raspberri cupcakes

Macaron & Cupcake Bouquet to say...

2012-05-28T09:00:00.000+10:00

...Sorry, this isn't a recipe post. Things are completely insane at the moment, and the only thing I had time to bake on the weekend was this little edible bouquet which I made as a thank you present for my wonderful wedding dress designer, Rhonda Hemmingway. People won't see the dress until this weekend but Rhonda and her team have been so incredibly lovely and made the entire wedding dress process completely stress-free that I wanted to make sure I did something special for her. I made the same blueberry cupakes as these ones but added lemon juice instead of vanilla bean to the icing, and used this strawberry jam buttercream to fill the macarons.

Unfortunately with my parents in town and all the wedding and work stuff I was doing at the same time I barely managed to find the time to do it, so it was a total rush job and not my best effort ever. I managed to waste an entire batch of cupcakes because I used plain flour instead of self-raising flour by accident (yes, I would be THAT person if I was a contestant on Masterchef). And the macarons were a little overcooked but hopefully they still tasted great after a day or so of maturing in the fridge.

The tulle netting and pinks is all a little too girly for me, but it seemed appropriate considering the circumstances. I used a cute little bucket that I got from Victoria's Basement, placed a styrofoam craft ball inside and used some wooden skewers to secure the cupcakes and macarons in place. Originally I wanted to make a batch of my salted chocolate chip cookies for the bouquet as well just to make it a little more fun, but after wasting all the time and ingredients on the first batch of fail cupcakes I decided to settle for just the macs and cupcakes. Anyway, I figured I might as well share it with you, since it was pretty easy to put together and a great little present you could give to anyone. I wrapped up the whole thing in clear cellophane with ribbon to protect it and hold it together while I was transporting it. She absolutely loved it!

In other news, I thought I might share some of the lovely little mentions and features that I've had in a few magazines and newspapers around the place. It's always exciting and humbling to get a nice blurb printed up! The first was Woman's World in the US who featured my Fruit Tingles Cake (although they incorrectly suggested using popping candy instead of all the other fizzy sherbet lollies I mentioned were available in the US, and I eye-twitched a little at the photo of the box of instant cake mix which they included but no biggie), Girlfriend Magazine included my Earl Grey & Poppy Seed Muffin recipe in this month's issue (June 2012) right next to Lisa, yay! Also there was a really lovely description in last month's issue of Jamie Magazine (Issue 27), and a teeny tiny mention (more of a mention-let) in the UK Times newspaper last month with a photo of my cheesecake-filled chocolate easter eggs. Big thanks to Kate from the little loaf who let me know about it and got her Dad to scan it for me, so sweet!

Woman's World (thanks to Laura Knipping for the copy!)

Girlfriend Magazine

Jamie Magazine

The Times (thanks to Kate for the scan!)

Brown Butter Pink Ombre Daisy Cake with Strawberry Jam

2012-05-21T09:00:00.000+10:00

That title is a bit of a mouthful, I know. But I needed you to know that this is a delicious brown butter cake. Filled with strawberry jam. And it's covered in cream cheese icing piped to look like white daisies. And it's pink on the outside. And ombré! I guess I couldn't help packing lots of my favourite things into one cake. The wordy post title was unavoidable. This cake needed to happen as soon as I thought of it. Dreamt of it actually. I woke up at 4 in the morning with the image of this cake in my mind. I had to make it!

I was in no small way inspired by the mind-blowingly stunning flower cakes that I saw on i am baker (see her hydrangea cake, rose cake, and daffodil cake). I am the first to admit that I completely suck at piping. My attempt at white daisies is not even in the same league. But it will have to do. This weekend was A's sister's birthday and it was the perfect excuse to attempt this cake. She loves cheesecakes so I thought a cream cheese icing would be perfect for this cake. I've been dying to do an ombré icing on the outside of a cake ever since seeing this cake from Apt. 2B Baking Co., followed by Lisa's awesome purple & chocolate version. Originally I was going to use strawberry jam to tint the icing pink, but it made the icing really runny with hardly any colour or added flavour so I gave up and used natural food colouring instead. For the record, I think it's 100 times easier doing ombré icing on a cake than it is to do ombré cake layers and I will definitely be doing it again.

