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 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.

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!

Cakes: Peppa Pig

I have three little nieces and they are the cutest things in the world, the can also be a pain I love them to pieces. So anyway every year I ask the oldest who's now 5 what she would like for her birthday cake, I figured she has about 10 aunts and uncles so a novelty cake is a perfect present for her.

Last year she asked for Peppa Pig, Woody and Buzz Lightyear and Fireman Sam in the corner, so I explained that she would have to pick one. After much deliberating she came up with Peppa Pig so here's how I did it.


Step one (Left), a vanilla tray bake with a strawberry jam filling.



Step two or three.. (Right) this is the part that takes the most time, I created tones of buttercream icing as that's her favorite and coloured it accordingly. I had to do this a few times to get the right colours and so no cake showed. Once done I chilled the cake overnight.

To finish I piped on the the finishing details  and made a sugar paste wand, with the extra icing I piped some 'oink's around her just to finish.

The bottom photo is lopsided but there is what remained after me nieces go to the cake. It went down brilliantly.

Alot easier than I thought.

Markets, Macaroons and Bake Off...

Right so seconds post, albeit a little bit later than I planned but the last two weeks ran away from me. The biggest thing I’ve learnt must be that turning something you do because you love it into a way to make money is pretty difficult.

So, I had my first four markets last week all over western Cornwall and I think I’ve final found a routine that works. Again Chelsea buns were big on the menu and also my Saffron buns that are improving with every day, I also had Tiffin (fridge cake for anyone born post 1990’s) a huge seller when people know what it is. This astounded me as it’s so easy to make (there’s no actual baking involved) but people seem to flock to it, there were also Spinach and Feta Filo pies, some of the rare savories I make.

And on a wonderful note I've finally conquered macaroons, much harder than I thought when I first found the recipe for them and after 6 times I've got the hang of them.

Now any Great British Bake Off fans here? It too me almost a week to get around to finally watching the final and I have to say Frances deserved to win and her wedding cake was amazing! I want to make one now....

So after watching the technical I wanted to try to make pretzels and they are easier than I thought, if you have a chance try them! Oh and if you're having trouble finding malt extract don't worry, I never used it and didn't have any trouble.

Me again...

I want to say it's going to be a third time lucky with me and a blog however that's not quite true as this must be my fourth or dare I say fifth attempt at writing and posting on a blog. This time I don't feel as if I have half as many distractions and I feel optimistic that I'll stick with this one.

So where to begin.

I'm Jordan (or J depending on what you like) and being a baker has been on my to do list since I was about 10, in-between then and now I've wanted to be a doctor, a paramedic, a graphic designer and many other things but I've always come back to being a baker. So finally after about 5 years working in kitchens doing various jobs and two years of college studying nothing to do with baking my mum told me to 'just pull you're finger out and go and do it, you've been talking about it for years.' Here I am, 18, not too many commitments, as far west as you can get in England (Cornwall) and the pipe dream to one day own my own bakery/coffee house all to myself, (and a few nerves but I'm ignoring them...)

I'm not quit sure why I'm writing the blog, I don't necessarily think it's going to effect my business much but there's something nice about sitting down and taking a minuet to think about what I've done and ponder....

Things that I bake:

Well that list has most definitely grown in the past month let alone the last year but my basics are obviously cakes, sweet breads like Chelsea buns, Saffron buns and many others, gluten-free cakes and I have a not so secret obsession with cupcakes. I've been learning to tame this obsession slowly but the way I see it there's nothing better than a perfectly proportioned piece of cake that hasn't been cut and is all yours. But then that's just me, this past summer I worked in a coffee shop and the varying size of cake slices were astonishing.

So as this is a first post I'm not going to go too crazy with the cakes and photos -I didn't think I would write this much when I started, but here's a photo of my most recent batch of chelsea buns, definitely a family favorite in my house.

The uniformity of my spirals lost to towards the end there....Still they tasted good.