Sweet stuff by Shannon

This blog is moving

2010-08-31T23:47:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone out there in blog land!

I just wanted to let you know that I'm in the process of moving this blog to a new location. In the next few days, I'll be doing some internet magic and hopefully everything will transfer over smoothly.

But in the mean time, if you'd like to subscribe to my new blog, there are a couple options:

You can visit the Sweet Stuff section of my new blog.

Or you can visit my main blog, which also includes photography, writing, travel and general musings.

Please excuse the dust while I'm in the middle of the relocation and redesign...and thanks for reading!

Cherry Blossom wedding cake v2.0

2010-07-07T23:14:00.000+01:00

As a follow-up from my last post, take a look at this baby!

Yeah, so I was really happy with how this cake turned out. It was a vast improvement on version 1.0, and it really goes to show what a difference a bit of practice can make - and how much learning goes on from one cake to the next.

I suppose that lesson goes for other things in life too.

This was real cake underneath. Hubby's work had requested a cake. And since there were no requests on how it should be decorated, I decided it would be a good opportunity to refine my cherry blossoms.

The cake inside was a chocolate fudge cake. It had a dark chocolate ganache filling with Tia Maria, and a coffee-flavoured butter cream on the outside. All covered in fondant, of course.

While the final wedding cake will be blue instead of white, I decided that one thing I don't need to practice is colouring and rolling out fondant. So I bought the pre-rolled stuff.

After doing v1.0, I also decided that the beaded border wasn't quite right. I had originally thought that smaller beads were the answer. But on this version, I tried a fondant ribbon instead. I think it's the answer - gives a nice finish, but is simple and unobtrusive. There's plenty else going on without the need for a fancy border too.

My favourite part of this cake was the branches though. They took a bit of time to get right, but they were definitely worth the trouble in the end.

First I made the basic branches with brown fondant. Then I textured them with one of my modelling tools.

This was then followed by a painted-on layer of icing colouring watered down with clear liquor and once that dried, a layer of bronze luster dust.

For this cake, I also made the blossoms as I needed them. While it would be nice to have all the blossoms pre-made, I think making them as they go on the cake gives a bit more flexibility and you can make each one a bit individual.

Plus, it allowed better clusters of flowers - with the fondant still wet, they could be shaped around each other.

Finally, the leaves went on. I was impressed by what a difference just a tiny bit of greenery made. To be honest, I'm not even certain that real cherry trees have leaves when they're blossoming. But they definitely make the cake look better!

Cherry Blossom wedding cake v1.0

2010-07-04T22:12:00.001+01:00

Okay, so I'm making a wedding cake for one of my best friends in a few weeks time, so I thought I'd better get practicing.

First off, I'd better give a shout-out to the main inspiration for the cake - I think this cherry blossom cake is absolutely gorgeous and I can only wish that someday my cakes are just as amazing!

So now, on to mine!

I started out by making a mountain of blossoms last weekend. I made four different sizes, and an awful lot of them.

Then I let them dry for a week. A week was far longer than required, but I was busy with work and stuff, so that's how long they got!

This weekend started with a fantastic surprise: my lovely mother who sent me some cake forms from America - I really wasn't looking forward to baking an entire wedding cake just to practice on! I have a bridesmaid dress to fit into in 3 weeks and eating and eating an entire wedding cake would not help in that pursuit!

See how happy I was when they arrived!?

Anyway, I learned about working with cake forms and fondant with this process...I think many of them will make super posts on another day. But here they are in quick format:

You can't just slap fondant onto a cake form. It will tear and you will get angry. Be sure to wrap it in plastic wrap, and then put buttercream on it. Just like you would with normal cake.
If your fondant is sticking to surfaces or drying out, use a bit of vegetable fat. It moistens it up very nicely and is much better than corn starch for the sticking, as it lubes everything up - plus, it doesn't leave little white marks on your coloured fondant!
Clear liquor is much better than water for use as a fondant glue. I've been using Triple Sec, but that's just what we have in the cupboard.
Even if the cake looks extremely rough to start with, a few carefully place decorations can make a huge difference.

