Geeky Goodies: Fish Fingers and Custard

I freely admit I am a terrible blogger but this latest hiatus has been stupidly long. Since my last post I have been on holiday, done a lot of overtime, had zero baking inspiration and had real life gang up on me all of which has left me with very little energy to devote to this place. And it's very hard to find the effort to work on something once you've gotten out of the habit of doing it! But the inspiration fairy has struck and now I’m back with a vengeance. I hope.

Now unless you have been living under a rock for the last year or so you should be aware that this Saturday (23^rd November 2013) marks the 50^th Anniversary of the cult classic Doctor Who. Whovians across the globe have been counting down the days to Saturday for months now as a special anniversary episode featuring 3 incarnations of the Doctor  (including one previously unknown) will be broadcast. Now is there a better reason to do some geeky baking? As a proud Whovian I don’t think so.

But what to bake? Dalek and TARDIS shaped cakes are too cliché, so I turned to the show itself for inspiration and there in the episode titled “The Eleventh Hour” was the answer. Fish fingers and custard.

I won’t bore you with the background to this combination but if you have no idea what I’m talking about I suggest watching the clip linked below.

Now in the show the Doctor ate real fish fingers with custard, I however don’t like fish fingers so I had to bust out my Fez and do some thinking. And then it came to me, chocolate brownies. And for once one of my mad cap ideas actually looked like the vision I had in my head, so I am proud to present a cakey version of an iconic dish.

Adipose approves of this

Ingredients
Your favourite brownie recipe
Vanilla flavoured frosting
Digestive biscuits
Custard

Method
Bake a batch of brownies as per your recipe. I’m pressed for time this week so I cheated and used the Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Brownie mix (which is incredibly tasty). Ideally you want your brownies to be quite firm and not too gooey in the middle. Once baked, leave to cool and when completely cold carefully cut the brownie into thin rectangles. Mine were about 1 inch by 4 inches.

Now using a food processor (or by hand) crush the biscuits until they look like very fine breadcrumbs (just like when making a cheesecake). I used about 200g of biscuits. Pour the biscuit breadcrumbs onto a plate and put aside for the moment.

With a palette knife, carefully cover each slice of brownie with the frosting. Make sure it is completely covered including the bottom of each slice. Then put the brownie onto the breadcrumb plate and cover it with the biscuit crumbs. Move it around until all the frosting is covered with biscuit crumbs. Put the finished fish finger on a plate and continue until you run out of brownies. Any biscuit crumbs you have left over can be stored in an airtight container for another day (I’m thinking mini cheesecakes would be a good use for them!)

Now get yourself some custard, sit back and enjoy your brownie “fish fingers”. I think this recipe would be a great one to make with children as it is very easy and somewhat messy to do!

If you are feeling brave why not check out The Geeky Chef and have a go at making real fish fingers. I gather the combination is actually rather nice.
http://www.geekychef.com/2012/11/fish-fingers-and-custard.html

And as a bonus, here is this week’s episode of Nerdy Nummies in which Ro made adorable Adipose cupcakes! I am going to have to try this, the Adipose are my favourite aliens. 

And if that isn't enough Doctor Who themed goodies for you, head to Lakeland as they currently sell some brilliant Doctor Who themed baking equipment and party ware. I love the chocolate mould!

http://www.lakeland.co.uk/p18038/Doctor-Who-Bakeware-Range

  

Something new

Hi everyone, this post is kind of a sequel to the Game of Thrones decorating tutorial that I posted the other day. As I mentioned in the first post I made those cakes as a competition entry, and it being a Youtube contest that means a video was required!

So in case you guys are interested, here is the video version of that tutorial.

Honestly I'm not sure if the instructions make more sense spoken, but since I'm planning on getting a new camera later this year I might be able to record some videos for this place. Would any of you be interested in that? I could do tutorial videos on techniques (e.g. icing a cupcake etc.), decorating tutorials like this one or even product reviews.

If something like that would be interesting to you my readers please let me know; email, comment, PM whatever, I'd love to get some feedback on this idea!

Decorating Tutorial and Recipe: Game of Thrones Cupcakes

Ok so this post took me slightly longer than I was expecting to write, and it’s a really long post so for once I shall make use of the jump break feature! Seriously I've written essays shorter than this post! There are also quite a few pictures.

I’ve wanted to do some Game of Thrones (GoT) themed baking for ages and in a stroke of good fortune one of my favourite Youtube channels is hosting a GoT themed contest right now. This gave me the perfect excuse! So here I present 2 designs of cupcake; one is incredibly easy while the other is a bit more advanced. I’ve also included my lemon cakes recipe.

Decorating Tutorial: Easter Nest Cupcakes

I almost completely forgot that it is Easter this weekend, easy to do when there is snow on the ground in March! Though as I write this the sun is coming out which is nice, I’d almost forgotten what it looked like! So sadly I haven’t prepared much Easter themed content, but I do have a couple of things prepared starting with this tutorial on Easter Nest cupcakes.

