Pebbles - of chocolate?

As you may or may not know, one of my unwritten rules for my blog is "never turn down chocolate". Not for me necessarily, but everyone else in the house adores chocolate and I quite like it too. Anyway, Cadbury's offered to send me some Dairy Milk Pebbles to try, so I couldn't say no.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately, if you are Cadbury's) they didn't last long. They did, however, last long enough for me to take a couple of snaps. (Badly, of course!)

Pebbles fill the void left by Mini Eggs when it's not Easter. They're a little bigger, pebble shaped (strangely!) but still covered with that crispy shell. Well, I say bigger - perhaps they're just flatter. And I think I can safely say they are moreish; I had to ration them with the children on the first afternoon they arrived. I was away the next night and by the time I came back, they were all gone! Hmm, maybe that wasn't just the kids; I think I hid the remainder.They come in handy bags for sharing, but if you're sneaky, I'm sure you could easily polish off a whole bag yourself. 

The chocolate is Dairy Milk - standard Cadbury's fare - so perfect unless you don't like milk chocolate. I've been told the RRP £2.03 (which is an odd number!) but looking at the supermarkets, some are selling them for £2 and others £1.50. It's similarly priced to the other sharing bags of chocolate on offer. 

I'd definitely recommend you buy these if you love your Mini Eggs; it will be like Easter every day without having the depressing thought that it's Easter straight after Christmas etc. Anyone would enjoy them though - I like getting through the crispy shell to find the chocolate underneath. Your only problem is going to be stopping eating them. I dare you. 

(Cadbury's sent me a couple of bags of Pebbles to try. They also kindly sent me a free family ticket for admission to Cadbury World.)

Missy Woo bakes her first cake!

Since we took a trip to the Cake and Bake Show in Manchester last week and Missy Woo got to help with one of the demos when there was a sudden and unexpected lack of peeled apples, which is fairly critical for a toffee apple cake, Missy Woo has been on at me to make a cake. I told her when we were there that she could make her own cake sometime when we were talking to the lovely Ruth from the Pink Whisk, the person she ended up helping.

Missy Woo is now like an elephant - she never forgets. You can't make promises like that and then conveniently forget them. She will keep on until she gets it. On Friday, she asked me again when she could make it and I suggested that she could on Saturday, her last weekend of freedom before she and her brother go back to school. We have a whole weekend to fill, just me and the children as husband is at work. She was further inspired by finding out her 8 year old friend often makes cakes for her family that turn out yummy, apparently.

I knew she would choose chocolate cake and luckily, had most things in. Whenever I am making chocolate cake, my first thought is to turn to Ruth again and use her recipe, which is super simple as it uses cocoa powder rather than having to melt chocolate, and it always works. The original recipe is here (it's actually for chocolate muffins but those quantities work for an 8 inch tin) but Ruth was lovely enough to give me a copy of her book which has the recipe scaled for different sized tins which is so handy.

So, Missy Woo set to work baking with me as adviser. This is what I did:

- Told her how to line a tin
- spray cake release around the tin
- got all the ingredients out for her
- explained some things to her about weighing and measuring some ingredients
- reminded her of a few things to do
- got the mixer out for her and fitted the blade
- cracked the eggs into the bowl
- scraped down the sides of the mixer bowl when she couldn't reach
- poured the cake mixture in tin from the mixer bowl
- put the cake in the oven
- took it out and tested
- removed from the tin to cool
- cleaned the blade of the mixer so she could reuse it
- finished off weighing out icing sugar
- added cocoa powder and milk to bowl to make buttercream
- split the cake
- helped her spread buttercream in the middle and top
- spread the buttercream round the sides
- open the sprinkles
- been around to answer questions when she wanted help

And Missy Woo

- drew a circle of baking paper
- cut it out
- turned the oven on
- weighed out all the ingredients for the cake
- microwaved the butter briefly to soften it
- put the ingredients into the mixer and turned it on
- decided when to stop the mixer and add new ingredients
- scraped some of the sides of the bowl
- timed the cooking of the cake
- helped to test the cake with a cocktail stick
- weighed out the butter and some of the icing sugar for the icing
- placed the buttercream ingredients in the mixer
- mixed the buttercream to her satisfaction
- spread some of the buttercream
- sprinkled stars and gold glitter on the cake
- licked the bowl, and the scraper, and the mixer blade, and the bowl. And the palette knife. And the little knife. You get the idea.

And here, in all its glory, is the finished cake.

Not bad for a first attempt, huh?

Cake of the Week - Tennis ball cake

So it was Monkey's birthday at the weekend. Eight. Bloody hell!

Apart from the chocolate oat flips that we have to eat the night before his birthday (we bought some in Booths when we were told to go for a walk when I was progressing and in Preston and in my mind, they are forever associated with his birth!), of course we have to have a cake. This year, Monkey had a tennis party for his birthday so, rather than do yet ANOTHER Barcelona cake, I talked him into a tennis ball cake to fit the theme.

Fitting in making a cake shouldn't have been hard but Monkey insisted he helped me make the cake and the evenings were mad last week. In the end, I pre-weighed everything so we could mix and bung into the oven before bed on Wednesday. And then it was Friday night before I managed to finish it off after the children went to bed. Talking about leaving it late, but we got there.

And here it is.

I decided on this because it's a simple design. Underneath is a standard chocolate cake recipe from my lovely friend Ruth - in her book, the chocolate cake recipe is scaleable according to the size of pan which I find so helpful. The recipe is easy and it always works. Then I split it and filled with a standard buttercream, covered it and chilled. It's then filled with lime green sugarpaste. Some wag on Facebook said aren't tennis balls yellow but yellow sugarpaste was too sunny so I went for the lime green as it's a yellowy green.

Then, I used some white sugarpaste to finish the decorations. I tried to find a way to extrude and if I'd found a way, I would have done so. Instead, I had to make do with rolling it out sausage style and sticking it on with water. A final 8 pressed out with a cutter finished the cake.

Christmas cupcakes from Pryces

I may like making cake but I'm really rubbish at making them look fab. This is why I don't like making cupcakes that much. The children however love them. So, if we're offered cupcakes to try, I am not going to say no.