Okay, so now that we've established that I've learned from this experience, let's look at the finished product! (notice that it's not completed - there are some border beads missing, I decided to stop applying them once I decided that I wouldn't be using them on the final cake)

So, the things that I'll do differently for the next version:

I will add the petal dust to the blossoms before the fondant dries.
I will add texture to the branches with the shell modelling tool
I will use smaller beads - or possibly a string of plastic beads.
I won't bother making the very small blossoms - I never used any of them
I will use pre-coloured fondant for the stem - I just couldn't get the colour dark enough for my liking!

Later in the week, I'll be making a real-cake version for hubby's work. It'll only be two layers tall though. It'll be a good chance to refine the tree-making process!

Homemade Thin Mint cookies

2010-05-23T23:02:00.001+01:00

First of all, for those of you who don't know, a Thin Mint is the most famous of the cookies that are sold by the Girl Scouts of America.

They are flogged across the country for a few months every year, earning money for the scouts and widening the American waistline a little bit more.

And the Girl Scouts do an amazing job selling these tasty treats too. Even though they're only sold for a fraction of the year, they're the third highest selling cookie in the country, only behind Oreos and Chips Ahoy.

I know I shifted a LOT of cookies when I was a Girl Scout. There were a couple years when I sold over a thousand boxes of cookies, and of course the majority of them were Thin Mints.

The problem is, though is that Thin Mints aren't available in the UK...and a few weeks ago, I got a craving for them. So what other choice did I have than to make them myself?!

To get myself started, I took inspiration from the Thin Mint recipe over at 101 Cookbooks, but changed it up a wee bit - including a metric conversion.

I started by creaming together butter and powdered sugar.

Then I added some vanilla and cocoa powder and mixed it thoroughly.

I stopped here and tasted the mixture. It's basically a chocolate buttercream and it would be amazing on top of some cupcakes or as a cake filling.

Finally, I added the flour and peppermint oil and mixed it until just combined.

Next up, I formed the dough into a ball and put it on a piece of cling film, placed another piece of cling film on top and rolled it out nice and thin.

By using the cling film like this, you can roll everything out without having to add extra flour. Plus it makes removing the cut-out cookies easier.

Once the dough was rolled, I cut the cookies out and placed them on a cookie sheet. Not much space needed between the cookies as they didn't spread at all.

Next time I do these, I'm going to poke a circle of five or six holes with a toothpick. Just to give a bit of a pattern to the cookie surface.

Then, I baked the cookies for 10 minutes, removed them from the oven and allowed them to cool on a cooling rack.

But here's the trick to get them nice and crispy. Once they were cool, I put them back on the baking sheet, upside down, and baked them for another five minutes. This removed any remaining moisture.

As the cookies cooled for the second time, I melted some chocolate (I used the microwave) and mixed in the peppermint oil to taste. Make sure you use peppermint oil. If it's not oil, it may contain water, which will make the chocolate seize up and unusable.

Finally, I dropped each cookie into the chocolate, scooped it out using a fork, shook off the extra chocolate, and placed them back on the cooling rack, with some parchment paper underneath to catch the extra chocolate.

If you want less chocolate on these, I think they'd be just as tasty with just a drizzle of chocolate on top.

You can put the finished cookies in the freezer for a few minutes to make the chocolate harden faster. If you do this, when you take them out of the freezer, be sure to place a tea towel over the top as soon as you pull them out. This will help to avoid condensation forming on the cookies.

Or just eat them straight from the freezer. They're delicious cold!

I chose to wrap them up in a tube of parchment. I thought this was reminiscent of the way real Thin Mints come wrapped...plus quite cute!

