Rainbow Cake

My husband held a "Regression Party" this week, while everyone was still on holidays.  A Regression Party is a retro kids' party, with all the fairy bread and mini frankfurters of childhood, but for adults.  He came up with this concept himself and was quite proud of it.  It was pretty much an excuse for him and his friends to get together and have Nerf-gun and Supersoaker wars and eat cake.  Anyway, he wanted that cake to be suitably exciting, so we decided it should be a rainbow marble cake and in the shape of Beartato (a character from Nedroid, a comic that we love).

To make the rainbow cake I made a white chocolate cake using this recipe:

    175g white chocolate, broken into pieces
    4 eggwhites
    1 cup (250ml) milk
    1 tsp vanilla extract
    2 cups (300g) self-raising flour
    250g caster sugar
    A pinch of salt
    1 tbs baking powder
    125g unsalted butter, softened

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C, grease and line cake pan.
2. Melt the white chocolate, set aside to cool.  In a separate bowl, whisk the eggwhites, vanilla and 1/2 of the milk to combine. In another separate bowl, use an electric mixer to mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, butter and salt with the rest of the milk.  Beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. Stir in eggwhite mixture, then the melted chocolate.  Mix until well combined.
3. Spread the mixture into the pan, then bake for 45-50 minutes until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean (cover the cake loosely with foil). Leave cake to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Except before I got to part 3 I separated the mixture into 6 bowls and added food colouring.  Apparently you can get some kind of gel food colouring which doesn't thin the mixture, but they don't have it at my shops.  I just used regular liquid food colouring and it turned out ok. 

I poured the coloured mixtures into the tin one by one, like so:

When it was cooked it went a kind of brown-purple colour on top but with patches of different colours showing through.  Spectacular!  This is a cupcake made out of scrapings of leftover mixture:

For decorating ideas I googled "Beartato cake" and found this one which I shamelessly copied.  My cake tin was a bit too long for Beartato, so I chopped off about 10cm at the top.  I rounded the corners and used the chopped-off bits to fashion two ears, then slathered the whole lot with blue buttercream icing and put it in the fridge to set.  Buttercream icing is really gooey when you first put it on but it hardens when you put it in the fridge for an hour or so, and once it's hard you can smooth it with a warm knife to get a finish almost as perfect as fondant icing.  I actually don't like the taste/texture of it that much, though - it's just like eating a lump of  pure butter.  You can feel it hardening your arteries as it goes down.  Anyway, after that irresistible selling point, the recipe: 

    250g white chocolate, broken into pieces
    300g cream cheese
    150g unsalted butter, softened

    Melt the white chocolate, then cool. Transfer to the bowl of an electric mixer, then beat with the cream cheese and softened butter until light and fluffy.   Add food colouring as desired.

So yeah, once I'd neatened it up I added details a la Beartato with black gel icing from a tube and a few bits of fondant icing from a packet.

I don't think it looks as good as the one I copied it from, but oh well.  The inside of the cake looked great!  Next time, though, I would probably make less red and orange and more purple and blue - the purple was only a thin layer on the outside and the red was all pooled in the middle, so it seemed like there was more of it.

Patchwork Pillowcase - the lazy way

I bought one of those giant 'European' pillows from IKEA the other day and, since I didn't have any pillowcases to fit it, decided to make one out of patchwork.  Partly because I like the look of patchwork and partly because I have loads of material scraps lying around - too small to make anything out of, too big to throw away.

A proper, skilled quilting person would undoubtedly be appalled by my patchworking skills, which can only be described as 'shoddy'.  None of my corners line up (I didn't bother to measure my seams properly) the colours don't match and it's not lined.  But heck!  I think it still looks good, and this way it took me an afternoon rather than a couple of days.  For me, any project that takes longer than that usually gets abandoned.  As a lazy, slipshod person I reserve the right to keep lazy, slipshod pillowcases. 

When I was taking photos of the end results my cats decided they would kindly pose on the pillow to demonstrate its comfort.  The black one is Gink and the smaller one Helix.

Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

This year I decided I wanted to give our neighbours gifts to say thanks for being good neighbours.  It really makes such a difference having nice neighbours, as my sister Ruth found out when she moved in next to a horrible nosy woman who hunts through her rubbish and reads her mail.  But I love being able to run across and borrow a lawnmower or lend a cup of sugar, help switch the power back on when a fuse has shorted or swap stories about redback infestations.  

When we were growing up our parents made a point of getting to know their neighbours.  As is fairly typical in Australia we had a Greek family next door, an Irish-Indian and an Italian family over the road, and Aunty Al and Eileen - two dear old ladies who were like surrogate grandparents to us.  Our back fence even had a gate in it leading to Eileen’s yard so we could play there whenever we wanted, and she let us have a patch in her veggie garden and shares in the plums from her tree.  The Greek neighbours often gave us home-made koulourakia at Easter time, which I loved, so in that vein I decided to give my neighbours some home-made goodies - Christmas pudding truffles and ginger snowflake biscuits.  Behold!

Ingredients

    500g light fruitcake or Christmas pudding
    100g dark chocolate melts, melted
    60ml (1/4 cup) brandy
    2 tbs apricot jam
    250g dark chocolate melts, extra
    60g copha, chopped
    150g white chocolate melts, melted
    Red and green glace cherries, finely chopped, to decorate

Method

Crumble the cake into a bowl.  Stir in the dark chocolate, brandy and jam. Place in the fridge for 30 minutes or until slightly firm.

Line 2 large baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Roll 2-teaspoonful quantities of cake mixture into balls and place on the lined trays. Place in the fridge for 1 hour or until firm.

Melt the extra dark chocolate and copha together.  Line 2 baking trays with non-stick baking paper. Use a truffle dipper or fork to dip truffles in the chocolate mixture to coat, shake off excess and place on 1 lined tray. Refrigerate until set, then decorate with white chocolate and glace cherries.

