This was dessert when Fussellette came to dinner last week.
Started first with a meringue (my recipe is from The Joy of Cooking, but you can see a chocolate version here).
We plopped on the meringue some raspberry ice cream (see post here, but minus the vinegar). Then we topped it with whipped cream, melted chocolate, and fresh blackberries. Sweet and simple.
This is how Fussellette got her name.
She was sitting in the MUGS room with the Pie, talking about, of all things, pie (we don’t call him that because he’s sweet and flaky, after all). They were discussing the merits of ice cream versus whipped cream as a topping.
Fussellette, a native Newfoundlander, mentioned that growing up, she had always had Fussell’s on her pies and desserts.
The Pie’s first reaction was along the lines of, “what on earth are you talking about? Fussell’s?”
I’ve never heard of it either. So Fussellette bought us some.
Apparently it’s a sterilized thick cream in a can, a Newfoundland staple. Ostensibly it’s from the Golden Butterfly Brand, but on the back you can see it’s distributed by Smucker’s, which is part of Nestlé. Globalization …
It’s rather clotted and yellowish, but tastes just like what it is, thickened cream.
We plopped it on our pie. It was good.
On Saturday, my cousin P-did married the lovely M and they asked me to make the topper for their cupcake tower.
After my adventures with fondant and ivy back in June, this was a real piece of cake. I could even re-use the colours and fondant I had leftover!
I even had the recipe down pat, using a single batch of the vanilla cake with white chocolate cream cheese frosting I used so many times before, and baking the excess into cupcakes for us to eat in anticipation of the big event. The heat made the fondant crack a bit, but all in all it worked out.
Because I’ve already posted about this recipe (twice), I’m going to spare you with the details, and just titillate you with lots of nummy photos instead.
Enjoy!
I have more ganache leftover from the Red Velvet Comeback Cupcakes than is really good for my sanity. There are/is/are about 3 cups of ganache sitting in my fridge.
The good thing is that you can freeze ganache. Did you know that? While it’s frozen you can figure out what the heck to do with it.
This particular ganache is just cream and chocolate, and has a consistency of chocolate pudding. Mmm, pudding …
So what can you do with ganache that’s lying around?
If it’s thicker, you can make truffles. If it’s thinner, you can make fondue.
If it’s as it is, you can ice cakes and brownies with it.
You can pour it into hot milk for hot chocolate.
Add it to your coffee for a mocha latte.
Today, however, we are going to make ourselves some cookies, then make ganache sandwiches with them, then FREEZE them. It’ll be like ice cream sandwiches, but wayyyy better.
I picked our recipe for margarine chocolate chip cookies, because they’re the biggest and fluffiest. But I made them twice as big. I ended up with 28 cookies.
Make sure your ganache is super chilly. To be on the safe side, chuck the mixing bowl you’re using in the freezer for a while as well.
Whip that ganache up to a frothy amazingness.
Spoon fluffy ganache in-between your cooled cookies. Sandwich them together. Otherwise they ain’t sammiches.
Wrap them in waxed paper, seal them in a plastic bag, and chuck them in the freezer.
The Pie and I each ate one before freezing. The sweetness was sweeeeeeeeeet.
Also there was a wee bit of ganache leftover, but neither of us could pluck up the nerve to eat any more. These babies are pretty intense.
It’s day three — the wedding day — and all that is left is to assemble our confection. If you’ve been following along, you’ll see that after all the hard work we put into the preparation, this next bit is a cake walk in comparison. Ha. Ha.
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
Gob some royal icing inside the guidelines for the next tier, starting with the bottom tier.
Align the second tier with your guideline, and then kind of drop it into place, while avoiding touching the sides of the cake with your fingers. Gob on some more royal icing.
Drop on the top tier. That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Now get your green licorice vines in order. I used four strands, which I “stapled” into place individually, using hoops of floral wire. 
I kept them concentrated at the top, then draped them around the cake in a circle.
Make sure to staple the vines occasionally to the cake to hold them in place.
A gob of royal icing and an ivy leaf with no stem will hide the end bits.
Then I just started sticking in leaves by their stems into the cake around the vines. I made sure that, after the first one that was glued in, all the leaves were facing the same direction, but other than that, I tried to keep it as random as possible with respect to leaf colour and size.
And it turned out better than I had expected.
Tada!
