Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone, hope you're enjoying the festive season with lots of mince pies and hot coco next to somewhere warm. Or in my case, eating my cake whilst procrastinating in front of my laptop instead of revising for my exams. At least the cake makes a nice break :)

I decided that this year I was going to have a white Christmas and decorate a completely white cake with white icing. A proper fruit cake covered in marzipan and royal icing; grand indeed. I chose to show the classic sleigh being pulled by reindeer. Here it is!

And here's how it was made:

First I had to make the actual cake. I decided to make a fruit cake, but I didnt have enough time to make a proper Christmas cake, so I cheated and made a simnel cake, ah well :) It taste just as nice, if not nicer!

                    

I then covered it in marzipan which involved me flipping the cake (covered in apricot jam) over into the middle of it in one movement, I prayed to god that my aim would have improved since P.E. My fears were not needed and it worked perfectly.

The next step was to cover it in royal icing, instead of my usual fondant. The making of the royal icing went well given I only had a hand beater. My hopes were high that I would get a perfectly smooth professional finish in only one coat. How wrong I was, but for my first attempt and for only doing one coat I'm fairly happy. 

The next step was planning my decorations that I was to make out of the royal icing. I got out my pen and paper and drew, and drew, and drew. In the end I came up with the following designs that I than drew to nice proportions and then piped. Multiple Times.

All that I had left to do was to assemble the pieces and arrange them on the cake using balls of un-clinging cling film as support. 

                                                  

And there it is, my finished masterpiece. Hope you enjoyed it, and I wish you a very merry christmas!

Bye,

Somnium xx

P.S. So Tasty!!

Boo!

Its Halloween!! (well it was..) The night where all the ghouls and beasties come out to play, the monster under the bed takes a holiday and the skeleton in your cupboard has a welcomed walk. But what every kid wants are sweets! So lets not stop just because we're getting older, we just have to be more creative to satisfy our sweet teeth (tooths?). So here was my plan. Halloween cupcakes to give out to my flatmates, and maybe one extra for me :D

It was the night of the biology deadline, spirits were high, stomachs needed sugar, and I needed to get my bake on! And there in the corner, was a dusty spider web glistening away. Its mesmerizing pattern drawing your eyes closer. You are unwillingly drawn towards it.

And what should you find but a HUGE fuzzy spider! All brown and hairy but definitely not cuddly. You wouldn't want this thing anywhere near you. You can see its eyes taking in your own bedraggled state. You can see its HUNGER and its THIRST. 

You try and run away, you can see its intent, but its too late. Its on your arm. You can feel its many legs unnaturally crawling along. It doesnt stop. It moves to fast to brush it off, scuttling in one direction to the next. Now its on your head, it crawls over your mouth, nose and eyes, never pausing for a second. You can do nothing but remain frozen in fright as it crawls into your ear. You cant see it anymore, it doesnt matter that you can now move, its disappeared. Its gone to your BRAIN!

Its too late, you know its too late. All hope is gone. you sit down in a state if shock. You can imagine it in there, crawling about, munching to its hearts content. You cant take anymore. You collapse into a dead faint. Only to wake up on Halloween morning. It was a dream.

There's all my cupcakes that I made, and hope I didn't scare you too much! Here's to what was hopefully a very spooky sweet filled Halloween.

                                                    

Other Bakes:

CHOCOLATE MOUSTACHE COOKIES!!

Now I must dash..

Somnium x

Flat Bake!!

Hello awesome people! One day I will get into the habit of posting more frequently, until that far away day, here's the latest :)

I've moved into University now (Woooo, Go St. Andrews!! You Rock!!) and therefore have moved into a flat with 4 other wonderful people! It was very nerve wracking moving in but as soon as I got to know my new neighbors all was good. A lot of other things have occurred including, my adoption to an academic family where I have way too many relatives to keep track of, my first kayaking river trip and of course, lots of studying baking!

 ICING MONSTER!!

