4th of July is red, white and blue fun!

We're not American.  Don't have any specific ties with America - though there is an Uncle living in Tacoma. WA and a good friend living in NYC, and another good friend who used to live here in Dundee but is now back in VA I think.  And I follow a few American bakers, like Bakerella, The Girl who ate Everything,  Created by Diane, Pint Sized Baker, Rose Bakes and so on .  And I am part of an American baking group on Facebook, so see a lot of American style cakes and 4th of July ideas in my Facebook newsfeed and in the emails I receive to my baking/work email address.

So actually, America does seem to feature quite heavily, hmmm.  Anyway, a lot of great red, white and blue ideas have come my way recently, some trickier than others, and I fancied trying my hand at some of them.  These looked fun and easy, and the girls wanted to help with some of it too.  They would have helped with all of it, but it was warm and sunny outside and they were desperate to try out the new Slip 'n Slide that we'd bought last weekend.  

Don't know what this is?  Oh, you're missing out!  My siblings and I had a yellow one when we were growing up and used it loads!  Mind you, we did grow up in Melbourne, Australia, where they know how to do Summer.  Months of daily temperatures from 25-40c and sun - glorious warm, yellow sun!  Ahh, takes me back, ha ha.   Anyway, it's a plastic rectangle mat that goes on the grass and it has a tube through the middle of the mat that is poked with holes.  You attach the garden hose to the mouth of this tube and water sprays over the mat, through the holes and kids run up to it then slide along it on their tummies.  Make sense?  Kids love them!!

So, getting back to the baking.  I decided to go for two things I'd seen on my newsfeed from Facebook...  A variation on this Red, White and Blue Cookie Bark and some patriotic Marshmallow treats.  What fun they were to do, and easy too!  And oh my gosh, I had a sneaky taste of the bark - it is amazing!!!  We decided that adding Oreo's would be too much, and what a tasty decision that was.  The salt and crunch of the pretzels goes really well with the sweetness of the white chocolate.

You lay out the pretzels underneath (and Oreo's, if you're going to use them), then add the melted white chocolate over the top.

Then you carefully, or otherwise, place your selection of red and blue M & M's over the top before the chocolate sets.  I didn't think we'd have enough chocolate M & M's so used the crispy ones too.  Mmm, great idea methinks.

 Here's the finished product, all ready for the fridge.

 And here it is ready to eat, cracked into pieces for ease of nibbling.  Mmmm...

For the marshmallow treats, we even had real American wax paper - oooh!

These were a bit fiddly to do, but easy enough.  Although by the time I got around to them, the girls had had their hair-washed and gone to bed.

So they'll be a lovely surprise for them, and our friends coming to play after lunch, for tomorrow! 

 And here's wee funny for you.  Sadly, it's not that funny for me, ha ha

Uncle Sam needs you!

A lady was due to emigrate to the gool ole US of A, and was excited but also sad to leave her family and friends behind here in bonnie Scotland.  So her lovely daughter-in-law reqeusted a cake that would help make her happy, an American flag.  We looked at a couple of images, discussed ideas and this is how it all panned out. 

I thought it would be fun if, when they cut into the cake, it was coloured appropriately, so started out like this - one blue half, one red.  Once baked, the tops were sliced to flatten the cakes for layering with jam and buttercream and crumb-coated.  I saw this on one of the YouTube videos and am embarrassed to admit that it was news to me.  But no more!  It's basically where you coat the cake in a slightly thinner than usual layer of buttercream so that it catches all the crumbs, then after you cover it in buttercream or fondant.  Here's a photo of what I mean.

It's not pretty, but it is a foundation.  You can see that I'd tried to smooth the edges so that the next layer would lay well, in theory anyway.  I cut out the stars and couldn't decide whether to use small or large ones, so cut out both...

In the end I went for the large ones, and laid them onto blue fondant.  I did the stripes in Fruit Winders, which ended up a bit wobbly. Sorry.

The customer reviews were positive, phew!  "Thank you so much :) they both loved it! Looked Amazing, tasted amazing!" from the daughter-in-law and "Thanks Becca. Great cake! Really delicious. Thanks to our family party co-ordinator too for organising it! :) " from the lady herself.  They even took an interior shot for us, awww.

4th of July

We've been invited to an American friend's 4th of July party tomorrow afternoon, and I'd seen an idea on the Betty Crocker website that looked fun. It used box cake mix and bought icing, but I have a sponge cake recipe that I've successfully coloured in the past.  And I think the bought icing is less tasty than my homemade, so figured I'd make my own of that too.

However... I must have not split the sponge mix into thirds correctly, as there's way more plain than blue and red, so the effect is lost.  And the colour faded loads on baking, adding to the poor effect from outside.  Then I tried to hide the cake by icing it in white and drizzling red and blue icing in stripes all around.  It seemed ok to me, but Mr Becca's face was a picture when he walked into the kitchen.  I still can't decide if he was being honest or a tad cruel in his assesment - so I added the red, white and blue stars.  It looks like fireworks, right?