I treated myself to a beer after I was finished, even though it was barely noon. Before I did that, however, I put the completed, weighing-more-than-my-dog cake back into the fridge. Don’t drop it don’t drop it don’t drop it …
Make sure to bring the cake to room temperature for at least two hours before serving.
Thankfully, the cake tasted even better than it looked — a marvel to be sure! I even managed to get it to the venue before it rained.
Canada's Parliament, view from Gatineau across the Ottawa River
And the bride was happy, which was most important.
No seriously, she was super happy.
Love you guys. Congratulations!
First thing to do this morning is take the white chocolate frosting and the fondant out of the fridge to come to room temperature. Don’t forget!
Right. So when we left off, we had just set the gum paste ivy leaves out to dry overnight. 
Fortunately for me, they didn’t completely dry, so I was able to cut tiny sticks of floral wire and stick them into each leaf as a stem. Had I known how rigid and brittle dried gum paste got, I would have done this the day before, when the leaves were still flexible. Also, the thicker the leaf, the better it worked.
My plan was to wrap these new “stems” around my green licorice whip “vine” and then drape the whole thing over the cake.
Of course the leaves were pretty heavy and the licorice was pretty delicate so of course the vine broke.
In any case, I got all the stems in and flipped the leaves over to dry completely.
My next idea was to simply drape the licorice vine over the cake, pin it in place with a few concealed floral wire “staples”, and then stick the leaves directly into the cake in strategic places. Of course I wouldn’t get to see if my plan worked until the following day. The tension starts to build.
The worst part of decorating the cake today was that I had a medical procedure scheduled for late in the afternoon, and I wasn’t allowed to EAT ANYTHING until after it was over. You try icing a cake and not licking your fingers.
Now, when you make a tiered cake you need to give it support so it doesn’t sag. Not to mention the fact that a three-tiered cake is tremendously heavy, so everything has to be strong and secure.
The entire cake rests on a cake board, which you can buy at any cake or craft store. My lovely father decided he’d make one for me out of plywood, as a cake board is essentially just a board wrapped in foil. In addition, you need cake circles, essentially made of cardboard (though my dad used matting board here) that are exactly the size of each of your upper tiers. They will go on the bottom of each upper tier so that you can move them around and so cutting one tier won’t result in cutting all three tiers. It’s really amazing the amount of hidden structural material goes into a wedding cake.
Now, you want to keep your cake as cold as possible, so I worked in shifts, putting each tier back into the fridge when I was finished each step. A cold cake is stiffer and less likely to come apart on you. Of course, the fridge I was using was downstairs in the basement and I had to negotiate several hallways in between. As the cakes became more and more complete, my mantra became “Don’t drop it don’t drop it don’t drop it …”
First you need to level the tops of your tiers. Use a long serrated knife to remove the round bit at the top. To ensure a perfectly smooth top, I flipped my tiers over so the natural “pan line” was the one that showed. I had to work super hard to get the 16″ tier to come out level.
Use some royal icing or other stiff-drying frosting (which I also purchased) and plaster some on the surface of each cake circle. This will be your glue, and will prevent the tier from sliding off when you move the cake.
I did the same with the cake board, and placed the tiers on their respective surfaces, cut-side down.
Then I wrapped up the ones I wasn’t using and put them back in the fridge. Don’t drop it don’t drop it don’t drop it …
I’m sure I’ve spoken to you before on the importance of a crumb coat. It is what it sounds like: a coating of icing designed to freeze all your crumbs into place so they don’t show up on the surface of the finished cake. So, smooth a thin layer of white chocolate frosting all over the cake and try to keep it as even as possible. Then chuck the tiers back in the fridge for at least fifteen minutes so the frosting can firm up.
I found the smaller tiers easier to decorate if I placed them on an upside-down plate on top of an inverted bowl. Of course, if you have a rotating cake stand then you’re ahead of the game.
And a handy tool like a fondant smoother is useful when you are trying to make your sides uniform. And on your second coat of icing, be generous. This stuff can hide many mistakes. Chuck the tiers in the fridge again after the second coat. Don’t drop it don’t drop it don’t drop it …
As I mentioned earlier, this cake is no lightweight. In order to avoid a Leaning Tower of Pisa thing, we have to provide adequate structural support for each tier on top of the bottom one. We are going to create hidden support columns for our tiers, putting them inside the cake itself. This next part is a little weird, but you gotta trust me on this one.
Enter the Slurpee straw.
