Cake Talk

The Bridal Show -- Part 1

I love a good bridal show. All those gorgeous gowns, florals, and cakes in one place.

Plus event planners and designers, photographers, caterers, musicians, and jewelers. Even lingerie and linens.

On this day everything is possible, and it's all here. The room is full of dreams waiting to come true.

As a baker, I'm awed by the possibilities. I can bring what ever I want. Bake any flavor, decorate in any color.

Everyday at the bakery, we make YOUR dream cake. Today we make OUR dream cake.

Starting with this bouquet of roses cake. It was inspired by these miniature bridal shower cakes by Peggy Porschen in her book "Beautiful Cakes." I could never justify just making these for the shop, but this was the next best thing.

A simple 4-layer 8-inch round vanilla cake forms the base, with multicolored fondant stems.

Then a two-layer 6-inch round of chocolate cake, carved into a semi-circle forms a platform for the flowers. If I were a glutton for punishment, I'd roll, cut, and form the hundreds of small Stephanotis (I do have the cutter), but I opt for larger white chocolate fondant fantasy roses instead. It's a business decision... It still takes me over an hour, and I'm pretty fast at this.

Slight variations in color from off-white to ivory create a realistic sense of depth. After all, in nature, no two blooms are exactly alike.

This would be beautiful as individual cakes or a centerpiece. Or for a bridal luncheon.

Or for the bridal show today. 

It's gonna pain me to cut it.

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The Hotel Capstone's Bridal Show
Once Upon a Bride... A Fairytale Wedding
January 29, 2012
1-5 pm

When Life Hands You Lemons...

Mom and dad have a lemon tree in their backyard. As fate would have it, I visit once a year, in January when the lemons are ripe.

And, there are only so many lemons my parents can use or give away. Especially in California, where every other house has a similar tree.

So in the suitcase they go.

Future lemon squares at Mary's Cakes and Pastries!

They are pretty easy to make, you just need fresh lemons. Don't even THINK about using bottled lemon juice.

I like them when they are heavy on the lemon custard and light on the crust. Tart and sweet at the same time. Makes them almost seem healthy. Here's a closer look.

Want the recipe? No mixer required, we make this ENTIRELY by hand in the shop so there is no fighting over Rosie (the new 60-quart Hobart mixer we won in the Get Back To Scratch contest last summer). The recipe is also in our cookbook.

You can use the crust recipe below or press unbaked shortbread dough into the bottom of the pan. Shortbread dough will make the crust firmer and stronger.

Mary's Lemon Squares

For the crust:

12 oz. butter or margarine (3 sticks)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
3 cups all purpose flour

For the filling:

4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (with zest from lemons)

For the crust: Cut the margarine into pieces. Add the margarine (or butter), brown sugar and flour to a large mixing bowl and mix with a fork, pastry cutter, or your hands until incorporated and the margarine or butter is in pea sized pieces. Press into a half sheet (12" x 18") pan. Do NOT line the pan. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes or until set. Crust will be slightly soft. Remove from the oven and let cool for about 10-15 minutes before pouring the filling over the crust. Lower heat in the oven to 325.

For the filling: While crust is cooking, combine eggs and sugar in a bowl and whip with a hand whisk. Then add flour, lemon juice and zest. Mix with whip until combined and the mixture is lump-free.  Pour lemon mixture over cooled crust and return to oven. Bake at 325  for 20-25 minutes or until set. Do not brown or create a hard crust on top.

When totally cooled, dust with confectiiners' sugar and cut into squares. Makes 48 2-inch squares (or more if you cut them smaller).

 

BYOB: Bring Your Own Bag

It started with an email titled "Do any of these sound interesting?"

Included in the list of possible activities while visiting family in California was a tote-making workshop with my sister-in-law, Lucy.

"There's a new bag ordinance" she explained.

But I didn't really get it until I arrived in San Jose.

Alabama may have the strictest immigration law, but cities in California have a Bring Your Own Bag Ordinance, which went into effect on January 1, 2012.

The ordinance prohibits single-use carryout plastic bags at check out by all retail businesses.

