Halloween Cake, Part II

I'll keep this short because it's 02:00 and I'm quite tired now as I've just finished making my Halloween cake for work.

If you remember the sketch from a couple of weeks ago it was supposed to look like this.

First, a little bit of prep work. I've been making some vanilla sugar for the last few weeks (I say 'making', but all I did was put a vanilla pod in some sugar) so I'm going to use that in the cake.

... and I need some coloured icing, too.

I'll skip the cake baking thing, so it's just about making the pumpkin...

My first quadruple-decker cake :-). It's a bit burnt around the edges but I'm going to cut them off anyway so it doesn't really matter.

I put it in the freezer for an hour so it was a bit firmer and easier to hack around with.

A marzipan wrap so the icing has a smoother finish. I used apricot jam as a glue to hold it in place. It's also starting to creep me out a little bit.

Another layer of jam and coloured icing creates the finished product. I've carved out the face just like the real thing.

So there we go. I'm quite pleased with it, if I do say so myself...

Lobster Cake

These are some plans for a lobster cake that I never got round to making. It was going to be for the family Boxing Day 2008 get together, but I made some vol au vonts instead.

Lost a Budgie?

If you've lost a dozen or so Plain Parakeets recently, they were in my neighbour's garden earlier making a bit of a racket.

Last seen heading West by North West.



I know it's not a very good picture, so here's an identikit close-up...

My Day In Pictures

I've been working at home this week which means that apart from phone calls and 2 grocery trips I've not left the house or had much human contact.

I was getting a little stir-crazy last night so I decided to go for a walk today along Regent's Canal from Limehouse DLR to Kingsland Road.

I followed the canal towpath (and not the roads), but this is a rough route map:

http://snipurl.com/regents_canal [http://maps.google.com]

Here's some pictures I took along the way...

First off, I was amazed how quickly the noise and bustle of Commercial Road turned into this tranquil little haven. Literally, a staircase with about a dozen steps separated the main road from this.

A little park about 10 minutes along the canal. I found another staircase back to the smog, got a coffee and brought it here.

Some barges. There were a couple of dozen in total along the stretch of canal I walked. Most were up by Victoria Park though.

Some little duckies (Moorhens?). There were a fair few of these little chappies.

Big duckies. These were the only ones I saw.

Haggerston Gasworks.

One of the avenues running through Victoria Park. I didn't spend much time here, but there's a lake that probably has a nice view in winter. It's blocked by bull rushes at the moment.

Someone with a sense of humour has decorated a few of the mooring points like this.

A mural on the side of what is presumably Ron's Eel and Shell Fish Shop.

I'm feeling a lot more relaxed now as you can probably tell from my writing. I might keep this as one of my secret little happy places.

Unless I accidentally post the photos all over the the Internet. D'oh!

Halloween Cake, Part I

I know it's still 3-and-a-bit weeks to go, but I'm already planning Halloween. To be fair, it's not really that far in advance given that Christmas decorations are already on sale in supermarkets...

Anyway, I need to try and one-up my cakey offering from last year, which to remind you was the following (can you believe I've been here a year already?):



So here's the concept sketch for this year's effort. I'm thinking of two whole cakes stacked on top of each other to get the height and then cover it in royal icing or marzipan (or both). I might even put some of the rumtopf fruit in it for good measure.



Watch this space for progress...

Going too far

So you've probably all worked out by now that I have a bit of a geek streak running through me. I play to it sometimes and most people seem to know when I'm joking and when I'm serious.

I might have gone a bit too far today though. Someone at work asked me if it was my birthday last week (which it was) and I said yes. They asked how old I was and without batting an eyelid I replied:

"35. I'm really excited because it's a multiple of two primes, and next year is a square number."

To be honest *I'm* not sure if I was joking or not.


P.S. And the year after *that* is a prime, too, but then it goes downhill for a while...