So I've disappeared for a while. I notice...so have you. My reasons are these babies...a 300-cupcake tower I did for hubby's youngest bro's wedding, with gumpaste figurines and sugar flowers.
After making the above tree for my BIL, I had to have one for myself. Ta da! Just made this for my **th wedding anniversary. [Photo edited to filter out glare.]
And here are some lemon meringue cupcakes I made for a friend...her daughter (15yo) is off to Melbourne for studies. Take cake of her, you melbournites.
For some of you, the spacing in my posts may appear weird. Dunno why, but, if I don't make a lot of space after my images, they overlap. Maedi?
So...YOUR TURN to tell what you've been up to. Hope you've been baking bread. If so, please share! I know I need a break from all that cupcakes, I'm going to bake some bread.
Really amazing TP, love the narrow choice of olours. What are the paper cases, they look like the little paper cups they put pills in for patients? Is the green icing a flavour? D
The paper cuppees are labelled as souffle cups, except one wonders how to put paper in a bain marie? It's 2" in diameter, and is the preferred cupcake size for petite asians. They are really firm and can stand alone, no need to put them in any patty tins when baking.
I love it when I'm given a free rein in designing cakes/cupcakes. The green icing has green tea in it and a random squirt of colouring; the brown's mocha.
Wow, TP, you have been busy! I've been madly making preserves - rhubarb and raspberry jam, lemon curd, strawberry jam, cherry and apple jam, apple jelly, apple butter...you get the idea. Apples are particularly cheap at the markets at the moment, so I've been stockpiling - a $5 box of granny smiths made 15 jars of apple butter, 4 jars of apple jelly, and 10 bottles of apple pectin (to store for stonefruit season).
Strawberries have also been great:
And here's a loaf of red onion and olive bread, based on Dan's recipe (which essentially makes a roux first), using Mick's modification for sourdough:
Do you have an online shop? They look so inviting! YUM!! Nothing like fruitpacked homemade preserves. Your kashmiri birds eye chillies must be something special. I just love your labels too! What a treasure you are!
Hey TP, your third pic attacks my eyes..it hurts me..aua! My monitor is a wide gamut one, with calibration profilation and so on.. But Firefox doesn't like color management... :(
I'm without a full-fledged photo-editor at the moment, and a friend helped me process that pix, whacking up the contrast. It doesn't look too 'hurtful' on my screen.
Have a pair of sunglasses nearby when you view my pix next time. By the way, you haven't told us what you've been up to.
Thank you! There's nothing quite as exciting as learning a new skill - this is our first attempt at jam and jellies, so we're still learning. The chilli jelly used dried red kashmiri chillies and fresh red birdseyes - it packs a lovely sweet kick. Our favourite so far has been the rhubarb and raspberry jams, they're just delicious, and the colour is amazing.
One thing Pete tried to make recently was mangosteen jam - he made the tiniest little jar out of 5 mangosteens, but it IS so tasty. We can't tell my dad about it, because he's insistent that if you eat mangosteens with sugar, you'll get sick (have you heard that?). :)
I had to laugh at your comment about petite Asians. I wish I was a petite Asian. With all the jam, I'm now more of a char siew pau. :)
I have a question about your amazing cupcakes - how did you manage to keep so many fresh while you were making the whole cake? Did you freeze them, and then take them out and ice all 300 in one hit?
Congratulations on a most successful 1st jam-making, you have such an interesting range. Great job, indeed. We've only made marmalade* so far, out of the festive mandarin oranges surplus, enough to last us through the year. I envy all your gorgeous fruit.
Yep, I freeze my cupcakes; the flavours do not suffer from it at all...people kept coming to me to say how good they tasted. However, I can't take all the credit...a friend helped to bake 100 while I did 200. I thawed them on the day before the event, and my friend, her daughter and maid came to help me ice them, conveyor belt style. It was fun. I did the whole set up over 2 weeks, i.e. making the top heavily-boozed fruit cake, marzipanned and covered with fondant, figurines, flowers, the stand, and the cupcakes. For my anniversary do, I took 3 hours to ice and decorate 50 cupcakes, that was because I had to keep popping the icing bag into the fridge. In spite of my aversion to shortening, in future, I shall have to add it to make my buttercream more stable in our heat.
TP
p/s. Have never heard of the sugar and mangosteen taboo. Hmm...
* edit: plus strawberry jam which we're oh so proud of.