Homemade Thin Mint cookies

Ingredients

Wafer cookies

226g butter
130g powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
130g cocoa powder
3/4 tsp salt
Peppermint oil to taste
134g plain flour

Chocolate mint coating

750g chocolate, chopped (I used milk chocolate, but I think dark would be better)
Peppermint oil to taste (must be oil if it's not oil, it will make the chocolate seize up)

You'll also need

Cling film
Rolling pin
Cookie cutter

Preheat oven to 350F/175C

Instructions

Cream together butter and powdered sugar until fluffy and light in colour.
Add vanilla, cocoa powder, salt and peppermint oil and mix well.
Add flour and mix just until combined.
Turn out dough onto a piece of cling film and place another layer of cling film on top. Using a rolling pin, roll until flat and thin - about 3-5mm.
Remove top layer of plastic wrap and cut out cookies. I used a small fluted cutter. Place cookies on a parchment lined baking tray - they can be pretty close together, as they won't spread.
Repeat steps 4-5 until all dough is used.
Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes. Remove from baking sheet and allow to cool completely
Place back on baking sheet, upside down - they can be right next to each other this time, and place back in the oven for another 5 minutes. Double baking helps to remove any remaining moisture and makes the cookies nice and crispy.
Melt chocolate and add peppermint oil to taste. Dip cookies in mixture and place on parchment or waxed paper to harden.

Easter Chocolates

2010-04-01T23:07:00.001+01:00

I've been working on various versions of my Easter chocolates for a couple weeks now.

That's how the final set ended up looking...but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning.

A couple weeks ago, I found some very cute silicone chocolate moulds at the supermarket and thought I'd give them a try.

I've tried making chocolates before with normal hard plastic chocolate moulds, but couldn't get the chocolates out once they were done - couldn't even pry them out with a spoon! Silicone seemed the answer to this problem...and it was!

I bought some chocolate to go with the moulds and happily trotted home, ready to get started.

But on my way home, I had a thought: why not decorate the chocolates with colours? I congratulated myself on this excellent idea and started formulating a way to do this in my head.

As I was almost home, and didn't have any white chocolate at home, I decided the best way to do this would be with royal icing.

So when I got home, I whipped up a batch and coloured it in lovely Easter colours, stopping to take pictures as I mixed in the dye.

Oooh, pretty and marbley!

So once stopped playing with the food, I started paintin the moulds with my coloured icing. It was fun at first, but took a very long time, especially since the icing was a bit too thick for painting into the tiny crevices of the mould.

Eventually, they were finished though and then I had to wait for the royal icing to dry.

So I waited

and waited

and waited.

Then I filled 'em up with chocolate...

...and waited a little bit longer.

actually, I waited overnight.

The next morning, I popped them out of the moulds, which was easy enough.

But, if you look carefully at the mould, half the coloured royal icing stayed behind...which meand that the texture of the icing on the chocolates themselves left a bit to be desired.

Nice, bright colours, but...the texture was almost - dare I say? - fuzzy. Not the lovely shinyness that you usually get from royal icing.

My theory is that the icing didn't get to dry properly, as it wasn't exposed to the air. Am I right? I'd be happy to hear other theories or expert opinions on the matter!

And the bunnys were very sad looking, as their eyes and noses didn't make it out of the moulds.

Well, it was back to the drawing boards...still, they tasted good!

While I was contemplating how to improve these chocolates, Hubby's boss requested some for Easter. I agreed, and settled on using coloured white chocolate.

But how to colour the chocolate? I didn't have any oil-based food colours, and water-based ones would just make the chocolate go funny.

Ahhh! Powerdered colouring - also called petal dust - was the answer!

It worked a treat, and I put together a lovely set of melted white chocolate colours, ready for painting!

Next up, I started making the chocolate filling. This was easy enough: open a can of condensed milk, pour it into a ceramic dish and stick it in the oven at 140*C for a while.

For how long? I wasn't really paying attention. When it starts bubbling, be sure to give it a stir once in a while.

When it turns a lovely carmel-ey colour, pull it out, stir it really well and then let it cool.

While the filling was in the oven, I was painting away.

It took ages, but was easier than with the royal icing. I also didn't have to wait for them to dry, as the chocolate was setting up pretty quickly (it was really cold that night!)

I put a thin layer of melted milk chocolate in the moulds, leaving plent of space for filling.

With the filling transfered to a piping bag, I added the filling to the moulds...this didn't look too nice, but was a means to a very tasty end.

Once the filling was added in, then the rest of the empty space was filled with more melted chocolate and the moulds were placed in the freezer for a while to get the chocolate nice and solid.

When they came out, they were popped out onto tea towels, and immediately covered up (covering with a breatheable fabric ensures that there's no condensation while they warm to room temperature - condensation can ruin the chocolate's shiny finish).

