Challenge #6 Bling Bling Millionaires Shortbread

This is number 6 in the Mary Berry Challenge (I'm going through Mary Berry's Baking Bible....... just for fun!). But I decided to bling it up a bit.

  I saw someone else do something similar using gold and I had some silver edible paint and so thought I'd go for it.

I really like the splattered effect - it makes it look that bit more professional and special. The recipe is super unhealthy using a whole 2 tins of condensed milk for the caramel. 

 I used 70% dark chocolate for the topping which made the silver stand out really well. You can use milk chocolate if you prefer but don't use dairy milk as the American's have made it un-meltable! and it separates it into a sticky mess. Which is really sad. 

Definitely a recipe I'll be making again - really tasty and looks great.

Challenge #5 Battenburg Cake

So I've been dreading this one. It was on the Great British Bake Off last year and not many came out perfect. 

So I followed all the instructions very carefully...I'll let the pictures do the talking

Can I just point out that Mary Berry said make a 'deep pink' batter. Hmm...

I was ridiculously pleased with how it came out and it wasn't that tricky. Next time I think I might try a chocolate coffee one with chocolate fondant icing instead of marzipan. Mmmm

Fire Engine Cake

Two years in a row have my little friends wanted a Fireman Sam cake for their birthday. Last year I did a normal round cake and made a flat fire engine on top (I would show a photo but my hard drive died and I lost it boo). But this year I felt a bit more adventurous so went 3D!

I made an 8" square chocolate cake and chopped it up into a rectangle with an extra square of sponge to make the raised top front. Then I smothered it in the red fondant then stuck on fondant fire engine parts.

I haven't done a lot of models before so I was quite pleased with my fire fighter! He'd just put out a fire so he's having a rest.

Challenge #4 Cappuccino Cake

I haven't got a lot to say about this cake - it was nice. The sponge was really light and moist and chocolate flavoured. It was one of those recipes that involved a lot of water which is really nice but the batter ends of up so liquidy that it sometimes seeps out of the tin and burns onto the bottom of the oven!

The icing was whipped double cream with coffee. I'm not a fan of cream so probably won't make it again. 

Patchwork Naming Cake

This cake took a lot of thinking power. It was an order for a naming cake in a patchwork design. 

Right from the word go it was all about the maths! There were a lot of things that could go wrong. Making sure the height would divide into the width making equal patchwork squares was super duper important, so I had to concentrate hard as there was not much room for error.

I covered the cake in a thin layer of white fondant and then made a square template out of card and cut out all the patches. Then I gradually stuck them on one by one and trimmed the edges.

The patchwork squares included cars, boats, checks, hearts and the name of the baby. The hardest part was trying to fit the 'Michael' into the bottom left square!!! 

To finish it off I made 15 cupcakes in matching colours

Challenge #3 American Apple & Apricot Cake

 This cake was yummy and my favourite so far from Mary Berry's Baking Bible. I'm not usually a fruit cake fan but I'll make this an exception!  

The main ingredients were cooking apples, dried apricots, almond essence & flaked almonds on top.

The batter consistency was really unusual - it mostly consisted of massive lumps of fruit - I wondered how it would end up turning into a cake.

Before

 

After

And the result....D loved it and ate it all but J didn't like the fruit bits :-). I really commend it - it's really nice.