My Dearest Readers, this week I unwittingly gave myself an early Christmas present. I finally got my Provisional Driver’s License after over 30 years of age! I was of course going for the title of oldest person on their Ls and imagined swerving back and forth in a large vehicle at age 80 and only getting my Ps out of sheer sympathy due to the fact that I had sat the test 50 or so times.

I purposely didn’t tell anyone that I was sitting my Ps as it is so easy to fail-two points and there are plenty of instant fail things and you’re out. Just before my test I took some professional driving instructor lessons and I felt like it was a good omen as my driving instructor sounded like Franck Eggelhoffer (although the similarity ended there). Then when I met the tester he looked like Tom Skerritt’s character from Top Gun, one of my embarrassingly favourite movies. So that was good omen number 2. Then we went the route that my instructor aka Franck took me on just that morning which was good omen number 3.

It wasn’t easy, it seems that with Christmas coming up people are more frazzled and dopey than usual and there was a man who just stepped out onto the road without looking and luckily I hit the brakes before hitting him (apparently avoiding addled individuals like this earns you one bonus point). I went for my first drive alone today and I was very nervous. It seemed that Sydney’s already congested roads were even more clogged and it took about 10 minutes to drive the two blocks from outside of our house. The first day was (relatively) incident free. OK there was a garbage bin that I accidentally backed into (who put that there?) and I had to call Mr NQN when I couldn’t park the car in the garage but I was just relieved that I managed to turn my lights on. Baby steps dear readers, baby steps…

I also gave myself another early Christmas present by making these Swiss Roll Christmas Cottages. I have already made and frozen some things (a crostata and a stollen went into the deep freeze last week to be served for Christmas dinner). These Swiss roll cottages are also perfect to freeze. I used a blackberry and durif jam that I picked up from Blue Ox berry farm on a recent trip to Milawa in Victoria which gives it a lovely boozy red wine flavour. The swiss roll is light and fluffy and the chocolate buttercream icing is a lovely sweet contrast to the fruity jam. And it’s in the shape of a house-call it my adult baker’s version of Lego.

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In my humble opinion, I would guess that for most guests, weddings are all about two things: the speeches and the food (dinner and a show if you will). The reason why I include these two things is because I am thinking about the men folk who don’t really care about a bride’s dress or the designer of her shoes whereas that’s my very first question. They simply want to be fed a nice meal and be entertained by a funny speech. Mr NQN’s brother The Assman was his best man at our wedding and he did a great job.

He started off with an anecdote that about the role of a “Best Man” during centuries past. It was such a sweet and funny speech that when we attended a wedding of a couple of guests a few months later we found that the best man there used the same anecdote. Except this best man decided to give his a “racy” tone and suggested that the best men of centuries ago used to help the groom find and knock up a girl and sling her on the back of a horse after some non consensual “hi-jinks” in the forest. It went down like a lead balloon and there were several gasps of shock from the older crowd and he abandoned his speech mid word muttering an apology. Oh dear.

So what does this have to do with the Danish wedding cake? Well the Kransekake cake comes in two forms. The traditional wedding cake is a conical shape. But you can also use the same dough to make a horn shaped cake called an overflodighedshorn where the open end of the horn is stuffed with chocolates and other sweets. I bought one last year and presented it to my friend The Second Wife and her fiancee Gravy Beard at their engagement party. It is to the non Danish or non Norwegians quite a sexual looking bacchanalian looking object. I must apologise to the Danes and Norwegians for finding it that way but every other guest at this party had the same reaction raising their eyebrows suggestively and asking where the roman orgy was.

I had all but sworn off making wedding cakes. I made one for Mr NQN’s family a few years ago and it was so traumatic that I simply never wanted to do one ever again. But then The Second Wife asked me with the magic words-I could do anything that I wanted for their cake. Anything? Like the Danish wedding cake? I knew that I wanted to make this cake but suppressed any urge to make the horn version lest there be suggestive eyebrow raising or hints to retire to an orgy room as that does not befit a wedding. I didn’t want to be the cake equivalent of that best man’s speech.

The horn version

The cake itself is easy enough to do provided you have the molds. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow the molds from the lovely Faye Cahill, wedding cake decorator extraordinaire. We were talking cakes, as you do, and I explained that I needed to make a wedding cake for a friend and that I wanted to do a  Danish wedding cake but thought that it might be too hard to do without the guides. Faye told me that she had a Danish wedding cake as one of her cakes (one of her cakes, I mean of course she would have multiple cakes) and she would lend me the molds!

