corn syrup – Ali Does It Herself

Chocolate-Covered Pretzel Peanut Toffee

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a great holiday. Ours was pretty quiet, which was good because all three of us got sick, one after the other – always a great way to spend one’s vacation. We have this week left to try to get as many things crossed off our to-do list as possible. We’re not holding our breath that they’ll all get done, but we’ll do our best.

In the meantime, here’s a quick little toffee recipe to help you combat those mid-winter blahs. I doubled the recipe, which I would not recommend, because the toffee sets so quickly it’s hard to get both batches flattened out on the pans fast enough.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and put it aside for a bit.

In a heavy saucepan, combine 1/2 cup butter, 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar, 1 tablespoon corn syrup, and 2 tablespoons water.

Attach a candy thermometer to the side and heat that over medium until it reads 300°F. Try to avoid stirring as much as possible, and if you do, don’t use a metal spoon – wood or silicone will prevent premature crystallization.

Next to the pot, place a little container of 1/4 teaspoon baking soda and another of 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. You’ll need to have those handy at short notice later on.

While you’re keeping an eye on the sugar, crush up about 1 1/2 cups pretzel twists.I also had some salted peanuts on hand so I crushed and dumped those in as well – probably about 3/4 cup salted peanuts.

And gather up 1 cup chocolate chips. I mixed mine with some dark chocolate for flavour.

When your sugar has caramelized and gotten to the hard crack stage (that’s 300°F), remove it from the heat and quickly stir in the baking soda and vanilla. Try to resist screaming as it fizzes up and gets all terrifying. I promise that will pass.

Salted Peanut Pretzel Toffee 13 — EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Toss in the pretzels and peanuts and stir the toffee quickly.

Then tip it out onto your parchment sheet and flatten it down as much as you can before it starts to set.

Sprinkle the chocolate evenly over the top of the toffee and let it stand for a few minutes while the chocolate melts.

Then smooth out the melted chocolate with a spatula.

Sprinkle the top of the chocolate with fleur de sel and let harden in the refrigerator for about an hour.

Once it’s hardened, break it up into chunks and ~~eat it all by yourself!~~ share it with your friends and family.

PB & J Gooballs

These are a great little snack when you’re on the go and need some protein. Or when you are pacing around your house with a small baby and have only one hand to get sustenance. Also good for children as a wee treat when they come home from school (although if you’re going to feed these to children under 1 year of age, replace the honey with maple syrup or something else, because botulism ain’t a joke). They were called “snack bites” on the website where I got the original idea but I think GOO BALLS is a way better term. So gooballs they will be. These ones taste like a peanut butter and jam sandwich, but you can pretty much customize these however you would like.

Your basic ingredients are as follows: 1 cup oats, 1/2 cup peanut butter (or sun butter, or whatever), and 1/4 cup honey. The rest is up to you.

I added in a few tablespoons ground flax, for health reasons.

And a handful of Reese peanut butter chips, for non-health reasons.

And some freeze-dried raspberries, because I had them on hand and they’re tasty as heck. Any dried fruit will do, provided you cut it up pretty small.

Assemble all your dry ingredients. I crumbled the raspberries in my hand so they were smaller.

Tip in the wet ingredients.

Stir!

Chill that for about 30 minutes, then take it out and roll a couple tablespoons’ worth of it into a ball. Repeat until you run out.

Store these suckers in the fridge to keep them firm and less sticky. ENJOY!

Home Made Watercolour Paints

This is a great gift for the artist in your family, young or old, or a neat thing to have on hand for any young visitors over the holiday season. They can be made with materials you probably have in your cupboards, which makes for a cost-conscious addition to your holiday crafting.

And because it’s all easy-peasy and non-toxic, I’m sure that kids will enjoy making their own colours – provided you don’t mind a little mess! This is a rather time consuming project, with all the stirring of tiny pots of colour, so if you do it with smaller children be prepared to finish the job once they get bored.

