French Revolution New Year cupcakes

Hello! I'm so so sorry that it's been so long! I've been back at school for a few weeks now and, bleeding hell, they don't hold back in Year 13! I've been weighed down with homework and written a pantomime, as well as baked a few birthday cakes for friends, all in the last few weeks! Fair to say I'm a bit exhausted.

Right, now that my usual spiel of excuses is out of the way, let's get on with this week's bake. I know that I hinted at something Roman last time but, because it's near the end of September, I decided to re-jig my schedule. So Roman stuff is on its way, I promise! I made these cupcakes on September 21st, in preparation for September 22nd: the anniversary of the abolition of the monarchy in Revolutionary France. During the French Revolution, a new calendar was created. This calendar started on the 22nd September 1792 when the monarchy was abolished. So I decided to celebrate the new revolutionary year with my first attempt at piping. Spoiler alert: it didn't go well!

Background: the French Republican Calendar

The French Republican (or Revolutionary) Calendar was created to symbolise a complete break with the past. Once the monarchy was abolished, France would be entering a completely new era. The French Republican Calendar was part of the Religious Terror, which made France a completely secular state. The Calendar started on the 22nd September 1792, with the 22nd September 1792-21st September 1793 being Year I, the 22nd September 1793-21st September 1794 Year II et cetera. The calendar was formally abolished by Napoleon I in 1805, although it did have a very brief resurgence in 1871. 

The calendar was divided up into four seasons: autumn, winter, spring and summer. Each season had three months. Each month was named appropriately for its season by the poet Fabre d'Eglantine. The autumn months were Vendémiaire ('grape harvest'), Brumaire ('fog') and Frimaire ('frost'); the winter months wereNivôse  ('snowy'), Pluviôse ('rainy') and Ventôse ('windy'); the spring months were Germinal ('bud'), Floréal ('flowery') and Prairial ('meadow'); and the summer months were Messidor ('harvesting'), Thermidor ('heat') and Fructidor ('fruit'). Each month had thirty days. This left five left over days- six on a leap year. These were known as the "sans-culottides", after the sans-culottes, the urban poor. In 1795, they were renamed "les jours complémentaires" (complementary days). The five extra days were: La Fête de la Vertu (Celebration of Virtue), La Fête du Génie (Celebration of Talent), La Fête du Travail (Celebration of Work), La Fête de l'Opinion (Celebration of Opinion/Conviction), and La Fête des Récompenses (Celebration of Awards/Honours). The sixth extra day, on leap years only, was La Fête de la Révolution (Celebration of Revolution). Each month was formed of three weeks of ten days, with the tenth day being a day of rest. The ten days of the week were: primidi (first day), duodi (second day), tridi (third day), quartidi (fourth day), quintidi (fifth day), sextidi (sixth day), septidi (seventh day), octidi (eighth day), nonidi (ninth day) and decadi (tenth day). Every single day of the year had a name. Every quintidi was named after an animal, every decadi after an agricultural appliance, and every other day after a plant.

You can read more about the French Republican calendar here, here and here.

Now that that's all done and dusted, VIVE LA REVOLUTION!

I just used a normal vanilla cupcake recipe, which you can find here, and added red food colouring for my base cake. I decided to model my cakes on the French Tricolore flag: red cakes, white icing, and blue sprinkles. Let's have a looksies as to how that turned out...

This was my first time piping and, as you can see, it was an absolute disaster. I used a piping bag and royal icing, both of which were of a very good quality. I'm afraid I have to blame this one on my lack of skills. Oh well, this certainly shan't be the last time I try piping. As they say, practice makes perfect!

Last but not least, I topped them off with some blue sprinkles. These cakes were relatively quick and (piping disaster aside) easy to decorate. As if to make up for the appalling decoration, they tasted pretty damn good. I just hope that Robespierre is proud of me!

Quite a short one today, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same. Please feel more than free to laugh at my expense, a few tears have been shed over piping, I can promise you. I really appreciate any comments, critiques, suggestions or recommendations as to what you'd like to see me have a go at another time. Back to recipes from history now! It's a fairly modern creation I've gone to, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. I've stuck with the red colour...

See you soon!

Eleanor

:)

<3

:)

Stuart Carrot Pudding

Hello, everyone! Yes, busy, busy times ahead. I went back to school at the end of last week and, well, they certainly haven't given us much time to get back into the swing of things before hitting us hard and heavy with the work. Oh well, as they say, mustn't grumble, mustn't grumble.

