So.........that went well......but I'm back with a bang!

At the start of the year I said that I would try to post more regularly and......yeah....that didn't happen =/

Finishing this doctorate and wedding planning, well my excuses are endless but the reality of trying to blog while also writing and working on a million other things was something that I did not anticipate.

So I will catch you up. In the last few months I got my Dr, have travelled to Austria, Switzerland, sunny southampton (to buy a wedding dress) and have been slowly but steadily ticking off items on my wedding to-do list.

A beautiful arch at our venue

Check out those Austrian mountains

No-one tells you flowers cost this much

We took this photo for our stationary

I've got a dress. He got a suit. We got a florist, a band, a DJ, a priest, and a cake plan, which brings us to this post. This weekend I decided to do a trial of one of my cake layers. I call it a ferroro rocher cake. What do you think?

This cake has three layers of hazelnut genoise sponge, doused with amaretto, separated by layers of hazelnut chocolate buttercream, and then smothered in hazelnut chocolate ganache!! It's a nightmare for nut allergies but it is a heavenly dream for everyone else.

Don't you want a little bite?!

So let me talk you through the process and I should start by acknowledging my inspiration for this came from Gretchen Bakery blog and I directly used her recipe for the sponge but I made significant changes to the rest of the cake that she then created for her ferrero rocher cake.

So for the genoise sponge recipe visit the link above.

I made three layers of cake and then used an amaretto simple syrup on the layers for moisture

Then I went in with a hazelnut chocolate buttercream. Now I have seen a number of other bloggers, including Gretchen, make a nutella buttercream by mixing ordinary buttercream with nutella. For me this was too sweet and too pale so I developed my own.

Hazelnut Chocolate buttercream

2 tbsp hazelnut butter
100gr butter
1 pinch of salt
150g Icing sugar
2 heaped teaspoons of nutella
3 tbsp of unsweetened cocao powder
1-2 tbsp milk until desired consistency

1 - Beat together the butter and hazelnut butter with a pinch of salt (unnecessary if using salted    
      butter)
2  - Add the icing sugar slowly and continue to beat
3 - Add nutella
4 - Add cocao powder
5 - Finally add milk until you have reached desired consistency

I then piped this onto my layers leaving a small amount of room at the edge

You can see how dark it is

Then add your hazelnut ganache around the outside of the buttercream, ensuring there are no air pockets and add your next layers

For this cake I wanted a slightly soft ganache that would be firm enough to stay in place so for a three layer 7" cake this is what I used -
250g - Milk chocolate
200g dark chocolate
260ml single cream
85g chopped, toasted and slightly caramelised hazelnut pieces

Here you can see the layer have all been added and I am about to frost with the ganache

Finally frost the top and sides generously with the hazelnut ganache and chill until the ganache becomes firm. You should now have a cake that looks like a ferrero rocher and tastes like a hazelnut dream.

This is definitely a cake that can be prepared in advance as the overnight storage allows the genoise to soak up more of the flavour and moisture from the buttercream and ganache. I would highly recommend that you try this cake and my fiance has given it a two thumbs up so if you are attending our wedding then you very well might be trying this in a few months time.

For the moment I will leave you there and return soon with some other deliciousness

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!

A Dairy-free Birthday Treat

Every year, on my birthday I bake a cake. Not this year, although I went back to dairy this year I decided to give myself the time to work on something else that I have been craving - Almond Butter cups!

As I mentioned in a previous post, we recently took an amazing trip to Vegas! It was wonderful to be in Vegas but also to be in the states again. There were so many things I had missed from my time living there. There were also so many new things that I wanted to try. When you follow various food blogs you get to see some of the delicious new things people are loving in America and around the world. Since my time living in the US, it seems that healthy eating has become much more prevalent and, with it, a whole bunch of exciting new healthy products. One of the things that had tempted me was the Justin's products and particularly his heathy peanut butter cups. However when I went to get some I saw that he included sea salt, which is something that I don't eat. So I disappointedly walked away =(

(It's an unfortunate belief that sea salt is more fancy or healthy than normal salt and therefore many healthy food companies include sea salt in an attempt to appeal to the healthier customer, however it ignores those that cannot take it)

However I never gave up on the idea of a healthy nut butter cup, and preferably my favourite nut butter - Almond! So for this birthday I decided to dedicate my baking time to chocolate work.

