Dad's Birthday Cake

This weekend I'm going home to see my parents as it is my day's birthday. So, this week I have been making his cake. He likes a particular cake in M&S so i tried to emulate it. I started at the weekend by making the sponge.

Chocolate Sponge
3 eggs (weigh these and then add equal weights of the following ingredients,
Self raising flour (6-7oz usually)
Caster sugar (6-7oz)
Margarine (you know I always use flora light!) (6-7 oz)

Put all the ingredients in one bowl, and mix together with a hand mixer. That's it, you're done! Pour into two greased cake tins and bake at 150 (fan) until a skewer comes out clean.

When cool, I popped each cake into a freezer bag and put in the freezer until need.

Ganache
250g milk chocolate
125ml double cream

Put ingredients in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water (the bowl must not touch the water). Stir occasionally until the chocolate melts and the cream and chocolate combine. Put in the fridge until cool.

Chocolate curls
1 bar of white and 1 bar of milk choc

Microwave on 50% power until the bar is just a little soft - but not melted!! Then start at one edge of the bar and use a vegetable peeler to gently make a curl. It takes some practice but you get them in the end!

Assembly of the cake
Put one of the sponges (defrosted if you have frozen it) on a flat surface and smooth over some of the ganache. Add the second sponge on top. Add more ganache on top and let it run down the sides a bit. Smooth with a palette knife. Grab handfuls of chocolate curls and push against the ganache on the side of the cake. I found tilting the cake whilst doing this helped. I then melted some white chocolate and then let it cool a bit - by letting it cool it pipes a bit easier and you have a bit more control. I then put the chocolate in a disposable piping bag ( from Lakeland - makes life a lot easier!) and either use a fine writing nozzle (no. 2) or just snip off a tiny bit off the end of the bag. Pipe your message and then refrigerate.

Happy Birthday Dad!

P.s. never try and pipe a balloon on a cake if your piping skills aren't amazing. It does NOT look good! I'll be honest - my balloon ended up looking like a sperm!! ahhh! If you do make a mistake with your piping, scrape it off with a knife, then get a hot, but dry, palette knife and smooth over the area you scraped off. You'd never guess you'd made a blooper :)

Nespresso Coffee Cake

The hubby requested coffee cake this weekend, so I got on the phone to my nan to get her recipe.

A simple all in one method (the method I love!), it is pretty much a 6, 6, 6 and 3 recipe with the sugar being a mix of light brown soft sugar and caster sugar, and the key ingredient, 50ml of coffee.  We used an espresso from his Nespresso machine for this job (in fact we used two, but that covered the cake and the icing).  We did put it in a jug in a cold water bath though so it wasn't hot as it was mixed in.  It didn't take long to get to room temperature so definitely worth the extra effort.

Therefore mix together:
6oz / 170g self raising flour
6oz / 170g butter or margarine (my preference is flora light)
3oz / 85g light brown soft sugar
3oz / 85g caster sugar
3 large eggs
50ml cooled Nespresso coffee

If you have a handheld electric whisk, a food processor or a mixer then it's all very straightforward.  If mixing by hand, using a wooden spoon beat the butter and sugars together first, then combine in the eggs before adding the flour, and then the coffee.  It's totally possible to do it by hand, it just takes a bit more muscle :)

All in the magimix:

I lined some pyrex muffin tins (they have straight sides so make cute mini cakes) with cake release spray - I've never used it before but I got some for Christmas so I thought I would try it out.  It smelt a bit funny but it did the job.  I also cut out little circles of baking paper for the base of the pan just to be safe.

Cook in a preheated oven: 160 degrees, or 150 degrees if using a fan oven.  If I'm cooking mini cakes I usually set the timer for 15 minutes, or 20 minutes for one big cake and then take it from there.  Your cake will be done when the sides have shrunk a little away from the sides of the tin, and a knife or skewer inserted into the center comes out clean - if it comes out gooey, put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes!

The middle of the cakes were filled with buttercream (icing sugar, half quantity of butter/marg, i.e. 2oz icing sugar, 1oz butter/marg all mixed together), flavoured with some more Nespresso espresso to taste!

For the top was just a simple icing of sieved icing sugar mixed with coffee until the right consistency is achieved.

Here's the finished product:

It needed something on the top as decoration, a walnut, or perhaps a coffee bean, but we didn't have either in the cupboard  so they are decoration-less for today.

Not sure what is on the menu baking wise next weekend - will have to pour through all my baking books during the week.  Until then x

100 ways with Chocolate Coins

I had a busy weekend last weekend baking, desperately trying to use up the thousands of chocolate coins we had left over from Christmas!

So, I made chocolate swirl shortbread with chopped up chocolate coins ( a nigella recipe):

Next on the list, banoffee tartlets for cake club at work.  I whizzed up some sweet shortcrust pastry in the food processer, rolled it out and then popped the pastry into a 12-hole bun tin and baked in the oven.  When the pastry had cooled I added a teaspoon of caramel (Carnation, out of a tin - classy I know), a 1cm chunk of banana and piped on some whipped double cream.  And on the top, you guessed it... grated chocolate coins!