Back to recipes from history and, this time, I've stepped back in time to 1699 for a Stuart recipe for carrot pudding, not overly dissimilar from modern carrot cake. The main difference is the density: puddings are much denser than cake. This pudding is also very buttery, so it's definitely not for someone who hates butter (like my mother). I love carrot cake and this was a really fun cake to make; thankfully, it wasn't even that difficult!

Background

Carrot pudding dates back to the Middle Ages and possibly even before that. In Europe, sugar was incredibly rare and only the very wealthy could afford it. For the average person who had a bit of a sweet tooth, there were two alternative sweeteners to sugar: honey, and carrot. Although it's uncertain exactly where and when the pudding originated, one of the first recorded recipes appears in a 10th century Arabian cook book, The Book of Cookery preparing Salubrious Foods and Delectable Dishes extracted from Medical Books and told by Proficient Cooks and the Wise by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq. You can read more about him, his incredible book, and his recipe for carrot pudding here. The first recorded use of the term "carrot cake" appeared in Richard Dolby's 1830 book, The Cook's Dictionary and Housekeeper's Directory. You can read Dolby's book here. I will be using a recipe from 1699, from the book Acetaria: Discourse of Sallets by John Evelyn. I chose this recipe over al-Warraq's because the latter requires the boiling of honey, which I've never done before, and didn't fancy doing permanent damage to my mother's kitchen. Also, Evelyn's recipe contains nutmeg. I love nutmeg.

Today, carrot cake continues to be a staple dessert, even if its ancestor doesn't quite have the same fame that it once had. You can read more about carrot cake and carrot pudding here and here. The latter link, to the Food Timeline website, has Evelyn's recipe that I used, should you wish to have a go at it yourselves.

I'm running out of things for this already so let's just spend 5 centuries grating carrot and get on with it.

Just a warning before we begin- unbaked carrot pudding does not look pleasant. Anyone with emetophobia might not want to look at the following pictures.

I scaled down the quantity of ingredients slightly, simply because I didn't want to end up with an uncontrollable amount of mixture! I went for 200g (about two-thirds of a pound) of each ingredient, with c. 100g of grated carrot. Everything gets chucked in, as per usual.

Whisk everything up! Don't worry if there are lumps of butter. This actually helps to create a denser cake more authentic to the butter-loving Stuart recipe. In the Stuart era, it was fashionable to eat lots of fatty foods and to be overweight, because it showed that you were able to afford rich foods.

Just like you would for any other cake, pour equal amounts of the mixture into the two tins. The Stuarts would have used just one deeper tin but I can't resist a sandwich cake.

Out it comes! I found that, on 180 degrees centigrade (160 in a fan oven), forty minutes was ample time for the cake to reach a lovely golden brown colour. If it comes out sizzling, don't worry. It's just the butter. Mine did the same and (spoiler alert!) it tasted great.

Flip them out to cool onto a plate before sandwiching them together.

The second time I deviated from the recipe. I'm a sucker for buttercream (even if the rest of my family hate it- screw it, this is my cake!) and it's the ideal filling for a carrot cake. Sorry, John Evelyn!

Last but not least, just put the other cake on top, best side up!

And there we have it! The perfect carrot pudding. This actually tasted much better than I was expecting. The high density made a nice change from the light and fluffy cakes that I'm used to. I'm shocked that I managed to get the amount of nutmeg right: just enough to add a kick, but not so much that it blows your head off. It was a soft, moist cake and the carrot was beautiful. Creative licence courtesy of yours truly aside, John Evelyn, I salute you. 9/10.

I hope that you enjoyed this post and if you do decide to give this recipe a go, that you enjoy this glorious pudding as well! I really appreciate any comment, critiques, suggestions, or recommendations for what you'd like to see me try later. Now we return to history-inspired cakes. Your clue is: "When in Rome."

Until next time,

Eleanor

:)

<3

:)

Lancaster and York cake

Hello! Yes, I know that I promised that I wouldn't leave as much time between bakes but silly me is apparently really bad at planning. I've been in the Netherlands this past week (maybe there'll be a bake about that a few weeks down the line...) and the week before was just so hectic that I had no time at all to bake. It was very sad. 

Anyway, without further ado, let's welcome today's bake: a York and Lancaster cake, inspired by the Wars of the Roses! This cake features a white rose, for the House of York, and a red rose, for the House of Lancaster. My mother inspired me to make this cake; she baked me a gorgeous White Rose of York cake for my 16th birthday. Whilst my cake isn't quite as glamorous as the one that my mother made, I hope that you like it nonetheless.

