So here I am again, with part two of I made a thing!
In my last post I showed you how I made some of those fancy book boxes you can buy in craft shops that cost an absolute fortune! I ended up making three of them for my niece and nephews for halloween and I wanted to show you how they turned out.
So as I said, my niece is a big Harry Potter fan so that became the basis of my theme this year. The previous years have all been along potions themes so I thought a change was in order. I mean, I could have done potions boxes and ingredients but it's all so similar to what I did before. Instead I decided to take the traditional sweets from the series and "make" those to put inside the box.
I picked three of the Hogwarts Textbooks from the first book, The Philosophers Stone, and painted the boxes to look like them. Before I started, I took the white painted boxes and covered then in tissue paper and glue to give them a nice, old book texture. Once I'd picked the books I wanted I did a google search for images of the covers, resized them and printed them out. I used acrylic paint to paint them in the colour of the book. I then used carbon paper to trace the deesign on the front of the boxes and filled in the detail with black and metallic paintmarkers. I personally like the Edding 780 ones, I think they have the smoothest and most vibrant coverage. Here's how they turned out:
It's been so long, I really don't have the habit of updating regularly it seems. In my defence I have now entered the final year of my PhD and the resultant panic that comes with that realization... I mean oh my... in about a year i'm going to have a doctorate and be out in the big wide world. Now is also the time I've had to start looking into what I'll do after, I think a Post-Doctoral position would be an excellent choice, but also slightly terrifying!
Anyway, I know this blog is called The Graduate Eats but this post is not about food... well not entirely. You see, I also really like working with my hands to make things. Infact before I set on my path to become an academic I actually wanted to train to be a set designer or prop maker, event's conspired against me however and I ended up not being able to do that, but I still love it as a hobby. As it coming upto Halloween I set about my tradition of making a gift for my nieces and nephews. Every year I make them something for halloween, filled with sweets and treats. Everything is hand-made and personal to them and they love it. It helps me feel closer to them too since I don't get to see them as often as I'd like. This will be the fourth year since I moved away and started this tradition. The first year I made them little coffins filled with sweets, the second year I made them potions kits filled with all kinds of 'ingredients', last year I made them a potions shop filled with all their potioneering needs.
This year however, I learned that my 10 year old niece loves Harry Potter, which is totally awesome because I'm a huge Harry Potter geek, so my joy at sharing this with her is immense. So, with that in mind I decided to make them spell books from the series and fill them with the traditional sweets from Harry Potter, chocolate frogs, peppermint toads, fizzing whizbees, sherbert lemons and so on. Now I know you can buy papier mache book boxes from most craft stores but boy are they expensive, like seriously expensive. Instead I decided to make my own, since I'm pretty good with my hands and all that I figured it shouldn't be too hard and it's really not. I also noticed that finding detailed tutorials on how to do it is very hard so I though I'd share with you how to make them so you can do them in future. This is the first time that I've ever done a photo tutorial so I hope you'll forgive me any mistakes I make but do ask questions if you want!
Recently I was asked to make a birthday cake for a friend, since I love making cakes this was a very welcome request, until came the stipulation that it had to be vegan. oh... I've never made a vegan cake in my life! The idea quite baffled me I mean eggs and butter are pretty much a staple in cake. This would be quite a challenge! It also had to be sturdy enough to stand up to being carved and covered in fondant as they wanted a rollerskate cake (as a side note Renshaw Regal-Ice and Modelling paste is totally vegan!).
I set about researching in earnest for vegan cake recipes, there are a few out there, most of which use oil, I tried one of the highest rated ones. I don't know what it is about oil based cakes but they just don't do it for me, the flavour always seems to be lacking the richness that butter gives it and it just seems to taste flat to me, I also really don't like the texture. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't get on with those kinds of recipes! So 1 try down and it was just ick, fudgy to the point of cloying in your mouth, almost like unbaked cake batter.