Pryces offered us just that. A husband and wife run business, they are very local to us, being just down the motorway at Walkden, and they only hand deliver cupcakes to Manchester (M), Bolton (BL), and Preston/Chorley (PR) postcodes. And when I mean hand deliver, Joanne turned up smiling on my doorstep one lunchtime with my little box of cakes. Lucky for her that she also lives in Chorley.

This is our box. It also comes with a handmade card, but that seems not to have made it into the picture. Oops.

Obviously, at this time of year, they had sent Christmas cupcakes to try. Here's a better picture of the cupcakes once the box was opened.

Beautiful - something I should aspire to, but never quite achieve! Everything is handmade by their staff.

So, we had three flavours - the ones on the left are vanilla with vanilla frosting, in the middle are fruit cake cupcakes with a glace icing on top like little Christmas cakes, and on the right, chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting.

Well, it was a tough job but we tried them all. My favourite was the chocolate cupcakes but they were VERY chocolatey and rich. The children couldn't finish them (unusual for them!) so that's the only way I got a taste. The fruit cake cupcakes were Monkey's favourite and Missy Woo liked the vanilla ones best and not just for the glitter sprinkles on top. A box of six costs £9.99 (£1.66 each) which is really good value.

Having had a quick squizz at their site, I noticed they also sell other baked goods that can be sent further afield. Hampers, baked goods, cake accessories and cake decorations - even bake it yourself mixes -  are all available if you want to give them a go but if you're in the area, definitely try their gorgeous cupcakes.

(I was sent a box of six cupcakes to try. All opinions are my own. )

OK, so who wants to win chocolate?

I thought that would grab your attention. One of the self-imposed rules I have for this blog is never turn down  offers of chocolate. Not usually for me, although I quite like chocolate, but husband loves his chocolate and obviously, Monkey and Missy Woo do too.

Luckily, a very nice lady regularly offers me the chance to try Hotel Chocolat products and we love their products. Obviously, with Christmas around the corner, this time we are looking at gifts for the festive season.

And boy, this one would make a special gift!

This is a chocolate wreath, known as the Purist wreath. A whole chocolate wreath, studded with almonds, hazelnuts, and jumbo golden raisins. The chocolate itself is 70% dark chocolate - my favourite sort - which is made from cocoa from a single estate in Ecuador. And it's solid; boy is it solid! Total weight is 450g and you need a knife (or a clean hammer!) to cut or chop it. This made it very chunky and crunchy to eat.

The chocolate is as rich as you would expect dark chocolate to be. Being quite chunky, we found it quite satisfying and rich to eat so we didn't gorge on chocolate. A box of chocolates would have lasted much less - we actually made it last several days without even trying. The children didn't really like the almonds but I loved all the nuts.

This would be a special gift for a lover of real good quality chocolate. It's quite expensive at £25 but if you can't afford that, there's a smaller one available for £9.

However, I'm giving you a chance to win one of your very own wreaths, worth £25 if you enter my little competition. It's been so long since I last ran a competition on here, I've almost forgotten what to do! To enter, just follow the instructions in the Rafflecopter widget below. The competition closes at midnight on Thursday 29th November, so get entering.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Chocolate and Raspberry Trick-or-Treat cake

One thing is for sure - going to Clandestine Cake Club certainly stretches your baking capabilities! Every time I see the theme for our local group, I start thinking about what to do and try to come up with something different.

This time, however, I thought I was going to have to give the group a miss as it fell on the day that husband was due to be running the Guild Marathon. However, he had to drop back to the half due to a problem with his knee swelling up over the summer and we worked out it was just about possible to get me there on time if we did some slightly complicated juggling of children.

This time, the theme was Trick or Treat which posed a problem. I don't do fancy or intricate cake decoration - I'm just not cut out for it. That means no cakes in the shape of witches etc, so I had to take a different tack.

I came up with the idea of doing a normal cake but one that bleeds when you cut into it. To me, that meant raspberry and what goes better with raspberry than chocolate? Chocolate cake it was. I tend to stick to the same recipes so Googled a bit and found one I thought would work. It had a raspberry ganache with it but I thought it looked lumpy so went for adding a bit of raspberry flavour to it whilst keeping it smooth. I've never made ganache before so I was a bit tentative about it. Some more Googling offered up the way to get the blood into the middle of the cake - make some raspberry coulis (easy), scoop out the middle of your cake, and "line" it with some buttercream to stop the coulis soaking into the cake. Phew...that gave me a few things to do, which made planning it a bit of a nightmare as I had no time on Sunday to finish off and I was out all of Saturday. So, I had to make my coulis on Thursday, cake and buttercream on Friday, then make my ganache on Saturday and finish it all off.

When I made the cake, the top went a bit mad and bust away from the rest of the cake, which when picked away, left a big dip in the cake, so all I had to do was add the buttercream, spoon in the coulis and sandwich the cakes together. Some of the coulis dribbled down the edges and I was dubious that this was going to work but having procrastinated all evening, I made the ganache and ended up whipping it to thicken it enough to spread. The result was a normal looking cake which gave no clue to its hidden secret.

At our meeting, the cake looked very plain until people started cutting into it and the dark red coulis started oozing out. I usually try my cake first at cake club (just to taste it's OK!) so it took all my self-control not to do so. And it was a huge success - this is yet another cake not for the faint hearted, very rich and certainly, with four chocolate bars in it, not the sort of cake you make every day. But it's really, really worth a go to trick your friends on Hallowe'en which turns out to be a delicious treat.

This was my most popular cake so far at any of the meetings I've gone to - after everyone had taken cake to take home, there was only a quarter left.

Why don't you give my cake a try? Maybe not if you're on a diet, eh?

Chocolate and Raspberry Trick-or-Treat Cake

Serves 16-20 probably - you don't need a huge piece

Ingredients

For the raspberry coulis:
200g raspberries
50g icing sugar (or to taste)
lemon juice, to taste
1-2 tsp cocoa powder (optional)

For the cake:
200g dark plain chocolate, preferably 70% cocoa solids, broken into pieces
200g butter, cut into pieces
125ml freshly brewed (ie hot) espresso, as strong as you can bear
85g self-raising flour
85g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
200g muscovado sugar, preferably dark but light will do
200g caster sugar, preferably golden
3 eggs
1tbsp natural yogurt (I used fat free Greek)
100g frozen raspberries

For the chocolate buttercream:
100g butter, softened
200g icing sugar
2 heaped tbsp cocoa powder
1-2 tbsp milk

For the ganache:
200g dark chocolate, chopped into pieces
300g double cream
1 tbsp light soft muscovado sugar

1. First, make the raspberry coulis. Whizz the ingredients in a blender or food processor, or mash the raspberries with a masher and stir in the icing sugar and lemon. Press the mixture through a fine metal sieve to  remove the pips. Taste and add more sugar or lemon as desired. Sprinkle over the cocoa powder if using, and stir into the coulis - this will help to darken it slightly to make it more like blood, and it will take a bit of stirring to mix right in.  Refrigerate until needed whilst you make the cake.