I left the chocolates covered over night.

In the morning, they were boxed up and sent on their way.

Valentine's 'pucker up' lemon cupcakes

2010-03-24T22:59:00.001Z

Okay, so Valentine's Day was over a month ago...but these really were made in time for February 14th!

The weekend before Valentines Day, I found some fantastic heart-shaped silicone cupcake moulds.

I don't think I've mentioned how much I love silicone bakewear. I've been using silicone-coated parchment paper for years, but recently, there's been an onslaught of silicone baking pans and I've been converted! No more need to grease-and-flour or line pans - the cake, bread or whatever you're baking just slips right out!

Plus they can be crumpled up in a cupboard, taking up far less room in my tiny kitchen!

However, I do have to say that I'm not totally sold on the idea of silicone cupcake cups. Simply because they're quite expensive, and not disposable - or at least they shouldn't be thrown out (tell that to my neighbors who throw out reusable shopping bags every week for no apparent reason).

Anyway, my point is that if you use silicone cupcake cups, you then have to remove the silicone cups and replace them with paper cups anyway...defeating the purpose? Maybe. Although, a fresh cupcake cup does look a lot nicer than one that's been baked in.

But I digress. I found heart-shaped cupcake moulds and decided to make heart-shaped cupcakes. That's something you definitely cannot do with traditional cupcake tins.

And when they came out of the oven, I thought they looked pretty good.

Unfortunately, when they came out of their wrappers, the obviousness of the shape seemed to disappear.

See? Once transferred to their cupcake cups, all heart-shapeyness is gone.

Okay, in a couple, the shape was a bit more obvious, but for the most part, they just look like cupcakes with loose wrappers.

I tried a couple options, including re-shaping with a knife (didn't work) and cutting the rounded tops off (did work, but left me with very tiny cupcakes and a lot of tops that would need to be eaten - not a difficult task, but the hours I'd have to spend running around the park to burn off those calories would have been a bit more work than I'd like.)

In the end, I just decided to go with the not-so-obvious heart shape.

I was being subtle.

Next up was filling.

I'd never filled a cupcake before. In fact, the whole idea of filling a cupcake was alien to me until a couple months ago. I used a homemade lemon curd (also a first for me), which was delicious, but I should have given it time to cool properly and set, as it was too liquidy and went everywhere.

Nonetheless, some of the lemon curd actually made it into the cupcakes.

Next up was piping on the frosting - a white chocolate buttercream - which was coloured pale pink. I tried to follow the curves of the heart-shape, in a somewhat successful attempt to emphasize the intended shape.

And topped them all off with the super-cute heart-shaped edible sparkles. Which were less sparkly and more shiny...but still lovely.

Here's the recipe I used for the cupcakes and lemon curd. Note that for the cakes, I quadupled the amount of lemon juice, and I still felt that the cake was only vaguely lemony - it definitely didn't have the pucker-up factor I'd been hoping for. It was actually quite buttery and light. Very nice, but only a hint of lemon, really.

The frosting was just a standard buttercream, with melted white chocolate added to taste.

And no, Hubby and I didn't eat all of these. We had one each; the rest went off to his work.

Oh, and yes, we had a lovely Valentine's day!

Christmas mini cupcakes

2009-12-18T22:48:00.003Z

It's been over a week since I sent hubby to work with baked goods, and they were getting restless. So I made these mini chocolate cupcakes. They were very mini, with buttercream frosting in red and green and a little silver dragee on top.

I also used the opportunity to try out some DIY photography lighting gear that I put together. Hopefully it will improve the quality of my photos, but it still needs a bit of work. Here are some of the pics I took with that.

Polar Bear birthday cake

2009-12-09T21:34:00.000Z

I got a request for a birthday cake with a polar bear theme. It was a pretty open request: chocolate, polar bears and 'happy 50th'. This was really fun, because it gave me a chance to be quite creative.

The cake was three layers of chocolatey goodness, with chocolate ganache filling. It was coated in white buttercream and then fondant. I had a great time decorating it, and I think my polar bears turned out very well. Hubby liked the water.

