Category "cake maker"

Saving sore baker's hands with hemp handcream

18th March 2015
by M-admin-bakehouse
baker, blog, cake, cake maker, cheshire, Manchester, marie's bakehouse, Urmston, , , , , , ,

hemp handcream
Need to know how to save sore cake maker’s hands?…..
Just a quick recommendation for today’s blog post. If you are washing your hands a lot while you are baking and decorating like I do, and especially in colder weather, it can wreck the skin on your hands. I’m sure lots of you have experienced the same as me, and it’s mighty painful. However, this cream is a little gem. It was recommended to me by a few cake friends, and it’s been fantastic. Over the years I’ve spent so much money trying out different hand creams, most of which are now half used and languishing in a cupboard somewhere in the house, but that will be happening no more! I’ve used this for well over a year and it’s going to be the one I use for years to come! So well done Bodyshop. You are saving sore baker’s hands with your amazing Hemp Handcream!
 

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Monthly Modeller Classes

24th January 2015
by M-admin-bakehouse
baker, blog, cake, cake maker, cheshire, class, classes, decorating, Manchester, marie's bakehouse, Urmston, , , , , , , , , , , ,

At Marie’s Bakehouse we offer a range of different classes, but one of our most popular ones is the Monthly Modeller Class. As the name suggested we meet once a month to model something different each time. Here are some of the things we’ve modelled already……
a witch
witch model
an elf
Elf model
an owl
owl model
a dragon
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
a beach scene
BSN1
and an afternoon tea
afternoon tea
And these are all the work of students- not mine. We’ve also made a mermaid, Santa, a pirate, handbags, a princess, trains, cars and teddy bears to name but a few!
If you’d like to join us, you can find a full list of classes here with our next class being Ronnie the Robot on Wednesday 28th January 7-9pm.
Ronnie Robot model
We do have a regular group of ladies who come to most classes, or those that come to ones that take their fancy. As well as learning, and being creative for two hours, we have a good natter, cups of tea and coffee and I bring along something I’ve baked (using my ladies as guinea pigs for my latest recipe hahaha), or if I’m very lucky, one of the ladies bakes for us instead!! Everything is provided, all you need to bring is a box to take your creation home.
It’s a really nice relaxing evening, so if you fancy coming one night to one of our Monthly Modeller Classes, you would be very very welcome!
You can message me on my fb page www.facebook.com/MariesBakehouse
or via email at marie@mariesbakehouse.co.uk

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Valentine's collection 2014

21st January 2014
by M-admin-bakehouse
1 comment
birthday, cake maker, celebration, cheshire, cookies, gifts, hearts, Manchester, maries's bakehouse, pink, presents, red, sprinkles, Urmston, valentine's, , , , , , , , , , , ,
The Valentine’s Collection for Marie’s Bakehouse is now available for ordering.
Chocolate chip heart shaped cookies, available in white, milk or dark chocolate, and covered in heart sugar sprinkles.
6 wrapped in a gift box, £5, one flavour choice for order.

 3 fudge hearts wrapped in a gift box £6.50.

Available in many different flavours including milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate, milk choc and orange, white choc and lemon, milk choc with fruit and nut, dark choc and peppermint…….and many others besides…..one flavour choice per order.

 3 Tiffin hearts £6.50
Both available in a variety of flavours such as Malteser, Mint Aero, Orange Aero, Rolo, Smartie…..

or another one of your choice.
Order consists of one flavour choice.
Tiffin hearts also available in a large size, same flavours available as before.
Gift wrapped for £13.
Large fudge hearts, flavours available as previously, gift wrapped for £13.
Large Brownie Heart- Crispy on the outside, dark and gooey on the inside.
My daughter’s favourite thing that I bake!!
Gift wrapped for your Valentine! £12
and finally…..
Let me know if you would like to order! Last orders taken on Sunday 9th February.
Marie x
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Time to get organised…..

16th January 2014
by M-admin-bakehouse
1 comment
cake maker, calendar, diary, Manchester, organised, resolution, Urmston, , , , , , ,

One of my many New Year’s Resolutions is to get organised. Not that I’m a complete disaster zone when it comes to organisation, things do get done BUT I do tend to waste a lot of time ‘faffing’ (read ‘largely wasting time on social media’). If faffing were a sport I’d probably win medals in it.
I need lists to function. Especially since I had children, my memory is not what it once was. And if I don’t have lists to remind me what I should be doing, I just can’t organise my time.
So that’s where these KTWO products come in. They are going to help me get organised (here’s hoping anyway).