Stores can sell you a PAPER bag made of at least 40% post-consumer recycled content for a minimum of 10 cents per bag, but the cheap carryout plastic bags are a thing of the past. And the minimum price for a paper bag goes up to 25 cents after 2013.

Many people (like my parents) scoff at paying 10 cents per bag, and opt to bring their own. For them it's simple economics.

For others, it's an environmental action. According to the City of San Jose, a high quality reusable bag has the potential to repace more than 600 single-use plastic bags over its lifetime. 

In many parts of the world, bringing your own bag is second nature. But in America, we're use to free bags being provided for our purchases.

That's ending in San Jose. Hence the "Go Green Tote" workshop.

We already had the mesh (which is the green bit) that actually makes up the entire tote. We got to pick pocket and border fabric plus straps at the quilt shop and it was fun finding something to go with the teal color.

And while I can follow a recipe pretty well in the kitchen, I made every possible mistake with the sewing instructions and had to borrow a seam ripper more than once.

But there you go, it turned out pretty well and I might just make another, now that I know how. Maybe this time with cake and cookie fabric.

More tips from the city of San Jose:

• Keep reusable bags by the door, in your car, or near your car keys.
• Keep foldable bags in pockets, backpacks, or in your purse.
• Keep bags clean by washing cloth bags, or wiping bags with a sponge and mild soap.
• Give your friends and family a reusable bag, and encourage them to start shoppping with them today.

Cake: A New Years Tradition

Cake and bread are lucky foods for New Years. Along with greens (which resemble folded money) and peas (a symbol of wealth), pork (forward progress), and salt (for good luck).

Cakes, especially those with a coin hidden inside, are considered lucky, for the person who gets the coin and everyone else who shares a slice. Round cakes or breads symbolize wholeness and the completion of a full year’s cycle.

In Greece, there’s Vasilopita (St. Basil's cake), a round bread with a coin hidden inside. Sweets are added to the bread which symbolize the sweetness and joy of life everlasting. It also symbolizes the hope that the New Year will be filled with the sweetness of life, liberty, health, and happiness.

Traditionally, the 1st piece is set aside for Christ, the 2nd piece for Theotokos (Mary, mother of Jesus), the 3rd piece for St Basil, and the 4th piece for the poor. Then pieces are given to all present, beginning with the eldest and ending with youngest. He or she who receives the piece containing the coin is traditionally considered to be especially blessed for the New Year.

There are no coins in oliebollen, the traditional New Years dough balls from the Netherlands. These doughnuts are filled with apples and raisins and dusted with powdered sugar.

They are said to have been first eaten by Germanic tribes in the Netherlands during the Yule. The Germanic goddess Perchta, together with evil spirits, would fly through the mid-winter sky. To appease these spirits, food was offered, much of which contained deep-fried dough. It was said Perchta would try to cut open the bellies of all she came across, but because of the fat in the oliebollen, her sword would slide off the body of whoever ate them.

In Italy, a sweet bread or cake like a panetonne or a torciglione is sliced and served to all as a symbol of hope and prosperity. 

In Scotland, after the firing of the guns at midnight, men go house to house for the “first footing,” when they were offered a bannock (oat cake) and whiskey.  

King Cakes are eaten on Epiphany (January 6) throughout the Christian world. In the U.S. South, the practice extends through Mardi Gras (February 21 in 2012).

The classic King Cake is round (the shape of a crown), with a small baby hidden inside.  The baby is hidden to represent the fact that the three kings had a difficult time finding the Christ child and of the gifts they brought.  The decoration is simple granulated sugar, colored purple, green, and gold (the colors of Carnival).  Purple represents justice, green represents faith, and gold represents power.

Whatever your traditions, we recommend ringing in 2012 with cake. That's what we'll be doing.

The Christmas Angel

St. John's Carpatho Russian Orthodox Cemetery is in Stratford, Connecticut. I've been there exactly 19 times. Once each Christmas Eve that I lived with my ex-husband. And once when we burried his mother in October 1987.

It's on a hill and the family plot is near the top, with a clear view of the entire cemetery. There is a big stone, carved with the family name, plus smaller ones that say Father and Mother.

