More Treats from T-Cake.....

Here are some more gorgeous cakes that i have churned out recently for T-Cake. These cakes were made during the festive season, so as you can imagine i have not stopped......the baking has had to take second priority as the demand in cakes was so much recently, but hopefully i will now be able to pick back up where i left off. (I know baking cakes is baking....but i want to stretch further than cakes on T-Cakery).

Above is the Ben 10 cake that i previously mentioned in my blog, it was a rich chocolate sponge, covered lavishly with chocolate fudge filling. I designed this cake on the watch Ben 10 wears (or the Omnitrix as i have now been corrected). The little boy wanted to have Ben in the middle with the aliens around him, as i have only just ventured into the modelling world (in fondant terms atleast) i didnt feel ready to take on such a well known character, so luckily i came across a Ben 10 figure in my local cake shop and it was something he could take off the cake and keep, so worked out well!!! I was told the cake tasted as good as it looked!!

This Cheerleader cake was made slightly differently to my other cakes. The recipient of the cake didnt actually like sponge, so the customer asked that i make this using a brownie mix to substitute. I was a tiny bit apprehensive about this, as i know brownies are renown for  being gooey stodgy gloops of heaven....and i didnt want to cover the brownie only to find that it sunk in the middle. In the end i cooked the brownie batter for 40 minutes as opposed to the 25 minutes guide given. After 25 minutes the middle was soooo gooey it just wouldn’t have held under the fondant and the figure. After 40 minutes a delicious sturdy crust had enveloped the gloop enough so i could begin decorating. The middle of this cake stayed gooey.......success.

Happy Baking

Toni – T - Cake

Merry Christmas......

Christmas is now literally only around the corner......nine day to be precise, and this year i will be baking more goodies than i have in previous years. Every year on Christmas eve, we all go around to my mum & dad’s house for drinks and food, my mum always puts on a huge buffet which never fails to impress.

This year i will be adding to this feast with a few homemade sweet treats, so look out for them on the blog, at this point in time i am making a white chocolate cheesecake (Mums favourite), truffles & cupcakes with mascarpone topping, and ganache!!!

Merry Christmas

Toni – T - Cake

T-Cake Gallery

As promised, here are some pictures of the cakes that i have made recently for T-Cake, the sister site of T-Cakery, i have been making cakes for over a year now and i am still learning, i hope you enjoy looking at them as much as i did making them.....and hopefully the customers did eating them!!!

This ‘Bedroom’ cake was made for my sister’s 21^st birthday and actually cemented a full year of cake making for me. I wanted to make something special that you don’t really see that often and also something that was personal to her. So as my sister is renowned for not being the tidiest of people, i opted to recreate her bedroom, complete with dirty clothes & unwashed plates. I also included a model of her in the bed, with some of her favourite items. The sponge was a moist vanilla flavour filled with gooey chocolate fudge filling. I took my time adding all the little details, and even put the wooden grooves on the floor boards!!

This cake was made for a Christening and is one of my personal favourites out of all the cakes i have done. The sheer size of this creation was overwhelming, it’s hard to tell from the photo but the bottom layer was immensely big. Everything on this cake is made from fondant and the building blocks on the top spell out the baby’s name. The bottom tier is made from a rich chocolate sponge and filled with chocolate fudge and the top tier is moist vanilla sponge and strawberry jam.

This slight naughty cake was made for a 30^th birthday. The customer specified to me the exact colour she required and i had fun making this Basque look more girly than the black and red one i did previously. I think the tassels on the front add a fun flirty feel to this cake. The sponge on this one was again vanilla, but filled with homemade butter cream and strawberry jam!!

This cake was made to match the invitations used for this birthday party. The customer’s showed me the actual cake they wanted to work from and together we picked elements to put together on this cake. Again the size of this cake was enormous, and it was really heavy. I actually weighed this cake and it was a stone in weigh!! By far the heaviest i have ever made. The sponge was vanilla, and this was filled with butter cream and jam!!

I have a cake ready and waiting in my kitchen for an order due on Saturday, this one is a Ben 10 cake - i love the look of it and cannot wait to show it on here!!!

