Seasonal Baking - Fiona Cairns

My birthday is getting close so I've been buying myself treats. I had half intended to wait and hope that I got 'Seasonal Baking' as a present, but then I couldn't resist it (always on the cards) and got it anyway telling myself that I would need it for a birthday cake recipe, or instead of a birthday cake, or something along those general lines... I really liked Fiona Cairns first book, 'Bake and Decorate', the second one has some amazing looking things in it but isn't really my style so I was really curious to know what this one would be like.

I think it's excellent. It's easy to forget that five or so years ago we weren't anything like as baking crazy as we are now but I do remember how eye catching the first Fiona Cairns cakes I saw were, I now get to some of see them every day at work and am still impressed (as she's local I also sometimes see the woman herself shopping - she's very polite) partly because so much of it is really quite simple, the sort of thing that's realistically achievable with a bit of time and patience, and the sort of thing where most of the decorative bits are easily obtainable in any decent sized supermarket or cook shop. Things like hundreds and thousands, smarties, nuts, fresh fruit, and dribbled icing or chocolate are reassuringly familiar and a good collection of biscuit cutters and those plunger stamp things for icing won't break the bank. I've amassed a few over the years and like finding ideas that make me use the bits I've got rather than sending me searching for yet more new stuff. 

My favourite decorative inspiration in this book though is a cake with a rose design painted on it. I've thought about painting directly onto icing for a while but had never done it before - I have now and was quite pleased with the results. Painting with food colouring, especially the very thick paste kind is a combination of using water colour and what I imagine printers ink would be like, you have to dilute it quite a lot or it just doesn't want to dry which means you need to be careful about how you build up colour for shading but otherwise opens up some very intriguing decorative possibilities.

The seasonal aspect of the book is rather nice too, I like the use of fresh and crystallised flowers and fruit, and also the use of exotic fruits in their proper seasons (there are plenty of things to do with mangos in here), again it's encouragement to use what's around which is always going to be more cost effective and help get the best out of ingredients too .

Altogether it's a thoroughly inspiring, practical, book which delivers on both substance and style. There are savoury bits in here too, cordial recipes, and a very good sounding mincemeat (fig and almond). I'm pleased with my present to myself, it's certainly a rather better reflection of how I want to bake than a lot of the books I've seen recently.   

  

The Birthday Cake Book – Fiona Cairns

I’m still feeling a little despondent, a state not helped by the weather today – what I was hoping for was a basically dry day because the plan was to go to Burghley for the last day of the horse trials. The plan was followed but somewhat dampened by a torrential downpour (we should probably have changed our minds before paying up to get in) with the result that we were both grumpy but never at just the same time so a cycle of mild bad temper was instigated. This wasn’t improved in my case when we got back to Leicester to find it dry and sunny. The Scottish one very sensibly dropped me off at my flat and fled back to the country to dry out in his own good time, meanwhile I got to spend some quality time with ‘The Birthday Cake Book’ which arrived on Friday but was too heavy haul around all weekend.

I’m finding it hard to settle on reading anything at the moment. The book I have on the go is good and I want to finish it but I can’t seem to keep my attention on it. Which is another reason I love cook books – and books with pictures generally I suppose. ‘The Birthday Cake Book’ actually distracted me from crap on television (and a half hearted intention to do laundry and write letters, but almost anything else would have sidetracked me from those jobs) which is a big step forward and gave me something lovely and escapist to think about which I appreciate too.

I really liked ‘Bake and Decorate’ which had some great and do-able looking cake decorating exercises and did rather wonder what this follow up would be like. ‘Bake and Decorate’ seemed to have it covered – the answer is that ‘The Birthday Cake Book’ steps everything up a level. Truthfully I think I might be a little bit out of my league here, I’m just not sure that I have the patience for some of the projects, or perhaps even more importantly the audience – so it’s a very good thing that each one come with a candle rating which indicates if something is easy, requires some effort, or is challenging. The other thing that I think is particularly brilliant about both Fiona Cairns books is that the cakes look obviously home made in the pictures. There are small flaws that are reassuring to look at because the overall effect is still stunning and it encourages me to believe that I could achieve these things.

