Party Idea: Sweet Station

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I was holding back on this post until a certain baby Isabella made an appearance. Now that she got to exist as a human, I really wanted to show you how we prepared for her arrival with a baby shower some time back. As sweet as babies are, we all wanted to make the day even nicer so I prepared a sweet station. It was quite simple to put together and it was such a hit – so much so I really want to be throwing another party soon so I can repeat it! We went with pink but as you decorate it all yourself, you can really go all out on the theme, the options are endless. I reckon a rainbow theme would work really well too.

DSCN2020 DSCN2024 DSCN2035Here’s what you’ll need:

– A few large bowls in all sorts of shapes, the huge decorative martini or wine glasses would work well too
– Ribbon to decorate
– As many types of sweets as you’d like (one per bowl)
– Cellophane bags with ties for takeaways
– Cookies
– Mini cupcakes
– A cake
– A cupcake stand (I used a cardboard one found in the pound store)
– Any party decorations/props which would suit your theme
– A party!

Arrange it all as artistically as possible and don’t forget to stuff yourself with all sorts of marvelous sweet things.

Here’s a close-up of the cake with the cutesy tiny presents I picked out for Isabella too:

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Et voila!

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The pinkest cake ever!

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When you have a few picky eaters to please but want a show stopper cake, you need to get creative. No chocolate, no fruit (or in particular berries), no cream cheese frosting. So what do you do? You create a vanilla ombre pinata cake full of jelly beans, of course. It’s that simple – if the flavor must be rather plain, you just go all out on decorations.

I started by preparing three quarters of the batter for Jemma’s Rainbow Cake – I wanted 4 layers instead of 6 as it was to be a small family celebrations and I didn’t want any cake to go to waste. But instead of colouring them in rainbow colours, I created 4 shades of pink.

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Once the cakes were baked and cooled, I used a round cutter to cut holes in the 3 darker shades, leaving the palest layer untouched. Once I had those 3 layers arranged on my cake board (using vanilla buttercream between them), I filled the gap with jelly beans all in pinks. I applied the top layer and did the crumb coat (a thin layer of icing meant to lock all crumbs). I left the cake to chill in the fridge for the icing to set and in the meantime I coloured the rest of my buttercream in 3 shades of pink. Using a large petal nozzle I then created a dark pink rose for the top and then created ruffles on the side of the cake for extra lush. You can see how to make the ruffles in this video (of course, again by Jemma – it also shows how to create the pinata effect).

cake2When you’re done with this and it’s time for the party, sit back and enjoy the faces of the crowd as they cut into the cake and the jelly beans spill out!

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My GBBO challenge

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2016 so far has been a year of many changes. On a personal level, I started a new job, we moved to our own apartment (I have my dream kitchen, yay!) and adopted a new furry four-legged child (you can follow his adventures on his Instagram). On an international level, Britain decided to leave the EU and the US didn’t chose their next president too wisely. But probably the biggest change for those interested in baking was the news that The Great British Bake Off as we know it is over! As of next year, it will be broadcast on Channel 4 instead of BBC1. Mel and Sue will no longer be presenter. And wait for it… Mary Berry will no longer be a judge. Paul Holywood is staying – but I do wonder who they’d find to soften his blows constructive criticism.

Which is why I simply had to buy this year’s GBBO book (even though the last 2 have been quietly sitting on a shelf for a while) – it will be the last one with Mel and Sue on the cover after all! The idleness of said books however had me thinking I should use those books more. This is why I have decided to challenge myself and bake as many recipes until next year’s Great British Bake Off.  This will not be a standard challenge of 100 recipes in 100 days or similar – with an anyways very busy schedule I would never be able to stick to it. But I do want to try and go through as many bakes as possible and aim mainly for things I have never made before. Like puff pastry – ain’t nobody got time for that when you can buy it in the shops, right?

I am looking forward to putting my baking skills to the test – what are your goals for next year?

I will miss Mary, Sue and Mel!

I will miss Mary, Sue and Mel!

