February Week 3... Shapes Outside...

Hmm now this was a harder one so I've gone a bit abstract, here's the vegetable stall at my Thursday market in Penzance where I've just taken on being joint manager with a friend. I figured there's a few shapes here.

February Week 2... Shapes...Circles..

I was actually really looking forward to this week but I missed it in a flury of activity so now here's a slightly rushed post to try keep up.

So I've picked the easiest shape for a baker... a circle.

I'm going to start with a cake I made last week for one of my parents work collegues who wanted one of my mum's chocolate fudge cakes and he added 'with just more chocolate.'

So here's the finished cake, four layers of dark chocolate fudge cake with a creams chocolate frosting and handmade chocolate shards covering the sides.

And next we have todays new experiment.. welsh cakes. I've decided these are a hybrid of a cornish scone and an american pancake. Making these with my 3 year old niece was a laugh and they seemed to go down well. I guess these will be on the market list from now on.

February Missed weeks... My New Hobart Mixer

So I've missed a few weeks I know! I honestly dont know what happened I've been busy thats all I can say.

I'm going to catch up with my weekly posts hopefully tonight but for the time being here's what me and my amazing dad produced last night for the bakery...

This is an almost 80 year old Hobart mixer, Hobart are world renound in the baking world for being the best and most reliable mixer out there. Thay're also known for also supplying spare parts no matter how old a mixer is, can you see my attraction??

When I started out I brought a little mixer similar to a Kitchen Aid to mix my dough for me as it's painfull to make more than 3 loaves of bread by hand. This little mixer has been making funny noises for a few weeks now and with the increase in demand a new mixer was in the pipelines. I found this one for a bargin due to all the work that was needed.

So here's how we did it...

We started by scratching any old stickers off and giving a thorough de-grease. I'm pretty sure this had never been done by the amount layered onto the front of the mixer.

Next we have a sand down with a wire wheel.

Then more sanding down to get ride of any marks with wet and dry sand paper.

A quick clean then we moved on to masking up any pieces that we couldn't take off and a thin layer of primer. In for dinner to let the primer dry..

Now we have the fun part, the first layer of paint. What do you think of the colour?

Second Layer..

Our third and final layer, just fixing the ID plate back on.

And that's that. Easier and quicker than I thought and it looks almost brand new.

February Week 1.... Media....

Well I've been putting this post off all week as I have has no ideas for what to do, media and baking.... so I've just had the thought that I'd show you some of my recipe books that I love to use and cherish....

Now I could probably pile all my baking books up and they would probably be as tall as me I'm sure if not taller, here's a quick photo of the pile of books I currently have sitting on my desk. Most of my books are in the kitchen piled on top of my fridge but a select few make it back in the house so I can flick through them when I need some ideas or just when I get bored.

Starting at the bottom The Primrose Bakery Book is the first recipe book I brought myself only about 3 years ago now, it's full of every cupcake flavour in the world and is testimony to how many flavours you can make if you just know how. Next we have the Covent Garden Soup Book a last minuet christmas present from my mum as I saw it and thought it would make a change from my tomato and veg soup (the only thing I can make) I don't tend to use this in my baking very often. Hmm then we move on to Mary Berry, now I know she's dubbed the queen of baking but she's not my personal favourite. While I find her recipes normally always turn out how they should I just find them slightly dated and simple....

Now one of my newer additions (I keep telling myself one day I will have enough books..) Lilly Vanilli's Sweet Tooth, this is the most random artisan cookery book I've ever seen ranging from rhubarb bakewell tarts to marzipan bleeding hearts.... Then we come to my tried and tested Paul Hollywood How to Bake book, this was an 18th birthday present again from my mum with a lovely note written on the front page. Making bread can be extremely technical and you can easily get frustrated with all the terminology, I find that in this book he makes baking bread simple and easy giving me time to fall in love with the process. All this made me ready for the book above it, so intense that I have to only read a little bit everyday. Sadly the top three are quite recent presents so I haven't had time to properly try them out. I'll let you know in a week or two.

Now I'm nearly finished but I have to show you my favorite baking book of all time.

This isn't my edition of the book but it's 10:30 on a sunday night and I don't fancy going out in the rain to take a photo of mine. (It's repaired with tape and everything) This is the most reliable book I've ever used to bake, yes the recipes are dated, yes they're in ounces, and yes there's a recipe for rabbit and ox but the baking sections is amazing. All the bones any baker needs, sweet pastry, marzipan, royal icing and egg custards. It's all there and it always works.

