Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Cake

For my birthday this year, I thought it would be apt to make a Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds themed cake, it being 50 years since Sergeant Pepper came out (I am younger than Sergeant Pepper!).  One of my favourite songs on the Sergeant Pepper album is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, and the imagery that accompanies that song  in the Yellow Submarine movie lends itself well to cake decorating.  

In Yellow Submarine, the cartoon Beatles find themselves in the foothills of the headlands, when John strikes up singing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.  The first image in that song is a woman (presumably Lucy) inside the heads in two different colour schemes.  That is the image I used on my cake, using coloured rolled fondant.

I was too lazy to colour my own fondant, so I just used colours that I could buy in the supermarket.  It was interesting the different textures that different brands of fondant had - some was hard to roll out, like elephant hide, while some was very sticky and fragile. 

I drew on Lucy's features with edible pens.

The underlying cake was a chocolate cake recipe that I had not used before from Chocolate Coffee Caramel - A Cook's Book of Decadence.  I chose it because it contained blackberry jam, like Nigella's chocolate cake. Here is the inside of the cake:

To make this chocolate cake, you will need:

125g butter

125g sugar

40g icing sugar

2 lightly beaten eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

80g blackberry jam

155g self raising flour

60g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

250ml milk

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Grease a 20cm round cake tin and line the base with baking paper.

Beat the butter and sugars together in a stand mixer until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, vanilla and jam and beat 'til combined. Fold in the sifted flour, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda alternately with the milk in three batches, starting and ending with the flour mixture. 

Pour the batter into your prepared cake tin and bake for 45 minutes or until cooked through.  Turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool.

Decorate as desired once cool.

Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Cake - Melbourne Cake Club - Sensational Song Cakes

This month's Melbourne Cake Club theme is Song Cakes.  The Cake Club met on a cold night at Lady Grange in St Kilda to exchange cakes inspired by our favourite songs.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album by The Beatles, so I decided to make a cake inspired by the title song.  The drum skin for Sgt Pepper is iconic, and being round, is the perfect shape for a cake.

I tossed up about making a cake containing pepper as the base cake, but figured that might not turn out well, so instead, I focussed on the psychedelia that went with the Sgt Pepper era, and made a psychedelic zebra cake from this recipe from The Cake Mistress:

The challenge then was how to recreate something at least resembling the graphic art on the Sgt Pepper drum skin.  Originally, I thought about getting an edible icing transfer, but I have used one of those in the past and couldn't get it off the backing paper, so I skipped that. 

My next thought was to use all fondant, so I bought rolled fondant in all of the Sgt Pepper colours.  I hit a snag when I went to actually decorate the cake, as I found that my letter cutters were too big to cut out all of the wording in fondant.  Also, the multiple layers of colours would have made the icing too bulky if everything was made of fondant, so on the go, I opted for a mixture of fondant and edible markers to produce the design:

It's not perfect, but in the end, I think it turned out pretty well. It was definitely a learning on the go experience, and I had to make a few of the pieces more than once.  A trick that I picked up from Whimiscal Cakehouse class that I  used in decorating this cake was that if you smudge colour onto white icing, you can dab it off with a little milk on a cotton ball or bud.  (The blue rings smudged a little as I was placing them, but the milk dab did the trick to remove the unwanted colour bleed.)

And here's a peek inside the cake:

At Lady Grange, in keeping with The Beatles vibe, I ordered a Penny Lane cocktail (vodka, coconut, peach, watermelon):

(Incidentally, Penny Lane was recorded at the same time as Sgt Pepper, but was released as a double A side with Strawberry Fields instead of making it onto the album.)

Club members had a terrific time seeing what everyone else had made, and we all had very different inspiration.

Abi made an Over the Rainbow cake, complete with lemon drops spelling out melting "Troubles", and a bluebird over a rainbow layer cake sandwiched with vanilla buttercream and lemon curd:

Sue made a gluten free, fudgy mocha Count Down cake, with the Count Down logo emblazoned in cachous on top of the cake:

Alex made banana, mango and macadamia muffins, inspired by the tropical sound of Mr President's Coco Jumbo:

Dalya sings You Are My Sunshine to her daughter, so she made a delicious lemon and almond sunshine cake:

Last but not least, Karen made a cake inspired by The Bangles' Eternal Flame, being banana and raspberry cake with orange icing to mimick the colour of flames and decorated with modelling chocolate:

So there you have it - our sensational song cakes!

