Gocco - First Attempt!

I mentioned back in September that I'd be trying out a new type of printing (well, new to me anyway) in the form of Gocco. I knew I wanted to have a go at printing some xmas cards, but it was all a bit last minute because I spent so long designing and assembling wedding invitations. Luckily, I had already prepared a card design, so didn't have to spend long on that side of things. I used  a character called Mr.Xmas Tree, who is an old favourite from some felt xmas decorations I made a couple of years ago. 

I was a bit worried about the photocopying aspect of the image, as I'd heard of problems exposing the image to the screen, so I decided to trace the image by hand with the carbon pen provided in the Gocco kit. Exposing the screen was really straightforward. That stage of the process worked really well and, at that point, I was feeling pretty confident. Then, I applied some green ink to the xmas tree. I don't know whether the ink was too old or had been stored incorrectly (I had purchased from eBay, so it's possible), but the consistency didn't seem right. When I tried to print, the red text came out ok, but the xmas tree was just a mess. I then had to clean the screen, which takes quite a while, before I could try again. On my second attempt, I  tried another green ink, but managed to smear the ink on the wrong side of the screen, so it had to be cleaned again. By this time, I had spent several hours on it, so wasn't in the best of moods! I decided to put it to one side and try again on another day.

So, the next day, I did give it another go. I took a bit more care when applying the ink, making sure the screen didn't move. The xmas tree part still wasn't as I planned, but his shape and face were coming out clearly so I decided to go ahead and print all the cards. I can't say I'm entirely happy with the results, but it was my first attempt so I probably shouldn't be so hard on myself.

It feels wrong to be blogging about Christmas in January, but that should be the last of it now. We're still eating Christmas cake though...

Christmas 2011

As mentioned in my previous blog post, I love Christmas food. A traditional Christmas cake is no exception. I made them in 2008 and 2009, but not last year because we moved to Bristol in November. You have to make your cake in October, then feed with brandy before the marzipan and icing layers and I was a bit stuck for time. 

I stuck to my trusty Mary Berry celebration cake recipe, which certainly didn't let me down. I also made a zesty orange marzipan layer, which adds a different taste and texture to the finished cake.

I haven't iced a cake for a couple of years and the last one I did (a birthday cake) didn't go so well, so I was a little apprehensive about trying again. At first, I thought buying the ready rolled icing would be helpful and take some of the stress out of the process. That was a bad move. As I was unrolling the icing, it cracked and was unusable in that state. I kneaded and re-rolled it, but just couldn't get it right. After a quick dash to Co-op to purchase some ready-to-roll icing, it took twenty minutes to ice the cake and smooth it out. Twenty minutes! I'm never bothering with ready rolled icing again, that's for sure. And I think it's the best job I've done of icing a cake. No creases or major bumps on the sides and I managed to get quite a sharp edge after smoothing.

The next stage was the decoration. I've never put much thought into the decoration of my Christmas cakes in the past, prefering to use ribbon or plastic decorations, but I fancied a change this year. I took inspiration from the Pink Whisk blog and her Stars and Sparkle Christmas cake. I chose red instead of the blue because....well, I just love red. It was pretty fiddly and time consuming, but looks really effective. It tasted ok too. Not as boozy as the previous one I made, but that's probably because I've been distracted with other things in the lead up to Christmas.

I do like to give homemade gifts at Christmas, but I didn't have much time to prepare this year. I did manage to frame a cat drawing for my Grandma though. I used my graphics tablet, but did it in the style of a very fine black pen. She seemed very pleased with it!

Lebkuchen

It's Christmas. Yes! For me it's the best time of year for food. We already a Harvey Nichol's Christmas pudding, M&S gingerbread cream (like Bailey's, but better), a pannetone from a wonderful Italian deli in Montpelier, winter spiced nuts and a special tin of biscuits. 

So, I felt in the mood for some Christmas baking. My brother is getting married in February and I've spent the last couple of weeks creating the wedding invitations, so things have been a little bit hectic (I will post more on that at a later date). I thought a little baking would probably be just what I needed and I'm a huge fan of lebkuchen, so figured I should try making my own. There are tons of lebkuchen recipes on the internet and they vary quite a lot, so picking one was difficult. I settled on one from The Pink Whisk blog in the end. Just in case you don't know or aren't from the UK, then The Pink Whisk is written by Ruth Clemens, who was a runner-up in the first series of BBC's The Great British Bake Off.

