Friday 20 April 2012

Victoria Sandwich



This is the cake for Wellies boy or in other words my wonderful son in law Oli. He had a big birthday recently so of course a cake had to be made, now I was ready to make a large iced cake of some sort for him but when I ask him all he wanted was a sponge filled with cream (much to the horror of Wellies who has never done cream) so thats what I did. I added passionfruit ( a must for both of them as their company is Passionfruit design now shortened to PFD) to the cream with a tablespoon of icing sugar. You can just see that I put strawberry jam on the bottom cake then the cream mix and chopped strawberry's. Tori then put icing sugar and raspberries on top just before serving it otherwise the fruit might look a bit tired if left to long on top.
When Wellies posted this picture on her blog someone commented that they would love to know how to make a Victoria Sandwich. About that time I was cooking some hams for my nephews 21st so out came my very old and in pieces Aga cook book ( although I have cooked countless hams these ones were boneless so I thought I had better check ) when trying to find the right page which is difficult when it's so in bits I came across this recipe which puts it so brilliantly.  

VICTORIA SANDWICH.

         The weight of 3 eggs in butter, caster sugar and self raising flour. 
        1 tsp of good Vanilla essence you can also use lemon juice & rind or orange.

The method all depends on your mixer if you have a good free standing one then all you need to do is put all the ingredients in the bowl and mix till well blended. It should look like whipped cream and drop off the spoon easily if it seems dry just add a little milk. If you have a hand held mixer then I would recommend you whisk the butter and sugar until white and creamy then add the beaten eggs and the vanilla gradually if it looks curdled don't worry just add a little of the flour till combined, finally fold in the sifted flour with a metal spoon. Place into 2 greased 18cm (7") sandwich tins and cook for about 20 to 25 minutes at 180C until golden and it springs back when pressed. Turn onto a cooling rack and leave to cool completely. You can then put in whatever filling you choose. If you wish to have a bigger cake then I add another egg to each inch tin size that you want to use so for a 9"tins use 5 eggs and the same weight as them for the rest of the ingredients. You can add food colouring if you should wish to do so. I did this for my grandson's cake last year which you can see here.



The cakes above is one that I did for one of my closest friends for her granddaughters 1st birthday. it makes you think how quickly time goes as it doesn't seem to two minutes ago that I was making her children's cakes when they were tiny. Well she asked for a ladybird cake as it's Darling Edith's favourite book is What the Ladybird heard. Now my grandson hasn't got this book but my friend told me that it was by Julia Donaldson who of course wrote the Gruffalo which he loves so of course I'm straight on the web and ordering it. Well it's brilliant and a new favourite and as Edith's party was going to be in London with lots of family and my friend was going via train I decided that a mere ladybird wouldn't do and with the inspiration of the story and the wonderful illustrations by Lydia Monks I did a straight copy from the book around the cake and the ladybird on top. I was really pleased with it and so was my friend, Edith's Mum wrote too me to say she loved it and that Edith grabbed hold of the ladybird and ate it before photos could be taken. 
I used 4 8" sandwich cakes of which I coloured 2 of them pink and then put chocolate icing which gave it a Neapolitan ice cream look. I make the icing by melting 100grm of chocolate and then letting it cool then put 160grm butter, 280grm icing sugar, 3tbl double cream, 1/2tbl vanilla extract and the chocolate in a food processor and pulse until combined. If you don't have a processor then beat the butter until soft then add the other ingredients gradually until mixed together. As I used sugar paste I put the chocolate icing between the cakes and around the sides then popped it into the freezer until hard enough for me to be able to put the rolled out sugar paste on and smooth over the cake. If the chocolate icing around the cake is too hard then either add a little more if you have some left or heat a palette knife and just run that around the cake till you can see the icing has melted.
I hope you all have a good weekend I'm busy tomorrow making Mars bar cakes, Banana Blondies (recipe on an earlier post), beef pasties and cooking mustard and honey sausages for our local point to point at Fakenham as my hubby is going to have a stand with some of his Landrovers to show what he can do. Lets hope the rain isn't to bad but as a Farmers wife and Mother I shouldn't complain about it as apparently we need it I just wish it would come at night my poor garden is now overgrown with weeds I must get out there!
Anyway have fun whatever the weather!!!! 









Thursday 5 April 2012

Cornwall



Hi Everyone.



Yet again have been very bad at getting another blog posted. This time though I do have a little excuse as we went to Cornwall for a few days holiday. It was fantastic to get away for a while and as normal we had a wonderful time. Lots of walking and although we have driven and had done a walk from the beach this time we visited Carhays Castle gardens. If you do find yourselves staying in Cornwall over Easter the I can recommend this place for a visit. I have never seen such beautiful and enormous flowers. The walking is easy although steep at times but lots of paths so you can do as little or as much as you like, not only was it beautiful but if kept on a short lead you can take your dog brilliant we wouldn't have gone if Lewis hadn't been able to come. The photo's were taken from one of the glorious Magnolia trees.






































The cake above is my wonderful daughters in law birthday cake,  we celebrated with her just before we went away. She didn't seem to mind at all that her weird M.I.L had put Peppa pig on top for her Grandson she is an understanding Mummy and the little lad loved it. Hubby mentioned that he thought it was a Clanger to which I had to agree although we had to show the rest of the family what a Clanger was. I hadn't noticed the likeness before but perhaps it was because it was a model, so who out in the blogging world can remember Clangers we use to love them.( In fact my nephews 21st birthday party this weekend is for Childhood heroes perhaps I should go as one. If I remember I'll be brave and post a picture of what I finally choose to go as.) Back to the above the base of the cake was a chocolate I got the recipe from here Sweetapolita who is just brilliant and her icing skills far exceed mine. For the icing I used the very easy if somewhat rich Chocolate Ganache as you can see I've used white chocolate but you can use plain and it goes without saying the better the chocolate the better the taste. 

CHOCOLATE GANACHE.
400g Chocolate (Plain or white )
400ml Double Cream.
Chop the chocolate into fairly small pieces and put into a heatproof bowl. Put the cream into a heavy based saucepan and bring to the boil, pour over the chocolate. Leave to stand without stirring for 5min, then stir until the chocolate has melted and then allow to cool.
Whisk the cooled mixture until it looks like whipped cream this can take some time and really does need an electric whisk ( I suppose it could be a good arm workout with a hand whisk but not one I would like to try!) When it looks like cream pop it into the fridge for 30 to 45min. Then cover the cake with it, if it gets too warm and starts to look a bit funny place it back into the fridge for a while. If its to hard to then place the bowl over some hot water until it softens. If like mine you decide to decorate with an icing bag and nozzle try to keep your hands as cool as possible and work quickly!

I've just remembered for the middle of the cake I made this icing that I found in the April Good Housekeeping mag.

CHOCOLATE HAZELNUT SPREAD ICING.
100g Chocolate hazelnut spread (I used Nutella)
200g full-fat cream cheese.
100g icing sugar.
Combine the ingredients together and put on top of one of the cakes then place the other cake on top. Put in fridge or if your Ganache is ready place into the freezer for about 15mins this helps to prevent the crumbs coming off when icing a cake with any icing or jam. A useful tip that I only learnt about a year ago. My icing differs a little from the G.H one as I added icing sugar to make it solid enough to hold the decorations.

I will finish with this picture that I took at the party of my darling Granddaughter it was taken a few weeks ago and yet again not very well as it's not one of Wellies! If you do have the time have a quick look at her new site Tori photography, I know I'm biased but her latest ones from a walk near here I think are stunning.

I'll try and get back soon with son in laws cake and the one for my nephew.

Love Caro xxx