Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Inundated At Yuletide

I'm not referring to the Johore floods, which are in itself shocking.

Let's see, as a result of all that baking last week, I've had oven burns, sugar burns, (this is the WORST, aitelyu!!! Searing hot, and immediately your skin begins to "bubble")....used up at least 4 trays of 30 eggs each. Shall I show off and put up the orders for last week? I think so lar, since it's my highest so far.

100 cupcakes, bannoffee pie, 3 chilled lemon cheese cakes, 2 mudcakes, 5 carrot cakes, 3 walnut cakes, 25 pieces of flourless choc cake, 1 sticky date pudding, 4 rum & raisin pies, 1 pumpkin pie, 2 brownies, 1 chocolate cake, 1 oreo cake. On top of that, there were the non commercial orders of 1 large 2.5kg cheese cake, and 2.5kg brownie for church. And the christmas fare, such as mince pies, savoury pies etc etc. I even had to turn down last minute orders for yule logs. Apologies to the person concerned.

Frankly, I don't mind taking a month of baking for now. I am thoroughly exhausted, and the sight of an oven is enough to make me wanna go scuba diving.

There were baking disasters as well during the course of baking. On Friday morning, the cream cheese frosting for my 4 carrot cakes absolutely refused to turn out. Wrote off 1 kg of cream cheese and started anew, but even the second attempt was fiddly. Taste wise it was fine, but aesthetically, gosh!!!!

The first batch of toffee for the sticky date pudding order was also botched. That's when I got the sugar burns. 2nd attempt was fine. And yesterday for Christmas, I completely left out a whole tub of sour cream in my Walnut Sour Cream Coffee Cake, rendering it way toooo dry. Guests were too polite to say anything....

Home made mince pies ready for baking....(mince from a bottle, but kah liew, with loads of brandy)

Ready mince pies with 1st time attempt pumpkin pie. Used butternut pumpkin, which is like 4 times the cost of normal pumpkin, but every nice taste.

Pumpkin Pie

The Cleaning Up was like this almost every day. Thank goodness for domestic help, or I think I really wont bother doing this as a hobby.





Ah, apart from the usual baking, I'm also finishing off my Level 2 Wilton Cake Decorating Course. Quite honestly, I am not keen on these flowery things at all, and my workmanship is crude and indelicate. But if I want to do the b***** sugarpaste course, I have to go through level 2. Anyone ELSE can teach me how to make fondant easily? Operative word is EASILY.

Those flowers are supposed to be, from top, apple blossoms, roses, PANSIES, daisies and daffodils. Roll eyes.

4 comments:

Karen said...

oh wow, that's a lot of baking! and heartache man at your disasters!!!

easy fondant/sugarpaste: add 500g icing sugar to 1 eggwhite and 2tbsp liquid glucose, stir and knead till smooth. add more icing sugar if required.

fatboybakes said...

merry xmas snowdrop.
yar, what to do, hazards of the business i guess. actually, i have a tub of lemon cream cheese frosting that's still good, in the event you want it. it has since solidified a bit and not so runny, so now can use as frosting.

must try your fondant recipe. can use dough hook or not? the thought of kneading...shudder, brings backs memories of thumb pain lah, this pain la, that pain...

UnkaLeong said...

Seasons Greetings! Apply colgate on those burns;)Sorry to hear about the baking disasters. Hahaha...

fatboybakes said...

seasons greetings too unkaleong. YALAR, forgot that old tip, about applying toothpaste.