tidings of comfort & joy!

This week is extremely busy. The oven seems to be on most of every day, and the cakes and pastries are tumbling out of their pans. All my deliveries will have been made by Friday afternoon and by Friday evening I’m ready to put my feet up and fortify myself for the tasks on Christmas Eve which include decorating our Christmas cake.

It is in these quiet moments, when the house is still and the neighbourhood hushed that my mind skims over the number of Christmas cakes I have eaten (and baked) in my life.

I am particularly fond of baking Christmas cakes because it brings back memories of being up late with my mum in the kitchen decorating our family Christmas cake. The house would be quiet at last (just like the Clement Clarke Moore poem)  and we would  speak to each other in whispers  so as not to wake my younger siblings who could stir at any moment. All the lights would be off except for those in the kitchen which made our activity seem more intimate and  magical.

The same decorations were used on the cake year after year. Mum would pull up a stool to reach the highest cupboard and retrieve the old biscuit tin which held them. There was a little old house with a red roof (who could have lived there?), a green bottle brush tree dusted with white to suggest recent snowfall and a small chalk figurine whose painted features had worn away with time. Royal icing was made with egg whites and sugar, whipped by hand  and then spread over the cake like snow drifts. I would help place the decorations on the cake and make ‘footprints’ in the snow leading to the front door.

That the scale was all wrong between the house, the tree and the small figurine meant nothing to me. I wanted these nights in the kitchen with my mum, warm from the fire and the smell of Christmas cake, to go on forever.

The tree, the house and the figurine are long gone. And so has my mum. But every Christmas Eve, when I’m decorating my cake and the lights are low and the house is quiet, my memories of her and Christmas cake bring me tidings of comfort and joy.

joyful & triumphant!

I love making fruit mince pies at Christmastime. There's something joyful about taking sticky, fragrant dried fruits, macerating them until they are plump and glistening, mixing them with ancient spices, enveloping them in a buttery little case and baking them until they look and smell delicious.

I see history and romance in that innocuous bag of dried mixed fruit on the supermarket shelf but acknowledge that it's hardly likely to have that affect on the majority of shoppers.

Today is perfect for making my mince pies. And unexpected. The temperature is a very reasonable 21. Usually at this time of year I have to crank the air conditioning up so that it's possible to work with the pastry without becoming entangled with it. But today, my little mince pies are behaving nicely and turning out a treat. Triumphant!

christmas is coming!

Today is the first day of summer in Australia and Christmas is just around the corner!

Once we hit December, the whole house moves into a different gear. The charcoal is stocked up for the long, languorous barbeques ahead, the ice-cream maker moves back into the kitchen, the jugs of iced tea start to appear, and christmas baking goes on long into the night.

As I sit out under the stars on these warm nights, listening to the fruit bats in the distance, with the scent of frangipani and gardenias on the breeze, I like to reflect on the year that is drawing to a close and the excitement of Christmas and all that is the very best that it can be.

A new advent calendar is hung, Bing Crosby and Doris Day are dusted off for another year of crooning, and all my favourite Christmas books and movies move to the top of the pile. I make lists of ingredients to gather, presents to find and jobs to do that are the pattern of my life at this time every year, and I love it!

a few of my favourite things

Aprons. Pinafores. I love them. Particularly when they are freshly pressed and starched. 

I wear them all the time at home and would not even think to start baking without a fresh pinny on. Depending on what I’m making, and the day, and my mood, and what I’m wearing – I make my selection. I always wear a proper chef’s black apron when I’m working with dark chocolate as chocolate stains terribly. 

Here I am in my latest acquisition. It’s made from vintage embroidered tablecloths with a crocheted edging in violet. It was handmade by Robin, one of the artisan apron makers I have come to know from my favourite land of Etsy. It’s perfect for the lemon and lavender cake I’m baking which I’ll serve this afternoon on china plates with matching teacups to cheer us all!

white on white

Miss H and Mr A asked me to make them a delicious cake of four tiers of alternating chocolate and caramel for their Byron Bay beach wedding.

After chatting about the  relaxed mood they wanted to create at their wedding and Miss H giving me a sneak preview of her dress, we settled on a cake design that was both romantic and fresh – white on white.

The stylised rose petals are all hand-made from icing and arranged individually on the cake, creating a contemporary take on a traditional rose design.

family wedding

My niece H is to be married shortly and she asked me if I had a photo of my parents (her grandparents) on their wedding day.

Mum and Dad were married in 1950 in St Barnabas Church, Eltham, London. Their marriage came 5 years after the end of the Second World War and 6 years after St Barnabas was badly damaged by enemy bombing over London in 1944.

