Purple Ombre Cake

Here's a beautiful ombre cake I made for a friends house warming (ombre just means a darker colour going to light). I've always wanted to experiment with coloured sponge and here was my opportunity. I used your normal Victoria Sponge recipe  and added baking gel colours and split it between three smaller tins rather than 2 larger 9" tins.

 You make your victoria sponge batter then divide it up as equally as you can into three bowls. Then add some purple gels to one to make a light purple and then add more to the next bowl of batter to make an even darker purple.

 I also made a purple frosting but I wish I had just used a normal white butter cream as it would've made the coloured layers stand out better.

 I decorated it in vanilla buttercream, piped a pretty little border and smothered the top in sprinkles! Wooo party time!

Chocolate Orange Cake

It was a friend's birthday last month, it was that really sunny weekend in June, so he had a BBQ. I offered to make any cake of his choice (because what's a party without a cake?). I thought he'd just say 'coffee' or 'chocolate', but I got a list of 4 possibilities with links to the recipes ha ha - love it. 

The choices were - Mary Berry Chocolate Orange Cake  http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/mary-berrys-very-best-chocolate-and-orange-cake

Chocolate Rum and Raisin Torte http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/chocolate-rum-and-raisin-torte

Date & Ginger Cake with Caramel Glaze http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/date-and-ginger-cake-with-caramel-glaze

Classic Victoria Sponge http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1997/classic-victoria-sandwich

After umming and ahhing, as you can see, I chose Chocolate Orange cake (and a Victoria Sponge - I went for 2!). I knew I could make these nice and big and feed a large group of people.

 I've never made chocolate curls before, they were very easy, so I'll definitely be using them again. You just melt chocolate and spread it out onto a marble block (which we happen to have) leave it to set and then scrape with a knife. Boom! 

Yummy cake! Can't beat choc and orange. And the BBQ was fun too...

(I stole this photo from his facebook page so umm copyright David Irwin?)

Classic Victoria Sponge

If you're English, it is essential that you know how to make a Victoria Sponge. 

 So I'm going to tell you how because it's so easy. This is for a 9 inch one.

12oz - Marg - room temp

120z - Caster Sugar

12oz - SR Flour

1tsp - Baking Powder

6 - Eggs

2 tsp - Vanilla Essence 

Step 1. Bung it all in a mixer and mix

Step 2. Divide up between the 2 tins and put them in the oven on 180 for 25-35mins

Step 3. Make some butter cream. Put soft butter in a bowl (maybe half a pack) beat it and then keep adding icing sugar until is stops tasting like butter. Add some vanilla essence too.

Step 4. When the sponges are cool, smoother one half in strawberry or raspberry jam and one side with butter cream.

Step 5. Say a little prayer and then flip the jam coated one on top of the other one

Step 5. Dust with icing or caster sugar (I like putting a doily on top and making a pretty pattern)

Step 6. Put the kettle on and eat a slice with a cup of tea and a friend

The BEST Chocolate Cake in the World...Ever

Soooo about a year ago I went through a malt phase and baked all things malt and got a bit sick of it. But after a little break I got over it and I am now back on that malty goodness. Especially after making this recipe. *I warn you* this chocolate malt cake is possibly the scrummiest thing you'll ever eat and could quite possibly make every other cake you eat after it, taste rubbish.

Where to start! There are quite a lot of stages to this recipe so I'm not going to write it all out. My friend Jo did most of mixing and weighing as I read out the instructions (team work makes the dream cake work). First you have to make a fudge sauce. Every cake that begins with making a fudge sauce has to be good.

You then make the 3 chocolate sponge layers. 

Once they're cooked you pour the fudge sauce over them whilst still warm - oh yes!

Next you make the AMAZING malt frosting. 

Look at it!! It's so yum. It's a mixture of cream cheese, double cream, butter, icing sugar and choc horlicks powder. Sporting the bowl of frosting is the lovely Jo. 

OK, so the next step was stacking and icing the cake and *ahem*, this is where things went a bit wrong. Whilst attempting to stack the 3 layers, the top cake split a bit, and then when I smothered it with super thick luscious frosting the whole cake completely split in half making an amazing mess. This is the only photo I managed to take before it happened.

Despite the cake crash, it was still eaten up and enjoyed. It's so moist and the fudge sauce makes it ever moister and the frosting is ridiculous and you're supposed to put malteasers in it too which I'm sure makes it (if possible) even more amazing. Anyway, I had a lot of frosting left over at the end so naturally, I made it into cupcakes. 

Oh, and it's a Hummingbird recipe in case you were wondering where you could find the recipe for the best chocolate cake in the world ever.

Iced Gems

 I saw these 'homemade' iced gems in a magazine and have wanted to make them ever since!

 It's a biscuit base - rolled out and cut into circles (you're supposed to use a fluted circular cutter, but I only had a petal shaped one). 

You push a thumb dent into each one (because they rise in the oven).

This is what the mini biscuits look like once cooked

The top is royal icing (made according to the packet instructions), coloured and then piped. It takes a few hours to set.

Grasshopper Slices

 It was my birthday the other week and some really good friends of mine got me the brand new 'Humming Bird Bakery Home Sweet Home' book as a gift. It was really hard to know what to bake first. But I decided on these, Grasshopper Slices.

 It's a 3 layered tray bake, brownie base, mint filling and chocolate topping. When I was at Secondary School, they used to sell something called mint cake that looked very similar and I loved it, that's why I chose this one.

The mint filling was a bit faffy to make. It's a white chocolate ganache with peppermint essence and green colouring. I haven't had a lot of experience with ganache, originally the recipe asks you to use 1kg, yes that's 1kg of white chocolate (which is ridiculous!) so I halved the recipe and used 500g (which is still pretty ridiculous but I'd set my heart on making it by this point). 

So I heated up some double cream and poured it onto chopped up milky bar and stirred and it went into the gungiest mess ever and I thought how is this ever going to turn into ganache?! So I put it in the fridge and after 30mins and a stir it did - phew! Then I stirred in the peppermint and green colouring.

I did the same thing with the chocolate topping, the original recipe asks for dark chocolate but the shop I was in didn't have any so I used galaxy.

They came out well. I think dark chocolate would have been nicer, and I need to work on my ganache skills (not pleased with the top layer!). Tim (husband) doesn't like mint in cakes and declared he refuses to eat toothpaste!! ha ha. Oh well can't please them all....

Berry Shortbread Cheesecake

I made this a few summers ago for a friend's leaving BBQ (she's now returned which is nice!). It was the front cover of the BBC Good Food magazine at the time. It was yum.

Here's the recipe...

Shortbread base - 200g shortbread biscuits and 50g butter, melted

For Cheesecake - 2x 300g tubs of Philadelphia, 1x 200g tub creme fraiche, 1tsp vanilla extract, 175g golden caster sugar, 2tbsp plain flour, 2 eggs

For the topping - 5tbsp seedless raspberry jam and 300g of summer berries (strawberries happened to be on offer!)

1. Blitz biscuits into crumbs, add melted butter mix together and press into the base of a lined loaf tin
2. Beat together philadelphia, creme fraiche, vanilla and sugar then stir in flour & egg pour into the tin 3. Put in oven for 10mins on 180 then 1 hour and 30mins on 120
4. Turn off heat and leave to cool in oven and then chill in the fridge
5. Heat jam in a pan and add enough water to make it a pouring consistency
6. Take the cheesecake out of the tin (carefully) and pour over the sauce and top with your chosen fruits

Now all we need is the summer....