Let’s ignore the fact that I had to purchase a Slurpee in order to make off with all these straws. The key to Slurpee straws is that they’re incredibly wide, which makes your support column all the more strong. Another plus is that they come in lurid colours, so you are unlikely to mistake them for the substance of the cake and consume them by accident.
So, you take your bottom tier. Rest the edges of the pan of the next tier on top for a second, just to leave a wee mark in the frosting where you want the next tier to go. 
Insert the straw into the centre of your guideline, pointing straight down, press it all the way to the bottom, and remove it. You will remove a tiny plug of cake while you do this, but don’t worry, you’re going to put it back. 
When you pull it out you can see the line that the frosting has left on the straw. Cut the straw at this point, then cut four more sections of straw to match this length.
Return the centre column to its original position in the cake and insert the other four columns around the centre one to evenly distribute the weight. Repeat this straw process for every tier except the top one and put the cakes carefully back in the fridge.
Now we are going to start on our fondant embellishments. Slice off some fondant with a sharp knife and knead it with your hands to make it more malleable.
I used a small amount of the icing colour we used to make the ivy leaves to create this pale green.
I rolled it flat and used a pizza cutter and a metal ruler to cut long strips of the stuff.
These are going to form bands at the bottom of each tier.
Working carefully, so as not to stretch the fondant strip, place them along the bottom of each tier. 
Because my fondant was a little on the dry side, I found it easier in the end to cut the fondant strips into sections and handle them with a fondant smoother. You can see that I’m wearing gloves in this shot to avoid putting fingerprints on the fondant.
I used the smoother to provide support as I pressed the strip portions onto the cake.
Then, with a soft paintbrush, I gently brushed on some green lustre dust for texture.
Not bad, not bad. You won’t notice all the imperfections from a distance, once the ivy is in place.
Next I rolled out some white fondant and got out the French curves. 
I traced the edges with a sharp pointed knife and pulled away the excess fondant.
Then ever so carefully transferred the shapes to the cake. I used the biggest curves on the bottom tier.
On the top two tiers I used used the smaller curve.
Now put those all in the fridge and leave them there. More on Monday, when we put this baby together!
On Saturday my best friend Chel got married. To Invis. For the second time.
Photo by Kurt Heinecke, http://www.khstudios.biz
My wedding present to the lovely couple was their wedding cake, which they wanted to be vanilla flavoured, white on the outside, and have ivy trailing over it.
I practiced ahead of time. I got the recipe down with the Pie’s birthday cake last summer. Then I worked on my fondant technique with my own birthday cake, and adapted the fondant flavourings with the moose cake. I even made my own vanilla for the occasion.
Was I ready for this? I had never made a wedding cake before. Chel and Invis wanted it simple, but a wedding cake is still a definite challenge.
First I had to figure out how much cake I needed. I had an 8″ springform pan, an 11″ springform pan, and then a gigantic 16″ aluminum pan (which I think my father now covets). So I did some mental math and decided to quadruple the recipe that I had for the Pie’s birthday cake and go from there.
That’s a lot of cake.
Four kilograms of icing sugar, 2 of white chocolate. Two litres of whipping cream. One and a half pounds of butter and the same in shortening. Two kilos of cream cheese. Sixteen eggs. Two bags of flour. Lots of mixing.
I gave myself three days to make this cake: the first day to do the actual baking and prepare the decorations; the second day to ice the cakes, and the third day to put the cake together. So that means you get to have three days of posts, because otherwise you’d be reading the world’s longest essay on cake. I gotta break it up a little. Shall we begin?
DAY ONE:
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Butter your pans generously and dust them with flour, knocking out the excess.
Of course, the whole selling point of a springform pan is it makes removing cake from it so ridiculously easy. Unfortunately, you’d be hard pressed to find a springform pan bigger than 12″ in diameter. So for the 16″ pan, which wasn’t springform, I had to cut out a circle in parchment paper for it and then butter and flour that as well.
Separate 12 eggs and bring the whites to room temperature. Save the yolks for making custard.
Then you want to do some sifting. A lot of sifting. More sifting than you actually want to do, to tell the truth. I started out with a regular sifter.
Then I got bored and my hand got tired so I switched to a fine mesh sieve instead. In any case, sift together 13 cups flour (I used cake and pastry flour because it’s fortified with a bit of cornstarch, which helps you maintain volume in your cake) with 4 tablespoons baking powder and 4 teaspoons baking soda. The sifting process helps to eliminate lumps and also serves to add a bit of air into your flour, making it lighter and fluffier. Volume is key.
