He Used To Bring Me Roses...

Fanny has gone into full-blown Blue Peter mode for her latest 'how to...' pic-strip. Not only has she raided the tubs of plasticine from the play-box, she also has a box full of 'ones that she made earlier' ready to show any newcomers who may miss her impromptu demonstration. If anyone dares that is. Fanny has come suitably prepared with all sorts of templates and diagrams as well... There's no need to send the adults out the room at this stage though, this one is intended for them, not the small fry...

All this preparation is for edible roses. According to Fanny they require an awful lot of practice to get right you see. That's where the plasticine comes in. She recommends making the roses from it first of all, just to make sure that you get the technique spot-on before letting you loose with anything remotely edible. Fanny additionally recommends using white plasticine ONLY for the practice runs, and then coloured Almond Paste ONLY for the real thing. This is a health and safety warning in essence to make sure that none of the plasticine flowers are eaten. Do not eat the plasticine, alright?

Fanny says the sole reason (apart from the aforementioned safety) for practising with plasticine is that if you do not end up with satisfactory roses, you can simply 'bang them down' and start again. The plasticine will easily work back into blobs and you can try again. And again. As many times as you require to perfect the presentation. Indefinitely Fanny says, such is her confidence in us all to master the technique. This make-and-make-again learning process is not possible with coloured Almond Paste, as it dries and cracks. No-one likes to see that.

I may be cuckoo, but not only do I decide to throw caution to the wind and NOT rehearse with plasticine first, but I also decide NOT to use Almond Paste to make my roses. I've got ready made icing instead.  It is white though, so perhaps my mind will be fooled into thinking it is plasticine, although I don't ever remember seeing it in white. Maybe it just never stayed white very long in my hands? For the roses, in your choice of edible or non-edible materials, Fanny first takes a blob the size of a walnut and fashions it into a 'bud' shape, with a flat bottom and a narrow waist. Then more, smaller blobs are rolled, pressed flat to the exact size of the given templates and then wrapped round the bud and made to look like petals.

I think I did alright despite the lack of plasticine preparation. They might look more like cabbages than roses, but I can sharpen my skills. Instead of colouring my icing, I have sprayed them with edible glitter once finished. Fanny gives one final warning at the end, so if even if you've practised and practised, but failed, it may be that by some unhappy chance you suffer from hot, moist hands and, if so, you should forget all about making your own edible roses. The moisture from your sweaty palms will penetrate the petals, producing a plastered together pile-up. Please do revert to ones that someone else has made earlier. Or indeed fashion your own from sticky-back plastic.

Can my icing skills matcha Fannys?

Fanny is not to know, but I've never been any good at icing and decorating cakes. I'm quite artistic, and love 'creating' things but when it comes to icing I just go to pieces. I can't do modelling, and am only just starting to master piping, thanks to Fannys instructions for potatoes of course. Fanny wants me to learn not only to ice, but to pipe a trellis design on to a cake. Eeek. In the partwork she gets everyone involved, even poor Johnnie is shown trellising away, it so easy apparently. Diligent assistant Dianne does the hard work on the cake though. It looks perfect of course, and Fanny says if I follow suit, so will mine. I am not convinced, just putting it out there. Before I can ice a cake I need to bake one, and Fanny recommends her close textured sponge for the job, which she also calls Recette Fanny, which presumably means it's her own recipe?

It's made using half flour and half cornflour, which is a new one on me, but I'm happy to try. Fanny recommends that the sponge itself be flavoured before baking and suggests coffee, orange, lemon, strawberry or raspberry if it's summertime. Well, it was sunny at the weekend, so for Edinburgh that counts as summer - raspberry it is. Let's not mention that it's been dull again today. Before I begin I have to sift the flour and cornflour onto a square of greaseproof paper, twice. But how much? 

Fanny asks me to weigh the eggs to determine the quantities - I need as much flour and cornflour as weight of eggs, and the same of sugar and butter. Twitter helped me out with this one - I wasn't sure whether to weigh the eggs in their shells or not... Seems it doesn't really matter, but in shells won. So the butter gets creamed, sugar added and creamed again, a small amount of the flour mix flung in and the eggs added one by one. Finally the rest of the flour is beaten in before the chosen flavour is added, or some milk if you fancy it 'plain'. Fanny always give the 'plain' option but makes it sound so dull and ordinary that everyone must leap straight you the flavours. For my raspberry flavour I need to sieve a punnet and add the same amount of juice as would've been milk. It's not as complicated as it sounds, just new to me. The batter is pink. 

