Some time ago, I found some information about the Sweet Table Contest on Twitter. This is a competition, where cake lovers decorate tables with beautiful designs, cakes, sweets and biscuits. As you will appreciate, preparing such a sweet-table can be very time consuming. It starts with an idea and some drawings and before you know it, you're backing your theme cupcakes in the middle of the night and trying them out on friends and family weeks in advance. Take a look at this website called
Sweet Table Contest where you will find all those beautiful creations of the 2010 contest. Some sweet-tables are organized around a central theme. The winner of last year for example, was inspired by the story of Snow White and designed a table around a wonderful background, with apples, fabulous cupcakes and even a white dwarf.
I started this blog because I wanted to write and in order to give my blog some structure, I decided to create a project called 'A year filled with cake'. In December I started to write about all the sweets that you see in the shops in Holland around this time of year, especially those that are on offer around December 5th. On that day we celebrate ‘Sinterklaas’ and eat large amounts of chocolate, cookies and cakes without feeling embarrassed. For those of you who do not know who '
Sinterklaas' is, this is similar and at the same time slightly different to celebrating Christmas with Santa Claus.
After I had taken a look at the website of
Monica Kühne, the Dutch judge of the contest, I decided to give it a go and design my 'Sweet-table' around a 'Sinterklaas' theme. My sweet-table would have typical Dutch sweets likes 'kruidnootjes' (small cookies made with different spices like cinnamon and cloves), an 'intocht-taart" (a Dutch-cheesecake with cinnamon and a topping of strawberry marmelade) and to top it all off, every possible ‘Sinterklaas’ sweet I could reasonably make. So besides 'kruidnootjes' and my own 'intocht-taart' (which took the shape of a Big Book), I made 5th-of-December cakes, Caramel Cups with red and white sprinkles, Sinterklaas macaroons with raspberry and white chocolate, a boat (Santa rides a sleigh, Sinterklaas arrives in a boat), white cream fondant and lots of cookies.
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| One of my sketches for the Sweet Table Contest. |
Where my self-imposed deadline to write an entry on my blog every week, is already a challenge, deciding to create a table full of sweets and focussing on cooking instead of writing, turned out to be almost more than I could chew! Baking is my hobby and I’m certainly not a professional. So occasionally things really get hectic in my kitchen. I often start out to late and most of the time I put my cakes in the oven around midnight! This time I took it upon myself to be better organized. So after careful preparation, paper sketches and a little help from my sister, the project got off to a reasonable start. A week in advance I started to protect my ingredients with post-it notes (do not eat this, don't touch this, do not move that), which drove my family mad! But things quickly got out of hand: I neglected my cat and to get some peace and quiet in the kitchen I sent my hubby to go running around the forest with my two little girls. Finally, in the heat of the baking moment I forgot to make lunch for my sister, without who’s help I could not have done this (sorry and thanks again Ellen!)
Luckily, after the photo shoot, I was able to make everyone happy with the words "Let's eat something Sweet!
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| Macaroons with raspberry and white chocolate. |
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| Meringues: Christmas miter and staff. |
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| 5-December biscuits & cream fondant. |
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| Speculaas (cookies stuffed with an almond-filling). |
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| 'kruidnootjes': small cookies made with spices! |
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| 'Intocht-taart' with kruidnootjes and cinnamon spice. |
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| Sweets! |
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| The Sinterklaas-boat & Dutch rooftops. |
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| Also on the tower: Caramel Cups! |
I'm going to offer my Sweet Table Photo to Kühne Monica and I hope I can join the contest. It would be great. This certainly was a very enjoyable and inspiring project to work on during my year filled with cake!
