A change of pace

Some of you may have noticed that I'm kind of fussy when it comes to food. Okay, that's an understatement. I'm stupidly fussy. But it's clearly genetic because half of my family is the same. And I'm by NO means the fussiest one in the family! Anyway, when it comes to dinners, I'm not much of a meat and vegetables kind of a girl. I tend to stick to a meal that doesn't require a knife and that can be eaten from a bowl. Don't ask me why, I have no idea. Probably because it's easier to eat on the sofa, which is where I eat 90% of my meals...

Anyway, last weekend when I was planning out my meals for the week, I decided I was going to try something different. Something that required a knife and more than one pan. I wound up with this:

And I'm glad I did. I had no idea what I was doing with the meatballs - I just mixed some beef mince with an egg, some herbs, and some breadcrumbs - but they turned out incredibly well. I fried them in a little olive oil, then added a tin of crushed tomatoes, a sachet of tomato paste, a teaspoon of sugar to cut through the acidity, and a teaspoon of garlic. Then I let it all simmer for about 20 minutes.

When it comes to baked potatoes, I usually take the easy option - throwing them in the microwave for 6 minutes wrapped in a piece of kitchen paper. But last night, I had a little extra time, so after I'd microwaved it, I threw it in the oven while the meatballs simmered. It made the skin crispy and the centre light and fluffy. It was like eating mashed potatoes, only not... The grated carrot was steamed with a little bit of margarine for flavour, and the peas and corn were just boiled.

The overall result was pretty impressive for something I wasn't sure would actually work. The meatballs were juicy, slightly spicy from getting overzealous with the pepper, and tasted kind of like meatloaf, but less dry. I might try putting them with rice or pasta in the future, rather than a baked potato. Possibly some risoni - it's the best of both worlds, really!

I'm not saying I'm going to change my habits overnight, and start cooking a multitude of knife requiring dishes. But I'm not going to automatically declare it too much work. Because this really was a cinch to make, despite my apprehensions!

K xx

PS. Having looked at the photo again, I've just realised that the potato looks rather a lot like a bread roll. It's really not... I'd just mashed up the inside with a fork and mixed a little margarine through it...

Experiment 3, Part 2 - cake decorating

We've finally reached the last installment from my baking extravaganza of a week off work - cake decorating. After a fair bit of thought, I decided that I'd make cupcakes rather than a single cake - more possibilities for decorating techniques that way!

I may have gotten a wee bit carried away with the amount of cupcakes I made...

I decided that I'd try doing half of them with butter cream frosting, and half with dark chocolate ganache. I started with the butter cream frosting. Which contained strawberry flavouring and a good chunk of pink food colouring... But which was delicious, I might add!

I started out with the basics - an oddly grape shaped blackcurrant flavoured candy. Not particularly imaginative, but the raspberry candies I was planning on trying just made it look like a boob... And I just couldn't bring myself to leave it like that!

Next up, I tried making a marshmallow flower. Technically, I should have used an M&M or Smartie in the middle instead of a the white chocolate chip. But I forgot to buy them... It didn't turn out too badly, but I really don't think six petals works very well!

Then it was onto decorating with white chocolate chips. Again, not particularly imaginative, but I think it works.

Here we have some chocolate shavings, done with a vegetable peeler:

Then I figured I'd try the marshmallow technique again, this time with FIVE petals. It worked much better.

Here we have another basic one - some desiccated coconut.

Something slightly more original - some slices of Milky Way...

Then I broke out the piping bag. I started with the star tip. I did the stars around the edge and then decided it looked a bit bland. So I did the one in the middle. And then realised it was off-centre. Oh well...

A smiley face. I don't really know why. Probably I was running low on ideas by this point...

This was meant to be a heart. I think I still need to work on my piping skills...

Then it was onto the writing tip - this one was for Sara.

This was pretty much the most disastrous of the lot - although it looked better as time went on, weirdly. I have a set of stencils designed for use on coffee or cookies or whatever. I'm sure they're much easier to use if you have a small shaker of the cafe or coffee shop sort. But I only had a teaspoon, so it was somewhat thicker than it should have been... For the record, they're meant to be hearts...

This one started out okay, but then the tip clogged. And then I ran out of icing in the piping bag and had to refill it. So it wound up looking a little messy. But if things hadn't gone wrong, I think it would have been okay.

This one was for me. This tip really wasn't ideal for writing with in hindsight...

This was my favourite. It got piping overload. I think it looks like either a hedgehog or Dennis the Menace from the Beano. And I can tell you now, it was delicious... ;)

Mmmm, icing overload... I think an entire batch of these would be pretty cool. Although you'd need to make about three times more icing than usual!!

