An Abundance of Cakes

Lately I have made many different cakes for many different occasions. Well actually only 3 but its still a good start right?
Anyway to start with, I was asked to make a dairy free cake and I was certainly up to the challenge. I want people to be able to enjoy what I cook even if they can't eat certain things. So I kept it simple by making a vanilla cake with a dairy free butter cream style icing. I decorated it with sprinkles and piped borders.

The second cake was for a bake-off between my friend and I, the theme was red velvet so I made a two layer red velvet cake with cream cheese filling, raspberries and chocolate and then covered in cream cheese frosting with shaved chocolate decoration. 

The last one I made was for my Nanna's birthday, it was a black forest cake. It had layers of chocolate cake with either chocolate cream filling or fresh cream and cherries. The whole thing was iced with fresh cream and decorated with chocolate shavings on the sides and fresh cherries on top.

Week of Wonders

This week as I was in my school holidays, I spent 3 of the 5 days cooking and managed to knock over a fair amount of food while making a little bit of money on the way. My new business is getting off to a great start and I completed a few orders during the week, you can see the facebook page here or the instagram account here. I began the week by making a trial version of some blue blueberry macarons which I have been asked to make for a Jeans for Genes day fundraiser next month. I packaged them up into some small gift bags and gave them to family and friends, you can see the pictures on my last blog post. On Tuesday and Wednesday I baked and iced some cakes:

4-inch vanilla and Oreo cake

8-inch blueberry and vanilla cake

mini vanilla and Oreo cupcakes

4-inch vanilla cake
no photo :(

On the Wednesday, I used up the egg yolks which were left over from making the swiss meringue buttercream icing by making some vanilla bean ice cream which I was going to use on Friday.
On Friday I completed an order of macaron gift packs and the flavour was pink marshmallow.

Later in the day I made dessert of poached pears. I had been contemplating the concept for some time now and thought that when plated, looked very good, so I got to creating a dish for dessert and this was the final product.

It was raspberry poached pears along with shortbread crumble, homemade vanilla ice cream, almond praline and freeze dried raspberries. I was really pleased with the way the flavours came together because I had used components from many different recipes and brought them together to create a dessert which wasn't too bad. I was however disappointed with my ice cream quenelle but I suppose I will just have to keep practicing...

Blueberry

Today I trialed some blue macarons which I have been asked to make for Jeans for Genes Day morning tea next month. I thought I would try a new flavour and that was blueberry. I got the recipe from my Adriano Zumbo cookbook. The recipe was for Blueberry and Lavender however I chose to leave the lavender out and adapt the recipe that way because I haven't found anywhere that sells culinary lavender yet (although I must admit I haven't really looked). I was really pleased with the way they turned out and can't wait to make them again for such a good cause.

New Adventures

Over the past few weeks, I have made many developments in the cooking world and I am excited to say that I have now started up my own small business - Sweet Treats by Tannah. I also tried baking some exciting new things that I'm happy to showcase to everyone. I was really excited after my large package turned up from the Melbourne Food Depot recently and I decided to use some of my new ingredients to get baking. I started by using some yellow pectin to make Raspberry Pâte de Fruit. I found the recipe while browsing the wonderful web on a website called Cannelle Vanille and was so pleased with the outcome that I now need to buy some more pectin so that I can try countless new flavours. Pâte de Fruit are similar to jubes in that they are sweet, bite sized jellies coated in sugar.

Next I made some shortbread as I had an idea of what I wanted to do with the jellies. Finally I made some homemade marshmallow and I piped it on top of each of the biscuits with a jelly on them. You might know where I'm going with this or maybe not... Anyway I finished by coating the whole thing in chocolate. I was really excited about the chocolate because I had also bought that from the Melbourne Food Depot and it was Callebaut brand (if you don't know what it is, don't worry I will be doing a post about it soon). Before using the chocolate I had to temper it, and with it being my first real attempt, I was rather pleased with how it turned out. The finished product is based on the Arnotts Royals that are available from supermarkets.

As well as these, I made a chocolate bar out of the left over chocolate and my new chocolate mould. I topped to bar with freeze dried raspberries (another new purchase). 

Yesterday I changed the look of my blog and I also now have a Facebook page and Instagram account for my new business (links on the blog).

50th Cake

Recently I was asked to create a 50th birthday cake for my Uncle. I was given a few simple rules to stick to - chocolate, rectangle, with tim tams - and this is what I came up with...

Here are some recent food snaps...

Still got it!

It has now been 4 and a half months since I last made Macarons and I decided that today would be the perfect opportunity to get back into it and make some again. I made something that I already knew and was comfortable with - Lemon - and just hoped that they turned out well and...  THEY DID! This was also the second chance I have had to cook since I returned from Italy just a few weeks ago. I also got to cook a pumpkin and pea risotto using home grown pumpkin. I got to eat a lot of good food whilst in Italy but I'm glad to be home and ready to cook more food of my own.

Bits, Bobs and Pies

The world of cooking has been quite good to me lately and I have been in the kitchen every weekend this month. I've been working on my pies, thanks to some not so subtle prompts from my Dad. I started with an apple pie (and had a little fun with the top), then I also made a lemon meringue pie - the feedback on both was good and I was glad I didn't disappoint my critics.

I also decided to 'try' to temper some chocolate - it wasn't until afterwards that I realised supermarket chocolate is pre-tempered and I actually un-tempered the chocolate instead. None the less, it didn't stop me from making lots of  cool chocolate decorations. I also spent a day making choux pastry - eclairs and mini croquembouches. 2 weekends ago, I spent several hours working on fondant roses and I'm certainly glad the hard work paid off.

Now I've got the experience to put my birthday cake together this weekend...

Update

I thought now would be a good time to add a blog update as yesterday I spent the day making a birthday cake for my sister's birthday today. I found a photo to use as inspiration on pintrest and this is what I came up with...

I have also been busy since my last post, making an oreo cheesecake and gingerbread house.