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Nadia vs. Tarte Tatin

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Now, I am known for baking until late, late at night. Baking and frosting cupcakes at 2am? No problem. Decorating cookies with royal icing at 3am? Bring it on. But if I am not one thing, that is an early bird.  So why did I end up waking at 6am to make a tarte tatin? Still a mystery to me too. Although it may have to do with the fact that I cannot miss a baking challenge and when my co-workers said I should make this dessert, I didn’t realize it’s best served warm. That is one mistake I will not be making hastily again: before promising another fiddly bake, I will check if it can be baked the day/night before.

So I set on to finding the best recipe. The New York Times promised theirs is fool proof but it used ready puff pastry (and I like to make my own pastry). BBC Good Food didn’t make any empty promises but it did sound like more work than the NY times one. So as one does, I combined the 2 recipes to produce the famous apple tart and here we go:

Tarte tatin
(makes one 10-11 inch tart – please note it takes a while to prepare if you do it ‘by the book’ and let the apples dry overnight in the fridge)

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Ingredients for the filling:
6 large apples (I used Braeburn but apparently you can use Granny Smith mixed with Cox or Honeycrisp) – just make sure they’re firm so they don’t fall apart while cooking
80g salted butter
100-130g light brown sugar (to taste)

Ingredients for the pastry:
250 g plain flour*
50 g soft light brown sugar
A pinch of salt
125 g unsalted cold butter
1 large free-range egg

*You can make the tart gluten free if you replace the regular flour with a GF one and add ½ teaspoon xanthan gum)

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Method:

I like to prepare my pastry in advance. So let’s start with that. Sieve the flour (and xanthan gum if going GF) into a large bowl (the shallower, the better), then stir in the sugar and salt. Cut the butter into cubes, then use your hands or a pastry blender to rub it into the flour mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Beat the egg in a separate bowl, then add it to the mixture. Use your hands to bring it together into a rough dough, but don’t knead it too much. If for some reason the dough is too crumbly, you can add some milk on order to bring it all together but mine came out fine with just the egg, in fact it was still a little sticky which is totally fine since you will be using a little flour later when rolling it out to prevent it from sticking to your worktop and rolling pin. Form the dough into a flat round, roughly 2.5cm thick, wrap in cling film and let sit fridge for about 30 minutes to an hour before rolling it out.

Slice the apples and place in the fridge for a few hours (ideally overnight so they can dry up a little bit). You can add some lemon juice to prevent them from browning but they will go brown when cooking anyways so you can skip the lemon juice.

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The next steps are ideally done right before you want to serve the tart. Cover an oven proof frying pan (I have an IKEA one which has a metal handle) with the butter (it needs to be a thick layer) and sprinkle most of the sugar over it and arrange the apples nicely on top, making sure the whole surface is covered. Add the rest of the sugar on top. Roll the pastry to the size of the pan and cover the apples. Place the pan on a medium to high heat on the hob. Cook for a few minutes until the juices around the edges of the pastry begin to bubble, and spoon some out of going over the pastry. Cook for another 10-15 minutes until the juice starts going darker and starts to caramelize. Then place the pan in a preheated fan oven at 170 degrees Celsius (or 180-190 if using a regular, non-fan oven). Bake for another 45-50 minutes.

Let cool for a few minutes (around 5) once you take it out of the oven, then place a serving dish on top and carefully tip the tart over. Serve while still warm – add a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream if you like!

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Textured frosting – a little secret

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Frosting is quite an important element in baking. It’s not a coincidence that there’s a saying ‘The frosting on the cake’ for something which makes good things even better. But a lot can go wrong with frosting – and you don’t want a nice bake spoiled by a cream cheese frosting which is too runny or buttercream which is too stiff of not mixed quite enough, therefore has a very grainy/sandy texture.

There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube how to get best results for smooth frosting so I won’t focus on that. But here a little tip if you want to achieve textured frosting (NB: not for piping – chances are it’ll clog your nozzle and this may or may not result into a piping bag explosion and frosting all over): Crushed biscuits. Not only does it look cool if you’re e.g. recreating soil on a garden themed cake or want to create sandy feeling (beaches always have some rocks etc. on them) but it gives the frosting a nice unexpected crunch. The original Oreo biscuits are great for chocolate frosting, while Golden Oreos or rich tea biscuits work well for paler colours (e.g vanilla buttercream or cream cheese frosting).

