Stephanie's Gourmet kitchen pages- So, what's cooking?

Hi to anyone who's reading this blog for more than a few seconds.

From time to time I'll be sharing recipes as I find yummy ideas or something I've developed myself. To make it easier to find them I decided to create pages. Savoury, sweets, and cakes. Its exciting to try something and even better to experiment with flavours and turn out a dish to die for! You can tell me how you go with the recipes, I love seeing feedback from people who love to cook too.

12 long stemmed boxed red roses- with a twist.

The whole lot is eatable.

Last week I had an idea, why not a box of 12 long stemmed roses! But out of cake and fondant for husband for Valentines day. I delivered it today with our two daughters who are used to seeing special cakes and for their ages (Almost 4 and almost 3yrs old.) They are learning fast about the cake decorating business and special cakes they can't touch but looking is okay. They were brilliant kids, stayed close to me while we pushed the trolley to the office from the car park, and not one word was breathed from them about the surprise for daddy.

(I'll be posting better photo's later.)

Cupcakes...

These red velvet with butter cream frosting cup cakes turned out devine!

Cupcakes for a wedding. a combination plate of fruit cake, chocolate mud cake and white chocolate mud cake, decorated differently to show the styles.

Bad to the bone...

I broke a thousand hearts, before I met you babe...I'll break a thousand more pretty babe before I am through...I'm bad to the bone....

This is my latest creation..  a Harley Davidson cake with all the trimmings. Dark chocolate mud cake covered with grenache, then Black icing and silver lustre dust. There was about 7kgs of chocolate alone in it. The bored measured 1.3mtrs x 1mtr long. I hand painted the board to give the effects of leaping flames. Many hours of work went into this one, and research on the 2009 model. Designing the layout. (Thanks to my computer whiz husband who made up a scaled template for me so I could get the diamentions right for the cutting of the outlines. Thanks Honey you're awesome!

I enjoyed working on it, as always delivering it to the venue proved to be more stressful than normal because of the heat. I arrived there only to spend fifteen precious minutes trying to get a trolley and into the room with no air-conditioning running. (I'm resolving that problem by buying my own trolley, just have to fit it in the car with the cakes!) Fondant doesn't like heat and neither does chocolate so to arrive and have delays on a hot day for a cake lady is stressful.

I didn't leave until they turned on the air-con, my cake needed the cool air, and I hated the thought of it all wilting before the party even began and the guests arrive.

My creation was a success, the feedback I had was very positive with the birthday boy loving his cake.

Mission accomplished!

Happy New Year - in my kitchen we baked into the New Year!

This is how this cake artist spent New Years eve.... Making a Hazelnut Gateau with light liquor cream a recipe from my trusty "Womens weekly" cookbooks that have been around since my Grandmothers time.

It all started with a bowl of egg whites;

You there are something I absolutely love about whipping egg whites into a frenzy adding sugar bit by bit and watching it slowly turn into a beautiful glossy fluffy white mass of heavenly sweet mergingue. (I don't think I could fit another descriptive word into the sentence!) Its almost too good bake, yet its just gets better and better after it is and turns into something more. Yummy!!!

See what I mean! yummy layers of hazelnut meringue...

The Almonds are plastered to the side and its off to the fridge to have for dessert after New Years Day lunch with my beautiful friend Joanne.

At last!!! New Year is here and its time cut into the Gateau, this is the first time I've made this so its like opening a present, your never quite sure what to expect inside but its the thrill of the unknown thats makes it special in its nice little package.

The aftermath of cutting into it, crumbs everywhere!!! The meringue crumbled as soon as the knife went through it, but that didn't affect the taste, which was AWESOME, sweet, soft, mmmm. The crumbs ended up with French Vanilla ice-cream, the combination of the soft flavour of vanilla with the mixture of liquor French buttercream and hazelnut crunchy meringue is just heavenly.

A look at the cut piece, I think I'll reduce the cooking time of the meringue next time and make it a little more chewy and less dry. I like to do it faithly to the recipe the first time and then make my changes the second time and there after...okay the original recipe didn't have coffe liquor in it, but then I didn't have coffee in the house so....big sigh, it was a sacrific I had to make and poured the liquor in. Tough job but somone had to make the call... I took the fall for all of us...

If anyone wants the recipe just let me know and I'll post it here.

Harry Potter!

I was excited when asked to make a Harry Potter cake for a friends son's birthday. Its one of those things where do you start since there are so many elements to the Harry Potter rich in characters it was hard to know where to start! I guess Harry Potter himself and his favourite game turned out to be the ideal. So here he is chasing the snitch around a mysterious suitcase and book, with the selection hat on top enjoying the game.

Merry Christmas and drop or two with Jim.

It's a belated Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! This year I decided to make for husbaand his favourite fruit/nut and maple syrup cake with Jim Beam Burbon added to the mix and poured over it. We have had a slice or two and there's still left overs since its so rich in fruit and texture.