Flower making at Stiletto Studio

Following on from a great cake decorating class at Stiletto Studio a couple of weeks ago, a friend and I spent Wednesday night learning how to make pretty flowers out of gum paste and fondant. I have got back into making decorations for cakes and cupcakes since going to a session on gum paste flower making a few months ago. I have a box full of silicone moulds, gel colours, plastic palettes and various tools for decorating that all need using. Just as well Becs came along with her awesome cake decorating classes to get me inspired!

Frangipani (before applying yellow lustre)

We started out by making one of my favourite flowers: frangipani. For me, the beauty in these tropical flowers come from their simplicity - plain white with a smattering of yellow (or pink) and they positively radiate sunshine. Frangipani will definitely become part of my flower making repertoire. *happy sigh as I reminisce about my trip to Samoa several years ago*

An evil looking chrysanthemum 

Next, we used a daisy cutter to create endless layers that would form a chrysanthemum bud. These flowers are too 'busy' for my liking, but it was good having a go at creating them. This one needs several more layers and I imagined it coloured in deep orange and burnt red tones ... but I am seriously reminded of Little Shop of Horrors when I see flower petals folding in on themselves like this one. Don't you think it looks a tad evil? ;-)

A beautiful, elaborate rose in egg yellow

By far the fiddliest flower to make was an elaborate rose. It involved building up three layers (and a few extra petals) around a bud attached to a wire and ruffling the edges of each layer with a ball tool. The finished product is simply beautiful but this will take a lot more practice for me to master - very much a 'special occasion' decoration.

Much simpler to make, but just as effective, is the anemone. I don't know if they come in this shade of blue but I was feeling bold and loved how the colour looked on such a big piece. We finished off by learning a much simpler technique for making roses out of seven little balls of gum paste. Although mine looked like a set of rolled up towels (maybe the white colour didn't help?), I think this is a rose I can master in time.

Flower collection.
From the top: blue anemone,
frangipanis
chrysanthemum, fancy rose, easier rose

Once again, Becs was in fine form as our teacher - endlessly patient and great company during a four hour hands-on session. She has really helped me unravel much of the mystique around cake decorating and I have come away with lots of ideas to try, given my very limited skills and creativity. I have most definitely got the cake decorating bug and had yellow and blue hands the next morning to prove it!

Three little words

A while ago, a colleague met me in town for a working lunch. As we walked back to her car, we continued chatting in the street as people hurried by on a cold day. Suddenly, mid-conversation, my colleague called out to one particular woman. "Excuse me ..." The woman turned around and then my colleague uttered three little words: "You look gorgeous."  And she did. Naturally, being from Wellington, she was dressed all in black but she did look stunning. I hadn't noticed her at all but my colleague, herself quite a stylish dresser, did and took her observation one step further.

The woman seemed really surprised. "Thank you!" she gasped, clearly shocked and thrilled all at once. She walked away with a straighter stride and a huge grin - and all it took was three little words from a stranger.

My colleague also noticed the look on my face. "Well, she did look gorgeous," she repeated to me. I agreed but realised that I didn't think I'd ever performed the simple act that clearly made this woman's day: complimenting a stranger. It seems so easy, so why don't we do it more often? Is it because we get so caught up in our own worlds that we don't notice those around us? Or do you think it could be because we kiwis tend to stick to ourselves and our inherent reservedness stops us from vocalising some of the things we should?

Sour cream lemon tart

A rapid succession of events with family and friends has meant plenty more baking this week - yay! I found this sour cream lemon tart recipe in the newspaper a few weeks ago and thought I'd wait for a special occasion to try it out. Created by Alison and Simon Holst, it is really easy to make with a food processor and kitchen mixer.

