To England!

Yes, yes, yes, I know. I was prattling about mudcake skyscrapers and Spider-Man cakes only yesterday, and now... I'M IN ENGLAND! For the first time ever! Wheeeee! 
Who's excited? I AM!

Our adventure started this morning, when we tried taking the bypass that connects Rogoredo station (which is conveniently close to hun's home) to Porta Garibaldi. 
Because we got here by train. From Italy. 
Seeing how airplanes, you know... it's not that I hate them for real. I have only one gripe with them - namely, the fact that they fly. 
However. 

The bypass train had some kind of problem, so we had to call a taxi to get to the correct station in time. But, we did it! Nothing else could possibly happen, right? 

WRONG!
Because once again, our train had some sort of mechanical hiccup - and dumped us all at some unheard-of station among the French Alps, waiting for a replacement train to pick us up.

Can you see the snow? Geez. SO COLD!

What was left of our first leg went smoothly afterwards, with our train crossing mile after mile of featureless French landscape... 

...until we reached the Gare de Lyon in Paris. 
Now before you ask: we did not see anything at all of the Ville Lumière - not that I, personally, cared in the least about it - as we had to madly dash to the Gare du Nord by mean of yet another bypass, which was horribly crowded, but thankfully punctual.

Even while the unexpected stop earlier on had eroded much of our time, we hopped on the next train just in time and enjoyed the ride under the English Channel and... 

...TO LONDON!

Now you must understand I've been reading (and fantasizing) about London for so long that the town's largely a literary construct in my mind. Sherlock Holmes and Peter Pan and Harry Potter and Jack the Ripper, oh my! 
Actually being there, if just for a few minutes until we picked up our rental car - which was, by the way, a tiny cramped thing, and with the steering wheel on the wrong side as far as we're concerned - it felt, well... awesome. 

I squealed at each and every sighting of a familiar location - King's Cross! And Baker Street OMG! - while poor sweetie struggled to come to grips with Great Britain's utterly alien driving system. 
I am sorry to say we did damage the rearview mirror first thing. Boo!

Reaching our final destination, deep in the rural Somerset region, took a further two hours, and we were mighty sleepy by the time we got here, super late on our estimated arrival.  
Not that the fact prevented us from sampling our first ale right away, mind you! 

I'll tell you more tomorrow about this gorgeous place where we're staying - and stuff... 

Once more unto the breach!

Sorry sorry sorry!

I keep dropping off the blogging world, but... this time I have a good reason if nothing else! 

See, I am finally baking again - my biggest cake ever (it serves 24), and my first go at... stacked cakes OMG!

Nedless to say, I'm frantic, tired and overworked, and dead scared about everything that could (and probably will) go wrong. 

And I'm feeling more elated than I've been in a long time. 

I'm allowing you guys a sneak peek at my WIP...

(Please ignore the clutter...)

See? It's going to be for a Spiderman-themed birthday party, so there will be ol' Spidey climbing down the skyscraper once it's finished.

And I'm going to put silhouette buildings all around the bottom tier, to make it look a bit more like New York. 

BTW this reminds me that I haven't shared my trusty "sturdy chocolate cake recipe" yet.

I'm not even sure I have a right to call it mine, honestly, as it's 99% an average mudcake, with a few very minor tweaks I introduced to make it extra durable. 

It's an awesome base IMHO, for children especially - it's rich and fudgey and extremely chocolatey, so that a single slice will satisfy even the sweetest tooth in the world.

Plus it's dense and sturdy (for carving or stacking), and it keeps for up to three weeks in your refrigerator. For real!

I'll have to convert the recipe in cup measurements before I can post it, so please stay tuned.

For the finished cake too, of course! 

(...Er. You do want to see it, don't you?)

YAY BIRTHDAY!

Who's the birthday girl then? 
WOOT! I am!

Lookie here, I even got my own doodle... 

...and Etsy sent me this lovely "cake"!

I won't be celebrating that much today unfortunately, as I'm going to be stuck at work till midnight - but, I gave myself a nice little gift to enjoy in the meantime! 

Wanna see what it is? 

