Sugar Christmas decorations

On Sunday we had the Dante Alighieri Society Xmas Market (Mercatino di Natale), and I made lots of sugar decorations for sale.

Ideal for 'baby's first Christmas' trees, sweet pastel colours, they can be used for Christmas cards too!

White and hand painted with a thin brush

Chocolate fondant, they smell great!

Green and silver for the trees

I used fondant (white, chocolate, red and green), corn flour, cookie cutters, food coloring (not cochineal!) and a thin brush to paint. We sold the lot!

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Sugarcraft: how to make a tin rose bud in under 30 seconds

I found this 'old' video (almost 3 years ago) of Arantxa making more sugar roses, this time tiny rose buds! They are so simple yet they look great!

The Famous Aquafaba meringue makes a good Vegan 'Pavlova'

"Vegan baker Goose Wohlt coined the term aquafaba ("bean liquid") to describe the liquid, which French chef Joël Roessel discovered could be used in recipes much like egg whites."

Source; Wikipedia

 To get aquafaba basically all you need to do is to drain a can of chickpeas, keep the liquid and then beat it. Don't do it by hand though, unless you have strong arms, it takes longer that egg whites. But wow it peaks! And white and fluffy too! I got quite emotional seeing it, like a wonderful chemistry experiment.

After beating for 3-5minutes

After 7-8 minutes

After adding sugar and cornflour

Taaa-daaa!

But what to make first?  I was tempted to make an Italian meringue, but didn't want to add hot syrup to my new discovery, in case the magic stopped! No, I decided, I'll do that next time and stick to something easy.

Ingredients

Base
1 Can of chickpeas (just the brine - i.e. water, which already has salt)
250 g icing sugar
1 tbsp cornflour
1 tbsp white vinegar
a few drops of vanilla essence

Topping
1 can coconut cream
1 tsp golden syrup
a few drops of vanilla essence
Green and gold kiwi fruit and/or strawberries and edible flowers

Beat the chickpea brine first, then when it is nice and peaky add the sugar, one tbsp at the time, and the cornflour. Add the vinegar and vanilla at the end and beat some more.

Not confident enough to try a single Pavlova I made two disks, plus some little ones to see how they baked. I had the oven on first very hot, and the at about 75°C fan for about three hours, actually more, it seemed to take forever! In the meantime I also whipped some coconut cream (Vegan Pavlova, remember?), I find that the Family Choice coconut cream has the thickest cream of all, in fact so thick that you don't need to refrigerate the can first, and can use the liquid a the bottom of the can to thin it down. I added a tsp of golden syrup (Maple syrup is good too) and a few drops of vanilla, and then set the cream aside in the fridge.

Coconut cream

 

I didn't end up assembling the 'Pavlova' until the day after, but the meringue was still good and the cream nice and stiff. I only put fruit in between the two layers, and reserved the cream only for the top. Possibly the disks were too large and they cracked a little, the smaller meringues looked great and made me plan for macaroons.  

The taste

It tastes as good as it looks! BTW, the primrose flowers are edible. I eat a lot of flowers too!

 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

How to make sugar fondant roses without cutters or tools, video

How to make sugar (fondant or icing) roses

My daughter, 12.

Vegan Heart Biscuits

 

I found a Vegan frozen sweet short pastry in the supermarket, and I wanted to try it. Actually, I like making short pastry, but making Vegan short pastry is not that easy (for me) so I was really curious.

Because the pastry is already rolled it was easy to cut it with a cookie cutter, and I opted for hearts.

Up to here everything was fine, but then the pastry shrunk in the oven! My pretty fat hearts became long quirky hearts! Did this ever happen to you?

My solution: transform the hearts into pretty-quirky-modern-art hearts with some glossy icing. I did the borders white first, and then I coloured some icing with saffron powder for yellow (this also gave the biscuits a lovely saffron aroma and flavour), cocoa for chocolate, and then I added a drop of red food colouring to the yellow saffron icing for a geranium orange/red. The colour reminded me of lipstick and nail polish, but I liked it! The kids took the biscuits to the Surf Life Saving Club and they were all eaten happily, but next time I think that I will stick to my own pastry :-).

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Fondant Frog and Lily Flowers and Leaves

A little bit of fun in this post: how I made a fondant frog on a lily pad, with natural colours (spirulina powder for green and berries for red).

No words, just images, but feel free to ask questions :-)

Fin

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©