Background: the Wars of the Roses

Whilst there is and always has been debate about when the Wars of the Roses began and ended, the general consensus is that they started in 1455 with the First Battle of Saint Albans, and ended in 1487 with the Battle of Stoke Field. The Wars of the Roses were a series of battles fought over the crown of England. The two main rival factions were the House of Lancaster and the House of York. In 1455, the King, Henry VI, was from the House of Lancaster, which had ruled England since 1399. The conflict origins from the reign of Edward III. Edward III had many children, and you can find a family tree here for the House of Lancaster and here for the House of York. Edward III's eldest son, Edward of Woodstock, died in 1376, a year before Edward III himself died. Therefore, Edward III was succeeded by his grandson (Edward of Woodstock's son) Richard II. Richard was not a popular king and, in 1399, in he was deposed by his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV. Henry IV was the son of John of Gaunt, the third surviving son of Edward III. John of Gaunt had been Duke of Lancaster, thus Henry IV became the first monarch of the House of Lancaster. However, John of Gaut's elder brother, Lionel of Antwerp, had children himself. One of these descendants was Anne Mortimer. Anne Mortimer married Richard of Coinsburgh. Richard was descended from the fourth son of Edward III, Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, Richard and Anne's son, Richard Duke of York (of the House of York) argued that his claim to the crown was stronger than Henry IV's descendant, Henry VI. If it sounds complicated, that's because it is. Very complicated. Especially when you add in all the other noble families in England, like the Percys and Nevilles, who took (and changed) sides during the course of the wars.

The Wars of the Roses are generally divided into three distinct stages. The first and longest stage, 1455-1464, begins with Richard Duke of York's first attempts at the crown at Saint Albans; reaches a climax with Richard's son, Edward, seizing the crown and securing his claim at Towton in 1461 to become Edward IV; and ends with Edward consolidating his hold on power by defeating opposition at Hexham in 1464. The second stage, 1469-1471, begins with Edward facing opposition from his former ally, the Earl of Warwick; reaches a climax with Edward losing his crown in 1470 and fleeing to Burgundy (modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands et al); and ends with Edward successfully reclaiming his crown and quashing opposition at the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471. The third and final stage, 1483-1487, begins with Edward IV's unexpected death and his brother, Richard, seizing the crown from Edward's sons so that he can become King Richard III; reaches a climax with Richard's defeat and death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 at the hands of an obscure Lancastrian, Henry Tudor, who establishes the new House of Tudor and becomes Henry VII; and ends with Henry consolidating his hold on power by defeating the pretender Lambert Simnel in battle at Stoke in 1487.

The idea of a red and white rose to symbolise the two houses was actually invented by Shakespeare. Although the white rose had long been a symbol of the House of York (and actually traces its roots back to the reign of Edward II), the House of Lancaster never actually used a red rose as their standard.

The wars were long. They were awful. They were bloody. There were some fascinating characters involved- from Margaret of Anjou to the Marquess of Montagu to Anne of York. I could honestly talk for hours about people that I love (and hate). This is the first period of history that I really fell in love with, so it has a special place in my heart (despite all the guts and gore- something that I promise won't be portrayed in this cake!) and I wanted to honour it with a spot on this blog.

If you would like to read more about the Wars of the Roses, you can do so here, here, and here.

Let the battle commence!

First thing's first is to make your base cake. After the success of my Victoria Sponge last time, I decided to go for it again. It's so simple and easy to make, involving two cakes sandwiched together with jam and/or buttercream. As I said last time, my family is fairly anti-buttercream, so, again, I went without. You can read all about my exploits with the Victoria Sponge on my previous blog post here.

Whilst the cake was baking and cooling, I got to work on making my roses. You can use either flower paste, modelling paste or fondant ('Ready to Roll' icing) for this but I find that modelling paste works best. Firstly, I cut off the amount of paste that I needed, kneaded it to make it soft enough to roll out, and then flattened it slightly (as you can see in the picture above) to make it easier to roll. I then rolled it out to my desired thickness. The thickness of the paste that you need will depend on how thick you want your shape to be and the depth of the mould that you're using (if you're using one, of course).

The next step was to prepare the silicone mould. Silicone moulds are your best friend and, whilst they can look intimidating, they're actually really easy to use. This is a really good video showing you how best to prepare a silicone mould. I lightly dusted the inside of the mould with icing sugar to make it easier to remove the paste. Sometimes you might not need icing sugar, it all depends on the type and quality of both your modelling paste (or flower paste or fondant) and mould.

