Coffee and Duolingo reminds me of Gilmore girls

This week we had a really fun and impressive anniversary. My fiancé hit a one year streak on Duolingo!! That is one whole year without missing a single day! That is very impressive to me, I think the most I have managed is about 10 days, but then if you've been reading this blog for any amount of time then my constant efforts to work on consistency won't be a surprise!!

Anyway back to my partner, to celebrate we decided to do a cake and when I asked him he said 'Coffee!' which may have been more to do with him wanting a cup of coffee than any specific cake design concepts.But We figured out a way to give him both!

This cake was so much fun to make. It. COntains 3 separate. cakes. One 7" and two that are basically oversized muffins each approx 3" diameter. Then there's the frosting. I used 3 types, ganache, buttercream and marshmallow fluff .The ganache was a combination of whipped and fudgy ganache to give a woodgrain look. The outside of the.cups is butter cream and the foam on top is the fluff. After that I just added a tiny bit of fondant/flower paste for the handles and raised decorations and we were away!

The cake needed to be sturdy so I did a coffee pound cake. For future reference I would add a coffee syrup for texture and extra flavour. However I think this was still pretty delicious! Here's how I put it together, recipe at the end.

I divided the main cake and first filled with fudgy ganache

Then coated it in whipped ganache and smoothed it out

Then I split the mini cakes, filled them with ganache and added them to the top of the cake, Being careful to avoid crumbs!!

Then I added a top coating of ganache before frosting with buttercream. I piped a rim for the mugs from butter cream also. The butter cream was initially difficult to smooth so I got it as smooth as possible and then let it set up in the fridge before applying greaseproof paper and smoothing further.

The handles were a mixture of fondant and flower paste, as mentioned above. If these are not things you have lying around you could feasibly make a play dough from flour, water and food dye and leave it it dry in the oven or the sun. Just be sure that no-one tries to eat it!

Finally there was the issue of the froth/cream. For this I made a homemade marshmallow fluffy using marshmallows and some agave nectar. It worked beautifully imho. However word to the wise- this stuff is Hella sticky, so keep some tools and a food scissors in a bath of hot water nearby while applying.

And that's it! Simples! Not really....but fun!

Coffee Cake Recipe

220g Butter
220g Sugar
280g Plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp instant coffee + 2 tbsp boiling water

Ganache
285g Dark Chocolate
285/1 container double cream

Buttercream
100g unsalted butter
200g Icing sugar
1 tbsp Milk
Black food colouring

Marshmallow fluff
3 jumbo marshmallows
1 tsp Agave nectar

1 - Preheat oven to 180'. Beat together butter and sugar

2- Sieve together the flour, baking powder and baking soda

3 - Alternate additions of flours and eggs

4 - Add the coffee and vanilla

Ganache
1 - Heat the cream

2 - Chop chocolate into small pieces and pour over the hot cream

3 - Leave the chocolate and cream to sit and then mix thoroughly

4 - Leave to sit for at least 30 minutes to cool fully before whipping

Butter-cream 
1 - Beat together the butter and icing sugar

2 - Add milk and food colouring

Marshmallow fluff
1 - Melt marshmallows in the microwave for 30 seconds

2 - Add the agave nectar and add to the top of the cups immediately

I am not going to get to worked up encouraging you to do this at home as I appreciate it's not a one hour job. However I will say that if you have a loved one that deserves a special treat it is probably less work thanks you would imagine! The whole thing really reminded me of Gilmore Girls and as a result I got through a few episodes while putting the cake together, which means that the review will be soon. (I don't know why I am constantly teasing this review......setting myself up for failure)

Otherwise I hope you enjoy this fun post and I will return next week with something a little more normal but just as delicious!!

Apple and Salted Caramel Cake

This week a very good friend asked if I could make a cake for them. I was absolutely delighted to do so and the requested cake was Apple and Salted Caramel

I had never actually made an apple and salted caramel cake before so I decided to do a little research. I found a delicious looking recipe on the Brown Eyed Baker and I must say that her cake looks amazing. However, naturally I had to make a couple of little adaptations and I am very happy with how it turned out. Firstly I wanted to make the cake lighter and more summer appropriate, so less spicy. I also wanted to include fresh apple to make it taste more fresh. Finally I came up with my own easy to make icing and some interactive decorations

Chocolate apple of mystery!!

Two delicious layers of apple cake were covered in frosting

before three little apples were placed on top

Excuse the on location picture quality

And the apples, well let me show you how they work.....

Fun right?!