These are actually the grandparents who emmigrated from Subcarpathia (currently Slovakia) before World War I. Ethnic and religious minorities, they escaped by foot across the Carpathian mountains toward freedom of religion in America. 

Mike's father was burried on Christmas eve the year before we met. No matter where we were in our preparations for the holiday, we always made the drive from Tarrytown, up the Hutchinson River Parkway, to visit on Christmas eve day. Always.

It was often cold and dismal, with snow on the ground. In our Sunday best, we stood there shivering, and visited, as people do in cemeteries. We reviewed the events of the past year, sometimes out loud, sometimes in silence.

One year was particularly bad. Mike had closed the business started by his grandfather during the depression and he was feeling terribly inadequate. As we turned back to the comfort of a warm car, a pale old woman in a black winter coat greeted us. She said she knew Mike's father and grandfather from the church, and they were so proud of Mike. She put her hand in ours. It was cold.

We thanked her and wished her a Merry Christmas. Feeling better, we got in the car. It occured to us that we hadn't seen another vehicle in the cemetery. Maybe we should offer her a ride.

Looking around from the top of the hill, the woman we had spoken with just moments ago was nowhere in sight.

Rosie's Cinnamon Raisin Nut Bread

I've been waiting months to make this. Ever since the Retail Bakers Association conference last summer where I heard about cinnamon chips as a way to add a burst of cinnamon flavor to breads and other baked goods.

At lunch, a guy started talking about his hummingbird cake recipe, and how he used cinnamon chips instead of ground cinnamon for pockets of concentrated cinnamon flavor.

When someone asked him where he got them, he replied "Wal-Mart."

And that's where it started.

We've made cinnamon bread in the past, but the cinnamon was either mixed into the dough (and the flavor was somewhat lost in the yeast and flour) or rolled in (which requires way too much effort to mix the cinnamon, sugar and butter and have a loaf folks can afford). We also make an outstanding cinnamon roll (which I wouldn't dare mess with). The cinnamon chips sounded like a great alternative.

And I figured it would be easy.

Our local Wal-Mart had semi-sweet chips, milk chocolate chips, peanutbutter chips, white chips and toffee chips. But no cinnamon chips. Publix? No. Target? No. Winn Dixie? No. Brunos? No. Food World? No. I was getting tired.

I even called my suppliers, but they had never heard of them.

Off to the Internet, and I found Hershey's.

Ok, I know Hershey's is not REAL chocolate. And their cinnamon chips are probably not real cinnamon. But the bakery buys refined sugar, bleached flour, shortening, margarine, corn syrup and food colors galore. I am hardly going to get all snobby about cinnamon chips.

In our defense, we DO use lots of real butter, real cream and real chocolate.

Back to the supplier, who said they would try to order them. That was in August.

They arrived Tuesday, December 6.

And today I dusted off the recipe for cinnamon nut bread, doubling it for Rosie, our new gigantic 60-quart mixer.

Got all the ingredients mixed, adding the cinnamon chips, nuts and raisins last.

The dough was lovely and soft to work with. There is a certain feel to good dough and I get all excited when I know it's just right.

We sprinkled a little sugar on the tops of the loaves and we all stared at the oven for the last few minutes of baking. We even had customers in the shop who waited for the bread to be done so they could take some warm loaves home.

It looked a little plain right out of the oven, and I could't resist drizzling some glaze over the top.

Simply yummy comfort food.

And it will make the perfect toast tomorrow morning.

Here's the recipe (you will have to do your own math if you don't want to make 30 loaves).

 

Rosie's Cinnamon Nut Raisin Bread

• 14 lbs. bread flour
• 5 quarts water
• 6 oz. instant yeast
• 2 lbs. sugar
• 1/2 cup salt
• 5 lbs. cinnamon chips
• 2 lbs. pecans
• 2 lbs. raisins

Combine first five ingredients in mixer. Using dough hook, mix 8-9 minutes. Watch dough and add additional flour or water if needed within the first three minutes. Add cinnamon chips, pecans and raisins at end and mix until incorporated.

Oil dough and transfer to large bowl. Bulk proof at room temperature until doubled. Divide into 1-pound loaves and place in oiled loaf pans. Proof again until doubled. Brush tops with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake at 350oF until done, approximately 35-40 minutes.