Ingredients

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup golden syrup

1/3 cup honey

80g butter

1 egg

1 t ginger

2 t cinnamon

1 t bicarb soda

2 3/4 cups plain flour

Method

Melt the butter, sugar, honey & golden syrup in the microwave until butter has no lumps.  Stir in the egg, spices and bicarb soda, then sift in the flour.  Roll mixture into ball, cover in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 30 mins.

Roll out mixture and cut out shapes, decorate with icing (1 egg white + enough icing sugar to make a smooth mixture.  It sets harder than if you use water).

A Recent Painting

Thought I would put this here because I find it interesting to look through time-lapse photos of a painting being done.  I did a painting recently based on the above photo, which was taken in Forrest, Victoria.  I pretty much painted it exactly as-is but I had to stretch and flatten it out a bit to make it fit the canvas I had, which was longer and thinner, and I did add a mossy log in the middle because I like mossy logs and I thought it looked good.

Here's a series of photos of the process.  I have arranged them in a nifty zigzag pattern, otherwise they make your eyes go funny as you scroll down through them.

And the finished painting:

I can't look at it now without thinking of Margaret Atwood's 'The Year of the Flood' which I was listening to on audiobook while I was painting.  I find the actual process of painting quite dull, but I do it because I'm usually quite pleased, surprised even, by what I can achieve.  But yeah, if I don't listen to something while I'm working or I get pretty bored.  Painting doesn't really require any thought processes, apart from 'hmm, the green in that spot needs to be darker' and the occasional 'ugh this looks stupid... oh well I'll keep going and it might get better'.

Flower Headband

Jessie saw this headband in a shop and decided she would get me to make her one instead of buying it.  So she took a sneaky phone pic and emailled it to me (modelled here by Ruth, our other sister, who had just had her wisdom teeth out - hence the chipmunk cheeks).  I had a go at producing my own version.

It's pretty simple to make but for the record the pattern is:

Cast on +/- 60 stitches.  This varies a lot depending on the weight of the wool and the size of the needles.  To be safe I usually do a few rows, pull it off the needles, measure it on my head and then either unravel it and start again or pick up all the stitches and continue if it's magically the right size.

1st 5 (or so) rows - knit one, purl one.  On the wrong side, knit all the knit stitches and purl all the purl stitches.  Can do more than 5 rows if you want the ribbed section bigger.

Row 5 - knit to end of row

Row 6 - purl to end of row

Repeat until the headband is about the thickness you want (again, depends on wool weight & needles, I think for this one it was about 8-10 rows).

Last 5 rows - as per 1st 5 rows.

Then you just sew the two ends together.  For the flower I followed the pattern here except I added a tiny flower in the middle to make it look exactly like the one on the headband above.  For the tiny flower: chain 5, slip stitch into 1st chain to make a circle.  In the circle, work (sc, ch1, dc, ch1) until you can't cram any more stitches on and then sl stitch back into the start.  You could just as easily do only dc's, a circle in the middle would also work.  Or a button or something.  Whatever you like!  I haven't really experimented.

I used Moda Vera Shiver wool in grey and 3.5mm needles.  But you can do it with pretty much any weight wool I reckon.

Here's my version:

Jessie says it tends to stretch a bit after a few wears but it's pretty easy to fix - all you do is unpick your seam and sew it up again overlapping further.

After I'd made it I found a picture of Whitney Port wearing one, so there you go.  As seen on Whitney Port.

Babushka Earrings

I made up the design for these based on some babushka dolls we used to have. I sell a lot of them on my etsy store but they're really easy to make, if a bit fiddly.

I make them out of super sculpey, which is a polymer clay. It's like plasticine you can bake in the oven and it goes hard. I used to make it out of 'original' sculpey which was white, and came in a box like this:

But the craft store doesn't stock it anymore so I now use this stuff which I don't like as much, it's kind of a flesh pink colour and it's softer and more sticky, and also a smaller amount of it costs the same price.

I used to be able to leave white sections blank when I painted the earrings, now I have to paint them white. The injustice.

Anyway so I model a kind of babushka-shaped thing out of sculpey, and add a little squashed round ball on the bottom for the foot:

Then I snip off a little bit of craft wire (which you can get from the jewellery section of most craft shops) and twist it around an earring hook (ditto). When I made the first prototype I just bent it around once and then poked it into my earring, but I found that once it was baked it would just sort of slide out. The twisty shape helps it stay put.

So you just sort of poke that into the top of your earring, smooth it out a bit if you need to, and then pop it into the oven on low for about 15 mins. Next I usually paint the whole thing white, to make a better background for the other colours. Then I get a fineline pen and draw on the detail.


I've tried several kinds of pen and the one I find works best is an artline one like this:
With most other brands the ink runs when you add paint and/or varnish.  Their only flaw is that they tend to run dry very quickly, I don't know whether this is a side effect of drawing on sculpey or because my newsagent has been selling me crappy old pens or something.  Anyway, I have to buy them in scores.

The next step is to paint the colours, which I do with a fine brush and jo sonya acrylic paints. You don't need much, so a little lasts a long time.

I don't actually paint them while they're lying on the table in that awkward manner, but it's quite difficult to paint and photograph at the same time. Anyway the final step is to varnish, which I do with ordinary clear nail varnish. I have tried various different and expensive craft laquers and varnishes and nothing dries as quickly, looks as shiny or is as cheap as nail varnish. So there you have it!

Welcome

It amuses me that the word 'crafty' also has the implication of sneakiness. My sister Jessie and I are both crafty, in the sense that we like making, sewing, painting, inventing and re-decorating things. I thought I'd start a blog about some of the things we've made and how we made them.