Hazelnut and Cinnamon Meringues

Dear Readers THANK YOU for the phenomenal reading response to TSWCS 3.0! I do hope you all enjoyed the pictures and will come to The Jester Festival in 2013!

Now that summer has officially reached Britain, why not make some meringues - the oven temperature is low enough that it won't over-heat your house and meringues make the perfect long summer eve desert. 

These meringues are a little bit different - they're slightly more grown-up after dinner with a coffee and/or amaretto than the pistachio and vanilla ones, but well worth trying...

 

...the recipe comes from Ottolenghi and it is a fabulous one as the meringues turn out just as good as the  famous ones for sale in their shop. The perfect sticky and gooey meringue treat. 

The recipe follows the Swiss meringue method which involves melting 260g caster sugar and 140g dark brown muscavado sugar in 200g free range organic egg whites in a bain marie for about ten minutes. Please be warned that it looks pretty revolting (as you can see in this picture) but I promise you the end result is worth the moderate ugliness of the early stages. You should be pre-heating the oven to 110 degrees by the way!

 Once this is done, you can begin the whisking. As per my previous post on meringues do not believe the instruction that it is not possible to get high volume meringues without a free standing whisk! Mine are made using a very lo-fi hand held electric option and always come out ticketty-boo. After a minute of whisking, the mixture will look like the above pic.

 After four mins it should begin to change colour and look like the one above.

 By the time you have been whisking for eight minutes, it should be cool, super-glossy, a beautiful pale colour and hold it's shape as per the image below. (NB these photos were taken by me whilst I was in the process of whisking hence the not-so-brilliant quality. It was a challenging photographic experiment!)

 At this point, it all gets super-fun as you sprinkle half a teaspoon of cinnamon over the mix and then VERY gently fold it in with a rubber spatula.

 Have 30g unskinned hazelnuts (roast them slightly and then rub the skins off in a tea-towel to get the best flavour) roughly chopped and ready and waiting along with two large baking trays lined with baking paper. Use two large metal spoons to scoop up a generous dollop of the meringue mix and then transfer to the baking tray before sprinkling over the hazelnuts. This is the most fun part of meringue-making - enjoy swirling the mixture onto the tray!

 They should look something like this as they go into the oven. Ensure they are well spaced out as they do puff up to a surprising extent.

Bake for between one and a quarter to two hours. It is hard to tell if they're done and it's important NOT to over-bake them so that you still have that chewy sticky gooey inner yumminess, but it IS very important that they are completely dry on the underneath and that should let you know when they're done. So I would say check after one and a quarter hours, but expect them to take about fifteen minutes longer after that. 

Et voila! Delicious Hazelnut and cinnamon meringues pretty and tasty enough to grace the cake stands of Whimsy! We completely under-priced our meringyues based on how expensive free range organic eggs cost but I think the people appreciated the Whimsenomical bargain they were getting and, indeed, these meringues were one of the first sell out products at TSWCS 3.0!
I am so excited about my next post featuring WHIMSY branded shortbread - you're going to love it!
Sugar and spacedust,
Whimsy x

The Silver Whimsy Cake Stall 3.0

Dear Readers,

I have kept you waiting with baited breath for too-too long. And now it is finally time to reveal images of The Silver Whimsy Cake Stall 3.0. Yes! We had a full re-boot this year and TSWCS was the sparkliest bestest incarnation thus far!

 The main key to our success was the addition of the help (not just of strangers this year) of baker extraordinaire Miss F. The two of us together made Whimsy a force to be glittered with and both stall and customers went away with extra sparkle as a result.

 Pictured above are Miss F's epicurean white chocolate and raspberry slices and pictured below is the ubiquitous Silver Whimsy record player. (People have tried to purchase the record player EVERY single year, but it is amazing how cheap the people deem the price of a battery-operated Japanese import portable record player!!) Also, note the edible creations in the pretty polyphene - a new idea for 2012; Whimsy Cakes to take away and eat later!