In terms of hardware, you’re going to need two plastic ice cube trays. I picked these up in the clearance section of Target. You can also use silicone trays, and then pop the solidified paint out to use somewhere else. You will also need some disposable stir sticks (one, or one side, for each colour).

And lots of food colouring. You can use both liquid and gel paste for this. I also added some metallic powder pigment to the mix.

Now grab a couple measuring cups. Scoop up 1 cup baking soda, and plop it in large (~4-cup) measuring cup or bowl with a pouring spout.

Pour in 3/4 cup white vinegar.

Keep stirring until all the fizzies are gone.

Next dribble in 2 tablespoons lily white corn syrup (the darker stuff will discolour the paint).

Then dump in 1 cup corn starch.

Mixy-mixy. You want this as smooth as possible, as it will settle quickly.

With everything mixed up, distribute the white liquid evenly amongst your trays. I found the given recipe to fill each section a little more than 3/4 full, but it depends on the size of your trays.

Now start colouring! Dip the end of a stir stick into your colour and drop a little bit into the tray.

Stir, stir stir!

I added a bit more because this was my black one, after all, and I wanted it to be dark. Again, make sure to scrape up the bottom as you stir, because all the powders are starting to settle.

With the gel paste colour, as you can see here with my red and brown, you will get little solid pieces that float while you stir. Don’t worry about them. Stir in as much as you can, then leave them alone for a few minutes and let the liquid get into the colour. They’ll dissolve if you go and stir them again a little bit later. I promise.

The liquid food colouring was much easier to mix in. Don’t forget you can easily create your own colours!

I did find that some of the colours kind of settled and separated, so I ended up re-stirring them a few times. I needn’t have worried, however: as the water in the liquid evaporates they will all come back together again.

I cleaned up the edges of the trays with a damp cloth after the mixes were starting to settle and dry. It was super quick. I ended up leaving these alone for a whole week just to ensure they were dry all the way through, but you may find you have dry paint within a couple of days.

To test the paints I created a colour guide. I had fun with the names.

I’m actually really pleased with how the metallic ones turned out. All I did was add the plain metallic powder to the liquid, without any other pigment.

And added some brushes to complete the gift.

Gluten-Free Fig Bars

Fussellette and her Hurler are in town again. Hurler is staying for good and Fussellette will be along permanently in January. Currently they’re staying with us so I decided to whip up some gluten-free fig bars from Serious Eats to feed to my guests and to take to my biweekly meeting at work. These cookies have a few more steps than a regular cookie, but none of them is particularly difficult or time consuming, so it’s worth it.

Start with your figs.

Take about 14oz dried figs and soak them in water for at least an hour.

Here is the underwater view of the figs starting to soak.

And the after-soaking underwater view. I just like taking pictures underwater.

Especially considering that this was going on outside.

Now let’s get on to the dough. In a bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups brown rice flour, 1/2 cup cornstarch, 1/4 cup white rice flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum, and 1/2 teaspoon table salt. Set that aside and haul out your mixer.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, cream together 1/4 cup vegetable shortening, 1/4 cup granulated sugar, and 1/4 cup dark brown sugar.

Beat in 2 large eggs, one at a time.

Grate in a few teaspoons of orange zest.

Tip in your flour mixture and beat on low until well combined. Continue to beat on a higher speed until a nice cohesive dough forms.

Shape the dough into a patty, wrap it up and refrigerate it for at least two hours.

Now you can make your filling. Drain your soaked figs and tip them into a food processor.

I ripped off all the tough stems, which was an easy job with the softened figs.

Add in the juice of half a lemon and about 3 tablespoons light corn syrup, a dash of salt, 1/4 cup water, and pulse until your goo is uniform and you can pipe it like icing. You may need to add some more water if it’s not squishy enough.

You can store your fig goo in a piping bag but I scooped it into a Ziploc instead.

And then the sun came out. Briefly.

When your dough is ready, preheat your oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set out another piece of parchment paper on your work surface and dust it with some brown rice flour. Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces.

