Neapolitan Rose cake

It was my Mum's *whispers* 60th birthday last month, and so a special cake was required. I was originally intending to bake a topsy turvy cake using the tins I got for Christmas (has anyone else used these? Any good?) but decided that it would just be way too much cake than it would be possible to eat, since we already had plans for afternoon tea on the day aswell.

I have seen quite a few rose swirl cakes on other blogs and think it makes for such a stunning effect, and had had a Neapolitan one by Baking Addict bookmarked for a while, as I loved the effect of all the layers of colours, too. I decided that would be the perfect cake for my Mum - roses being a bit of a tradition (the chocolates aswell as the flowers!), plus neapolitan ice cream just reminds me of my childhood and so I thought that would be quite fitting.

The recipe was cobbled together from a couple of sources - a mix of the basic sponge cake recipe I always use, with bits borrowed from Ros' recipe - and I used Ros' recipe for the buttercream with the exception of the fresh strawberries. I decided to use flavouring as when I've used fresh strawberries in the past I've struggled to get the right piping consistency, so I wanted to play it safe with this one as I didn't have any spare time for errors! I think Ros said in her post that the cake really doesn't actually take that long to make, and people will think you spent longer on it than you did - I can vouch for that! I made this in an evening after work and was still in bed by 11pm! I think altogether it took me around 3.5 hours.

Here is the recipe I used:

For the cakes:
300g caster sugar
300g butter
6 medium eggs
300g self raising flour
1tsp vanilla extract
1.5 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp milk
100g milk chocolate, melted
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1tsp strawberry flavouring
pink food colouring (I used Wilton paste)

For the buttercream:
750g icing sugar
375g butter, softened
4-6 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
50g melted chocolate
drop of strawberry flavouring
pink food colouring

The cakes were made by beating the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then adding in the eggs, flour, baking powder and milk. Split the batter into three equal portions and add the vanilla extract to one, the melted chocolate and cocoa powder to another, and the strawberry flavouring and pink colouring to the other. (I just made the vanilla and chocolate ones first with 2/3 of the recipe, then made the strawberry one separately)

Spoon the batter into 3 x 18cm sandwich tins, greased and lined, and bake on 190c for around 25 minutes until springy to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tins for a few minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Once the cakes have cooled, get on with your buttercream. In an electric mixer, mix together the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract and add the milk gradually until you get the right consistency. Beat the buttercream on a high speed until light and fluffy. Divide into three portions (you need 3 slightly differently sized portions - the colour on the bottom needs to be the smallest, and the top colour the biggest) and add the melted chocolate to one (this was the smallest portion in my case), and the strawberry flavouring and pink colouring to another (the medium one in my case). Fill 3 piping bags fitted with Wilton 1M nozzles - I went out and bought 2 extra nozzles for this cake and the time/effort it saves you having them all to hand is definitely worth it!

I would recommend levelling your cakes if needed, as this will make it look neater and easier to decorate! Now smear a bit of buttercream on the base of your cake board and plonk the chocolate layer down. Cover with strawberry buttercream, and place the strawberry cake layer on top. Cover that with vanilla buttercream and top with the vanilla cake layer.

At this point I would advise doing a thin coating of vanilla buttercream, especially on the top. I didn't think the sides of the cake desperately needed it, but it would have looked so much neater. I really wish I had coated the top first at least as I ran out of vanilla buttercream and couldn't fill the gaps!

Pipe rose swirls around the bottom layer with the chocolate buttercream, middle layer with the strawberry buttercream, and top layer/top of cake with the vanilla buttercream. You can disguise some of the gaps on the top with little drops of buttercream, which would have been fine if I hadn't ran out (I got my quantities wrong for the portions and ended up with loads of leftover chocolate buttercream!).

I was happy with the flavour of the cake - the flavours of all the layers came through nicely and it tasted fresh and light. I was a little disappointed about the gaps in the piping, and was kicking myself for not doing a base coating. Looking back at the photos I probably should have gone for bigger rose swirls but at the time I was so cautious about it I played it way too safe! Overall though I was really pleased with how it turned out. It's a great celebration cake and the piping and colours make for a stunning effect.

Easter Baking 2013

Again, horrendously late with posting about anything seasonal but for some reason I just cannot bring myself to post things out of the order in which they are baked! I was so late with this that I ended up writing the entire post, looked again at the photos and realised I'd forgotten an entire batch of cupcakes!

Easter weekend usually ends up being fairly busy and for the bits where we are at home I favour lying on the couch eating chocolate over slaving away over anything complicated in the kitchen! But this year I did want to force myself to try something new, so while I still knocked out the traditional favourites of Easter nests, chicks and mini eggs, I did try a new recipe too.