Almond Butter Cups

240g Dark Chocolate Chips
100g Almond Butter
50g Almonds, toasted and ground
1-2 tbsp Agave Nectar
1 tbsp Coconut Oil
1 tsp Salt


I used some of my delicious 70% + dark chocolate. I melted down two thirds of it and then added the final third to bring down the temperature and temper the chocolate. Then I poured them into my mini-cupcake cases

For the almond butter centre I mixed store bought almond butter with more toasted ground almonds to thicken it, coconut oil for smoothness, salt in enhance the flavour and a tiny bit of agave nectar for sweetness. I then made little balls and pushed it into the hardened chocolate cases

From there I froze the cups to cool everything and facilitate the covers hardening. Then poured on the bottoms from the tempered chocolate.And then I simply let them hardened et voila...

As you can possibly see, the bases are not completely flat. This is due to the container having a raised lip. However I appreciate the thick bases as it's a nice chunk of chocolate to balance the almond butter.

As you can also see I left some lovely chunks of almond, but this is obviously optional! So now I have my dream treats and I will definitely be making these again, even if they leave a little bit of clean up.....

I would highly highly recommend making these. They are incredibly delicious, vegan, healthy and full of goodness. The best part is that it lasts so much longer than cake. I ate one of these while I typed this tonight and there is still plenty more =)

Melting middle Nutella Cookies

It's February, finally! The January blues were less intense this year because I feel good about 2016. However even a good January is a difficult month; Christmas is over but it is still cold, every form of media that just 2 weeks prior was telling me that I deserve a treat is now telling me that I am fat and worthless for eating treats and my only redemption is an extreme diet with the help of their weightloss program, or tablets, or juice; and finally this will start to ease up!

And so, in the spirit of this I have made you some delicious melting middle nutella cookies!!

Merry Christmas, happy holidays or just Happy new years

I dislike starting with an apology but last week I tweeted that I would post on Tuesday and then got taken up with lots of jobs and never posted. So this week I am posting one day early to make up for it. Well I have a few little treats to share with you....

This year, like every year, I gave out sweets as gifts

Molten chocolate cake with caramel center

This weekend we had some of our lovely friends over for an awesome dinner party. We were so excited to have them over because they are new friends but absolutely awesome people. Dinner parties are such a wonderful way to spend time with friends. Since moving here we haven't had many, as I use our dinner table as a desk, so it was exciting to break out our dinner party stuff. It is just so nice to get quality time to sit and talk while having good food and drink. Great nights with great friends, which I have been incredibly lucky to have a good few of over the last few weekends, deserve a great dessert. I think I'm in something of a chocolate mood this month so like the brownies last week this dessert had to involve chocolate. Cue the photos -

Chocolately enough?

You may notice that the center of the molten part is a different colour. That is not a trick of the light, that is a delicious gooey river of caramel. The best part is that these beauties are so, so simple to make and will finish off a meal perfectly.

Molten chocolate and caramel cakes (makes 4-5) (adapted from BBC good food recipe)

100g Dark Chocolate
100g Butter
100g Muscovado sugar
50g White sugar
3 Eggs
50g Flour
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
8 Rolo chocolates

1 - In a deep bottomed saucepan, melt the butter and chocolate together

2 - Add the sugars, white first and melt completely, then remove from the heat and let cool slightly.

3 - Add the muscovado sugar and beat well

4 - Now add beaten eggs and vanilla and beat everything together.

5 - Finally fold in the flour until just fully combined.

6 - Butter and flour 4-5 ramikins or you can use cupcake cases and fill most of the way up.

7 - Just before serving, place two rolos back to back and insert into the center of the each cake

8 - These need to be baked just before you serve, so if you want to eat them immediately put into a
     200' oven for 10 minutes. However if you are having a dinner party, then just store them in the
     fridge, covered well in cling-film (to avoid absorbing tastes/oders) and then bake for 15 minutes
     before serving.

9 - Serve with ice-cream and berries and enjoy!!

And when you break into it ............

