Joining the Flickr community (photo sharing site) a few years ago, I came across a really fantastic tag line of Amy Eilert who starting making cakes pretty much the same time that I did. Amy calls her company - Cupcake Envy, and her tag line is "my cupcakes are better than your cupcakes". Taking single serve cakes to a whole new level of creativity, her creations are now known in the cake world as cakelets.
Once upon a time, cupcakes were all I made, and I adored them. But apart from the occasional foray into a pot of flowers, I haven't experimented much with cakelets. Until this one.
A life sized cricket ball took care of that. It was such fun to make and so enjoyable to see something recreated in sugar that looks remarkably like the real thing.
Cakelet was 8cm in diameter and made from lemon cake and white chocolate ganache.
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Whilst on the topic of making cakes for fun, I also ticked off finally making something from my new book.
The Aunt Sassy cake really took my fancy. The Americans have a palate that enjoys a lot of sweet/savoury combinations. Like peanut butter and chocolate, chocolate coated pretzels to name a few as well as heavily spiced things like cinnamon chewing gum. So in general, very different flavour combinations to what we are used to. The Aunt Sassy cake is a pistachio cake paired with a honey buttercream. The buttercream in the book has a base of a type of milk custard/roux which is then whipped into the butter. The cake, was made with a combination of butter and shortening. Another ingredient seldomly used in Australia. All in all, it seemed like an interesting one to try.
The cake was easy enough to put together. The buttercream came together in the end. Does it look like the cake from the book?
Close enough. (you can see it in the big picture along with the authors of the book)
Verdict? Because we are not used to the taste of shortening, I found the cake had a slight 'stick to the roof of your mouth' aftertaste typical of shortening. It was however, very light and had a lovely texture. The buttercream was lovely fresh, but split after a couple of days in the fridge. Delicious cold, but has a slight floury taste due to the large amount of flour in the custard.
Interesting to make, but I'll probably stick to baking with recipes by Warren Brown or Rose Levy Beranbaum.
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A short reminder that our Classic 101 - Buzzy Bees class and Designer cupcakes classes are running 11 & 12 June weekend from Epicurious in Subiaco.
A couple of spots are still available for Buzzy Bees, so we'd love to see you there!!
and a look at our new and improved Novelty 101 - Ted's Pillow
The new courses inlcuding French macaron classes will be listed on the Cake Love website in the next week or so!
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And I'll leave you with the pic of the first full rainbow of this season that I've seen.
Hope you all have a marvelous weekend!
That cricket ball is absolutely perfect! Well done on that! I wish I had your kind of talent Winnie!
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