2. Next, make the cake. Preheat the oven to 160C/Gas3. Butter the sides of a 20cm deep round baking tin ( I use cake release spray) and line the base with baking parchment. Place the broken chocolate into a heatproof bowl and sit this on top of a pan half filled with hot water, taking care to ensure that the water is not touching the bottom of the bowl. Add the butter and the hot espresso, and heat gently until everything is just melted. You can do this in the microwave by heating on medium for around 4 mins, stirring every couple of minutes.

3. Whilst the chocolate melts, mix together the flours, baking powder, sugars and cocoa in a big bowl until evenly distributed. In another bowl, beat the eggs together and stir in the yogurt.

4. Pour both the melted chocolate and the egg mixtures into the dry ingredients, mixing carefully but slowly and stopping as soon as all the ingredients are mixed together. Scrape carefully because the dry ingredients tend to get stuck to the bottom of the bowl! The cake batter will be smooth but quite runny.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin, tapping gently to remove air bubbles and level the mixture. Press frozen raspberries into the batter evenly across the tin then place in the oven. Cook for 1.5 hours, until a skewer comes out clean. Don't worry if the cake cracks on top. Leave to cool in the tin for a little while, then remove from the tin and leave to cool completely on a wire rack. Place in the fridge to get it really firm, then slice the cake into two. Scoop out some of the one of the halves - choose the less even of the two halves. Leave at least a 2cm gap all the way around the edge of the this half or your cake will not sit evenly.

6. Make your chocolate buttercream. First, beat the butter until smooth, either by hand or with a mixer. Sift in the icing sugar and cocoa powder, mixing thoroughly. Add the milk until you get a light but spreadable consistency.

7. Next, assemble your cake. Place the scooped out half on a plate or board. Spread the buttercream all over the indentation left by your scooping - not too thickly but ensure you have a solid layer of buttercream or the coulis will leak through into the cake. Spread buttercream around the edge as well as this will stick the cakes together.

8. We're now ready to fill the hole with "blood". First, take out 1-2 tbsp of the coulis and reserve for later. Then, carefully spoon the coulis into the buttercream lined hole as close to the brim as you dare. Top with the other half, press down gently. At this point, some coulis may leak out of the sides so it's best to leave this in the fridge to "set" the dribbles. The cake can be refrigerated until you need it. I also spread some leftover coulis over the top of the cake to soak in and add to the raspberry flavour.

9. When you are ready to cover your cake, make the ganache. Place the chopped chocolate into a bowl. Place the cream into a pan with the muscovado sugar and heat until it is about to boil. Remove from the heat and pour over the chocolate, stirring together until everything melts. Stir in the reserved coulis then leave to cool until it is thick enough to spread. If the ganache is not thick enough, you may whisk it with a balloon whisk for a minute or two until it begins to thicken. Beware as the ganache will continue to thicken after you have stopped whisking so stop just short of soft peaks - I whisked until it felt thicker but was leaving a slight trail in the bowl but it soon firmed up further.

10. Remove the cake from the fridge and spread the ganache over the top and sides of the cake, smoothing it with a palette knife. (If you want to get really fancy at this point, you can grate chocolate over the top or decorate with fresh raspberries but I didn't!). Refrigerate to "set" the ganache then transfer to a serving plate. Take the cake out of the fridge about an hour or so before serving to enjoy it at its best. If you end up with any spare coulis, you can always bring it out to pour over the top once the surprise has been revealed!

Linked up to Dollybakes Calendar Challenge for October.

Mocha crunch cake - a totally over-the-top birthday cake

Sunday was the first birthday event of the local Clandestine Cake Club. If you don't know what it is, see here - basically, you book onto an event, make a cake to fit the theme, then turn up at the venue (which is kept a secret until a few days before), eat lots of cake, chat with cakey people and get to take cake home. What is not to like?

So, as I said, it was our first birthday event. I have been going since the second meeting ever so I missed the first and although I haven't been every time, I'm a fairly established regular attendee, this being my fifth event.

The theme was, of course, Happy Birthday and I wanted to make a decadent, over the top cake for a special occasion that would be suitable for a grown up birthday. In our house, that means chocolate cake, by and large. I found the original recipe for chocolate crunch cake in a booklet from a Good Food magazine but I wanted to do more to it so I have combined with details from a coffee crunch cake on the Good Food website and added my own details.

I wasn't totally convinced that this would work, particularly as the cake batter was quite runny so it is a bit of  leap of faith, but the meringue stayed on top and baked nicely. I have tweaked the amount of water going into the cake batter as the cake took a lot longer to cook than it should have done. If you find the mixture a bit stiff, loosen the batter with a drop of water.

Just feet from cake club venue.

This is probably best made on the day you want to eat it. I couldn't because logistics didn't allow for it - I was at Body Pump until an hour before. So I made the cakes, stored them in plastic containers overnight, then filled with the cream just before I left for the event, which was held a few feet from Bradley Wiggins's other golden postbox. The cream softened the meringue very quickly, so if you want to keep the crunchy effect of the crisp meringue, I would recommend filling it with cream at the very last minute. And then you have every excuse for finishing it off on the day you make it.

Mocha Crunch Cake
Cuts into about 12-16 pieces

Ingredients

For the cake batter
50g good quality cocoa powder
175ml hot water
100g butter, softened
280g caster sugar, preferably golden
2 large eggs
175g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp (2.5ml) bicarbonate of soda

For the meringue topping
2 egg whites
100g caster sugar, again preferably golden
Coffee flavouring (see below)

For the cake filling
284ml double cream
2-3 tbsp icing sugar
Coffee flavouring (see below)

Also required
100g dark chocolate drops

1, Start by making the coffee flavouring. I make a small cup of double strength espresso from our coffee machine and allow to cool. If you can't make fresh coffee, use as much instant coffee as you dare and dissolve in 100ml hot water. You may need a little more than this but the stronger you make it, the less you will need. Also before you start, place the cocoa powder in a jug or bowl, pour over the hot water and whisk until you have a fairly uniform lump free liquid. Place on one side to cool while you get the cake ready.

