On Saturday my good friend George came to visit. It was the first time we had seen each other for two and a half years. Such occasions I decided, deserve a cake. A really yummy and fattening cake. After flicking through my recipe cook entitled 'Chocolate', I settled on the White Chocolate Truffle Cake.
The sponge base is made by whisking eggs and sugar until really light and fluffy and then sifting and folding in plain flour. A small amount of melted white chocolate is then folded in and the mixture is baked in a springform tin for about 25 minutes. I don't know if i was too rough with my folding, but it came out a pretty flat base. If I were to make this again, i'd just make a regular sponge base. The topping is...wait for it.... 300ml double cream 350g of melted white chocolate AND 250g of mascarpone cheese Bring the cream to the boil, add the chocolate (broken up into small pieces, it'll melt in the cream), once this is all melty and smooth, leave to cool a bit then mix through the cheese. Pour onto your sponge base and leave to chill in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. Decorate as you wish. I chose to peel chocolate with a veg peeler and scatter it over. The result is a very rich, sweet but yummy cake. George liked it.
For a long time I have been nervous about making pastry. Mrs Marsland made us do it at school and I sucked at it. I can now say however, that this is not not the case! I'm not amazing at it yet but I can stop buying the ready made stuff.
The pie above is a mince and onion pie from The Great British Book of Baking. I followed the recipe to the letter and while I really liked the pastry (it has cheese in it) the filling wasn't great. It was a bit dry and bland. It would be much better with proper steak bits in an aley gravy. I have also since invested in a proper pie dish as that little roasting dish was not ideal. I have also been practising making my cupcakes prettier and I fixed my home made cake stand. This was the result.
On Saturday the house of MoshJohn had a joint birthday party. Because we are brilliant hosts John and I baked. John made lovely scones and I made cupcakes. I was initially going to make thirtysomething sweet cupcakes but because our lovely friend Elise made us a 5 TIER CHOCOLATE/PRALINE/ALMOND CAKE! I decided to try making savoury cupcakes to even out the sugar to savoury ratio.
The results were as follows.
The savoury cupcakes are pine nut and red pepper, I think they don't look very appetising but they tasted pretty good. Their texture is more bready than cakey, but that's fine with me.
If you would like to make them. Here's how.
In butter gently fry for about 5 minutes, 2 finely chopped shallots, 2 diced red peppers and 2 cloves of garlic. Remove from pan and leave to cool. Gently toast 100g of pine nuts in the pan.
In a large bowl mix 125g of butter with 125g of plain flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 125g ground almonds, lots of pepper and 4 beaten eggs.
Add the red pepper mixture and pine nuts. Mix well.
Divide into cupcake cases and bake for 30 minutes at 180 Celsius.
The recipe says it makes 12 but I think I got 17 in the end. If you wish you can pop a bay leaf in the top before baking for prettiness.
I learnt from all my previous mistakes and this was the outcome. Pretty cupcakes on a cake stand made by yours truly. Here's hoping I can recreate them for Saturday's party.
I have probably said before (at least in person if you have met me) that I am not creative or artistic. I have never been good at drawing, painting and all of my clay things at school just looked like lumps with holes prodded into it. I am trying however, to make my cakes look pretty and I think cupcakes are probably the best starting point for me because they don't have to have lots of intricate icing work to look great.
Previous attempts at decorating my cupcakes have always ended pretty poorly and for this I have always blamed not having a wide enough nozzle to pipe with.
You can see here that the lines are not defined and it's all a red splodgy mess.
Today I tried once again to make my cupcakes look pretty and this time with my 1M star tipped piping nozzle. From what I could find out it seems to be the best one for getting the big swirly swirls to top delicious sponginess. This is what mine ended up like.
I don't think they are a terrible first attempt, they certainly taste good. But I have learnt a few things.
My butter cream was too wet. This led to gloopy peaks.
I piped at an angle, I think you are supposed to hold the bag completely upright.
Cake glitter needs to be in some kind of shaking device. It stains your fingers and does not give an even sparkle if you just pinch and scatter with your finger.
Make double the amount of butter cream you usually would. What normally covers 12+ cupcakes only did 7 today.
I started from the outside and worked my way in. I should of just watched this lady first.
