Just want to document a little about this past year....

December 22nd 2016
This was the night I was out with some work colleagues and managers and suffered fall as a result of a few seconds blackout...the first time EVER that this had happened to me.
Due to the area I was stood in at the time of the fall, my knee took the worst of it and I suffered a TOTAL KNEE DISLOCATION with varying degrees of damage to all 4 ligaments around the knee and the layers between the two bones...I also had a dropped foot and a lot of nerve damage in the lower leg and foot.
After being rushed to hospital (on a silly amount of painkillers and Gas & Air) I was told in no uncertain terms this would be "Life Changing for the knee".
I also experienced the worst pain I have ever felt in my life when they had to x-ray the knee to get an idea of the damage. This was due to the nature of the dislocation....my thigh bone was in my lower leg and they had to put a wedge UNDER the knee to x-ray!

So I was rushed into straight into theater about 3am to relocate the knee, and I woke up 3hours later with a frame of metal work sticking out of my leg to hold it straight. This would allow the knee to gum back together and the swelling to go down....and hopefully allow some of the ligament to start mending.
HOWEVER...what they were most worried about was the artery that sits behind the knee and goes down to the foot. If i had damaged that and lost the blood flow to the foot I could have lost my foot!! But i had faint pulse and warmth in the foot so it was just monitored for the next few weeks.

Once you know your new limits and have accepted them, the next stage was to learn where and when I can/can't push them. Refusing to let this new aspect of my life hold me back from what I want to do.

I think a major factor in adopting this mentality was the 5 years I spent in the disabled campsites at Download Festival...noone there let their injuries or illnesses hold them back from doing things (the majority of them much more serious than my stupid knee).

So I have everything in place I could possibly need and the only thing that will prevent me from trying to do what I want to do is myself (either my brain or my physical limitations).

31st August 2017 - Where am I at now....
I worked from home a few hours a day from January-June.
It was 5 months post injury before I was able to drive again.
Once driving I finally went back to work part time.
7.5 months post injury I am now back at work full time
I am now fully registered as Disabled....but I still hope it is just temporary.
It was almost 4 months post injury before I got a flicker of movement back into my foot.
Now 8 months post injury I have about 90% of the movement back to my foot.

I use a crutch or walking stick to get around (1 now instead of 2 though)
I wear a knee brace constantly when I leave the flat or have to stand/clean the flat.
I still have to uses a bath stool and rail to help me get into the shower.
I use a stool in the kitchen when I can't stand for extended periods of time.
I had to use a wheelchair for the first few months of the year with my boyfriend pushing it.
I now have a mobility scooter for when I want to go out for a day but can't walk the distances.
I had to sell my car (manual) and I bought an Automatic (lucky it is my left leg I can't use)​.

I still struggle climbing steps/stairs.
I still can't stand for long periods of time.
Any kind of walking hurts after a short distance and I struggle so have to rest regularly.
My knee aches when I use it a lot and it grinds and "pops" badly.
I lost a lot of feeling in my lower leg and foot due to nerve damage...that now has a constant tingling sensation through it but is no longer "dead".
Nerve pains are EVIL and can strike at any time...usually when you are trying to sleep!
I still can't move my foot upwards properly (couldn't drive a normal car any more)

I still have 2 fully torn ligaments (outside and rear of knee)
Ligament inside of knee knitted while my leg was pinned.
Ligament at the front of the knee has healed up to a degree during the first 7 months.
I was told I had to give the knee 18 months natural healing time (til June 2018) after that they will consider surgery

BUT...
I am still me and haven't had to change too much.
I have a lot of independence back once I became mobile again.
I have amazing friends, family, work colleagues.
I am able to go out places and see things...just research helps me plan better and know my options in advance.
I have an amazing boyfriend who moved in with me at the start of the year so he could look after me when I needed him most...we have now been together 14 months.
I am now starting to bake again and regaining my love for it and experimenting once more.