2. Grease and line the bases of 2 20cm (8in in old money) sandwich tins with baking parchment and grease the linings. I find the best way to do this is to use cake release spray but you can use softened butter if you like.

3. Place the butter and sugar in a bowl and whisk for 2-3 mins, preferably with an electric hand or stand mixer. There is a lot of sugar in this mix, so it won't go all pale and fluffy like it normally does but do not panic. Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking after each addition and this time, it will go all pale, light and fluffy. Pour the cooled cocoa mixture on top, and then sift in the flour and bicarbonate of soda. Fold everything together gently until thoroughly mixed and smooth. Divide the mixture equally between the two tins. Smooth the tops if necessary. Place the tins on the side whilst you prepare the meringue topping.

4. Preheat the oven to 160C/Fan 150C/Gas 3. You will need to reuse your mixer to make the meringue unless you are very strong or like me, possess two mixers! If you have to clean it first, clean the beaters very well to remove all traces of fat or the eggs will not whisk. Make sure you have a clean bowl too and when you separate your eggs that not a trace of yolk has got into it. (I find it easier to separate the eggs into a small bowl first before adding to the mixing bowl. Whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks - when you lift the beaters out, the eggs should make a peak that stays formed very easily. Add half of the sugar to the bowl and whisk again until the mixture becomes glossy. Gently fold in the rest of the sugar and 1-2 tsp of your coffee flavouring.

5. When combined, spoon half of the meringue on top of the cake mixture. Leave a 2cm gap around the edge of the tin as the meringue will spread as it cooks. The tins are now ready to go into the preheated oven.

6. Bake for 40 minutes, or until the meringue is crisp and the cake cooked. Use a long skewer at an angle to test the cake under the middle of the meringue. If the cake needs longer cooking, check how the meringue looks - if it is looking like it will burn, turn the oven down to about 140C and keep in there until the cake is finally done.

Cakes cooling after baking

7. Remove the tins from the oven and leave the cakes to cool in their tins for 5 minutes. Then, really carefully remove the cakes from the tins - this is where loose bottomed tins come into their own! Peel off the paper and leave to cool completely, meringue topping uppermost.

8. When it's time to eat the cake, make the cream filling. You'll need your mixer beaters again - cold if possible (I put clean ones in the fridge to chill) as this makes better whipped cream. Whisk the cream until it forms soft peaks. Sift in the icing sugar and add 1-2 tbsp of coffee flavouring, folding both gently into the cream. Add more coffee or sugar to taste, folding gently as before. You can do this an hour or so ahead if you want and store in the fridge.

9. Right, cake building time. Decide which cake has the best looking topping and reserve that for the top. Place the other cake carefully on a plate and spread thickly with the coffee flavoured cream. Scatter about half the chocolate drops on top of the cream.

Cream on top of bottom layer, with chocolate chips

10. Make some coffee drizzle icing. Place 2-3 tbsp icing sugar in a bowl and add about 1-2 tsp coffee flavouring then mix together. You need an icing that is runny enough to drizzle but thick enough for it to set quite quickly and not dribble over the sides.  You may need to add more icing sugar - mine was too runny but I didn't have time to thicken it further! Drizzle the icing over the top of the cake, then scatter the remaining chocolate drops over the top so they stick to the icing. A final dusting of some icing sugar is completely optional - I didn't bother as I was out of the door within a minute with the cake in a box.

You may like to try other combinations with the chocolate - I can think of using orange juice and an orange liqueur to make a chocolate orange cake or peppermint essence to make mint choc cake. How about some chopped hazelnuts folded gently into the meringue with some frangelico in the cream? Or even some squashed berries in the cream! The possibilities are endless.

Thanks to Susan and Linzi for organising today's event.

How to make yourself feel better

I have been feeling quite rough for a few days now although I did actually make it to the supermarket yesterday. It's some kind of virus with a horrible cough that is just totally debilitating with my temperature spiking up and down at will. A great way to start the holidays, eh?

When you're feeling like this, there are only two approaches to make yourself feel better. (Beyond the "dose yourself up to the eyeballs" method - seriously, I'd fail an Olympics dope test right now).

The first is to turn to chocolate. Not my usual method, I'll admit, but as it had happened, a few days before, a lovely lady who runs Chocolate by Genevie had offered to send me chocolate and husband has instructed me never to turn chocolate down.  These arrived on Monday, probably when I was feeling at my worst.

Yeah, there are some missing because we tried some before I even managed to summon the energy to take a snap. They were absolutely gorgeous, although there was no card describing what each one was and not all the decorations on top made clear what was in the middles. They didn't last long and the children enjoyed them as much as we did. They were a lovely pick me up on an otherwise horrible day. I could have happily ate a whole box of the coffee flavoured chocolates. Thank you, Genevie - it was perfect timing.

 The second is to try to be kind to yourself and eat as healthily as possible. Also quite coincidentally, Blue Diamond Almonds sent me a hamper full of breakfast goodies to try out their Almond Breeze almond milks, a healthy alternative to dairy and soya milks. I haven't got around to drinking the champers as yet - the past four days have felt one massive hangover without adding any alcohol into the equation. 

I love the muesli they sent, which I then poured their unsweetened milk over and it was nice. I don't normally like soya milk. I haven't been brave enough to try it in the tea but we don't recommend it for drinking with filter coffee as it seem to split. I thought it would taste strongly of almonds, but given it is only 2% almonds, it doesn't really have a taste at all. It's a good source of calcium and a number of vitamins and the unsweetened version has less than half the calories of skimmed milk, and half the calories of soya milk. So it's good for you too!

So, a two pronged attack. Strange that the chocolates have disappeared before all the muesli and almond milk, isn't it? That is because I can keep the muesli to myself without being pestered for it. Kids, eh? It'll do me good. That, and the dosing to the eyeballs method, is going to have to get me fully back on my feet fast as we're going to the Olympic football tonight!