The dough has to rest overnight, at least, so I made it on Wednesday and baked on Friday. You can keep it in the fridge for upto three days, to let the flavours develop. It was pretty tricky, cutting out the shapes, as the dough was extremely sticky. I popped the rolled-out dough (inbetween two sheets of greaseproof paper) in the freezer to firm up while each batch was baking. I used the recipe's glaze, with some lemon juice, on half of the lebkuchen and drizzled chocolate on the rest.

I'm fairly pleased with the results. The texture is right, but they're not as dark or rich as the ones I normally buy. There's a definite gingerbread taste to them, so they're not awful by any means. I get the feeling I might have to try several recipes to find the perfect lebkuchen. I'm sure I'll have help eating the experiments though....

Halloween & Guy Fawkes 2011

I never celebrated Halloween as a child, so I'm always tempted to do more now. I don't go as far as dressing up and treat or treating though. I first made pumpkin pie two years ago, where I used fresh pumpkin and then carved it into a lantern. This year I decided to try out Libby's tinned pumpkin puree for a change. I know it's what lots of Americans use, so I figured it would probably turn out fairly authentic. It took a while to decide between the recipe on the tin or the one I used two years ago, but I decided to redo the old one. The tinned one calls for evaporated milk and fewer spices, which didn't sound as nice to me. It also doesn't instruct you to blind bake your pastry before adding the filling and, as we all know, no one likes a soggy bottom. The result.... it was nice, but I didn't find tinned pumpkin as nice as fresh pumpkin. It lacked something. Anyway, I did discover that some maple syrup whipped into cream makes a really good accompaniment to the pumpkin pie.

I can remember going to firework displays when I was growing up, but I don't recall eating many of the traditional foods. I think we may have had treacle toffee. It seems bizarre to think that Parkin originates from northern England and the first time I tried it was probably whilst living in London! So, I decided to have a go at making parkin this year. You are supposed to bake parkin a week in advance, as the texture and flavours will improve over time. I did find that it was very treacly and rich, but at the same time quite crumbly. I'm not quite sure whether it's supposed to crumble so much, but we did enjoy it. I love the flavours this time of year and it just occured to me how autumnal the colours are in both of these bakes.

 

Sicily

Since my last post I've had a birthday, been on holiday and done much baking. I just forgot to blog about it... 

Firstly, one of my best friends bought me the Cox Cookies & Cake book as a birthday present. I'd looked at it in a bookshop a while ago and thought it was full of glamorous and delicious cupcakes. There are so many recipes I want to try, but I decided to start with the black forest soft cookies recipe. I adore soft, chewy cookies and cherries are the king of all fruits, so it had to be done. The bitter chocolate really goes well with the kirsch soaked cherries and they keep well because they're meant to be soft. I slightly overcooked them, but it means I've resolved to buy an oven thermometer before I attempt macarons. My husband bought Pierre Hermé's Macarons book for me. I've been waiting for it to be translated to English for a couple of years, so I'm looking forward to trying out a recipe!

 

We finally managed to book a holiday, once I'd got round to renewing my passport and we could decide where we wanted to go. As we'd left it so late, it needed to be somewhere that would still be warm. In the end, we chose Siracusa in Sicily. We'd seen a few different parts of Italy, very briefly when on a cruise a couple of years ago, but not really explored it any more than that. Obviously the ice cream appealed to me, to start with, then I discovered all kinds of Sicilian delicacies that sounded right up my street.

 

Cannoli are great and we managed to eat three while we were there. They're little tubes of fried pastry, filled with a sweet ricotta cream. I thought the filling would be overwhelming and sickly, but it was really lovely. We managed to squeeze in an extra one before going home because our flight was delayed by three hours. The ice cream was amazing too. Flavours tried were cannoli (of course), cinnamon, coconut, watermelon, mandarin, cherry and zuppa inglese, which is supposed to be English custard/trifle flavoured. Oh and the hot chocolate! The richest, thickest hot chocolate I've ever had.

When we got home, I was instantly missing the cakes and ice cream. We had bought some Sicilian lemon cream before we left, strangely enough, so I knew I had to make something to complement that. I've never made a traditional tarte tatin before, just a savoury tomato & caramelised onion one. It's such a classic bake that I'm surprised I haven't made it before really. It took a while to peel and slice all the apples, but on the whole it was easier than expected. It did annoy me slightly that I felt my neatly arranged apples move when trying to tip it out onto a plate. It also didn't look very caramelised, unlike some other tarte tatins I've seen. I used a Mary Berry recipe, but I might be tempted to try another if I ever made it again. It tasted nice anyway, which is the main thing.