A Tray of Bliss

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

So...this insourcing thing...how much can it really save?

People ask me often, why I bother with all this insourcing (as I like to call it). Well apart from being lots of fun for a creative soul like me, it saves us the most enormous amount of money! And as I keep saying, I don't care how much you've got, we all want more, don't we. And can I tell you how much it saves me?

One year I made tall cupcakes, as above. They were lemon syrup cake baked in recycled tins that had held corn and baked beans, and decorated with a circle of fondant, a hand fashioned lemon with leaves from the same fondant (yes, I made that), and wrapped in vellum printed with pretty green scrolls and tied with raffia. These were packed into individual boxes and paired with my homemade Limoncello, seen below. These were Christmas gifts a few years back. I have a large extended family and we still gift to EVERYONE, so this saved me hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

Those savings went towards a trip to France. This included travelling to Bordeaux, seen here...

....Honfleur, seen below....

... and Talmont, where I snapped this pretty window vignette....

Then, we had lots of cups of tea on trays laid with our own vintage linen and china rather than frittering money away on café lunches for another year or two....

...that meant we could stay in this restored farmhouse in a different part of France...

...visit the Arachon Coast with it's soaring cliffs and really unusual and unique wedding cake style architecture....

...hook back to Paris to renew our vows in front of the Eiffel Tower, where our daughter, miffed that she'd missed the first wedding, conducted the ceremony and took this charmingly (ahem) crooked shot of us. You're right...there's no 'us'. It's just the Eiffel Tower, but she was only 8 years old.

.....we had enough money for divine meals....

...a visit to the Musee` D`Orsay...

...and a stopover in Sydney to visit friends where the view was like this...

Due to clever and creative frugality, we also get to holiday at Noosa regularly...

...where we have a shack that's a short walk to here...

....and we've still managed a third trip to France and squeezed in a visit to the Palace at Versailles...

I can also indulge in my love of Chanel No. 5....

....fund my daughters obsession with dance...

.....provide for my disabled sons needs...

...and let The Musician Husband buy me pretties now and again...

So don't tell me, that having edible rose petals on hand...

...to decorate cupcakes instead of buying them...

...making our own desserts...

....and baking and decorating family wedding cakes, however humble...

...doesn't make a difference to our lives. Because it does.

...Mimi...

Monday, March 2, 2015

This weeks insourcing #4.....

Well I'd call the last week kind of patchy.

Do you get those patchy weeks, where for every step you take forward, you take two backwards? That was my week last week.

Amongst my insourcing savings were the following....

I had a huge meal prepping session and probably saved myself anything up to $100 in similar purchased supermarket items and definitely saved $300 on a restaurant meal. Our friends came to us for Pork Belly Roast and Garlic Mash and they saved money too.

I hemmed two dresses, shortened two pairs of pants that were too long for me, replaced a button, and took up a recently purchased t-shirt that on me was more like a dress as I'm a shortie. Savings of around $100 on paying for similar alterations done at the dry cleaner.

I made a bulk batch of béchamel sauce. This is so handy to have on hand, and means that we can have a seafood mornay, or chicken and corn crepes in an instant. Savings of $40 on instant takeaway meals!

I made agar-agar jelly to cut into cubes to add to my daughters iced tea, Bubble Tea style. We're yet to work out exactly what those 'bubbles' are but we think they're some sort of sago pearls, so I'll be looking into that too. This saves $6 a couple of times a week to satisfy her cravings. I know that sounds insignificant, but she's saving for spending money for our holiday in June, and $18 a week for her, means another $250 or so for her to spend at Harrods, so it's not to be sneezed at! Especially with currency conversion rates just now :(

I bought frozen edamame beans from a Japanese grocer to steam for afternoon tea. We love these and eat them in place of potato crisps...so much healthier, and at $6 for a tiny container from the Japanese Sushi place, we're saving up to $30.

I planted some basil and a chilli bush. The last basil and chilli I planted died courtesy of my black thumb. Clearly I didn't inherit that gene from Mum! Savings on bought herbs and chilli and bought Thai inspired takeaway....let's say $50.

And finally I conjured up a wedding cake out of nowhere and with just three days notice.

This cost under $70 and fed 50 guests with some left over to take home.

Here's how I made the Broke and Busy Persons Wedding Cake...

Disclaimer....this is labelled the Broke and Busy Persons wedding cake, so there's not much in the way of 'I made it from scratch'.

This is really more of an exercise in what anyone can do with very little in the way of time or money, or perhaps even, skill!

My cake saved the Bride & Groom about $400 on a similar professional cake, so that brings my tally to around the $1000 mark for all I achieved this week. I'm happy.

This cake is the product of the following ingredients....

3 vanilla cake mixes made as per instructions in a 45cm round cake tin

1 kg of bought fondant

1 batch of Wilton humidity proof buttercream (which I actually did make from scratch!)

1 purchased spray of fondant flowers

1 green satin ribbon

1 cake board

So on Day 1, the cake was baked and chilled for a day (read...no time to do anything else!).

On Day 2, the buttercream crumb coat was applied and chilled for one hour, before I applied a second thicker coat, and chilled it again. This gave me a something to carve and mold into nice smooth surfaces and edges before applying the fondant. I like this Youtube tutorial for how to....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ659Qhy9_Q

The whole thing chilled again overnight.

Day 3 was spent wrestling with fondant, and believe me, it is a wrestle, draping it over the cake and trimming it, and brushing it with edible pearl dust, which I love.

The final touches of the ribbon, rings, and flower spray were added when the cake was transported to it's final display spot on the wedding table.

The whole thing cost less than $70. I'm not sure how much a similar professional cake would cost, but I pretty much guarantee it wouldn't be $70!

My point is, that we all think these things need to be professional and perfect, and we outlay hundreds of dollars on something that's only going to be eaten at the end of the day anyway. And if perfection is a priority for you, then that's fine.

But for my brother and his new wife, budget was paramount, and they were thrilled with their cake.

With a bit of money, a lot of courage, and not too much effort, I was able to create something pretty for them, and I was proud of myself.

This cake is not perfect. But it was made with love. And the wedding was full of love and celebration too. Therein lies the 'perfection'.

Go on. Be brave. If I can do it, you can too.