I’ve previously had a file organiser bought for me by a lovey friend, and that has helped get me organised with my receipt filing for my business. And that, my friend, is a HUGE task. So I have high hopes for these!
Part of the plan is to build in time to blog more frequently. We’ll all be the judge of whether that happens or not.
Any tips you’d like to share with me for getting organised? Any help gratefully received!
Marie x
www.mariesbakehouse.co.uk
www.facebook.com/MariesBakehouse

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Review of Lakeland's Silicone Chocolate Box Shapes

16th December 2013
by M-admin-bakehouse
cake maker, celebration, cheshire, chocolate mould, Lakeland, Manchester, maries's bakehouse, review, silicone, Urmston, , , , , , , , , , ,

Another Lakeland toy to play with? And it involves chocolate? Definitely count me in!

I’ve had experience with making chocolates with a hard plastic chocolate mould before, but not with silicone, so it required a bit of thinking about how to go about it, as the methods I used for a rigid mould wouldn’t work so well with a flexible one.
I decided to apply the melted chocolate with a paintbrush which helped get the chocolate in all the places required, especially with the more intricate designs. In hindsight, it may have been better to let this harden, and then apply a second coat, as a couple of the chocolates didn’t come out without breaking, but that’s something to try next time.
I made a caramel sauce, and poured it into the chocolate mould once they had been in the fridge for about an hour (I was busy doing other things at the time, I don’t think it necessarily needs this long). I left a space at the top of each mould- I didn’t fill it completely to the top.  And then popped the mould back into the fridge.
After about half an hour, I melted more chocolate and added this on top of the caramel, then it went back in the fridge again to set. I tried to pop them out after half an hour, but this perhaps wasn’t quite long enough as a couple of them cracked on coming out, so I chilled them for a bit longer (this could have been down to having too thin a coat and not the chilling time- I will need to experiment with this).
Second time lucky, the rest popped out without a problem, by pushing the mould from underneath.
I’m really pleased with how they look!

Not perfect, but pretty fab for the first attempt I think!
I’d definitely use this mould again. The chocolates would be great for presents, not just at Christmas time, but for birthdays, Mother’s Day, and I’d also think about using them on my dessert tables.

I’m looking forward to trying out different flavour combinations- I think salted caramel and a chocolate orange ganache will be two I’ll be trying out soon!
If you fancy giving them a go, you can buy them from Lakeland here: http://www.lakeland.co.uk/16442/Silicone-Chocolate-Box-Shapes
I was not paid to write this review, but was sent the mould free of charge. All views are my own.
www.facebook.com/MariesBakehouse
www.mariesbakehouse.co.uk

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How to make a stripy vanilla and chocolate bundt cake

7th October 2013
by M-admin-bakehouse
birthday, bundt, cake, cake maker, celebration, cheshire, chocolate, Manchester, maries's bakehouse, pourable ganache, stripy, Urmston, vanilla, , , , , , , ,
I’ve seen a few stripy cakes around recently, and after treating myself to a bargain bundt tin this week (£1.99 from Home Bargains!!!) I decided I needed to use it, instead of putting it in the cupboard and not using it for months. Not that I EVER do that with new equipment. NEVER. *ahem*
So here’s the recipe for the stripy vanilla and chocolate bundt cake!
What you need:
280g butter or baking margarine
280g caster sugar
5 eggs
280g self raising flour
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp. cocoa powder
100ml double cream
200g milk chocolate (I used Cadbury’s Dairy Milk for this recipe)
What to do:
1. Cream the butter/baking margarine and sugar together.
2. Add the eggs one at a time beating thoroughly.
3. Add the vanilla extract and the self raising flour and beat again until thoroughly combined.
4. Take half the mixture and put it in another bowl.
5. Add the cocoa powder to the remaining half and beat until it has mixed fully.
6. Grease the bundt tin. I used Wilton Cake Release, and can’t recommend it highly enough.

7. Add a dollop of the vanilla mixture to the tin.

8. On top of the vanilla mixture, add a dollop of chocolate mixture.
9. Next add another dollop of vanilla, on top of the mixture already in the tin. The mixture will start to spread.
10. And then another dollop of chocolate. Keep adding alternate dollops of mixture until you have used all the mixtures in both bowls. If it doesn’t spread as well as you need it too, just shake the tin a bit and encourage the mixture to spread round to the other side of the tin.
11. This is what it will look like when you have finished adding the mixtures.
12. Bake for around 30 minutes at 160 degrees. Check around 25 minutes- your oven may bake differently to mine.
13. Leave it to cool for about 20 minutes in the tin, then turn it out onto a wire wrack to cool fully. (How fab does that look?!)
14. Once the cake is cool, chop the chocolate into small pieces and put it all in the bowl, and heat the cream until it just reaches boiling point, and pour the cream over the chocolate. Leave it for about 30 seconds to start to melt the chocolate, then beat it together until it has combined to make a smooth ganache. Pour the ganache over the top of the cake and leave to set.
15. Stick the kettle on, cut and slice, put your feet up and enjoy 🙂
I am definitely going to make this again, but try different flavour combinations too. Chocolate and orange, coffee and caramel, white chocolate and lemon, dark chocolate and mint……so many new ones to try!!
If you make it, I’d love to hear what you thought!
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Cake International Manchester 2013 – my experience of entering the competition!