Roll out each segment into a rough rectangle about 10″ by 4 1/2″ and trim the edges (save the trimmings). Use an offset spatula to gently separate the dough from the paper.

Cut a 1/2″ hole in the corner of your Ziploc bag and pipe a few lines of fig goo down the centre of the dough rectangle (I piped three lines on each and ended up with a LOT of leftover fig goo, so be generous).

Fold the edges of the dough over the fig goo and seal the seam.

Place your fig/dough log seam side down on your baking sheet. I rolled out the trimmings into yet another rectangle and ended up with 7 logs in total.

Bake the fig logs for 15-20 minutes, until they are a light brown.

Slice them with a sharp knife into 2″ pieces while they are still hot, then seal in a lidded container overnight so they can sort of steam themselves until they’re a bit softer.

The next day you get lovely, cake-y, gluten-free figgy goodness!

For the Birds: Edible Holiday Ornaments

Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope you are all enjoying the winter holiday season, whichever tradition you celebrate.

Today we’re going to celebrate by feeding our backyard birds. Both the Pie’s parents and my parents are supremely fond of the feathered creatures that appear outside their windows, so we thought we’d make them a little holiday treat, courtesy of Design Sponge.

First, I’d like to show you a little behind the scenes shot of my office during my Christmas gift-making chaos. I made these on a tiny patch of floor I’d cleared specifically for the purpose. It’s amazing what you can hide in a close-up shot …

Aaaand the closeup. You will need these things: waxed paper, a spoon, a giant bowl, a tablespoon measure, corn syrup, flour,

and a honking hunk of birdseed.

Plop 2 cups bird seed in your bowl with 3/4 cup all purpose flour (we doubled our recipe, hence the enormous amount pictured).

Give that a stir, then drop in 3 tablespoons corn syrup and 1/2 cup water. Stir that up too. It’s gross.

Prepare your moulds. You can use cookie cutters on top of waxed paper, but I used these cake moulds I picked up at the Superstore. If your surfaces are non-stick, that’s cool, but if not you might want to spritz them with a bit of cooking spray first.

Spoon your sticky birdseed into your moulds and pack it down with a spoon.

I had extra (obviously), so I made little pucks of bird seed in a muffin tin as well.

Use a paint brush or straw or pencil to wiggle a hole at the top of each of your bird seed packs. Don’t make it too close to the top of the ornament, as you’ll need enough dried birdseed there to support the weight of the thing.

Let them dry overnight and then tip them out onto waxed paper. If they’re still wet, leave them longer to dry or, if you’re in a hurry, bake them for an hour at the lowest temperature in your oven.

See, it kind of looks like a Christmas ornament …

I used butcher’s twine to string up my ornaments.

Then I wrapped them up in waxed paper and tied them with string to give as gifts.

For the bird lover in every family.

Pecan Pie

Phew. This is the last of my backlogged posts. I made this pecan pie, an adaptation from Epicurious, way back in October, for Thanksgiving. Instead of the whole wheat crust, I used my new favourite recipe from The Joy of Cooking, the same one I used back when I made the two processor pies.

So, assume you’ve made one batch of dough, and you have two discs of dough to use. I made one into a pumpkin pie, but saved the other for this recipe. Roll it out and stuff it in the pan and whatnot, like you normally would.

Chuck that in the freezer to stay cool and grab yourself a small saucepan. Pitch in 3/4 cup pure maple syrup, 3/4 cup packed brown sugar, 1/2 cup light corn syrup, and 1/4 cup butter.

Melt that sucker over medium heat until it’s all dissolved.

Increase the heat and boil that for a minute, then remove it from the heat and allow it to cool to room temperature, about 45 minutes.

In a small bowl, whisk together 3 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Whisk in the cooled maple mixture.

Then stir in 1 1/2 cups pecan halves. Mmmmm. I love pecans.

Pour the filling into the crust.