I remember being little and my mum saying we need to find this cook book as she couldn't remember where it was, she said 'it's cream and called the dairy book'. I thought 'yuck! Why would a baking book be called the Dairy Book it must be terrible' It was found later under the stairs in a plastic box full of other books. Since then it never left the kitchen until I commandeered it for mine, it's full of post-it notes, flour and some of the pages are coming lose but it's still the best book I know.

January Week 4: Views....

.. So would you believe it but I think this is about my fourth blog, I always start them but always fall behind after a few weeks then give up. I've been tempted to drop this blog already as I've been finding it hard to find relative photos to the prompts and also baking. Here's the new plan... I'm going to blog once a week following the overall weekly prompt, this way I can keep the photos relevant but still be here. 


Here's my views for the year, first my kitchen. I've used a similar photo on here before but here's my kitchen seen from the doorway. If you haven't already noticed I'm a bit of an OCD'er (not officially) but I do like things organised. This can be seen by my lovely shelves over my hob full of labeled pouring containers. My boyfriend always laughs at me as I've managed to retain the prices of containers and certain products in the supermarkets, so when we go shopping I always have to see if anything's on special offer...

Here's a view from over by the friges, hopefully by next months photo I may have a new industrial mixer in the left hand corner.

Then we have my second view my cooling table. This is in a different room but I only use it for storing baking while it's cooling, the first photo is from my Thursday market where I mainly make sweet doughs like currently Hot Cross Buns and Tarts.

And here's a photo from my friday market where I mainly make bread and lots of tiffin.....

See you guys next week x

Monday: My World in One Word...... Baking

Hmm so this is going to be another hard week for me, well I'm sure you can all guess what my world in one word would be. Baking of course! Hmm photos to go with this well I'll give you the earliest photo I know of with me baking. I'm not one for loving my baby photos but here are two of them, I'm not too sure where this was taken or who with but I'm sure my mum could have an educated guess.

Yeah yeah I was a chubby toddler (finally grown out of it hehe) I love that we still have this bright orange bowl and I use it on a daily basis, so many experiments and masterpieces made by at least four generations have been made in this bowl. Still in brilliant condition I'll add.

Wednesday: Inside...a machine...

So as I'm trying to keep things baking related I'm only taking part in three or four days this week... sorry. Today I have something in a machine, I was originally stuck for this idea then it just hit my. My oven is a machine....duhhh. So here they are two rather flat rye flour loaves, they take about 2 day to prove as the dough is so heavy and that stunts the yeast but they went down brilliantly today. 

Tuesday: Inside... a bag or box...

For two of my market a week I have to pre-package all my food, this isn't something I like doing as it's extremely time consuming and I don't really think it makes anything look very appetising but maybe that's just me. Hehe I love having slices of cake piled high on an antique stand. Anyway so here's a photo I took at 6:30am this morning just before I packed my car for the market.

I also have a selection of breads in their box ready to be taken to our local shop as they wanted to try my bread and maybe stock it.

Monday:...Inside my house...

Hmm so this is going to be a hard one as I'm trying to keep these things baking related, I thought I would begin this week with my kitchen. This isn't in fact in my house. When we moved into this wonderful house I've grown up in we built a house for my Dad's parents and a flat for my Gran either side of us. It was then converted into a kind of guesthouse for whenever we had people to stay but that doesn't happen very often....

..Soo when I came along wanting to start up my own business and needed a working kitchen this seemed like a perfect place. It's now been kitted out with a new oven and fridge and a few extra shelves and lots of various ingredients. I love how this place was somewhere I didn't quite like as it reminded me of my Gran and now that it's my workplace and I spend quite a few hours a week in here it's become one of my favourite places to spend my time.

Also as soon as you walk in the smell of cinnamon and gingerbread is always there....

Sunday: Colours...Brown...

Final day of the week and I've kept up! Yayy and I love seeing everyone else's photos when I upload them onto the Lucky 7's Blog (it's here if you don't know http://lucky7sin2014.blogspot.co.uk/) To finish i've got one of my favourite treats to share with you. Cinnamon and Chocolate Macaroons... a lovely little chewy mouthful.

And I couldn't resist a tine one!

Saturday: Colours...Pink or Purple

So I'm going to go with pink... first we have one of my favourite desserts of all time, lemon posset with homemade raspberry coulis. I first has this in a local restaurant in St Ives and I had to recreate it myself. It's definitely a family favourite but the hight cream content means I try not to make it too much.