(I was sent the above products to try for the purposes of review. All words and opinions are my own and I have not been paid a fee to write this post). 

Cake of the week - A (Blackpool) football cake

This is one of those cakes that I thought up at the last minute. As I mentioned last week, it was husband's birthday on Tuesday and needed to make a cake. I decided I was going to cover it and do some design but I wasn't really sure what.

Suddenly I thought that perhaps I could make a Blackpool cake - for which I'd need tangerine (bright orange in other words) sugar paste. As I am not good at piping or intricate designs, I struggled as to what to do when I came up with the idea of using hexagonal tiles to make it look like a football, allowing some of the tangerine shine through.

All I had to do was make it. The cake was actually chocolate, from Ruth's recipe. As I have her book, I was so glad to see she's included a scaleable version of it in her new book with different quantities and cooking times for different sized tins because sometimes, you just don't have the right sized tin. I make this recipe a lot now; it's easy and it never lets me down.

Having made it and left it to cool on Monday afternoon, I decided I had better get it covered with sugarpaste that evening as I wouldn't have too much time to do cake decorating the next day. I am so glad I did as it then took me most of the rest of the evening. First, I had to colour my sugarpaste. This proved to be way harder than I thought and however much I added, it never seemed to reach the required shade, even when wrapping it and leaving for 10 mins to let the colour develop, as Ruth advises. And trying to work it in to the paste was harder work than kneading bread dough! Eventually, I gave up and settled for a pale orange colour - or maybe it's more peach. Lesson learned - bright colours need huge amounts of food colour.

Then I followed Ruth's instructions for covering the cake with sugarpaste. I now know that the secret is keeping the sugarpaste quite thick as this makes it easier to handle. After a big deep breath, I got it on the cake without rips or holes, and it looked pretty good. Result! By this time, it was past midnight but I thought I had better plough on.

The hexagonal tiles were a challenge. I would have preferred a hexagonal cutter but had no time to get one so I scaled a hexagon to the size I wanted, printed it out then once cut out, used it as a template to cut around, having rolled out some black and white sugarpaste. I placed the tiles gently on the top of the cake to figure out the pattern and after a few goes, I came up with a pattern I was happy with and I brushed where I was sticking each tile with a little water to stick them to the cake. By the time I'd finished, it was way past 1am and my kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. According to Helen, that's early for cake makers! I left everything as I was very tired by then, but I went to bed with a sense of achievement that it looked quite good. And it tasted nice too!

What do you think?

Linking up with Helen's Cake of the Week feature.

Easter eggs will never be the same again

I've mentioned this before on many occasion, but I am not a huge chocolate fan. Yes, I eat it but I don't have to have it. That said, if someone is going to offer me free chocolate, I am not going to turn them down, because the rest of the household would frankly lynch me.

Hotel Chocolat offered to send me one of their Easter eggs and I wasn't about to say no. We've tried their products before and they are always welcome. We picked out one of their Extra Thick Easter eggs to try - the Rocky Road to Caramel one to be precise. Now, Easter Eggs usually leave me cold - they promise so much but deliver so little - thin chocolate eggs and a few extra sweets with a lot of packaging. It was going to have to be amazing to change my opinion and at £26, it is not cheap.

Cake of the Week - a chocolate Barca cake (in away colours)

Of course, my cake of the week just HAD to be Monkey's birthday cake. The origins of this cake go back a whole year actually, and I like to think comparing these two cakes will give you an idea of where I have gone with baking over the last year and also displays how great tutorials and recipes from other bloggers can really make a difference.

So, last year, when Monkey turned 6, we took him to Barcelona for the weekend as husband was running his first marathon and he had asked to go. Whilst we were there, we took him to see Barcelona play and I took him to the museum during the morning of the marathon, once husband had run past where we were staying and before we went to see him cross the finish line.

His birthday wasn't until just after we came back so I had time to make him a cake and I came up with the idea of turning into a Barcelona cake like this:

Which at the time, I was pretty impressed with. All I did was buy some ready to roll icing and the blue and red seemed to be close to Barcelona home colours and then of course, cut out the 6 from yellow icing, adding an offcut that looks mysteriously NOT like a football. Monkey loved it, especially as he had no idea I was making it and it was a bit of a spur of the moment late night decision which I basically winged my way through. 

At the time, we teased Monkey that if he'd been a year older, he could have had a David Villa cake as his squad number was 7. This is because when we were out there, he chose an away shirt with David Villa's name on the back as a present. You can see him in it here. 

Fast forward a year, and when I asked Monkey what kind of cake he wanted, his answer was unequivocal: a David Villa cake, in the away colours of his shirt, which is now so last season. Hey ho. So, this is how I did it, with links to recipes or instructions that I used. 

First, I made a chocolate cake. My go to recipe at the moment is on The Pink Whisk by the lovely Ruth. Yes, the recipe is for chocolate muffins but Ruth says you can use the same quantities to split between two 20cm/8 inch sandwich tins. I actually make it in a single tin, cook it for about an hour. I allow it to cool in the tin, so that I can shave the top level, then slice it in two, admittedly not very straight. 

Then, I referred again to Ruth's blog to follow instructions for covering the cake with sugarpaste. This can be summarised by saying having levelled and sliced it, I sandwiched the cakes with chocolate buttercream, chilled the cake, topped it with icing and spread it around the sides then chilled it again. Having bought the same pack of ready to roll icing, I realised my mistake in that there was far too little green for the job, but I ran out to the supermarket and bought some white sugarpaste and kneaded about half of it into the green and very quickly, it became evenly coloured. It probably was about right as the green needed to be lighter than the stuff in the packet. I rolled it out, and learned that I need to keep turning it or it sticks very easily, even if you have lightly dusted your workspace! Placing it on the cake is always a nervy moment but I get there and it's never as perfect as Ruth's final result but it will do. 

Next, I needed to do the red and blue flash that was on the front. For this, Monkey had given me his shirt for me to work from which was actually quite handy. I rolled out the red icing into an oblong shape, then trimmed it to the width I wanted and cutting it to the desired angle on the right hand side. I rolled out the blue icing and again trimmed it to the width I needed, overlapped it onto the red icing so I made sure when I cut that side, it was at the same angle. Then I fixed them both to the bottom third of the cake, using a few dabs of water from a clean paintbrush, another trick I learned from Ruth. I made sure they lined up against each other. 

