The Wedding and Cake! pt one

Making your own wedding cake....

First let me say is well worth it if you normally take pride in making cake for your family, yourself, friends etc.
Also let me qualify that with its not to be undertaken lightly! As I live in UK and got married in USA I couldn't bake the layers and freeze them ahead of time as I did with the trial wedding cake this spring.. so with much pleading, photo sharing and phone calls- I convinced my mother that yes she could whip up 9 layers no problem.. which after all this is the woman responsible for my cooking/baking love- she did.. and it was fabulous! BUT.. there is still a lot more to wedding cake than baking the cake. And it does mean you have a bit less chill out time- but perhaps I would of spent that stressing about something else silly.. at least this was a real challenge to worry about!


We got married on a Saturday, so all of Friday was devoted to 'assembly'! My mom and I had make the tricky Praline Silk Meringue Buttercream on Tuesday so we would have one last thing to worry about and everything had been coming to room temperature since Thursday night.


Cue the miracle worker..the wife of one of the groomsmen- she makes my cake making hobby look like mud pies in the back yard. almost completely self taught she loves making cakes- so much so she was tickled pink to get to ditch her kids and be put to work basically all day until the evening dinner on Friday.. so here she is in action...

Here I am trying my best to reassure her that yes I do want her to stack my cakes as I know that without her ingenious leveling I will get a sloped saggy masterpiece!

Witness here our fridge full of partially completed cakes and white chocolate ganache- see those bits on the corners of the top cake.. i would have never done that... but she did and I have level layers to show for it!

Note its the bottom tier on the bottom of the fridge (a 12' chocolate butter cake with silk praline meringue buttercream) and the middle tier on top with waiting bowls of chocolate ganache and white chocolate! (a 10" vanilla buttermilk cake with homemade raspberry jam and white chocolate ganache)

At this point I thought.. hooray we're almost done.. then remembered I still had to make all the chocolate faux bois coverings.. and there was still one more tier to assemble and it needed its filling made too.. and we had a rehearsal to get to, party dresses to change into and a party to go to!

part 2 coming soon!

TWD:Sables

This month I've made a pledge to get back on track! It also helps that I'm in a cookie making mood and the two recipes that are cookies this month go hand in hand (this one needs 2 egg yolks- next one 2 egg whites!)

These were really simple to make and tasted just like a shortbread cookie to me. I seem to have some issues with rolling a log and not having crevasses in the middle- but thankfully that doesn't seem to have any impact on the taste! Plus putting them on our new wedding dishware seems to make everything more photogenic!

TWD:Sugar Topped Molasses Spice Cookies

Oh Dear.. it seems that November completely got away from me.. The first month of life post wedding was such a transition for me that I barely even made it into the kitchen! Let alone posting a wedding/ wedding cake recap!

somehow I did manage to make these in Novemeber- before Thanksgiving.. but then never managed to post until now!... These are delicious.. really make them now- they are very similar to a cookie I grew up making with my mom called molasses crinkles from that much loved 'cookie book'. I ran out of molasses but substituted the last of my treacle.. if anyone can tell me how those two are different.. i'm all ears cause they seem to work interchangably!

I try and get a wedding cake post up soon!

TWD: Chocolate crunched caramel tart

It was a bit hard to get this weeks TWD recipe out. Not for any sane reason, like not wanting to make the recipe.. because believe me that picture looked so good and chocolaty, I knew I wanted to make this one! The real problem you see is that this is the last week before we leave for the USA and get MARRIED! Yup so sorry if this is a kinda lonely blog for awhile but pretty much all of October is wedding and honeymoon.. so come 10/10 you know I'll be digging into my own wedding cake that me and my mom have made- with a little help from some bridesmaids!

As you can see this is pure deliciousness and for once I had no issues with making caramel! Hooray! A quick press in (i love not having to roll it out) cookie tart dough- breezy caramel and super simple ganache and you have something that looks beautiful, tastes like the best candy bar you've ever had and definitely impresses! Make sure to check out the rest of the TWD blogroll tarts!

Daring Bakers: Vol au Vents

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

I was pretty excited to make my own puff pastry this month. I remember doing it once as a kid with my mom so I thought I'd see how tough it could be on my own. I must admit I found this pretty straight forward. I spent one Saturday doing errands and then coming in and doing a turn of the dough before starting something else and returning.

The result was a nice crispy, golden, flakey form ready for me to fill! I had some leftover black bean hot pot that was fantastic in these!

Be sure and see the rest of the Daring Bakers posts this month!

TWD: Cottage Cheese Pufflets

We have had a bumper crop of plums this year- so I thought this would be a good excuse for using up some of the jars of jam in the fridge that didn't seal properly.

These were very simple to make and the cottage cheese added an interesting tanginess to things. I think perhaps they might of needed a bit more time in the oven to get flakier, but they were delicious even slightly underdone!

Yum!

Be sure to check out the rest of the TWD blogroll today.

Daring Cooks: Indian Dosa

This months daring cooks is a great choice for me as I am vegetarian and the past couple have been pretty meat/fish heavy. While this 3 piece recipe seemed daunting at first the filling came together quite easily.

I then moved on to making the sauce- and I think there must be some sort of misprint in the instructions as it ended up tasting too stocky.. kinda like gravy (not so curry inspired) I doubled the coconut milk- but it was still a sort of gravy taste..

For me I think the biggest challege was the dosa themselves- getting these pancakes to turn out took some time figuringout the right amout of oil in the pan and the right heat. I got there in the end though!

These were pretty good- but I did find the recipe too reliant on curry powder- i guess living in the curry capital of the UK this was just a bit too 'translated' for me to really taste anything like the dosa I can get in Bradford!