If you would like to join us in August, our theme is Magic Cakes - the details are here.

Lady Grange

1 Fitzroy St

St Kilda VIC 3182

Phone: (03) 9534 3056

Marmalade Cake with Orange Frosting

Recently, I had another birthday.  While I had grand plans for the cake I was going to make, these plans did not come to fruition, as I have been very busy with no time to do anything too fancy.

In the end, I decided to make a Marmalade Cake - inspired by the reference to "Marmalade Skies" in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by The Beatles.

I wanted to make a different marmalade cake to any other that I had made before, so I hit Google for inspiration.  Importantly, the marmalade cake had to be frosted rather than glazed.  I came up with this recipe for Marmalade Cake, which interestingly was inspired by the Mitford novels.

 
Key changes that I made to the recipe were:  I included two tablespoons of marmalade in the cake batter; I also included two tablespoons of marmalade in the syrup.  I frosted my cake with an orange-flavoured buttercream rather than the sour cream frosting in the recipe, and I skipped the extra marmalade in the layers and on top of the cake.  I then decorated the top of the cake with orange M&Ms (but I slipped up in the yellowish night light and had a couple of pink ones in there).

I think the cake turned out pretty well:

It was quite sweet, but delicious all the same. I think a single layer would have been enough, as it was quite a lot of cake, even with a thin slice.

This was not the cake I had envisaged making, but it did the job.  I shared it with the people at my secondment workplace, and it must have tasted OK, because it disappeared.  That is a win in my books.

Rose Ombre Layer Cake for Valentines Day

 

 

All you need is love

Love is all you need.

 

                                                                The Beatles

 



Love it or loathe it, today is Valentine's Day.  I for one am not adverse to this day of love, not because I float in a sea of flowers while lying back on a chaise lounge to eat decadent chocolates, but because I like the idea of a day to celebrate romantic love, and it involves lots of red and pink, two of my favourite colours.

 

 

I like to celebrate occasions with baked goods, and this year, I was immediately taken by the Ombre Layer Cake that I found on Tartine and Apron Strings.  Kayte had given me a set of Wilton 6" 5 layer cake pans for Christmas, and this was the perfect opportunity to use them.  (It astounds me that in Australia, we get charged twice the price or more of the US market price for such things, so I am grateful for Kayte's gift.) 

 

Instead of using the Swiss meringue buttercream in the recipe to ice the cake, I used my favourite Primrose Bakery Vanilla buttercream recipe, tinted palest pink, and flavoured with rose water instead of vanilla.

 

I bought Flowerdale Farm Turkish Delight rose petals to decorate my cake - a little pricey at $6.95, but they are surely the crowning glory of my creation: 

 

Here's an aerial shot - so pretty:
 

Once sliced, the true beauty of the ombre layers shines through:

It is a very impressive looking cake.  Even better, the cake tastes devine.

My only tips on making the cake layers are that they are quite delicate - grease your pan well, run a knife around the rim of the pans to unmould them, and oil your wire rack for cooling them, as the layers have a tendency to tear and stick.

Do you have any plans for Valentine's Day?  And do you like to celebrate Valentine's Day, or ignore it?

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

WWDH - Apple slice

For Wednesday with Donna Hay this week, Chaya chose Donna's apple slice recipe. You can find it online here.

I loved this version of apple slice, with a shortcrust base and crumbly topping, and not overly sweet.  It is way nicer than the commercial bakery version.  It was also a hit at work - it disappeared very quickly.  Someone actually said that you can't buy stuff like this - so true.

To see what Chaya, Sarah and Margaret thought of this delicious treat, visit their websites.

It is the last day of 2014, and the year has flown.  I haven't had much time to tell you what I have been up to this month, but here are a few snippets:

• On 4 December, I attended our work Christmas party at Encore at St Kilda Sea Baths.  The theme was Arabian Nights, complete with a belly dancer.

• On 5 December, I went to Hobart for the weekend, staying at the beautiful Henry Jones Art Hotel.  I dined at an old favourite, The Drunken Admiral, and went on a ferry trip to MONA.  I also picked up some more gorgeous plum pudding jam from Amanda Jammm at Salamanca Market.