It's not one of those fancy cast iron skillets everyone keeps raving about, but the next best thing for sure: an aluminium one! 

I've collected a nice bunch of recipes already, and I can't wait to try it out! Wheeeeee! Can you see I'm excited?

A very Kirby birthday!

It is that time of the year again.  

Time to provide a nerdy birthday cake for my sweetie's kid, that is!

I knew right from the start, alas, that this time around I wouldn't have the time to replicate the feat that was last year's Super Mario Bros. cake.  

The theme was still going to be Nintendo videogames though, since the birthday boy's such a huge fan - thus, Kirby it was! 

Unlike Mario and Luigi, with whom I had a passing acquaintance if nothing else, I knew absolutely nothing about Kirby and his friends. 

All I had to work with was this pic that my sweetie kindly provided...

The Kirby games and all related characters belong to Nintendo and HAL Laboratory

I fully meant to reproduce the four of them - Kirby, King Dedede, Meta Knight and Waddle Dee - hanging up to the star, just like this.
And that was when... dun-da-da-DUN... DISASTER STROKE! 

Between me and you: that's not really true.
The ugly truth is, I've been a complete idiot and didn't check my fondant stash beforehand, so I only discovered at the very last moment that... It. Had. Gone. Bad. 

Luckily I had a bag of marshmallows in my pantry, so I quickly whipped up a batch of homemade fondant. 
The good thing was, I had a chance to flavour it to my heart's content and make it way tastier than storebought sugarpaste. But it was far too soft to model complex shapes out of it, plus - since my marshmallows were of the pink-and-white persuasion - getting a pure white base out of them was out of question, which meant I could only make characters that were pink-hued to begin with...

Even their simple, spherical bodies ended up all squished. 
Blah.

While not my better job by far, this cake tasted delicious if nothing else, as it was based on Alice Medrich's Queen of Sheba - a European-style cake, and possibly the closest you could get to a Sachertorte without receiving worryingly official-looking correspondence by some highly respected legal practice in Wien. 

Ground almonds. Egg Whites. Chocolate-based batter. So NOT a Sachertorte...

The recipe's from her Craftsy class, Decadent Chocolate Cakes. 

If you are a beginner and interested in baking with chocolate, you should definitely buy it! She gives tons of useful tips on how to work with this "difficult" yet yummy ingredient!

I was in such a hurry in the end that I didn't even snap a pic of the finished cake... but my hun took a few during the party! 
Awww... Ain't he such a sweet and considerate guy?  

(The star should have been standing, though. Sigh...)

Imma makin' Super Mario Bros. COOKIES!

Would you believe it? It's that time of the year again! Time to get into crazy baking mode, that is! 

Last year I made a Super Mario Bros. cake for the 8th birthday of my sweetie's child. This time around I'm settling for a less ambitious cake, since unfortunately I lack both the time and the storage space to replicate that feat - but, I can do COOKIES!

Many people see cookies as the easiest form of baking. I disagree with that. 

Personally I find cakes to be much less troublesome; I can't think of more than two instances where I seriously messed up a cake (and both times it was because of a notable mistake on my part), whereas I've had countless cookie misfires, even while following recipes to the letter. 

Meh. 

Not this time, though!

Of course, it helped that the recipe is from that veritable cookie lover's Bible that is Decorating Cookies: 60+ Designs for Holidays, Celebrations & Everyday, by Bridget Edwards.

Same of you might remember me raving about her (and her blog, Bake at 350) back when planning my Susan gingerbread cookies - which I made for a party we never had. Drat! - only this time I picked a chocolate dough. Kids adore chocolate cookies and that's a fact!

(Plus, this recipe has Nutella in it. Your argument is invalid.) 

Unlike my previous gingerbread experiment, these cookies baked flat and even and didn't spread at all. OMG I'm so happy about that!
That might be because I've been using cookie cutters, as opposed to cutting manually around a template - which allowed me to work quickly, manhandling the dough as little as possible. 
Also, I allowed the raw cookies a fair 10 minutes in the freezer before they went into the oven. And finally, I splurged on a few extra cookie sheets, so I didn't have to keep using the same one by refrigerating it with water between batches. I really believe it makes a world of difference!