For the lettering, I had thought ahead enough to go and buy number and letter cutters from Dunelm Mill a few days before, so I rolled out the rest of the blue icing, cut out the lettering I needed, and again fixed them to the cake with a bit of water. This was the nerviest part, making sure I got the spacing about right and I wished that I'd made a bigger cake at this point! 

Once it was done, I was ready to go for a lie down. 

And here it is, with candles on Monkey's big day.

And do take a look at Cake of the Week, over on Helen's blog.

Cake of the Week - a chocolatey Jaffa drizzle cake!

Randomly, I decided to bake at the weekend with Missy Woo and this cake jumped out at me from a booklet with this month's Good Food magazine as I had everything I needed to hand, and it celebrated two things she loves foodwise - chocolate and citrus. This is the little girl that will literally lick the cut edge of lemons and enjoy it.

The original recipe is for a loaf cake but I thought I would share my unique method of preparation with you. As I didn't have a large enough loaf tin (it specified a 1.2 litre loaf tin), I used a 7 or 8 inch round deep baking tin which really requires adjustments of cooking time, which I have given here. Also, I wasn't sure the cake would be orangey enough so I took inspiration from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries, which has an orange drizzle loaf cake recipe using marmalade, so I bunged that in too.

Jaffa Drizzle Cake 

Ingredients
(Cuts into 10-12)

For the cake:
140g/5oz butter, softened
200g/7oz self-raising flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
200g/7oz caster sugar
3 large eggs
6 tbsp milk
75g any marmalade - shredless is best
1 large orange

For the syrup:
3 tbsp orange juice (from the orange)
50g/2oz caster sugar

To top the cake:
75g/3oz dark chocolate (the darker, the better - 70% cocoa solids is good)

This is how I actually did it.

1. Heat your oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas 4. Butter and line the base of either a 20cm/8" deep round tin or a 1.2l loaf tin with baking parchment.

2. Measure your butter, and place in microwave ready to soften.

3. Place all the cake ingredients into a mixing bowl and start to beat with hand whisk. Realise you haven't grated in the zest of the orange, so stop and finely grate the zest into the bowl.

4. Recommence beating with hand whisk for 3-5 mins and wonder why it's not gone light and fluffy as expected, but more like a cake batter. Realise baking powder has not been added, add that in and mix again.

5. Realise your cake mixture is not going to go light and fluffy. Shrug. Pour cake batter into tin and go to place cake in oven. Turn towards microwave and ..... OH MY GOD! The butter. It's STILL in the microwave. Turn microwave on to soften butter.

6. Wrestle cake bowl that children were about to start licking from small hands, pour cake batter into bowl. Quickly wash out tin, discarding cake parchment. Re-butter and re-line the base of the tin.

7. Add now softened butter. Mix again, and realise that butter was indeed the missing ingredient and the mixture finally becomes light and fluffy. Place in the tin, level the top.

8. Bake in the oven until risen and firm to the touch, should be about 50-55 mins if you use a round tin, 40-50 mins if you are using the loaf tin. In the last few mins of cooking, place the orange juice and sugar in a pan  over a gentle heat, and stir until all the sugar dissolved. Try to keep warm, but don't allow to bubble too much or the liquid will evaporate and dry too hard. (Ahem.)

9. Remove cake from the oven and spoon over the syrup. Leave to cool in the tin. Remove from the tin, using ingenuity and some force to ease the solidified syrup from the top of the cake. Leave to cool completely.

10. Break the chocolate into small pieces and either melt in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, ensuring the water does not touch the bowl or microwave in 30 second bursts and stirring vigorously between. Drizzle over the cake and leave to set.

Thankfully, this is a fairly forgiving cake. It's an all-in-one sponge, so all you do is place ingredients in the bowl and just mix them together. Missing the butter out initially didn't mean the final cake suffered - it was actually light and fluffy, even though it sank back quite some distance after removing from the oven, although the syrup might be the culprit there. It smells gorgeous, even cold. I wondered if you could add some cocoa powder to the sponge to make it fully chocolate and orange flavoured; that might be a step too far but it may be an experiment for another day.

Linking this up with Helen's Cake of the Week feature once again, just because I love her cakes!

It's November so let's talk about the two C words - Christmas, and chocolate.

When someone offers to send chocolate, you don't say no. Even if you are not a chocolate addict, which I'm not - I eat chocolate but I don't have to have it every day. When Hotel Chocolat offer to send you chocolate, you say yes very quickly. We got sent some a few months ago and it really didn't last long.

This time, they offered to send me a product of my choice from their Christmas gift range. Oh yes, the other C word. I've been holding off mentioning it on here but yes, I've started getting ready - my aim is always to have everything bought by the start of December as I don't generally do shops in December (barring the supermarket, you can't avoid those.) But still, I don't like mentioning Christmas too early because I get all bah humbug about it.

So, it was fairly odd picking out a Christmas product to try in October, but we managed, as you do - although we had to hide them from the children. I'd settled on the Luxury Truffles to Share Advent Calendar. This means there's not one but two truffles behind each window so there's no fighting over the chocolate. Genius. There are six different varieties of truffle - Mulled Wine, Salted Soft Caramel, Gingerbread, Cinnamon Praline, Milk Praline and Simple Dark Truffle. I was a bit dubious about the mulled wine variety but it was really nicely spiced and not too strong tasting of alcohol (I am not a huge fan of liqueur chocolates). I also loved the salted caramel - it was the first time I had tried it but it was a lovely combination and I'll definitely have it again. They are a nice range of different flavours and the truffles are small enough that if you are on your Christmas diet to squeeze into your LBD or whatever colour party dress you like to wear, they'll be a little treat which won't send you off the rails. The nutritional information on the back suggest that a truffle averages out at 41 calories each.

It is a little bit on the expensive side at £25 but Hotel Chocolat do have other Advent calendars available, although those don't have two chocolates for every day. And it's really nice, good quality chocolate so in that respect, it's worth the money.

And the best bit? (For you, anyway). You have the chance to win one for yourself! Yes, Hotel Chocolat are giving away one Luxury Truffles to Share Advent Calendar for one lucky reader of The Five Fs. To take part, you first must be a follower of this blog - either by RSS (click the orange jellybean to set up) or email (red jellybean). Then, all you need to do is leave a comment below and tell me what you would do to win chocolate. Just one thing - and don't say "anything"; that doesn't show imagination!