Happy Baking

Toni - T - Cake

.......and after that pause, im back!!!

Firstly i want to apologise for the lack of actual blogging on T-Cakery lately, i have been so busy with cake orders from T-Cake that i’ve not had time to do anything else. I will upload some pictures from afew cakes i have made recently.

Secondly i am now the proud owner of a Kenwood Titanium Major!!! I cannot begin to describe how much easier this little mixer, or should i say rather large mixer, has made my life. I can now move about and prep my work whilst the eggs are being whipped, and the butter is being creamed rather than having to constantly stand over the bowl!!! The pleasures come from the small things.....

The actual mixer i got came with all of the above attachments (if not more), so now i can mince my own meat, make sausages & burgers from scratch, no more guessing how much meat is actually in them!! I can blend, mix, whisk, blitz, juice and grind every ingredient imaginable, oh and they threw in a nice set of Kenwood scales, a recipe book, and two DVD’s!!!

Happy Baking

Toni – T- Cake

Technically soup isnt baking.....

This week i have been knee deep in soup!! My cupboards are groaning under the weight of all the vegetables and bread rolls that i keep stuffing into them. I think the weather plays a huge part in what i tend to eat and now that the dark nights have crept in and the temperature has dropped – gone are the pesky salad’s and quiches and in with the soups and hot foods.

I’ve made two batches of delicious soup this week alone and cannot begin to guess how many pans of soup lay ahead in my future!!! The soup that i have been making this week doesn’t really have a name, i guess it could be called ‘Three Veg & Garlic’ – hmm doesn’t sound very appealing.

The veg i threw in were asparagus, carrots, leaks, onion and garlic. The overall end result of the soup was thick and yummy, add to this a warm bread roll and you can’t beat it for a winter warmer!!

You can even do what i did and make extra so you can take some to work the next day – and if I’m being honest, after a night of stewing the flavours seem to pop more and i thoroughly enjoyed it today for my dinner!!!

If you fancy making this quick and easy tea for yourself, check out my recipe below. You can play around with ingredients and spices and see what other little gems you can create – let me know if you stumble across anything nice, i’d love to add more soups to my list.

Ingredients

·         1 bunch of asparagus

·         Carrots

·         1 Leak

·         1 onion

·         Garlic

·         Chicken/Vegetable stock

·         Olive oil

1)      Add a small amount of olive oil to a pan and turn onto a low heat.

2)      Chop the onion,asparagus, carrots and leak into bite size pieces and add to the pan and allow them to sweat gently for approx 5-10 minutes or until tender.

3)      Drop one (and a half depending on your own preference) stock cubes into 500ml boiling water and allow to dissolve – pour this over the vegetables. Your looking to have the waterline just above the top of the veg.

4)      Turn the heat up to allow the stock to boil, then lower this back down to a gentle simmer. At this point add your garlic. (Overcooked garlic turns bitter).

5)      Leave the pan simmering for another 10 minutes, or until all the vegetables are tender. Then blast this in a food processor, or with a handheld blender to churn out all the chunky vegetables. (Don’t worry if you don’t have a blender, this soup can be enjoyed chunky, but i would recommend blitzing this down if possible).

6)      Add sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste and a drop of cream to garnish if required.

This soup is a really healthy soup – the only thing you are adding is water and vegetables so this is why its another favourite of mine. Warm a bread roll up to add to this dish if desired. I would have made my own bread but i couldn’t wait that long – the smells in my kitchen from this dish were too alluring!!!

Happy Souping!!

Toni – T - Cake

Please note the pictures used in this post did not belong to me (excluding the 'winter' pic, this one is mine) - i didnt have chance to take any of my yummy soup, as soon as i make this again - i'll upload mine!!

A Weekend of Baking - Saucy Cake

The other week I was asked to make a 21^st birthday cake for a member of my extended family. The brief was a boob cake, but nothing too saucy as the older generation would be present. It was ironic that I had an order for two boob cakes on the same weekend.