I tried to keep the icing layer really thin so it wasn't too rich or sweet. I really didn't want the icing to overwhelm the flavour of the three layers of beautiful brown butter cake. The smell of brown butter being whipped up with sugar and vanilla bean is unbelievably mouth-watering. The cake batter tasted so divine that I knew this cake would be a winner before I even baked it. The combination of the nutty-flavoured brown butter with the strawberry jam and creamy icing is out of this world.

I know the daisies don't look exactly right, but they're close enough for me. I know you could easily shape flowers using gum paste but I liked the challenge of attempting it with icing. I was just happy to get something that even remotely resembled flowers. I was praying not to end up with a cake that looked like the icing had been flung on to the top of it by a crazed monkey. So...I think, mission accomplished? The easiest way for me to make a petal shape was to piped a blob of icing and then smear the middle of it in a line using a small spatula. I definitely made my petals a bit too indented for daisy petals, but I've never been very coordinated so I didn't have much control over that. And I cheated and used yellow skittles for the centres of the daisies. I really love white daisies, I may have mentioned that before. So I hope you can understand why I didn't have the heart to cut into the top of the cake to give you an innards shot. I just couldn't bring myself to mess up the top of the cake before I got to present it to the birthday girl. Hopefully it will be okay!

Edit: If you realllllyyy want to see the inside you can check out the dodgy Instagram shot I got of the cake while we were demolishing it. It disappeared fast!

Brown Butter Layer Cake with Strawberry Jam & Pink Ombré Daisy Cream Cheese Icing

(makes a three-layer 17cm cake, brown butter cake recipe from Food & Wine)

For the cake:

340g (12oz/3 sticks) unsalted butter, plus more for greasing the pans

285g (2 1/4 cups) plain/all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

2 1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

370g (1 2/3 cups) sugar

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped, or 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or pure vanilla extract

3 large egg yolks

2 large eggs

1 1/4 cups milk, at room temperature

About 1/2 cup strawberry jam for spreading

For the cream cheese icing:

500g (about 17.6 oz) cream cheese, chopped

250g (about 8.8 oz) unsalted butter, chopped

3 cups icing sugar, sifted

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Optional: natural pink food colour

Yellow skittles, to decorate

In a medium saucepan, melt butter for cake. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until foamy, about 5 minutes. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the milk solids turn brown and the butter smells nutty, about 4 minutes longer. Scrape the melted butter and browned bits into a large heatproof bowl. Set the bowl in an ice water bath until the butter hardens. Alternatively do what I did and prep the butter ahead of time and chill in the fridge.

Preheat the oven to 165°C (325°F). Butter two or three 17cm cake pans and line the bottoms of the pans with baking paper. (I only had one so I had to bake each cake separately, which did cause the later cakes to be less high but it still turned out okay) Butter the paper and dust the pans with flour, tapping out the excess. Whisk the 2 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour with the baking powder and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. Scrape set brown butter in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on high until creamy. Add the sugar and vanilla seeds and beat at medium-high speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Beat in the egg yolks followed by the whole eggs. Beat in the dry ingredients and milk in 3 alternating additions, scraping down the side and bottom of the bowl as necessary. Pour the cake batter into the prepared pans and bake in the center of the oven for about 30mins if doing three layers, closer to 40 minutes if only making two, rotating the pans halfway through baking, until the cakes are golden and a toothpick inserted in the centers comes out clean. Cool the cakes in the pans for 10 minutes, then invert them onto a rack to let them cool completely. Peel off the parchment paper.

Remove butter and cream cheese from the fridge 30 mins before starting icing. Place butter in a large mixing bowl and beat butter with an electric mixer on high until smooth and fluffy. Add cream cheese and beat until combined and smooth. With the mixer on low, gradually add icing sugar, add vanilla and increase to high. Beat until light and fluffy. If doing ombré icing, take about 1/3 of the icing, split that icing into two separate bowls and tint one bowl light pink and one bowl a darker pink. Trim any uneven tops off the cake layers. If filling cake with strawberry jam, whisk jam to remove lumps and sandwich between cake layers. Using the white cream cheese icing, crumb coat outside of cake. Chill in fridge for at least 15 mins.

Starting at the bottom, spread the dark pink icing over the bottom third of the cake using an offset spatula. Do the same for the middle third of the cake using the lighter pink icing, blending the two colours where they meet. Spread white icing over the top third of the cake and smooth with spatula. If piping daisies, place leftover white icing in a piping bag with a 0.5cm round tip. Pipe 5cm rings of 1cm dots of icing and then use the tip of a mini spatula or a chopstick to smear each dot of icing to make the petals. Place a yellow skittle in the centre of each piped flower. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour. Remove from the fridge 30 mins before serving. Can be stored in the fridge for a couple of days.