Now set that aside. In a larger bowl, beat together 2 cups softened butter with 2 cups vegetable shortening until fluffy and creamy.
And I’m talking creamy.
Add in 7 cups granulated sugar and 1/2 cup pure vanilla extract.
Make sure you’ve also got all those precious vanilla seeds in there too.
Beat that up until it’s fluffy, and make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Now crack in 4 whole eggs and mix that up as well.
Okay so this next bit you mix in your flour mixture, as well as 6 cups ice water. But WAIT.
You gotta do it a bit at a time. You want to add the flour in three separate increments, and the ice water in two. So you start with the flour, then add water, then flour, then water, and then the rest of your flour. And that’s how that is done.
Once you’ve done all your adding, scrape down the sides of the bowl and just keep mixing for a further minute or so. Isn’t that lovely and smooth?
Now, in yet another bowl, you want to whip up those nice warm egg whites. Add in 1 teaspoon cream of tartar to firm things up a little and beat the whites until they are at the soft peak stage, shapely but not dry.
Plop those whipped whites into your batter bowl.
Gently, ever so gently, fold those whites into the batter. This is what will give you the majority of your fluffy cake.
Now distribute the batter between your three pans and smooth the tops.
Now we bake. Unfortunately the day I did this, Ottawa was in the midst of a heatwave. So this is what I look like when it’s hot and I’m leaning over an oven: hair in pins, shorts, dishtowel tied around my waist, and a jaunty wet scarf on my neck to keep me cool. Super sexy, I know.
Self-portrait of the baker in a heat wave.
In terms of baking times, I baked the first two tiers for about 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre came out clean. I used a convection oven, so it might take a little longer in a regular oven. The bottom tier took about 60 minutes to bake, but just keep checking on them to make sure they don’t burn. The 16″ tier BARELY fit in the oven.
When the cakes are all golden-brown and lovely, put them on racks to cool completely. When they are completely cool, remove them from the pans, wrap them tightly in plastic wrap, and put them in the fridge overnight. It is much easier to decorate a cold cake than a warm one, trust me.
While the cakes are doing their thing, you can make the fondant and frosting, as well as the gum paste for the ivy leaves.
For the fondant, I creamed together 1 cup softened butter, 1 cup vegetable shortening, 2 cups lily white corn syrup, and 6 teaspoons almond extract.
When it was all creamy I was ready to add in the icing sugar.
By the time I had the texture right, I had added almost 3 kilograms of the stuff (I’m Canadian, so forgive me for switching back and forth between Imperial and Metric. It’s just what we do). I had also neglected to take my rings off before I kneaded the stuff. Shame on me. 
Then wrap the fondant tightly in waxed paper and chuck it in the refrigerator overnight.
For the frosting, start off by melting 4lb white chocolate, chopped. I know, it’s a lot. But it’s necessary.
While your chocolate is becoming liquid, cream together 6, 250g packages of cream cheese.
Really mix it well to get out all the lumps.
Pour in 2 1/4 cups each whipping cream and icing sugar. Add in 3 teaspoons vanilla extract as well.
Whip that extra good until it’s super smooth and creamy.
By now your chocolate should be all melty.
Pour that white goodness into your other white goodness and whip it up to create more white goodness.
Now put plastic wrap on the surface of the icing and chuck that in the refrigerator overnight.
For the gum paste, I didn’t want to tempt fate (I know my own limitations, folks) so I purchased gum paste mix from a cake decoration store.
The instructions on the package are to mix 16oz of the mixture with 1/4 cup water.
Then you stir like crazy, eventually using your hands to knead it all in.
Then wrap it tightly in a bag and leave it at room temperature for 15 minutes.
Now you can dye it. I used two different shades of Wilton icing colour: moss green and juniper green.
It’s a good idea to use gloves when you do this, unless you want green hands. Apply the colour with a toothpick. Just remember that a little goes a long way.
Then, with gloves on your pretty little hands, knead the gum paste until the colour is thoroughly mixed in.
Okay, so now put a bit of spray oil on your rolling pin and roll that sucker out flat.
We’re cutting out ivy leaves here, so I thought, what better template than a real ivy leaf?
Cait came over to help me with the cutting out.
First we squished real (washed) ivy into the flattened gum paste. 
You can see how the veins show up nicely.
