The Wonderful World of Sprinklebakes
There are a handful of food bloggers out there that I absolutely idolise. They’re people that push boundaries, think creatively and prepare the most mind blowingly beautiful treats you can imagine. I’m sure you can guess who I’m talking about – the likes of I am Baker, Raspberri Cupcakes, Bakearella and Sprinklebakes.
As I mentioned on Sunday, there was huge excitement in my life last week as my copy of Sprinklebakes arrived – the first book from the brains behind the blog, Heather Baird. If you haven’t already trawled through her blog, you must! She’s a hugely talented baker who’s known for transforming dessert into works of art, making food that’s as beautiful as it is tasty.
As you can tell I adore her work and had enormously high expectations for this book. Thankfully I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest – quite the opposite in fact! Sprinklebakes blew me away, taking pride of place in my cookbook collection as my absolute favourite.
What’s so wonderful about this book is the range of projects it includes – there’s something for absolutely everyone, whether you’re an absolute beginner looking for ‘go-to’ recipes and step-by-step help or a more seasoned baker seeking new ideas and inspiration. The complexity of the recipes increases as you progress through the book – beginning with items like ‘how to line a cake pan’ and ‘how to ice a cake’, before you know it you’re finding out how to make edible sculptures such an anatomical heart cake and bring dessert to breakfast.
Sprinklebakes is great for giving new recipes a try – as you know, I couldn’t quite get myself to try making macarons until I came across the recipe in this book. Not only does Heather include great instructions for each recipe, but there are pages of tips, tricks, variations and photographs of the process. I attribute my macaron success to Heather’s handy hints included in the book.
But my absolute favourite part of Sprinklebakes is a section on painting with food colourings. I’m not a hugely artistic person – I haven’t done any form of painting since intermediate – but I’m itching to pick up a paintbrush after reading up on the technique in Sprinklebakes. The pages and pages of illustrations, suggestions, techniques and tips have left me completely inspired to try ‘painting’ my very own cake.
My favourite cookbooks are those that feel personal and make you feel as though you know the author by the end of it. Sprinklebakes is packed full of personality, bringing the Heather we’ve gotten to know online into the printed world. It’s one of those books that you just keep coming back to – not a day has passed since it arrived that I haven’t poured through it, feeling completely inspired when I lay it down.
So if you’re looking for a new cookbook or just want to bring a bit of beauty and inspiration into your life then you absolutely must purchase a copy of Sprinklebakes. I ordered mine along with Amy Adams’ new book, Sweet Designs through Amazon, and despite having to pay for shipping to the ends of the earth it was still really affordable. If you want to keep your shopping New Zealand based then Mighty Ape and Fishpond both stock it too.
Now just to wait for I am Baker’s book to be released!
Kirsten
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The Great Macaron Experiment
The past few months I’ve been obsessing over macarons. I thought about baking them countless times, but after reading up about them online I always decided against it – according to every website I stumbled upon they’re incredibly temperamental and a million things can cause them to go belly up in the oven. It all sounded a little too stressful.
But last week I received my copy of the Sprinklebakes cookbook from Amazon – a whole month ahead of schedule! After pouring through it several evenings in a row I realised I kept coming back to one particular recipe for macarons. Not only did the recipe seem simple enough, but it also included two pages of tips and tricks for baking the perfect macaron. Totally inspired, I decided to make macarons my weekend project.
As this was my very first batch of macarons I decided to keep it simple and made plain macarons with a beautiful, thick lemon curd filling. Armed with Sprinklebakes and lots of enthusiasm I got started, reading each step of the recipe several times – I was paranoid about messing something up and being faced with macaron failure. But after carefully blending, whipping, folding and piping the mixture I had trays full of beautiful macaron unbaked shells sitting before me.
So far so good, but the real test with macarons comes when you place them in the oven. Usually I just throw my baking in the oven, set the timer and get on with life while they do their thing, but not this time. I was flitting around the house, zipping back to the kitchen every minute or so to check on their progress. About four minutes in something wonderful happened – they grew feet! I was absolutely over the moon, grinning from ear to ear as I reported the latest macaron related news to Kevin.
After ten minutes I was lucky enough to pull a perfect batch of macarons from the oven – no cracked shells, beautifully formed feet and no oily spots. I have to admit I was embarrassingly proud of my handiwork and dragged Kevin away from what he was doing to admire them in all their glossy glory. Once cool I filled them with a mixture of lemon curd and icing sugar (just enough to thicken it up) and sandwiched the cookies together. Perfect!