Mandarin & Jasmine Tea Cup Jellies with Raspberries

2012-05-14T09:00:00.000+10:00

After the Trifle Disaster of 2012, I hope you can understand that I needed a little break from baking. I'm loving jelly recipes at the moment, and I wanted to come up with something easy, fruity and fresh. And since it was Mother's Day this weekend, I thought it would be cute idea to serve them in some adorable, girly tea cups as well. Teacup jellies!

Aaaand since the jellies were going to be in tea cups I figured, why not make a tea flavoured jelly? I love using tea in desserts, especially earl grey and green tea. This time I happened to have a tin of jasmine tea that I wanted to use. I drink my fair share of jasmine tea when I eat out at restaurants since it's usually the default tea served, but to be honest I don't love it. I find jasmine can be a tad too floral for my tastes while eating savoury food, I usually prefer tik koon yam (spelling?) tea at home and with yum cha. Mmm yum cha...

What was I talking about? Oh. So it turns out the floral notes in the jasmine tea make it perfect for using in a dessert. It's a very, very light floral scent so you don't have to worry about it tasting like a bar of soap the way that some lavender desserts can taste, for example. The floral and bitter flavour of the tea is a great match for the sweet mandarin juice and tart, fresh raspberries. I was honestly surprised by how interestingly and pleasantly the flavours worked together.

Of course there's no reason why you have to restrict yourself to jasmine tea for this recipe. I can imagine earl grey or green tea working just as well, or any other sweet black tea. And of course you could play around with the combination of fruit flavours as well, I bet a sweet green tea jelly with blackberries would be great. You could even use sparkling wine or add a bit of liqueur or spirits to make boozy tea cup jellies. Gin in a tea cup jelly! The jellies were a little cloudier than I had hoped for, but you can still see the raspberries in the cups and I think the effect is quite pretty.

I know there's nothing super exciting or challenging about jelly, but I love to have a really easy recipe to do every now and then, especially when I'm crazy busy. Also, pretty much everything looks great when it's served in a tea cup with gorgeous little spoons. I think my love of jelly comes from all the giant ones my Mum used to make for parties (gotta love the retroness of it!), and the little agar jellies she always makes for dessert with tinned fruit salad and a hint of rose syrup in pretty moulds. I guess that's why it felt so appropriate making these for Mother's Day. I miss her lots but I get to see her in a week, yay!

Mandarin & Jasmine Tea Cup Jellies with Raspberries

(makes approximately 4 tea cup jellies)

Juice of 2-3 fresh mandarins (about 1/3 cup) plus extra mandarin to decorate (can be replaced with fresh orange juice)

1 tbsp powdered gelatine (can be replaced with agar)

1 tbsp sugar

400ml (approx 1 & 2/3 cups) boiling water

1 tsp jasmine tea leaves (can be replaced with other tea - e.g. green tea or earl grey)

1 punnet fresh raspberries (can be replaced with other berries)

Place boiling water and tea leaves in a bowl and leave to steep until it is strong enough to your liking, at least 10 mins. In a small saucepan, stir together gelatine, sugar and mandarin juice and leave for 1 minute while gelatine softens. Place over medium heat and stir until gelatine is completely dissolved, about 6-8 minutes.

Strain tea to remove leaves and stir in gelatine mixture. (Feel free to adjust the balance of flavours to taste at this point) Pour mixture into tea cup, add a few rasberries to each tea cup. Chill in the refrigerator until set, at least 2 hours or overnight. When ready to serve, remove from the fridge and top with extra mandarin slices and raspberries. Can be stored in the fridge for a couple days.

Passionfruit & Lemon Trifle with Macarons

2012-05-07T09:00:00.000+10:00

Today is Asian Gaga's birthday (I think she has outgrown the nickname I gave her for this blog a while ago but it's too confusing to come up with a new one). As my bestest friend in the whole wide world, I like to bake her something extra special for her birthday each year. Last year it was the Mint Slice Cake. The year before was the Lady Gaga Cake. And before that was the Lemon Meringue Cheesecake. This year she requested something with passionfruit and lemon in it. I decided I wanted to make her a birthday trifle. I love trifles. I may have gotten slightly carried away. I drew a diagram and everything.

