tips – Phil's Home Kitchen

How to rescue a curdled buttercream/frosting (with video)

If, like me, you like adding extras to your buttercreams to get great flavour – for example: alcohol, fruit purées and the like – you often need to add a lot to allow your buttercream to pack a real flavour punch….and, of course, the buttercream is then prone to curdling into a horrid mess! Continue reading “How to rescue a curdled buttercream/frosting (with video)”

Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Cake: chocolate cake with Earl Grey tea buttercream

This is the cake I made for Sheila Dillon from BBC’s The Food Programme and a gathering of the 4th birthday meeting of the Clandestine Cake Club group I attend: the theme for this evening being Alice in Wonderland. Continue reading “Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Cake: chocolate cake with Earl Grey tea buttercream”

Shortcrust pastry & fool-proof blind-baking

It might be easy to feel daunted when it comes to making pastry, but I hope this post will go some way towards facing any doubts you might have when it comes to shortcrust pastry. I have also included what I think is the most fool-proof way to blind-bake the pastry, giving perfectly cooked pastry and a neat finish. Continue reading “Shortcrust pastry & fool-proof blind-baking”

The quickest & easiest croissants: 20-minute lamination!

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Quicker croissants: 20-minute lamination!

A batch of traditionally made croissants can take the best part of a weekend with all the resting and chilling in between the turns and at other stages.

Don’t get me wrong, making croissants this way is one of the top baking pleasures for me, but there are certainly times when effective shortcuts are called for. And this shortcut is certainly effective in that it gives excellent results and is easier to achieve than traditional croissants. Continue reading “The quickest & easiest croissants: 20-minute lamination!”

Hobbit House Cake

This hobbit house comes complete with productive garden and lake. A bountiful feast of fruit and vegetables including radishes, turnips, watermelons, cabbages, cauliflower and carrots might keep the hobbit going for a couple of meals! Continue reading “Hobbit House Cake”

Cupcakes: a contemporary camp classic!

As with macarons, there is nothing butch about a cupcake, but it revels in its campery – and rightly so! They flounced onto the baking scene with great style several years ago, demanding to be noticed, and all of a sudden the shops started featuring them and everyone started making them. Continue reading “Cupcakes: a contemporary camp classic!”