But, I had an idea! You can buy vegan butter so that's a start, and eggless cakes are quite popular as well so maybe an eggless cake was the way to go and I could 'veganize' it from there. This was by far the best choice. I found a simple eggless chocolate sponge and adapted it from there with almond milk in place of skim milk and vegan butter instead of butter. I also divide the flour between self raising and plain for a bit more lightness and added in some dark chocolate to up the chocolate factor a bit. The result was deliciously rich, moist cake that was tasted pretty much like a normal sponge cake.
I will say that a problem of vegan cake is that it is quite crumbly, probably due to the lack of eggs so I found it best to leave it to cool completely in the tin before trying to move it and then by using two plates to kind of flip it over so you're not lifting it out as it's likely to crack. It also is much more stable to next day when it's had time to settle but if you are using it for carving/decorating you do need to be a bit more gentle!
For carving the cake I layered it up with peanut butter frosting (vegan butter, icing sugar and peanut butter) and then wrapped it in greaseproof and foil and froze it before attempting to do anything with it. It actually worked out quite well with minimal crumbling, just make sure you have a very sharp knife. Before crumb coating it I chucked it back in the freezer for half and hour and made sure my frosting was not too cold or thick otherwise it would have pulled off the crumb. Then just proceeded as usual, chilling the crumbcoated cake before covering in frosting. It turned out quite well if I do say so myself! And went down quite a treat with the intended birthday person!
(I used this recipe for vegan royal icing)
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| Vegan Moxi Skate Cake |
It's been a busy past few months! The blog rather fell by the way side amidst making 2 wedding cakes and 2 celebration cakes in the space of a month (perhaps I shall share some photos later), travelling around the south of England on research and studying. I also gave my first conference paper this week, oh my pretty scary stuff but quite fun, they also feed us and free food is always a bonus, especially accompanied with free alcohol, I think I could get used to this conference thing!
Anyway, I do have quite a backlog of recipes to share with you now that things have quietened down a little. Today though I want to share something really really simple yet incredibly delicious, just to ease us back into this game!
Peach season is upon us! I think peaches have to be my favourite fruit and I can demolish a punnet of peaches in a day, but thats ok because they're totally healthy so I don't feel too bad about it. My favourite has to be the yellow flesh peaches they just seem so much sweeter and juicer than the white flesh, and necatrines? forget about it. Is it just me or do they taste weird? But yes, peaches. Peaches are delicious and I'm so happy that I can get them in the supermarkets again. I love that they are only sold in season since I think that fruit sold out of season is just kind of meh... you know the strawberries in December that just taste like water or Blueberries that have literally no tartness or sweetness just mushiness. Ick. Well its the season for Peaches, Strawberries and Blueberries so I am one happy camper right now! My three favourite fruits right at my finger tips in all their sweet, tart, juicy glory! It's also the season where the weather gets warmer which seems really nice at first, until it's too warm, you know that british thing right? There's like a 3 degree window of too warm... too cold. Yesterday was one of those days that it was a case of nope... too hot. But a girl still want's dessert! Just, not turning on the oven because oh dear god please no more heat.
This is where today's recipe comes in. Here at the grad house we try to eat healthy, sure the odd bar of chocolate sneaks its way into my belly more often than it should occassionally... but we try to get plenty of fruit and wholegrains and cook things from scratch so we know what's in them. We're still working on the vegetables because we have very different tastes in those! I love broccoli, sprouts, green beans, cabbage, Mr Grad... not so much. But that's another post and another recipe! So, eating healthy, this fruit salad is a really easy way to get delicious fruit into you diet without having to munch your way through endless apples. As a bonus it also has the flavours of Mojito in it which has to be like the best drink ever. What's not to love??
Aren't cupcakes fantastic? I mean really, a little piece of cake just for you with the perfect cake to frosting ratio. I quite, quite love them, mostly because the flavour combinations are endless, more so than actual cake! They are also so much easier to share. I mean, who really wants a half eaten cake or even just one slice of cake? Instead cupcakes are all like 'hey I made these just for you... look, tiny little whole cakes just for you!' (it also means you eat less cake, which is good and also bad because, cake!).
