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.
