We’ve moved!

So I’ve decided to move the blog to my website for continuity purposes

This is the new address: http://sugaredsaffron.co.uk/blog/

Come and re-subsribe and re-bookmark for a sweet 2013!

How I flavour white chocolate ganache

Look at that cute little thing! I think 6 inch cakes are my favourite size cake. Add some pink and chocolate to the mix, and its a sure fire way to get me cakexcited (like what I did there?).

This is a rich chocolate cake, filled with strawberry Italian meringue buttercream and covered in strawberry ganache.

I use a white chocolate ganache for all my cakes that aren’t chocolate cakes, or that don’t have a chocolate/ganache filling. This was the first time flavouring my ganache, though I’ve thought about it in the past. I imagine dry flavours like coffee or hazelnut would be pretty easy to reproduce, but what about ‘wet’ flavours like strawberry? There are of course flavoured oils, but I wanted to go with something natural and real. I did some googling and found a few different methods of flavouring ganache. None were in much detail, but that’s the fun of experimenting. To make the strawberry ganache, I used a strawberry reduction made by cooking down fresh strawberries and straining or liquidising. I’d seen some accounts where it was mentioned to offset any liquid with more chocolate but I literally used 2 tablespoons of my strawberry reduction because the flavour’s pretty intense.

Because white chocolate ganache is actually an off yellow, the resulting colour was a bit, ermm brown. So I added a teensy weensy bit of red food colouring to pinken it up a bit.

I’ve wanted to do the messy iced, rustic frosting, or whatever its called for ages and this is how it ended up. I really, really love the look, and its a plus that its pretty simple to do well if you’re experienced with icing. All you need is a palette knife and a spoon. After covering the cake evenly with the ganache and a palette knife, use the back of the spoon is soft circular motions to produce the waves of icing. Do this all around the cake and its finished. I used candy melts for the border, melted and piped.

The messy icing look isn’t as popular here in London as in the US, brides here are still riding the vintage train pretty hard, but I’d love to see more brides opting for it. Rustic iced wedding cakes with fresh flowers just have this appeal, and I can just imagine it at a Shoreditch wedding round the corner from me.

I finished the cake off with an open oversized peony. I usually do a more closed type, with loads of layers and takes quite a while to make. This was actually finished the same day, and personally, it was a lot easier. Not a flower for the beginner I’d say, as wiring skills are needed. I searched for peony cutters in the UK and didn’t find any I liked. When I had the opportunity to get something imported from the US, I purchased the Jennifer Dontz peony cutters.

I’ve already made 6 since I got them and I’m still not bored.

The easy way to make your own butter

Following the 1 litre of cream I used for the eclairs (It wasn’t the entire bottle!) I grabbed the opportunity to try making my own butter. Yes, butter is made with cream. In my youth I imagined fermenting bubbling cream, and maidens churning for hours in giant wooden vats. Clearly I didn’t have the faintest idea how butter was actually made. After googling ‘what to do with over-whipped cream?’ a long while ago, my chubby milk maiden fantasy was laid to rest. So that’s how you make butter! I had a epiphany and imagined making fresh butter every morning with home made crusty rolls and sunlight streaming through the window.

Turns out its not very cost effective to make your own butter, I’m not really that enthusiastic, and I never have cream left over. That stuff gets poured on whatever I’m eating. So my butter dreams were laid to rest until now.

Its extremely easy to make, and doesn’t need a recipe. Although I suppose that instructions might help.

The making of home-made butter

• Quantity of double cream.

• Stand mixer (or handheld, or jar)

Bread and butter

Method:
Whisk the cream in the mixer on medium-high. The cream will pass the lovely whipped stage and start to curdle. Buttermilk will separate from the fat solids, its a white translucent colour. Tip it.

Add some ice cubes to the mixture to help get rid of liquid and keep the butter cool.
Tip more liquid.

When your happy with the texture of the butter, pat it dry with some kitchen towel and add salt (or herbs) if you want. Shape the butter and wrap it in cling film or baking paper. Will keep in the fridge for a week, or maybe longer.

I served mine with some soft home made bread rolls I made the day before. Whilst I wont be churning my own butter for my cakes, it’s one of those things to do every so often, and at least have a go once.

Have you tried making your own butter? Or do you feel inspired now you know how easy it is

Playing with eclairs

I’d been craving the slightly salty chew of choux pastry and had a litre of cream in the fridge.

Don’t ask.

Time to whip up some éclairs. It’s not really whipping, because it involves quite a few steps and time so you may find that by the time you’ve finished making the éclairs, your creamy zeal has kinda faded. They still taste BANGING though. Yes I said banging.

Ever sat and thought about that éclairs are just long profiteroles. Its a question to ponder over. Or that profiteroles are just short round eclairs? Which came first? And why aren’t profiteroles called small eclairs in french? And sorry, no crème pâtissière, I’m so used to commercial eclairs stuffed with whipped cream I can’t bring myself to leave it.