Behold, my Seven Layer Passionfruit and Lemon Trifle. It includes (starting from the bottom); a Passion Pop mousse, lemon cake, lemon and passionfruit curd, passiona (passionfruit soda) jelly, chocolate and passionfruit macarons, whipped cream with fresh passionfruit and mini meringues on top. The inspiration for this epic trifle came from several different places. But before I tell you about it, I need to tell you about what happened while I was making this trifle. The event that will forever be known to me as The Trifle Disaster of 2012.

I started this trifle two days in advance because I knew that all the different elements would need time to be prepped and chilled. Day one went smoothly, I made the passion pop mousse, the cake, curd, jelly and macarons. The next morning I worked at a leisurely pace to make the meringues and cream and it was going very smoothly. I was pleased. I had been taking a shot of each layer as I added it for the animated GIF further down in this post. All the components were done and I just had to take a shot of it before adding the last meringue layer. I turned my back for a second to find my camera and turned back just in time to watch the trifle slide off the spot where I had placed it and completely upend itself on my carpet. SPLAT. Completely destroyed. I screamed. A horror movie kind of scream, followed by a full-blown hysterical meltdown. A day and a half of work down the drain and I had to either give up or START ALL OVER AGAIN. Ugly crying ensued.

Yep. This kind of shit happens to me all the time. Because I'm unco and careless and messy. Like the time I dropped my camera into the middle of some freshly baked cupcakes. This time some kind of insane determination took over, and I refused to be defeated by my clumsiness. I scooped the mess off the carpet, threw it in the bin and started over (after A talked me down from my hysteria and bought me a whole bunch of new passionfruits). I made an absolute mess of my kitchen but by the end of the second day I had nearly recovered. It wasn't quite as neat and perfect as the first time around, but it was good enough. By the next morning I had a fully assembled trifle. Sighs of relief were abundant.

Most of the inspiration for this dessert came from a great passionfruit dessert I had at Hemingway's Manly which used Passion Pop, the iconic Aussie chick drink. I thought it was a great way to add a hint of nostalgia for our teenage years. It was not surprising that I got my ID checked when I went to buy a bottle of the passionfruit flavoured sparkling wine, they must have thought I was 16 or something. But it was worth it, the passion pop mousse is a delight to eat. It might be my favourite layer of this entire trifle. The pretty cubes of passionfruit soda flavoured jelly and crunchy mini meringues on top were inspired by some fabulous desserts that I tried at Quay recently. I decided on a whim to add the layer of macarons, remembering how pretty they looked in a Donna Hay trifle recipe from a while back. I made a chocolate passionfruit ganache for the macarons, which is one of my favourite macaron flavours. The moisture from the other layers does make the macarons turn soggy pretty quickly, so the last three layers are best left to be assembled right before serving. So, this weekend I made TWO trifles. I am insane but it was worth it because it's for my bestie and she deserves it, she is amazing. If you are as insane as me, I have included the recipe below. I advise you not to dump the entire contents on the floor right after you finish making it. I think I lost several years off my life this weekend. P.S. See if you can spot where disaster struck and I had to start over in the gif below. It's not the best gif ever, I was shooting handheld and had no idea if I was taking it from the same angle each time. Plus it's shot with two different trifles :P

Passionfruit & Lemon Trifle with Macarons

(I used a 15-19cm wide x 15cm tall trifle bowl)

Layer 1: Passion Pop Mousse

I made a half batch of Sprinkle Bakes Champagne Mousse, replacing the champagne with Passion Pop. If passion pop is unavailable you can replace it with sparkling mixed with passionfruit pulp to taste. Pour mousse mixture directly into the bottom of the trifle bowl and refrigerate until set, at least 2 hours.

Layer 2: Lemon Cake

Prepare the lemon cake from this recipe, using a 17cm round cake tin instead of a rectangular tin. You may need to add 5 minutes to the baking time. Trim the edges of the cake if needed so that it will fit tightly over the top of the mousse layer.

Layer 3: Lemon & Passionfruit Curd

3 passionfruit

Juice and grated zest of 1/2 a lemon (about 2 tbsp juice)

2 eggs + 1 egg yolk

100g (bit less than 1/2 cup) sugar

70g (5 tbsp) butter, softened

Place all ingredients except the butter in a saucepan and place on low heat. Stir continously (and I mean it, stop watching it and it will turn to scrambled eggs within seconds), until it's thick and coats the back of a wooden spoon, about 5-8 minutes. Remove from the heat, strain to remove passionfruit seeds (if you prefer) and whisk in butter until smooth. Pour into a bowl and cover surface with clingfilm. Keep chilled in the fridge until ready to spread over top of cake layer.

