Clockwork Lemon

Pinwheel Cake Tutorial

 Spring is supposedly on its way but when I look out my window all I see is little flurries of snow and a grey sky. Its probably a bit unrealistic to expect green grass and flowers in Alberta in February. I won't be vacationing somewhere warm any time soon so I've been staring at spring inspired photos and fabrics online to get my fill of pinks and greens and yellows. 

I have been reading the fabric and quilting blog Nana Company even though I don't sew or quilt. Her fabric choices are so pretty that I love checking out what sort of cute stuff she is working on. When I decided that I wanted to make a spring themed cake with pinwheels I used her creations as my inspiration for the colours and patterns.

 

 

 

Making these cute spring decorations yourself is actually really easy. You can make them any size, colour, and design that you want. Then they can be used to decorate cakes, cookies, and cupcakes or whatever else needs a pretty spring decoration.

 

 

The supplies:

• Gum Paste/sugar paste (I always use the premixed stuff because it's the perfect consistency and one bag lasts me through many decorating projects. You can find it at most craft stores)
• Crisco or some brand of shortening
• rolling pin
• gel food colouring
• paint brushes
• vodka (to dilute the food colouring with)
• optional : shimmer or petal powder

 

 

Knead your choice of food colouring into some gum paste. To get everything soft and workable I usually knead a tiny bit of crisco into it.

 

Tip: I find the pinwheels look the best when the background colour is pale and the painted on and folded parts are painted darker. Go easy on the food colouring because you can always add a wash of colour later.

Grease your work surface (important so that it is easy to move after!) and roll out the gum paste.  Use a piece of paper or post-it note cut into a square as a template for your square shape. Keep any gum paste that you aren't using either in plastic wrap or in a plastic bag to prevent it from drying out

 

 

 

Wet your paint brush with a bit of the vodka or dilute some of the food colouring into a little dish of vodka to paint your pattern with. Vodka evaporates faster than water and doesn't make the gumpaste as soggy or as sticky.

Paint whatever pattern you want! It really doesn't have to be perfect because only parts of it will be showing. Plus part of the charm is that they are hand painted and thus not completely perfect.

 

 

 

Once your square is painted use a knife or gum paste tool to cut lines from the corners about two-thirds of the way to the middle.

 

 

 

To shape the pinwheel dab a tiny bit of vodka onto the left corner and then fold and press that corner into the middle.

 

 

 

Repeat that with the remaining corners folding each alternating one in.

 

 

 

 

Voila! A pinwheel! Stick a little ball of gumpaste in the center to cover up the points there. It looks really cute if you paint it a bit darker than the base colour that you are using.

 

 

 

I really like the way the pinwheels look when the folded in parts are either brushed with shimmer powder or a darker wash of colour for some contrast. It's easiest to let the pinwheel dry before doing this so that you aren't pressing on it and ruining the shape. However, I'm super impatient sometimes and I just brushed it on right away and then used the back of the paint brush to lift up any parts that I had squished down.

 

 

 

Use a spatula to gently move your pretty new pinwheel to a safe place to dry for a couple hours or up to overnight. Re-grease your work surface and start on the next pinwheel

 

 

 

 

Once your pinwheels are dry they are ready to decorate with! I stuck my pinwheels on a chocolate layer cake covered in light green homemade marshmallow fondant.

 

 

For edible glue beat together an egg white with a lot of icing sugar to make a thick royal icing that is spreadable rather than thin enough to pipe. Spread a little glob on the back on the pinwheel and hold it against the cake for a few seconds. The thicker the royal icing (which means more icing sugar beat in) the better it will glue the pinwheels to your cake/cookies/cupcakes.

 

 

 

 

To stick the pinwheels to the wooden skewers place the pinwheel face down on a flat surface and spread a glob of the thick royal icing in the center of it. Gently press the skewer into the royal icing and then cover with a circle of fondant. To make it more secure you can spread a bit more icing around the edges of the fondant. Allow to completely dry before using.

 

 

I had so much fun planning and making the decorations for this cake that I forgot about the cold and snowy weather outside.

That is, until I looked out the window again. But by that point I had cake in front of me so it really didn't matter that much.

