Trees // Pulp

Libby left me with the worst of the cake trio to sample at my leisure yesterday afternoon. If you hadn't guessed already I got the one with green on top:


The cake is made of: Factory consistency, boring cupcake sponge; pink butter style icing, white chocolate chips, Green confectionary chrismas tree (1cm in thickness). This would be a fairly bog standard novelty cake, seasonal to boot, unortunately it has one serious downfall, one component is amiss, you guessed it, it's the green bit.

I hesitate to call it marshmallow but that's how the tree would be advertised if you brought it on its own. There's a sliding scale for the quality of marshmallowy confection and it's a steep one:

1. The cream of the crop: Homemade Marshmallow. James Martin said of this delicious stuff that you'll never go back to normal marshmallows again, he's almost right.
2. Packet marshmallows: the ones in supermarkets that are advertised as being "seductively soft" however they are primarily toasted around bonfires, or have their chewy monotonousness smothered by a dubious chocolate fountain, all seduction lost.
   
3. Flumps: machine uniform, 13 year old sugar rush fodder. Still palateable comfort food, often found at the seaside in cones bigger than most stomachs, good thing they compact.
   
4. Sugar coated Jelly Pop's: Do not compact, these were certainly popular last year filling many supermarket xmas shelves but I've not seen so many this year, possibly because after eating three you realise they're disgusting. Their texture is first grainy because of the sugar coating (coarse granulated sugar) which swiftly dissolves and you discover that the jelly pop is not a smooth jelly but slightly textured, almost mealy, it takes more than a glass of water before your mouth feels clean again. Then there's the taste, sweet of course but mainly: rank. They taste like nothing natural and you know you should be able to place the flavour, they're trying for flavour, unfortunately the thick coloring carries more aroma, like a cheap plastic panhandle that got too hot. If you eat too many you may get the sensation that there are chemical sores on your tongue.
   

This tree sweet was somewhere between 3. and 4. unfortunately for Candy Cakes the difference between the two is enormous. That is that Flumps are still paletable whereas the Jelly pops were a Christmas '08 phenomenon, they seemed like a good idea at the time, like investment banking, only this year everyone wants investment back!


I felt ill at the first nibble, soldiering on I finished the whole thing. I felt nauseous. It was so green, it tasted of green, it had the squashiness of mallow and the mealiness of a jelly pop. It had the same coarse sugar coating and was simply revolting. The sugar icing baubles were reminicient of gristle.

Unfortunately the problem goes deeper than this piece of evil confection, the cake structure shows the business model of this product, as Lib mentioned below there is no investment into the quality of the muffins and cakes. They are are not lovingly hand-crafted parcels of deliciousness, they're cheap, on trend, rubbish. The cake was acceptably moist but boring, the pink butter icing and so-so-so awful white choc was flavorless, the flavor of the disgusting one cm thick green thing had leeched into the pink icing which made it also revolting.

An otherwise boring cake has been made nauseating by this mistake of sugar and science. The second main function of food is to taste good, CandyCakes have skipped this stage and made cakes that LOOK good only. This sets a precident that I'm sure most of the other cakes live up to, made on the cheap to turn a profit. Unfortunately even the most fashionable cake eater couldnt stop themselves from turning green after eating this, but not as green as the tree, leave that shade to the scientists.

Killing in the Name // Rage Against The Machine

Jonny told me yesterday that a new cupcake shop had opened in kingston. We've had a spat of openings over the past few months, but none very interesting. I'm interested to see how this new one does, as it's in a crap spot. The cafe that was there before did terribly.

I wandered down in my lunchbreak today, and was dissapointed to find that it's not anything new - but a chain. I'd been to the one in Kingly Court about a year ago.