Next, I pressed down the paste into the mould. Be resilient with this as you want the paste to perfectly take the shape of the mould. For more intricate designs, you may find that you need some icing tools. However, these are not essential and my roses came out fine without me using any tools at all. Remember to remove any excess icing. This makes it easier to extract the paste from the mould.

Now all the extra paste is gone, it's time to get it out!

Pull the mould away and lift the paste out as carefully as you can. This can be quite fiddly and it might take a white. Be patient and go slow to avoid breaking the paste.

Then set your finished shapes onto a plate! The longer you leave them, the harder they will become, so always bear in mind how hard or soft you want your shapes to be.

Now it's time to ice the cake! Same as I did for the modelling paste, I cut off the amount of 'Ready to Roll' icing that I needed and flattened it to make it easier to roll out. This is a really good and easy to follow tutorial of how to cover a cake with fondant.

If you have any imperfections, these can easily be sorted out with a bit of patchwork from leftover bits of icing and water. Alternatively, you can make sure that you cover the bits that aren't quite perfect.

The last step is to add your decorations. I secured the flowers to the cake with a little bit of icing. Two red roses for Lancaster, two white roses for York. Then I piped on the dates of the Wars of the Roses to finish it all off. I'm not biased towards Lancaster, red icing just seemed as if it would show up better on the white fondant! 

And there we go! All finished and looking lovely.

I hope that you enjoyed this blog post. Of course, you can adapt this cake as you wish. Maybe you're an unfaltering Lancastrian and only want red roses on your cake. Maybe you want to make the roses look a little more life-like and use some edible paint to add the colourful details to the leaves as my mother did.. Maybe you pledge you allegiance to Henry VII and want to use both red and white paste for the same flower to create the Tudor rose! Whatever you want to do, I hope that you have as much fun baking it as I did.

Thank you for reading! I really appreciate any comments, critiques or suggestions that you may have for me, as well as recommendations for what bakes I should have a go at later. Next time, we're back to bakes from history, and your hint is 'Bugs Bunny' (and no, it's not rabbit pie).

See you soon!

Eleanor

:)

<3

:)

Victorian Victoria Sponge

Hello! I'm so sorry that it's been so long. I've been away on holiday and kind of stressing about results day tomorrow. I'd better keep working on this blog, seeing as baking might end up being my Plan B if tomorrow doesn't quite go the way I'd like it to.

As this is the second bake, I will be using a recipe from history. After putting myself through metaphorical amateur decorating hell with the Marie Antoinette cupcakes, I decided to take it easy this time with a classic: the Victoria Sponge.

Background

Unsurprisingly, this cake originates from Queen Victoria's reign. The first recorded recipe appeared in the 1861 book Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, written by Isabella Beeton.You can read more about her and her renowned book here. The sponge was created as a teatime treat for children. Victorian teas traditionally consisted of fruit or seed cake (which will eventually be covered in a later blog post- watch this space!), however, there were fears that children might choke on the fruit of the seeds. Thus, the Victoria Sponge was created for upper-class children to enjoy whilst their elders indulged themselves. You can read more about the history of the Victoria Sponge here and here. The latter link, to The Food Timeline website, a site I can promise you'll be hearing about a lot on this blog, includes Mrs. Beeton's original 1861 recipe, should you wish to try it yourself.

Apparently, this was Queen Victoria's favourite cake, so let's get to it!

Trying to keep things as historical as possible, I love Mrs, Beeton's original recipe from The Food Timeline. It follows the basic rule of thumb for creamed cakes: equal weight of eggs, flour, sugar, and butter. I always follow this recipe- not just for the Victoria Sponge- just because it's simple to keep track of. Also in an attempt to be authentic, Mrs. Beeton did not include buttercream in her recipe. Scandalous, I know, as the buttercream is undoubtedly the best bit. However, as neither my mother nor my sister like buttercream, I went with it. If you prefer a recipe with buttercream, have a look at these equally delicious recipes here and here.

First thing's first: grease the cake tins as thoroughly as possible. Better to be over-greased than under-greased! If you don't like too much butter or just prefer not to use it, greaseproof paper works equally as well. It's just my personal preference. Remember to pre-heat the oven! The right temperature depends on which recipe you choose and what type of oven you have.

Once again, everything just goes straight in!

