#lindy smith

[gacougnol]

Lindy Smith Blue Vervain IA Kallitype on paper

[gacougnol]

Lindy Smith Goldenrod WY nd Kallitype on paper

[thecakediary]

Buttercream Recipe

I use buttercream recipe from Lindy’s Book :

Ingredients:

110gr unsalter butter

350gr icing sugar

1-2 tbsp milk / or water (I used milk)

drops of vanilla or alternating flavouring (I used vanilla)

Recipe :

Beat the butter until fluffy

Sift icing sugar into the bowl and continue to beaten

Add milk or water ->must be firm but spreadable

Add flavour

Because I love playing with colour I put some purple and made a purple buttercream.

When I first tried this recipe I didn’t know what to expect and I thought it was too sweat, and I tried another one with less icing sugar but the consistency wasn’ t it. This is the one that can make things hold in place.

[thecakediary]

The Chocolate Mud Cake Recipe

I've used The Chocolate Mud Cake from Lindy Smith Blog for many recipes, you can also find the recipe in here : 

I used a 20cm square tin.

Ingredients :

500ml water

600g sugar

250g dark good quality chocolate

375g butter unsalted

320g plain flour

60g self raising flour

40g cocoa powder

3 eggs lightly beaten

Recipe :

Preheat oven (160°C)

Grease a 20cm (8in) square or 22.5cm (9in) round cake tin, line the base and sides with baking paper.

Combine water and sugar in a large saucepan and heat until the sugar has dissolved.

Remove the saucepan from the heat and add in the chopped chocolate and the butter. Stir until all ingredients are combined and melted. I found that the chocolate although melted is suspended in the syrup rather than being combined into it.

Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature.

Sift the flours and cocoa powder together, with a balloon whisk, carefully incorporate into the syrup

Add the eggs in one at a time and whisk until smooth.

Poor the mixture into prepared pan.

Bake in a moderately slow oven for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. To test, insert a skewer into the cake when it comes out clean the cake is ready. I use a fan oven at 160°C  and found that my cake was baked in 2 hours.

This cake is fabulous, it's really moist and with a layer of chocolate ganache : it's Chocorgasmic!

To add a layer of ganache, you have to cut your cake vertically. 

The recipe for the chocolate ganache is :

(you can also find it here) :

Put 200 gr chocolate (dark was the one I used, but you can use white or milk) into a bowl over boiling water pan, with 200 ml of double cream.

Stir until totally melted, use it hot or cold.

This is Lindy's smith recipe and it is awesome!

I think this proportion is too much for only one layer of a 20cm square tin. But I will recommend to cover the all cake with it if you'd like to cover it with fondant (sugarpaste) it helps to adjust the holes and bumps and make a more professional look.

I've used this recipe for the Octopus Cake, the Mystery Cake and Rosie's Birthday Cake.

[thecakediary]

The Contemporary Cake Decorating Bible

Discover everything you need to know to create celebration cakes that are beautiful, unique and truly contemporary. This is the ultimate, must-have cake decorating and sugarcrafting techniques book, from best-selling author and superstar sugarcrafter Lindy Smith. Acclaimed sugarcraft expert Lindy Smith demonstrates over 150 techniques step-by-step, from baking to decorating More than 80 projects allow you to get creative right away, with detailed instructions for decadent desserts from tiered cakes, wonky cakes, mini cakes, cupcakes and cookies Essential tips and advice are included for all skill levelts, from complete beginners to the most confident of cake decorators

I finally bought this book.

The recipes for the cakes are not the best in my taste (I prefer the ones on Lindy's blog), but the book is really well done, easy to read, with lots of helpful tips and techniques to learn how to decorate cakes. I will definitely recommend to buy one of her books to start decorating.

[madewithlovebyme-blog]

MadeWithLove-Stencilled cookies

Stencils are great for creating beautiful, intricate patterns that look both time consuming and complex, when in fact they are very simple to do and dont take that long!

Stencils can be used in several different ways to create lots of different effects.

The first way involves using ROYAL ICING. This is icing that is made with egg white and icing sugar. You use one egg white and then mix in enough icing sugar to create a toothpaste type consistency.

Tip* The advantage of using royal icing is that it sets hard so you don’t have to worry about it smudging later on!

Once you have rolled out your sugarpaste you simply lay the stencil over the top. You can tack it down with a very small blob of royal icing on each edge, or a little dab of water underneath the stencil, but i find just by holding them with finger and thumb they stay in place.

You then use a pallette knife to scrape the royal icing across the stencil. I make sure i am using the broad side of the knife and take it gently. This takes a little practice but you get the hang of it quickly enough.

Once you have covered the whole stencil wait for a minute of so and then gently peel back the stencil. You will be left with the beautiful design on the sugarpaste ready to be cut out with whatever cutters you are using.

These stenciled sugarpaste shapes can then be laid over your cookies, tacked down with a little more royal icing on the biscuit and there you have it, beautiful intricate biscuits.

I use one stencil to get two or three cutter shapes out of one stencil as this saves time. It takes along longer if you just get one shape out of each stencil!

Tip: I tried to go again with the same stencil a second time and found it got really messy and didnt work very well, so now i gently rinse them between attempts. The stencils can be quite fragile so after rinsing i press them between a T-towel to dry them, rather than rubbing them. It only takes 30 seconds but then you have  a nice clean dry stencil to do your next design with.

For a beautiful selection of stencils, look here:

http://www.lindyscakes.co.uk/OnlineShop-Stencils.htm

Here is an example of a ginger cookie i made with a royal icing stencil design.