Oh, and speaking about cutters: I got mine from WarpZone, an Etsy shop I am head-over-heels in love with. It's a nerdy baker's paradise!
They 3D-print cutters in every geeky flavour you can dream of - from anime to Game of Thrones, from Dr Who to My Little Pony... You name it, they have it!
And if they don't, they can make one from your own drawing. How awesome is that? 

I got the whole Super Mario Bros. range from them, knowing how huge a fan my hun's kiddo is... but I didn't want to mix up dozens of different icing shades all at once, so I stuck with three subjects: our two hero plumbers, Paper Mario-style... 

...plus the iconic 1-up mushroom. 

Hee hee! Aren't they friggin' adorable? Squee! 

..And here are the freshly iced cookies! 

Since kids are going to eat them, I didn't trust raw egg whites and used Wilton's Meringue Powder instead. 

I have mixed feelings about it, franky - it's super-easy to mix and takes colour well, and it doesn't clog up in the squeeze bottle's nozzle nearly as much as "real" royal icing. It seems to be sturdier, too - less brittle and crunchy, somehow more like candy melts than icing. 

On the other hand, it feels slightly chalky in my mouth, and the flavour, while not at all bad, is just different. 

Still, better safe than sorry!

[Cupcake Portraits] Discworld Personalities: Carrot Ironfoundersson

Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was. 

Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid. 

Carrot was not stupid. He was direct, and honest, and good-natured and honorable in all his dealings. In Ankh-Morpork this would normally have added up to "stupid" in any case and would have given him the survival quotient of a jellyfish in a blast furnace, but there were a couple of other factors. One was a punch that even trolls had learned to respect. The other was that Carrot was genuinely, almost supernaturally, likeable. He got on well with people, even while arresting them. He had an exceptional memory for names.

For most of his young life he'd lived in a small dwarf colony where there was hardly any other people to know. Then, suddenly, he was in a huge city, and it was as if a talent had been waiting to unfold. And was still unfolding.

- Men at Arms

It has been a while, uh? 

Well, fear not! The Fanbaking Project is definitely on!

But I must confess, this third installment gave me lots of trouble. 

See, as the Discworld Personalities series took shape in my mind, I figured out I could stick to some kind of rotation to make things easier for myself, and in the end the one that made the more sense seemed to be a Witch - Wizard - Guard - Random sort of thing. 

Which is to say, my third installment had to be a guard!

Now I realize Vimes would have been the expected choice, and you peeps are probably waiting hungrily (literally!) for his cupcake rendition. 

Fact is, Vimes terrifies me. He's such a complex character, and he changes so much from one book to the next - in short, I don't feel I can nail him down just yet. 

I needed someone simpler to portray in the meantime! 

And yes, you guessed it right - Who could be simpler than Carrot himself? 

Image belongs to graffitihead @ http://graffitihead.deviantart.com/

(I don't think anyone who has seen that Twins movie can help picturing Schwarzy in the role...)

As he is introduced to us in Guards! Guards!, Carrot could easily be mistaken for your average Lawful Stupid character. 

I mean, come on - he's some sort of red-headed, law-abiding jock who considers himself a dwarf by adoption, and always does things by the book. It looks like he's a bit of an oaf, if a hugely sympathetic and cuddly one.

But from Men at Arms onwards, we get to know him as a much more well-rounded character. 

To begin with, he is the rightful heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork - which he knows all too well but, even since Vimes made him see how monarchy is a bad idea indeed, he has a conspiracy of silence going on, to the point that he often negates the obviousness of it in such a blatant way, it's hilarious.

Also, he's shown to possess a keen intellect, a sharp eye for details and a love of books (although his punctuation skills when writing are nothing short of abysmal) - yet he remains very much the honest, jovial, trustful fellow we knew (and loved) from the start. 

The only fault I could find with him is his debatable taste in women - but hey, the guy's a dwarf; he likes his grilfriends hairy. Just don't get me started about this. No, really - I'm serious. 

To me, the point with Carrot is that he's the proverbial glass you measure your view of the world against. 

