I've been a bit under the weather this week, with long hours of work and a terrible cold. So, what better way to cheer up a rainy day than with a batch of kisses? Of the baked variety, of course.



Here's another one of those amazing Women's Weekly Books (from Amazon, £3.90) that I seem to be using a bit as a baking bible at the moment. These recipes are really great, I haven't gone wrong with their recipes yet (touch wood, or, as my aunt Karin says, spit three times pah pah pah).
















So, back to the Kisses. They're a sort of sponge-cake-biscuit with a distinctly custardy taste - due, largely, to the custard powder you mix into the batter. The two spongey halves are sandwiched together with vienna cream. They're not as light as I thought they would be - imagine a rich custard sponge with a light sweet and creamy filling. You can easily eat three or four of these with a cup of coffee!
















The recipe is quite easy and comes together quickly, and I'd imagine you could adapt it to give them a citrus zing, or half-dip them in chocolate. I found that I baked them in batches because my baking trays weren't big enough. If you do that, let them cool a bit on the tray before you take them off - they'll hold their shape better. Also, leave the sandwiched kisses for a bit before eating so that the vienna cream sets for a better texture.

The recipe is available in the book, 100 Classic Cakes, and I found it online as well (here at RecipeFinder). I've copied the recipe below.

Kisses

Ingredients 
125g butter
½ cup (110g) caster sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup (50g) plain flour
¼cup (35g) self-raising flour
2/3 cup (100g) cornflour
¼cup (35g) custard powder 

Vienna cream 
60g butter
¾ cup (120g) icing sugar mixture
2 teaspoons milk

Note: this recipe makes about 40 cookies and can be prepared three days ahead. Kisses can be filled several hours before serving.

Method
Preheat oven to moderately hot (200°C). Lightly grease oven trays. Beat butter and sugar in a small bowl with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy. Add the egg and beat only until combined. Stir in sifted dry ingredients in two batches.

Spoon mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm tube. Pipe 3cm-diameter rounds of mixture, about 3cm apart, onto prepared oven trays. Bake in two batches in a moderately hot oven for about 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Loosen biscuits and cool on trays. Sandwich the cold biscuits with Vienna cream and dust with extra sifted icing sugar, if desired.

For the Vienna cream, beat butter until as white as possible. Gradually beat in half the sifted icing sugar, then the milk; gradually beat in the remaining icing sugar.

Unfilled kisses suitable to freeze. Not suitable to microwave.

I figured that I can't possibly get married unless I can make jam like a proper Afrikaans House Wife. I'm not entirely where I got that from, especially considering that I'm neither Afrikaans nor a House Wife, but I suppose everybody's wedding anxiety manifests itself in different ways.
















So, when I saw that the lovely folks at The Make Lounge were offering a jam and chutney class, I signed up. I've made cranberry jam before (delicious!) and sweet chilli jam (one of my favourite sweet/savoury combinations) but I wanted a bit more hands-on experience with some of the theory - like how to best sterilise jam jars if you plan on giving them to someone else.






















The class was a good size - nine people - and was taught by Chloe Coker who was incredibly friendly and oh-so-charming with lots of info. The one thing that really stood out for me at this class is how thoughtful the organisers are: they arranged drinks, snacks and bread for tasting the jams. They gave everyone an apron, and provided loads of different fabrics to choose from as a part of the 'decorating' aspect of the class.
















The class was three hours long, which is just enough time to make four very large pots of jam and chutney in industrial quantities so that we could each take home four little pots of our own. Just before bottling our jams we got to choose fabric for the top of our jars from about twenty or so different prints. We cut them in circles about an inch and a half bigger than our jam jar lids, secured them with elastic bands. We also chose coordinating ribbons to cover up the elastic bands, and pretty gingham printed labels so you can tell which jam is which (because no jam is complete without a gingham label, of course!).






















As you can see from my (many) photos, we made Plum and Orange Jam (with cinnamon), Blackberry and Apple Jam, Caramelised Red Onion Chutney and Sweet Chilli Jam. I want to make rhubarb jam (yum) and pineapple and granadilla jam (which I really miss from home!) so I'll have to wait for the right fruit season. I really like the idea that you can make your own preserves and know exactly what has gone into them - I'm definitely going to knuckle down and make some when we get back from the wedding!

Our wedding is in three weeks, and with moments to spare, I was introduced to these beeeeyoootiful wedding cake toppers by the lovely Pennie Roberts. They're actually part of a wedding cake pattern by Alan Dart, a toy-knitting guru. I saw them. I wanted them. I ordered the yarn.

And then I told The Groom. It went something like ...

"Hi. You know you said you wanted cake toppers? Well... what do you think about knitted cake toppers?"
"Stace. Are you mad?"

My heart sunk. I had ordered the yarn already. It was too late. Turns out it wasn't as bad as I thought. In recent weeks I've been talking a lot about knitted tea cosy patterns, and in the wedding excitement, the groom thought I was trying to cover our wedding cake up with an oversized knitted tea cosy.






















This is the original pattern (available on Alan's website for £2.50). As you can see, I made quite a few adjustments to make them look more like us. I gave the bride little white sleeves and a less-traditional hairstyle. I changed the flowers for a simpler variety (more akin to what we'll have on the day) and I left out the veil completely. The groom got taller and swapped trousers for kilt with matching sporran and kilt hose. His waistcoat became black, as it really is, and I gave him a high-necked dress shirt with a black bow tie.

















I also used chunkier coloured yarn for the faces to make them a bit more fun, although I may change this later. The only thing left to do is sew on pearl seed beads for earrings, and silver seed beads for waistcoat buttons, but I'll do this at home as I don't have any of those here.

The pattern was very easy to knit up in a day but the sewing up took a bit longer. I also had to improvise a skirt-like pattern for the groom's kilt, knit in alternate bottle green and navy blue to create a Graham of Menteith tartan replica. I'll take a better photograph of this at the wedding so you can see it!