Not chocolate

Today's creation was banana layer cake with German icing - which I assumed was German CHOCOLATE icing, but wasn't. There is walnuts and coconut and a bunch of other stuff in there. The cake batter called for sliced bananas but we substituted those with banana puree (?) which explains the bright yellow colour that is not of nature. I love anything banana-flavoured, but would definitely make this with real bananas and - you guessed it - chocolate icing next time.

Carrots & cream cheese

Baking school is back! I forgot to photograph last week's pound cake, but it was pretty simple-looking anyway. In other news, I made marzipan carrots today:


This week: Carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Vegetables and desserts are not two things that go hand-in-hand, if you ask me, but the method used to make this was different from a typical batter-type cake. Eggs and sugar were heated over a double boiler and then whipped. Vanilla, lemon juice and rum was added and then shredded carrots and a mixture of graham crumbs, flour, ground almonds, cinnamon and baking powder were mixed in by hand (meaning I was elbow-deep in goo). I'll probably try a slice tomorrow - it actually smelled amazing coming out of the oven, so maybe I'll be sold on the idea then.

Grand finale

Strawberry shortcake was our last creation. As you can see, I have not yet mastered the decorating comb and my whipped cream began to fall as I was piping my rosettes, but all in all an admirable attempt. My masking skills are improving as my whipped cream wasn't filled with crumbs this time. I'll be getting a lot more practice in January, when I start The Art of Cakes, my second course! And yes, these are tuxedo strawberries!:

Just peachy

It was fruit flan night and although it's not my favourite, it's something that I probably wouldn't attempt at home so I'm glad I had a chance to make it. It involves sponge cake, sweet dough and pastry cream (vanilla pudding). A lot of work - not to mention the crust is brushed with melted chocolate and it needs to be decorated and glazed.

Rolled, whipped & piped

I was obsessed with photographing my Swiss Rolls when I got home from class last night. I'm not a huge fan of eating something with this much whipped cream on it, but it makes for a lovely photo!


I love how it looks from this angle, with the raspberry jam & whipped cream all lined up and rolled together...


There were quite a few steps in the process (baking the sponge sheets, spreading with raspberry jam & whipped cream, rolling, masking and decorating) but each was fairly simple so it was fun.