This layered dessert probably earned it’s name because of the delicious coffee syrup soaked sponge that make up its base. It is believed tiramisu originates from Tuscany, which is famous for other layered cakes, however, it doesn’t appear to be a very old recipe. Tiramisu often includes a liqueur in the coffee syrup, which is why many people regard it as the Italian equivalent to trifle. The best tiramisus leak coffee syrup onto your plate, and always taste better the day after they are made. I came up with this recipe a few years ago when I was commissioned to write a children's international cookbook. Sadly, the book never eventuated, but this recipe has become legend in my house, with even my non-dessert eating husband slurping it up! 3 egg yolks ¼ cup caster sugar 1 tblsp corn flour 1 tsp vanilla extract 250ml milk 500ml marscarpone cheese 2 tblsp instant coffee powder 2 tblsp sugar 500ml boiling water 1

Long time no blog, right? I haven't been doing nothing though! Like most bloggers, I gave up on the big stories and went for micro blogging sites like Facebook and Twitter. I have been keeping the world up to date over there. Not so much here. I have been churning out big cake after big cake. I've also taught myself how to make sugar cookies. I'll taking a moment over coming weeks to put some new posts up. Cooking wise, when you have a kid there's a whole lots less fun cooking, I can tell ya! But there have been a few inventions. I'll share those too.

It wasn’t such a long time ago when the only colours cake decorating fondant came in were white and ivory. Then Cake Art came on the scene and introduced vibrant red, brilliant green and black fondant. In the past couple of years two new players have entered the market – Satin Ice and Bakel’s Pettinice, and I think it’s high time we took a look at coloured fondant and how it has performed in the jobs I’ve completed over the past year. I first bought Cake Art’s red fondant when I thought I would decorate a Christmas cake with all red instead of traditional white. I chickened out at the last minute, not confident I could pull it in the dead heat of summer. When I finally got around to using the 1 kilo roll of red fondant, I noticed it was very wet and somewhat grainy. My supplier (Hollywood Cake Decoration) told me it was possible to add up to one third white fondant to Cake Art’s intense red fondant, and it would still have the same deep colour. I didn’t need to expand the bu

When I was asked to make an Octonauts cake for a little boy's fourth birthday, I was very relieved to have all the coloured fondants from the Bakel's Pettinice range on hand to use. A year ago I would have had to mix up all the colours myself, which is incredibly time consuming. Having pre-coloured fondant to work with saved me a massive amount of time in creating the colourful characters from the cartoon series, Octonauts. I made this cake on the same day as the purple 30th birthday cake, so I still had to struggle with the hot weather. Once again the ganached cake had to be set in the fridge. And I also had to work cornflour into the fondant to ensure it would go on the cake. Unfortunately, I think I put a bit too much conflour which changed the chemical composition of the fondant, which in turn caused cracking and scarring on the sharp edge. While I was able to recover the fondant this time, I found out a couple of weeks later that too much cornflour can actually wr

I haven't been blogging a lot lately because it has been a summer of utter cake avalanches. Some weekends I have been doing two or three cake jobs and had absolutely no time to share photos or stories about it. One of the greatest challenges has been keeping the cakes under control in the hot Australian summer. I work from home and I do not have airconditioning, so I've had to work out how to get cakes to stabilise instead of turning to mush. I made this cake for a 30th birthday and got myself very tangled up trying to get the ganache to set. I made it about 12 hours before I needed to use it, which normally would be enough in winter to get it to the right consistency. But in summer it never achieved better consistency than thickened cream, so I had to put it in the fridge. Once I started covering the cake it had to go in the fridge every 20 minutes to get each layer to set. Overall this took me two hours, but remove the waiting time and, using the barrel ganaching t

If you live in Sydney, Australia, you will know that it has been a summer of extreme weather. We’ve had two extraordinary heat waves where the temperature has reached over 45 degree Celsius. And then there have been a few occasions when we’ve suffered through extreme monsoon rains. Both types of weather create conditions for cake baking which change almost everything I know to do in the kitchen. During the heat I left the butter on the bench and it warmed to almost melting, then I used it to bake cupcakes. The result was an incredibly rich, thick cake batter which produced about six more cupcakes than usual – a surprising, good result. In the monsoon rain I created a selection of cupcakes as samples for a wedding, with four different designs using buttercream, fondant and royal icing. The buttercream never set – never even formed a shell on it which is really necessary to help it hold its form. Mean while, the fondant absorbed the moisture from the air until it became sticky