These tasty little morsels were something I always wanted to try...not the giant dollops of meringue that you can buy in markets but nice little bite-size tasties that can be stored in a jar for whenever the urge for something sweet needs to be fed.

I had a look online for different ideas and flavour combinations to try.

One of my favourites for inspiration has become the Meringue Girls instagram.
Based in London they do fantastic colourful meringues.

Doesn't that look AWESOME!

And having come back from Cake International last weekend i was now stocked up with some brilliant new Foodie Flavours to try out also.

So...armed with my recipe and instructions I set about trying meringues for the first time.
I chose not to use my stand mixer and try it by hand to begin with. I wasn't able to get as stiff a mixture as I needed, but they still turned out rather yummy for a first attempt...

I also kept it simple to begin with using just a strawberry flavour with pink colouring.

So...i moved on to my next batch and started trying out some of my other flavours...

The Rhubarb flavouring and custard flavouring were my 2 random purchases from CI....but I must say I think they may have been one of my best!
These gooey meringues just make you think of the sweets I used to get as a child.

As the title suggests, this past weekend I had an order where I needed to make flowers...something I had not yet done without them being a simple cut and press type.

I needed to make poppies!
So as any self taught decorator would i started looking on Pinterest at Poppies others had made and on Youtube for video tutorials that would help me with this task.

As I only had whatever was in my cutter store to use for the flowers, it was finding the right tutorial and working out the best way to approach it.
I did however buy the poppy leaf cutters, as the leaf cutters I currently owned were not suitable and i wasn't going to do them all by hand!

One of the main images I found was to the Poppy/Rose cutters on the Pretty Witty Cakes website. I also found a great video for a simple tutorial on Youtube that uses this cutter (posted at the end of this Blog). This gave me a place to start...

Much better! It is amazing how just something so simple can completely change how something looks. I was much happier with them like this so, i carried on making the rest that would be needed.

The finished cake was a poppy covered birdcage for an 18th birthday, though it seemed kind of fitting to be making a poppy cake for Remembrance Sunday also.

Well....I had a very quiet week leading up to Hallowe'en (for a change) as I had decided not to spam the local selling pages to try and get orders in, this gave me the opportunity to try my hand at a cake I had been wanting to do since last year...a PUMPKIN cake (with or without a face).

I had recently purchased myself a bundt tin and was dying to try it out on this design. So I trawled though other cake makers blogs and youtube videos for advice and ideas and then set to work.

Having not used bundt tins before I chose to keep the recipe simple (vanilla) so I didn't have to worry about trying to scale it up or down.
So I baked a 4 egg mix for each bundt half, then when they were cooled i sliced them in half and sanwiched them together with orange coloured vanilla buttercream and crumbcoated them into a ball shape.

I was being very generous with the amount of buttercream I used in the crumbcoat, as when it comes to molding the pumpkin shape into the fondant it will push the buttercream sideways slightly.
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I also wasn't happy with the height of the cake, so I also sliced an extra centimetre off the bottom once the cake was chilled and the buttercream was hard. This gave it a much nicer squat appearance.

As bundt cakes have the hole in the middle I placed a little 4" cake board over the top of the cake to seal it up, and also applied a thin coat of buttercream to it so it would stick and blend in, this central hole could also be filled with hard shelled sweets like a pinata cake...perfect for the trick or treat theme.

I allowed the buttercream to come back up to room temperature so it would be a little softer for the molding process, and allow the fondant to stick properly.

Having never covered a ball shaped cake before it actually took me 2 attempts to get it right, also keeping the fondant a nice thickness so it wouldn't tear when the features were added.
I used one of my modelling tools to push down the sides of the pumpkin, these do not have to be at regular intervals so no need to measure, just do whatever looks right. real pumpkins are also full of blemishes so no need to have it completely smooth.
I then used my fingers to lightly press and smooth down.

i then rolled out the remaining fondant into a long strip and covered the board, sticking it down with a a little water,  I didn't need this to be perfectly smooth as it was going to be a muddy ground so I just ensure it was pushed up against the base of the pumpkin.