19th March 2013
by M-admin-bakehouse
1 comment
blog, cake, cake maker, cheshire, decorating, Manchester, marie's bakehouse, Urmston, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Have you been to Cake International? It’s been running for many years, but I’ve been to the Birmingham one for the last three years.  The first one, I drove there from Manchester with my mum, spent a fortune on goodies and came home full of ideas, and totally in awe of anyone who entered the competition, thinking it wasn’t anything that I’d ever do myself.

The second and third years I went with cake friends and stayed over near the NEC. It was a really social experience, spending time in person with ‘real live’ cake friends, not just chatting to them over the internet! Each year different friends entered the competition and, with them, I lived through their anguish beforehand whilst making their competition piece, their nerves when waiting for the judges to announce who had been awarded what grades, and their joy and sometimes disappointments at how they had been scored.

But I hadn’t ever entered the competition myself. Well, I lived in Manchester, and the cake had to be delivered to Birmingham before 8.45am on a Friday morning, and I had work, or had to take the children to school, so I couldn’t possibly get it there, could I?
Good enough excuse I thought.

Then Cake International moved to Manchester. And not just Manchester- to Event City, which is less than ten minutes away from where I live in Urmston. So the ‘I can’t get it there’ excuse was no longer relevant. Hmmmmmmmm.

So, when the time came to think about buying my tickets for CI, it was crunch time.  Was I going to buy a three day pass? Or enter the competition and have a three day pass because of it? So I entered the competition. I read through the rules of each class and decided on Class B: Celebration cake with all edible decoration.

I decided to stick with something I knew I could do. Some people enter CI to really challenge themselves, and hats off to them for doing it. There are some absolutely fantastic pieces there, such as this amazing piece from Rhu at Pimp My Cake By Mama Rhu. But I thought I’d make a cake which I’d make for a customer, and just have fun making a cake I enjoyed. Which is exactly what I did.

I like making cakes with lots of detail. Cakes which make you look a little bit closer. Cakes which have decoration at the back as well as at the front. So I kind of went to town with it on this cake.  I didn’t stress, I didn’t worry, I just enjoyed making a cake that I wanted to make.  So far so good I thought.

On the morning of delivery I was still fairly relaxed about the whole thing. Until the point of putting it on the table. Then I started to feel nervous. Lots of people would be looking at my cake over the next three days. The judges would be scrutinising it in a matter of hours. People might wander past it and criticise it. I might be there and hear them! Suddenly I wasn’t quite so calm! But I felt confident enough in my cake to think I might be awarded a merit, and if I was lucky enough to get a bronze, then I’d be thrilled.

After taking the children to school, and going home to bake for a order, I returned to CI at about 11am. As soon as I arrived I went to the competition area and saw a judge with my cake! Suddenly I felt very sick.  Suddenly it really mattered to me what this person thought of my cake, and I needed to know as soon as possible. 

Then I, and other cake friends, waited for the results to be announced. And waited and waited and waited. Three o’clock came round and I had to leave to collect my children from school. On returning home I was glued to my laptop, waiting for Rhu to let me know what the results were. Then Rhu posted a picture for me.

Stunned. Totally stunned. In fact I think my first response was ‘Noooooooooooooooooooo!’ But completely and utterly pleased and proud. Thrilled that one of my cakes, one I’d make in the same way for a customer, achieved a gold at Cake International!
Quick jump to Sunday afternoon, and the award ceremony, and not only did I manage to meet John Whaite (winner of GBBO) who presented my certificate, I was also awarded best in my class. Here’s me with a daft grin, and trying not to cry!
Happy caker 🙂
And just because I have one, here’s a picture of Mary Berry with my cake. Well, almost with my cake. I’d like to think she was at least looking at it!
Would I enter CI again? Yes I think I would. I might even step out of my comfort zone and enter a class I’m not so confident in. I have a few ideas forming…….
So that’s it, my journey to Cake International Manchester.
Any ideas how many eggs the Easter Bunny hid in the garden?? ;0)
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