Bake that sucker for about 55 minutes, or until the filling is slightly puffy around the edges and the centre is set. Mine took less time for some reason (so you see it burned a bit), but it might have had something to do with the pumpkin pie I was cooking at a slightly higher temperature.

Serve at room temperature, with a dob of whipped cream!

Chewy Molasses Squares

These were a consolation prize the Pie found after the disastrous experiment with s’mores cookies last week. And they turned out to be an excellent way of depleting our more esoteric baking supplies.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and butter an 8″ baking dish. I went with the extra precaution of lining it with parchment and buttering that, too. Now I doubled my recipe and plopped it in a 9″ x 13″ baking dish because the recipe got its math wrong and there is no way that an 8″ square pan leaves you with forty 1 1/2″ squares. It just ain’t so. I only ended up with twenty-four, and that’s in the bigger pan.

Anyway. Don’t fret about the math for now, and whisk together 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon salt and set that aside for now.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together 1/3 cup unsalted butter (room temperature) and 3/4 cup granulated sugar until they’re pale and fluffy, a couple minutes. I used half white and half brown sugar here because I ran out of molasses so I needed to boost the flavour a bit.

Separate out 4 egg whites and use the yolks for something else. I’m sure you could get away with tossing them into this mix, but it would make for a much denser cake. I might try it next time. Huck those into the mixer and beat to combine.

Grab yourself 1 cup molasses. I ran out of molasses halfway through and discovered that my Golden Syrup had corroded the tin it was in, so my only recourse was lily white corn syrup, which made my squares quite a bit more pale than they were supposed to be. Your squares will be much darker.

Anyway, pour that in as well and give it a stir until it’s all combined.

At this point, the Pie remarked that this was one of the grosser-looking things I had ever made, with maybe the exception of banana bread. He has no appreciation for the science of things. Then of course I added in the flour mixture and whipped that around and he was all like, “ooooh, it’s so pretty and smooth!” Figures.

Anyway, smooth that lovely pretty substance into your prepared pan and chuck it in the oven for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of it comes out clean. For the doubled recipe, this took about an hour.

Allow the cake to cool completely in the pan on a wire rack, then tip it out and cut it into as many squares as you like.

Grab a bowl and dump in about 1/2 cup icing sugar, and roll each square in that just before serving (if you do it in advance then the icing sugar will be absorbed into the square and it won’t look as pretty).

Then you eat them!

Caramel Corn

I’ve been experimenting quite a bit recently with caramel (not “carmel”, like Newfoundlanders and many Americans call it, that drives me bonkers) corn — something to which I am entirely addicted, but usually too lazy to make. I think I’ve finally come up with a recipe I like, however, so now you can have it. This version is plain jane, but feel free to jazz it up with chopped salted nuts for extra pizzazz.

First, start with 10 cups popped popcorn. This is generally about 1 cup of the unpopped stuff. We don’t have an air popper here, and I’m afraid of the chemicals in microwave packets, so I’ll let you in on how I make my own popcorn (when I’m not doing it this way). Take about 1/3 cup of popcorn and plop it in the bottom of a brown paper lunch bag.

Fold the top edge down once and then again, over itself.

Put that on its side in your microwave and cook away. Every microwave is different when it comes to popcorn, but I’ve found that on mine, cooking it for 2 minutes and 35 seconds on power level 9 (out of 10) pops nearly every kernel, every time, without burning anything. Make sure to save people’s teeth by sifting out all the unpopped kernels before you use this stuff.

Now, preheat your oven to 250°F and spray a large roasting pan. I used the one I save for turkey time. You could also use a large metal bowl if that’s all you have. Plop your popcorn in the roasting pan for now.

Scrounge around and find yourself a wooden spoon (always preferable to metal in candy making), a spatula, a whisk, and a candy thermometer. Keep those all handy.

Find a large pot, too, and plop in 1 cup butter, 2 cups brown sugar, 1/2 cup corn syrup (any colour, doesn’t matter), and 1/2 teaspoon salt.

On the side, have two small dishes ready with 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and 2 teaspoons vanilla.