So the first bake that our flat did were good ol' cupcakes. I baked them in the afternoon once i'd finished my very exhausting day of 3 lectures and then let each of my fellow flatmates have one to decorate themselves. I'm just so kind! One flat mate decided that the icing should be green and then we were off. I explained how to hold the decorating bag and how to pipe and soon they were all better than I was! Here are the finished masterpieces:

Aren't they cute! but we didnt stop there, oh no! The night after a flat mate and I we're sat around the table debating what we should do this fine friday night. We could go out? We could go to the cinema? Instead, of course, we went shopping and then went into a baking frenzy! We had lots of carrots in the fridge needing to be eaten so whats better to do with them than a carrot cake?! Soon enough it was in the oven cooking. But why stop there? so we also made some cinnamon twirls (whirls, swirls, twists?) and cooked them as well. The carrot cake tastes amazing, which made up for it falling apart when we took it out of the tin but we soon glued it together with scrummy icing.

So there you have it. I obviously live in an AMAZING flat were we can make AMAZING bakes in an AMAZING town!

Type soon,

Somnium

xx

P.S. Some pics of St. Andrews cause its so nice looking :)

Minecraft Skin Cake

Again, I'm awfully sorry for not posting in ages. I was away for a month in Uganda though so that helps my case. So, cake time. It was my boyfriends birthday last week and I kept thinking what to do for his cake. This will be his third, and it'll have to be one of my best so far. My first idea (that someone helped me with) was to do a sombrero and a moustache but I couldnt think of a great way to execute the hat so I thought again. And it came to me, Minecraft! but what, i'd already done a Minecraft cake before so it had to be unique. hmm.. how about, his very own skin in cake form. Perfect. 
So here is the making of his Minecraft character; cake form :D

I made a vanilla sponge in a rectangular tin, and made sure to add loads of batter this time. Cooked till it was done, then took it out to cool.

Once cooled, I cut it in half so that I could add an apricot and buttercream filling.

I took my printed out correct sized template of his skin and pinned it to the cake so that I could cut out the right shape. 

With the shape sorted I coated it in more apricot jam and covered it in white fondant. Which I managed to cover first time, this time. Yay me :D

Now I faced a dilemma; cover with coloured squares of fondant to get the pixels, or paint with food colouring. I decided to paint, so paint I did. However, I forgot that the icing had made the man bigger that his twin template, so when I started using the template to get the painting lined up they were a tad small, but I managed to overcome this lack of common sense to make it look similar.

And there you have it, the finished cake! It was very tasty and he enjoyed it very much.

I promise this time ill post quicker,
Till next time,
Somnium xx

The Making of Tracy Island!

Hey, sorry for the lack of posting but I've been busy doing this and that, including a small amount of baking :)
Whilst I've been missing in action I've made various things including an amazing cheesecake I made with my equally amazing boyfriend after college one day. A simple vanilla and raspberry baked cheesecake.

But now for the main attraction! A first ever! A step by step on how I made by Brothers 22nd birthday cake of Tracy Island! For those poor poor people who don't know what Tracy Island is, it is the island base of Thunderbirds, Google it. My cake is based off a toy me and my brother played with when we were little and cute :)

So, after weeks of giving a little bit of thought of what cake to make him I came up with this idea (two days before making it), and spent the rest of my free reminiscing about my childhood. I knew that this cake was going to be complicated so I decided to do some proper planning this time. It included pictures of the toy and some quick sketches. Unfortunately, I left them in the kitchen and dad threw them in the bin. Ah well. 

I then cooked three circular vanilla sponge cakes, which took two attempts as I didn't make enough mix the first time round, silly me. After they cooked they cooled whilst I went swimming with 'The Minecraft Crew', definitely needed in the decorating process. I was then left with the problem of assembling the cake into a shape that ressembled Tracy Island. After multiple cocktail sticks here was the result.

The next step was to cover it in lovely vanilla buttercream. Yum. Oh, and remove the cocktail sticks.

Then to cover it in fondant. Which I sure need practice in covering awkward shapes with.

Then I decided to paint with food gel mixed with a tad of icing sugar and got the finished result after my mum made the paper bits as I was running out of time. Thunderbird 3 was made out of Fimo the previous day, so wasnt edible.

     There you have it, my cake creation of Tracy Island. Hope you liked it and ill try and post again soon.

