Winter Scene Christmas Cakes

Merry Christmas everybody! ... At least, it was!  All the decorations are down, and the cake is (almost!) all eaten but the post about my Christmas Cake still remains to be written, and read!

This was my second year of Christmas Cakes after the debut in 2011 using my Mum's recipe.  This year I added a little ingredient of my own so now I can say I have my own spin on her yummy fruit cake :-)  

This year I began the fruit cake process on November 1st, soaking the fruit in sherry for a couple of days first before baking.  Last year I did 2 large round cakes and 2 small round ones (you can find last year's cakes and designs here) but this year was going to be a little different.  We were heading over the Atlantic to England to spend Christmas with my family for 2 weeks and I knew I DEFINITELY wanted to treat my family to cakes now I have tried to make them myself!  So I made 1 large round cake (for us!), 1 large traybake that I would split into 4 small rectangles, and then the remaining cake mixture into a loaf pan that would make 2 smaller square cakes.

That was a lot of cake for one day!  And then, 7 weeks later after the occasional tipple of sherry (for the cakes, not me!) it was time to marzipan and ice and of course decorate!

My issue this time was how could I decorate the cakes in a way that could travel 3422 miles without getting squashed, broken or completely destroyed in transit.  I thought that perhaps it was time to try some piping and maybe some white on white winter scenes would look good.  I am MORE than pleased with how they turned out and glad the designs (mostly) worked the way I had planned them.

My Grandparents and Aunts & Uncles that we spent Christmas with all got personalised designs that I knew (or at least, hoped) they would love!  Here they are...  

A snowy tree scene for my Granny!

For my bird-loving Grandma, a truly Canadian Cardinal!

For Lara and my Grandad!  Lara was getting married over the
Christmas season so although she did not have a wedding ceremony
amidst trees and snow I used a little artistic license here!

For my Aunt and Uncle who live out in a little cottage in the
hills with the sheep just like this one!

Some carol singers for my musical Auntie Jo and family :-D

And there's a little story behind this one that was for my
parents and siblings! ...

So the photo above shows some classic Muskoka chairs sat in the snow and overlooking a small lake.  I actually based this design on our Christmas card photo that we took and used to send out to our friends and family this year!  We took the photo in March 2012 up in Port Carling, Muskoka when we were on the hunt for some snow as Toronto was definitely lacking last year!

Here's the photo to compare my cake to the real photo!

I had a LOT of fun doing all of this piping, and after making sure I got my family's done with no stress or tears I made a start on our own cake as we were not prepared to give away all of my hard work - there had to be something yummy in it for ourselves as well!!

I tried drop icing for the first time ever (so please any tips/ feedback are welcome!) and combined a little of my favourite parts of the other designs and here's how it ended up...

Although the time for Christmas style fruit cake might be over for most of you (I know Jonathan could eat it all year round however!)... the Winter scenes I designed and piped might still be seasonally appropriate!?  I'd love to hear your comments and here's a belated Merry Christmas for 2012!!!!

Oh and in case anybody is wondering... the cakes ALL made it safely across to the U.K!  They survived a 50 person plane from Toronto - Philadelphia, a 6 hour wait in Philadelphia airport and then a long 8 hour night flight to Manchester.  Thank you to multiple tins, a holdall in carry on luggage and my amazing husband for carrying 6kg of Christmas Cake perfectly level and safely across to England for what could be (once they had arrived safely) a wonderful Christmas!!

Hockey's Back!

After 4 months of the NHL Lockout HOCKEY IS FINALLY BACK!!!!  And last night we saw the first game of the season that should have begun back in September.  Of course we needed to celebrate and I had a cake I wanted to try out!

A few months ago I decided I wanted to try working more with buttercream frosting.  I have already played around with fondant a lot but to keep things simpler why not try just using buttercream that I would be making for a filling anyway, so this was what I tried!

HOCKEY CAKE!

A simple Victoria Sponge cake subbing out some flour for cocoa powder made it a chocolate cake and then white buttercream for frosting.  Colouring a little of the remaining buttercream red and blue and consulting my rules expert husband for details on the lines and proportions I was ready to go!

We headed over to over friend's place for wings and LEAFS!  Annnddd they won!  I guess we have to eat wings and bake this cake EVERY Leafs game of the season now!  With 47 games to go we'll see how that pans out!

GO LEAFS GO!!!

RCM Piano Exam Preparation ♫

I am SUPER excited this year to have some students taking piano exams.  So far this year I will have 5 students (4 little ones and 1 adult!) taking their Preparatory B exam and 1 student taking their Grade 1.

Having grown up with the ABRSM exam board in England I needed to learn about the Royal Conservatory system here in Canada.  I found some information on the internet but I wanted something FUN to help my students prepare.

I searched and searched but in the end decided I may as well just make my own packs!  My students know I love 'packs'.  Maybe you've seen my Olympic packs and the Winter packs still need to be posted up, oops!

I like to include a little colouring, some fun and easy stuff to fill in and of course some parts they will learn from that won't just be a boring checklist!

Front page and 1 inside preview from the Preparatory Pack.  Get your PDF version of the Preparatory B Pack here.

2 inside preview pages for the Grade 1 pack.  Get your PDF for the Grade 1 pack here.

So far the kids have loved these!  They have just been filling in the front pages right now but as we go along in this semester they'll be able to test what they know by writing what notes to play around the edge of each shape or in the blocks.  Let me know if you want further explanation of how I'll be using these in my lessons :-)

Christmas Stars and Dogs!