A while ago I was tasked with a Minecraft cake (lucky for me the actual figures we used were toys – phew) and I simply crushed Oreos, popped them in the chocolate frosting et voila! A few people later asked how I gave the frosting the wow-look and taste – and it’s that simple.

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And they ate cake happily ever after

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Because very few things makes living happily ever after happier than doing so while eating cake! Or at least eating a wedding cake, right?

So imagine my excitement when I was tasked to do a cake for a small, intimate wedding. I was over the moon. It was a bit of a short notice, at least as far as weddings go, but the cake wasn’t overly complicated either so I agreed to do it amidst all the work which was happening in our new flat. Bad idea, you’d think – but I didn’t think so at the time. I miraculously pulled it off – however, I will think twice next time I am in such a situation. I present you a very chocolatey 2-tier wedding cake decorated in white buttercream rosettes, accompanied by matching cupcakes because cupcakes, you know.

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Is a chocolate sponge with chocolate frosting too much chocolate? No such thing.

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White buttercream coming along nicely

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The finished product

I personally always think it’s such an honour when you get to be part of an important event in someones life – be it a wedding, finding out the gender of their baby etc. There’s no room for error but it’s also very gratifying when it all works out in the end and it makes someone’s day that little bit better! Here’s to a happy life together to the lovely couple! Now hand me that champagne flute, please?

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The mother of the bride had made the topper to represent the couple’s personalities – they were adorable!

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Always eat your vegetables [+RECIPE]

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I have very early memories from my childhood singing a song about vegetables and how you’d never grow up to be big and strong if you didn’t eat them. I also don’t remember ever being refused dessert for not finishing my veggies – I must have been lucky. To this day I do like (most) vegetables but then again, I also like cake. So why not combine both?

We have all heard about the almighty and oh-so-good carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. But let’s face it – carrots are so sweet they barely classify as a vegetable in my books. Which is why I like to use other, less popular veg. I am yet to make a beetroot chocolate cake but I now have 2 great courgette recipes in my ‘Let-me-amaze-you’ arsenal. I have admittedly omitted to mention the presence of courgette a time or two before the cake has been tasted but again, luckily no one has spat cake in my face yet either. So all in all – my attempt to incorporate one of your 5 a day in dessert is working well so far.

So here a recipe I discovered and already tested on my office guinea pigs (who luckily for me never say no to cake).

Lemon courgette cupcakes
(makes 10 or 12 – see below)

Ingredients:
175g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
115g caster sugar
150g courgette (peeled and coarsely grated)
2 free range eggs
60ml sunflower oil
1tsp lemon extract

For the frosting:
200g full fat Philadelphia cream cheese (cold – straight from the fridge)
3 heaping tsps of icing sugar (approximately – add more or less according to taste)
zest of 1 lemon
1/2tsp vanilla extract

Method:
Line a muffin tin with either 12 fairy cake cases or 10 muffin ones. I prefer using muffin cases in this case as the frosting is a little runnier than buttercream so it sits nicely in the cases without spilling over. Sift the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a small bowl (oil, eggs and lemon extract). Add the courgettes and the wet ingredients to the dry ones and whisk well till all incorporated. Bake at 160 degrees Celsius (fan) or 180 degrees for non-fan ovens for around 23 mins or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let to cool on a rack completely.

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In the meantime prepare the frosting. Mix the cream cheese frosting, vanilla, sugar and lemon zest using a wooden spoon – don’t overmix so it doesn’t go too runny but make sure it’s nice and smooth. I recommend to then pop it back in the fridge for a while (at least until the cupcakes are completely cool) so it can firm up.

Once the cupcakes  are completely cool, spoon frosting on top and smooth out a little. I did like those looking a little bit rough around the edges to add to them even more home-made flair. If you have time or patience, you can even shave longer pieces of lemon zest to decorate. I was lazy 😉 Then serve with a cup of tea and coffee and enjoy!

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Oh, hello spring!

