Bake Bake Bake

This week has been incredibly bake-heavy. I was asked to make a few little Christmas treats for a church function, but as usual with food, I went a bit overboard. I decided we'd have Black Forest Parfaits, Christmas Tree Cupcakes, Pecan-Pretzel-Caramel Treats and Gingerbread Snowflakes.

Monday was making cherry jelly, dark chocolate mousse and vanilla macaron shells for the parfaits (note: baking at midday in QLD very close to summer is NOT conducive to perfect macarons) and then baking hordes of litle gingerbread snowflakes and once cool, dipping them each individually in royal icing. Time consuming, but v. delicious.



Tuesday night was for cupcake baking. Wednesday morning was for icing said cupcakes.



Wednesday evening, with one hour between getting home from work and getting to the church was for making a batch of delicious Pecan Pretzel snacks.We're going to call them Christmas Yertles, as they were made with the same recipe as Katherine used here but with a red or green M&M stuck on with chocolate to make them festive.



You'd think that after all that I'd use my Thursday off work for something not realted to baking, however, you would be wrong. As it was my wonderful friend Rachel's birthday the next day, I decided a cake should be made. Now, years ago Rach and I had glorious plans for a rainbow cake, but if I recall, it sort of ended up as a delicious but distinctly greyish mess. I also had some problems with a layer cake last year (note: it slid around everywhere and became a cakey puddle) and I never really got over it. This was my chance to fight again, regain my honour and emerge victorious. And I have to say, I was very happy with the result, if I was using battles as a metaphor, I was totally Legolas, coming out of the great war victorious and feeling sassy and stylish while I did it. To top it all off I coated this bad boy in icing made from melted down musk sticks (Rach ADORES musk sticks). It looked impressive (if not slightly off balance) when it was just pink and tall, but the suprise rainbow was pretty great, and it was a lot of fun to make.






P.S. I've rediscovered my love of the Hipstamatic App for my iPhone camera..could you tell?