The Great Wall of Buttercream

Buttercream spaghetti anyone? Well, I am Italian.

I have a slight issue with anything that requires waiting. Macaroons. You pipe out your little rounds on a baking sheet, put them in the oven, liberate them from the oven in due course and then you have to wait. Wait for them to cool before you the buttercream-sandwiching process can begin to complete the macaroon as we know it.

It's just that I have a definite weakness for the warm, straight out of the oven goods, and naturally you need to try them (even if they are an un-sandwiched macaroon half) to make sure they taste good. So while waiting for my macaroons to cool, I may have eaten a couple, perhaps a few. Alas, I am an idiot. I haven't taken the butter out of the fridge to get to room temperature! (No, crazy though it sounds, I don't have a microwave) Thus, the waiting for the macaroons to cool has evolved into waiting for the butter to warm yet the outcome is the same. Many un-sandwiched macaroon troops were lost in the waiting game, consumed for no purpose other than impatience.

When I finally did get round to making the buttercream and sandwiching the little beauties together, I had way too much buttercream! Oh no! So obviously, I put a cool looking piping nozzle in and squeezed it all out onto a piece of baking parchment. Refrigerate and reserve for sweet cravings. I wish I was kidding; Tom and I demolished this little wall in a day.

Birthday Boy

So, while I've been gone it was my wonderful boyfriend's birthday (only 4 days after mine), naturally I was compelled to make him a kick-ass cake but I also wanted to play with a new icing head I got so one could argue that I went a little overboard on the piping!

Anyway, it was your average birthday sponge sandwiched with mouth-watering fresh blueberry jam (I use the word jam loosely as the berries were almost entirely intact) and blueberry buttercream. The buttercream came out an off-putting 70s shade of salmon/putty so I toned it down to a pretty lilac, yes I know, incredible masculine.

I had the lights off and the lighter at arms reach ready to start igniting the candles when at the signal (the door at the bottom of the stairs clicking shut when my beau got home from work) unfortunately though the surprise was slightly ruined by him running up the stairs 3 at a time - probably with birthday boy excitement - to catch me mid-way through lighting :-( "Go away!" was the wittiest response I could muster and he patiently waited outside while I lit the rest of the candles. In spite of that, the cake was delicious and now armed with even more piping heads I'm looking forward to excelling myself next year.