Steampunk Cookies for a Wedding

I was asked just after Christmas to make a set of steampunk wedding favours. After some useless excitement, a lot of daft ideas and finally some sensible thinking, I decided to create a design using royal icing transfers, where the elements are piped onto a translucent silicon sheet, or parchment paper, tracing a print of the design underneath. Given a couple of days to dry thoroughly, these delicate icing embellishments can be carefully peeled off, and attached to the main cookie (once you've discarded the many, many, many broken ones and tried not to get too disheartened).

Of course I had to start with cogwheels. Once piped in a couple of colours, I painted over with shades of brown to mimic the streaks of polished brass, then sprayed them with a mixture of gold and bronze lustre spray.

The client requested keys which also fit nicely into the theme of metallic working parts and were an opportunity to add a little more elaborate detail, though of course the stems were extremely delicate and prone to breaking. I painted these in lustre dust mixed with a little alcohol-based lemon essence for a brighter metallic gleam.

I wanted to include the wedding date, and thought of a variety of ways this could be done, but decided 'typewriter keys' would add a little more dimension. Piped in purple, and sprayed with gold, then outlined in brown which was then painted in gold. Much less prone to breakage and very satisfying to make, so I now have lots spare.

What I really wanted to do was to create something delicate and pretty whilst being obviously steampunk, so I decided to use the base as a form of decorative 'backplate' to the working parts above, using the filigree wet on wet technique onto which I gently dropped the seperate elements.

And this is where I started to have fun, as late at night, half way through, I very sensibly decided to record the process, never having made a video before. This first video shows this stage of the cookie decorating, highly edited to remove the parts where you can't actually see what my hands are doing, and set to a marvellous piece of music called Requiem for a Fish by the Freak Fandango Orchestra - how could I not choose a piece of music with that name?! - because I have no intention of letting anyone know what my voice sounds like.

This second video shows piping of chain links, the date, and 'rivets' to finish off the base, set to Roberto Billi's Sfioro because it's a great piece of music (though I don't know what he's singing about!) and because he's wearing a top hat on the album cover.

And now I want to video ALL THE THINGS and set them to more mad music. I also have lots of cogwheels left. Valentine's may well be steampunk this year...

Chocolate Concrete, Recipe!

Poor photo. I considered making another, in order to get proper pictures, but that's an AWFUL lot of chocolate concrete there, and I'm at home all day, looking at it.

We used to have this regularly at school and it was amazing. Hot and gooey, very sweet. Not like the rich chocolatiness of brownies, more cakey. I never had custard on mine (I don't do custard). Cold it was chewy and sort of hard, hence the name. I used to make it at home too, after the school sold a spiral bound recipe book of school dinners for tenpence. It had very odd quantities, as I guessed they'd simply divided a bulk recipe by the number of eggs.

I remembered it recently and googled. It seems there are a few versions out there. Some people remember it being very hard when cooked, like a shortbread, and some of the recipes have no egg in them and the fat is rubbed in, which would make a shortbread, but I know there was an egg in ours, because the raw mixture tasted fabulous after adding the melted butter, and then not so good with the egg in. A lot of people had it with pink custard, or peppermint custard, which is odd.

Anyway, I had to spend a lot of time inside google before I finally came across this recipe in a forum, unfortunately with a broken link to its source, with odd quantities that rang bells, and it worked.

10 1/2 oz self-raising flour
8 3/4 oz granulated sugar
8 3/4 oz margarine or butter
1 oz cocoa powder
1 egg

Mix the dry ingredients together, melt the butter and mix into the dry ingredients. Add the beaten egg. Press into a tin or dish of the right size (you'll have to guess - make the mixture rounghly 3/4 inch thick) which has been greased. Lightly brush the top with water (I just used my fingers) and sprinkle with a little more granulated sugar. Cook at 180c for 25 minutes.

Let it rest a few minutes before trying to serve as it will fall apart. And be too hot to eat. And you will get a burned tongue if you try to dig a hole in the middle and eat some to see if it's cooked already although you know better than to do such a silly thing. And if you've just done that, learn from it. Don't dig another hole and do it all over again.