The new recipe was these Creme Egg cupcakes. My friend had sent me a link to the recipe and I knew I had to try them! I loved the idea of recreating the creme egg filling and was happy to discover another fab food blog at the same time! I just used the frosting recipe to go on top of my chocolate cupcakes. A strong lesson learned here was always buy decent food colouring! I thought Dr Oetker gel colours would do the trick but alas not. I'd already used most of the packet and still only had a very pale yellow to decided that would have to do! I also stuffed up the dual piping... I had bought one of the Lakeland dual piping bags but they just seem to be TINY! I rammed way too much frosting down one side first so couldn't get the other side in, I ended up scooping it out and abandoning the pretty frosting, going for spreading frosting on top and finishing with a dollop of the creme egg filling. I was a bit annoyed with it but once I'd stuck a mini creme egg on top it masked the botched job a little! Not quite the beautiful swirl of the original recipe but they tasted pretty good and I will probably have another stab at them next year, armed with better food colouring and lessons learnt in terms of dual piping bags!

So onto the traditional Easter favourites... last year I'd wanted to make something based on the hatching egg cupcakes I'd seen on Butter Hearts Sugar, but saw them too late and ended up making fairly rubbish ones out of Kinder eggs which were the only ones left in the shops by then. This year however, I was fully prepared and bought some smaller eggs in plenty of time and was happier with how they looked.

Easter nest cupcakes never fail to disappoint either, I can't see an Easter passing by without me making some of these! The chicks always end up strewn over the kitchen and I keep finding them in various places throughout the year.

Mother's Day cupcakes

 I decided to go 'back to basics' this Mother's Day and made some vanilla cupcakes with lemon buttercream. Sometimes, you just can't beat the taste of a nice, plain, simple cupcake.

To jazz them up a bit, I picked out a pretty box and some nice cases, made some butterflies and letters out of sugarpaste, and piped the buttercream in a rose swirl. Rose swirls are definitely my favourite kind of piping, it's so quick and easy to do and makes for a simple but classic effect.

I think she liked them. But to be honest, she had a piece of El Gringo cake aswell on the day and I think that stole their thunder a little! Hopefully that was the first and last time my mother has ingested tequila!

El Gringo Margarita cake

This is a cake borne out of an obsession. An obsession with cheese....

Back in March, I was aware that a new limited edition cheese was on the horizon - the El Gringo, from the Cheshire Cheese Company, which was a cheddar cheese with tequila, lime and chilli, or to put it another way - the cheese of dreams. Normally, I can limit myself to buying 'special cheese' at food festivals only, but I knew I would have to get my greedy paws on the Mexican cheesy goodness as a matter of urgency.

Unfortunately for Mike, the El Gringo was released during a week off work, which meant I became obsessed with tracking it down (and also possibly temporarily insane) - ordering it online and waiting DAYS was just not going to cut it. Happily we discovered there was a food festival happening in Wigan where the cheese was to be available, so I forced Mike to drive us there and I obtained two truckles of the Mexican beast from Deano, the slightly bemused stallholder. Possibly the shortest trip anyone has ever made to Wigan, we were there approximately 24 minutes!

I feel that this photo captures the mood of the day!

So since I now had Mexican cheese, we had to have a Mexican evening, which meant nachos smothered in El Gringo, followed by chilli, followed by... well, what exactly? Apart from churros I really couldn't think of any Mexican desserts and my thoughts turned to cake... so I decided to make a cake based homage to my new obsession El Gringo, but swapped out the chilli for orange to make a margarita cake! I looked for a recipe, but didn't really see anything that caught my eye, so I decided to tweak this recipe for orange drizzle cake, make up some tequila buttercream and see if it would work.

It worked. Hurrah! I was really pleased with how it turned out. I was confident the cake would be good as the recipe was a cracker when I had made it in it's original form, and the buttercream went very well with it. I'm not sure I could identify the taste as tequila if I didn't know that's what it was, but it definitely gave it a different twist to usual buttercream.

 

I'd love to try this recipe again and make it into a more dramatic layer cake, as I feel that a tequila fuelled cake should look a bit more flamboyant somehow!

Here is the recipe, if you would like to try it yourself:

For the cake:
175g butter, softened
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
Grated rind of 1 orange and 1 lime
175g self raising flour
2 tbsp milk

For the drizzle:
45ml freshly squeezed orange juice
30ml freshly squeezed lime juice
10ml tequila
100g granulated sugar

For the buttercream:
500g icing sugar
160g unsalted butter
50ml of tequila and freshly squeezed lime juice (I used 2 tbsp tequila with the rest lime juice)

1. Preheat oven to 180c and grease/line a 18cm deep cake tin.
2. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat.
3. Add the orange and lime rinds, flour and milk and fold into the mixture.
4. Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake for 30-40 mins. A skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean.
5. Cool in the tin.
6. When cool, score or prick the top of the cake.
7. Put the fruit juices and sugar into a pan and heat until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to boil and boil for 1-2 mins, then pour over the cake. Let the juice soak in, then remove the cake from the tin.
8. To make the buttercream, mix the butter and icing sugar in an electric mixer until combined, then beat on a high speed for 5 mins. Gradually add the tequila and lime juice and mix until combined.
9. Spread the buttercream over the top and sides of the cake, and decorate with lime zest.