These cupcakes are absolutely adorable and are so easy to make, I think they’d be great for children to have a go at. So let’s get started!

You will need
1 batch of cupcakes, I used double chocolate cupcakes.
Icing sugar and green food dye
Chocolate frosting, I used a tub of Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge frosting as I was feeling lazy
1 bag of mini chocolate eggs
Bird cake toppers, one for each cake
Piping bag and star shaped nozzle

Step One

Mix together the icing sugar with a splash of water and some green dye, mix well. You want a thick icing that is slightly runny, I can’t give quantities as I just dumped some icing sugar into the bowl! Cover each cake in the icing and leave to dry, I left mine overnight.

Step Two

Fill the piping bag with the frosting. Then pipe a blob of frosting onto the middle of each cake.

Step Three
Pipe one continuous spiral of frosting around the blob. Or pipe a circle around the blob, and then pipe a second circle on top of the first one. Finally add a couple of chocolate eggs to each nest and insert the cake toppers.

I hope these instructions make sense and that you have fun making these cakes. If you make these please let me know I’d love to see your results!

Snapshots: The Cake is a Lie

And that’s about as far as my knowledge of Portal goes... I really must have a go at playing it sometime but first I need to finish Lego Lord of the Rings and try some other games. My attempts at playing Bioshock are going to be hilarious but you aren’t here to hear me talk about games so on to the actual subject of this post.

Last Sunday was my baby brother’s 21^st birthday, and since I’m an amazing and fantastic sister I kindly made him a birthday cake. And here it is, the Weighted Companion Cube!

You have no idea how awkward it was get the cake into my photography setup.
It was extremely heavy which made moving it tricky!

This cake is constructed out of four, 8 inch square Madeira cakes which have been sandwiched together with cream cheese frosting.  The whole thing was then covered in sugarpaste (which I coloured myself) and then all the decorations were appliquéd onto the surface. They were also made of sugarpaste and glued on with royal icing. Each piece was cut out by hand with a scalpel (well apart from the circles/hearts, obviously I used a cutter for those) and all I can say is thank the lord that icing is not like pastry so it doesn’t matter how many times you re-roll it!

Me and my mum are united in our hatred of people who just shove candles into cakes without a thought for the amount of effort that has gone into them or the overall design, so I baked a cupcake to hold the candle. This cupcake is a Peanut Butter Cup Cupcake V1 (recipe coming soon) which has been topped with some leftover frosting and a blue sugarpaste portal. Where is the orange portal? Well that’s a trade secret ;)

I learnt a lot making this cake, not only did I learn that sugarcraft will always take longer than you think it will; I also learnt some new techniques.  I learnt how to cover a square cake in sugarpaste (much harder than a circle cake, especially one this size!) and I learnt how to level cakes (a spirit level is your best friend). All in all I’m pretty darn proud of this cake, it was truly a labour of love but I think it was worth it!

Icing Cakes – A Quick Reference Guide

There are several different types of icing used to cover cakes, some of which go by more than one name! This can get a little confusing, especially for beginners to baking and cake decorating. In this post I’m giving a quick overview of the different icings I use and some of the other names I know them by. At a later date (not too late I promise!) I’ll do a more in-depth post on each type, which will include instructions on how to make and use them.

Hopefully I’ve managed to get all of the common names for these icings, if I’ve missed any please let me know and I’ll update accordingly.  Some of the icings listed below have more than one use which I’ll touch upon, but at the moment I’m only concerned with icing as a cake covering. Anything that is primarily used for sugar craft I’ll cover in a separate post. Right so let’s get started, oh and the pictures show examples of me using that icing. I've tried to use pictures that I haven't posted before where possible!

Water Icing aka Glacé Icing
A classic icing, and probably one that most people made as children! This really is the simplest icing you can make, as it only needs water and icing sugar! This icing is pretty adaptable as you can easily adjust the consistency to suit any cake or biscuit. In addition to this because the basic recipe is always white this icing is great fun to colour and it’s very easy to add whatever flavour you want. Sometimes I use lemon juice instead of water and spoon it over hot cakes for a quick lemon drizzle cake that is pre-iced.

Water icing is made by mixing small amounts of water into lots of (sifted) icing sugar and mixing until you get the desired consistency. Just be careful when adding flavours and colours as these will affect the consistency!

Buttercream
This is one of the simplest toppings you can make for a cake and it’s highly versatile. Buttercream is made by simply creaming together butter and icing sugar and adding some flavouring, the most common of which is vanilla. Once you’ve got a nice smooth, thick and spreadable consistency it’s ready to use. Take care however, as using shortcuts like melting or warming the butter will only produce an oily icing, so where possible allow your butter to get to room temperature before starting!

Buttercream is great for filling sandwich cakes and topping all manner of cakes, I often pipe or spread it onto cupcakes. This icing is highly adaptable as by adding a couple of drops of food dye and changing the flavour you can match it to any flavour of cake. Some of my favourite flavours include: chocolate, cinnamon and rose.