Sour cream lemon tart

Ingredients

• 250 g sweet short pastry (1 sheet pre-rolled or see recipe below to make your own)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• thinly peeled or grated ring of 1/2 lemon (see below)
• 2 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 cup (250 g) sour cream
• 2 teaspoons custard powder or cornflour
• 3 large eggs

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150°C. Spray a 20 cm pie or flan dish (with a removable base and fluted sides) with non-stick spray. Gently press the sheet of pastry into the pan and trim any excess.
2. Measure the sugar into a food processor.
3. Using a potato peeler, thinly peel the rind from the lemon or grate it finely. Vary the quantity according to taste.
4. Add the rind to the sugar then process until the rind is cut finely through the sugar.
5. Mix the lemon juice with the custard powder (or cornflour).
6. Add the sour cream and lemon juice mixture to the sugar then process until smooth and the sugar has dissolved.
7. Add the eggs one at a time with the processor running.
8. Pour the filling mixture into the pastry base. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until the top is beginning to brown around the edges. (The middle may still jiggle a bit, but this is ok.)
9. Remove tart from the oven and allow to cool. (The middle will probably sink a little and become firmer.) Cut into wedges to serve.

Sweet short pastry

Ingredients

• 100 g butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup self-raising flour

Method

1. Soften (but do not melt) butter. Add the sugar and egg then beat until well combined. [I used a dough hook but probably didn't need to - the paddle attachment would have been fine.]
2. Add the unsifted flours and mix well to form a dough. If too dry, add a little milk (teaspoon by teaspoon). If too soft to work with, refrigerate rather than adding more flour.
3. Roll out the pastry onto a lightly floured board before trimming to a round 3-4 cm larger than the baking tin.

Note: this will make more pastry than is required. The extra can be frozen or refrigerated for later use.

Serve with lightly whipped cream or creme fraiche. We had it cold with ice cream but it would probably taste great warm, too.

Sour cream lemon tart

How to Meet Girls from a Distance

Some people are shy. Others are quiet and reserved. That can make it really hard to meet dating prospects, something most people could probably sympathise with. So how does someone overcome this? Well, the simple solution would be to find out a little bit about your object of affection before making an approach, but where does background research end and stalking begin? This fine thick line is the subject of a locally made film, How to Meet Girls from a Distance, which we got to see at a special preview screening last week thanks to Flicks.co.nz.

Made on a tiny budget, How to Meet Girls from a Distance was the winner of this year's Make My Movie competition. It was great to be able to spot well known locations and scenery from in and around Wellington, as well as some extras in the cast, and this made the anachronisms easier to overlook. Genuinely funny and cringe worthy all at once, there were many moments when I wanted to yell "noooooo!" at the main character or just take him aside for a 'quiet talk'.

How to Meet Girls from a Distance is on now in selected cinemas. It makes for a hilarious night out as well as providing practical tips on what not to do when stalking getting to know a romantic interest.

Cake decorating at Stiletto Studio

I had a weekend of almost non-stop baking last weekend – just how I love it! Fifteen spicy vanilla cupcakes for a Halloween party, two small madeira cakes to decorate and 1.5 kg of buttercream frosting to cover everything in sight. Icing sugar was everywhere!

A while ago, a friend and I came across a Grab One deal for cake decorating sessions at Stiletto Studio in Johnsonville. Naturally, the classes sold out really quickly so we felt lucky to be able to buy vouchers for a beginner's cake decorating course as well as a session on flower making. Check out some of the display samples made by Becs Lake, the owner of Stiletto Studio.

Stiletto Studio display cakes

We began by learning how to make a bow out of gum paste. Each half is formed separately by folding a rectangle of gum paste like a concertina then folded over so the ends meet before being left to dry separately. Now, I don't know why but I all I could think of as I was shaping my bow (and watching it dry) was "ears" – the resemblance was uncanny. The middle of the bow was formed later once the sides had firmed up enough to place on our cakes. This simple technique would look great in any colour and will now become part of my limited (but growing) decoration repertoire.

Now it was time to throw some buttercream around. It’s not as easy as it sounds! We learned the correct technique to layer our levelled cakes (mental note: must buy a leveller) with buttercream before covering them with fondant. I got to play with a cake turntable, which has now been added to my *want* list. I’ve already had experience with colouring fondant and gum paste (and sporting multi-coloured dyed hands afterwards to prove it) so decided to stick with a white base and ribbon, adding colour and texture with the decorations I was creating. This time, the fondant didn’t fall off my rolling pin in the dramatic way it did during the last decorating class I attempted and I was pleased to have a (relatively) smooth finish.