Now I’m totally inspired to become a more regular macaron baker – aided by the abundance of almond meal already stashed in the cupboard. Any suggestions of flavours to try next?
Kirsten
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Banoffee Magic
It’s been over eight months since Kevin and I moved in to our little house, and we seem to have accumulated a lot of stuff. Where once all the cupboards had room to spare, we now have to reshuffle things to fit new buys in. But no cupboard is as bad as our pantry.
Granted I have two shelves dedicated entirely to my baking supplies (pretty good considering it’s all ingredients, sprinkles, colourings, decorating tips… the lot!), but we’re rapidly running out of space. So this weekend I decided to clear a tiny bit of space by using something that’s been perched in the cupboards awhile now – caramel condensed milk.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a huge fan of caramel (though I recently declared to Kevin that Caramello is possibly becoming one of my favourite chocolates – makes no sense, I know), but Kevin adores it so I knew the baking would get eaten. After having a quick look at what else we had on hand I decided to make banoffee pie cupcakes.
We had a few bananas left from the week’s lunches so I whipped up a batch of banana cupcakes using this recipe from the Chelsea website. The resulting cupcakes were simple to make and rose perfectly, but I found them a little sticky when removing the cupcake wrapper. They are described as ‘moist’ cupcakes though, so I suppose this makes sense.
With the cupcakes baked and cooled I went about transforming them into cakey twist on banoffee pie. This was really easy – just core each cupcake (I just cut out a circle from each using a sharp knife – check out this post from Grace Cakes for a great tutorial on cupcake filling) and fill with a couple of teaspoons of caramel condensed milk. I found each cupcake needed between two and three teaspoons of the gooey stuff.
Next I whipped up a batch of buttercream icing, beating it up until it became a beautiful, white colour. Then it was just a matter of piping it on to each cupcake, covering the exposed pit of caramel condensed milk. To finish the cupcakes off I topped each one with a couple of banana chips.
As these cupcakes have both a sweet filling and rich icing, they’re definitely designed for those with a sweet tooth. As you would expect, the flavours worked together perfectly and the super easy filling is a wonderful bonus. Anyway, don’t just believe me – here’s the text Kevin sent me from work when he tucked into one yesterday: “Oh my god, this cupcake is amazing!”
Kirsten
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Now That We’re Engaged…
Is it just me or is this year just absolutely whizzing by? The past few months have been full on and life has only gotten busier (and more exciting) since Kevin and I got engaged – it’s hard to believe it’s been two months already! We’re loving it so far and I have to admit, wedding planning is totally addictive.
As you know, Kevin and I were lucky enough to have the proposal photographed by our wonderful friend, Rhys Lake, leaving us with a beautiful collection of photos we’ll treasure forever. But we’ve gotten even luckier since then as Rhys agreed to do another session with us to capture some of that post-engagement glow.
Armed with a bunch of helium balloons (rather than umbrellas!) we headed north to Long Bay Regional Park, where we met up with the Lake family – Rhys, his wife and assistant creative director, Joy and assistant-to-the-assistant, Tilly. Long Bay ended up being the perfect choice – the trees were shedding their leaves, the beach was looking gorgeous and we had the park largely to ourselves.
As always Rhys was an absolute pro – both he and Joy were full of creative ideas that not only made the most of the spots we stumbled upon but were a lot of fun to do. Kevin and I are more than thrilled with the beautifully autumnal shots he captured and are so grateful for their help once again.
Below is a selection of our favourite shots from the session, but you can find them all over on Rhys’ blog. If you’re in the Auckland region and are ever in need of a friendly, creative and hugely talented photographer then definitely get in touch with Rhys – you can take a look at some of his other work over on his website, Rhys Lake Photography.
Kirsten
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Fudge Time!
Fudge is one of my very favourite things in the world – there’s something about the smooth texture and rich flavour that gets straight into my heart – and sweet tooth! But after an incident (aka. being uncoordinated while pouring boiling sugar) while fudge making when I was 14 I have been more a fudge purchaser than producer – wimpy, I know.
But not all fudge requires careful heating and handling to taste amazing – this recipe is case-in-point. Pulled from a kid’s cookbook many years ago, this recipe produces rich, chocolatey fudge in… Three minutes! Granted that’s excluding chilling (which takes around an hour), but it still makes for a ridiculously quick sweet treat. Click here for the recipe.