Bring the contents of the pot to a boil, stirring often, and clip the candy thermometer to the side. The reason you use the wooden spoon here is because sugar crystallizes more quickly on metal than wood, and crystallization is not what you want at this particular juncture.

Once the mixture starts boiling, stir it constantly for 1 minute.

Then take the spoon out and let it boil on its own for 5 minutes. It’s going to boil up pretty high, so make sure you use a large pot for this. At this point, your candy thermometer should be reading 250°F, which is the magic number for the hard ball stage — exactly what we want.

Turn off the heat and stir your mixture for about a minute. Then remove it entirely from the heat.

Whisk in your vanilla and baking soda. It will fizz up, so be careful. See how the texture and colour has changed? Well, you can’t in that photo because it’s a terrible photo, but it will become smooth and a light opaque brown almost immediately. Keep whisking until it more or less stops fizzing.

Slowly and in a controlled stream, pour your caramel over your waiting popcorn, mixing with a spatula. Don’t worry if you don’t get it entirely incorporated.

I suggest leaving all your caramel tools soaking in hot water for a few minutes. It makes cleanup so much easier.

Pop the roasting pan filled with popcorn in the oven and bake it for an hour, stirring it all over every 15 minutes. While the caramel had started to harden on you before you stuck it in there, baking it at this low heat enables it to ooze all over the place and cover everything evenly.

So when you’re stirring, make sure to scrape the bottom of the pan, because you will always find a nice puddle of caramel down there.

Spread a counter with waxed paper and spray it, too. Once the hour is up, take the pan from the oven and spread the popcorn in a thin layer on the waxed paper to cool. Squish it down with your spatula to spread it out. Doing that now will make it both cool faster and be easier to separate after it’s cooled.

Once it has fully cooled, break it up into pieces and store it in a sealed container for up to a few days.

Or package it in wee bags for a bake sale, which is what I did.

I found the “Hello” stickers lying around in my office supply cupboard. I figured what the heck, eh?

Baked’s Sweet and Salty Cake

Not only do the Pie and il Principe share a birthday, but I’ll have you know that Cait’s birthday is only four days later. And then Jiss’ birthday is only a scant five days after that. Because we were heading back to Ottawa for a visit at the beginning of the month, we decided to postpone our birthday celebrations until we got there so that Cait and Jiss could share in the fun.

So, for my husband on his birthday and my best friend on her birthday, and my husband’s friend’s spouse on HER birthday, I made them this fantastic confection, which comes out of our favourite cookbook of all time, Baked.

You can read the recipe online here, here, or here. But you should really buy the book. The pictures are glorious and the authors explain everything so well.

This recipe involves caramel, chocolate, and salt. Yes, SALT. I rarely use salt in baking but this one made it all worth it. If you can get your hands on fleur de sel, all the better, but you can use sea salt as a substitute if necessary. It’s also worth noting that this cake takes many steps, and you can save time by making things like the caramel the day before and putting it in the fridge.

For the Caramel:

Pour 1/4 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 2 tablespoons light corn syrup into a medium saucepan and stir it around.

Plop a candy thermometer in the pot (making sure it doesn’t touch the bottom) and bring the mixture to a boil, cooking until the temperature reaches 350°F, which will take about 10 minutes.

Keep a close eye on it. If you cook it any higher than the specified temperature it can burn super quickly.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, combine 1/2 cup whipping cream and 1 teaspoon fleur de sel. Bring that to a boil as well and cook until the salt is dissolved, about 5 minutes. Remove that from the heat and set aside.

When the sugar has reached 350°F, remove it from the heat and allow it to cool for one minute. See how it’s browned a little bit? That’s the caramelization of the sugar, but you don’t want it to get too dark.

Carefully (very carefully) add the hot cream to the sugar mixture. It foams and fizzes quite a bit, so you don’t want that in your face. Whisk that all up until it’s smooth.

Whisk in 1/4 cup sour cream and let the caramel cool.