Drizzle with sugar glaze when cool.

Six of Mary's Favorite Named Pastries

Some day I may bore you with stories about all my favorite famous named pastries, but here are six of the more interesting ones.

1. In France, many pastries are named after people. However, the Napoleon or (called mille feuilles in France or ) may come from napolitain, the French adjective for the Italian city of Naples.

A Frenchmille-feuille consists of three layers of puff pastry and two layers of crème pâtissière. The top is glazed with icing, in alternating white (icing) and brown (chocolate) strips, and then combed. In France a Napoléon is specific type of mille-feuille filled with almond flavoured paste.

In Italy, the pastry is called  mille foglie which mean "a thousand leaves" and is believed to have originated in Naples.

There are almost as many claims to origin as there are countries. The Danes believe a Danish royal pastry chef invented the dessert in the 1800s for a state visit between the Emperor Napoleon and the King of Denmark, in Copenhagen. In Sweden and Finland, the Napoleonbakelse (Napoleon pastry) is a mille-feuille filled with whipped cream, custard, and jam. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to claims.

2. The Savarin is named after Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), a 16th century gastronome.  Similar to the Baba au Rhum -- a ring shaped yeast cake, flavored with fruit and soaked in rum syrup-- without fruit, and soaked in kirsch syrup.

As an aside, the baba is believed to be a version of a kugelhopf, which was invented in Lemberg in the 1600s. The baba was brought to Paris, France by King Stanislas Leszczynska, the deposed king of Poland and the father-in-law of King Louis XV (1710–1774) of France when he was exiled to Lorraine. According to legend, he found the customary kouglhopf too dry for his liking and dipped the bread in rum. He was so delighted that he named the cake after one of the heroes of his favorite book, Ali Baba from A Thousand and One Nights. Later, his chef refined the sweet bread by using brioche dough and adding raisins to the recipe. The dish was then simply called “baba.

3. The Madeline is a small shell shaped sponge cake flavored with nuts or citrus. Madeleines are associated with the French town of Commercy, whose bakers were said to have once, long ago, paid a "very large sum" for the recipe and sold the little cakes packed in oval boxes as a specialty in the area. Commercy once had a convent dedicated to St. Mary Magdelen. According to the legend, the nuns, at a time when the convents and monasteries of France were abolished during the French Revolution, sold their recipe to the bakers. Madelines were made famous in the 20th century by Marcel Proust in his book, À la recherche du temps perdu, Volume 1, Swann's Way...

She sent for one of those squat plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell … I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure invaded my senses...

And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray … when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane …. and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and garden alike, from my cup of tea.

4. The Croissant, often associated with France, originated in Austria. Remember the Ottoman Empire? Well, the bakers of Vienna are credited with defending the city AND inventing the croissant during the seige of 1683.

The story goes... after several months of trying to starve the city into submission, the Ottoman Turks attempted to tunnel underneath the walls of the city. Fortunately for Vienna, some bakers hard at work in the middle of the night heard the sounds of the Turks digging and alerted the city's defenders. This advance warning gave the defenders enough time to do something about the tunnel before it was completed. Soon, King John III of Poland arrived at the head of an army that defeated the Turks and forced them to retreat.

To celebrate, bakers in Vienna made a pastry in the shape of the crescents they had seen on the battle flags of the enemy, calling it a kippfel (the german word for crescent). Many years later, Marie Antoinette, a 15 year old Austrian Princess, married King Louis XVI of France. To honor their new queen, the bakers in Paris made kippfels (in French, croissants). 

5. Closer to home, the first reference to the Hummingbird Cake (with bananas, pineapple, pecans and cinnamon) is credited to Southern Living Magazine in 1978.

The name comes, perhaps, from the fact that hummingbirds are drawn to sweet sources -- the cake is definitely sweet. Like many named pastries  however, there is more than one theory about the origin of the name.

• The cake is so good you "hum" with delight.
• People hover around it like hummingbirds hover around nectar.
• The cake is sweet enough to attract hummingbirds.
• The national bird of Jamaica is the hummingbird, and the cake's main ingredients (bananas and pineapple) are tropical.