Gluten free Brownies, because equality matters

So this weekend has been a huge one in Ireland. Same-sex marriage was brought into the constitution by popular vote and it was the most exciting and amazing feeling to see my country of origin rise up in acceptance and love for the LGB community. I went to an awesome yes celebration barbeque and anxiously watched as the votes were counted and the announcement made that the law would be officially changed. I would love to have made something delicious in celebration, particularly in rainbow flag colours. However that would have involved going out and buying food colouring in all the relevant colours and then throwing out the resulting bake because I cannot stand the taste of food colours. So that doesn't seem all that great, so instead I decided to make delicious gluten free brownies and embrace the wheat and gluten free peeps.

So brownies are an awesome food to make gluten-free but I should emphasize that gluten free doesn't equate to healthy in this instance. I adapted them from a couple of recipes and I am very happy with how they came out. Also in the spirit of embracing I have rolled in a number of other holidays into the celebration dessert; how you might ask?? By using up left-over christmas and easter chocolate is how!! If you plan on doing the same, be sure that the chocolate that you are using is also gluten free because  not all chocolate is. Also, always be sure that your chocolate is in date.

Gluten free Brownies

90g Butter
75g Caster sugar
75g Dark brown sugar
250g chocolate (preferably dark, but I used milk and it was delicious)
2 large eggs
3 tbsp cocoa powder (NB - not drinking chocolate)
3 tbsp cornflour
100g hazelnuts and/or almonds, ground
1 tsp vanilla extract.

1 - Preheat oven to 180. In a thicked based saucepan, melt the butter and sugar together.

2 - Add the chocolate and stir vigorously until melted. Remove from heat before fully melted and
      beat.

3 - Add eggs and beat.

4 - In a seperate bowl mix the ground nuts, cocoa and cornflour.

5 - Add everything to a mixer, or one bowl and then beat with an electric mixer, or vigorously with a
     whisk.

6 - Pour into a buttered (and optionally cocoa powdered) cake or bread tin and bake for 30 minutes, or until the center no loner shakes. Let cool in the tin and then enjoy.

These brownies are deliciously fudgy and nutty with a huge chocolate hit. They are also firm which is useful for serving a parties and other celebrations. I sprinkled on icing sugar for decoration, which worked as good contrast.

Christmas Cookies

So I couldn't get a post up last week but I am returning with some delicious Christmas cookies. These cookies are a request from my boyfriend. Occasionally I will ask him what he would like to see on the blog (i.e. to eat) and he will come up with something that I might never have thought of myself. This was one of those occasions. He said that he want caramel AND fudge cookies. Hmm, I have to tell you that gave me pause. Initially I figured that the flavour combination would be too much for a cookie but after some thought I decided to try these and oh boy, are they delicious?!

So you should know ahead of time that these take time but they can be broken down into parts for different days and then assembled very easily at the last minute. The parts are as follows; salted caramel/dulce de leche; fudge and chocolate chip cookie bowls; and a chocolate lid (for simplicity I've used giant chocolate buttons.

For the caramel I've made a dulce de leche. This is so simple but takes some time and a good extractor fan. I use the saucepan method but as I've said before Little Rose Book has an awesome method for how to make it in a crockpot. For the saucepan method, you need 1 can of condensed milk and a large saucepan. Just stab the top of your can in a couple of places. Place it in your saucepan and then fill the pan up with water to near the top of the can. Heat the pan and refill for approx 90 minutes. Then remove from the heat and let cool before opening the can. Mix well and I also like to add some salt to taste.

Making the cookie-

I used a sugar cookie recipe instead of the usual chewy cookie recipe, still from Alton Brown of course!

Chocolate Fudge Cookie Bowls (Based on sugar cookies by Alton Brown)
Makes 32 cookies

226g Butter at room temperature
200g Caster sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
384g plain flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
50g fudge pieces
50g dark chocolate chips

1 - Chop the chocolate chips and fudge pieces until you have very fine pieces

2 - Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3 - Beat the egg and milk together and add to the butter with a tbsp of the flour

4 - Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt and add to the butter mixture.

5 - Finally add your tiny chips and chill for 2 hours.

6 - Take you mini muffin cases and push the dough around the bottom and sides.

7 - Chill again and bake for 5-8 minutes.