This was still a time of rationing and friends and relatives donated ration stamps so my parents could get enough eggs, dried fruits and sugar for their wedding cake to be baked. Their cake was finished, as was the tradition, in royal icing incorporating elements of the Lambeth method.

In keeping with the limited availability of materials for wedding cake decorations, their wedding cake topper was fashioned from wax, ribbon and wire, featuring tiny bluebirds on springs under an arch of creamy wax flowers and leaves.

My mother chose a wedding dress design that reflected the Tudor history of nearby Eltham Palace, and the 16th century building where their reception was held. My mother's headdress, which we still have, was also made of cream wax flowers.

I was lucky enough to accompany my parents to St Barnabas and Well Hall one summer to retrace their wedding day, about a decade before they passed away.

My niece will marry 61 years later, on a beautiful beach in Byron Bay, Australia.

remembrance of things past

I'm having a Proust moment and baking petites madeleines.

Marcel Proust made these delicate, plump sponge cakes immortal, 'which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell', in his classic book A la Recherche du Temps Perdu or Remembrance of Things Past.

And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life have become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory.

I know how he feels.

As you already know, I am a devotee of the sponge, madeleines included. But for me it is the cup of tea which deserves the notoriety arising from Proust's famous reflections that has, instead, been anointed to this little cake. Not that I'm complaining! Tea and cake are a cornerstone of my life. I don't believe there is a finer culinary combination - save a chip butty and tea, or tea and a large shard of milk chocolate. But there you are, tea features again and again.

So on this warm afternoon, with weather you wish you could bottle, the smell of lemon blossom and sweet peas in the garden, I'm taking my madeleines outside to have with tea.

True to Proust's account, I will dip my madeleines in a cup of lime flower tea, but I will also serve them (in a second sitting) with some heady Persian rose petal jam, freshly whipped cream and a stronger infusion of Ceylon tea and milk. As Proust says, 'whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy?'

sponge cake with elderflower cream and strawberries

Oh, how I love a freshly baked sponge cake!

Today is so glorious that I'm going to put on a pretty dress and bake a sponge cake filled with elderflower cream and fresh strawberries to take to my friends for afternoon tea. 

I do think the sponge cake (or genoise) is under-rated. Just as its name suggests, it is a delightful foil to whatever (moist) filling your heart desires. And then you get to mop up your plate with the last sweet, feather-light bite on your fork.

Finished with a light dusting of icing sugar and fresh flowers, it makes my heart sing with joy!

rose madder & avocado

I love the name and history of rose madder. Madder has been cultivated for dye since antiquity in central Asia and Egypt, where it was grown about 1500 BC.

This four layered white chocolate and raspberry cake is finished in avocado-coloured fondant embellished with a damask pattern in royal icing. I have used rose madder as the accent colour in the handmade sugar rose bud and leaves, and matching trim.

peacocks and wedding cake

The morning of the wedding launched itself gently but optimistically - full of promise and blue skies, and the smell of jasmine on the breeze. 

Miss Z and Mr S asked me to design a classic cake in keeping with family traditions and a family name. A real peacock feather brooch was specially commissioned to clasp the peacock blue ribbon adorning the cake. Baguette-cut diamantes added sparkle to each tier. It was a beautiful day for a lovely couple. 


Best wishes to you both for a long and happy marriage!

raising funds for cancer research

My Daffodil Day morning tea was a great success with over $2,700 raised for cancer research. Thank you to all involved for your kind donations and support! x

Daffodil Day

Hoping that the day we know how to stop cancer comes soon.

the circus comes to town!

Can you remember when the circus came to town?

My first memory of the circus was Billy Smart's in Blackheath, London. The smell of candy floss and sawdust and the crush as the crowd poured through the mouth of the big top ,  gasping and chattering excitedly.

I wanted to be a  trapeze lady (when I wasn't being Gigi), with feathers in my hair and a sequinned costume. I was bewitched by the way they swung gracefully overhead and would look away as they flew out into space, reaching optimistically for a swinging bar somewhere in the darkness. Would they make it safely? Would they fall? And then entwining themselves around ropes as they descended serpent-like from their eyries high above the sawdust ring.

I hope young Master M likes his circus tent cake and has sweet dreams of a circus life of daring and adventure.

birdies

I love birds and I love painting on cakes.

The cake artist who inspires me the most with the way she captures birds and nature is Natasha Collins of Nevie-Pie Cakes. Natasha worked for many years as an illustrator and textile designer before combining her life-long love of baking with her art.

Like Natasha, I mainly use food paste colours to paint with, however for washes, I use alcohol whereas Natasha uses boiled water. I also use pure cocoa butter to create a lustrous patina.