Layer 4: Passiona Jelly

2 tbsp powdered gelatine

200ml (about 3/4 cup) + 600ml Passiona (about 2 1/2 cups) (or any passionfruit flavoured soda, I used Kirk's pasito)

Place 200ml passiona and powdered gelatine in a small saucepan and stir over medium heat until the gelatine is well dissolved. Pour gelatine mixture plus 600ml passiona into a cake tin or rectangular tray to set (I used a 24x32cm tray so that the jelly set 1cm thick). Chill in fridge until set, then cut using a long sharp knife into 1cm cubes. Keep chilled in the fridge until ready to sprinkle over curd layer.

Layer 5: Passionfruit Chocolate Macarons

I used my plain macaron shell recipe, using yellow gel colouring to tint the shells and only piping regular 4cm rounds. For the ganache, I placed 150g chopped dark chocolate and pulp and seeds from 1 passionfruit in a bowl and then heated 100ml heavy cream in a small saucepan until nearly boiling and poured it over the chocolate. Leave it to melt for 5 minutes and then whisk until smooth (if there are still unmelted bits, place bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and stir until smooth). Strain mixture to remove seeds, then chill until thick and cooled but still pipable. Pipe or spoon between macaron shells. Refrigerate in an airtight container until you are ready to assemble your trifle for serving.

Layer 6: Passionfruit Cream

300ml (about 1/4 cup) thickened/whipping cream

1 tbsp icing sugar, sifted

1 passionfruit

In a large mixing bowl, beat cream and sugar on high speed with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Fold through pulp and seeds from passionfruit. Chill until ready to assemble your trifle for serving.

Layer 7: Mini Meringues

I followed the instructions from Butter Me Up Brooklyn (but mine look no where near as pretty!), minus the orange zest. Keep in an airtight container until you are ready to assemble your trifle. Right before serving, assemble macaron layer, cream layer and place the mini meringues on top. Serve straight away.

Banana Scones with Whipped Honey Butter

2012-04-30T09:00:00.000+10:00

My love of scones is well-documented. But one thing has always irked me about my homemade scones; they're not very photogenic. In fact, the lumpiness and uneven shape of my original CWA scone post makes me cringe so much that I keep wanted to redo the photos. But then I made this batch of Banana Scones with Whipped Honey Butter, and I realised that all my scones look pretty lumpy and uneven. It's my fault, I'm terrified of over-working the dough because there is nothing worse than a tough, rock-hard scone. I want my scones to be fluffy clouds of deliciousness. So I guess I still have a way to go before I improve the look of my scones to the level that you see from the CWA ladies.

So I may not be 100% happy with how these look, but I do love how they taste. It's a great way to use up those bananas that are too ripe, and that extra cream you might have in your fridge (I always have extra cream but that's me). The scones are super soft and light, and they are really meant to be served with some kind of sweet topping, like the whipped honey butter and strawberry jam, or cream & jam. The scones themselves are not sweet at all, so you'll have to add some icing sugar and spices to the scone mixture if you plan on eating them on their own.

Originally I was planning to make some honeycomb butter to go with these scones, but I was too lazy to make my own sugar honeycomb, and I managed to eat the two Crunchie bars that I bought for it. Chocolate bars do not last very long in my house. But this fluffy honey butter works just as well with the banana scones, with the added sweetness and just a hint of cinnamon. It's so good melted on a warm, freshly baked scone.

My favourite part about making these scones was opening up my oven to be greeted with the smell of the warm banana in these scones. It smells amazing! Because the scones are so light the flavour is not super intense, but it's definitely noticeable. I'm quite happy to eat these for breakfast, brunch, tea or dessert. In fact I've been slowly making my way through a batch over the last day, zapping them in the microwave until they're piping hot, slathering them with the honey butter and strawberry jam and enjoying them with a giant steaming mug of tea.