The sponge bakes well and comes out the oven fairly flat on top and risen well. Presumably this is why it makes a good sponge for decoration? Fanny makes her buttercream using an egg yolk, which again is not something I've done before, and she adds an appropriate flavouring. Fanny did hers with coffee, but I wonder if some lovely Green Matcha Tea would be a better match with the raspberries? And surely Fanny would approve of the colour? The buttercream is dolloped on the underside which becomes the top (just to ensure it's perfectly smooth), flattened down with a spatula and placed in the fridge to set.

Fanny gives very loose instructions for her glacé icing - basically mix icing sugar with a chosen flavouring until it is the right consistency! It's quite hard when you are hoping to learn what that consistency is... I have some raspberry syrup, so set to mixing it up until it's 'pourable but thick' which is Fannys only clue. Again, Fanny shows how it runs over the cake but needs to be teased a little with a spatula dipped in hot water. I think I made mine too runny, it just won't stop. Fanny finishes her recette with a trellis of icing, and I choose to make this with Matcha powder too, just for fun. Fanny says that 'her way' totally eliminates the danger of picking up any spare cake crumbs when applying the icing. That is true, not a crumb in sight! There is a cake under their I promise, but I think I need a little more practice. Or perhaps ice the cake on a rack first then transfer to a board? 

It's All In The Booklet #2 - Petits Fours

It may seem bizarre for Fanny to dedicate an entire episode of her Cradock Cooks for Christmas series, and so a whole chapter in the booklet, to Petits Fours but what seems even stranger is that she only gives one recipe - for choux paste. I think if she was on TV today she'd have an array of Macarons and cake pops, but as her legacy is preserved in her very favourite aspic, it's choux paste all the way. Fanny reminds us however that she is helping us to dazzle our guests with a treat which is not available outside of France, which is simple to create (if you know how) and above all is so very economical to produce. All we need is some flour, butter, two standard eggs and some ordinary tap water, which by any reasonable person could not be considered extravagant, apparently.

With some help from poor darling Sarah, Fanny demonstrates the technique for melting the butter in the water, and when it reaches boiling point 'shooting' in the flour and beating before adding carefully the eggs. It should be very thick and absolutely smooth, past the globule stage, as Fanny points out 'such nasty little lumps'. Fanny reveals her own special trick to ensure that the finished baked buns don't contain any 'shameful goo' and that is to allow it to cool at room temperature and NEVER in a refrigerator. Fanny is particularly cross on screen about an un-named and shamed women's magazine who gave a perfectly correct recipe, except the stage where goo had to be scraped out. Made properly, there should be no goo. Fanny pushes her finger into her baked buns to prove it.

I am sure Fanny would be most pleased with my piped and baked eclairs, buns and little miniature buns - not a hint of goo anywhere. Baked high in the oven and on a high heat, they are light and crisp when cooled, although I couldn't bear to bake mine as long as Fanny recommends. Fanny reveals hers from the oven proudly, and claims they should be very dark brown, and not prone to the perils of humidity as they are baked solid. Mine are golden. Oh dear, sorry Fanny, I fear I will be in for some of the same treatment as poor Sarah. Once cooled however I push on, fill them with the required mix of confectioners custard and whipped cream, and top with flavoured and coloured glacé icing. Fanny recommends a gentle pink perhaps, chocolate or coffee coloured, but my modern day choux buns are slightly more vibrant than even Fanny herself would make.

The same process is used for eclairs and the larger buns. Fanny, in a moment of faux modesty, reveals that her reputation for producing these wonderful Petits Fours is quite unjustifiable, after all it is so easy.  Her piping technique, which includes cutting the choux paste from the piping bag with a wet knife, does indeed produce wonderfully shaped eclairs. I do need to improve my technique, as from time to time I did forget, pulling up the piping bag and ending up with 'dreadful tails', but as Fanny demonstrates these are easily snipped off and re-shaped without much fuss.

Fanny says you can make these six months ahead of when you want them and they are perfectly fine, if stored correctly in the freezer of course, but they are so very simple and quick it seems unlikely that you'd bother. Fanny stresses throughout the show, and of course in the booklet, how very simple it is, and fun. However she does appear to be a little fuddled on screen, forgetting which buns she's filled and so on, perhaps it's because poor darling Sarah has disappeared? She seems worried about the year ahead, perhaps she knew this might be her last time in the spotlight? Soldiering on, Fanny displays a full table of completed eclairs and buns, even a Croquembouche which she does not explain how to make, at the end. She warns any friends who are watching that she does not appreciate their nerve in asking for a doggy bag to take any home that may be left over from the party, how very dare they. I am guessing the guests were too dazzled by the sight of all those garish buns to eat them on the night.

I've entered these Petits Fours into this months #TreatPetite hosted by @Cakeyboi and @bakingexplorer