Chelsea Buns {recipe}

Makes 4 large buns

(I usually double it, then split into 6 very large buns and bake in an oven tray)

Ingredients:

450g strong white bread flour

1 tsp salt

75g castor sugar

1 x 7g sachet instant yeast

150ml milk

150ml water

50g butter

Filling:

1 Tbsp melted butter

2-4 Tbsp Demerara sugar

Cinnamon to taste

80g Raisins

Icing:

about 4 tbsp icing sugar

Boiling water

Method:

Heat the milk, water, and butter just enough for the butter to melt, then set aside to cool until it is about body temperature.

Measure out the flour, salt, sugar, and dried yeast into your stand mixer bowl and mix together. Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and stir through quickly, then knead with the kneading hook until you get a smooth, but very soft dough (you know it has been kneaded enough when a small ball stretched between your fingers will stretch to form a very thin translucent 'window pane' without tearing.) At this point is is very sticky and difficult to handle. The dough can be kneaded by hand, but requires plenty of patience as it is so sticky, I don't recommend using a bread machine. Leave the dough in the mixer bowl and cover with cling film or a damp tea towel and leave somewhere warm (like an airing cupboard, or near a hot oven), until it’s doubled in size.

Knock it back with your fist and quickly knead in the raisins. Form the dough into a rectangle and press it out (or roll it out) until it measures about 6" x 18" (or longer). I do this on a piece of oiled greaseproof paper as it makes rolling the dough up much easier.

Spread with the melted butter, then sprinkle over Demerara sugar and cinnamon (as much or as little as suits your taste). Now roll the dough up tightly (like a Swiss roll), starting at a 6" edge, so that you end up with a 6" long roll. Slice into 4 equal pieces with a very sharp non-serrated knife, or a piece of unflavoured dental floss, and place the buns in a 9" square pan, equally spaced from each other and the sides of the pan. Ensure that all 4 buns are placed with a cut edge facing up and that they all look somewhat round (I also like to neaten the spirals where they have been smooshed when cutting). Cover again and rise until they are nicely puffed up and touching each other and the sides of the pan.

Bake for about 15-20 minutes at 180C until they are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. 

While they are baking make your icing by adding a few drops of boiling water to the icing sugar until you get a thick, smooth icing. Spread this over the buns once they are out of the oven, while they are still hot (you can put on as much icing as you desire, my family prefer just a little icing). Allow to cool in the pan until they can be handled without burning one self. Eat immediately!

(Left overs can be kept for the next day, and are best heated for about 30 seconds in the microwave.)

Finger-licking good!

N. Ireland Holiday

We had an amazing holiday, staying with some very good friends, in N. Ireland this summer. I finally got to visit The Giants's Causeway, a sight I have wanted to see ever since I first saw pictures of it in Primary School. It was a bit of a dull day and, because we went on a bank holiday, there were hundreds of people all over the sight, but I still managed to get a few good photos.

We hiked around towers, went for walks along the beautiful Bangor seafront eating ice-cream cones and watching yacht races, wen't go-karting, ate lots of great food, visited gardens, visited the titanic museum (I wouldn't recommend that), and saw a bit of Belfast.

I also got to go fishing for the first time in about 20 years. I used to love going fishing with my Dad, but my hubby is not so keen!

Wedding Cakes

Next week is my brothers wedding anniversary, so I thought I would do a post on wedding cakes, featuring, of course, his cake. I absolutely love making wedding cakes, and hope to make many more of them. Here are some of my favourites:

First up is my brother's cake. I didn't know, when I went out to South Africa for his wedding that he and his gorgeous bride would ask me to do their cake along with the mother-of-the-bride. I was thrilled, of course! They wanted an all chocolate cake. Ideally, they wanted a crisp white chocolate collar around the cake with the top filled in with chocolate truffles (the cake itself was a rich "Bar One" chocolate cake). Since we didn't have the equipment required to make the collar, we settled for white chocolate panels, overlapping each other around each tier. The top was then filled with hand rolled truffles in 3 flavours: white chocolate rolled in coconut, milk chocolate also rolled in coconut, and dark chocolate rolled in cocoa.