Frosting
Now I expect that many people include buttercream under the umbrella term of frosting, but when I mention frosting I’m usually referring to cream cheese frosting. Which happens to be my favourite type of icing, it’s so tasty. I include marshmallow and meringue frosting here too, but those are slightly different so I won't discuss them here. 

Commonly found on carrot cakes and red velvet cakes, this icing is made in pretty much the same way as buttercream only with the addition of cream cheese.

Sugarpaste aka Fondant Icing
When you buy a premade birthday or Christmas cake this sugarpaste is normally what has been used to ice it. This type of icing is a popular choice when decorating cakes, and is very simple to use. To be honest I’m not entirely sure how sugarpaste is made but since it is widely available in shops it really isn’t necessary to make your own. Sugarpaste can be used to cover cakes by simply rolling it out as you would pastry and draping it over the cake, however it also has uses in sugarcraft as it is very easy to use for model making.

Sugarpaste is sold in pretty much any colour you can think of, and white sugarpaste can be coloured using food colours (or by kneading blobs of coloured sugarpaste into it). It is naturally extremely sweet however it is possible to buy flavoured sugarpaste (for example lemon and chocolate). This is usually only available in specialist cake decorating shops though. Shop brought sugarpaste can be kept for over a year if stored in an airtight container in a cool dry place.

Royal Icing
Another icing that has two uses, royal icing can be piped and used as decorations or used to cover cakes.  It dries hard and is very brittle once dry which means you should be prepared for breakages (and lots of them) if using this to make decorations!

This icing is quite simple to make, but does behave differently to other types of icing. Royal icing is made by beating together egg whites and icing sugar to create a thick smooth icing. Some recipes call for lemon juice but I never add it. To thicken royal icing you must never add extra icing sugar as this will ruin the proportions in the recipe, to thicken simply beat the icing for longer. If you require a runnier icing add a tiny bit of water (literally drops). When made this way the icing is perfect for use when piping decorations, if you want to cover a cake with it add some glycerine.  This addition means that while the icing is still hard when dry it won’t be as brittle, so it won’t crack so much when you actually cut the cake!

When used to cover a cake royal icing is either used to create a perfectly smooth surface (common on wedding cakes) or a rougher textured surface that makes a great snow scene on Christmas cakes.

As royal icing sets hard it needs to be kept in an airtight container when not in use, but if left alone in a cool, dry place and perfectly sealed it can be kept for months.

So there you have it a basic overview of all the different types of cake covering, I haven’t dealt with marzipan here as that is usually hidden under royal icing or sugarpaste. I hope this post is helpful in some way. As I said as the start, at a later date I’ll discuss each of these in more detail and discuss the icing used in sugarcraft. 

Some of my recent baking

Wondering why I haven't updated since the New Year's Resolutions post?

Sadly my work hours have been all over the place the last week and shall be this week too, but next week they settle down and everything here should return to normal(ish). 

I have been baking though, today I made soda bread. Not entirely sure how it's turned out though, I accidently made it with strong white bread flour rather than plain flour! oops It has risen and it looks like the picture in the book, but I have no idea if it tastes OK. Guess I'll find out tomorrow, at which point I shall update you guys with the results of that particular mishap!

Edited to Add: Well I've tried the soda bread, and it's actually very nice! It tastes best when eaten as is with some butter/spread, as when toasted it developes a rather heavy texture. Apparently this is normal with soda bread, I'm not sure as it's years since I've eaten the stuff! So all in all this experiment hasn't gone too badly but I think it shall be improved by using the right flour next time! No pictures as it all got eaten!

I also made this

I made this a couple of days ago but I've had to wait to post it as it's my granddad's birthday cake and I have no idea if my grandparents ever look at this place! (I had to keep it off Facebook because they do use that and may have seen it.)

This is a chocolate cola cake which I have covered with green sugarpaste, and then appliqued the elephant and it's blanket using more sugarpaste. The red stripe has been covered with red sugar (secured with royal icing) and the blue areas have been decorated with star shaped sprinkles (makes a change from snowflakes!) The elephant's toe nails and tusk were made of white sugarpaste and the eye is an edible silver pearl. 

All in all I'm really proud of this cake, as while I've done modelling with sugarpaste before this is the first time I've ever covered a cake in the stuff. I think it's turned out rather well, I managed to roll it to an even thickness and it was big enough for the cake! I even coloured white icing green and grey myself (the blue/red were pre-coloured). The cake is on a plate because I completely forgot to go buy a proper cakeboard, oops. My only issue with this cake is that I should have rolled the icing a little thinner when I cut out the ear shape, as because it was a little thick the edges didn't curl properly when I ran my ball tool over the edge. But annoyingly the icing kept sticking to the worktop so I couldn't roll it any thinner easily, next time I'll dig out my mum's icing rolling pin (it's much smaller) and non-stick board.