Clive's Tips - Tip #3

So it has been a while - but Clive has been one very busy deer. You know, sending out his Christmas cards (for Rudolph, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen - the whole gang), wrapping up presents, making a pudding for Christmas day - all that fun stuff. But now he is back with another tip for you all!

And this is a good one, have you ever come across a recipe that calls for cake flour? I mean, really, who ever has cake flour on hand? I know I certainly don't, and I also don't like forking out extra cash for a special flour that I barely use.

So what can you do instead? Well did you know that...

1 cup of cake flour = (1 cup of plain flour - 2 tablespoons) + 2 tablespoons of corn flour

Or in plain english - for each cup of cake flour that you require take one cup of plain (all-purpose) flour, remove 2 tablespoons of the flour and replace it with 2 tablespoons of corn flour (or corn starch).

Clive's Tips - Tip #2

First of all Clive wanted me to pass on his top 5 favourite movies of all time:

1. Bambi - I think that is self explanatory.
2. The Thin Red Line - get it?
3. Open Season - again with a deer as the main character.
4. Snow White - lots of lovely forest folk.
5. Notting Hill - he is a hopeless romantic after all.


So now that we have got that out of the way it is time to pass on Clive's wealth of knowledge with you all. Did you know that Clive has baking since he was 4 years old? Now at the mature of age 21 he has decided to share his baking wisdom of 17 years in order to help all aspiring bakers out in the blogosphere.

Whisk your dry ingredients together before adding to the wet ingredients.

By doing this you minimise the amount of stirring needed to properly combine the dry ingredients, therefore reducing the risk of over mixing and losing all of the air from your batter. You also ensure that each of the dry ingredients is distributed evenly in the batter, instead of having small pockets of cocoa powder as an example.

Clive's Tips - Tip #1

Have you all met Clive? Clive is really the brains behind The Red Deer, in fact he is the red deer. Clive loves cupcakes, cookies, doughnuts and tofu burgers. He also likes going to discos and roller skating. But most importantly Clive is an expert baker and he has decided to start a new segment on The Red Deer to share his expert baking tips.

So may I present to you the first of many tips from Clive the red deer...

Tip #1

Break your eggs on a flat surface (such as your counter top) for a cleaner break. This way you are less likely to obliterate the egg shell and end up with pieces of shell floating around in the egg white.

First Decorated Cake

Last week I made plans, cake decorating plans. With Zoe's birthday party coming up very shortly I needed to practice my cake decorating skills to make sure that I can manage the vision I have in my mind. So last week I planned out a special cake to practice all the techniques I will need for Zoe's cake. On Sunday when I baked the Violet Crumble cupcakes I also baked a 6" chocolate cake, wrapped it up and popped into the freezer so that it would be ready to go.

Then on Monday night once little miss Z went to bed I cracked open the fondant and got busy!


May I present to you Clive - The Red Deer. I used modeling fondant to make a model of Clive and at first it freaked me out because the fondant dries so quickly, but by the end of it I was definitely having fun.

On Tuesday I got the cake out of the freezer so it could defrost. I then made up a batch of vanilla Swiss meringue butter cream and filled and coated the cake. Then I popped the cake into the fridge to set. Later that night once little miss Z went to bed I covered the cake in fondant and did a little decoration, to end up with this...


My very first fondant covered cake and fondant sculpture. Now I know that it is by no means perfect, but isn't it just so cute?!


I especially enjoyed putting the polka dots around the side of cake and rolling up those little balls of fondant - that was fun!


And in case you are wondering I needed long pieces of wire to hold up Clive's antlers they go from the tip of the antlers right down through his head - poor Clive!


Since this cake is just a practice run I thought it would best if I got a sliced photo, you know - for you, the readers.


And now that it is sliced I better try some... yummy!

Now that I kind of know what I am doing with this - next time I will take in progress shots for y'all!

WIP Thursday - Clive the Plush Toy

I have been dreaming of making my own plush design for some time now and I think that Clive the deer is the right candidate for it. I am making the basic nude Clive to start with (how naughty!), and then sometime down the track I will introduce some special editions, but I won't give away too much about that yet - I've got to leave something as a surprise!

So this week I have come up with the first version of the pattern, cut out the fabric (don't fear - the final version will not have a flowery head), embroidered the face and pinned together the pieces. Now I just hope that Zoe gives me a few spare moments so that I can sew this baby up!

I will post my progress shots of Clive as he comes along. Nothing like a blog to stop you from procrastinating.

Business planning and other news

The past few weeks I have been a very busy girl planning my new crafting venture. I can't give away all of the secrets yet, but I think it is safe to say that Clive - the red deer will feature prominently throughout my products. So far I have been doing a bit of research and some forward planning - to make sure that I am not running into this blind.

Here is a list of the planning I have done so far:

• Looked into registering a business name
  
• Looked into registering an ABN
  
• Looked into what tax liabilities I will have
  
• Considered my goals for the business
  
• Worked out what products I want to create
  
• Found suppliers online and in brick and mortar stores
  
• Begun a marketing plan
  
• Worked out a timeline, with goals and objectives for the first 6 months

I think the research and planning phase is officially over now - so I have to actually get into working gear and design some of my products to sell. I'm working off a 5 month plan to get my shop up on Etsy - so I have a lot of work ahead of me. I will keep you posted as I go along with this endeavour.

In other news Zoe is going really well - she will be 14 weeks old tomorrow, so time is really flying by now. She is gooing and gaaing, smiling, almost laughing and she really badly wants to roll over but can't quite get there yet. One of the best gifts that we have been given for her so far has been her bouncinet - she absolutely loves it!!! (Thanks Dad and Liz). I also bought 18 new baby beehinds nappies for her - so that we can almost completely phase out the use of disposables, which I think are a bit ewww!



Also I got my hair cut and it is ultra short!