The cake is basically made up of almond meal, icing sugar and egg whites mixed together and then rolled out into these molds and then baked. The rings are then stacked on top of each other and sandwiched together by royal icing. And there was a recipe on the side of the box which I followed but I found that it wasn’t quite right. It called for the dough to be warmed and dried out and then cooled which I found nearly impossible to roll as it was so dry.

On the left, the recipe below. On the right, using the recipe provided on the box

It was also a lot shorter than I wanted-a wedding cake after all is supposed to produce a heightened sense of reality and this was just a let down at a mere 21cms high. So instead I searched on the internet for a few recipes and none of them called for the dough to be cooked and then cooled. I found these recipes much easier to roll. And once I decided on the recipe the cake was pretty much mixed within 10 minutes, prepped within 15 minutes and only required 10 minutes in the oven. The resulting cake is about 30cms tall and tall enough to make an impression but not overshadow the bride-as if!

“Let’s double it!” Franck Eggelhoffer says…

But of course you know the inner Franck Eggelhoffer in me wouldn’t stop there. He said “OK zis veddding kak is only sirty centimetres tall… let’s double it!”. Which I thought was a good idea at the time until it came to transporting it.

This is how we decided to transport it: in three parts. It would have been too precarious to move otherwise. Unlike other cakes, it has no scaffolding apart from the royal icing and half whispered prayers. And it needed to go to Kurrajong Heights which is 1 hour and 40 minutes away. And besides that, that morning I was getting some eyelashes applied at the skillfull Lash Lady Charlotte in Newtown. Then I was getting my hair done at the fabulous Stevie English salon in a Mad Men/50′s style as there was a group of us attending the wedding outfitted as if we were from this era as it is The Second Wife’s favourite time. I showed my stylist Verity a picture of the style that I wanted and it was done perfectly to brief!

Mad men hair!

We had a large box with a lid where we put the large bottom layer and we strapped that into the back seat belt. The middle and top layers sat in a box on my lap and on my lap lay a large flat stand to give the box as flat a surface as possible.

It was being held in an outdoor marquee so we quickly took it out, placed it on the cake table and I “glued” the middle section onto the bottom section. We then checked into our nearby accommodation at The Rustic Spirit but barely had a chance to enjoy it as we had to shower and get changed and high tail it back 40 minutes later to cement on the top layer before the wedding started at 3pm.

Hurriedly icing the top layer to the middle and bottom layers ten minutes before the ceremony started…

It was a stunningly beautiful wedding, although I always knew it would be. The little poochies Dash and Lucy were involved (and it’s a good thing that Lucy didn’t her little trick when she is excited of peeing and doing a handstand-yes really!).

And the kak ahem… the cake? I think they really liked it!

I also think that we found the perfect card from a gorgeous shop, Red Letter Day in Matakana, New Zealand. Little did I know when I purchased it in March that I would be making the cake!

So tell me Dear Reader, what is your favourite era and why?

Kransekake – A Danish Wedding Cake

Makes a 70-80 cms tall cake (halve this for more regular and easier to transport option)

• 1100grams almond meal (ground almonds)
• 1100grams icing/powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup flour plus perhaps 1.4 cup more if dough is too sticky plus extra flour for dusting molds and rolling
• 10 egg whites
• 4 tablespoons unflavoured oil (like almond oil)

For icing

• 3 egg whites
• 6 cups icing sugar
• 3 teaspoons lemon juice

You will also need: 1 set of Kransekake forms, a large cake board and some white fondant. If you want to paint a gold ring around the fondant then mix up a little vodka with some edible gold dust and brush it on with a small paintbrush.

1. If you’re using a standard Kitchenaid or Breville mixer, do this in two lots as the mixture is too large to do together-at least while it’s first mixing up. In the large bowl of an electric mixer add the almond meal and flour and sift in the icing sugar. Add 4 of the egg whites into the mix and mix with a paddle on low speed. Add a little of the 5th egg white until you reach a moist but rollable consistency. Cover your hands lightly in flour and if the dough still sticks to them add a little more flour. Cover with cling wrap so that it doesn’t dry out.

Kransekake ring molds

2. Preheat oven to 200C/400F. Grease each kransekake mold with oil and sift over with flour. Take a small amount of the dough and roll it out and place it in the molds, joining any joins straight away before it dries out. Don’t fill too much as it will expand a little. Cover the dough in the molds with cling wrap so that it doesn’t dry out. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until it is a light golden shade. Cool in tin and if any are sticking together then quickly run a knife between them before they cool and harden. Remove from the tin once cooled.

The cooked rings

Lighter baked ones and darker baked ones-darker baked ones are sturdier!

