Valentine Chocolate Heart Cake

I made this chocolate heart Valentine’s Day cake this weekend, although it doubled up as a birthday cake for my lovely friend Jules. It’s a chocolate layer cake with buttercream and ganache filling – I’ll be writing a tutorial nearer to Valentine’s Day to go on the UK Handmade MADE blog, including how to make the polka dot chocolate heart decorations :)

Anemone Chocolate Cupcakes

Yay for the sale! I got this lovely cream wire cake stand from Homebase for £5.99 last week, so today I whipped up a batch of chocolate cupcakes and decorated them with little fondant anemone flowers in pale blue, pink and cream. I had some stamens left over from making butterflies in the summer, so I poked a little bunch into the centre of each flower ….

The cupcakes actually are going to be multi-tasking, as I’m going to remove the flowers (to keep for another occasion) and replace them with sparkly fondant snowflakes with edible glitter, for our church’s carol service tonight (it was postponed just before Christmas due to the snow so we’re having it tonight instead!)

Snowflake Cupcakes

Christmas Present Cake Tutorial

Well… I really should have got this post up before Christmas but now it’s nearly New Year! Hopefully it will still be useful, as a present cake can easily be used for birthdays and other celebrations, just without the snowflakes!

This is the cake we had for Christmas this year and it easily fed family and friends with plenty left over. It’s quite an easy cake to make as long as you give yourself plenty of time to form the bow and let it dry….

To make the fruit cake…

This is my Mum’s favourite fruit cake recipe, and I love it! It’s from a very well used and dog-eared Be-Ro cookbook, although we like to use brown sugar instead of caster sugar for a deeper flavour.

Ingredients / Equipment

12oz self-rasing flour

1 tsp mixed spice

4oz ground almonds

8oz brown dark brown sugar

4 eggs

4T milk

4T brandy

8oz currants, picked through to remove any tiny bits of stalk

8oz sultanas, picked through to remove any tiny bits of stalk

8 oz raisins, picked through to remove any tiny bits of stalk

4oz glace cherries, halved

4oz mixed peel

8″ square baking tin, brown paper and string

Method

1) Preheat the oven to gas mark 2

2) Sieve together the flour, spice and ground almonds

3) Cream the butter and sugar

4) Beat the eggs together with the milk and brandy

5) Add the egg mixture and the flour mixture to the creamed butter mixture, a little at a time

6) Stir in the dried fruits and mix well

7) Spoon mixture into the greased and lined 8″ square tin, then wrap a thick strip of brown paper around the outside of the tin and tie it with string to protect the cake while baking. The paper should be a couple of inches taller than the tin

8) Bake in the oven for about 4 1/2 hours (yes, really!) until the top is lightly browned and the cake top is springy to the touch

9) Cool in the tin, then wrap in foil

10) If you have time to wait, “feed” the cake with brandy for a month to make it more moist and boozy. Simply poke a few holes in the top of the cake with a skewer and pour a tablespoon or two of brandy over the top and then cover it with foil and store in a cool dark place. The following week turn the cake over and repeat the process. Do this a few more times before using the cake

To decorate the cake…

Ingredients / Equipment

500g marzipan – you can use more than this for a thicker layer

1500g white fondant icing

50g white flower paste

Purple food colouring – I used grape violet by Sugarflair

A few tablespoons of apricot jam

2 Fondant cake smoothers, or just use your hands!

9″ silver cake board

Small, medium and large snowflake plunger cutters by PME

Rolling pin

Ruler

Kitchen roll or tissue

Method

1) Plug any holes in the cake with little bits of marzipan – yes, mine had quite a few uneven places, lol :)

Plugging holes with marzipan

2) Boil the apricot jam to kill off any bacteria, then brush over the cake to help the marzipan stick

3) Roll out the marzipan and lie it over the rolling pin to help you get it to the cake without tearing. Smooth the marzipan across the top of the cake using your hands or the fondant smoothers and ease it down over the sides, little by little, easing the folds out, so that the marzipan fits the cake. Sharpen up the edges a little with your hands or smoothers. Trim away the excess at the bottom

Leave to dry overnight…

4) Transfer the cake to the silver board and brush the cake with more of the glaze