Having long been sold on the miracles of silicone moulds to create decorations, I wanted to experiment with techniques that I hadn't tried before. The bow was a good start and it got me thinking about creating a kind of 'present' look for my cake. I had a go at using a cute rolling tool to create ribbons out of some Regalice ready rolled fondant I'd bought. I loved the result and so had to buy the tool – yes, more stuff for my baking collection.

Then came assembling the decorations on top of the cake and setting them in place with water. Tylose paste could also be used (depending on what you are sticking down). I discovered it wasn't as easy at it looks to paste down a straight ribbon of fondant!

Becs is great teacher, allowing just the right balance of demonstration and hands-on practice time. She's patient and happy to respond to cries of "help!" during class. It was great to be able to play with all her decorating tools and experiment with new techniques. We are very much looking forward to the flower decorating class in a few weeks’ time and would highly recommend her decorating classes for everyone from absolute beginners to those who have already had some cake decorating experience.

The finished product!

Chocolate class at Bohemein

Imagine being locked in a chocolate shop for two hours on a long weekend surrounded by irresistible chocolate treats. That's exactly what nine of us did on Saturday with a hands-on chocolate class at Bohemein.

*drool*

Bohemein make amazing fresh chocolates with mouth watering truffles and great gift ideas. Owner and chocolatier Jiri Havlik (better known as George) also runs weekend hands-on chocolate classes in their Featherston Street store. Apart from being an experienced end-user of the product, my chocolate making skills have only ever extended as far as remelting chocolate melts to set in various moulds. I had a lot to learn!

We started out by learning how to make dark chocolate ganache correctly. Although I have made ganache a few times for cake and cupcake decorating, my success has largely been hit and miss. George showed us some good techniques for combining the chocolate in cream that had been brought to the boil. I learned what it means to 'split' the ganache (you don't want that to happen) and think that is what might have been the problem during some of my ganache disasters. This ganache was to become the filling for the 70% truffles we made later.

George helped us unravel the science of chocolate making and make sense of the process. I knew that tempering involved raising, lowering and then raising the temperature of chocolate again to make it workable but never really understood why this was necessary. If I'm honest, I actually thought you could probably skip this step - but now know why it's essential and how to do it! (This article is a good guide to chocolate tempering.) It is all about creating type V (5) crystals which allow you to work with the chocolate at its best, leaving a glossy finish and a delightful snap.

Temperature is all important when pre-crystalising (tempering) chocolate and some tools of the trade are necessary. Firstly, a digital infra-red thermometer was recommended for its accuracy. I knew my sweetie (gadget man) had one of those and we laughed about what else he might have that I could commandeer for chocolate making at home. Melting the chocolate is done on a bain-marie (double boiler) and cooling is easy with a cheap fan. Reheating, however, is different. A heat gun with a variable thermostat is best, but most people don't have these on hand. Although a hair dryer could suffice, George laughed that he didn't own one. (Check out his picture to see why.) Concerned that I also don't own a hair dryer, I wasn't sure what I could use at home but suspected that, once again, my sweetie would have the required equipment in his garage. Yep, he does, and so my friend and I will now make chocolate at our place. :-) 


Truffle assembly line

We created a kind of truffle assembly line, dropping the ganache pieces into the tempered chocolate then draining off the excess with a special chocolate fork. Then, it was into the pile of chocolate shavings before rolling the completed truffle forwards to set on baking paper. We got to make six of these 70% dark truffles each and they were bagged up for us to take home. They looked very professional!

Truffles to take home

Although there is a lot more science involved in chocolate making than one would initially imagine, it is obvious from George that the essential ingredient is passion. You can see by just looking at his amazing chocolate creations that this is far more than just a commercial interest. I was blown away by the creativity of this kiwi sculpture. The marble slab, egg and flowers are all made from chocolate. Impressive!


Inspiration!

I highly recommend this chocolate making class at Bohemein for chocolate lovers and bakers alike. I now have some great ideas for making Christmas presents and will top them up with goodies from the shop. In the meantime, practice makes perfect so that gives me a great excuse to eat make a lot of chocolate.