The scallop pattern on the rings

3. Sort rings into graduating shapes. Make royal icing by sifting the icing sugar in a bowl and whisking in the lemon juice and egg whites. Using a piping bag fitted with a small plain tube (I used some made of baking paper-three in total), place some royal icing on the bottom of the largest ring and adhere it to the cake board. Then with the royal icing, draw patterns on the rings as seen above. Sandwich these together with more royal icing which sets like glue (and is great for warm weather-unlike chocolate it doesn’t melt).

Piping royal icing onto the base of the ring that will sit on top-to flip upside down

I also put some royal icing on the bottom of the ring that was to sit on top of each ring-this was only necessary as I had to transport it a distance but normally I don’t think it is needed. Traditionally, it is served with Danish flags in it. To cloak the rest of the silver board in fondant, roll out 500grams/1 pound of white fondant on a lightly dusted cornflour/cornstarch surface and follow the instructions here. Use a rectangle of overhead projecter sheet to smooth out the surface and to disguise the join.

Happy Wedding The Second Wife!

Although I’m not what one would consider a goth (I mean really, do goths tan or more accurately fake tan?), I am not really surprising anyone when I say that I do all of the accoutrements of the gothic world. That doesn’t mean that I also don’t like the girly but I get similarly excited when I see the Hallowe’en decorations filling the stores. Not only do I get to create some creative food, I also get to dress up. And you see Dear Readers, that is what girls do best.

My Hallowe’en parties are costume only affairs. I admit that when guests don’t dress up, I get a little upset inside and somewhere a unicorn dies (ok not really). Costumes don’t have to be elaborate or costly. Case in point, my friend Miss America made an awesome costume where he stuffed a pillow under his shirt and wore a retro shirt and hat from a vintage store. So when people don’t bother dressing up, like Franck Eggelhoffer would do, I strike them off my invite list for the next year. Yes I can be ruthless that way. The guests that tend to not get dressed up are the boys. Mr NQN is a prime example. He will do anything to try and avoid getting dressed up.

As you can see I delighted in getting dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood. OK my costume was a little shorter than I wanted. Queen Viv was going to make it for me but she was called to South Australia for work so with no time left, I bought it on ebay. And I warn you if you go that route, they only seem to sell sexy adult costumes and I spent to whole night pulling down my skirt trying to ensure that I wasn’t mooning my guests. And along with dressing the part, I also like making the food. The more ghoulish and blood like the better and I tend to use a lot of black and red food colouring for this holiday.

I got the idea for these directly from Linda’s lovely Bubble and Sweet blog where they were more of an ode to Twilight but of course the timing wasn’t lost on me. She was kind enough to email me tips on how to do it. I did the lazy route and made pops out of white Tim Tams rather than cake. One thing that I would suggest is to buy the Wilton red chocolate melts which is what Linda suggested as painting the white chocolate was a) fruitless b) stupid and c) time wasting. I’d like to save you from that fate but still enjoy these gorgeously vampish treats.

Sure there is some food colouring involved and when Teena brought little Annabel to the party I didn’t give her any for fear of her turning into a head spinning toddler. But they are surprisingly easy to make, especially the lips. Plus they can help give you the vampire teeth look while providing you with a snack at the same time.

So tell me Dear Reader, do you like getting dressed up for costume parties or Hallowe’en?

Vampire Cookie Pops

Makes 16 Vampire Pops

• 1 packet white chocolate Tim Tams
• 50grams/1.7 ozs light or regular cream cheese (I used light)
• 3-4 tablespoons almond meal
• red food colouring gel or liquid
• 250/6ozs Wilton red chocolate melted
• Lollypop sticks
• a small batch of black royal icing (see recipe below) or you can use chocolate fondant
• white fondant for teeth and fangs

1. In a food processor, process the biscuits, cream cheese and red colouring until it becomes a smooth paste. You may need to stop and scrape 2-3 times to do this. Add almond meal if it becomes too sticky. Scrape the mixture into a bowl and refrigerate for 30 minutes until it becomes firmer.

From a ball, to a flattened ball..

To a diamond

To lips!

2. With a melon baller or small spoon scoop out truffle shaped balls and rolls these into balls between your palms. If you have hot palms like me, run them under cold water and quickly towel them dry. Shape them into lips but making a diamond shape and then fashioning lips-this is surprising easier than you would think ’

3. Melt red chocolate in a double boiler. Dip a lollypop stick or a small wooden skewer into chocolate and carefully and gently insert it into the base of the cookie pop. Allow to set firm. Then dip each ball in the chocolate making sure that excess chocolate drips off-this is very important. Place back on parchment lined tray to set firm.

4. When set, add a little black royal icing in a long oval shape in the centre of the lips. Then shape some fangs with the white fondant and some teeth and affix these to the royal icing which will set hard and adhere them.