 

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Bread and Other Bake-Sale Treats

 

This past weekend I baked up some goodies for the Calgary Food Blogger Bake Sale which was benefiting Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids Society. I had gone back and forth over what I should bake because I knew that if I brought sugar cookies or cupcakes I'd go overboard and turn it into some huge decorating session that would keep me up all night painting tiny pieces of sugar paste. Don't get me wrong, I love making fiddly little decorations but designing and executing them the night before is just a terrible idea.

 

 

 

 

Instead I mixed up enough wild rice and onion dough to make six loaves of bread and put it in the fridge to rise overnight. I love this bread because it's soft and onion-y and makes excellent toast. Plus the more I bake the more I find that many people prefer savory baked goods over the sweet ones. Given the choice between a cheese bun or a brownie I'd choose the cheese bun every time (but really I'd be happiest if I could just have both). 

 

Calgary Food Blogger Bake Sale

 

 

There have been so many times when I've been reading a food blog and wished that the blogger would just make (insert delicious item here) for me so I could eat it ASAP. 

If you are in the Calgary area you have to opportunity to have that exact thing happen! Vincci from Ceci n’est pas un food blog has organized a food blogger bake sale and the proceeds from the sale will be going to Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids Society which is a really worthy charity.

Whole Wheat and Rye Swirl Bread

 

Sometimes bread baked with 100% whole wheat or whole grains turns out dense and a slightly bitter. I wanted a sandwich loaf that would be light, soft, easily sliceable, and delicious.

The starting point for this recipe was King Arthur Flour's whole wheat sandwich loaf. When I first tried their recipe I was very happy with the soft texture but not really sold on the flavor. I started trying different flours and doughs until (after many bakes) I came up with this loaf which has become a weekly staple. Its 100% whole wheat swirled with dark rye and caraway seed dough that bakes up soft and flavorful thanks to the addition of potato flakes and buttermilk.

 

 

I like to test my bread recipes over and over to make sure that the dough behaves relatively consistently. I recently had a fun fun baking date with Jacinthe and Rachele which I used as an opportunity to try out this recipe in another kitchen.

The rye dough is a mix of whole wheat and dark rye with caraway seeds and coco powder. The coco doesn't make the break chocolatey, it just adds extra flavor to the loaf and some extra colour to the rye. Both doughs have potato flakes, orange juice, and buttermilk in them. Potato flakes are just the stuff that you make instant mashed potatoes out of. Make sure you buy the plain ones though and not the ones with added fake flavors like sour cream and chive!

Cheese Empanadas (Improved Recipe)

 

 

Last year around Christmas I went to visit my friend Natalia and stay with her family. Her family is from Chile and her mom was nice enough to show us how to make delicious gooey cheese empanadas.

This year I visited them again and we all made cheese empanadas again (yum!). Natalia's mom said that she wasn't completely happy with how the empanadas turned out last time so now I'm updating this post with all the improvements. The empanadas were good last year but this year they were insanely tasty. Too delicious for their own good.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

 

For Christmas this year I received Kim Boyce's book Good to the Grain which had been on my to-read list forever. One of the first recipes in the book is for chocolate chip cookies made with whole wheat flour. If I had just stumbled upon a recipe like this on a random website I would probably just pass it by thinking something cynical along the lines of: "I'd like my cookies to taste like cookies.. not like cookie replacements that aren't actually healthy anyways". However, this book and these cookies have gotten many good reviews and they aren't portrayed as a "healthier cookie" but rather a cookie that benefits from the nutty flavor of the whole wheat. Since flour is my favorite ingredient I wanted to take the opportunity to see how different flours could improve baked goods with their complex flavors.

The result is a cookie that doesn't tastes whole grain or like its trying to be more wholesome, it tastes like a chocolate chip cookie that has an almost brown sugar or nutty flavor to it.

 

 

 

The first step in making these cookies is to sift the whole wheat flour. Scooping up a cup of flour straight from the bag or bin usually results in a densely packed cup  which throws the proportions of the recipe off. Sifting the flour works air into it and gives you a more consistent amount of flour in each cup.