Popcorn

How does it happen? 

How does time past by me so quickly? One minute it’s 2012 and the next, it’s not! I wish I could say that I’ve been doing lots of productive activities, climbing high peaks, achieving lifetime goals, but no, nothing like that. 

I feel a little like my 4 year old daughter who started “big” school last September. Big school is a constant flurry of activities. The children spend about half an hour for each activity before moving on to another one. 

When I pick her up from school and ask her what she did during the day, her first reaction is to say ‘nothing’. All those fun activities just blend into 1 long day, and the only thing that comes to her mind is ‘nothing’. 

And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Nothing. 

Well nothing, that is, apart from snacking! This is my current obsession: home-popped corn (as opposed to store bought already popped corn covered with preservatives and who-knows-what-else?). 

It’s really the simplest snack. Buy a packet of popping corn. Heat a teeny bit of oil in a saucepan, add the popping corn, put the saucepan cover on (very important!) and wait. You have at least 10 minutes of toddler entertainment just watching the saucepan!

We tend to eat it plain and unseasoned but season as you please.

The 7hr saga of a pig (dodgy photo alert!)

It wasn’t just any pig, it was Peppa Pig!  If you have a toddler and live in the UK, it is very likely that you have been acquainted with Peppa Pig.  An adorable little pig who likes jumping in muddy puddles (all the time to some very annoying music in the background). 

Daughter no. 1 was obsessed with Peppa Pig when she was about 2 years old.  Daughter no. 2, slightly obsessed but not to the same level luckily.  Our house is filled with Peppa paraphernalia and various bits of Peppa plastic.

Needless to say, when it was No. 2’s 2^nd birthday, she wanted a Peppa Pig cake! 

Now, my attempt at a Peppa Pig cake for no. 1 looked like this. 

Not great.  I so wasn’t impressed with it that I only took about 2 photos of the cake.

I was determined to get it right this time around.  Absolutely determined. 

Step 1:
Find the perfect vanilla cake recipe.  I tested several recipes (to the point where my colleagues started getting a little tired of eating vanilla cake) and once again, Sweetapolita delivered the perfect recipe.  Very vanilla-y, light and moist.  ‘Moist’ being the important part as I find that vanilla cakes can sometimes be on the dry side.

I made 1 20cm square cake and 1 18 cm round cake from the recipe. 

Time taken: 2 hours.

Step 2: 
Fondant (ie. Sugar paste).  I used this recipe again.  I love it and always end up nibbling on too much sugar when I make it.

I made the base recipe and left it overnight to settle while my hands and arms recovered from the kneading.  The next night, I divided the large hunk of fondant into 6 (unequal) parts, coloured the parts into 6 main colours: pink (for the face, ears, arms and legs), dark pink (cheeks and outline for the face and ears), red (dress), dark red (mouth and outline for the dress), white (eyes) and black (eyes and shoes).

Time taken: 2 hours

Step 3:
More sugar.  Vanilla buttercream.  Once again, my favourite site Sweetapolita didn’t let me down.  I used this recipe.  I love making icing.  When I’m stressed, I make icing.  All that whipping of the butter and the sugar just de-stresses me.

Time taken: 0.5 hours

Step 4:
The fun part: putting it all together.  This took the most time but this is where I had the most fun.  I levelled the cakes with a bread knife so they were the same height – more or less.

Then armed with yet another knife, I carved out Peppa’s dress from the square cake, used the round cake as the head and used the offcuts from the square cake for the ears and nose.

The bits of cake were held together by the vanilla buttercream. 

Peppa was then covered all over with buttercream and the fondant was draped over it.  By this time I was starting to OD a little on Peppa.  But once the fondant was on, I could see the end of the tunnel – though it did look like there was a lot of fog around!

Next were the details, eyes, nose, cheeks, outlines, arms and legs.  Phew.

Time taken: 2.5 hrs

It’s not perfect but it’s an improvement on my last Peppa!

7 hours of butter and sugar = 1 Peppa Pig cake = 1 super happy 2 year old!

Definitely worth it.

Ps.
Now I know why decorated cakes are so expensive to buy.

Don't buy these

One of my least favourite things in my kitchen at the moment are these white cupcake cases that I picked up at the local supermarket.  

They’re horrible. 

First of all they’re tiny.  I don’t know how they can call themselves ‘cupcake cases’ – they’re more like ‘thimbles’.  Look how tiny they are in my cupcake tray!  Tiny.  I put just over 1 tablespoonful of batter in each liner and that practically filled them up. 

 They also seem to separate from the actual cupcake after baking.  Not pretty.  I'm pretty sure it’s not my cupcake as I've made them in other cases with no problems.  So my conclusion is that these liners just seem to separate.  Perhaps they’re too waxy?  Who knows.