The swallows were featured on a spring cake created by Natasha, while the robin red-breast in the snow was painted by me to decorate traditional christmas cakes.

butterflies in my tummy

I'm excited for Miss C. It's her first birthday! A big day for any girl. Mum and Dad have bought her a brand new dress and matching swishy shoes and fancy socks, and she's looking as pretty as any cupcake herself. And I've made the cake. Butterflies and blossoms was the brief. I do hope Miss C doesn't get too excited to eat the cake. After all, this may be the very first butterfly in her tummy ever!

sweet peas

As our winter starts to fade and spring is shaking out her prettiest dress ready for her grand entrance, in my garden the sweet pea seedlings are heading skywards with all the determination and zeal that I admire in these delicate plants. 

Every hour they seem to have climbed further upwards, entwining themselves elegantly but tenaciously around their wire frame. I examine them each day, impatiently waiting for that very first bud to unfurl and release its tissue-like petals and delicious perfume.

Sweet peas are old-fashioned and charming. I really like that about them. I love making them to decorate my cakes and have decided that, if it came to it, I'd happily be re-employed as a sweet pea tendril-maker. I twirl, twirl, twirl the tendrils, this way and that, as dreamily as a young girl twisting her hair around her fingers, each tendril different from the last. 

In this wedding cake for Miss L and Mr A I have included ivory roses and rosebuds with pink and blue sweet peas to capture the freshness of spring.

Willy Wonka meets Chocolat

I've been busy stocking up on ingredients, including chocolate, for my Daffodil Day baking.

It's like a childhood dream-come-true when the chocolate is delivered to my door. As I open the 10kg bags to decant the chocolate, the whole house is filled with perfect chocolatey-ness. It's Willy Wonka meets Chocolat!

I use Belgian Callebaut couverture bitter sweet chocolate for my cakes and ganache. 

Daffodil Day

August 26 is Daffodil Day and each year I organise a morning tea in my workplace to raise money for cancer research.

Like many families, our family has been affected by cancer too keenly and too often. But I know there are lots of bright, clever minds out there trying to work this one out.  And one day they will.

If our combined efforts to raise funds keeps these researchers and scientists in a job so they can pay their bills and raise their children and be able to apply their minds to find the answers we need, then I am more than happy to do my bit too.

Every little bit helps.

the humble jam drop

There's something rather steady and reliable about the jam drop. It's like the tug boat of the biscuit world.

In winter, I like to sit on my front porch step to catch the afternoon sun, absent-mindedly dipping them in my tea. With its little medal of red jam, and buttery, toasted almond taste, this little fellow will set you up perfectly for the afternoon.

If you'd like the recipe, let me know.

caramel tea cake

I baked this caramel cake for tea recently. It's based on a recipe from Alison Thompson's book Bake.

Alison lives and works in beautiful Yarra Glen in Melbourne's Yarra Valley and at one time worked for the Little Venice Cake Co. in London. I have tweaked the icing recipe to give it a creamier taste and to make it a little less sweet. If you don't have unsalted butter, use salted butter and modify the amount of salt you add. Remember to keep tasting it every time you add some salt so it's just as you like it.

Caramel Icing
200g (7oz) soft brown sugar
60g (2oz) unsalted butter
50ml (1 3/4 fl oz) milk
100g (4oz) cream cheese
11/2 tsp salt

good morning!

My friend N has moved to Abu Dhabi to live. I'm not sure when I will see her again. 

When she told me she was leaving I thought of a book I had about two women who lived on opposite sides of the United States and shared a year of their lives through a digital photo taken each morning. Their story and images caught the imagination of people around the world and their personal project became a book A Year of Mornings. 3,191 Miles Apart.

Each day since N's been gone, we've sent a photo of something from our morning to each other. A vignette of simple, everyday things. We don't write anything, we don't give the photo a caption, we don't even look at the photo that's arrived in our inbox before we have taken our own and sent it on its way. 

Our photo journal of our lives at the beginning of a new day is unsophisticated and intimate and won't win any prizes. Somehow though, through the photos, we are connected in our daily lives. And the photos cause me to pause and contemplate the solace and joy of an everyday life.

N and I live 7,472 miles apart. Photos from 5 July 2011.

baking for three generations

The lovely Mrs H first came to me to ask me to make her daughter's first birthday cake. And then, sometime later, her nanna was turning 80 and she asked me to make her birthday cake. The brief was pink, feminine - and she loves roses! And then, sometime after that, Mrs H's mum was marrying again and could I do the wedding cake and cupcakes?

I have baked for three generations of this lovely family and my cakes are part of the stories handed down through their family. How wonderful is that!

brown paper packages tied up with string...

Parcels arriving by post. Definitely one of my favourite things.