Brushing the marzipanned cake with apricot glaze

6) Roll out 1000g of the fondant to 1/4 inch thick, wrap around the rolling pin, transfer to the cake and smooth out over the cake as you did with the marzipan

7) Colour half the remaining fondant a deep purple and roll into a long sausage shape. Then flatten this out and roll it until thin. This long strip should then be cut to the width of the ruler (just place the ruler over the fondant and cut along each side) and should be about 16″ long

Making a fondant ribbon

8) Roll the fondant strip up to help you transfer it to the cake without tearing, and lay over the centre of the cake and down 2 sides. Attach using a little water and trim the excess ribbon off at the bottom of the cake

9) Repeat this step again, lying the second ribbon at a right angle to the other, so that the ribbons cross over the cake. Pinch the top ribbon in the centre

Fondant ribbon on cake

10) To make the bow, colour the flower paste a deep purple to match the fondant. Roll out the paste to the same thickness as the fondant ribbon and 2 3/4″ wide and 8″ long. Roll up some tissue or kitchen roll and fold the strip of paste around it and pinch the ends together to make a loop. Style the loop to make it look like a real ribbon, with soft folds. Repeat this again to make the other side of the bow. Allow the paste loops to dry over night and then remove the tissue from the centre. They will now be hard and stand up on their own

11) Roll out a fat sausage of purple fondant to the same thickeness of the fondant ribbon strips on the cake, but this time make it 2″ wide and 6″ long – you are making one of the ends of the ribbon that will lie on the top of the cake. Cut a V shape into one end, and pinch the other end together so that it will fit neatly into the bow loops. Repeat this so that you have two strips of ribbon

12) Cut a small strip of purple fondant the same thickness as the ribbon on the cake,  2″ wide and 4″ long – this will form the knot

Making a purple fondant bow

13) Now place the strips of fondant with V ends on the cake, with the pinched ends in the centre of the cake. Fold the fondant loosely so that it forms soft folds to look like real ribbon

14) Place the bow loops on the cake, and fold the small strip of purple fondant over the middle to look like the knot

15) If you are decorating with fondant snowflakes, roll out the half of the fondant that was not coloured purple, and cut out snowflakes of varying sizes and attach to the white fondant parts of the cake using a little water

Fondant snowflakes

You’re done! Stand back and enjoy your hard work ;)

The cake should be stored out of the fridge in a cool, dry place as fondant melts when it is stored in the fridge. Once you have cut into your cake (if you can bear to!) and removed the bow, you can store the cake in the fridge to preserve it’s freshness as the layer of fondant covering the cake will fare OK in the fridge – but never store a newly decorated cake in the fridge or all your hard work will be ruined! I learnt this to my cost when I put a batch of fondant flower decorated cupcakes in the fridge overnight and in the morning found that they had absorbed too much moisture and melted all over the butter icing! Sob.

Christmas Present Cake

We’re having this for Sunday lunch with Grandad today! I used the Nigella recipe from her website to make the chocolate cheesecake, and then decorated it with white chocolate curls and shards of dark chocolate that I’d studded with pistachios. I’m really disappointed with the dark chocolate topping, I wanted it to sit very neatly on top, but it has glooped at the sides a bit! Next time I’ll allow it to drip down the sides as she suggests, that should look so much better :)

….I’m a bit nervous, this is my first ever cheesecake as I was vegan for years and cheesecakes have taken a long time to grow on me…. eeek, I hope it tastes nice!

Poinsettia Necklace

I love making the Poinsettia necklace at this time of year, it feels so Christmasy! I’ve teamed my handmade glass flower focal with red, black, bronze and mossy green beads for a glamorous look. I finished it off this evening and popped it in my Folksy shop :) Hopefully I’ll have time to make the matching bracelet this week – I’m going to pick up a packet of crimp beads while I’m in Nottingham tomorrow from The Bead Shop, as I’ve run out!