I know, the world’s not going to stop turning because I bought some dud cupcake cases, but I have 100 of them!  What am I supposed to do with them?

Well, I could just make lots of chocolate cupcakes (not a bad thing), but then I would have to eat them all myself.  Not good for my ‘diet’. 

Or I could just let my daughter make her ‘cupcakes’!

On another note, Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to everyone.  Enjoy the mooncakes!

Sandrolls

My children strongly dislike sandwiches.  I would almost say that they are borderline bread haters.  No. 1 will eat a sandwich only if there’s really nothing else available.  No. 2 will refuse sandwiches even though there is absolutely nothing else.  Bread is just not a popular meal in my house.

Apart from coating both sides of the bread with pure sugar, I’ve tried everything I can think of to get them to eat sandwiches or just bread in general.  I’ve tried coating the bread in egg then frying it ie. French toast.  No luck.  I’ve tried bread and butter pudding.  No luck.  Seriously.

Anyway, life would be so much easier if they would eat sandwiches.  We could have simple cheese or tuna sandwiches, chicken and sweet corn sandwiches and even a more gourmet feta cheese, roast pepper and spinach sandwich.  I could whip up a no-cook dinner in 5 minutes instead of slaving over a hot stove (or microwave!).

So in a desperate attempt to disguise the sandwiches, I presented them in a different form, what I call ‘sandrolls’!  I came across this idea somewhere on the internet, can’t remember where though.  The photos looked better on the internet, much more spirally!  Perhaps I needed a filling with a stronger contracting colour? 

I used 2 fillings: a grated cheddar cheese, cream cheese and pineapple filling and a tuna roast pepper and garlic mayonnaise filling.

Grated cheddar cheese filling:

Grate a chunk of cheddar cheese; mix with spoonfuls of cream cheese and mashed/grated pineapple.  No measurements, I just added to my taste.

Tuna filling:

Mix a tin of canned tuna, grated garlic, mayonnaise and roast pepper (chopped finely).

 Putting the rolls together:

1.       Cut the crusts off the slices of bread.
2.       Spread the filling on the bread length-wise.  Leave about 0.5 cm of space at the end of the bread.
3.       Roll roll roll.
4.       Cut the roll into 2 or 3 sections and you’re done.

After all that grating and mixing, did my children eat the “sandrolls”? 

Nope. 

They’re not that easily fooled.

Bugger.

Spark of vanilla

Coming back from holidays is hard.  Summer holidays are especially hard.  On this side of the world, the days are getting shorter, the mornings are getting cooler and I’m starting to think about having to sew those name tags on the uniforms for school – not for me, for my big little monster who’s starting school this year. 

It’s all kind of depressing really.

Then, a dim spark of hope lies in the form of VANILLA CAKE!  Okay, maybe I’m being a little over-dramatic but I love VANILLA CAKE!  I especially love VANILLA CAKE with SWISS MERINGUE ICING.  Sorry I’ll stop shouting now.

Sweetapolita is my go-to blog for vanilla cake recipes.  For this cake I used this recipe, which is what I would call a topsy-turvy method of making a cake.  I’m used to creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs and then any other liquid and finally gently mixing in the dry ingredients.  This method calls for mixing the butter with the dry ingredients and then mixing the wet ingredients in.  It seemed almost easier than the standard creaming method with amazing results.  Amazing (had to say it twice). 

And the icing, oh the icing.  Not an overly sweet, slightly gritty buttercream but a light and smooth swiss meringue buttercream.  It takes a little longer to put together but the results are absolutely lovely.  It seems so light that you forget that it’s almost pure butter!

And the resulting cake?  Moist, light, a mouthful of vanilla-ey sunshine.  Definitely something to make the shorter days a little longer J

Notes for the cake: I replaced the cake flour by putting 2 tablespoonfuls of cornflour into a cup and then filling it up with ordinary plain flour.  I also only used a pinch of salt instead of the ¾ teaspoon of salt.

Notes for the icing: I halved the quantities in the recipe and still had some leftover.  This was my first time making swiss buttercream and I was a bit vary of using raw egg whites hence I used pasteurised egg white powder instead of fresh egg whites.  The buttercream still came together quite well.

5 giant yums for this recipe J

Warm belly

2 weeks in Brittany and I didn’t take a single photo of any form of food or food products!

However I did take a photo of this.  

Enough to warm any belly, and the heart above it.

Holidays and more sugar

I don’t like packing.  I especially don’t like packing toiletries.  There’s just something annoying about having to either decant shampoo and other liquidy items into smaller containers only to find that everything leaks through the 2 plastic bags that I put it in when we get to our destination.

Anyway, complaining aside, we’re off on holiday!  It’s the usual mad rush so I leave you with a pretty picture of more sugar! Have a nice weekend everyone!