Now we took a sharp pointy knife and cut them all out.
Laid them on waxed paper to dry overnight.
Aaaand … that’s all you get for today. I don’t know about you, but I’m pooped. More Friday!
♪ Secret AGENT Tarts, Secret AGENT Tarts, he’s givin’ you a number, and takin’ AWAY your name … ♫
Baking is much more exciting if your recipes come from a spy, like this one did.
I have a friend who works for CSIS, which is the Canadian equivalent of the CIA (likewise, our RCMP is the FBI). And like all good spies, he is multi-talented, and thus has a very good recipe for butter pecan tarts. Or butter tarts. Or raisin tarts. Or whatever you call them. I call them SPY TARTS. I had to call him at work to get this recipe. Espionage was involved.
(I also applied to work at CSIS a few years ago, and after a very entertaining 3-hour interview, both CSIS and I decided we wouldn’t be a good fit, though I’m sure they kept that file on me somewhere. I must be too awesome to be a spy.)
So here is your top-secret recipe. It’s top secret because it’s super easy.
At some point I will expand my repertoire to include pastry, but at the moment you will just have to be satisfied with pre-made Tenderflake tartlet shells. This recipe makes 12 3″ tarts.
Preheat your oven to 425°F.
Gather together the following:
This is a great cake to whip up for a potluck or casual dinner. Baking it in a 9″ x 13″ glass casserole dish makes it easy to carry and means you can even freeze the cake if you need it later.
The fudgy icing adds the element of delectability to what is otherwise a regular cake recipe. Cake recipe from Canadian Living, fudge icing from Chocablog.
Spray the sides of a 9″ x 13″ glass baking dish and line the bottom with parchment paper (you can use metal baking pans as well, but I prefer the even cooking of the glass) and set that aside. Preheat your oven to 350°F.
In a large bowl, beat together 1 1/2 cups softened butter with 2 1/4 cups granulated sugar. I ran out of white so I added in some brown.
Add in, one at a time, 3 eggs, followed by 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract.
In a separate container, mix together 3 cups all-purpose flour, 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and the same again of baking soda.
Stir your flour mixture alternately with 2 1/4 cups buttermilk (or milk soured with lemon juice or vinegar), making three additions of the dry stuff and two of the buttermilk.
At this point I was slightly concerned because the mixture was the consistency and colour of wet cement. I figured I might as well forge ahead in any case.
Scrape that cement into the prepared pan and smooth the top.
Bake until tester comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for about ten minutes, then turn out onto the rack and peel off the paper and allow to cool completely.
While the cake is cooling you can start on your icing.
In a medium saucepan, melt 10 oz butter at low heat.
Holy crap that’s a lot of buttery goodness.
Stir in 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder and raise the heat a bit before adding 10 oz icing sugar.
Gradually add in 6 tablespoons milk and allow the mixture to come to a boil.
Remove from heat when you have a glossy, smooth paste, and allow to cool completely.
Slather that goodness all over your cake. Just give ‘er.
Then you get to eat it. I made this for Cait and iPM and Cait informed me that she had it for breakfast. So it’s a multipurpose cake.
At the end of October I dog-sat for one of my neighbours, KDB. She has two Scottie dogs, Hamish and Flora.
I wanted to leave her something nice to come home to, and to take advantage of the fun that is her kitchen. It’s blue. All of it. And whatever isn’t blue tends to have the image of a Scottie on it.
Kristopf came over to help me make cookies (but in reality to use my computer).
This is a recipe that I kind of invented myself, adapted from the basic Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. I hope you like it.
Preheat your oven to 375°F.
Soften 2 cups butter and plop it in a large bowl.
Cream it together with 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar and 1 1/2 cups brown sugar.
Crack 4 eggs into a bowl and whisk them silly.
Add the eggs to the butter stuff and mix well.
In a separate bowl, mix together 4 1/2 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 6 to 8 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa. Add this to the goo mixture a little at a time and stir well.
Now, stirring the whole time (you may need to use your hands at this point as the dough gets hard to handle), add in 2 1/2 cups pecan pieces, 2 cups butterscotch chips, and 2 cups chocolate chips.
Drop spoonfuls of the dough on ungreased baking sheets.
Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, rotating halfway through for even baking. After removing them from the oven, leave the cookies on the sheets for a few minutes, then remove them to a rack to cool completely.
They are super good with your afternoon tea.
Try not to eat them all at once.