I've been trying to get some more oven building in between the winter rain. A little bit of bread and some apple pies with cheap granny smiths from a local orchard. But no photos unfortunately.
Did about 30 pizzas over two different pizza nights last weekend. But unfortunately it was inside in the kitchen, the weather and oven are not quite there for outside cooking.
Working on a long retarded loaf of Miche with a mixed starter of rye and whole wheat, the final dough is 75 % white whole wheat from KA Flour in Vermont and the rest just bread flour! Will see what happens, should I bake it in the creuset? Hmmmmm...
You must have a very large creuset to be able to plonk a miche in. Looks like you're converted, lol.
I'm getting very nervous about the Shirley Corriher bread I converted to sourdough....it's not moving fast enough and dinner is approaching. Having it with (wagyu) beef korean style, and, kimchi, apple slaw for my younger 2 who can't take the heat (er...I'm not that hot either).
When it's not too hot to turn the oven on, and sometimes even when it is, I've been baking nothing but sourdough - white bread, buttermilk white raisin with cinnamon swirl, whole wheat - and because of a lack of freezer space, the neighbours are getting lots of free bread!
I'm enjoying baking in my new oven. No more concrete block and half a broom stick holding the door on/shut! 150 loaves of bread in 23 days is a new record for me. Good fresh sourdough is hard to find around here and all my friends suddenly want it. And then there's the Turkish--but we won't mention it on a sourdough site. This is my first post--I've just been lurking and reading since I signed up. Liz
Welcome, Liz, and puhleeeeaze share your experience with us!
Congrats on your new acquisition. What oven are you using now? I'm still dreaming about getting a bigger oven that can fit more than 2 loaves at one go.
Now, now...you've piqued my interest. Is Turkish a bread? Don't worry about it not being bread or sourdough even, we have an OT forum. Hey, we're in it right now! Do tell.
Someone (guess who?) has been busy too. Between the 3 of them, they baked 22 loaves of various breads, ie...spelt, wholemeal (omega 3 seeds), challah, rye and baguettes. These pix were taken by the wife of one of the bakers and have kindly allowed me to share them here.
Jack was having a baking session with a student and a couple who contacted him via another forum...the breads were for a charity event. Must also mention the flours were from Rebecca Rayner of Glebe Farm. We should get ourselves invited too. *wink*
This was a baking day in late June. We were baking breads to sell at a charity event. We were joined by a sourdough enthusiastic couple and their baby. More pictures on their site:
Also there was an MBA student of mine who is interested in bakeries in China. It rained on and off that day. We made about 40Kg of bread, plus pizzas we had for lunch while the oven was too hot, and some bao. All sourdough. All cooked in the wood fired brick oven.
Top picture that TP was kind enough to post is my wood fired brick oven, and breads in bannetons ready to go in. The plastic bag is rice flour to stop the dough sticking to the peel.
Next picture shows some of the breads: seeded wholemeal, with a seed mixture of sunflower, pumpkin seed and soya kernels that is meant to be high in Omega 3. Also white and raisin
Third picture shows white spelt plaits (60% hydration)
Fourth picture are rye breads, some with caraway at the rear. They are also shown inside the oven. Note temperature probe.
I'd already kneaded raisins into two loaves of my sourdough, and shaped a single plain loaf, and having at least enough leftover dough for another loaf of some sort, I thought, what the hey, I'll make a coffee cake. Rolled and folded in some butter, put it in the fridge to rest, then rolled it out, smeared on some more butter, sprinkled it with sugar and some toasted coconut and a few blueberries; rolled it up jelly-roll style, but instead of making buns, I put it onto a parchment-lined baking sheet, made some cuts and folded them onto different sides. Let it rise, and baked it. Brushed it with a thin coconut-flavoured glaze and sprinkled on more toasted coconut. It's fantastic! I gave some to a friend this afternoon and she had it for dessert after her supper. I love sourdough, it's so easy to work with, and so good, and it isn't all that sour. To think that it was just a couple of months ago that I was struggling and wondering what to do next, should I feed it, should I leave it, and now I'm having a wonderful time doing whatever I feel like with it. Amazing. And I will, once I learn to handle the camera properly, post some pictures, promise!