Disclaimer! This  post is in no way an advertisement, a sponsored post, or anything to do with the Cheshire Cheese Company. I just really like their cheese and felt that I should tell the full story behind the cake!

Not Cakes From Kim: Sweet chilli and tomato chutney

I LOVE chutney - chutney stalls are probably the second place you should look for me if you ever lose me at a food festival (cheese stalls being the first). I had high hopes of mastering the dark art of chutney making last year so everyone I know could have received jars of it for Christmas adorned with pretty labels and ribbons, but of course I didn't bother pulling my finger out and trying any recipes, so it was a chutney-less Christmas for all who know me! (I'm not even sure how many people I know would actually eat chutney but still, might have made a nice change from having cakes forced upon them...!)

So I had a week off in March and decided it was time to give it a go. I'd had this Pink Whisk recipe for sweet chilli and tomato chutney (a firm favourite flavour) bookmarked for a while which looked like a good place to start, having really good step-by-step instructions and handy photos, so off I went.

Well, I don't really know what else so say other than the recipe was super easy and BLOODY GORGEOUS. I was intending to make Ruth's recipe for tartlets to use up the chutney if I had to, but it all got gobbled down by us mostly as an accompaniment to chillis (though also lovely with cheese), and doled out around some friends and family who volunteered to take some off my hands after I posted a picture on Facebook - one of them even said she wouldn't mind a regular supply, which was great feedback!

You'll need to set aside a few hours, but most of it you just need to be hanging around keeping an eye on it, so it was a great excuse for me to sit guilt-free and watch back to back episodes of SATC which I am currently working my way through. I don't have any other hints or tips, because the recipe should tell you everything you need to know. If you're a chutney newcomer I can definitely recommend this chutney as a good place to start! We have just finished the last of this batch and so I am on the hunt for a new recipe to try - if you have any recommendations I would love to hear them? 

Peanut butter and toblerone cheesecake

Another post that isn't a cake! We were having some friends over a few weeks ago and I wanted to make a nice dessert. Proper desserts aren't something I've made very many of, I'm definitely more of a cake girl, and plus, I'd always rather have a boozy coffee or a cheeseboard than a dessert (or seconds from the main course...!).

Anyway, I had had a Peanut butter and Toblerone cheesecake on my 'to bake' list for a while, and as it was a 'no bake' recipe I thought it would be a fairly quick and easy dessert. And the only springform tin I had was the exact right size. AND it had an Oreo base and it's been a while since I indulged that little obsession of mine.. so you can see, I was struggling to think of a reason why I shouldn't make it. (Although one did present itself when I weighed out the ingredients and realised the sheer volume of cream cheese involved, but I was too far down the line then!)

It was super easy to make - the most difficult bit was chopping the Toblerone! And for extra fun/stress relief, bash up the Oreos yourself rather than whizzing them in a food processor! The recipe says chill for minimum 3 hours or ideally overnight - I can definitely vouch for the overnight chilling, it was still quite soft after a good 8 hours of chilling so next time, I'll make it even more in advance. I possibly should have waited until serving before adding the peanut M&M's because the colours ran quite a bit.

This is very good cheesecake - rich, creamy and a little bit different. It is also massive so make sure you've got a lot of people you can give it to, otherwise reduce the recipe (or risk a few inches on your waistline, because trust me you won't be able to not eat it...)

Strawberry Heart Pavolvas

So we'll gloss over the fact that I'm posting my Valentine's bake in March. Anyway, even though this is a heart shaped bake, it doesn't have to be, you could make it any time of year!

I'm always dismayed by the Valentine's Day apathy I see every year, and I don't like being made to feel sad or a sucker for wanting to celebrate it. While I do hate how everything has become crazily commercial these days, it shouldn't mean you have to shun it completely! We all know that you should make sure your loved ones know that you appreciate them every day of the year, but I don't see anything wrong with having a day where you can celebrate it, spend some quality time together, and write some nice words in a card to make extra sure they know.

Anyway, it was bloody weeks ago so there's really no point in me getting on my high horse now! Our Valentine's Days have been varied so far, we have been for a day out, we've been for a meal out, we've had a meal in, and this year we decided to stay in again have a takeaway and watch a DVD. Our tradition is that I get flowers and Mike gets something baked for him (surprise, surprise).

This year I'd spied my Valentine's bake quite early, on one of my favourite baking blogs Butter Hearts Sugar - Strawberries and Cream Pavolva Hearts! This would be an extra special and heartfelt bake, since I don't like meringue and I don't like any egg 'interaction' beyond a quick crack into a cake, egg separation is the stuff of nightmares to me!

The meringues were quite simple to make really, I think mine were a little runny as it was quite difficult to pipe them but I managed to wrangle them into heart shapes and they turned out fine, if a little uneven due to my smoothing shortcomings! The filling was just whipped cream with sugar and vanilla, and sliced strawberries, with a bit of warmed strawberry jam drizzled on top. I think they were perfect for the occasion and Mike definitely enjoyed them. I think I will be making these again in future - reckon they would be great as a summery dessert. The recipe is here if you want to try them.