• On 14 December, I went to a first birthday party for my friend's adorable Yorkie - it was a wonderful girlie afternoon with bubbles and nibbles and chat (for us, not the Yorkie).

• On 19 December, I went to see The Beatle Boys at The Palms at Crown.  I adore these guys - if you can't see The Beatles (which you can't), The Beatle Boys are the next best thing.  This is the second time I have seen them, and they were even better this time around - more relaxed and funny.   I also had front row seats - yay!  Highlights were the lively banter between "Paul" and "John", "Ringo's" enthusiastic drumming with hair a'swinging, George's" awesome rendition of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", and "Paul's" sparkly baby blues. Go see The Beatle Boys - they're great!

• On 20 December, it was the legal team's Christmas function at my boss's new house.  Family and friends came along, and we sat out on the gorgeous covered deck while we indulged in fabulous food cooked by my boss and his wife, including prawns, buffalo wings, lamb chops and salads, and ate my pavlova roulade and Gingerbread Buche de Noel for dessert.   It was a wonderful afternoon.

• On 21 December, I attended the 158th anniversary service at my friend's church.  Afterwards, there was an enormous potluck to feed the masses. 

• I am currently with family for the Christmas break.

What have been the highlights of your year?  Was it a good one for you?  And what is exciting you for 2015?  Would love to hear your thoughts.

Have a fabulous New Year one and all!

Margaret Fulton's Beatles Cake and The Meaning of Life

Forty-two is the number Deep Thought gave as being the Ultimate Answer.  Ford Prefect

The Restaurant at the End of  the Universe, Douglas Adams

It was my birthday recently.  As I do not live near family, if I don't make my own cake, I tend not to get one, so I always make my own.  This year, I had no trouble deciding what cake I was going to make.  After visiting The Beatles in Australia photographic exhibition earlier this year (of which you can read more details in this excellent post), I was fixated by a Beatles party cake in a magazine at the exhibition.  The recipe, which was published in Woman's Day (visible at the bottom of Sewing the 60s exhibition post), was devised by Australia's queen of the kitchen, Margaret Fulton.

I had no idea where I'd get the recipe for this cake, as the magazine in the exhibition was published in the 1960s, way before the Internet, and I had no idea how to track down the magazine.  However, my idle Internet surfing was rewarded recently when I typed in "margaret fulton beatles cake".  By chance, Woman's Day had turned 65 last year, and to celebrate, they had republished Margaret's recipe in an August 2013 edition of the magazine.  Phoodie had published a post about this, so I did another Google search, this time for "woman's day beatles cake".  I then hit the jackpot - the Margareet Fulton Beatles Cake recipe from the 1960s was on their website.  You can find it here.  The cake is described as a burnt sugar party cake, and is frosted with a caramel icing.

You will see from the recipe that Margaret assumed her readers would have some cake baking experience, because while the instructions are adequate for an experienced cake baker, some of the finer details required to make this cake successfully would be lost on a novice baker.  Unfortunately, the link to the Beatles biscuit template does not work, so I had to design my own template, working from the photograph of the cake.  I also decided to use a different caramel icing recipe, as Margaret's version uses 4 cups of brown sugar and is of the tricky fudge variety that is impossible to work with.  That said, the icing that I used got tricky to work with over time, as it dries out and sets fairly quickly.  With respect to the biscuits, I found that they took much longer than the 8-10 minutes quoted for baking time.

 

Here's a peek inside:

 

 

 

My adapted version of the cake and biscuit recipes is as follows:

Cake

1 1/3 cups sugar
1/3 cup hot water 2 ¾ cups plain flour 3 teaspoons baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt175g butter 3 eggs ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup milk

Grease and line 2 x 8" round cake tins.  Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Place 1/2 cup of sugar into a heavy saucepan and stir over low heat.  When the sugar just turns dark brown, remove it from the heat.  (Don't take the sugar off too early as you won't get a nice caramel coloured cake, but don't leave the sugar for too long or it will taste bitter in the cake.)  Carefully and slowly, add the hot water to the sugar (be careful and stand back, it spits!), and stir the mixture until well combined. Allow this syrup to cool.

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl and set aside.