Whisk it all together. It doesn't look particularly appetising, but that's just due to all the air bubbles. Whether or not you have air bubbles in your mixture or not depends on how much liquid you put in. I quite like my cakes to be soft and moist, so I put just a little more than the recipe's recommended amount, but if you prefer something denser and drier, then you can put less liquid in. Just make sure that the mixture is a good consistency.

Pour the mixture in equal amounts into two tins (or more, if you're going for more tiers to your sponge. Just make sure that there's enough mixture in each tin so that you don't end up with a Victoria biscuit). Now it's into the oven.

Out of the oven! Make sure that the sponges are cooked properly by impaling the cake with a knife or cocktail stick. If the knife or stick comes out clean, then the cake is cooked; if not, it needs a few more minutes. Then, tip the cakes out onto a plate. The better greased your tins were to start, the easier this should be. You might need to tap the tin with a knife to coax the cake out. Try to be as gentle as possible to avoid breakages. Then, allow the cakes to cool before you sandwich them together...

...with jam! Depending on how much jam you like, spread as much or as little as you like onto one cake. This can also be a cheeky cheat to cover up any imperfections with jam! If you want to put buttercream in your cake, now's the time to do it. Whichever goes on first doesn't really matter. You might find that one way is easier than the other. I personally prefer to go buttercream, then jam, but it's up to you.

The last step is to delicately place the other half of the cake on top! Don't worry if your alignment isn't quite perfect first time round. The jam (and buttercream, if you have it) should be soft enough that you can slide the cakes around a little. Again, try to be as careful as possible.

And there we have it! A gorgeous, traditional Victoria Sponge. One of the easiest cakes to bake and an absolute essential for any party.

        

As much as I love buttercream, you just can't beat a classic. Victoria Sponges are soft, light and moist cakes, and the jam adds an extra sweet treat. 8/10.

I hope that you enjoyed this blog post! These cakes are so easy to make and I seriously recommend that you give them a go. A sweet thing to make all of your friends love you even more. I really appreciate any comments, critiques or suggestions that you may have for me, as well as some recommendations of cakes that you'd like to see me tackle. Just be nice, and I promise not to bite :) I'll try not to take such a long time between updates next time. It's back to history-inspired bakes now. Your teaser is: roses are red (or white?).

See you next time,

Eleanor

:)

<3

:)

Blue Marie Antoinette Cupcakes

Hello, and welcome to the first bake of the blog!

The cupcakes that you are about to see are inspired by history. The term 'Marie Antoinette cake' is used to describe pretty, dainty and quite regal-looking cakes. The name comes from the luxurious lifestyle that Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, led (until she was arrested and imprisoned during the French Revolution). They are also inspired by the gorgeous cakes from the 2006 film Marie Antoinette, directed by Sophia Coppola.

As this is a History blog, I will be talking about Marie Antoinette for a bit. However, if you're more interested in the baking and what the finished product looks like, feel free to scroll past my ramblings.

Marie Antoinette

Although she was the wife of the French King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette was actually Austrian. She was the fifteenth child of the Austrian Empress, Maria Theresa (a formidable woman in her own right) and the Holy Roman Emperor, Francis I, in 1755. After France's defeat in the Seven Years War, she was betrothed to Louis, heir to the French throne, in 1763 to preserve the Franco-Austrian alliance against Britain. They were married in a grand ceremony in 1770. Four years later, Louis XV died Marie Antoinette's husband became Louis XVI of France.

The royal couple were complete opposites: Marie Antoinette loved to party and socialise with other courtiers, whereas her husband preferred to sit by the fireplace reading, avoiding social situations wherever possible. Marie Antoinette was known for her lavish lifestyle and extravagant tastes. There was an economic and financial crisis in France during this period, and the dissatisfied people of France dubbed their queen "Madame Deficit". A particular source of anger for the peasantry was a game that the Queen loved to play with her ladies: she had a fake farm built and she and her friends used to dress up as shepherdesses. Marie Antoinette also brought shame upon the royal bedchamber by allegedly having an affair with a Swedish count, Axel von Fersen. During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette's name would be further brought into disrepute by radical revolutionaries like Hébert and Marat, who argued that she committed incest with her son, the future Louis XVII.

During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette's reputation continued to diminish. Her evident hatred of the Revolution was, understandably, unpopular. She was a strong-willed Queen- more ardent than her husband in some respects- and it was said that she constantly tried to persuade Louis to halt the Revolution and revert back to the absolute monarchy that had existed for centuries before in France. Marie Antoinette was supposedly the orchestrator of the Flight to Varennes in 1791, a failed attempt by the royal family to escape Paris so that they could reassert their authority. This event caused the King to lose almost any remaining popularity that he had. The constitutional monarchists were losing power and influence as republicans, like Robespierre, rose to prominence.