Candy Cakes

So the new one in Kingston looks like everything a trendy cake shop should. All blues and pinks, cute little pouffes to perch on next to colourful little tables.
I went in.. and Killing in the Name was playing on the radio.
This made me laugh quite a bit, and I got odd looks from the staff at the counter.
I know that they just had a radio station on, and Rage was playing because of the Christmas number one chart battle.
Now, I'm all for some RATM, but in a cake shop? Maybe it's just a personal thing but I'd want the music to be as cute as the cakes.
The staff seemed a bit clueless, but I think the shop has only been open a few days, so for now we'll let that go.
I got three cakes, in the name of research. Unfortunately they could only tell me what one of them was.



I was dissapointed that they only wrapped them individually in plastic, not in a box like all the ones they had on display.



J and I split a blueberry cheesecake muffin, which had a lovely softness to it, and was crammed with blueberrys. There was a large splodge of sweet cream cheese in the middle. The only let down was the pink water icing. I know that muffins are never going to look that interesting unless you stick a whole sheet of shocking colour over the top, but the sweetness that it brought was just wrong. It just tasted like sugar. Jonny disagreed and said it doesn't really effect the overall taste.



After only half, I felt a bit sick. I had just had a big lunch though.
I can't really moan about the costs, these 3 came to £8.70, though looking at the receipt the pricing seems to be a bit random and we can't work out what cost what.
I'd hope that it's a reasonable cost, I can't seem to find any information about where or how they're made, and what with.
I've got the chocolatey looking nougat one in my bag for later and left the pink cupcake with a nasty looking Christmas tree on top for Jonny. If there are any further revelations we'll report back, but I doubt Candy Cakes will be replacing my usual lunch-time treats of macarons or percy pigs.

Sugar Daddy // Tom Jones

Christmas Cake # 3, 4, 5 and 6

A marathon day of cake decoration. I managed to convince Jonny that he really wanted to stay and help.
A good day overall, though a brief nap was needed. I don't want to go into too much detail, as 12 christmas cakes is bound to become boring very soon.

3 - A bit too pink!



4 - All white - Couldn't outline the leaves as planned but I think it went down well.



5 - Becci's cake - snowscape. Nut free!



6 - Corporate order.. my work asked me to do a cake for our best customer. The problem came when the template Jonny had made was two inches too big. This was my fault. I got the cake size wrong. The design is our business logo, with a festive twist. I was willing to leave it as just the logo, but Jonny and my Uncle, and my Mother in fact, said it needed something more.

Swinging on a Star // Big Dee Erwin

Christmas cake #2

I was left in the house alone to decorate the second cake, which is my present to my Uncle, who is staying for the night.
Having the house to myself allowed me a bit of time to rock out, then get down to the cake dec. I was very relaxed about this one... and it went very well! The marzipanning and sugar pasting were the best I've ever done.
I was quite shocked by this and remained completely uninspired for the detail until J arrived.
And look at what we made!!!



I'm so immensely chuffed. It was so satisfying, removing layers of icing, filling in, removing, filling in. I imagine I'll repeat this design for one or two of the other cakes I have to do, the only change I'd make would be to put less colouring in so the blue is more icy.

Sugar Coated Iceberg // Lightning Seeds

Christmas Cake #1

I am half way through icing my first christmas cake - number one of twelve.

Started by levelling the top off - which I am always too generous with. This means that I end up with space at the bottom of the cake which will need generous stuffing with marzipan to level it up. I guess this is a good thing for those who love marzipan.
I got in from work and the decision to start icing tonight was spontaneous, which is leading to problem after problem. Firstly I don't have any apricot jam, only some kind of conserve - which I know is the same, and I'm being fussy.. but I like to have a cheap apricot jam so that there aren't any fruity lumps under my icing.



The fact that I had very little marzipan left meant I couldn't put the base on quite as well as I hoped. I can handle this, along as it is a comparitively smooth layer for the sugar paste, I don't really care what it looks like.

The final problem so far is that as my kitchen is stupidly small, I have all my cake dec equipment in tool boxes in my bedroom. This means that my room is getting messier and messier as I rush in and out.
I think I'm getting stressed out by nothing.