Beat the softened butter in a stand mixer until soft.  Add the remaining sugar to the butter, beating until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs to the sugar mixture, one at a time, and beat well before adding the next. Beat in the vanilla and the syrup. 

In a stand mixer on low speed or using a spoon, add the flour and milk alternately to the butter mixture, starting and ending with flour, with three tranches of flour and two tranches of sugar. Mix in each tranche until just combined. 

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tins and bake the cake in your preheated oven for 30 minutes or until cooked through.  Leave the cakes to cool in the tins for 5 minutes before turning them out onto wire cake racks to cool completely.
       

 Biscuits

125g butter
50g sugar 1 egg yolk 1 cup plain flour 1 cup self raising flour pinch of salt iced waterblack licorice straps for hair and eyescashews for Ringo's noseunsalted peanuts for other nosesglace cherries for mouths 
Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius, and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Beat the softened butter and sugar together in a stand mixer until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg yolk.

Using a spoon, fold both flours and the salt into the butter mixture.  Add iced water to the dough and knead in if necessary to make firm dough. (I did add some water.)  Form the dough into a flat disc, wrap it in cling film, and allow it to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Roll the chilled dough out on a floured surface or between two pieces of baking paper until 1/4" thick.  Using a paper or plastic template as a guide, cut out the Beatle heads from the dough with a small sharp knife.  (Cut out 12 head shapes.)  Put the biscuits on to the lined biscuit tray and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Remove the chilled biscuits from the fridge and bake in the preheated oven 8-10 minutes or until pale golden colour. Allow to cool on the tray for 5 minutes before transferring the biscuits to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cut out hair and eyes from the licorice straps, and mouths from the glace cherries, then stick these and the nut "noses" onto the biscuits with a small amount of chocolate icing (see below).
Makes 12 Beatles.   (I only made the four biscuits I needed for the cake - that was more than enough!)        

Caramel icing

I used this icing recipe rather than Margaret's.  Work with it as quickly as you can, as while it is malleable to start with, it firms up quickly.  Use a hot knife to help spread the icing if necessary.

Chocolate icing for piping and sticking on Beatles' "faces"

50g softened butter

1 cup sifted icing sugar

1 tablespoon cocoa

Beat together the butter, icing sugar and cocoa in a stand mixer. Add sufficient milk to make the icing a smooth piping texture.   

Cake assembly

Place one half of the cooled cake on a cake board or cake plate.  Spread one third of the caramel icing on top of the cake, going right to the edges.  Place the second cake on top of the first, then spread the remaining caramel icing over the top and sides of both cakes. Pipe music notes around the sides of the cake (and Beatles lyrics if you like) with the chocolate icing. Place the Beatles biscuits on top of the cake, securing with a little chocolate icing if necessary.

Yeah, yeah!

Day 1 in Las Vegas, Lemongrass at Aria, Liberace Costume Exhibition and Cocolini Gelato at The Venetian

Our evening destination after motoring on from the Grand Canyon was Las Vegas.  It is not strictly on Route 66, for sure, but it would be silly to come all that way and not drop in to the party capital of Nevada.  Besides, you can "travel" all over the world in just one place.  There was New York, New York, at the top of this post, and the ever stunning Bellagio:

and who could leave out Paris:

For dinner on that first evening, I was keen to return to Lemongrass at Aria, where I had dined two years previously:

As the name suggests, it is a Thai restaurant.  You can dine a la carte, but I wanted to have their excellent pre-show set menu again ($39):

For starter, you receive a fish cake and a vegetarian spring roll with a sweet chilli dipping sauce:

For main, you receive pad pak (vegetable stir fry) with jasmine rice:

and green chicken curry:

All of it is delicious, and because it is designed for those dining before going to a show, it comes out really quickly - no waiting around.

For dessert, we received this divine bua loi - sticky rice "dumplings" in warm coconut milk:

This was as good as I remembered from last time.  Trust me to remember the dessert!

The staff were prompt and courteous, and didn't indicate that they even noticed that Tim and I were dressed for the road rather than the theatre.

Afterwards, we went next door to The Cosmopolitan, where they were hosting a Liberace costume exhibition:

I have posted all of my photos from the exhibition on my travel blog here, if you are interested in some more glittering costumes.