In the future, I think I'll do facial features in piped royal icing. It was really difficult to get the eyes in reasonable sizes. I still think the bear on the left looks a bit zombie-like.

I always like this idea: a cake on a cake!

A view of their cute little bear bums. I also quite liked the wee present and my first attempt at a fondant bow.

Extra cake

2009-12-09T21:21:00.000Z

Okay, so I got a request for a chocolate cake with a polar bear theme. I decided to use my devil's food cake recipe, which has been wonderful in the past.

I made the batter, it seemed to fine. And I put it in the oven. The cakes looked fine for about 10 minutes, rising nice and evenly...and then they sunk. Like the Titanic. Like a lead weight. Like a comical souffle.The sides of the cakes were four inches high. The middle, when it was finished baking, was less than 1/4 of an inch.

I don't know what happened. Maybe my bicarbonate of soda had given up. Maybe the weather or other environmental conditions caused a problem. I don't know what happened, but the cakes were not useable...at least not for the requested cake.

But I'm not one to waste cake. In the olden days, I would have been tempted to snack on it until it was gone. But I'm really trying not to eat whole cakes on my own, so I decided to send it on to Hubby's work for them to take care of.

I crushed up one of the cakes and used it to fill in the canyon in the middle of the other cake. Then flipped it all over onto a cake board. The result looked like a perfectly normal cake.

Luckily, I also had some lovely white chocolate and mulled wine cream cheese frosting leftover from my Iron Cupcake entries. Just the right amount to cover this cake too! So cover it I did, and topped it off with some drizzled dark chocolate, toasted almonds and candied peel (also left overs).

It sure looked yummy. And didn't last the day.

My next attempt at chocolate cake worked well. New bicarb and new cake recipe seemed to make the difference.

Iron Cupcake entries: Christmas cupcakes

2009-12-09T20:58:00.000Z

So hubby and I attended the Iron Cupcake on Monday. I submitted two entries to the event, and the theme was Christmas.

My first submission was Peppermint Mocha. It was a chocolate cake with some additional coffee loveliness and crushed peppermint in the batter. It was topped with a peppermint merengue and more crushed candy canes.

Unfortunately, the only candy canes I could find looked a bit anaemic, so they didn't have the punchy colour in the decoration that I was hoping for.

That didn't stop me from enjoying them though!

The Caked Crusader said about these:

Shannon’s sponge provided a strong hit of coffee and wasn’t too sweet – this greatly pleased my co-eater Jasmin who often finds coffee cakes overly sweet. The mint came through later and freshened your mouth. The crushed candy cane topping provided some lovely crunch and the whole cupcake worked beautifully in both flavour and textures.

My second entry was Mulled Wine and White Chocolate. These were based on Nigella's recipe for Guinness Chocolate Cake, but with some substitutions. The icing was a lovely conglomeration of white chocolate, mulled wine and cream cheese. I wish I'd kept track of how much of each I used, because it tasted AMAZING. I'm definitely going to have to make it again. The cupcakes were finished with a sprinkling of candied peel and toasted almonds.

I was really very happy with these cupcakes. The mulled wine flavour wasn't quite as strong as I would have liked in the cake, but there's something to be said for subtlty.

The Caked Crusader said about these:

The creamy smooth frosting on these was delightful – I could have eaten a dessert bowl full of it! It’s funny because I don’t like the drink mulled wine, but the spices, when used in baking, are great! This was a beautiful cupcake – very tasty and the little sprinkling of nuts on the top was a perfect accompaniment.

The next Iron Cupcake is in February, and the theme is Love. I'm looking forward to trying this again, and now that I know what the competition is like, I have a much better idea of what I'm in for!

Thanksgiving mini pies

2009-11-30T20:16:00.000Z

As an American living in the UK, I've found Brits to be very open to the idea of Thanksgiving. Maybe it's curiosity, or a love of food. Or maybe they're just being supportive, knowing that it's an important holiday for me.

Or maybe it's the promise of pie.

Yes, I think that's probably it.

This year, I couldn't decide on one type of pie. To be honest, I don't know how anybody ever decides on one type of pie. I couldn't even decide on three types of pie. So I decided to make six types. In mini format so nobody had to make difficult choices on Thanksgiving day (especially me!)