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This winter has been very very long albeit not very cold. But I am ready for the sun and the beach. And I can finally see the end of it – so as we welcome Spring, I feel like this is the last chance to share a winter cake still. Even though we live in a warm climate with plenty of sunshine and beaches, my other half still enjoys winter sports and we are lucky to have a ski resort not too far away from Gibraltar. So when he said he wanted to go skiing for his birthday in January, it was obvious what cake I should make for him. Living together did prove to be a challenge for a surprise cake but where there is will, there is a way – special thanks to my friend Tracy for allowing me to invade her kitchen so I can bake the cake in secret still! So the unsuspecting birthday boy got not only the iPhone 6 he’d been dreaming of for a while, but a ski chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting too! I was lucky he saw the humor in it and wasn’t at all offended by being pictured as just feet sticking out of a pile of snow*!

Side view Top view*When we went to Germany for Christmas, I brought back almost half a suitcase of cake decorating stuff – sprinkles, cookie cutters etc, but my best buy by far was a set of edible felt tip pens (8 different colors too). How did I live without them before? I definitely recommend them to everyone – they’re great for writing on fondant or dry royal icing.

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A love letter to a cake

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Recently I have been experimenting a little more with gluten free baking. I have done loads of gluten free cupcakes before but had my first go at GF pastry which turned out to be a success. But then I saw this recipe on Jemma’s YouTube channel and it really made me curious – no xanthan gum needed (a powder which acts like gluten to bind the ingredients together), no flour – just polenta and ground almonds. So I decided to make it. Admittedly, it didn’t turn out quite as fluffy as Jemma’s (it was nice and moist though) so it does need tweaking – maybe play a bit with temperature or baking time (after all, my current oven isn’t the best to say the least). But it still tasted good and I shared with some friends, not omitting  to mention the shortcomings of it. And then something unexpected happened. I got this:

Needless to say, I was happy to hear that the cake was liked so much but I was also a little disappointed. The actual creator of the cake has to this date never received such a letter. At least it’s good to know that the things I create provoke such deep feelings, isn’t it? Have a look at the cake yourself:

Whole

Before we cut it

The inside

The inside

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The travelling baker

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Time for some catching up – this post is well overdue but since in baking chronology is not really that important, I follow the rule of better late than never. So since I moved away from my home country just under 8 years ago, it’s not always easy to spend the holidays with family. Bulgaria, turns out, is not the easiest or cheapest destination to reach from Gibraltar. So the last couple of years we have tried to meet about halfway. We spent NYE together in Vienna last year and this year we decided to all head to Germany for Christmas. Markets, mulled wine, cold – the whole package. And cake because, you know, I simply cannot travel without sampling the local cuisine.

But this is not the story I wanted to share. What I wanted to share is how I managed to make a birthday cake for my dear sister while travelling. So I had been planning to make her a cake as we were renting an AirBNB in the city my dad is currently living in. But! Because there is always a but. It was a holiday flat so yes, you guessed it. No oven. The horror!!!! We quickly made a plan to use my dad’s landlady’s oven. However, around this time it started daunting on me she may not have all the tools I need. Also, how was I going to fool my sister in order to disappear for a few hours?

But I am also super good at solving problems. I quickly delegated to G to save the day. I pretended to be super tired after dinner on our second last night and had previously asked G to take my sister out for a drink on their own. We expected this to be the biggest challenge as she’s not a massive drinker neither does she like going out so much. But miraculously she agreed with no questions asked. I managed to get to my dad’s place, bake a cake and do the icing and be tucked in bed back at the AirBNB before the sister and the boyfriend came back from drinking the wine reserves of Speyer dry.

I was pretty sure she doesn’t suspect anything yet but had yet another hurdle to overcome. The cake was not iced or decorated yet – So my plan was to wake up early in the morning, go over, finish the cake and come back before the sister wakes up. But guess what – she had woken up earlier that day. G kept it cool: ‘I don’t know where she is’. Good that I do tend to go for runs in the morning that my sister thought I’d gone for a run. So we walked in with the cake and she was still very surprised! Admittedly, not my best bake (untested German ingredients, new oven, different tools) and not the best looking cake ever but made from the heart. So here is Vanina’s surprise red velvet birthday cake:

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