Colourblind // Darius

Aahh you can't beat a bit of Darius.





These were done ages ago, marshmallows with the remaining American gummy bears. I wanted to do something with them that would show off the amazing colours.



I think I need a new sugar thermometer, as all of my recent marshmallows haven't been that good, a bit too squishy and sticky, I don't think all of these got eaten.



Sorry for the lack of posts between now and Christmas, things went a bit wonky. I have a few posts to catch up on and should be back on track for Easter.

Walla Walla // Offspring

My brother - Glass Candle Grenades - has returned from his trip to America. He was full of stories and excitement and a large amount of endearing love for his new friends.

He cunningly managed to time his trip to miss my birthday, my Mum's birthday and my Dad's. Strangely enough, he returned in time for his own. He had been in touch and asked what we'd like him to bring back. Dad asked for duty-free rum and Mum wasn't sure what she wanted.

I asked for 'sweets, not chocolate.' I've tasted all the American chocolate I want to.

I got 1.3 kilos of Haribo Gold Bears.

I'm still ploughing through them, I can only eat a few at a time. The colours are incredible on them, so we had some photo fun, which was also an excuse to hunt through the family crockery.

I don't know if it's just me being a bit weird, or if I'm actually right, but I think they have a much higher gelatine content than British ones. Maybe a blind tasting is in order.

Brighton Rock // Queen

I have quite a lot to catch up on! Expect a few blogs over the next few days..

On Sunday we headed down to Brighton to celebrate Mister Chay's birthday. We picnicked on the beach.. well as we'd already been away mine and Jonny's picnic consisted of burgers and chips from Grubbs. I highly reccomend it if you're in need of a filth fix. It's a must-do for any trip to Brighton.


The other must-do for any beach trip is ice creams! Suprisingly, it was only me and Becci that fancied one. You know the kind I'm talking about. Not real ice cream. That miscellaneous stuff that unfurls out of a machine.


I had two flakes. I realise now this is quite greedy. Becci wanted butterscotch sauce but the man had only strawberry or chocolate. She was very dissapointed, and while she struggled on with eating the sauceless ice cream you could see how distressed she was.








After mooching and doing poi and going in the freezing-icicles-of-death sea we all packed up and headed for the pier. We went on the little rollercoaster.


And then we went on the Waltzer. I love a good waltzer. Especially after beer and ice cream.

Then to the pub for some horrendously bad food and service (I was behaved and didn't complain or moan, as Jonny pinched me). I was by now tired. The plan was to head on to a club event reggae thing. Which isn't my cup of tea, but I fully intended to go in order to not look like a grumpy mare that won't do anything that involves something she doesn't like.. but we were tired so four of us headed for the train.


We picked up crepes on the way. While they were impressively cooked and looked really really nice, the batter was odd tasting and chewy. All the nice stuff dripped to the bottom of the cone that they'd been plonked in. That was dissapointing. I think next time I'll just get a second icecream.


Wow. Reading that you wouldn't think that I had a massively awesome day. It was so much fun. Especially the rollercoasters.

Billy Brown // Mika

Yesterday was the birthday party of one of our best friends, Will.
We managed to keep it a complete surprise from him, and I think it was a total success in the end, well he seemed happy enough.


When I make cakes for people I like to put some thought into them, make them a bit more personal. I had two ideas for Will.. wine and guitars.
We decided against making a replica of his beloved bass, as it's beautiful and a cake would just be a charicature of it, and its imperfections would have probably annoyed him.
The other idea, wine, needed practice and I ran out of time and didn't fancy taking the risk of errecting a cake held up with wine bottles without knowing if it would work or not.
So I had to re-think. Will is one of my only friends who has an interest in proper chocolate, he thinks the darker better.
So I gave myself the challenge of making the chocolatiest cake in the world.

I made the actual cake on Thursday evening, using James Martin's cola cake recipe, the only chocolate cake recipe I trust to work now.
I planned to fill it with a dark ganache and top it with Helm Magical Icing and then put as many chocolates as possible on top, all bought from William Curley.

I'd asked my dad to buy some 70% chocolate for the ganache, as Will would approve but it wouldn't be so dark everyone else would hate it.
So I happily made the ganache but when I tried it.. bleurgh.. it was bitter and unpalatable. We checked the packet and it had been 85% chocolate. It could not have gone in the middle of the cake, and I had to get back to the office.
It was decided we'd take the risk of adding sweetened cream cheese, in an attempt to keep the perfect consistency but make it a bit more edible.
It worked, sort of. It solidified in the cake, so wasn't the gooey filling it should have been, but it was still tasty.

Helm Magical Icing is a mixture of butter, cocoa powder, icing sugar and evaporated milk. It makes a silky smooth covering that you can just pour over the cake, and it gives it a lovely shiny coating.


Then the fun bit of covering the cake in chocolates, cinder toffee and nuts. We were quite pleased with how it looked in the end, and I think everyone at the party liked it, even if they didn't manage to finish the Libby-sized portions I dished out.

Spit It Out // Slipknot

I take back anything good I may have said about Candy Cakes, and remove any chances I might have given them.
I had a moment of weakness when all I needed was cakey stodge. A nice muffin, a nice blueberry cheesecake muffin.
They didn't have one, but the man serving, still a bit bumbling and rubbish, pointed me in the direction of a raspberry and apple one.
They didn't have much variety, so I plumped for that one.

I can see now why I was pointed towards that one, it obviously needed selling, though why anyone would let produce like that be sold lord only knows.
It was heavy and solid and had none of the soft crumb that the blueberry cheesecake did. It was completely off and flavourless.
I suppose it would have been hard to tell, due to the obscene amount of icing on top, which had leached through to the top of the muffin, making it the best bit as it was slightly moist and edible, but I dread to think how long the cake had sat in that shop, and how many others were in a similar state.

They did have more stock, but that seemed to have replaced the variety of muffins, and it included macarons. Ugh. I can't even be bothered to write about the vanilla one I bought. They weren't interesting and they weren't amazing.

Hopefully the residents of Kingston will learn how lazy this shop is, and it will fail in a small amount of time. However the general appeal of brightly coloured humungous cakes might be too much for some people to resist.

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.