After my first Christmas away from home in 2011, this year it was time for my return back home to England for a rowdy family holiday!  Just as when I was a little girl, I volunteered the place names for our Christmas dinner!  14 people were coming, but that didn't stop me going all out with my new machine, a try at blanket stitch and some personalised embroidery on the stuffed felt ornaments!  Here's how they turned out...

My original Etsy photo

Trying out my new camera lens, getting as close as I can!!

Inspired by the Radley dog, here's my Christmas take on this!

Thanks for the display!.... This was before this one got a little wet with red wine :-S

I saw a few of these hanging on trees or cupboard doors in the days after Christmas, hopefully everybody gets to keep their own decoration for many more years!  Happy Christmas everyone!

Movember Moustaches

Just in time for Movember 2012 I created these moustache hair clips so all of us Mo Sistas can be a part of Movember too!

These cute felt hair clips are padded and attached with a barrette hair clip, perfect for any hair style! 

Check out my Etsy store to buy yours now!  Wear them with pride this Movember season or keep them in your hair all year around - these moustaches are everywhere right now!

Apple Picking and the yummy consequences!

After an amazing Summer together we fell into a very VERY busy September back at work and school and it took until October 13th for us to spend an afternoon together.  It was (almost) a beautiful Autumn day so we headed up to a local apple orchard for some apple picking!

A really great day out but then of course we had to get to work making use of all those apples!

Ideas we wanted to make were apple sauce, some kind of apple and cranberry chutney (we still had lots of cranberries left over from a trip to Bala, Muskoka earlier in the year) and of course an apple crisp!

Another new project for us was canning - so thank you Canadian Tire for our supplies.  Armed with lots of empty jars we were ready to go!

We were very surprised with the pink colour of the apple sauce!  Taste was great so no complaints!

Next was apple and cranberry chutney.  We had a little trouble finding a recipe that we liked all parts of.  We didn't only want a cranberry sauce to spoon over turkey, we definitely wanted to seal them in the jars as we wanted to give some as Christmas presents!  Also a lot of recipes were a bit 'spicy' for us.  I don't like cinnamon or a heavy clove or nutmeg flavour so we tried to avoid that.  In the end we found this recipe here from BBC's Good Food website.  We loved it all so off to work we got!

The hardest part was keeping these secret until Christmas!!

All of our canning complete there was the mandatory apple crumble to make (maybe definitely doubled the crumble part of the recipe - thanks Mum for that recipe!) but boo we forgot to take photos of that, sorry!

And then with a few of the leftover apples I tried out a recipe I found on Pinterest but originally came from this blog here.  Armed with our mandolin (again, thank you generous wedding gifts for supplying us with endless kitchen utensils!) I got slicing.  A little sprinkling of sugar (no cinnamon please) and baked them all afternoon.  They were ADDICTIVE!  Like seriously addictive.  Just a shame they take so long to cook meant you couldn't just cook them when you got the craving - but perhaps my teeth thank me for that.  

We'll definitely make these again!

So a rather long post but after such a great day out and lots of projects following it I just had to!  Enjoy Autumn!

Plum and Almond Thanksgiving Tart

Happy Thanksgiving!  This week I celebrated my 4th Canadian Thanksgiving!  For me I love having the long weekend in October after what usually is a crazy back-to-school time in September and by this point having a weekend off is great news!  This year we spent the dinner at Jonathan's cousins house, celebrating Thanksgiving and a birthday in one meal!

I wanted to bake something to match the season and there was something I had been wanting to try for a while.  In a small 'Dessert' recipe book from my Grandma was a recipe for Plum and Almond Tart.  I had originally wanted to make it for a church lunch event but decided it a) might not slice into small squares well, and b) would probably be better warm so I had to wait.

Living a busy life with just the two of us - it is hard to justify baking a big cake or dessert without a reason - should we REALLY finish off a big cake just for ourselves in a regular week?  Maybe yes but likely no!!

So I had to wait until now to experiment with this recipe.

As the recipe was from a book and not the internet I scanned in the original page so you can see the recipe and get an idea of what the picture looked like (hopefully the scan is okay to view).

Double click for a bigger view of this picture - hopefully
you can read the recipe - let me know if you
want more details!

This was a FUN recipe to make.  Again, as in my Cherry Bakewell Tart post I made my own pastry.  I believe ready-made sweetcrust pastry is easier to find in English supermarkets but not here in Canadian grocery stores!  And so instead of searching multiple shops I decided it probably would be quicker just to make my own.  I tried Anna Olson's method of making pastry, rubbing the butter and flour between my hands, almost flattening it to create layers of butter within the pastry.  Seemed to work really well!  Thanks Anna!

I did omit the brandy from the recipe - didn't want to include this strong flavour in my tart as I LOVE the almond flavour so wanted to make sure that shone through.

After making the almond paste I was a little worried that there wouldn't be enough to fill up around the plums which definitely seemed bigger than the original picture in the recipe book.  Hmmm.  Surprising to me was the way it did fill up and puff around the plums.  It became slightly spongey whilst still being moist.  A different texture than I had baked before but with the almond flavour it tasted really good!  

Post-oven!

Pre-oven...

Enjoy this tart warm with whipped cream... I certainly did!

Happy Thanksgiving!