Cake Decorating Part Two and Matakana Farmers Market

Lesson Two took off… our teacher by the way is Laurel featured below.

It was like going off to the beach we had so many things to take

First I had to make little bags out of parchment triangles. Of course "Wiltons" have special parchment paper already cut into triangles, all you have to do is to fold the triangles into piping bags. I was a bit all fingers and thumbs but I finally made the 12 bags, 6 for Katie and 6 for me

Laurel was reasonably pleased with the our iced cakes.

We were taught the very difficult dots. You have to make a perfect dot without a little nipple on the top.The little white bits are some of my efforts.

Then we had to learn how to make stars…they are used for filling in patterns etc.

Wiggly snakes and closed up snakes

Writing and printing

Katie and I seemed to be fairly messy. Icing everywhere.
Katie’s cake is pretty good…interestingly enough over the past week her cake has faded and is now a very pale pink.

The funny thing is we are keeping these cakes to decorate on the final lesson so obviously we won’t be eating them…could get sick if we are not careful.

This is a fun course I am liking it a lot.

Sophia the 10 year old has been going from strength to strength with her cooking.
Have a look at her blog.
http://thelogofsophiaandjosephwrightson.blogspot.com/

Matakana Farmers Market

I have just come back from a trip to Omaha Beach. My husband had a weekend on the boat with his friend Pete. So I took off for the beach.
We are having beautiful spring weather and it was lovely at Omaha.
It was my friend Sheryl’s birthday and we celebrated with a wonderful fish dinner and lots of Champagne

In the morning Sheryl and I took off for the Matakana Farmers Market

It is an excellent market. We were a bit late so missed out on some produce.

No garlic from the garlic man

Pate sold out

Having consumed a lot of wine the previous night we gave our somewhat unsettled stomachs a bit of break and had champagne for breakfast!!! Of course...with the promise of freshly cooked Whitebait Fritters to soak up the Champagne.

I was starving and I had to stand in line for the Whitebait Fritters (20 minutes)
The aroma was almost driving me to tears, but it was worth the wait…they were sensational.
Served on a slice of white bread (plastic of course) with a squeeze of lemon and salt & freshly ground black pepper. You can’t get much better than that.

These ladies sold homemade lemon tarts and beautiful Lemon infused Olive Oil

We bought both.

I wish I could come here every weekend,

There is a big black cloud over "The Land of the Long White Cloud" though...we have been knocked out of the Rugby World Cup. The French dorked us… New Zealand is in mourning.
I am over it now, but it was disappointing. We will go in as the Underdog in the next World Cup maybe those boys could draw up some passion and win as the tournament will be held here in NZ in 2011.
Only one silver lining on the dark cloud…Australia was knocked out as well by England no less. At least South Africa and Argentina are representing the Southern Hemisphere in the semi’s this weekend

Anyhow we do have an excellent Farmers Market down the road from our house.
I bought this lovely little lamb rump there.

Just seared the rump.
Smothered the top with mustard
Mixed some breadcrumbs with chopped rosemary, minced garlic sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and extra virgin olive oil

Sat in on a bed of seasoned onions with some par boiled potatoes and kumara.

Drizzled over with olive oil

Roast in a hot oven 200C about 25 minutes
Served with garlic green beans and a little juice from the roast.

Delicious.

I just had to pop in this photo of the Princess Cleo is this gorgeous or what!