It also gave me the opportunity to try some ‘darker’ photos. Eclairs have this rustic ‘I-don’t-give-a-crap-that-I’m-hollow,’ look about them, so my over exposed bright cake look doesn’t seem to fit.

New website!

So my last website I paid for. I got in contact with a web designer, got it made and paid. I liked it at first, although it wasn’t perfect. I was supposed to be able to add photos/edit the site but said designer never explained it to me. So I was stuck with a site that I couldn’t edit, and a ‘web designer’ who decided the professional thing to do was ignore emails. C’est la vie

After a lot of thinking, reading tutorials, blogs and watching youtube vids I decided to bite the bullet and do my own site. My bro’s at Uni doing something with computers so naturally the noob in me thought he’d be able to do it. Wrong – that dude is doing something about games or some other such modern computing degree. No way was I going to even attempt to learn code, I can only just use simple html (still don’t know what xhtml is)

What seemed the ideal ‘thing’ to use was WordPress. I already blog with it and it seemed simple enough. Long story short is I figured it out! I purchased a theme from Themeforest and got on with taking photos for the site.

Here’s the finished site as it looks today. On second thoughts log on to www.sugaredsaffron.co.uk and let me know what you think

Ciao!

Egyptian rose shortbread

I love shortbread because its so easy to make. I’ve tried some absolutely terrible recipes though. Too much butter and you can’t handle it, not enough and its not ‘short’. Biscuits are also a good thing to bake right now whilst the strange British weather is warm.

The rose water adds a fragrant, exotic flavour. The rose petals add beautiful red-pink flakes to the biscuit and deepen the flavour. Its a departure from the Scottish original, but I’m not Scottish so I don’t care!
The rose petals are really Egyptian. We bought them on our trip to Alexandria last december. We were doing our last shop before we left and the herbs and spices were so cheap. In the last minute rush in the supermarket, he asked me what else to get.

“I dunno, get some rose petals!” It just seemed like the north african thing to do.

Other recipes you’ll find have cornflour, rice flour and all sorts of stuff which promises a great melt in the mouth experience. I mostly like to keep things as simple as possible though.

I don’t have a dishwasher.

Calling this the best shortbread recipe ever would be hyperbole, but I’m not going to be looking for an alternative. Win.

Rose shortbread recipe

Ingredients

• 210g plain flour
• 100g cool salted butter
• 60g caster sugar
• 1tsp vanilla
• 1tsp rose water
• 1tsp-1tbsp rose petals

Method
(If you have a dough blade for your food processor put it in now.)
Put all of the flour into a food processor. Crush the rose petals roughly in your hand add to the flour.

Process for about 10 seconds until the petals are evenly distributed through the flour.

Dice the butter into small chunks and add to your food processor.

Add the vanilla and rose water and process the mixture until it just comes together. If the mixture doesn’t come together, add a little ice water a teaspoon at a time.

Take out the dough, wrap in cling film and refridgerate for 30 mins.

Preheat the oven to 180C

Cut a piece of baking/parchment paper cut to fit the size of your baking tray. Lightly sprinkle with flour and roll out your dough onto it to a thickness of 5mm.

Use a round cutter to cut out biscuit rounds, make sure they aren’t too close together as they spread slightly whilst baking.

Lift off the extra pieces around the rounds, re-wrap and put back in the fridge. I needed to do this twice with my baking tray to finish up all the dough.

Bake the shortbread for 10-15 mins until the edges start to lightly brown.

You should end up with something like this:

If you are a bit vanilla, just leave out the rose water and petals and you’ll have a recipe for all butter shortbread. Or try substituting in some brown sugar and adding some cinnamon for a spiced winter shortbread.

lace style flowers

This cake was designed after the lovely Carla Thomas, of Carla Thomas Photography contacted me about designing a cake for a Titanic themed shoot. One of the perks of being a London wedding cake designer is being able to get involved with so many creative talents. The shoot was to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the voyage’s demise, and was complete with era appropriate dresses! The brief was brief (see what I did there). Just simple and white, to match the Victorian style of the shoot that was actually going to be on board a boat!

When I though about the design the first thing that came to my head was lace. And I did really think about lace. There are a number of lace moulds on the market that are very popular, but as much as I think they make for very pretty cakes, it doesn’t look like lace to me. There’s always the option of using real lace on a cake. For borders I think it can well but strewn all over reminds me of an old granny’s curtains.

The most realistic method for producing lace effect cakes is no doubt Sugar veil. It’s a very unique product, and the effects you can get with it are incredible.

Example of Sugarveil on a cake

Some decorators struggle getting to grips with it whilst other use it on every other cake. It seems like one of those products which splits opinions amongst sugarcrafters. Although display cakes are the perfect way to practice new techniques, I only had a couple of days and a severe case of tonsilitis to contend with so sugar veil was a nono.