He's my BFF Flavio's favourite character, and he reminds me of him in many ways - they both believe everyone is nice deep down, and that any controversy could be easily settled if only people were willing to have an earnest talk about it. To the likes of him, Carrot's strenght lies in his guileless nature, as his very attitude and example make people hate the idea of letting him down.

Less optimistic-minded people like yours truly, on the other hand, would be tempted to say that such a view is far too naive, and Carrot only manages to get away with it because of his royal charisma. 

Who's right? No one knows for sure, with the possible exception of Sir Pratchett himself - and he's not telling. Because in the end, this is the true power of books IMHO: that while tricking you into believing you're only discussing fictional situations and characters after all, they make you look deeper into yourself and your beliefs. 

But enough with philosophy, and back to cake - carrot cake, that is!

Which may seem an obvious enough choice, but believe me - Carrot's name was not the sole reason for it! 

Fact is, carrot cake is as simple and reliable as a dessert could get. It's healthy and sensible and traditional - my version especially, since it doesn't include nuts, fancy spices, chunks of tropical fruit or anything. Just your basic, comforting, by-the book ingredients, plus a slosh of beer to honour the character's dwarfish upbringing... 

Carrot Cupcakes

Ingredients:

* 1/2 cup butter (softened)

* 1/2 cup + 1 Tbsp 1/2 light brown sugar

* 2 eggs

* 175 g grated carrots (about 2 cups - see instructions)

* 1/3 cup beer (I used Budweiser - see instructions)

* 2 cups self-rising flour

* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 1/4 tsp salt

1.  Scrape the carrots to remove all the dirt,  grate them, and allow them to dry thoroughly. (Don't skip the drying part, it's important!)
Also don't use the smallest holes of your grater, as I found out that if the carrots are grated too finely, your cupcakes will turn out soggy and dense, and will go bad pretty soon.

If you can grate them as coarsely as mine in the pic, the quantity you'll need is 2 cups, full but not super-packed. If you own a scale, you'd probably be better off weighing them! 

2.  Pre-heat oven to 320° F.

3.  Sift the self-rising flour, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. 

4.  Cream the butter and sugar. 

5.  Whisk the eggs slightly, then slowly add them into the sugar and butter mix, one Tbsp at a time or so.

6.  Check that your carrots are really really dry and dump them in. Add the beer as well. 
It will look like an ugly mulch. Keep mixing! 

Before going on with the recipe, allow me to spend a few words about teh beer. 
Professional chefs will usually tell you not to cook/bake with booze you wouldn't want to drink, but in my experience, baking with beer is a bit of an exception. 
Believe me, I've tried baking these with a couple beers I love - a refreshing, hops-rich Bock, and a wonderfully rich Amber Ale - and in both instances I got a nasty, bitter flavour in my cupcakes, and a creepy sticky texture. I almost gave up on the carrot/beer concept altogether. The one that did the trick in the end, was humble Budweiser: it made my cupcakes wonderfully light and soft, and the beer flavour in them is not overwhelming and pleasantly sweet...

7.  Add in the flour mix, one couple spoonfuls at a time. Your batter will magically look like batter again!

8.  Line a cupcake mold with wrappers; I picked some silvery ones to suggest the guards' armour. The batter is enough for 12 cupcakes (but if you go with the "crown baked inside" decoration that I'm showing you further on, you'll get 22-24 - KEEP READING!)

9.  Remember to place a water-filled silicon cup on the oven's bottom before baking. It is the secret to get soft, moist cuppies!

10. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until the cupcakes feel soft and spongy to the touch. Test for doneness with a skewer - there's lots of wet ingredients in these babies, so you might have to adjust your baking time somewhat. 

11. As soon as the cupcakes have cooled down a little, seize one of them. Read it its rights, then eat it. And afterwards, you can write home about it. There, you're done! 


