Handbag Cake

I had a cake class today in West Village so I took a 40 minute walk along the Hudson River to get there. New York was out jogging and dog walking (there are a lot of doggies here ) and it was beautiful in the morning sun.

Just as I was thinking life couldn't get much better, it did: a five hour cake class with the wonderful Colette Peters who let us help ourselves to her large working kitchen, a treasure trove of cutters, colours, embossers and ideas. Colette was warm, funny and generous with her advice - anyone with a photo of Hugh Laurie taped to her fridge gets my vote.

The working kitchen was busy with three large cake orders, including this huge urban hip hop barmitzvah cake (only in New York). 

The kitchen was full of stunning cakes and peppered with little jokes. The staff quietly focused on their work while we chatted (when they could understand my thick British accent). 

The class was on making handbag cakes. Everyone was given the same shape of vanilla and chocolate cake layered with Swiss buttercream (I ate the offcuts for elevenses) and finished with very different bags. This is mine.

I thought Fitz would like to take the cake into work to share with his colleagues, but apparently taking a pink handbag cake onto the trading floor would look a bit strange. So I am going to have to eat it myself. 

Mmmm traders don't know what they're missing.

Peonies and Peanuts

This morning I had a three hour private class with Ruth Drennan who makes the most stunning cakes (click on the link for her website) and is an expert in making sugar flowers. She showed me how to make a peony - one of my favourite flowers - and for a first attempt I am very pleased with it. I have to wait for the peony to dry before I can dust it with colour, so for now she is "naked". Frankly I wish I looked this good naked.

Ruth was absolutely lovely and gave me a host of tips on where to buy baking equipment and ribbons in New York. If/when I max out my credit card, I will have her to blame. She and her assistant Lauren also told me about some great places to visit here for cakes and pies, which I look forward to trying.


On the way home I bought some groceries and spotted this little fella amongst some familiar Green and Black faces.

Green and Black milk chocolate with caramelised peanuts and sea salt. If anyone sees this in the UK, please can you let me know? My bar is already half demolished.

Barack and Bakeries

My first day in New York coincided with a visit by Barack Obama.Sadly we didn't get to see each other -  he was too busy laying a wreath at Ground Zero and inspecting progress at Freedom Tower, which is already scraping the sky. Work continues on it throughout the night. The apartment is so close to the World Trade Center site that I could hear them drilling at 5.27am, when my body decided it was time to get up.

Freedom Tower

President Obama is here somewhere. So I did see him really.

"Media circus". They were kept penned in

Mr President's visit meant some of the streets downtown were closed so I skirted along the river in the spring sunshine. It's that tricky time of year when there is no consensus on what clothing is appropriate for the weather. Some people are wearing flip flops, others puffer jackets.  

I had breakfast in the Peace and Love cafe - a surprisingly decent cup of tea and a crumb cake, which is like a compacted crumble but without the fruit. At the cafe I signed a piece of paper that brought to a satisfactory end to eight months of unhappy wrangling. I'm not allowed to discuss the contents so suffice it to say that I'll won't be feeling guilty about the shopping I'm about to do here. 

Around lunchtime I passed a Wholefoods Store. I knew from happy Canadian experience that this store is generous with their free samples. And as is well documented, free food contains no calories. Today's free food was a little pot of chipotle black bean salsa and tortilla chips which made me so hungry I had lunch there. Avocado sushi, my favourite, and soy 'chicken' yaki soba. Nothing yacky about it all, it was delicious.

I dragged my stomach off to find pudding. As a Brownie Guide, I was taught to 'be prepared', which meant keeping a 2p coin in your pocket for an emergency phone call. Today I'd prepared by researching the top rated bakeries in New York. First on the list was Billy's Bakery for a yellow daisy cupcake and a cup of tea, which involved the usual puzzled look when I asked for milk. Surely they've got used to the idea by now that British people often put milk in their tea? I loved the decor in Billy's and had a pang of logo envy.

I also visited Baked by Melissa off Broadway, a blink-and-youll-miss-it hole in the wall dispensing cupcakes. These cupcakes are bite-size. Not American bite-size but genuinely one small mouthful of cupcake. I had mint choc, peanut butter and cinnamon. Nice, moist cake but $3 for three seemed steep. They were gone before I had a chance to take a photo so will have to make do with the logo.

I visited Dean and Deluca, where the bakery lady offered me a sample of lemon tart and some delicious ginger molasses cookie. Their display cabinet was so well stocked that I was bamboozled and I bought nothing but a mixed bag of hard-to-find liquorice sweets (yes mammy, if you're reading - these are for you). 

If I'd bought anything it would have been one of these. The box is filled with caramel.

American-style buttercream cake covering. 

My first day in New York ended in a champagne bar, in a diner, in a blur. My last memory of the evening is a blind taste test of Liptons vs the Yorkshire tea bags I'd brought with me (no contest) and me wishing I had bought a ginger molasses cookie from Dean and Deluca after all.

Easter eggs

This week I took delivery of my own tub of cocoa butter. The postman seemed a little taken aback by my puppy-like bounding to the door, but after I'd failed to source cocoa butter in the north east's cookshops (one advised me to try the Body Shop...) my only option was to order online and wait.

The postman was barely out of the gate by the time I'd made some Easter egg cake pops, warmed my cocoa butter and daubed them in pretty colours.

 

I learned handpainting on a masterclass earlier this month at Little Venice Cake Company with the Queen of Couture Cakes, Mich Turner MBE. The class was brilliant fun and Mich was very generous with her time and advice. I painted these two cakes (baked and covered by Little Venice) and am excited about practising this technique some more. The cakes were absolutely delicious too!

While I'm talking about Easter eggs, yesterday I did a chocolate egg making class at Davenport's Chocolates with the lovely Jane Williams. It was fascinating to see how artisan chocolates are made and quite a thrill to pack my own Easter egg with a selection of them. Mostly I indulged my obsession with violet creams  - I swear there's a little old lady inside me trying to get out. When I decorated my egg, I forgot my own mantra of "less is more" and over-egged it (ha ha...)

My nephew Alex is only 6 months old, so I am hoping he'll share his Easter egg with the family. To be honest, he's not going to have any choice in the matter.

Lastly, Easter isn't Easter without a chocolate rice crispie cake with a couple of mini eggs. Here's a twist on the theme - a nest with a lemon chick cake pop. 

 

Cakes

I don't usually post cakes here without a matching cake pop but these two cakes are for two special people. The wigwam cake was for my dad's birthday today; when I showed him the big book of cake ideas, I just KNEW he'd plump for this one. Happy 67th birthday, you big bairn!

The playful kitten ruining a perfectly decent ball of wool is inspired by my mum's ginger cat. He's long past being a kitten, but could still give a ball of wool a run for its money. I made this lemon cake for mother's day. Happy mother's day to my lovely mammy!

I'm very lucky to have such great parents. All I can give them in return is far too much cake, and a quiet thanks for their constant support and for saving me six months ago xx

Easter bunny cake pops

Pink strawberry Easter bunnies standing in a chocolate Easter cake. Just as well I've not given up chocolate for Lent, or indeed anything else. What I like best about the bunnies is the back view:

Little bobtails! My mum says the word for a rabbit's tail is "scut". She knows everything.

Butterfly cake pops

These strawberry chocolate cake pops were made for the launch party of FYEO Portraits in Newcastle. I thought FYEO was a lapdancing bar, but this is a studio specialising in body portraits taken by female photographers. Their branding is black and pink with butterflies, hence the glittery butterfly cake pops. Next stop, gettin' me some sexy photos of me being a sexy laydee (not really, their photography isn't THAT good).