My friend C in Canberra was lamenting the demise of the shop around the corner - her local bookshop. Whilst we are both avid readers, C still buys her books from the bookshop whereas I buy all of mine online nowadays. Indeed, I have for some time. One of the consequences of this has been the return of the simple pleasure of receiving a parcel in the post.

I love getting parcels. Even though I know what's in them (after all, it's only me that's sending me things), there's a giddy delight I feel when I come through the gate to find a small, brown package quietly waiting for me on the doorstep. I hurriedly turn the key in the front door, pop the kettle on and reach for a pair of scissors.

a perfect Saturday

It's cold and wet outside but inside it's toasty-warm from the oven. The smell of plump, dried fruits soaked in orange floral muscat with cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg and freshly zested oranges and lemons, all baking in a cake. Listening to Desert Island Discs with a cup of tea and a slice of chocolate cake, thumbing through cook books and shopping for a new apron on Etsy. A perfect Saturday.

sugar posies

There is something very lovely about individually-fashioned, edible flowers on a wedding cake. And to be asked to make something so beautiful and unique for someone's special day is a real pleasure.

This particular design incorporates peonies, ranunculus, hydrangeas, foliage, buds and small blossoms, and I have used five different shades of green petal dust to create this colour palette.

If kept out of the direct sunlight and in a dry place, sugar flowers can last a lifetime and make a charming family heirloom.

thank you girls!

Well, this day had to come. The girls who supply me with fresh, organic eggs can't do it anymore and they are retiring.

Mr D, who owns the girls, wrote a lovely letter explaining that hens can only lay for so long and that he is far too attached to them to - you know - yet he doesn't have room enough for a fresh brood unless he (gets rid of them). Which is not happening! So the girls are staying.

They will continue to scratch for worms and beetles in Mr D's garden and keep an eye on the caterpillars in the cabbages, but there will be no more eggs. Well, perhaps the occasional one for Mr D's breakfast, but not enough for my cakes. So I'm looking for a new source of fresh eggs. And the girls? Well, they're having a lie in.

Thank you girls!

one, two, three!

Mr & Mrs W are the proud parents of triplets. Two bouncy boys and an equally bouncy girl. Beautiful, cheeky, smiley cherubs.

Well, before long it was the babies' first birthday (time flies you know) and the Ws needed a birthday cake for their poppets.

The day came for the big event. The babies were all scrubbed, Mrs W wore her new lipstick and Mr W was very proud. It was a fine affair and everyone squeezed the babies and ate lots of cake - even the babies! Happy 1st birthday baby G, J & M xxx

pink & black

Why is the colour pairing of pink and black so often associated with the French? I don't know. Do you?

Pink and black makes me think of the film Gigi. I used to daydream about being Gigi when I was a little girl. Bubbles tickling my nose from my first sip of champagne, the rustle of eau de nil silk taffeta skirts, and beauty salons staffed with young women in black uniforms and tight chignons.

By the time I reached my 20's, I was a devotee of Guerlain's Jardins de Bagatelle dispensed from voluptuous atomisers and a regular patron at French film festivals.

So when Miss K asked me to create a birthday cake for her very special birthday that was fun, yet chic - I thought a design in pink and black would be perfect. Miss K was delighted. Bon anniversaire Miss K!

royal cakes & royal icing

Miss Z & Mr S have kindly asked me to make their wedding cake.

Miss Z's grandfather was a baker and she grew up eating the very best fruit cakes on family occasions. For their wedding, the couple have chosen tiered, fragrant fruit cakes which bring back such happy memories.

Today I will macerate the dried fruits for their cake so they will be juicy and plump in preparation for baking next weekend.

My fruit cakes are based on Eddie Spence MBE's recipe. Eddie has been part of the finest English cake decorating traditions for over 50 years and his renowned royal icing skills earned him the opportunity to work on Prince Charles & Lady Diana Spencer's wedding cake and Her Majesty the Queen & Prince Philip's golden wedding anniversary cake.

Sadly, the art of piping in royal icing is no longer in demand. But there are few things more soothing than to sit at my table in front of the window, watching the wind in the trees, creating fine, lacy designs in sugar.

a little eleven o'clockish.

 “When late morning rolls around and you're feeling a bit out of sorts, don't worry; you're probably just a little eleven o'clockish". Winnie the Pooh

That's just how I'm feeling - a little eleven o'clockish. I need to get a move on. So I've put the kettle on and will eat a large slice of the apple pie I baked for last night's tea.

Mr Clam and I have friends  coming for tea tonight and I want to bake a caramel cake that I've not tried before. The recipe is from Alison Thompson's book Bake. I'll let you know how it turns out.