At the risk of sounding immodest, I will say I'm really happy with this recipe, and I'm not even a fan of carrot cake usually - and no, I don't have a bias against veggies in my desserts, and you should know as much. It's just that carrot cakes are typically soggy, with a slightly slimy texture that I can't stomach. 
Now these cupcakes, they're like an airy, fluffy, delicious sponge cake. You can taste (and see!) the carrots inside, but they don't feel weird and chunky under your teeth; and there's a hint of mellowness from the beer, although it's light enough that it doesn't feel like an "adult dessert" at all (you'll have to judge this for yourself, of course, but I'd say these are safe for even kids to eat.)

They're yummy as-is, or topped with a dusting of powdered sugar and cinnamon if you really can't stand not to have a hint of spice with your carrot cake. 
Or you could make some cream cheese icing to go with them, like I did for the photo shots. It's runny and messy, and I think its sweetness kills the cupcake's subtler flavour, but it's what you'd traditionally pour on a carrot cake proper, and - what with this being a Carrot-inspired recipe - I wanted to stick to the rules as much as possible. 

...But, wait! Is there no decoration at all on them? 

Sad but true. As fun as sculpted badges, swords, and regulation books would have been, I learned from bitter experience not to put fondant on top of slushy frosting - and this one's even soupier than Granny's! 
So, I went down a different route this time, and baked the decoration inside the cupcakes. Thus, when you cut them... 

...Carrot's distinctive crown-shaped birthmark is revealed! 

It is an easy enough technique, if a bit time-consuming. I don't know who came up with it in the first place; I've seen lots of tutorials online and I have no idea which one's the original. 

Basically, to make these you'll need to mix two batches of batter, and to tint one darker. 
Powdered food colours would be ideal for the job; liquid ones take forever (guess which kind I had on hand, uh?)

It doesn't look like there's a huge difference in the pic, but the colours will darken as they're baked. 
It's also worth reminding here that since the batter itself is orange, you'll have an easier job making it darker if you use a contrasting colour such as blue or green, as opposed to red or brown. You can add a bit of black too, but don't overdo it!

Next you need to grease a sheet cake pan and pour the darker batter in it. 
Bake it for slightly longer than you would the cupcakes, as you'll be cutting up the resulting cake, so you need it to be firm. 
I happened to have a crown-shaped cookie cutter, but you can easily freehand the outline, using a paper template as a guide - the simpler the shape, the better! 

Just make sure that your cake cut-outs aren't too big to fit vertically inside a cupcake mold! 
Mine were, so I trimmed off the base... 

...and stuck one little crown inside each wrapper, after putting a bit of the lighter batter on the bottom to help it standing. 
Remember: ALL THE CROWNS MUST FACE THE SAME WAY IN THE MOLD! 

Don't fret about the cut-outs being completely covered in batter; it will rise anyway, and if there's still some darker bits sticking out in the end, they will be covered by icing. 

Mine are actually way overfilled - the batter didn't spill out, but try to resist the urge to put in so much! 

As you take out the baked cuppies, YOU MUST FIND A WAY TO REMEMBER WHICH WAY THE CROWNS ARE FACED - because if the cupcake is cut at the wrong angle, of course you won't be able to make out the shape. 
You can simply mark the bottom of the wrapper with a pencil, or cut shield-like "badges" out of golden paper and glue them on the front of the wrappers - I went with the latter solution, as it also worked to reinforce the whole Watch theme. 

This was all there is to it, really. 
Enjoy your Carrot cupcakes, and please let me know how you liked them! 

Fruit is HEALTHY!

How many annoying blog posts about the weather being so hot have you read this week? 

I'm betting the topic is almost as likely to get the "OMG DELETE" treatment as the tired old "How can it be August already? Where has the time gone?"

I mean, it's summer and it's supposed to be hot, duh, no big news here, right?

Still, I will say this: there is such thing as too much heat. I mean, surely some sort of line must be drawn at a point when even I can't bear turning on the oven? 

The only positive aspect of this situation is, I'm eating plenty of fruit. 

Of course, me being - well - me, you can't really expect me to munch on a peach and be done with it. So, I'm going to share with you a bunch of recipes by other bloggers that I have personally tested, and utterly adored. 

Which are, being fruit-based, inherently HEALTHY. Wow, don't you feel righteous already? 