What can I say about lemon that I haven't said before? I've told the story of my mother's lemon tree that fruited three seasons of the year. And I think I've told the story of the minature lemon tree my husband and I were given for our wedding (which incidentally has fruited more lemons this year than we've ever had from it before). Lemon is one of those classic flavours that just cannot be outdone. It's up there with chocolate and vanilla in my opinion. When I was pregnant, I was surprised to find I craved lemon (and tomato). I would happily have eaten nothing else, which probably wouldn't have agreed with me since both are so high in acid. Yet those were the two flavours I wanted most. I've had friends say in the past that a vanilla cake with lemon icing is the next best thing to heaven. Lemon when it is allowed to retain it's simple nature is a beautiful thing in cooking. So all hail the humble lemon! Here is my mornng snack tribut

One of the odd things about being a part time baker is, while I'm busy supplying quality baked treats to cafes and customers, I then get a cafe cake from the espresso bar where I get my coffee at work. I always find the choice limited and the quality questionable. So this year, I've decided to be my own customer for cafe cakes. It means I get a treat to go with my coffee that I know will be good, I'll save about $3.50 a day which adds up to $17.50 a week. Plus I will keep my husband supplied with morning snacks too - although I think he eats the snackies I make him in the afternoon. So here is my first cafe cake for the year - chocolate coconut slice, which has yielded 18 slices. We only need 10 for the week, so eight can go in the freezer and be enjoyed some other time. Ingredients 2 cups plain flour 2 cups desicated coconut 1 cup caster sugar 4 tblsp dutch cocoa powder 370g butter, melted 1 tblsp vanilla essence 1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celci

In 1998 my friend Sophie came to visit from France. It was the second time we met face to face, having been penpals since we were high school kids. Sophie came armed with a swathe of genuine French recipes, which we attempted to cook for a dinner at my mother's house. While Potatoes Au Gratin had been served in our home before, the recipe we'd used was not like Sophie's. Hers was based on beef stock and creme fraiche, which unfortunately was unknown in Australia at that time (or at least in Penrith). It also had bacon interspersed through the layers of potato, and if I remember correctly, needed topping up with more creamy stock as the potatoes cooked. My mother and I messed with Sophie's recipe so much, I don't think it resembled the French version much at all. And don't even get me started on the disaster of a cherry clafoutis, which we had no idea how to handle! It turned out rubbery and we could tell by the look on Sophie's face that it wasn

A couple of weeks ago I was scraping around looking for inspiration for some baby shower cupcakes. The weather was hot and I knew my usual piped buttercream wasn't going to cut it. At the same time I was tooling around on the internet looking for decoration ideas, when I came across a blog where a woman was putting fondant onto cupcakes with a thin layer of buttercream underneath. Back in 2009 when I first tried fondanting cupcakes I'd used white chocolate ganache as the under layer. It was really hard to get the ganache to behave well and I spent a lot of time smoothing it to form a neat dome shape. The lighbulb went on for me when I saw the buttercream under layer and I thought I'd give it a go. In addition, I have a texture mat that I really haven't put to good use in the years since I bought. I thought why not emboss a small amount of fondant on the texture mat and see what happens? It turned out to be a winning combination. Here are my tips for this c

Well it is that time of year again - when there's parties a plenty, with lots of fancy drinks and of course loads of festive fare to enjoy as well. I've kicked off what we fondly call "the silly season" with a cocktail party in my backyard. We had been thinking about doing this for a couple of years but were concerned we'd have planes landing all night, since we live under the Sydney flight path. Instead we had to battle appallingly hot weather on the very first day of summer. I must say I don't cope well with heat, and my face was flushed for the entire day. In fact I wasn't sure if I would ever return to my normal colouring again. But when we woke this morning, a cool change had blown in and some light rain had cooled things down. I so enjoyed preparing canapes for my guests I thought I'd share them with you. Rare Roast Beef Crostini Ingredients 1 French bread stick 1 tblsp olive oil 1 large clove garlic 250g rare roast beef, sliced p

Recently I took a trip to Canada to attend a course and had the great fortune to spend a couple of days in Vancouver. Of course Vancouver is all about the Canuks! The big foodie highlight for me was Granville Island, the location of the public market. With autumn falling across Canada, many shop windows showed displays of their harvest produce. I was concerned that there really wouldn't be much good food available, but boy was I surprised! Here is a selection of the great fresh produce I found on Granville Island. Granville Island was originally a swamp and was converted into an industrial island where the main product being produced was iron and steel. It fell into dilapidation after the second world war, and was reclaimed by the city and turned into an urban redevelopment in the late seventies. You get there by taking the bus from downtown, or you can catch the Aquabus which docks right outside the market. You can find out more about Granville Island by checking out t