The six flavours I settled on were:

Lemon Icebox

Pumpkin

Apple

Pecan

Chocolate cream

And coconut cream

Since Hubby's mum can't eat gluten, everything had to be gluten-free as well. Which, really was pretty easy to acommodate with pie. I used gluten-free flour for the crust, which didn't roll out very well, so I just smooshed the dough into the pan and used the pastry cutter to finish them off with a nice crinkle.

Anywhere flour was required in the fillings (mainly the cream pies), I just used corn flour instead, which I probably would do anyway. I think it thickens better and leaves less flavour behind.

There were a lot of pies, (a dozen of each). To save me from myself, Hubby took the leftovers to work...not a single pie survived the weekend.

Birthday apple-cinnamon sticky buns

2009-11-30T19:57:00.000Z

Okay, so it may not be traditional, but instead of cake, I had birthday apple-cinnamon sticky buns for my birthday treat.

(photo by hubby)

I prepared the night before, and hubby got up early and put them in the oven, so they were ready for me when I crawled out of bed a while later. Unfortunately he forgot to take photos during the process, so I'm a bit low on pictures of these once they were cooked.

They did look lovely when I finished them the night before.

And here they were covered with apples

And here they are turned out after baking.

And served up... ooh they tasted yummmmmy!

Birthday cake-olates

2009-11-30T19:35:00.000Z

My first order for cake-olates came in at the beginning of the month. 100 in four different flavours for a birthday party. Lemon, chocolate, coffee and ginger.

There were four boxes of 25. Each box also included an 'instruction sheet', as I like to call it.

I was very happy with how everything turned out. It was also my first attempt at packaging everything up nicely.

The comments I got back were all positive, which was great. Apparently, one eater asked the host if the baker was married, and was disappointed when the answer was yes. :-)

Halloween cupcakes

2009-11-01T13:00:00.000Z

Halloween is one of my favourite holidays. I have wonderful memories of the fab parties and decorations we had when I was growing up, and it's also what I condsider the beginning of the Holiday Season: it's followed closely by my birthday, then Thanksgiving. After that, Christmas and New Year are just around the corner!

Plus there's all the sugar and candy!

I decided that I wanted to make cake that was a marbled black and orange. I also wanted to use spiders because I know that Hubby hates them...what's better for a good Halloween scare!?

I decided on devil's food (of course for Halloween!) marbled with an orange flavour cake. The colours of both cakes were enhanced with frosting colour for more vibrance.

Here's what they looked like before going in the oven.

I love my new cupcake cases!

Out of the oven, and cooling before decorating.

They were then topped with some bright orange buttercream frosting and decorated with black edible glitter and plastic spider rings.

The spiders had the right effect. Hubby shudders every time he looks at them. :-)

Here's one 'undressed' to show the marbled effect of the cake.

I'm not convinced on the black glitter. It looks kind of like dirt. Shiny dirt. I suppose that's okay for Halloween though. In the future, I'll probably not use glitter that contrasts sharply with the frosting. I think it has a better effect when it's the same colour as the frosting (red sparkles on red frosting for example).

I also had some left over devil's food batter, so made some Little Devils.

They were devilishly tasty!

And oh so cute!

About me

2009-10-18T21:27:00.000+01:00

Ever since I was quite young, I've enjoyed cooking and baking. For many years, I made Christmas cookies as presents for my extended family (about 40 dozen cookies every year!) I also remember watching my mum decorate cakes when I was younger. On a few occasions, I tried my own hand at the decorator bags, making flowers, or filling in a bit of a character cake with a star tip, but my hands weren't really strong enough, nor my patience long enough.

Last summer, my interest in cake decorating was rekindled when my mum agreed to make my wedding cake. I started working my way through her hold Wilton decorating course books, and she gave me a lump of sugarpaste to play with.

Though this blog, I'd like to share my progress in learning to decorate cakes, as well as any other tasty treats that come along. I think I'm doing pretty well so far, but I have plenty of room for improvement!

I'm not a professional, but am happy to discuss making items at cost. Just remember: I'm still learning, and they won't be perfect!