All you need to do is place all the ingredients in a heatproof bowl, cover with a paper towel and toss in the microwave for three minutes. Then just give it a quick stir until it’s nice and smooth, pour it into a tray and place in the fridge to set. Voila! The simplest fudge you’ll ever make.
The magic of this recipe comes down to a single ingredient – icing sugar. Because it uses icing sugar rather than granulated sugar the mixture doesn’t need to reach boiling point, making it a lot quicker (and a lot less risky for the uncoordinated among us!) The use of icing sugar also makes this a beautifully soft fudge – definitely one that should be stored in the fridge.
One day soon I’ll bite the bullet and get back into fudge making – albeit with a touch more care and a sugar thermometer! But in the meantime this chocolate fudge is more than enough to keep the fudge cravings away, despite only taking a handful of minutes to prepare.
Kirsten
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Three Minute Chocolate Fudge
Ingredients
- 3 ½ cups icing sugar, sifted
- ½ cup cocoa, sifted
- 60g butter, cubed
- ¼ cup milk
- 1 Tbsp vanilla essence
- ½ cup nuts (optional)
Method
- Place icing sugar and cocoa to heatproof bowl and gently stir together
- Add butter, milk and vanilla essence.
- Cover with paper towel and microwave for 3 minutes.
- Stir mixture until well combined and smooth. Stir through nuts if desired.
- Pour into greased or lined pan and chill in fridge until firm (approx one hour)
My Geeky Confession
There’s something about winter that makes me want to head outside. I know – in large it’s a gloomy, wet season, but that makes braving the weather and exploring slightly more adventurous. Anyway, as the weather cooled down Kevin and I decided to pick up our old, slightly geeky and rather neglected pastime – geocaching.
Haven’t heard about geocaching? It’s a digital twist on the old fashioned treasure-hunt, where people track down containers hidden in the real-world using GPS co-ordinates. There are literally thousands of containers hidden throughout the country (and world!) – just take a look here, there’s bound to be a handful not too far from you. While you used to need a handheld GPS to track down the items, now you can just use your smartphone by downloading this great little app.
On ANZAC Day we headed up to Matakana with our good friend Matt to have lunch and dig around for a couple of caches. It was a pretty successful afternoon – not only did we lay our hands on four different caches tucked around the village, but we made our way to a gorgeous little waterfall off the main highway.
While it is a bit of a geeky activity, it’s a whole lot of fun. Along with the ‘usual’, well known places, people hide the containers in some of the most secluded, intriguing and picturesque places they know. This means that when you track them down you’re lead to wonderful little pieces of the world you never knew existed. Thanks to geocaching Kevin and I have stumbled upon historical sites, forests and beaches we’d never heard of before, despite them being right on our doorstep.
Now I’ve shared my geeky pastime with you, I want to hear about yours! Can’t wait to hear what you guys get up to – and I wonder if any fellow geocachers are reading this?
Kirsten
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The Wonderful World of Bread Making
Kevin and I are both big fans of bread, but have never really tried making it ourselves. I did try my hand at making hot cross buns this Easter – which turned out wonderfully – but other than that I haven’t made bread since I was little.
The thing that struck me about making the hot cross buns was what a long process it was – I’d completely forgotten how long you have to knead the bread and had to come up with all sorts of inventive ways to let the dough prove our little house’s warmest spots.
Then last weekend Kevin and I were trawling through the shelves of Briscoes (what exciting lives we lead, huh?) we came across a wonderful kitchen appliance I’d totally forgotten about – a bread maker! After our realization that we ‘desperately’ needed one, Mum agreed to lend us hers for us to play around with before we take the plunge and get one of our own.
So Sunday was bread making day – after much pondering I decided to try making a filled braided loaf. The excitement of making bread and trying out a new gadget must have gotten to Kevin, as for the first time I had a very eager assistant in the kitchen!
I grabbed a plain white bread recipe from Alison Holst’s Bread Book and amended it so I could make the fancy loaf I was envisaging – my final recipe is here. As I wanted to fill and braid the dough before baking I just used the bread maker to mix, knead and prove the dough – aka. the more tedious parts of bread making.