Anyway, cupcakes. I like baking, alot, but I am also conscious of my health so sometimes I have to really reign in my cupcake baking (and general baking) desires otherwise we'd have a house overrun with tiny little cakes. It's a problem when I suddenly have an idea like, 'hey! I wonder how Mojito cupcakes would taste?' and then my brain is like 'you need to go make them... now!!' for like the next week or month until I have an opportunity to indulge my experimentation and share the results. However, now that Mr. Grad has a job my problems have been solved! yay! I can bake/experiment all I want and the results are always very gratefully recieved by his colleagues who all seem to have very sweet tooths. Everybody wins!
Recently, Mr. Grad passed his 6 month probation with his company so to celebrate I made cupcakes for him to share with his colleagues. My brain had been nagging me to make these mojito cupcakes for a few weeks and I'd been obsessively searching through google and pinterest for ideas and drooling over the images so it seemed totally fitting to make these cupcakes to celebrate. Everyone like Mojito's right? and cupcakes? so combined? One word... divine! All his colleagues declared them to be the best cupcakes ever which was nice to hear! Even Mr. Grad who doesn't particularly have a sweet tooth went back for seconds!
So, you totally need to make these for your next 'grown up' party or celebration or just because you need mojito cupcakes in your life, which you do, you always do!
Now the warmer
weather is coming in I don't feel like filling up on a steaming bowl of
porridge in the morning, but I do like my oats! They are so very
healthy and tasty. What's a girl to do??
But then I
discovered this wonderful, magical food called overnight oats! Have you
heard about overnight oats? I think I'm quite late coming to this party
but they are pretty amazing! Basically you toss oats, milk, chia seeds
and whatever flavours you like into a jar, shake it up and throw it in
the fridge overnight. In the morning you have gloriously thick oats that
have absorbed all the liquid and become tender and delicious!
I
also love them because they are so simple, no faffing about in the
morning with the stove when you're sleepy and likely to burn down the
house. No bowls/saucepans to wash up. Everything gets made into the jar
and shaken up and then you can eat out of that jar too. Bonus! You make
them the night before so it's just grab and go and you can make them up
for a few days and not have to worry about breakfast! yay!
They are also so
incredibly healthy! No nasty stuff in it and it's a really good way to
get fruit into your breakfast as well as protein and everyone knows the
oats are like the best superfood. What's not to like?
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| See? So healthy! |
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| Into the jars it goes! |
It's been so long since I updated here hasn't it? Life has totally gotten in the way... well I say life, I really mean the PhD has gotten in the way, which seems to be life anyway so hey ho... I've been scootling around the UK to archives and conferences and all that kind of stuff and I also started teaching! That's right, they let me loose on the first years at the uni! It's been fun but pretty exhausting, I also have way more sympathy for my Professor's than I ever had before! But now term is ending and I finally have a few moments to myself so it felt like it was time to crack open the blog and share some recipes that have kept us going over these past few months. This is one of my favourite bread recipes to make, so easy, simple, quick and delicious.
We love bread in this house. We eat it every day, more than once a day. There is nothing better than a warm slice of bread fresh from the oven. I am quite simple in my tastes and quite enjoy it on it's own with a tiny bit of butter and a sprinkle of salt or just alongside a slice of Salami, oh and of course slathered in Nutella for breakfast, lunch afternoon snack. Mr Grad will eat it with pretty much anything, Salami, Cheese, Chilli, Artichokes, Tomatoes, you name it.
One of my favourite breads though is one that is purely savoury, Focaccia. I adore it! It's insanely delicious, all nice and fluffy and chewy with a delicious olive oil taste. It also makes the best sandwiches (amazing with Porchetta!) and is even incredibly tasty as a grilled cheese!
I have a recipe for Focaccia that I've been making for at leat 6 years, I don't even remember where I got it from, I just know that I love making it, it's so easy and versatile! When I say easy, I mean EASY, no kneading, no fancy equipment or anything, just a bowl and a spatula and you get the fluffiest, tastiest bread you can imagine. You can also flavour it in almost anyway you want which is awesome, I love it with Rosemary or Sage.
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| So fluffy!! |
