That's So Magical!

A year over-due, but here she is... Sesame Street's favourite fairy, Abby Cadabby!

Time keeps Marching on...

Bugger... so much for getting back into blogging this year. I completely missed February, it's almost the end of March already, and I'm running out of time to post pictures of a cake that I still feel absolutely terrible about missing. My daughter Rebecca turns 4 this week, and I never got around to posting pictures of her 3rd birthday cake.

March 2011 is kind of a blurry patch in my memory... my first apprenticeship placement had fallen through, and I was working at Snows Patisserie (which only turned out to be a  four week stint). I'd been planning to enter the Newcastle Show, but after losing my job in February I was worried about the expense of dummies, icing and other supplies. I ended up going ahead and was quite happy with my flowers, but the cake itself was a bit of a rush job as I was running out of time... unfortunately it showed, and was reflected in the judges' comments. 

Then I had to back up from Show stress with Rebecca's birthday the following week... I made her an upright 3D "Abby Cadabby" cake. And the week after that I lost my job at Snows, which triggered a pretty major personal crisis. I felt destroyed, and started having doubts about whether or not I was cut out to be a pastry cook... and in the midst of all that, I never got around to writing up a post on Rebecca's cake.

Fast forward to March 2012, and history has repeated itself to some extent... once again, I left it too late to get my Newcastle Show entry organised. But this time, when I realised I was headed for another case of "nice flowers, shame about the cake" I decided to quit while I was, well, behind. After seeing the entries at this year's Show, it's really hit home just how much more I still have to learn. I rely too much on my flowers... the winners always have amazing decorative work on the cake itself.

So, long story short... I WILL have photos of Rebecca's last birthday cake up before her NEXT birthday. And  "lesson learned" that competitive cakes aren't something you start a month out from the competition. I've already started planning and sketching ideas for next year's wedding cake... watch this space in 2013!

"Hoot Hoooot!"

And here it is, my first cake of 2012, "Hoot the Owl" for Kendra's first birthday! Unfortunately I didn't make it to the party myself as I work Saturdays, and the bakery gets very busy in the Summer holidays... especially on the weekends!  Hoot's head was Cherry Ripe mud cake, and his body was an experimental Caramel mud cake.  The caramel needs a little work in my opinion... tasted more like butterscotch to me. Overall, though, I was really happy with the job I did on this one!

Kendra's Christening

I've just delivered my first cake for the year... my little niece Kendra turned 1 earlier this week, and at her mum's request I made her a "Hoot the Owl" cake (of ABC Kids "Giggle and Hoot" fame) for her party tomorrow. Photos yet to come, but in the meantime, here's one of the missing "cake files" of 2011... this was for Kendra's christening back in May.

Happy 2012!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! After a hectic and often stressful 2011, I'm hoping to get back into doing cakes again in 2012.  I've almost finished my Cake & Pastry certificate... no more practical classes or exams, just some Food Safety assignments to do in the upcoming semester and I'm done! I know I put a lot of pressure on myself to excel at TAFE, so a lot of the stress I've been through was self-inflicted. Even though all I need to do in apprenticeship terms is pass, I'm not the kind of person that is satisfied with "just passing"... I definitely come from the "if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well" school of thought!

So, about that rather sad looking number of blog posts in 2011... yes, it was a rather lean blogging year. I still have quite a few cakes that "missed the boat" so to speak. I'll try to catch up over the next month or so, but my Facebook page is always up to date if you'd like to visit and browse my albums.  Most of the cakes I did last year were for family, as I stopped taking orders from the public due to being over-tired, over-stressed and over everything.  But I'm far happier where I'm working now than where I was this time last year, and the bulk of my TAFE work is behind me, so it's all systems go for 2012!

A Series of Unfortunate Events

So I'm coming up to exams in November, and the pastry cook I work with is awaiting the arrival of his new baby.  Waiting, waiting, waiting... theory exams come and go without incident, then it all comes down to my final practical assessment on the 29th. My boss had wanted me to skip TAFE when the pastry cook had his week off, but sorry... no-can-do this week.

The Wednesday before my prac exam, wet weather and slippery conditions caused a certain mishap on the road that left my car with an unfortunately remodelled bonnet.  OK, stay calm... it's my day off tomorrow, we can take it to get assessed straight away, then take it from there.  Ahhhh... nope. Later that evening I finally get the text I've been sweating on for weeks... pastry cook and his wife are coming close to heading for the hospital.  Goodbye day off, hello getting the whole family up at 3am to take me to work in what was up until now our back-up vehicle.

On my own at work, stressing about the sudden change in transport situation (yes, my poor old car got written off), AND trying to stay focussed on exam preparations... they say things come in threes!  Many thanks to my wonderful father, though, for volunteering to get up at crazy hours of the morning to drive from Morpeth to Mayfield to pick me up and take me to Salt Ash for my 4am start from the next day onward so we didn't have to drag the kids out of bed every morning... and as if that wasn't enough already, my dad also did the leg-work in finding us an awesome car to replace the one we lost.

All's well that end well, though... we now have a MUCH better family car than we had before, my prac exam went really well, and although we're still ironing out a few problems at work caused by a staffing re-shuffle that didn't quite work, life is slowly getting back to normal. Oh, except that the day we picked up the new car my computer chucked a wobbly and decided not to work the next morning.  And our lawn mower died yesterday.  But you get that... just when you think it's safe to back in the water, so to speak!

Last Christmas

And yet another month flies by... speaking of which, before the bells start jingling for THIS Christmas, here's what I made for my family last festive season.  I happened to catch an episode of Poh's Kitchen with Emmanuel Mollois, who made a gorgeous looking Yule Log... the recipe and video can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/pohskitchen/stories/s3063678.htm

The log had a heart of vanilla barvarois wrapped up swiss-roll style in a sheet of sponge with chocolate mousse and pistachio almond praline.  Unfortunately something wasn't right with the recipe for the chocolate coating that was supposed to go on the outside (you can find my colourful expression of annoyance at this in the comments under the recipe amongst those of others that had the same problem); suggested changes to the recipe have been added since, but I haven't tried it again.  I was still up at midnight on Christmas Eve improvising with a ganache that I made from the last of the chocolate and cream I had left in the house.  All's well that ends well, though... my logs (eventually) looked and tasted amazing, and were a hit with the family.

At the time I was still working at the now-defunct 321 Patisserie, and we had a French pastry chef working with us making yule logs (or Buche Noel, in his native tongue) for the shop.  He always put meringue mushrooms on them, and after a bit of Googling I found out that mushrooms were a traditional decoration for yule logs, as they are meant to resemble a log that's fallen over in the forest.  I added some holly made from modelling paste, and a dusting of icing sugar for snow.

Finally, a cross-section of one of the cut logs... it was most suitably rich and delicious!

And now that 2011 is three quarters over, that FINALLY wraps up 2010!