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

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!!

Browned Butter Nutella Cookies

Let’s talk cookies shall we? These ones are AMAZING!

I am not exaggerating. I’d forgive you for thinking that I was, this is my recipe on my blog, so of course I’d say positive things. That said my experience of eating these was filled with repeated, repeated expressions of pure joy and excitement at the outcome of a hunch. My poor boyfriend probably thought I had finally left the land of the sane after the fifth time I said ‘these are just….just…..incredible,’ and that was with my first cookie. Enough justification of myself, let me tell you how they taste. The texture is crisp on the outside with a thicker chewy center, there’s added crunch from the nuts but it’s the flavour that’s the essence of these cookies. Think gourmet Nutella and depth, such depth. Each bite seems to initiate itself boldly with a rich chocolate and hazelnut hit but then the flavour achieves another level, the nutty flavour emerges and your whole mouth feels as if you are enjoying something special. These cookies are not for the faint-hearted one cookie filled me for dessert (I do make them quite big) and the depth and richness of the flavours satisfied me completely. 

Breakfast of champions for special people in your life

As I mentioned last week study has been taking over my life of late, every hour, everything I do it's in my mind and it has been going on for a while! Doing a doctorate is somewhat all consuming and the fall out from all this stress hits the ones closest to you. So what do you do for those lovely, supportive invaluable people - show your love in chocolate and hazelnuts, of course!

Mocha-rons - Mocha macarons with an obnoxious name

You know it's summer when my house is full of macarons. I enjoy this delicious treat at any time of the year but the combination of sweetness and light texture feels just perfect during the sometimes hot but always humid days of summer. So you can expect many more posts of a similar nature, including hopefully one with the wonderful and hilarious decidedlydelicious.

As an affirmation of my ability to control things in my life, even in the smallest way possible, I have given up chocolate for a month, it's a good thing that I don't tweet because all it would say is 'chocolate, chocolate, want chocolate,' at the moment. Before starting this ridiculous and masochistic journey I did however enjoy quite the final hoorah and these were a part of that.

I wanted to experiment with a coffee macarons concept, and I always like playing with the macaron shell that so many people revere and respect because, well why not. The playing with the shell took a couple of forms but the best was the sprinkle of cocoa powder as it made the macarons look like the frothy top of a coffee drink. So the chocolate filling was the obvious glue for the conceptual mess, plus who doesn't like coffee and chocolate together?!

Can I have a medium Americano and one large cup of macarons ;)

Mocha Macarons

125g Ground Almonds
175g Icing Sugar
2 tsp Instant Espresso powder (This has to be one of those over-priced powdered real coffee things)
3 egg whites (aged)
75g White Caster Sugar
3/8 tsp cream of tartar

Cocao Powder to decorate

Chocolate filling of choice ( I used nutella, but that was mostly out of laziness/desire to get these in
                                               my mouth faster)


In a clean bowl beat your aged, cold egg whites and cream of tartar until light and frothy, add the caster sugar slowly and beat until you have made a beautiful meringue.
Sieve together the ground almonds, icing sugar and coffee powder. Once thoroughly sieved and combined then add this to your meringue and mix until the mixture not longer forms peaks.
Pipe the mixture onto your parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Attempt to keep the macarons the same size.

Once you have piped all the macarons onto the cookie sheets (this mixture fills about 2 cookie sheets) then decorate with cocoa powder. This can be done which ever way you feel like, for one sheet I sprinkled cocoa powder delicately over the macarons but on the other I literally just threw cocoa powder all over the cookie sheet (feeling like a modern artist I might add) and they both turned out pretty well. Finally allow the cookies to sit for one hour before baking for 10-12 minutes at 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4.

Let the macarons cool on the parchment paper but off the cookie sheet, remove carefully and pipe a small amount of filling in between two cookies before sandwiching them. Then enjoy which you can see I was when I initially started this post, ah three days ago, how I miss your chocolatey flavours =)