I am a cake obsessive, based in West Sussex, UK.

I started off making cakes for family and friends before giving up a proper career in favour of playing with sugar full time. Having worked for two bakeries making their wedding and celebration cakes, I am now looking toward world domination with breaks for coffee and chat.

If you are interested in seeing future projects, enter your email address in the box on the right for updates.

To see my website go to: www.kasserina.com. You can email me on info@kasserina.com.

I also sell some sugarcraft items on Etsy. Please go to https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/KasserinaHome?ref=hdr_shop_menu

Thanks for looking!

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Gingerbread House learning curve - December 2015




So, it's been a few years since I last made a gingerbread house (and I wasn't caking for a living then!).  

I found a great looking little book on Christmas Gingerbread so decided to try it out using the beautifully illustrated instructions.  It was great learning curve.

Lesson 1:  the gingerbread in the book (2 kinds) tastes absolutely great, but spreads terribly in the oven despite being made exactly as instructed, and not over mixed.  the resulting pieces didn't fit together well at all, so had to make a second batch and re-cut them while still warm.  Edges weren't great then though. I couldn't re-cut my windows so they looked like half closed eyes.

Lesson 2:  the gingerbread recipe in the book, even when baked for far longer than stated, is not really stable enough to support the weight of the larger houses.  The walls start to bow very quickly.


Lesson 3:  the caramel glue advised in the book is a tricky animal.  It gives no second chances for positioning, which is a thing, but the big problem with it is that (while it might work fine in a dryer environment) it's been stormy here and the caramel absorbs the moisture from the air, then beads and drips sticky, discoloured water all over your pretty design.  I'm not using that again.

Lesson 4:  the piping that I did when the pieces were lying flat, simply didn't adhere well to the gingerbread so that when upright they started to break and fall off, especially when the soft centred gingerbread started to bow.  Experimenting later on I found that if I lightly sprayed the surface with a little water before piping, the royal stuck a bit better. 

Obviously you have to to wait for the icing to dry and the water to evaporate before you can do anything with the pieces.


So, lessons learned, I used a more stable (more biscuit stye) dough that is less liable to spread or bow for subsequent houses and it all went much better.  Here're the photos of the experimental one though.  It's not too bad, but I wouldn't be comfortable selling it!



...oh, and by the way...
!! Happy Christmas !!














Simple Rainbow stacked cake with sprinkles - December 2015


Simple but effective!

Six layers of rainbow vanilla love, stacked high, covered with smoothed buttercream and showered with rainbow sprinkles... perfect.


Now, the only issue with this little lovely is that when you make a cake higher than it is wide, it tends to want a little lie down when you drive it around corners (especially when you've made it to taste this good).  

This cake had quite a way to go, so in order to make sure that the cake was safely transported I gave it a central bubble straw support to make sure that the layers didn't slide around on the buttercream.  

I also screwed a dowel into the cake drum and positioned the bubble straw and cake over it so nothing could shift during delivery.


I hadn't even got back from delivering the cake before the customer sent me this photo. It seems to have gone down well!


Hoo ha!