Once the bread maker had done its thing, Kevin pulled the dough out (saving me from getting sticky hands) and I began filling and shaping in on a floured bench. This was really easy – I just rolled the dough out into a big rectangle (about 40cm long by 30cm wide) then cut lengthwise into three strips. Then I placed the fillings on the dough – one strip was spread with basil pesto, one with roasted capsicum pesto and the other sprinkled with crumbled feta (yum!).
With the fillings in place I rolled each strip lengthwise and pinched the dough shut, leaving me with three round lengths of filled dough. With Kevin’s help I lay the lengths on a lined tray (when I did it alone they stretched out horribly – Kevin claims I can’t move both hands in the same direction) and began braiding them together. This was just like plaiting hair except I had to pinch the dough together at the top and bottom instead of wrapping on a hair tie.
We ended up leaving the bread proving on the bench for a further 90 minutes as we headed off on an adventure around Cornwall Park with our good friend, Matt. By the time we returned the loaf to-be was enormous, puffing its way over the sides of the tray! So I quickly popped it in the oven and patiently waited.
20 minutes later the house was filled with the unmistakable aroma of baking bread – it had turned out perfectly.
Both Kevin and I were overly excited when we pulled the finished loaf from the oven, and now think of ourselves as wonderful artisan bread makers (Hah! We can dream). I can definitely see us making another bready treat this weekend – any suggestions?
Kirsten
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Kirsten’s Basil, Capsicum and Feta Braid
Recipe amended from Alison Holst’s Bread Book
Ingredients
Bread
- 3 tsp dried yeast
- 1 ¼ cups + 2 Tbsp warm water
- 2 Tbsp oil
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1 ½ tsp salt
- 2 Tbsp non-fat milk powder
- 3 cups high-grade flour
Filling
- ¼ cup basil pesto
- ¼ cup roasted capsicum pesto
- ¼ cup feta, crumbled
Method (using a bread machine)
- Measure all ingredients into bread machine in the order listed above
- Turn machine on to dough cycle – this should take around 1.5 hours
- Once finished, gently knead dough on a floured bench until it’s not sticky to touch.
- Roll dough into a 40cm x 30cm (approx) rectangle.
- Use a sharp knife to divide dough into three even strips. Brush each strip with one of the fillings.
- Roll each strip lengthwise and pinch to close
- Move strips to lined baking tray. Firmly pinch three lengths together at one end, then plait. Firmly pinch together at other end.
- Prove in a warm place for approx. 30 minutes or until doubled in size
- Heat oven to 200 degrees Celsius and bake until golden (20-30 minutes) – loaf should sound hollow when tapped.
A Very Happy Half-Birthday
Just before the Rugby World Cup final last year, Kevin and I were introduced to someone pretty special through our great friends Rhys & Joy – their first daughter, Tilly. Since then we’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with this little girl and her awesome parents, and have become even more enamoured with Tilly – she’s going to be one of our flower girls when the wedding rolls around!
Thursday marked her half-birthday and it’s crazy to think how much she’s changed over the past six months. We were flicking through photos of her when we caught up with the Lake family last night and it was hard to believe we were looking at the same baby – while she’s always been beautiful, Tilly’s grown into such a gorgeous, chubby little thing with personality coming out her ears.
So when my Mum offered me an extra cake she’d baked (I know – extra cake) I snapped it up and decided to decorate it for Rhys, Joy and Tilly as a small half-birthday gift. Granted, it was a gift that would be far more enjoyable for Rhys & Joy since Tilly’s not quite at that cake gobbling stage just yet! Knowing the cake didn’t have to appeal to any child’s tastes I decided to ice the cake with a variation on the usual buttercream icing.
After mulling over my collection of teas I decided to infuse the icing with Earl Grey, as it just seemed to suit the beautiful chocolate cake Mum had made perfectly. I used the same method for the icing as I did with the tea-infused cupcakes – just heat some milk in a small pot and add a few teaspoons or tea bags of your preferred tea. Then use the infused milk in place of regular milk in your icing recipe.
My favourite thing about using tea as a flavouring is the beautiful colours that come out of it – the Earl Grey stained the milk a beautiful coffee colour. This translated into a lovely light caramel coloured icing with a hint of Earl Grey flavour. As for the decorating, I just iced the cake with a small paddle before covering the top with little spirals made using a #195 tip.
So happy half-birthday Tilly! We can’t wait to see what the next six months bring.
Kirsten
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