Firstly, can I say an enormous thank you to everyone who has given me baking advice in the last few days. It has been greatly appreciated and will, undoubtably, come in very useful in the next couple of months. I’ve made a wee bit of progress this weekend in that I’ve become more organised and have also been clearly reminded of what my cake baking abilities are at present.
Firstly, D’s mum has very kindly lent me her rather cool 1970’s Kenwood Chef. I can now experiment with both hand and electrical mixing. Some people swear by mixers, others think they create more problems than they solve. Joy from Almanzo’s Belly suggested I stick with the manual approach and “use a wooden spoon for [my] creaming and really beat the air in, and a metal spoon for [my] flour folding.”
Secondly, on Lucy’s advice I’ve ordered The Cake Bible from Amazon U.S. (it’s not available over here). Eagerly awaiting its arrival and wondering what Ms Levy Beranbaum thinks about mixers.
Thirdly, the happy couple have given me a clearer idea of what they’d like: a square cake, with royal icing, not fruit cake, decorated with gold ribbon and fresh flowers. The above picture is from their wedding invitations and was painted by Faye Anderson, the same artist who designed my banner. 🙂
And finally, I had another go at making the stunning vanilla sponge that I’d spotted on Confections of a Foodie Bride a few months ago and, yet again, I failed miserably to produce anything edible. Not only did it in no way visually resemble Shawda’s beautiful cake, it wasn’t cooked through and it had an odd greasy texture when cooled. I’m not fazed by this disaster though. This cake is my public starting point. I have eight weeks to become a more confident, more successful cake baker.
I can do it, I can do it, I can do it…. 😀