Then for seconds these my raspberry cream danish pastry. A simple danish pinwheel with homemade creme patissier (bacically a post egg custard mix) and fresh Cornish raspberries. I've only made this once and they went down brilliantly, I'm planning more thigs like this for my summer markets I just need to find some local fruit producers.

Friday: Colours... Black

Hmm another difficult one for me but I'm taking the prompt lightly so I'm going to go with today and yesterday making 'contrast.' I've found the only photo in my archive that supports this prompt..

These are some coffee and chocolate cupcakes I made a few years ago as a wedding gift for some family friends, they were much appreciated. As I looked at the photo I thought it felt like yeas ago I made these, only a couple.

Thursday: Colours... White

White right.... umm ohkay here's quite a few...

White royal icing in my beautiful mixer at christmas...

Not exactly white but here's one of my favourite cakes I've made recently. Its just a simple jam and buttercream sponge but by adding the buttercream all around the cake and some marzipan butterflys you get a beautiful birthday cake.

And finally not baking related but I couldn't resist, a tiny little elephant candle from my partner's parents for christmas. A little set of 10, so cute!

Wednesday: Colours... Green

Evening, hmm now green is another hard one for me as there aren't too many green cakes and even when there are green cakes they never look too appetising. So while being stuck for an idea I was chatting to mum about how my Gran's 67 year old weighing scales that we had refurbished a few years back were in full use today. 

Since they were refurbished they weren't as accurate as they used to be when they were yellowed and covered in years of flour dust so they ended up in a cupboard and put away. I discovered them again while I was cleaning out my kitchen as I was just starting up about 4 months ago and have been using them as a 'shabby-chic' cake display. So while at Paul Market the scales of a fellow stall holder broke and mine where the only things that resembled a pair of scales. Low and behold they're green.... long rambling story over x

Tuesday: Colours.... Blue

I found todays word a bit harder as there aren't too any blue cakes that I've made or know of so flicking through my folder of cake related photos with a niece on wither knee I found two.

The first being a cake that me and mum came up with a few years ago as a birthday cake, my big brother, sister and now her daughter all have their birthday in the same week in July so we needed a summer themed cake. I normally make a few layers then fill them with strawberries but this particular cake was to be taken to Mounts Bay School as a cake for the staff. Covered in blueberries and Cornish blackberries I thought it was fitting for todays photo.

The second photo my eldest niece insisted that I post today as it was her 5th birthday cake from last year, I mean what five year old doesn't want an R2D2 birthday cake?

Monday: Colours... Red hmmm

Well I didn't keep up last week but I'm back at work now, thats a mix of babysitting my crazy and lovely nieces, data inputting for Mum and Dad and my favorite... baking!

As soon as I heard todays word I knew exactly what Photo I was going to use... Red Velvet Cupcakes of course!

These aren't my personal favorite but they are a favorite of my best friend and her partner so I've perfected the recipe over the last few years. Made using a mix of white wine vinegar and bicarbonate of soda this is where the 'red' colour originated from however a bit of modern food colouring brings them to life. And you can't have these without cool vanilla cream cheese to top.

You can't deny the colour is striking!

Day Three.. clothes... sort of..

Now I know that todays word is 'clothes' but as the link to our words can be as tenuous as we wanted and the overall theme is resolutions here's my photo...

My christmas present off a special someone, this is the first time I've taken it off since christmas... hehe

Day two... drink..

Right so I'm already a day behind everyone else but I'm getting back into the swing of things after a hectic December and then crashing with a few days of doing nothing at all...

I started baking properly again today and tested out two new recipes that I've wanted to make for ages and I don't see anyone else making these at my markets... guessed yet?

Custard Creams and my big brothers favorite Chocolate Bourbons...
So here they are custard creams, bourbons and a cup of tea in my new mug courtesy of my mum xxx

Lucky 7's in 2014.... Day 1... Food

So I've finally been convinced by my mum to try a picture a day every day of this year and I'm already a day behind... Some are going to be easier than others, for example today's prompt being food... I would be worried if I had trouble finding a photo of food... and other more difficult to find.... wish me luck...

So here's one of my favorite food photos from just before christmas, a completely homemade hamper for my sister and brother in law.. I'm planning on marketing some next year as the perfect hassle free homemade present for family...