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Hello!
July 29, 2008
Another long gap! Since my last post, I have moved to Southampton, which has been a bit of an upheaval, and Adam and I have been very busy trying to finalise our house purchase. Also living with Adam again after several months apart is great, but I definitely don't think about the blog much!
I have a few wedding related things to show off today - not all my own wedding! I made this tiara for my friend Jess's wedding - it was up in the lake district and really good fun. I was a bridesmaid and there were lots of lovely yellow and orange flowers, and lots of dancing.
It's the same one I made my myself ages ago - mine has tarnished really badly and I need to smother it in silver cleaning products and hope it goes back to the way it was!
I found a lovely box for the tiara and padded it in place with champagne tissue paper, I thought it looked fantastic, I don't normally bother to wrap presents much but this was worth it!
Next, I have been doing some knitting, for literally the first time in MONTHS. I decided I want a wrap to wear for our wedding, as it is in March, and I picked River. I'm knitted one in the violetta colour of kidsilk haze because it's such a lovely colour - I might wear it or make another one in a more bridal colour, I haven't decided yet!
I am enjoying it so far, although I do keep cocking it up and having to frog a couple of rows. I'm not sure why I'm being so idiotic.
Finally, next I made some more practice wedding cakes. I made the dark chocolate and lemon ones again, but this time with shiny icing. I did want to make lemon sweets to put on top, but I haven't managed to get them to set properly yet! The first attempt at this cake is here.
Bye for now!
Posted by jen at 01:02 PM | Comments (4)
Cakes: take 4 - Raspberry, Almond and Ricotta revisited.
July 01, 2008
I made the cakes I first posted about here for a second time this weekend, but tried a different icing. This time I made raspberry mousse to put on top! I had to improvise the recipe, because I am vegetarian and the mousse couldn't have any gelatin in it. Also I didn't really like the idea of a tofu mousse - sounds a bit odd. Anyway, I made a nice one using agar agar, but I think it could be even better, so I'll post the recipe when I've perfected it!
Here are the cakes:
I originally planned to fill them, using the cream cheese frosting from the first attempt, but I decided if a raspberry got in the way of cutting out a cone, the whole thing might fall to pieces. So I didn't bother.
When I first tried to ice the cakes, the mousse was too cold from the fridge and too firm - the tube of icing coming from the piping bag kept breaking when it bent round the edge of the cake, and the whole experiment was frankly a shambles. I used a spoon to smooth it instead:
I left the mousse out for an hour and tried again - it worked better, but I think the tips I'm using are too large. I thought bigger was better - but it's too thick to curl it around the cake, and does result in a spectacularly large quantity of icing. I will go down a size and keep practicing!
These are definitely an improvement though? And the topping was lovely - I will try another mousse next time with more raspberries and less whipped cream - it might be pinker and have more raspberry flavour.
I am also currently making a beaded wire tiara for a friend who is getting married, so it's not only cakes at the moment!
Posted by jen at 12:37 PM | Comments (15)