Whatever the theory, the recipe's first appearance was in an article titled "Making the Most of Bananas." The recipe is, today, the most requested recipe in Southern Living Magazine History. It is traditionally covered in cream cheese icing and pecans. 

6. The Lane Cake is a white sponge cake made with egg whites and consists of four layers that are filled with a mixture of the egg yolks, butter, sugar, raisins, and whiskey. The cake is frosted with a boiled, fluffy white confection of water, sugar, and whipped egg whites.

Emma Rylander Lane (from Clayton, Alabama) first printed the recipe in a self-published cookbook (Some Good Things to Eat) in 1898.

According to chef and culinary scholar Neil Ravenna, Lane first brought her cake recipe to public attention at a county fair in Columbus, Georgia, when she entered her cake in a baking competition there and took first prize. She originally named the cake the Prize cake, but an acquaintance convinced her to lend her own name to the dessert.

If you like this kind of stuff, go back and read some of my past posts with references to named pastries...

• The Linzertorte
• Flan
• Peach Melba
• Pain au Chocolat
• Bundt Cake
• Rumpledoodles
• Divinity
• Creme Brulee
• King Cakes
• The Buche de Noel
• Fruitcake
• Bon Bons
• Apple Tarts

The Linzertorte

The Linzertorte or Linzer Tart is our new favorite pastry at the bakery. And we just love watching people's expressions as they taste it for the first time. Absolute bliss.

A traditional Christmas pastry in Europe, it originated in Linz, Austria. The pastry is made from a nut and spice dough, filled with jam and topped with a lattice crust.

It's one of those fussy *named* pastries you learn about in culinary school, along with the Sachertorte, the Napoleon and the Madeleine.

The Linzertorte is also one of the oldest known tarts with a recipe, discovered in an Austrian abbey in 1653.  An Austrian immigrant who worked as a baker is recognized for introducing it to America in the 1850's.

The traditional recipe calls for hazelnut flour and black currant jam, ingredients that are expensive and hard to come by in America. Most American recipes call for almond flour and raspberry jam instead.

We use almond paste instead of almond flour, which results in a very soft dough. Too soft to roll with a rolling pin, we spread the bottom layer with a spatula, and pipe the lattice with a pastry bag.

Here is the recipe from our Cookbook.

Mary's Cakes Linzer Bars

• 1 lb. butter, softened
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup almond flour (or almond paste)
• 3 cups a.p. flour
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 lb. raspberry jam
• confectioners sugar
• sliced almonds (optional)

Place butter and sugar in bowl of electric mixer fitted with a paddle atttachment. Cream until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients together. Beat dry ingredients into butter mxture to blend thoroughly.

Divide the dough into thirds. Reserve one-third for the lattice top. Press remaining dough into the bottom of a 12" x 18" (half sheet) pan. Spread jam evenly onto dough in bottom of pan.

Roll out remaining dough for lattice top and cut into 1/2-inch strips. Arrange on jam in a criss-cross fashion, re-rolling dough as needed to make sufficient strips and piecing strips as necessary. (If you used almond paste instead of almond flour, your dough should be soft enough to pipe the lattice using a large plain tip). Sprinkle with sliced almonds (optional).

Bake at 350^o for about 40 minutes or until  nicely browned. Cool, then dust with confectioners sugar and cut into 2-inch squares. Makes 48 squares.

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A little bit of trivia... The third largest in Austria, Linz is a city of about 200,000, just 30 kilometers south of the Czech border, about halfway between Salzburg and Vienna. It sits on both sides of the Danube River. Known for steel and chemical production, it is also a center for music and art. Former resident and composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) is to Linz what Mozart is to Salzburg. Fred Astaire's father was born there. Johannes Kepler (the astronomer) and Adolf Hitler (most infamous resident)  lived there. It's almost the home of PEZ candy (in Traun, about 15 minutes away). And that's about all you need to know about Linz besides the cake.

Gingerbread Persons

 

Rosie helped make this year's gingerbread persons. All 220 of them.

Of course, without Suzanne, they'd be plain or ordinary.