We then took a leisurely stroll back to our home casino.  Here is a fab arial shot of The Strip at dusk from one of the elevated walkways:

And here is Paris again, all dolled up in its evening finery:

and of course, its next door neighbour, The Flamingo, who hosted the Osmonds for years, and now has our very own Livvy performing:
 

Don't miss The Bellagio light show, which happens every half hour or so nightly on The Strip:

We wandered over to The Venetian which, you guessed it, is decked out to transport you to Venice.  Gondola ride anyone?

We were in The Venetian because our tour guide, Bob, told us that he liked to end the evening by having a gelato in St Mark's Square at The Venetian.  We were sold on the idea, and while it took us quite a while to find (if you have never been to Vegas, the scale of the casinos is enormous!), we finally wandered into St Mark's Square:

when we stumbled upon Cocolini Gelato:

I threw caution to the wind and ordered this very decadent bacci gelato ($7.50):

Tim and I sat and ate gelato while listening to a classical music trio entertaining the crowds.

Of course, on the way back to our casino, I had to take a photo of this sign advertising the Love Cirque du Soleil show, which features music of The Beatles:

 

Sadly it was not on the nights we were there, and last time I was in Vegas I didn't go because I messed up and bought a ticket for another show on the same night in Los Angeles which I could not attend and I decided to just wear my mistake.

 

I wasn't sure about being in Vegas again when I saw it on the itinerary, but I have to say that I enjoyed it way more this time.  Just stay away from the pan handlers, the pretty ladies at card tables and the shiny machines with flashing lights, and you will be fine.

 

Lemongrass

at Aria

3730 Las Vegas Blvd South
Las Vegas, NV 89149

United States

Ph: + 1 877 230 2742

 

 

The Cosmopolitan
3708 S. Las Vegas Blvd.  

Las Vegas, NV 89109

United States

Ph: +1 702 698 7000

 

The Venetian

3355 S Las Vegas Blvd

Las Vegas, NV 89109

United States

Ph: +1 702 414 1000

Fiona Cairns' All-In-One Chocolate Cake for Sir Paul McCartney's Birthday

They say it's your birthday
Well, it's my birthday too yeah
They say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you

Lennon/McCartney

On Saturday, Tim and I went to see The Beatle Boys, a Beatles tribute band from Sydney, play a 50th anniversary concert.  The first half was a replica of the 1964 concert, while the second half was a medley of various Beatles songs.  I was surprised by how good they were - I went along simply because I am a Beatles fan, but now I am a Beatle Boys fan too!

Fittingly, it is Sir Paul McCartney's birthday today.  He turns 72.  I wanted to mark the occasion with a cake.  From my research, I gleaned that Paul's favourite type of cake is chocolate cake, so that is what he shall have!  I also read that Paul also orders his Christmas cakes from Fiona Cairns, so I chose to make one of her recipes for his birthday.

The recipe that I selected is the All-In-One Chocolate Cake from p77 of The Birthday Cake Book.  As the name suggests, the cake is made all in one bowl - easy peasy and little washing up.  The cake and the icing both use cocoa instead of chocolate, so the cake is also inexpensive to make.

Instead of making a square cake, as the recipe instructs, I made 2 round cakes in 9" sandwich tins and stuck them together with some of the buttercream icing.  Here's a peek inside:

For decoration, I used dark chocolate bits to spell out Paul's name, and Milky Way Magic Stars around the edge.  Again, these decorations were super simple and keeping in theme with the chocolate cake.

To make this cake, you will need:

225g butter, softened
180g self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs, lightly beaten
225g sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 tablespoons cocoa powder mixed with 3 tablespoons boiling water to form a paste

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and line your cake tin/s (I used 2 x 9" sandwich tins).

Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl of a stand mixer, then add the butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla and cocoa paste.  Beat well until combined.  Divide the batter evenly between the two cake tins, and bake the cakes for 30-35 minutes or until cooked through.  (My cakes took a little longer.)  After cooling in the tins for 5 minutes, turn the cakes out onto a wire rack to cool.

For the icing:

2 tablespoons cocoa powder
150g butter, softened
200g sifted icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat the butter until pale and creamy, then add the other ingredients and beat well until the icing comes together.

Ice and decorate your cake as you please.