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

:)

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

:)