Last minute gift idea for Mother’s Day (part II) | WEEKEND WIND UP #36

Back from the 24/7 grocery store/petrol station?

Well, then let’s go and get started with our last minute Mother’s Day pressent!

And here is how you do it:

For the base:

Mix 150g butter and 75g sugar. Add 3 eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla flavoured sugar (or a few drops vanilla essence), a few drops freshly squeezed lemon juice. Finally add 65g flour, 65g starch and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. Put the dough in a heart shaped tin. Bake at 170°C for about 40 minutes. 

While the cake is in the oven, you can make some custard.

Apply one layer of custard on the cake (after you have taken it out of the tin!), then cut strawberries in halves and put them on top.

Finally, make some glaze (if you don’t want to use a convenience product, you can make glaze yourself by mixing water, gelatine and sugar and brining it to boil). Add some red food coloring, if you like.

Whip the cream. Cut a few strawberries in tiny pieces and mix with wipped cream. Fill the mix in a piping bag and either write something (“Happy Mother’s Day”, “For Mum”…) or decorate the cake otherwise.

Done and ready to serve.

But before you give the cake to your Mum… hang on a sec, I still have some tipps for you:

• Use some kitchen foil to wrap around the cake like some sort of frame once you applied the custard. It helps to keep everything in shape, especially when you pour over the glaze.
• If you don’t have a heart-shaped baking tin on hand, you can also use a round or squared tin and cut out a heart after the cake is cooled down. (Use a stencil to make a heart that’s evenly shaped!)
• For the custard, use custard powder but less milk/water than what it says on the instructions so that the custard is a bit thicker than usually.
• Use whipping cream stiffener (makes whipping the cream so much easier!)
• By the way, if you don’t want to use glaze on your cake, you can simply put cream on top.
• Make sure your Mum doesn’t know what you’re up to…

… and then surprise her with a cake that looks as if you had bought it from a high end confectioner!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Last minute gift idea for Mother’s Day | WEEKEND WIND UP #35

I’m really bad when it comes to getting presents on time.

It’s always about a week after a person’s birthday that I get the good ideas.

It’s always after Christmas that I come across the erfect present for my father or the inspiration for a gift for my brothers.

And it’s always the day before Mother’s Day that I realise I still haven’t found the perfect gift for my mother.

That obviously always happens late Saturday afternoon when the shops are closed and all you can get is ice cream or beer from the local petrol station (as there aren’t any 24/7 stores where I live).

So this year I decided to bake a perfect heart-shaped cake for Mother’s Day.

If you are like me, haven’t found the perfect gift yet and maybe want to surprise your Mum with a simple yet beautiful and delicious cake, quickly head down to the grocery store (or petrol station) and make sure to get

• butter
• eggs
• sugar
• vanilla essence/vanilla flavoured sugar
• lemons
• flour
• starch
• baking powder
• custard
• strawberries
• single cream

Skulls & Bones & Candy | WEEKEND WIND UP #5

One of my favourite German blogs, brezel.me, pointed out earlier this week that amazon is now selling groceries, food and beverages.

That is just crazy.

I decided to investigate on the matter and so while surfing on amazon and looking at all the ridiculous things they sell there, I found the most A-M-A-Z-I-N-G cookie cutter:

Isn’t it cool? I think it’s hilarious. Just imagine great-grand-auntie {insert name of nosy relative} invites herself to come to your place for a cup of tea and you dish up these biscuits…

I do realise that most pastry shops will not like the thought of skull-and-bones-shaped confectionery, nevertheless have I been playing with the idea of training as a confectioner with this bickie cutter being the first tool of the trade I’d buy.

Now, here is some other cool stuff I found (click pictures for source):

NESTABLE: Matryoshkas as measuring cups!

CUTE: A "Tweety"-cake tin.

YIN & YANG: Gives your desserts some good feng shui!

ROMANTIC: Heart-shaped love puzzle.

STAND BY YOUR MAN: With some tool-shaped handyman-bickies.

The following are three other things that would come in quite handy, I think (or are just cool in general): This amazing cake tin that makes your cake turn out 3D-pumpkin-shaped. How cool is that?

Then there are those silicon muffin tins (I think they might be worth a try, because you can use them again and again and don’t have to throw them out like the paper cases).

And finally that cake tin on the right. I love how it looks like a soon-to-be-in-full-bloom rose. So beautiful. I bet it makes some yummy cake!

I would love to start baking right away, but before I go, here is one random picture I found.

When I first looked at it, I thought it was an emu or a moa even, but then it occurred to me it might be a dinosaur:

FROM OUTER SPACE: Moa-Dinosaur-Goose.

Well, according to amazon, this is actually meant to be a goose. I reckon it looks like a Moa-Dinosaur-Goose-Alien from outer space, but yeah… it might just be a normal goose with weird feet, who knows.

♨ Enjoy your weekend and lovely baking, everyone! ♨

Do you like baking? What are your favourite baking tins? What is your favourite recipe?