The remaining fondant was shaped into the stem of the pumpkin and fixed centrally onto the top. Again using one of my modelling tools I textured this with a lot of lines, using my real pumpkin as a reference.

i then left this overnight to dry out a bit and firm up before I would start airbrushing it.

I started by airbrushing the board brown, I kept this as neat as I could up against the pumpkin so there wasn't a lot of overspray, again it didn't have to be perfect as any brown on the bottom edge of the pumpkin would blend into the effect of it being sat in the mud, and the shadowing due to the shape.
I also made some areas darker than others, as I would later be blending in black and greens to darken it up a bit. This was a great opportunity to try my hand at mixing different shades.

The pumpkin was sprayed straight orange, and i then mixed a drop of brown into the orange to get a darker colour along the grooves and around the base.

The stem was then carefully sprayed with the brown, with a little bit of dark green, being careful not to overspray onto the top of the pumpkin.

Once complete it was left to dry for an hour or so.

As it is usually the little details which can MAKE a cake, I chose to finish it off with a few leaves and vines made using an ivy leaf cutter and my fondant extruder, placing a few around the base of the stem and on the  board.

And I know everyone in my office loved it!

Not to mention everyone on my Facebook page!

My workplace decided to run its own Bake Off Competition in aid of its BCA breast Cancer charity fund raising. The idea being that each week the bakes would be for sale in the staff canteen where all the employees could vote for their favourite.
The GBBO episode would air on the wednesday, and then we would receive our task choices based on what they did in that week's episode. We would then have to bring our bakes in on the Monday morning.

Well....this was an interesting number weeks.
It gave me a chance to try my hand at things I had never done before (like pastries and breads) and i really enjoyed the challenge each week.

Week 1 - Cakes
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Kept this simple and I chose to go with the Black Forest Gateau task...but in cupcake form.
So a lovely chocolate sponge, cored and filled with a dark cherry conserve, topped with a kirsch/cherry flavoured buttercream, and decorated with chocolate shavings and a Cherry.

Week 2 - Biscuits
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​This week i decided to challenge myself a little and chose to do the biscuit box with a different type of biscuit inside.
So I used my usual Vanilla biscuit recipe for the box, rather than a traditional gingerbread, and I filled the box with SNICKERDOODLES (because I love cinnamon hehe)

Week 3 - Bread

I have never really made much bread before, especially not from scratch so i decided to try my hand at Cranberry filled Brioche rolls...they tasted lovely, but were a little overbaked. Will try again in the future tho

Week 4 - Desserts

You can never go wrong with a nice cheesecake. Until now I had only ever made cheesecake using the "no-bake" versions that you leave to set in the fridge, however this one needed to be baked. So I found myself a trusty recipe and gave it a go...voila! A Summer Fruits Baked Cheesecake

Week 5 - Alternative Ingredients

Well...I didn't even bother to take a picture of this weeks entry....a sugar free cake.
I chose to do a carrot cake which used Agave Syrup as a sugar substitute...definitely not my most successful week.
My only consolation was that all the bakers involved seemed to struggle as much as each other for this task.

Week 6 - Pastry

This week I decided to really challenge myself and make the Cypriot Flaounes! And I found an online Greek supermarket that was actually based locally so I was able to easily source the Masticha and Mahlepi spices.
These were actually a lot harder to make than I expected (it was a lot of cheese!) and definitely an odd flavour

Week 7 - Victorian

A proper Mary Berry Tennis (Fruit) Cake. Not cheap to make once you bought all the different dried fruits...and there was a LOT of fruit in this cake.
This was also the first time I had ever tried to make a fruit cake....and I must say it was very tasty

Week 8 - Patisserie

Another week that wasn't my strong point, and contained a lot of firsts for me.
I chose to make Chocolate covered Eclairs filled with a vanilla creme patisserie. They tasted lovely but the aesthetics of them could definitely be improved.