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I'm getting the weirdest one out of the way first - and let me tell you, it took a huge leap of faith for even me to be persuaded to put fruit into my pasta. 

I mean, you know by now I despise food bigots, and will happily mix flavours and influences from all over the world in the same meal - and in the same dish - if so I fancy.

I don't even like pasta that much, so I don't share the reverence some of my fellow countrymen have for its tradition.

Still, I couldn't honestly say that the idea of topping spaghetti with fresh peaches didn't freak me out a little. Which is strange, really, since I've already put fruit in every possible course except main until now, and always loved the result... 

Basically what I'm trying to convey is, I really needed the suggestion to come from someone I trusted. Luckily for me, Makiko of Just Hungry is exactly that, and more!

Her blog is my go-to reference for Japanese recipes mainly, but because she travelled extensively through Asia, America and Europe, she developed a cosmopolitan view of food (among other things) that I immensely respect and admire. 

Another thing I immensely respect and admire is her pic-taking mojo - how do you make a bowl o' marinade (with shredded basil leaves and chunks of peaches in it to boot!) look pretty? 

Get the recipe for Pasta with Peaches and Basil from her directly, and gape at her photos with me - they're so much more appetizing than mine!

(Hey, but I did put it on a purple plate! Serious colour theory going on here, b*tches! Do I get bonus points for that? Do I?)

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Onwards to the next treat, and once again we're marinating our fruit first thing - this time it's huge, sweet, gorgeous dark cherries into balsamic vinegar!

Here's when your cherries get roasted - which makes them way yummy and jewel-like glossy... 

...and finally they're smothered with Brie Cheese and chocolate (yep, you heard it right!) and turned into the most blissful grilled cheese ever!

The genius behind this lunch/dessert hybrid is Kevin Lynch of Closet Cooking. 
His blog I discovered only recently, but I'm loving it to pieces! First of all, Kevin's a guy and this fact alone makes for a refreshing point of view in a girl-dominated foodie world. 
Also, I kind of have a crush on his rationale for blogging... 

I came to realize that my meals were boring and that I had been eating the same few dishes over and over again for years. It was time for a change! I now spend my free time searching for, creating and trying tasty new recipes in my closet sized kitchen.

Way to go, bro! Seriously, what's not to love in this man?

The recipe for Balsamic Roasted Cherry, Dark Chocolate & Brie Grilled Cheese Sandwich is wonderful as-is, but I found the chocolate flavour to be a tad overpowering, so the second time around I adjusted the cheese-to-chocolate ratio slightly.

Also, since I'm a lazy bum who hates cleaning her oven, I pan-roasted the marinated cherries instead of baking them. I liked this version better, honestly, but it's of course just a matter of personal preference - also, I see lots of possibilities for experimenting with other fruit and types of cheese here!

Which seamlessly leads me to... 

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...this veritable pièce de résistance!

I don't know how well you can see them in the pic above, but there are figs on this pizza. Gorgeous, honey-sweet, HEALTHY figs...

...and then, of course, there's bacon and fontina and sharp gorgonzola. What?

A Fresh Fig, Bacon + Blue Cheese Pizza could only be the brainchild of Jessica of How Sweet It Is. 

Now her blog, it's one of the very first ones I found out and kind of loved - and I say "kind of" here because her recipes tend to be very hit-or-miss with me. I mean, she loves anything cheese, which makes most of them (such as, uh, this one) super extra gorgeous in my book. But she also loves melon and avocado and mascarpone. Ouch. 

Also, you know that friend everybody has, who is invaluable in that she'll recommend her favourite movies and TV shows and whatnot - and you know that you can pretty safely shun them, and watch the ones she didn't care for, and be sure not to be disappointed? 

She's kind of that to me. Honest, it's such a sure hit, it is uncanny. But her blogging voice is so lighthearted and fun and playful that I drink up her opinions as hungrily as her recipes, and of all the foodies I'm following, she's the one that feels like the closest friend to me (even though she doesn't know, LOL!)

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...OK, so I gave you lots of food for thought today (as well as, y'know, food plain and simple.)

How about you start doing something for your health now, and treat yourself to one of these recipes - or all three?