Going back to the idea of an audience, these are cakes with a wow factor; painted Russian dolls made from sponge with a lime and vodka syrup filling, a crystal skull which puts Damien Hirst’s diamond effort to shame, and a bucket and spade cake complete with crushed biscuit sand and chocolate sea shells all really stand out. Also ‘The Birthday Cake Book’ is likely to feature heavily as a present for baking friends over the next few months especially if I think they may be persuaded to make me one of the following: a Blackberry, Lavender, Rose, and white chocolate cake, a butterscotch cake which has amazing hazelnuts on it (they’ve had a sort of toffee apple treatment but also been allowed to drip so they’re all wispy and incredible looking), and a perfect heart shaped affair with eau de nil icing, a bunch of fresh violets on it and some nifty ribbon to hide any messy bits around the sides. That last one is also the cake I most want to attempt myself, I’ve never used sugar paste so have no idea how easy it is to get that flawless looking finish (it has a two candles for some effort required rating) but I love it.

Inspired by all the pictures I made my first Sachertorte tonight. Fiona Cairns gives a flourless recipe but I wanted something a little more traditional so made the Fortnum and Mason version (sort of, Fiona replaces flour with almonds, I used a bit of both). There’s an episode in a Molly Keane book where someone makes a Sachertorte and it’s desperately complicated as well as involving a profligate number of eggs. My recipe turned out to create a profligate amount of washing up as I used 3 bowls just for the cake, never mind icing it – after which the half dozen eggs required were a mere bagatelle. Happily it turns out that it’s just my sort of thing; richly chocolaty without being very sweet and with a slightly decadent feel to it. The ganache threatened to split (was actually a claggy mess) but was rescued by a thorough beating with an electric whisk and now I can go to bed feeling like something other than a soaking came out of today.

Tea Time Luxury

Bake and Decorate Tea Time Luxury – Fiona Cairns

This book was a case of love at first sight – I got it a week ago as an early Easter present (any excuse) after a rotten day, and after another rotten day I have turned to it again to be cheered up. I had meant to bake something from it as a treat for the Scottish one but the afternoon is passing fast so I'm going to write about it instead (hopefully he’ll be happy with a cream egg).

It is a truly lovely book to look at even with the addition of the sort of sparkly lettering that I normally view askance, and is full of pretty, pretty, cakes. I’m a fan of the concept of tea time even if it’s the sort of thing that I never get round to doing quite as formally as I would like. We (me, my Scottish friend and my mother) like a bit of ceremony around the place, especially if it involves well pressed linen and some spiffy china (my mother really likes her china and we’we've spent many a January day in Stoke-on-Trent to prove the point).

Cook books are a weak spot for me, not I think a surprise for any regular readers here, but even I've got to the point where I have to seriously question if I need another one – it has to offer something special, and honestly I think this one does. As it's all sparkly I couldn't help but notice Fiona Cairns name on the front and she sort of interests me as she’s vaguely local; I knew she’d started a business baking cakes at her kitchen table, and now sells to Fortnum and Mason’s and Waitrose amongst others which seems impressively industrious and inspirational to me. That’s what made me pick the book up.

I kept dropping heavy hints about it because of the contents (not just the pictures either). The recipe’s look good (not tried any yet but there’s nothing there to raise the suspicions of the regular baker, or to put them off either) white chocolate and cardamom rosewater sponge anyone? And that’s not even the best looking cake in there... I wouldn't say there’s anything ground breaking, but rather a really good repertoire of usable things, the tips and hints section strikes me as particularly good, but again probably all stuff I could find elsewhere. What I like is the structure of the book; hints followed by the bake part, and then the decorate section. Decorating is broken up, like the recipes into large cakes, small, and biscuits.

All manner of impressively cool but simple things are shown; pretty things with crystallised flowers and ribbon, child friendly (not perhaps if it’s your own child that’s going to be hopped up on sugar) things heaped with candy's, decadently expensive looking things involving gold leaf (which I might one day use – but not before a pay rise or two). It’s all very inspiring, and really appeals to the magpie instinct within. I am adding a square cake tin to my kitchen wish list, where it will join the long desired aspic cutters, and I'm after some black viola’s for candying purposes to make something very sophisticated in the birthday cake line.