Plum Fleur Asymmetric Necklace

Now the craft fair is over, I am starting to fill up my online shops again at Etsy and Folksy. This wintery necklace in deep purple, with one of my handmade glass flowers set to one side, is now available. The corsage style looks great with a little black dress for Christmas :)

I was at Belton House yesterday for the craft fayre. It was a Christmas themed event with decorated trees and a brass band, so there was a nice atmosphere and the customers were really friendly :) My Mum came with me to help out, and I’m so glad she did because it got busy at times and there weren’t enough hands to box cupcakes and package jewellery! The day seemed to go by so quickly apart from at the end as the shoppers tailed off – it’s in the quiet times that you realise how tired you are!

My stall looks a bit odd in this pic because I spaced the jewellery out like this once all my cupcakes and cookies had sold out after lunch (yay!) - I wish I’d taken a photo at the beginning of the day when the table was full, but I was in such a rush to finish getting set up before the first customers arrived!

I took 3 different cupcake flavours with me: milk chocolate brownie, maple and pecan, and lemon curd. I also took an assortment of cookie lollies in light blue, lilac and rose, decorated similarly to the cookies in the post below. Oh, and I made some cookie hearts with ribbon attached to hang as decorations, but I forgot to take a photo before they sold. I might make some as gifts to give at Christmas so will hopefully remember to take a pic then.

I think my favourite thing of the day was using my crash-lock cardboard cupcake boxes, lol! My brother designed me some fab little round stickers with my Gillyflower Bakery logo in pink, so they were stuck onto every box that I sold. So cute :)

It’s always interesting to see what sells – different items of jewellery seem to go at different fayres – but my flower pendants always seem to be popular so I make sure I have them in every colour. The wildflower knotted necklace seems to be my best seller, and usually sells in the first hour, so I’m going to work on expanding my range of knotted jewellery in the New Year.

It was a good day, and I would definitely do the fair next year – there was a good turn out despite the drizzle and people were really interested in buying, which was lovely. Emma Grey, the organiser, did a great job, and the co-ordinators came round with hot drinks regularly which was a nice touch. The stable area that I was in was pretty dark, so that’s probably my only criticism but I knew that when I booked the pitch so I can’t complain! We took a string of lanterns with us and two bright spot lights and created a friendly glow :)

Craft Fair Cookies

Today I made a few fondant decorated Christmas cookie lollies, as a bit of a practice for my first craft fair of the season at Belton House on 21st November. I’m woefully under prepared and am having a bit of a panic! I had to pull out of Drill Hall in Lincoln because of the flu, so Belton House is now my first one of the season. It’s probably the only one I’m going to do this side of Christmas, as I feel really busy with my new job and don’t seem to have the time to make lots of jewellery and try out new cake recipes as I’d planned. So this afternoon I squeezed in a little bit of prep and tried out my designs for the cookies I’m planning to take with me to Belton. I think they’ve turned out nicely, but I’d like the pink to be more cerise as it looks a bit red. I”m also going to get some purple organza ribbon which should look better with the pink cookies :)

Herbal Remedies

I’ve not been well for a few weeks – I got the dreaded swine flu! So my focus has been on using natural remedies (and some paracetamol!) to feel better. Honey and lemon tea is so soothing for a sore throat, but I wanted it to have more of a kick and contain some herbal goodness, so I first made up a jar of herbal honey with fresh and dried sage leaves from my garden and fresh ginger root. 1 teaspoon of the honey and 1 freshly squeezed lemon, plus boiled water, makes a delicious and healing hot drink.

I’ve taken a lot of echinacea tincture to boost my immune system, along with plenty of vitamin C, but I bought the tincture from the health shop, as I’ve been banned from digging up the echinacea root in our garden to make my own! The flowers are beautiful in the summer, and the bees really love them, so I’ll leave them alone :)

To help my cough, I made up a simple syrup using kitchen cupboard ingredients such as vinegar, honey and cayenne pepper to calm the cough and cut through phlem. For the recipe, see my tutorial in the Christmas edition of UK Handmade magazine, out the beginning of December.

The latest edition of UK Handmade magazine launched today! Our Autumn issue is full of seasonal goodness, fabulous interviews, lovely tutorials, self-assessment business advice, book reviews and an article on The Make Lounge, plus lots more. If you fancy whipping up an autumnal cake, check out my spicy apple cake tutorial on page 46, or make your own body cream with my homemade recipe on page 14!