 This image shows another of Miss F's inventions - Space Cakes! Popular with grown ups and children alike, these fairy cakes come to life in your mouth with the special ingredient of popping candy and a lollipop to eat as a post-cake snack!

 We had the most wonderful variety of cakes on offer and the people commented over and over again about how amazing it was to have such choice! I started making a Victoria Sponge but after the cakes were made, I felt the need to do something a little more interesting and came up with the Raspberry Cream Dream Cake (pictured below). Oh Readers, 'twas so delicious! Raspberry coloured and flavoured buttercream on the inside with freshly whipped cream with raspberries spun through it on the outside and vanilla sponge in the middle!

It was a wonderful day at the Jester Festival, West Hampstead's greatest local gathering, and we had an amazing, glittery day! The people love TSWCS and TSWCS loves the people! Roll on 2013!!
Recipes to follow,
Silver Whimsy x

Pistachio and Vanilla Meringues

As preparations for TSWCS 3.0 continue apace, I thought I would give you a (not so) quick and relatively simple meringue recipe! I think there are many myths surrounding meringues that are created to prevent people from trying to make their own. The first is that you need a freestanding electric whisk / mixer to get real volume. Whilst I'm sure the Kitchens of Whimsy would be forever changed if I had a 'Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer' I do find that a regular (in fact rather small) hand-held electric whisk creates adequate fluffy meringue volume from where I'm standing...

 Take 600g caster sugar and heat it in the oven at 200 degrees until the sugar is starting to dissolve slightly at the edges and your kitchen smells of candy floss (8-10 mins).

 Put 300g egg whites (preferably ones that have been left in a loosely covered bowl overnight as this will help create volume, whatever you do don;t use them straight out of the fridge!!) in a meticulously clean (I always pour boiling water over the bowl and then allow it to cool before whisking) metal bowl.

 Whip the egg whites until they begin to fluff up and at this point VERY slowly and carefully add the sugar about a fifth at a time whipping constantly until the sugar has been completely absorbed before adding more. The mixture will become very thick and begin turning into the most beautiful silky wedding-dress-white substance. When this happens KEEP GOING as it is likely you still haven't been whisking for long enough. You need to have been going for about 8-10 mins in all.

 In the last 30 seconds or so, add around a tablespoon of vanilla essence. Leave the meringue mix and take out a tray of pistachio nuts that you have chopped very finely before you began the whole process (remember mise-en-place is key!). Using two large silver spoons, scoop up a generous portion of meringue and put it in the pistachios. Pick it up with the other spoon and place on a baking paper-lined baking tray.

 Doing this is quite tricky...you can always put the meringues on the tray and sprinkle the nuts on top if you need to, but the result isn;t quite as good...

 These dollops of creamy sugary delight need to cook for about two hours at a very low temperature - 100 degrees.

Best served with freshly whipped cream and some slightly sharp raspberries to cut through all that sugar!

Silver Whimsy x

Strawberry-iced Fairy Cakes

 Dear Readers,
As preparations for The Silver Whimsy Cake Stall 3.0 hot up, I thought I would tempt you with some super-easy to make fairy cakes...

 Take:
125 g unsalted butter
125 g caster sugar
125 g self raising flour
2 free range organic eggs
A teaspoon of vanilla essence and 2 tablespoons of organic milk....

Then it's time for the icing...

Making the cakes...
Cream the butter and sugar together, beat in the eggs one at a time adding a spoonful of flour if the mixture begins to curdle, beat in the vanilla, sieve in the self raising flour and then fold in with a large metal spoon. Spoon into the pretty cake cases and bake in the oven for 15 mins at 170 fan assisted...

I've spent a long time trying to figure out the recipe for the best butter icing... I feel quite strongly that it is a 3:1 ratio (there's one for the mathematicians amongst you!) of icing sugar to butter. I would suggest that you sieve the icing sugar at least twice to help you beat it in, and make sure the butter has been left out all day. I think  the trick is to use summer fruits to flavour and naturally colour the icing. Once you have added your icing sugar ad butter to a large bowl, press the summer fruits into the mix and beat it all together. You may need to add a drop of milk as well, depending on how many fruits you are willing to add. 