Apple Salted Caramel Cake (adapted from BrownEyedBaker)

Apple Cake (enough for 2x9" Cake layers)

340g Butter
400g Caster Sugar
75g Brown Sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
500g Cake Flour (Plain flour with 8 tbsp replaced by cornflour)
1 tsp Baking powder
2 tsp Baking soda
1/2 tsp all spice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 eggs
4 cups grated apple in 2 lemons worth of lemon juice

Salted Caramel Icing (enough for this cake)

280g Salted Butter
560g Icing Sugar
60ml Caramel Sauce

Caramel Sauce recipe that I used

Instruction

1- Preheat oven  to 180'C and grease and line your cake tin

2 - Beat together the butter and sugar, beat in the vanilla extract

3 - Sieve together the flour, baking powder and soda and spices

4 - Beat the eggs together

5 - Add portions of the eggs and flour to the butter alternating between the two, leaving a portion of flour

6 - Add the grated apple and the remaining flour.

7 - Divide between 2 9" cake tins. Wrap the tins in tin foil to protect and bake for 45-50minutes.

8 - Allow the cake to cool in the tin.

*Note - This is a very soft and light cake and needs to cool completely in the tin to be workable but the texture upon eating is just perfect!!*

9 - Beat together the butter icing sugar and caramel sauce for the frosting.

10- Ice the cake - First do a crumb coat - there will be crumbs. Although I think a naked cake version would also be awesome

Finish the icing and make the chocolate apples.

To make these I used half circl moulds and dark chocolate. I found the bet technique was to paint the chocolate onto the mould to achieve even layers. Then set and melt the edge to get two half circles together

I made a hole in the top and filled with more caramel sauce. Then filled in the hole with a pretzel stick.

Then when the cake is ready to be eaten, just cut the apples and enjoy the show!!

So that's it! I hope you enjoy and try it out for yourself!

Wedding cakes and adventures

A few weeks ago, I had the honor of working on the wedding cake of some amazing people. This was a process that took a lot longer than a week. Months of planning and trial runs and classes and fretting culminated in one week of intense baking and execution. How did all of this turn out??

I'm quite happy about it! The bride and groom were too and it was so amazing to watch them cutting into it on the night! People around me were asking if it hurt to watch all my hard work being sliced up but I couldn't have been happier. You see, the real work in this cake had gone into the inside; the combination of flavours and cakes that met the bride and groom's desires, provided an awesome tasting experience and would present perfectly. Well let me tell you that was the challenge! So watching the cake cutting to me represented a moment of pure anticipation on the cusp of knowing whether I had succeeded or not.


So what were the cakes?

Bottom tier - Victoria sponge with a balsamic strawberry preserve and buttercream center covered in a dark chocolate ganache

The middle tier? Light and fluffy carrot cake with a cream cheese filling, covered in a white chocolate ganache and fondant

Herein lay the biggest challenge!! When I attended the wedding cake course this summer I was told unequivocally that I could not do a carrot cake in a wedding cake. However when I presented this idea to the bride she was crestfallen and I just could not accept that so ..........  I figured it out!  

The top tier was traditional fruit cake, covered in marzipan, and I used a traditional family recipe that's a bit lighter than old fashioned fruit cake and keeps all those traditionalists happy.

So three tiers, three different cakes and so so much flavour....

So how was the experience of making a wedding cake? Absolutely amazing!!! I enjoyed every minute of it and apart from one particularly panicked night 2 weeks before the big day, I felt relatively calm and prepared as much as possible, then put it together. The look on the grooms face when he saw the final product and applied the figurines was amazing and seeing the bride so happy about it was all the thanks I needed. They were extremely appreciative, but all I needed was their smiles.

I will definitely hope to make more wedding cakes and am considering going into the cake business officially but until then I will cherish the memories of this bake =)

Birthday cakes

Another week, another cake, or so it seems! But let me tell you.....I am not complaining!! Baking is so much fun, but nothing is more fun than sharing that baking with others!! Recently I have been very lucky and happy to have had a number of opportunities to make celebration cakes for birthday parties.

The first was a beautiful two tiered birthday cake for my grandmother. We celebrated her birthday with the rest of my family and we had a wonderful time. The cake went down really well and I was pleased with how it turned out. The technique that I have been using most recently has been piped buttercream roses. I love this piping technique because it gies height and definition easily and with a little more time and planning you can add a beautiful focus to any cake.

Inside the cake was a store bought cake that originally started by looking quite cheap. There were positives and negatives to this. As you can see, a small amount of work changed the cake into something more impressive, without having to do the baking. However, as it turned out, the store bought cake was dry and unimpressive. I feared this when I saw it but was assured by multiple people that the cake had a 4 star review from a leading local paper. Just shows that you should always trust your instinct on these things. Regardless everyone at the party enjoyed the cake and no-one appeared to complain about the dryness, so....

The second cake was one that I did for a friends' 30th. She specifically requested a red velvet and recently commented that she would love to be able to have a sprinkles cake. So I combined the two and came out with this.

As you can see once again I have used the piped roses, but this time as a much smaller accessory, making the sprinkles the highlight of the cake.

As you may have read last week I explored the difference between artificial and natural red food colouring. This cake was for an American friend, so I knew it needed to be bright red and therefore used the artificial colouring. So how does it look cut -

Want a piece?!