First of all. My daughter saw the cupcake cake, TeckPoh, and wants one for her birthday! Cake decorating is not my strong point. My new stove is an Emilia 800mm gas/gas. Finding an 800 mm was a bit of a challenge but I didn't want to rebuild my kitchen and I didn't want a smaller oven. It's got a convection fan option that I've been playing around with, turning it on in the 2nd half of the bake. It seems to eliminate the hot spots. It holds steam pretty well without the fan on, at least I get a good puff when I open the door after 20 min. I usually bake 6 tinned loaves--a mix of round and loaf tin--with no worries. Haven't put my tiles back yet--Need some new ones because I've broken a few. 'turkish' is the flat bread I make. Not really like the stuff you buy here. I bake it a bit longer so it's not as doughy as the bought stuff. Otherwise it's just a yeasted white bread pulled into shape at full proof. I've reduced the yeast to give a slow rise and everybody loves it. thanks for the welcome. I like the new bread ideas and hints. Liz
How old is your daughter? Cupcakes don't need any decorating 'skills'. It's all about tying the theme together. I'd do something elaborate for fewer cupcakes, and something simple for bigger volumes. Have fun!
Replies
After making the above tree for my BIL, I had to have one for myself. Ta da! Just made this for my **th wedding anniversary. [Photo edited to filter out glare.]
And here are some lemon meringue cupcakes I made for a friend...her daughter (15yo) is off to Melbourne for studies. Take cake of her, you melbournites.
For some of you, the spacing in my posts may appear weird. Dunno why, but, if I don't make a lot of space after my images, they overlap. Maedi?
So...YOUR TURN to tell what you've been up to. Hope you've been baking bread. If so, please share! I know I need a break from all that cupcakes, I'm going to bake some bread.
Best
TP
Maedi
TP
D
The paper cuppees are labelled as souffle cups, except one wonders how to put paper in a bain marie? It's 2" in diameter, and is the preferred cupcake size for petite asians. They are really firm and can stand alone, no need to put them in any patty tins when baking.
I love it when I'm given a free rein in designing cakes/cupcakes. The green icing has green tea in it and a random squirt of colouring; the brown's mocha.
Good to see u.
TP
Too humid to bake of late, but I have a loaf in the works. Wow that is a lot of cupcaking!
Wow, TP, you have been busy! I've been madly making preserves - rhubarb and raspberry jam, lemon curd, strawberry jam, cherry and apple jam, apple jelly, apple butter...you get the idea. Apples are particularly cheap at the markets at the moment, so I've been stockpiling - a $5 box of granny smiths made 15 jars of apple butter, 4 jars of apple jelly, and 10 bottles of apple pectin (to store for stonefruit season).
Strawberries have also been great:
And here's a loaf of red onion and olive bread, based on Dan's recipe (which essentially makes a roux first), using Mick's modification for sourdough:
Cheers, Celia
TP
My monitor is a wide gamut one, with calibration profilation and so on..
But Firefox doesn't like color management... :(
Have a pair of sunglasses nearby when you view my pix next time. By the way, you haven't told us what you've been up to.
TP
Thank you! There's nothing quite as exciting as learning a new skill - this is our first attempt at jam and jellies, so we're still learning. The chilli jelly used dried red kashmiri chillies and fresh red birdseyes - it packs a lovely sweet kick. Our favourite so far has been the rhubarb and raspberry jams, they're just delicious, and the colour is amazing.
One thing Pete tried to make recently was mangosteen jam - he made the tiniest little jar out of 5 mangosteens, but it IS so tasty. We can't tell my dad about it, because he's insistent that if you eat mangosteens with sugar, you'll get sick (have you heard that?). :)
I had to laugh at your comment about petite Asians. I wish I was a petite Asian. With all the jam, I'm now more of a char siew pau. :)
I have a question about your amazing cupcakes - how did you manage to keep so many fresh while you were making the whole cake? Did you freeze them, and then take them out and ice all 300 in one hit?
Cheers, Celia
Yep, I freeze my cupcakes; the flavours do not suffer from it at all...people kept coming to me to say how good they tasted. However, I can't take all the credit...a friend helped to bake 100 while I did 200. I thawed them on the day before the event, and my friend, her daughter and maid came to help me ice them, conveyor belt style. It was fun. I did the whole set up over 2 weeks, i.e. making the top heavily-boozed fruit cake, marzipanned and covered with fondant, figurines, flowers, the stand, and the cupcakes. For my anniversary do, I took 3 hours to ice and decorate 50 cupcakes, that was because I had to keep popping the icing bag into the fridge. In spite of my aversion to shortening, in future, I shall have to add it to make my buttercream more stable in our heat.
TP
p/s. Have never heard of the sugar and mangosteen taboo. Hmm...