Then for the fun bit... decorating! 

 I went for a pink heart theme with these little cakes and sprinkled over some trademark SW glitter.

 Styled in vintage tea cups and ice cream sundae cones I think they look rather pretty. 

Do come along on Sunday to try out some Silver Whimsy cakes for yourself! 

 Silver Whimsy x 

'Issy's Milky Way'

Dear Readers,
Just a quick post. Building up to TSWCS 3.0 is a thirsty business and, in a deviation from the norm, I felt inclined to go in search of a milkshake. (Once, at university, I formed the Midnight Milkshake Association where we would search for the magical milkshake diner where the light never went out. But I digress.)

Welcome to 'Issy's Milky Way'  featuring everything you could possibly need for a recreation of a 1950s summer date!

 What better way to refresh than with a delicious, thick shake made with Marine Ices ice cream? Especially when 'Issy's Milky Way' is situated in the Camden Passage where you can spend a few minutes before or after enjoying the vintage treats and antiquities that grace the quaint street. You can also look out for Noel Fielding who we we saw walking past during our teatime treat!

 It is out of the ordinary for a 'Confessions' blog to feature a non-coffee related beverage, but with a menu like this one, how could I resist? I didn't try the cakes, but there were some promising looking brownies, and the coffees being drunk next to us looked suitably old skool.

 Back to baking now though,  TSWCS 3.0 preparations never end!

Magic and milkshakes,

Whimsy x

PS Check out my silver glitter nail polish in the pic above! Fashion Joy!

'full stop.' Brick Lane's finest!

Dearest Readers of Confessions,                

Well! It has been an age, has it not, and yet so much cake has been both baked and consumed over these months - what excuse could I possibly have for not keeping you up to date with all the latest in, ummm, cake-eating and coffee-drinking? Well, aside from Jubilantics with the SIBF which mostly consisted of using gold card and double-sided sticky-tape to transform our ever-suffering cat Princess Tildred of Cumberland into HRH (see photo below) I have been busily making cake for young people as of yet uninitiated in Whimsenomics which, incidentally, appears to have taken over Europe. 

But moving swiftly on... I have returned and today come with news of a fantastic and utterly unpretentious cafe on (be prepared for a shock)  Brick Lane! Yes! It is possible for a cafe thereabouts not to be pretentious and, indeed, to be deemed worthy of a review from Whimsy! 

 The SIBF and I were escaping the Jubilee (having re-enacted the flotilla at a friends suggestion by floating Tildred on a tray in the bath) by attending an amazing FRIENDS gig at Rough Trade. But the lure of cake was too much and, after much to-ing and fro-ing we stumbled upon FULL STOP., roughly mid-way down Brick Lane. How could we resist a beautiful black-board featuring the incantation below...?

 On entering 'full stop.' the first thing one must comment on is the beautiful de-marcation of space consisting of the gorgeous vintage conservatory feel of the area towards the shop-front and the rather more sultry, sofas n papers n your dream of a place you could hide from a torrential downpour if stuck in the middle of London, towards the back.

 I was rather taken with these divine roses,
and struck by the whimsical beauty of it all! 

The next fabulous thing about 'full stop.' is that they have four variations of hot chocolate on the menu! Dearest Readers! Thant is not one, not two, not three, but four different types. I may not be brilliant at maths, but I do know that that is approximately four times more sub-genres of hot chocolate than your archetypal cafe! We went for the straightforward 'milk chocolate' variant and, oh, the joy to Whimsy when it arrived in a small glass with perfectly formed creamy froth on top AND a LONG SPOON for better drinking, stirring and sipping!

We also ordered the 'FRESHLY BAKED!' banana loaf and I was pleased to be offered it toasted - a delightful proposition on such a miserable day. In honesty, whilst I *did* enjoy eating it, I also did find it rather peculiar but not in a bad way - just in a is this completely cooked/isn't it/how much cinnammon (sp?!) is in this/what is in this/how do you make a cake with a crust and a squidgy centre?! kind of way.