The next few stages should be a doddle as this cake is a gift, it doesn't need to be fancy, and they like a bit of ribbon bunged on. I'm a firm believer that ribbon shouldn't go on a cake unless it's completely ballsed up. So this gives me some space to go wrong...



...which I did. I was sort of gun-ho and just went for it and slopped my beautifully rolled sugar paste on to the wrong bit of cake, panicked and ripped it. In the end the patch up wasn't so obvious, but it got a bit jammy.
I had great fun using my new icing gun - a bit of a risky gadget. I'm using it to make ribbons for the bottom of the cakes, as I've decided royal icing and piping is too much of a faff. It works very nicely, but it's quite hard work on the arms, and I need to work out a way to block up the holes so I only get one ribbon.....



Finished with a simple glittery star and some silver and black ribbon - not much effort at all. Which is just what I needed to get me back into the swing of cake decorating.

Strange Fruit // Billie Holiday (Abel Meeropol)

I went sloe picking with my mum in October. It’s a regular annual outing as the best sloes to be found are near where my grandmother and uncle live so there’s always somewhere to escape to after traipsing along hedgerows through a persistent drizzle.

The usual foraging etiquette of don’t take to much etc. didn’t used to apply with sloes. Usually there’s a lot of fruit but this year we had a shock. The wild and ragged footpath that follows the river along the floodplain at the bottom of the hills had been “rejuvenated” and a lot of the hedgerows had been hacked back beyond all recognition.

We walked for half an hour down the almost sterile grass path, now ten people wide. We got told off for not being on the footpath as we veered off to look at bushes growing along fences not officially en route. We found approximately five sloes in half an hour.

The aim of our sloe adventure was to eventually make the most delicious winter warmer of a drink; sloe gin. It is a blood red tincture that is the answer to a summer of drinking elderflower cordial; it’s sweet and has a flavour of summer fruits, a rich, dark, black-forest sweetness.

Sloes grow as the bitter fruit of the blackthorn or snag, a traditional hedgerow plant that flowers in spring and fruits in late summer and ripen through to the first frost when they’re at their least bitter. Their “least” bitter is still pretty astringent and that’s why they’re not a very commercially available fruit.

Eventually further down the path we found more sloes on branches that had escaped the pruning by being very high up. As the drizzle set in I climbed fences to reach the top fruits, filled my coat pockets and jumped down. We scrambled under barbed wire to get to the other side of the hedges. Eventually we found a tree stood out on it’s own in a cattle field, covered in the dusty blue fruit. We took all we needed and left, sure that further down there were more leftover. Passers by told us that we needed to go to another spot for the best crops but this was our patch for years and it did us proud.

The first time I made sloe gin I was about 12 and on a walking holiday somewhere near Leeds with my mum and her cousin, an accomplished rambler. We filled a 500ml water bottle with sloes on one walk and when home we followed the following imprecise recipe:

• 500ml bottle full of sloes;
  
• 1L gin;
  
• 1KG bag of sugar
• an extra 500ml bottle.
  

Method:

1. Empty sloes into collinder and give them a quick rinse then Dry lightly.
2. Prick the sloes all over and fill each bottle with an inch or two of sloes.
3. Using the funnel add sugar and shake so that the sugar runs into all the gaps between the sloes
4. Add more sloes, followed by more sugar until the sloes have been equally split between both water bottles and are surrounded by sugar. Each bottle should be approximately half full of the sloes and sugar.
5. Top up the bottles with gin and screw the lid on tight.
6. Over the following months turn the bottle upside down regularly to let the sloes swirl about and the sugar dissolve in the gin, it should mature from pink to a deep red.
7. Open at Christmas or after 3 months and enjoy.

You can strain out the sloes and decant it into a nicer bottle but there’s no harm in having a couple of sloes drop into your glass. It can be drunk neat or with lemonade, both are delicious. More precise recipes and fantastic advice about when to harvest the fruit are available from the cottage smallholder. We tried to do the freezer test but forgot to label the bottles, so we’ll save that for next year.