The bottom tier of the lace style cake, with blossoms and royal icing piping.

For me the idea of simple piping with small blossoms has a fabric-y feel to it. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t say it was lace effect, but definitely lace style. Its simple, without being a just-throw-a-ribbon-on-it kinda job. The shoot was featured on the Want That Wedding blog. I wonder if will anyone will notice the difference between the photos here and on the blog. The cake for the shoot was actually four tiers. A while later I played around, took the bottom tier off and placed a rose on top. I think I prefer it this way.

Simple Chocolate Tart

Pies, muffins, cheescakes, tarts. I feel guilty just typing them all.

This very simple recipe that produces a lovely dense filling, lovely with Vanilla ice cream and some raspberries. If you already have a go-to shortcrust pastry recipe, use it. You can add a bit of icing sugar if you’d like but its not essential. If you want to buy shop bought and you aren’t in a squeeze time-wise, then give yourself a little slap for your minor cheat. This recipe is for a 9″/23 cm pie tin. On the subject of tins, I much prefer the ones with the loose bottoms (hehe) as its much easier to push up the pie then risk breaking the crust when trying to get the tart out of a normal pie tin.

Sweet shortcrust pastry:

• 200g Plain flour
• 100g  Salted butter
• 50g Icing sugar
• 1 Egg yolk
• 2 tbsp cold water

Tart filling:

• 300g Good quality dark chocolate
• 150g Butter
• 5 Eggs
• 50g Icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp Vanilla

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas mak 6
In a food processor, process the flour, butter, and icing sugar. Mix the egg yolk with water and add to the mixture. Process till the pasty comes together.

Remove the pastry from the processor, wrap in cling film and put it in the fridge for 20 minutes to settle and cool right down.
Roll out the pastry into a 9″/23cm pie tin. Prick the pastry with a fork, line it with baking paper and fill with baking beans. Refridgerate for 30 mins or freeze for 10.

Bake the base for 10 mins and remove the baking beans and parchment. Put it back in the oven for another 3-5 minutes as the base will be a bit wet, and you don’t want it to end up soggy.

Reduce the heat to about 180°C/360°F/Gas mark 4.

Make the filling by melting the chocolate and butter over a double boiler or by zapping in the microwave in 30 second bursts. Keep mixing until fully melted.

Remove from the heat and let it cool down before adding the eggs, icing sugar, and vanilla. Pour the filling into the pastry case and bake for 20 mins. The tart should be just firm and don’t worry if it rises a bit, it will cool down and sink again. Let it cool in the tin and sprinkle over icing sugar. Serve warm or cold.

 

Featured on CakeCentral magazine!

At the very end of May, CakeCentral.com approached me to design a cake for their magazine. I wasn’t just thrilled, I was absolutely over the moon! I’ve lurked on CC for close to 3 years and have just recently started posting. I know the big names that have been featured in the magazine, and that post on the forums, so for me to be in the same magazine as them, well it was just too much :’)  Having a bit of a Paltrow moment here.

They gave me the deadline: ONE WEEK. Okay, so its a dummy cake meaning there’s no baking time involved.  But there is designing, decorating and getting some ‘real’ photography done. I was already up to my neck in things to do that week but I also had no way of telling whether they’d ever approach me again, so I decided to throw caution and common sense to the wind and get my head down.

I figured out my design, but obviously my iPhone wasn’t going to cut it so I contacted a few photographers I was familiar with. Thankfully one came to my rescue! Emanuela, the wonderful London photographer behind Nimama Photography, took some disgracefully amazing photos of my rushed work well in time for the deadline. I managed to sumbit the shots

The inspiration was teal and pink, and I was also sent a mood board to work with which included some pinkish flowers. I decided to do the vintage stained style roses. I have no idea what they are called in real life, but I’ve seen them at flower markets and florists. The cake was featured on two pages, a full shot and a couple of detail ones. I can’t release the original images yet, but these aren’t even my favourite!

I really hope I do get requested to feature on the CakeCentral mag again. I love that I share the pages with a whole host of other amazing cake artists and having a brief that other decorators all interpret differently is so cool to see. If you haven’t got your issue yet you can download it here http://cakecentralmagazine.com/. My cake is featured in the Volume 3 issue 5, but you can also download back copies too.

This is me avoiding a ‘My first post on my new blog!’ post.

…Because I’ve found that when I read that on a blog, its NEVER updated.  So this is me with the first post of the blog, but hopefully not the last. I really hope to do this properly, which is why I took a while to make the decision on whether to blog-or-not.  I’m going to be going all retrospective for a few weeks and I’ve had an amazing  first 6 months as part of the London wedding industry and I want to document it all. Well not all, but there’s been some shizzle too cool to allow to just fade into normal memories.