Week 9 - Chocolate

I had a very busy weekend so I went with something simple, I took my usual vanilla biscuit recipe and turned it into a chocolate version and made biscuits pops in the shape of flowers and butterflies, and piped the detail on with melted white chocolate. Then for display these were placed into a covered cake dummy

Week 10 - The FINAL

A Classic British Bake...I was torn between what one to do, so I made two cakes and then decided.
The first was a classic Nigella recipe I love to use for a Coffee & Walnut Cake, the second was a Bakewell cake.
I ended up submitting the Coffee & Walnut and taking the Bakewell into the office the next day

Many people started the competition, but it slowly dwindled down til there was only really 4 of us doing almost every week.
With the bakes only being sold at 50p a slice/piece plus the option of adding extra votes for 20p each we managed to raise over £350 for BCA.

oh....and I won :-)

I definitely need to try and update this Blog a little more, Life here at KWC HQ has been pretty hectic recently, but time to start experimenting again properly (between the few orders that I currently get).

The coming weeks could be quite interesting, with the Great British Bake Off coming back to our screens this week, my Day Job workplace has decided to run it's own Bake Off competition for the next 10 weeks....so i thought "Why Not?" and have signed up for it....wish me luck :)

INGREDIENTS:

• 400g custard cream biscuits (or any other biscuit of your choice)
  
• 400g large marshmallows
  
• 50g unsalted butter, diced
  
• 50g glacé cherries, sliced (optional but definitely nicer with)
  
• Whatever you wish to decorate them with...chocolate, sprinkles etc
  

METHOD:

• Line a 8x8" tin with clingfilm (much easier to remove later just make sure it overhangs)

• Place the biscuits into a bag and bash the living daylights out of them....or use a food processor if you have one available.
• Slice the glace cherries and mix them in the the biscuit crumbs
• In a microwaveable bowl add the marshmellows and butter and nuke on high for a minute or so until the marshmellows have puffed up. Remove from the microwave and stir, this will break the melty marshmellows down and help the butter melt into the mix.
• Now add the biscuits/cherry mix to the marshmellows and stir in...this is VERY sticky...also need to do this a quick as possible as the mixture will start to stiffen up
• Once mixed pour into the prepared tin and flatten down to level out and fill to the corners (I find another piece of clingfilm over the top helps prevent hands being covered in the stickiness).
• Leave to set on the side or in the fridge (I like to leave it overnight).
• Once set tip out onto a chopping board and remove the clingfilm
• Drizzle the slab of yumminess with melted chocolate and once the chocolate has set you can slice it up into bars or squares.

Perfect for bake sales, parties or just as something in the cupboard to nibble as a treat.

Pleased to announce my recent inspection from East Hants Council went very well and KWC has been awarded a 5* Food Hygiene Rating (www.food.gov.uk)

With a family wedding on the cards what better gift could I give the happy Bride & Groom than their wedding cake :)

With the tables being set with birdcage centerpieces this gave me the perfect opportunity to try out a cake design I have been wanting to do for a long time...a Birdcage.

I did the usual trawl through Google and Pinterest for ideas and elements I wanted to include on my design (lots of beautiful cakes online to pull inspiration from) and I got to work.

Being a very tall cake i decided to try and cover this one in one go instead of in 2 sections (top and sides)....and I was VERY happy with my CAKE ARTE mat I had purchased at Cake International.

This mat allowed me to flip the rolled fondant over the cake and then peel the mat away, instead of trying to lift the fondant off the mat to cover...less chance of it tearing.

So now I have a smooth covered cake...it is onto the decorating....look for Part 2 of this blog soon :)

LINKS:
"Gunge" tutorial - http://ericaobrien.com/blog/gunge-its-a-miracle/