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New House! Perfected Cakes (or as good as they will get)!
August 27, 2008
Hello internet! I feel awful for neglecting my blog and also neglecting to read everyone else's, I wonder if I will ever be less busy enough to join in properly ever again?
We are in our new house now, and it is fantastic to finally have a place which is properly our own. We are used to living in a small flat, so it's all a bit weird having space! We have painted the mustard yellow dining room, so it is now a lovely sky blue, and are currently hurrying to finish the living room before our sofas arrive - to be honest we are sick of painting.
I made yet another batch of raspberry, ricotta and almond cupcakes with raspberry mousse frosting this week, and finally we are totally happy with both how they taste and how they look. This has taken more practice and trial and error than I anticipated!
I am so pleased with them! They look all proper! They taste EVEN BETTER than they look!
So, I'll just sum up how they are made:
The recipe for the cakes comes from here. Although, in converting the ingredients to grams from cups, I made a mistake and only used half the quantity of butter. The cupcakes came out fine and I didn't want to mess with a good thing, so I have made them like that every time.
I'm not a fan of the frosting in that recipe though, and decided raspberry mousse might suit us better. All the recipes I found had gelatine in, which we don't eat, so I made up a vegetarian mousse recipe:
Vegetarian Raspberry Mousse
Ingredients: 275g fresh raspberries, 50g caster suger, 1tsp agar agar powder, 500ml double cream
Cook the raspberries with the caster suger until they are pulpy, and then push through a seive - throw away the pips.
Return to the pan and add the agar agar powder (if using flakes you'll need about twice the volume). Bring to the boil and then simmer for 5 minutes. Take it off the heat.
Now let the raspberry mixture cool, and check every few minutes to see if it is setting. It will set at room temperature, and very firm, so you need to keep your eye on it.
While the raspberry mixture is cooling, whip the double cream until it is standing in peaks.
As soon as the raspberry mixture starts to set, pour it into the cream and give it a quick whip or stir to mix it all in.
Now put the lot in the fridge until it is properly cool. You can then pipe this onto the cooled cupcakes.
Maybe I will bore you with my sudden interest in gardening next time! Or maybe I will try another cupcake recipe - next one has green tea frosting and white chocolate in it!
Posted by jen at 08:05 PM | Comments (11)
Thrown Together
August 07, 2008
I have been too busy packing for the move tomorrow to get any knitting done, but I did have time to buy the new Kim Hargreaves book!
It arrived today, and is really lovely. You can see all the designs on line here, I love almost all of them, but I think I will definitely make Polly, Cate and the Robin hat - they all look snuggly and amazing.
By the way - I don't think I will buy the new Rowan, and I don't think there is a single thing in it I would knit. I must finish River, and then perhaps I will treat myself to yarn for a new Kim Hargeaves pattern - I seriously could choose from any of about 20!
Posted by jen at 08:43 PM | Comments (6)
Slow progress
August 04, 2008
I have been making some very slow progress on River:
It's turning out to be annoying to photograph. I've stopped messing it up for now, although it wouldn't surprise me if it all goes wrong again on the very next row! It's an easy pattern, but I'm finding it hard to concentrate.
We are moving into our new house on Friday, which is extremely exciting! I think we will be very busy trying to do some decorating, and sitting on the floor waiting for our furniture to turn up! I have lots of plans for the garden and I'm really looking forward to moving in. However I'm not sure if we will have internet sorted for ages so I may disappear for a few weeks again.
Before I go, here are another batch of cakes - we actually made these weeks ago but I forgot to blog about them. They are another go at the raspberry and almond, this time the frosting was neater because of using a smaller tip for icing, the mousse was tastier as there was less cream in it, but it still needs work - the agar agar is too firm setting, which made it hard to mix the jelly into the cream. One more go perhaps?!
I would still give them 100% for taste!
Bye for now!
Posted by jen at 07:54 PM | Comments (6)