Happy Anniversary Mike and DD!!!

The next cake I made for a good friend, and (ex) neighbour, of mine. The cake is adorned with a swarm of golden butterflies and covered in an intricate scroll pattern. All three tiers of the cake are dark chocolate sponge in 6 layers with vanilla buttercream icing. The cake is covered in ivory fondant with the piping done in ivory royal icing. The butterflies are made from fondant and coloured in three different shades of gold. It was delivered all the way up in Morecambe, and the whole thing was assembled at the venue (the butterflies were to fragile to survive the journey attached to the cake).

Next up is a cake that was designed to compliment an ivory and orange colour scheme. The bride wanted a modern wedding cake, but also wanted something quite simple and understated.

The cake is two tiers of moist carrot (and pineapple) cake with cream cheese icing covered ivory fondant ruffles. The top tier 'floats' above the 12" bottom tier. The Gerberas are fondant in three different shades of orange, with golden centres.

And finally I'd like to share a Groom's cake topper that I made for a Cowboy themed party.

Plaid cross quilt {tutorial}

This is the quilt I recently made for my son. It was really simple to make, and quick to assemble too.

The finished quilt measures 84" x 84"

Fabrics:

For the crosses:

20 different fat quarters (mix of lights, mediums and darks)

For the borders:

1/2 yard dark fabric 2" border (cut 8 strips 2 1/2" wide)

1 yard medium or light fabric for 4" border (cut 8 strips 4 1/2" wide)

Dark fabric for binding (or 2 contrasting fabrics for machine stitched binding)

Batting and backing fabric

Method:

Start by cutting one of the fat quarters into 3 1/2" strips, so that you end up with five 22" x 3 1/2" strips.

Cut 4 of those strips into:

• one 9 1/2" piece
• three 3 1/2" pieces

Cut the last strip into:

• two 9 1/2" pieces

From 1 fat quarter, you should end up with six 9 1/2" x 3 1/2" pieces and twelve 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" pieces, enough to make up 6 crosses.

Now do the same for all the rest of the fat quarters.

Once that is done it is time to lay the quilt out. I like to lay mine out on a blanket, the same size as, or bigger, than the quilt I am making, this way the pieces stay where you put them. Start laying crosses down as pictured below:

All the 9 1/2" long strips should lay in the same direction. Use "partial crosses" to fill in the gaps around the sides. You will also need to cut down the 9 1/2" pieces to 6 1/2" along the very top and bottom edges of the quilt.

Once the whole top is layed out and you are happy with the balance of colours, it is time to pick it all up again! Start by labelling each column, using a post-it-note or piece of tape, on the first block. (There should be 24 columns if you have made it the same size as mine.)

Pick up the labelled first piece of column 1 and place it on top of the second piece below it (in the same column), then pick those two pieces up and place them on the third piece, and so on, until you have a neat pile of pieces, labelled with their column number on the top. Clip them together, and do the same with column number 2, and continue until you have 24 piles.

Now sew each of those piles into a long strip with a 1/4' seam, being very careful to keep them in the correct order. When done you should have 24 long strips, each with the numbered label at the top end. Iron each seam flat. Seams align better if, for all the odd numbered columns you iron the seams one way, and all the even numbered columns have their seems ironed in the opposite direction.

Sew all those columns together with a 1/4" seam, again, being careful to orient them correctly and in the right order. I don't pin before I sew, but rather make sure each cross seam is aligned correctly (where they match up), by stretching the fabric slightly and letting them 'click' into place (because the seams are ironed in opposite directions, they fit into each other very neatly).

Iron the whole thing so that all the seams are flat.

Finally add the borders, sandwich, quilt and bind (if you need further instructions for the borders or binding, please leave a message and I will add it on). For this particular quilt I sent it off to be quilted on one of those big machines. For the binding I used an AMAZING machine stitched binding technique, which can be found at 52 Quilts. It is a very quick way of professionally finishing off your quilt, and best of all doesn't require any hand sewing!

If you would like instructions for regular, hand stitched binding, adding the borders or sandwiching, please leave a message and I will add it on.