And that's not the kind of place that Mary's Cakes is. Neither plain nor ordinary.

So every year, about this time, we mix up a batch of gingerbread cookie dough and roll out the naked bodies.

Then we mix up a really big batch of royal icing, and Suzanne gets to work clothing each one in his or her unique costume.

Each one is different, but there are themes.

There are always Bama and Auburn fans (Suzanne went to BOTH UA and AU). Party persons with tacky Christmas sweaters and pinstripes and bow ties. Glamorous gals in swimsuits and evening gowns. Funky folks in all types of sportswear and Hawaiian shirts.

And of course there are brides in off-the shoulder dresses and veils, holding bouquets.

She adds incredible details like Pearls. And flip flops. And wristwatches. And hats. You never know what her mind will come up with next.

This year there is even a pirate with an eye patch and sword, a ship's mate with a striped shirt, and a mermaid.

Plus Santa (with a big "S" on his belt buckle).

When the icing dries, we attach a ribbon for hanging on the tree (better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it...) and package each person in a protective celophane bag tied with another ribbon.

They are suitable for hanging on the tree, but also deliciously edible.

Come on down and pick out your favorite. They'll be ready and hanging from our tree at Dickens Downtown.

Or make your own. Here's the smaller version of Rosie's Recipe...

GINGERBREAD PERSONS

Shortening	1 c.
Granulated Sugar	1 c.
Dark Molasses	1 c.
Cold Water	1/4 c.
All Purpose flour	6 c.
Ground Ginger	2 tsp.
Ground Cinnamon	2 tsp.
Salt	1 tsp.

Cream shortening, sugar and molasses. Add cold water and mix thoroughly. Add Dry ingredients and mix to incorporate.

Roll out and bake at 350F until done, about 10 minutes. Makes about 2 dozen.

Decorate with royal icing.

Note: Dough rolls and cuts better if slightly chilled. Pierce head  with straw or decorating tip before baking if you plan to add a ribbon to tie on the tree.

Saponification

sa·pon·i·fy. verb \sə-ˈpä-nə-ˌfī\:

to convert (as fat) into soap; specifically to hydrolyze (a fat) with alkali to form a soap and glycerol.

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Making soap is like baking. It's a process that involves mixing quality ingredients according to a recipe to create a finished product.

Fortunately, you can do it decently without having all that much knowledge of chemistry.

Which is a good thing since I never got beyond high school chemistry.

Yesterday I made soap from saponified olive oil (cold press, extra virgin), dried lavender and organic lavender salts (which I originally bought to take a bath with, but hadn't gotten around to using).

It has just recently been cut into bars and smells WONDERFUL. Just like lavender.

I used a lye calculator to determine how much sodium hydroxide was needed for the amount of oil I planned to use. The online calculator also gives a range of liquid (water, milk or herbal tea) needed to activate the sodium hydroxide and I used the high end of the range. The soap is still pretty soft and will need a few weeks for the water to fully evaporate.

So I just had to do it again. With less water. To see if less water will produce a harder soap. Soap-making ingredients can be expensive and hard soap lasts longer than soft soap.

Today's ingredients include various fats purchased at the local health food store...

• Almond oil, 16 oz.
• Cocoa butter, 7 oz.
• Shea butter, 7 oz.

I'm going to saponify these with 3.8 oz. of sodium hydroxide (NaOH, or lye) from the local hardware store, liquified in 8 oz. of water (from my tap) -- the low end of the range which is 8 - 11 fluid ounces.

To this I am adding coffee grounds (for texture and color -- and because I think coffee and chocolate and almonds go well together) and sea salt.

Sea salt contains skin nourishing minerals such as magnesium, zinc, calcium, potassium and iodine. Some of the many benefits include:

• relaxes skin muscles
• cleanses and detoxifies face and body
• sea salts draw toxins out of the body, which will naturally lead to feeling refreshed
• grainy and therefore makes for a great scrub
• increases blood circulation

The mixture is poured into a mold to set (looks just like cake batter, huh?). When firm, it will be cut into bars and left to cure and continue drying for about three weeks.

Then we will have the most lovely soaps.

They will be available in Mary's Cupboard before Christmas.