As this cake would have a body on it and not just boobs like the Pink Friday cake, I used a one pint pyrex dish to shape the boobs on this cake, and then carved a body/waist out of a normal square sponge. I covered this with black and red fondant and added some eye popping details.

The yellow sponge recipe was once again featured in this cake, and it was deliciously filled with smooth strawberry jam and vanilla butter cream.

The cake went down a storm, and I was frequently asked for the details of who this cake was modeled on :o) – boys will be boys…..no matter what age!!

Happy Baking

Toni – T - Cake

A Weekend of Baking - PINK Friday

You may of noticed that I didn’t feature a Baking Bowl challenge this week, that was due to the amount of baking that I already had in the pipe line this week.

On Friday 29^th we held a PINK Friday in work, this was held to raise money for breast cancer and I was asked to bake some goodies. In keeping with the pink theme, originally, I decided I was going to bring out the chocolate crinkles with a pink twist and some pink cupcakes. In the end, I made a batch of pink cupcakes, and a novelty boob cake which was to be raffled off.

For these little pink babies, I used my fool proof ‘Yellow Sponge Recipe’ which I actually found online. When I first came across this, it was measured in cups and not metric, the look and textured of this sponge sounded like something I had been looking for so I asked the owner of the recipe whether she could amend the recipe and show it in metric aswel, and she did this without a moments hesitation. I’m really glad I asked, because this is the best sponge I have made, and is the one I choose to  make all my cakes with. The overall texture of this cake is soft and moist, but not oily and greasy. It stands up well when faced with fondant and yet is delicate enought to be draped in frosting and not be too bland!!

 

After this batter was mixed I added a small blob of pink colouring. I used the pink from the ‘Sugarflair Colours’ collection. This turned my batter a vivid colour which I thought would surprise people as they bit into it. (I didn’t manage to capture a picture of the inside of one of these lovely gems). To decorate these I made my trusty vanilla buttercream and again added a dollop of PINK colouring. Then I simply piped this over the cooled sponge and topped them off with two decorative chocolate hearts, one milk and one white.

 

To create my BOOB cake, I again used the ‘Yellow Sponge’ recipe and poured the batter into a two pint Pyrex dish. If you decide to do this, be sure to leave at least an inch and a half of space at the top of the bowl, this batter rises when being cooked and can easily flop out over the sides.

Once cooked, I halved the sponge and simply filled them with a vanilla butter cream before decorating the top with fondant.

Yellow Cake Recipe

INGREDIENTS

280g SR Flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
230g butter (I swear by Stork)
400g Caster sugar
4 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla essence (or pods if you have these, one pod should be plenty)
240ml milk
4 egg whites

METHOD

• Preheat the oven to 180’ and line your chosen cake pan with baking paper, or grease it thoroughly with butter.

·         Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.

·         In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar together for about 2 minutes. Add egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each egg. Add in the vanilla.

• Add the flour mixture to the sugar/butter batter bits at a time, alternate this with the milk. You should begin and end with the flour. Try to add small amounts of milk at a time as too much milk will cause the mixture to split.

• Beat the egg whites in another bowl until soft to medium peaks. Make sure bowl and whisk are clean and grease free, or the eggs will not thicken. Fold half the egg whites in the batter to temper. Then fold in the rest of the egg whites.

• Pour batter in prepared cake tin(s) and bake for approx 45 minutes. The cake is ready when an inserted wooden skewer or cake tester comes out clean or when cake springs back when lightly pressed with a finger. (Remember this is a moist cake)

Buttercream Icing

An easy to make egg-free icing that works great for decorating cakes for birthdays. When you need to add colouring to icing, use colour paste. If you use liquid colouring, you may need to add more icing sugar.

Ingredients

250g butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

600g icing sugar

2 tablespoons of milk

Preparation method

1.       In a large bowl, cream together the butter and vanilla. Blend in the sugar, a quarter at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the milk, and continue mixing until light and fluffy. Keep icing covered until ready

2.       to decorate.

Lots of lovely cakes were made on the day and we raised a lot of money for this brilliant cause!!!

Happy Baking

Toni – T - Cake