Ta ta for now,

Somnium xx

Cookie Dough

Everyone loves Pizza Huts cookie dough. If you don't, you're an alien spy and we're going to find you out! If you haven't tried it then you've obviously been stuck in a hole for the last 2 years or so.. Seriously though. Its amazing. They even have 2 new flavours which I haven't tried yet as I just cant get over the chocolate chip one :)

       So I decided to try out making this heavenly food item. With no chance of doing it justice, but wanting to try anyway. Unsurprisingly, I still prefer Pizza Huts, but mine wasn't bad! May have cooked it for a bit long but it was still tasty chocolate chip cookie goodness.

And there it is. Definitely going to be on my top list of homemade comfort food. 

Anyway, this was only a little post.

Until next time,

Somnium x

Happy Easter :)

Its Easter which means chocolates, chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies, chocolate cakes... lots and lots of chocolate! but whats this? I haven't done a chocolate cake!? No. I've done a good old fruit cake. A lovely lovely fruit cake covered in marzipan and icing. So nice half of its gone since last night!

       Unfortunately I couldn't be bothered making a proper fruit cake as it has to be stored for months before being eaten and it has to be fed. So instead I've made a welsh tea bread, except I used orange juice instead of tea which in my mind equals a quick and tasty fruit cake (better than the proper fruit cake in my opinion)

      However my lack of planning soon became evident. The cake was made about to be marzipaned. I check the cupboard and I have no icing! At least I can drive now, so I popped down to the store to buy some. Now, the cake is made, marzipaned, iced and crimped but i dont know what to put as the center piece! So I stopped decorating and thought for a while and came up with my final idea and put it into action. And this is what I achieved. 

Sorted :)

My Easter cake done and dusted for another year. 

Hope you enjoyed it, too bad I have to eat all your shares ;)

Till Later,

Somnium x

Lemon Cake

Its been a while since my last post, sorry about that, been busy with college. I'm on holiday now for two weeks so decided to celebrate by... making cake! what else?

      So this is just a little cake I made to use up some eggs and to try out a cake pan I've not used yet. I used my mums normal cake recipe of (flour, butter, sugar):(eggs) in 2:1 and in ounces, wouldn't really work otherwise. so yeah, I also added an extra egg yolk (cause I wanted to use those suckers up) and some lemon juice from pancake day and a tad of orange juice to lessen the tang. Poured it into my well greased tin and baked :D

      30-40 minutes later and ta-da! cake! I let it cool and cut off the bottom to make it flat then drizzled lemon glace icing over the top. Lets just say, it didn't last to see tomorrow ;)

The only thing I would change is adding some lemon rind to it as well but seeing as I was using lemon juice from a squirty plastic lemon.. that wasnt gonna happen.

Ill be posting soon,

ta ta for now,

Somnium x

10 Minute Pudding!

So, yesterday I was sitting around trying to keep my mind busy to try and forget about my driving test today (I Passed, Woo :D). I figured I needed a quick distraction so decided to make this recipe I found for an apple sponge with caramel sauce. Baking is an awesome stress reliever. You can do what you want (within reason) and you can eat it in at the end! 

     Anyway, I got home from college and put my plan into action after eating tea. Here's the recipe if you wanna try it:

http://www.bramleyapples.co.uk/recipe_bramley_apple_sticky_toffee_puds.html 

     Its awesome and really really simple to make. You just put everything in a bowl, mix it together and pop in a mug and into the microwave. Simples! I followed the instructions except that my butter wasn't completely soft so didn't mix together that well and I added a bit of cinnamon (cause they go together like shoes and shoelaces <3 ). I cooked it for about 5 minutes as well and halved the mixture so there was just enough for me and my brother. 

May not look like much but my presentation skills aren't amazing just yet and half of it got stuck in my mug. So yeah, grease you mug loads!! or just eat out of it... I didn't use that recipe for the sauce, I just whacked out a tin of caramel from the cupboard and microwaved it. 

     My Verdict. Tastes lovely, bit dense for my liking though. The sauce and cake together were a bit sickly so either less sauce, less cake, or use ice cream instead. Overall it's great, especially for the time it took! Definitely going to be made at Uni :)

Why not try it yourself??

Ta Ta for now,

Somnium x