8 - As soon as removed from the oven use a teaspoon or a gloved finger to push the cup shape into
     the cookie again.

9 - While the cookie is still warm add a half teaspoon of the dulce de leche into the cavern of the cup.

10 - Finish by covering the top with a giant button. The heat ill melt the button into place, so just leave and let cool.

Once these are cool they are incredible, crispy on the sides, chewy in the center with the hard chocolate top. Once all the parts (dulce de leche, cookie dough and chocolate buttons) are ready they take less than 15 minutes to throw together and make a wonderful Christmas present for anyone or a delicious snack for you ;)

Just try to resist!

Coconut bites - all natural taste of summer

If, like me, you have spent this summer in front of a computer screen or inside an office building then as August starts it can feel like summer is slipping away, and don't get me wrong I'm looking forward to autumn and winter, but it's nice to celebrate summer while it's here. So here is a little taste of the tropical to help you hold on to the summer.

Bounty bars are advertised as a taste of tropical flavour and I bought in, so when I thought tropical I thought about them. But they are not the healthiest thing you can eat, so here's my low fat, low sugar version.

You will need:

3 egg whites
350g dessicated coconut
80g (equivilant) stevia
20g caster sugar (alternatively you can leave out the stevia and use 100g sugar)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 tsp white rum
30g ground almonds
30g  dark sugar free cocoa powder

1 large saucepan
1 metal bowl
1 whisk
1 sugar thermometre

1 - Put your egg whites, sugar and stevia in your metal bowl. Heat some water in the saucepan and then gently bring up the temperature of the mixture, whisking constantly until it reaches 160'F.

2- Remove from the heat and beat vigourously until you have achieve a meringue

3 - Add the vanilla essence, rum and whisk.

 4 -  Add the coconut, ground almonds and mix thoroughly.

 5 - Chill in the fridge for about an hour

6-  Press into squares and use a sieve to sprinkle cocoa powder over all the sides to coat.

They taste sweet, soft and delicious and the hint of rum compines with the coconut to make you think of beach holidays rather than you computer.

A quick and easy summer dessert

Ok - I am not going to lie to you. I am all the way phoning it in this week! I have a massive deadline in college and haven't had the time to even think about baking. To add to that it is HOT here!! I mean in the mid to high twenties at night!! There is just no relieve. Now it has been pointed out to me, today actually, that if I had ever lived in a more tropical climate I wouldn't even consider this to be spring weather and I take the point on board, but this little Irish girl is just not used to the heat! Now you see why I love autumn and winter so!

In terms of baking, the summer brings cravings for fresh flavours, salads and fruit so cake and cookies go off my radar for a while. But that's not to say that my sweet-tooth takes a vacation! Oh no, I need my sugar fix! So this week I thought I'd show you what you can throw together that satisfies the need for dessert without too much hassle, or any baking (hence the phoning it in).

Frozen Grapes with Mint Chocolate Dip!

You'll need:
White Grapes
Dark chocolate
Dark mint chocolate
White wine (optional)

So this recipe takes no effort but some planning. You will need to freeze your grapes over night but if you're like me and have difficulty with this heat I would recommend having a bag of grapes in your freezer all summer

You get to see inside my freezer, feeling privileged?! I know you are!!

Just before serving take out your chocolates. You want to have a 2/1 ration of dark chocolate to mint dark chocolate and I would recommend at least 40g of chocolate per person, probably more!

You can melt your chocolate in a double boiler or directly in the ramekins in the microwave, heating for 20 seconds at a time and mixing between blasts. Once melted serve immediately.

Present each guest with their own grapes and chocolate and let the dipping ensue

If you wanted to be classy you could provide them with plastic toothpicks!

You'll notice that the chocolate hardens instantly on the cold grape, so there's no mess and the flavours go together beautifully. Combine this with a nice dessert wine and you are golden my friends!

Other uses for frozen grapes:
To replace ice-cubes in a drink that you need to cool but do not wish to water down any further - like a pimms cup!!
Without the chocolate as a refreshing snack
In a smoothie
To thrown at an annoying friend or sibling, idk - please don't they are really hard!

So that's it, I'll be back next week with hopefully a more complicated recipe but in the mean time try this and enjoy =)