When war broke out between France and most of the rest of Europe in 1792, the monarchy's fate was sealed: the disastrous military situation led to people calling for the removal of the monarchy. After an attack on the Tuileries Palace in September, exactly that happened. Marie Antoinette and Louis were accused of sending French battle plans to the Austrians and Prussians. Louis was tried and guillotined in January 1793, and Marie Antoinette followed him in October of the same year.

You can read more about Marie Antoinette here, here and here.

Even though Marie Antoinette never actually said it, "Let them eat cake!"

So let's start at the most obvious place: making the cakes themselves.

Basically, number 1 rule of baking, chuck everything into a bowl...

And whisk it all together! Then artfully put enough mixture in the cupcake cases. Now, I was a bit of a wally and forgot to take pictures of the unbaked cupcakes. Anyway, then they went into the oven and came out looking like this:

I certainly wasn't expecting them to rise that much! As you can see from the tray, I'm quite a messy baker.

So whilst they cooled down, I got to work on making the decorations. I should point out here that I was inspired by this Pinterest post and wanted to put my own spin on these gorgeous Marie Antoinette cakes. I started by rolling out some icing...

Unfortunately, the icing that I used wasn't very good quality (poor student problems!) but, no matter. It served well enough. I had 12 cupcakes, so I cut out 12 circles to coat each cake with.

Once all the cakes had cooled down, it was time to attach the tops! I quickly made a bit of icing and added a blob to each cake...

And then placed each circle on top of the cupcake.

Then it was time for the fun, artistic bit! I had five different types of decorations.

The first used seven of these larger silver balls.

I dipped each ball into the icing and arranged them on top of the cupcake in a sort of flower shape.

Voilà!

Next was probably the most time consuming. I started by icing the vague outline of a heart.

If you're following this for yourself, don't worry if your heart isn't perfect. As you can see, mine isn't either! It can be tweaked and covered up later. I then took some of the much smaller, Ivory coloured pearls and placed them along the outline, like so:

Magnifique!

Next, I used some very pretty little decorations that I picked up from Tesco to create almost a stack of flowers! I started with just one...

And then built up around it!

If you want to, you can add an additional sugar flower on top of the ring so that a centre flower is visible, like this:

Très beaux!

The next one was a little bit fiddly. I won't show you all the steps as I followed this video tutorial to make a white fondant rose, which I then secured on top of the cupcake with a dab or two of icing.

Je l'adore!

The final two are pretty similar to the heart. As these are called Marie Antoinette cupcakes, I felt that it would be criminal not to give her some credit for them. So I iced her initials...

And covered them in sugar sprinkles!

Parfait!

And that's that! All five decorations showcased for you. These cupcakes took ages to make (I was working for about an hour and a half on the decorations alone!) but I think that it was well worth it. They're cute and dainty, and I love making them. Maybe I'll try them again another day when I have better baking tools and supplies. Maybe then they'll look even more sophisti-cake-d. Get it? Maybe I should stop and just show you a picture of the finished product.

Délicieux!

So there we have it, our first bake done! These cakes were a lot of fun to make and they taste absolutely gorgeous. All the time and effort paid off.

I hope that you enjoyed this post. I really appreciate any comments or suggestions that you may have, including for future bakes! Next week, I'll be using a recipe lifted directly from history. Just a little teaser: it's a 19th-century classic.

Until next week,

Eleanor

:)
<3

:)

Welcome!

Hello, everyone! Welcome to Histori-cakes, a history-themed baking blog. Before we get stuck into the baking next week, I just thought I'd make this little introductory post.

There's a more thorough explanation of how this blog will work on my About page, but I'll just quickly summarise. I'm going to be blogging about my history-related baking exploits: that's cakes that are inspired by history and recipes that I've lifted from the past. I'll be posting pictures, reviews, links to recipes and more. I hope that you'll enjoy as much as I will!

Really, this is just a bit of fun. I love baking, history, and writing, and I thought that this blog would be the perfect way to combine them all together. It should be a fun little adventure and I can't wait to start. I'm hoping that my cake decorating skills will be able to improve as well :)

That's all for this week, unfortunately. I hope that you'll stick around for the first bake of the blog!

Ta for now,
Eleanor

:)
<3
:)