Well, with that it is time to say tootle-pip for now and also to give you advance warning that TSWCS 3.0 will be taking place this year on July 1st in the usual place... 

Until next time, I'll leave you with some Brick Lane Bunting! 

Fondest Fondant Fancies, 

Silver Whimsy x  

PS Why didn't I ever start up my bespokebunting.com website? I would surely have made a fortune by now!

The Silver Whimsy Cake Stall (2:0)

And so it was, Dear Readers, that a Whole Year passed and it was time for The Silver Whimsy Cake Stall (2:0) to be held once more at West Hampstead's finest Jester Festival!

The aim this year was for everything to be slightly less frantic, slightly more calm and slightly less damaging to general physical, emotional and mental health and...guess what?? With the help of my ever suffering, completely amazing SIBF (who has cleaned the kitchen so many times over the past three days that he deserves a medal, or alternatively beer for life), super-star cousin Lee (who both baked delicious peanut butter cookies and gave us a lift to the festival site with our ten stone trestle table), and bestest friends Sally and Dave Emery (who left thir tea-towel empire to come and visit the festival and took all these WONDERFUL photos), it was!

Obviously, that doesn't mean that there weren't any nervous bake-downs over how to make enough cakes, or crisis' over the fact that, whatever the trendy magazines say, Whoopie Pies actually do just taste horrible, but generally speaking things went a lot more smoothly and there was a lot less to cry about! The major difference this year was that we actually have our own super-cute and phenomenally indie kitten called Tilly,

which meant that I didn't have to go all Hepburn over a stray cat that turned out not to be a stray cat after all... (New readers check out entry number one for more info...) This had both positive and negative implications. Positive because I knew there would be a kitten waiting for me at the end of the day but negative because I had to keep the kitten out of the kitchen for a few days which meant that she was a little bit cross with me.

Anyway, a lot of baking products were purchased to make all the sweet treats for the festival. I started off by making the Pistachio Meringues because they keep for quite a long time so could be made in advance.

I even phoned up Ottolenghi for advice on how best to store them! Then I moved on to the Lemon Drizzle Cake which is a phenomenally popular cake stall cake.

A lovely gentleman bought four slices and then returned the next day to buy some different cake because he'd enjoyed it so much! That was one of the best things about the festival. I had repeat customers from the previous year! People were so charmed by the spirit of Whimsy that they remembered the stall and sought it out, and if they were new customers then they returned for Day Two because they loved it so. The only problem with this was that I actually sold out of cakes on Day One which meant that I was up all night re-baking for Day Two! I found myself making meringues at midnight...

and fairy cakes at four am!

I was particularly proud of my Victoria Sponge

made with organic raspberries and freshly whipped Vanilla Cream.

Last year, a number of people asked me if I had a Carrot Cake so this year I decided to make one and it was The Surprise Hit of TSWCS!!!

Who knew that out of all the super-enticing sweet-treats the Carrot Cake would sell out first?! Possibly, it was because of the addition of the trademark Silver Whimsy mini-flags, but who knows? All I do know is that I had to make another one at 10pm on Saturday night because it had been so popular! The My Little Ponies (Lickety Split and Baby Bonnet) helped to sell the Scrummy Chocolate Brownies and enjoyed frolicking on the pink lace table cloth of Whimsy.

All in all, 'twas a fabulous weekend (made all the more special by visits to TSWCS by the wondrous Lara and Dan) and a marvellous festival of general community madness. I was very excited and also quite nervous that The Kitchen Table (West Hampstead's best cafe) and Walnut (West Hampstead's finest restaurant) tasted my meringues, and was very happy that they both enjoyed them! Hooray!

I might have a little bit of a baking break for now so, until next time, kisses and cakes from

Silver Whimsy x

PS Once again enormous gratitude to Dave Emery for allowing me to use his fabulous photographs x x x