Then I decided to make some chocolate curls. The process is fairly simple - melt some dark chocolate, and spread it onto a flat surface. Ideally, it should be a marble slab. But I don't have one so I used the bottom of my square cake tin on the basis that it's not a non-stick tin - nothing worse than Teflon in your chocolate curls!! Then stick the tin in the freezer for 30 seconds or so, or however long it takes for the chocolate to mostly set.

I used a melon baller to make the chocolate curls. It worked pretty damned well, I have to say!

And that brings us to the end of the butter cream frosted cupcakes:

Then it was onto the chocolate ganache!

I started with the basics again - white chocolate chips.

The raspberry candy worked better on the ganache than on the butter cream...

This one got chocolate curl overload. And it, too, was delicious. I took most of the cupcakes to work with me, and everyone was too scared to eat this one, so I wound up with it...

Some nice slices of after dinner mint.

Some white chocolate shavings, again with the veggie peeler.

Some granulated peanuts.

Some random marshmallow decoration...

By this point, I was starting to run out of ideas, so dug through the freezer and found some frozen berries. After thawing some of the raspberries out, they made quite a nice decoration, I think!

Then I tried piping with white chocolate. This was much trickier than piping frosting. I didn't want to let the chocolate cool too much in case it decided to set into a solid blob in the piping bag. These were meant to be stars. As you can see, that didn't turn out so well... But I think it still worked okay. Just not as expected!

I was really running low on ideas by this time, and resorted to a dusting of icing sugar.

Another white chocolate piping disaster. I'd left the piping bag sitting for another couple of minutes in the hopes that it would get slightly more solid. It really didn't...

This one just got the one chocolate curl.

More playing with frozen berries - sliced strawberries this time. If I'd been more organised, I would have cut up another couple of strawberries and overlapped them somehow.

More unfortunate white chocolate piping...

I was *really* scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas by the time I pulled out the hundreds and thousands!!

Then I tried slicing the after dinner mints in a different way.

And finally, I tried topping off some piped white chocolate (again, rather unsuccessful) with a chocolate curl. This one turned out better than the others with white chocolate piping, that's for sure!

And that's the lot - thirty four cupcakes, all decorated differently!

I'm already looking forward to an excuse to make a full sized cake to try out some of the techniques on the large scale!!

And that's the end of my week of baking experimentation - three experiments, three success stories!

K xx :)

Experiment 3, Part 1 - a test run

Enough of the humiliating stories of last night, let's get back to the baking!

In preparation for my cake decorating mission, I purchased this:

A rather expensive cake decorating set with two piping bags and numerous piping tubes. Before letting it loose on cakes, I decided a test run was in order. Having consulted my trusty Women's Weekly cookbooks, I decided that rather than actually making icing and wasting the entire batch on piping practice, I'd follow their recommendation and use instant mashed potato - who would have guessed there was a use for it??!!

So, I made up the instant mashed potato according to the directions on the packet (aka add some water and stir it...). Looks delicious, huh? :S

Then I put together the piping bag, starting with the basic tip that's used for writing.

I dumped some mashed potato into the piping bag, then followed the instructions to twist the bag around and fold it over to get suitable pressure on the bag.

Then it was onto the piping practice! I started with capital letters. Not my best work, obviously, but not bad considering the last time I did anything with a piping bag, I was 14... So not too bad for a first attempt!

Then I tried cursive. I actually found that easier than the capitals. Although that could have just been because I was getting the hang of how much pressure to use. Sorry about some of the photos - if I'd been thinking, I would have added some food colouring to the mash so that it showed up better against the baking paper!

Then it was onto the more exciting tips. I tried a few techniques with each of them. The middle one worked best with this one, I think...

This was one of the star tubes. Not exactly ideal for a ripple technique, is it?

This was a slightly smaller star tube. It took me a while to get the hang of it, as you can see...

I couldn't really work out the point of this tip. Unless you want your icing to look like worms, that is...

This one was kind of interesting. Although it clearly got clogged half way through that last attempt, hence the giant blob...

This one is intended for making flowers. You're meant to use it in association with the scary pin looking thing in the first photo, and then transfer the flower to whatever you're decorating. But I just made something almost resembling a rose on the baking paper, because there was clearly no way in hell mashed potato was going to stand up to being transferred off the flower pin!

From memory, this one is meant to be used to make leaves. I'm buggered if I can work out from the instructions how to make it actually look like a leaf...........

Another star tip. I was getting the hang of stars pretty well by this point, I think...

This one is meant to make shells. I followed the instructions for the middle one, but if it looks like a shell, I look like a supermodel... Personally, I think they look like something Bear Grylls would eat in the outback *shudder*

More stars, slightly bigger this time. Definitely mastered this one!

And that was the end of the practice run - considering it was my first time using a piping bag in 13 years, I don't think I did too badly. Although by the time the potato got cold, it was starting to get quite lumpy, which didn't help things!

Next up was actually applying the new-found piping skills to icing cakes! But that's a story for another post...

K xx :)