Optionally, you can gain a second entry by tweeting the following:

Win a lovely Hotel Chocolat Luxury Advent Calendar on @kateab's blog. http://bit.ly/tld7xy I've entered, have you?

and leave me a separate comment to let me know that you've tweeted. Please ensure you leave me a valid form of contact as I've had to redraw prizes before now as winners haven't responded to contact from me. I tend to announce winners on Twitter, so why not follow me there to get the latest news?

By the way, you can also follow Hotel Chocolat on Twitter or like them on Facebook for the latest chocolatey news from them.

Get entering, and good luck!

Terms and conditions

To enter, leave a comment below, saying what you would do to win chocolate, along with a valid contact email address or Twitter ID, which will be used to contact you if you win.
An additional entry can be gained by tweeting as stated above.
Please ensure you follow this blog via RSS or email.
Maximum two entries per person - multiple entries will be discarded.
The prize is a Hotel Chocolat Luxury Truffles to Share Chocolate Advent Calendar.
The competition closes on Thursday 10th November 2011 at 8pm.
The winner will be drawn at random from all valid entries.
The winner will be contacted that evening and asked to provide a postal address and contact telephone number within 48 hours or the winner will be re-drawn. The prize will be despatched by Hotel Chocolat. UK entrants only.
There is no cash alternative.

Review: Hotel Chocolat Everything Selection

There are some things you should just not turn down when offered them. When you're offered the chance to try some of the best chocolates around, you just don't say no. Now, I will be honest and say I am not a chocolate addict at all. In my childhood, I had to avoid it because chocolate was one of the things that could trigger the migraines I had back then. Luckily, I grew out of them but it meant I never really crave chocolate. That's not to say I don't like it because I do; it's just I am not one of those people who HAVE to have chocolate daily.

So when Hotel Chocolat offered me the chance to try something from their birthday range, I didn't hesitate to say yes. I've always wanted to try their chocolate. Hey, it's not my birthday but we can pretend, can't we? It's nearly my half birthday anyway. I deserve a treat.

I say I, but once Monkey and Missy Woo got a sniff of chocolate, they wanted in. I chose the Sleekster Everything Selection to try so, well, we could try a bit of everything! The chocolates turned up well packed and can include a gift card with message if you wish.

This is what we got - 30 chocolates in a smart gold box; the Sleekster bit refers to the shape, rather than the chocolates in the box. There were caramels, truffles, pralines and a few liqueury type chocolates. My absolute favourite was the Brownie - the square one with the little square of white chocolate on top. Unfortunately, Monkey had the other one and there were only two in the pack! The pralines were my favourite sort but the children were game for all types although we tried to keep them off the liqueur ones! Needless to say, the chocolates disappeared quite quickly over a couple of days. Although these are rather grown up chocolates, they are sweet enough for children to enjoy on the whole. They're not fussy anyway but they would reject things they don't like (yes, even chocolate!) but these all got wolfed down.

These would be a lovely present for a real chocolate fan, but if you have kids, you may struggle to keep them to yourself. At £20, they are rather pricey to be sharing with your offspring, however much you love them, but these are special treats, so if you want to keep them for yourself,  I'd recommend keeping them under lock and key. Or fitted with an intruder alarm.

Simple Pleasures

There are many simple pleasures in life, and we all have different ones. As a mother, simple pleasures are often the things that keep you going when parenting - and your children - feel like it's getting on top of you. That can be as simple as a strong cup of tea, drunk hot for a change. Well, that's one of mine. I'm forever forgetting about my tea and reheated in the microwave never tastes the same. I get tutted at quite a bit for not finishing my brews. Naming no names as to who that is, but it's not my children.

I love being online but that's not a particularly simple pleasure, is it? Some of my simpler ones are:

• the smell of freshly brewed coffee
• the feel of clean bed linen
• waking up, looking at the clock and realising it's not time to get up
• the excitement and joy in Monkey or Missy Woo's faces when I pick them up from school
• the children laughing or giggling
• hugs (especially from, yes, my children)
• and that hot cup of tea... 

Trying to put some of those pleasures in photographic form for The Gallery was proving to be a challenge, especially as I have not had time to take some decent photos to depict any of them. Instead, I rummaged through my digital archives and found this little series of a baking session with Missy Woo that I took a couple of years ago, depicting one of her simple pleasures. One, I suspect, that will feature a few times in other posts this week. 

It is, of course, chocolate. 

Inside Out Bounty Cake

One of my favourite flavours is coconut and you may have seen on this blog a few weeks back, that I blogged a favourite recipe of mine for coconut cake. Around the same time, I also blogged the recipe for my friend Helen's chocolate cake which I have discovered is both easy and impressive.

I was thinking about cakes - as you do - and I remembered that a favourite dessert I once had on a holiday was coconut ice-cream with a warmish chocolate sauce. And then I thought of Bounty bars - coconut in the middle, chocolate on the outside. It got me thinking - maybe I could make a chocolate coconut cake. So, I set off on a Google search, the results of which were disappointing. Half the recipes stipulated cake mix as an ingredient and I have to be honest, I really don't see the point when I have the basic ingredients to hand.

I therefore set about devising my own cake using both of the above recipes. What I decided on was to have the chocolate cake in the middle, with the addition of some coconut to give it a bit of flavour, and coconut frosting on the outside, kind of like a Bounty inside out, so that's why I've called it Inside Out Bounty Cake! I've never devised my own recipe like this before, so it was fairly ground-breaking for me. I am good at following recipes, not creating them out of nothing.

I set off on this journey on Wednesday after the children went to bed. Unfortunately, after I'd baked the cake, I discovered I had no icing sugar so had to make the icing the next day as I was home alone with the kids and couldn't go to the supermarket. I was a bit dubious at first because I ended up with extra icing with my first piece and it seemed a bit sickly but it has been universally wolfed down and praised by those who have tried it. You only need a small slice so in theory, it lasts ages - unless you have kids who love coconut. Mine do!