For the Cake:

Preheat your oven to 325°F and butter three 8″ round cake pans. Cut a circle out of parchment paper for the bottom of each one, butter it as well, and dust them all with flour.

You need two decent-sized bowls and the bowl of a mixer for this next part. In one bowl, whisk together 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa, 1 1/4 cups hot water, and 2/3 cup sour cream. Set that aside and let it cool while you do the other things.

In the other non-mixer bowl, sift together 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt and set that aside.

Now, in the mixer bowl, beat together 3/4 cup softened butter and 1/2 cup vegetable shortening. Beat them until they are smooth and kind of stringy when the paddle is spinning around, about 7 minutes.

Beat in 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar and 1 cup dark brown sugar until light and fluffy.

Add in 3 eggs, one at a time.

Add in 1 tablespoon vanilla extract, scrape down the sides of the bowl, and beat for a further 30 seconds or so.

Carefully add in a third of the flour mixture, then half your chocolate mixture, then a third of the flour, the rest of the chocolate, and the rest of the flour.

Divide the batter evenly between the three prepared pans and bake for 18-24 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre of each cake comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely before removing from the pans and peeling off the parchment paper.

For the Caramel Ganache:

First, finely chop 1lb dark chocolate.

Also, cut up 1lb butter into tablespoon-sized pieces. Make sure they’re soft but still cool.

Now we’re going to make some more caramel, but this time without the salt or the sour cream.

So, in one pot, combine 1/4 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 2 tablespoons light corn syrup and stir it around. Bring it to a boil over high heat until a candy thermometer reads 350°F, which will take about ten minutes. Remember to watch closely.

In the other pot bring 1 1/2 cups heavy cream to a boil, then remove from heat and set aside.

When the caramel has reached 350°F, remove it from the heat and allow it to rest for a minute.

Carefully add the hot cream to the caramel and stir to combine, then let it cool for 5 minutes.

Plop your chopped chocolate in the bowl of a mixer and pour the caramel over the chocolate. Let that sit for a minute, then stir the chocolate to dissolve it.

Shove your bowl into your mixer with a paddle attachment and mix the chocolate goo on low until the outside of the bowl feels cool to the touch.

Dump in your cut-up butter bits and mix on medium-high until it’s all well-combined and smooth and a little bit whipped, another 2 minutes or so.

To Put It All Together:

Now I followed the instructions up to this point to the letter, and ended up with a slippy-slide-y cake that ended up looking a bit like a giant pile of poop. When I put my cake layers together, they kept sliding off on the caramel and the weight of the cake pushed all the lovely caramel goo out of its insides and it was altogether rather a disaster. So I recommend cooling your ganache and your caramel slightly before you do this, just so they’re slightly colder than room temperature and a little easier to handle.

Slice the tops off your cakes to make them level and place one on your cake plate.

If you are concerned about making a mess with your icing (though considering how goopy mine was it didn’t matter anyway) you can place four strips of parchment paper on your cake plate under the cake to catch the excess, and then pull them away later, leaving a nice clean plate.

Take about 1/4 cup of the caramel and spread a thin layer on the cake, allowing it to soak into the cake a bit (which will only happen if your cake or your caramel is warm, and will just make everything quite slippery).

Layer on top of that about 1 cup of the caramel ganache (also, at room temperature, incredibly slippery).

Add another layer of cake. See what I mean about gravity really being annoying here?

Repeat your caramel and ganache steps and top with your final cake layer. This is where I tried to remove some of the excess and failed.

Use the remaining ganache (easy to do if it’s cold, if it’s room temperature you’ll use wayyy less) to cover the surface of the cake. At this point the whole thing started to slide slowly and rather unnervingly to one side. It was like watching a mudslide in slow motion. There was much yelling.

Sprinkle the top with fleur de sel and chill for an hour or so before serving, to set the ganache.

At least it tasted good.

Ivy Vanilla Wedding Cake

On Saturday my best friend Chel got married. To Invis. For the second time.

Chel and Invis — 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?