Happy birthday Ruth!

My friend Ruth is a vegetarian and doesn’t eat eggs so for her birthday I decided to take the challenge and make her some cupcakes. they turned out quite well (obviously not as good as normal cupcakes with eggs) the only raising agent was baking powder so I changed the recipe slightly and did half plain flour and half self raising to help it along.  This is how they turned out. 

If you’re crazy and you don’t eat eggs or you have a weird friend who doesn’t hers the recipe for you:

(from http://www.rakskitchen.net)

Plainflour/All purpose flour/Maida	1& 1/2 cups
Coco powder(I used Hershey's)	3 tblsp
Sugar	1 cup
Oil (I used sunflower oil)	1/4 cup
Baking Soda	1 tsp
Lemon juice/Vinegar	1 tblsp
Water	1 cup
Salt	1/4 tsp
Vanilla essence	1/2 tblsp

Snooker Cake

                     Happy Birthday John!

Here is a 70th birthday cake I made. it took 3 10"x10" vanilla cakes and 12 hours work with my mum but we did it! Im very proud of my snooker cake and I really like the beer, chalk and cues which are made from chop sticks cut to sizeand coloured.

Chocolate chip cookies

I have been recently experimenting with cakes, pastries and biscuits I don’t usually make, so I decided to make some cookies and I came across this recipe which turned out to be really good. The difference with this recipe to your usual biscuit recipe is that the cookies ask for oats, normal porridge oats, it really gives the biscuit a great texture and unique taste that has become very addictive.

 Chewy Oat and Chocolate chip cookies

Serves: 42

• 250g butter, softened
• 200g light brown soft sugar
• 75g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 150g flour
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 260g porridge oats
• 125g chopped walnuts (optional)
• 175g chocolate chips
  
  (this recipe is from allrecipes.co.uk)
  

1. So to start with cream the butter and sugar until a light colour then add the eggs and vanilla.
2. Next stir in the flour, bicarb and salt stir until just blended then add the oats and chocolate chips.
   
3.  Place even piles of the batter on a tray and bake for 12-15 minutes.

1. 
   

Happy Easter

pastillage

Pastillage is sugar-based dough used for decorating and creating decorations for pastry, centre piece work and decorative moulded forms. The dough is much like clay or play-dough where you can knead  it and roll it out. Pastillage is worked then allowed to dry, setting up to a hard, sugar-based decoration. Depending on the mix, pastillage can be formed and sanded to remove any rough areas after it is completely dry. 

This piece is a centre piece of a mask and other elements. I didn’t want to use much colour to keep it minimal; the colour we used was powder colour. We used royal icing to pipe patterns on the work. 
Pastillage is very delicate work and you have to have a lot of patience to be able to work with this form of decoration.