* edit: plus strawberry jam which we're oh so proud of.
Did about 30 pizzas over two different pizza nights last weekend. But unfortunately it was inside in the kitchen, the weather and oven are not quite there for outside cooking.
Beautiful cupcakes TP!
Matthew
Thanks, Matthew.
TP
I'm getting very nervous about the Shirley Corriher bread I converted to sourdough....it's not moving fast enough and dinner is approaching. Having it with (wagyu) beef korean style, and, kimchi, apple slaw for my younger 2 who can't take the heat (er...I'm not that hot either).
TP
What lucky neighbours you've got!
TP
I'm enjoying baking in my new oven. No more concrete block and half a broom stick holding the door on/shut! 150 loaves of bread in 23 days is a new record for me. Good fresh sourdough is hard to find around here and all my friends suddenly want it. And then there's the Turkish--but we won't mention it on a sourdough site.
This is my first post--I've just been lurking and reading since I signed up.
Liz
Congrats on your new acquisition. What oven are you using now? I'm still dreaming about getting a bigger oven that can fit more than 2 loaves at one go.
Now, now...you've piqued my interest. Is Turkish a bread? Don't worry about it not being bread or sourdough even, we have an OT forum. Hey, we're in it right now! Do tell.
Best
TP
Someone (guess who?) has been busy too. Between the 3 of them, they baked 22 loaves of various breads, ie...spelt, wholemeal (omega 3 seeds), challah, rye and baguettes. These pix were taken by the wife of one of the bakers and have kindly allowed me to share them here.
Don't seem to allow me to insert more than 2 images. Here's more breads...mmmm......
White Spelt Plait followed by Rye Breads.
TP
I've been busy with lots of things also;
Family from Europe are staying with us so I've been entertaining for the last three weeks; two week to go....phew!
Busy tying flies for saltwater fishing; leaving for north Queensland tomorrow for a family holiday but I hope to get some fishing done.
Posting advice for some flyfishers who are amateur sourdough bakers.
And other things uninteresting.
we need your advice here too.
TP
p/s Enjoy your fishing holiday!
Jack was having a baking session with a student and a couple who contacted him via another forum...the breads were for a charity event. Must also mention the flours were from Rebecca Rayner of Glebe Farm. We should get ourselves invited too. *wink*
TP
We were baking breads to sell at a charity event.
We were joined by a sourdough enthusiastic couple and their baby. More pictures on their site:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kasiazinken/BreadMakingSession
Also there was an MBA student of mine who is interested in bakeries in China. It rained on and off that day. We made about 40Kg of bread, plus pizzas we had for lunch while the oven was too hot, and some bao. All sourdough. All cooked in the wood fired brick oven.
Top picture that TP was kind enough to post is my wood fired brick oven, and breads in bannetons ready to go in. The plastic bag is rice flour to stop the dough sticking to the peel.
Next picture shows some of the breads: seeded wholemeal, with a seed mixture of sunflower, pumpkin seed and soya kernels that is meant to be high in Omega 3. Also white and raisin
Third picture shows white spelt plaits (60% hydration)
Fourth picture are rye breads, some with caraway at the rear. They are also shown inside the oven. Note temperature probe.
"WOW!"
Joerg's breads have been even tastier since
Kasia (wife of the enthusiast)
And, now, we'd love you to share your breads with us.
Best
TP
Me want pictures! For purely selfish reasons. Just go auto and *click*!
TP
First of all. My daughter saw the cupcake cake, TeckPoh, and wants one for her birthday! Cake decorating is not my strong point.
My new stove is an Emilia 800mm gas/gas. Finding an 800 mm was a bit of a challenge but I didn't want to rebuild my kitchen and I didn't want a smaller oven. It's got a convection fan option that I've been playing around with, turning it on in the 2nd half of the bake. It seems to eliminate the hot spots. It holds steam pretty well without the fan on, at least I get a good puff when I open the door after 20 min.
I usually bake 6 tinned loaves--a mix of round and loaf tin--with no worries. Haven't put my tiles back yet--Need some new ones because I've broken a few.
'turkish' is the flat bread I make. Not really like the stuff you buy here. I bake it a bit longer so it's not as doughy as the bought stuff. Otherwise it's just a yeasted white bread pulled into shape at full proof. I've reduced the yeast to give a slow rise and everybody loves it.
thanks for the welcome. I like the new bread ideas and hints.
Liz
TP
Oven a bit hot
TP