Inside Out Bounty Cake

Ingredients
For the cake:
275g/10oz caster sugar
175g/6oz soft tub margarine
3 eggs
175g/6oz natural yogurt
1 tsp vanilla essence
3 tbsp coconut cream (try to use the thick part if it's separated a bit)
200g/7oz self raising flour
50g/2oz cocoa powder
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g/2oz desiccated coconut

For the icing:
100g/4oz butter, at room temp or slightly softened
300g/10oz icing sugar
4tbsp coconut cream or to taste (NOT creamed coconut - I buy the cream from Waitrose or Booths)

1. Pre-heat oven to 180^oC/350^oF/gas 4. Grease a 32cm (9in) spring form cake tin. Line the base with non-stick baking paper. Dust the inside of the tin with a little flour, then tap out the excess. (An 8in tin will also work although you may need to adjust cooking time.)

2. Beat the caster sugar and margarine in a mixing bowl until smooth (I use an electric mixer). Beat in eggs, vanilla essence, yoghurt and coconut cream. Sift in flour, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda, tip in the desiccated coconut.  Stir until fully combined. Spoon mixture into prepared tin and level the surface.

3. Bake cake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Put the tin onto a wire rack, and cool for 5 minutes. Turn the cake out onto rack to cool completely.

4. Make the icing once the cake is completely cool. Mix the butter and icing sugar together and stir in the coconut cream. Beat until smooth. You may need to add a little more icing sugar or coconut cream to get a nice spreading consistency. Swirl over the top and sides of the cooled cake.




As you can see, I made the icing a teensy bit runny but it did make it soft and nice to eat. There is only one piece of the cake left now but then I took a big chunk of it round to my friend's today. There were 7 children and 3 mummies - most of the kids had at least one piece, if not more!

What do you think to my experiment then? Leave me a comment if you try the recipe. Happy baking!

(This is an entry to English Mum's Big July Bake Off, for which the prize is a Green & Black's hamper. Entry details are on the post but entries close today - that's 31st July - so if you want to enter, get baking and snapping pretty quick!)

The "art" of baking - part 2. The Helen Chocolate Cake!

If you read my other post at the weekend, you'll know I'm on a bit of a mission to convince you that baking is not difficult. This post is about the other cake I made at the weekend for the school summer fair (which, incidentally, raised over £1200 for the school, which is excellent). It's chocolate cake.

Now, I always thought that chocolate cake was difficult, until I met my friend Helen, that is. Helen is a mum that joined our local NCT branch and one day turned up at a fundraising event with the most amazing looking chocolate cake. It looked gorgeous and it disappeared really quickly. Helen's cake soon became a fixture of our fundraisers when we were providing cakes. For me, therefore, this will be forever "Helen Chocolate Cake".

Helen started responding to requests for the recipe. I think she did it in the hope that other people would take on the mantle of making "Helen's Chocolate Cake". Sadly, for her, every time we are needing cakes, she gets asked  "Helen, can you make a chocolate cake?" and if she complains, we remind her that her version is the original and best.

I succumbed to obtaining the recipe last Christmas, when I first was contributing to school's other main fundraising event, the Christmas fair. Helen offered to send me the recipe when I mused about making chocolate cake, but have always been scared that it would mean melting chocolate and faffing around - even tho I know, having done it a few times over the last few years, that it is not that technically difficult to do.

Good to her word, the recipe arrived in my inbox within a day or two. As Helen said herself, it's very very quick and easy tho you might find that you need to make it a few times to get it totally to your liking. Personally, I think the oven temperature is set too low and after a few goes at this, I now set my oven hotter and the cake has been fine.

The good news is that there is actually no chocolate at all. The cake uses cocoa powder so it mixes in with the dry ingredients and needs no special treatment. Simple, this most definitely is. I would also use margarine as recommended. The flavour won't be affected but the margarine keeps the icing softer and the cake less dry.

Here's the recipe for "Helen Chocolate Cake".

For the cake

225g/8oz self raising flour

275g/10oz caster Sugar

175g/6oz soft tub margarine

3 eggs

1tsp vanilla essence

175g/6oz low fat natural yoghurt

50g cocoa powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the icing

50g/2oz soft tub margarine

50g/2 oz cocoa powder

3 tablespoons milk (I find it needs more than this)

350g/12oz icing sugar

12 walnut halves to decorate (optional – you can add anything you fancy)

you will also need a 32cm/9 in spring form cake tin and some non-stick baking paper. 

 Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 170^oC/325^oF/gas 3. Grease the tin. Line the base with non-stick baking paper. Dust the inside of the tin with a little flour, then tap out the excess. 

(Note - Helen reckons a 20cm/8 in tin will work fine as well.I reckon using 180C/gas 4 works better)

2. Beat the caster sugar and margarine in a mixing bowl until smooth. Beat in eggs, vanilla essence and yoghurt. Sift in flour, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda. Stir until fully combined. Spoon mixture into prepared tin and level the surface.

3. Bake cake for 40-45 mins, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Put tin onto a wire rack, cool for 5 minutes. Turn cake out onto rack to cool completely.

(You may need to do a bit of trial and error on this one - for me, 180 C for 50 mins gives a good result.)

4. For the icing, melt the margarine in a saucepan - a milk pan is ideal. Stir in the cocoa. Heat gently, stirring, until combined. Remove from heat. Stir in milk and sifted icing sugar until mixture is smooth and blended. (Extra milk is definitely needed for this but add in spoonfuls. If you add too much, you'll need extra icing sugar).

5. Spread or pour (pouring probably works better and gives a smoother result) icing evenly over top and side of cake. Arrange walnut halves, if using,  around top edge. Leave icing to set for 10 minutes before serving.

Here is the finished article: 

I have made this cake for Monkey's 5th birthday party back in March and for that, I got a personalised Ben10 icing cake topper from eBay to complete the look. It was actually really easy to do and looked great. He was very proud that his mummy had made him a proper cake. I have also made this cake and the children asked for leftovers for breakfast. As an one off, I let them and have never seen such well-behaved children in the period between getting up and going on the school run.

This is a great cake to make with kids and actually Missy Woo helped me make this one. Licking the bowl is great too, because the minute you add the cocoa, it all starts to taste very chocolatey and it's heaven for little ones to to lick. The icing is a mummy only job, thanks to the fact we're using a pan on the hob. 

So, what do you think? Fancy trying to make a Helen Chocolate Cake and telling me how you got on? I'd love to hear. You will love this cake and you'll become extremely popular with friends. They will think you're extremely clever. But your secret will be safe with me. :)