Banana Scones with Whipped Honey Butter

(makes 9-10 scones, adapted from my plain scone recipe)

300g (about 2 1/3 US cups flour, closer to 2 metric cups) self-raising flour, sifted

1 over-ripe medium banana, well mashed (about 1/3 cup)

1/4 tsp salt

100ml (about 1/2 cup minus 1 tbsp) pure/pouring cream (min 35% fat, heavy whipping cream in the US)

160ml (about 2/3 cup) milk

Note: if you are not planning to make the butter or to serve with jam, I recommend you add about 2 tbsp sifted icing sugar and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon to the flour mixture

For the butter: (Alternatively you could make Bill's honeycomb butter)

115g (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room-temperature

4 tbsp honey

1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

To serve: strawberry (or any other flavoured) jam, can replace butter with clotted cream

Remove the butter ahead of time to allow it to soften. Preheat oven to 230°C (445°F), 220 °C (430°F) fan-forced. Sift flour and salt together in a large mixing bowl and make a well in the centre, place the mashed banana in the centre. Gradually pouring the cream into the bowl, begin to cut cream and banana into dry ingredients with a flat bladed knife so that it starts to come together, then gradually add milk (using the same cutting motion with the knife to combine the ingredients) until there is enough to form a soft dough. (I usually save a small amount of milk to brush the tops of the scones)

Working quickly and gently, gather dough together on a floured bench. Try to handle the dough as little as possible, using lightly floured hands to stop dough sticking to you, and pat the dough into a rectangle about 3-3.5cm thick. You can lightly knead the dough with your hands for a smoother appearance but overknead it and your scones will be tough and hard.

Cut out round using a 5-6cm scone cutter (push the cutter into the dough, don't twist) and place next to each other in a lined/greased heavy based baking dish that has sides (scones baked close together will rise higher and thus be lighter). I usually manage to cut about 5-6 scones, then I pat the scraps together and cut out another 2 and finally pat the scraps from that together into a ball to form the final scone. Lightly brush the tops of the scones with some extra milk using a pastry brush.

Bake for 10-15 mins, until scones are cooked through and tops are lightly browned. While scones are baking, prepare the butter; chop the softened butter into small cubes. Place the butter, cinnamon and honey in a large mixing bowl and beat well on high speed with an electric mixer until smooth and fluffy. Place in a serving dish and store in the fridge until ready to serve. Cover with a clean tea towel to keep scones soft, serve immediately with honey butter. Strawberry jam is also a great addition to the butter. You can substitute the butter with clotted cream. Store leftover scones in an airtight container, warm up in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Best eaten on the same day but scones can also be stored in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Rolo Chocolate Brownie Cake

2012-04-23T13:25:00.000+10:00

After the disaster that was my Twix Cake experience I thought I would be avoiding anything chocolate and caramel-related for a long time. But caramelly, chocolately goodness is an evil temptress and I was itching to make a Rolo covered cake. Rolos are an awesome baking ingredient. I mean, look at these beauties. I had also promised Tomred a birthday cake for today (Happy Birthday Tomred!). Considering the fact that for Tomred's birthday last year I came up with one of my favourite inventions ever, the Tim Tam Cake, this Rolo Cake had big shoes to fill.

About 5 seconds after deciding to make this big-shoe Rolo Cake for Tomred's birthday, I forgot all about it. Completely, totally forgot about it until I was just starting to wake up yesterday morning. A little, nagging thought was poking the edge of my brain and stopping me from getting out of bed to make the banana scones I was planning and then OH SHIZZ I remembered about the cake. I then spent the rest of the morning running around my suburb trying to find ANYWHERE that sold Rolos, because (as per usual) the one thing that I desperately needed was nowhere to be found. I may have been a little too excited when I finally found them and bought about 10 tubes.

When I finally got around to making this cake, I realised that it would not be a cake for the faint-hearted. Two layers of fudgy brownie cake (adapted from Lisa's PX Brownie Cake), with a pack of Rolos baked into each layer, a (salted) caramel (dulce de leche to be specific) filling just like a Rolo, covered in a milk chocolate ganache and topped off with a mountain of Rolos. Yep. I won't even try to pretend this isn't decadent and over the top. But I DID try to make it less sickly-sweet and unbalanced by halving the sugar and eggs in the cake. But there is a lot of butter, which is always something I always freak out about when I make a brownie recipe. I used salted butter in the cake and sea salt in the dulce de leche, and made the ganache milk instead of dark chocolate to make it less rich. In the end it's still quite rich, but not enough to make you feel totally ill after a slice. ~~Or three.~~ But one slice is enough!

It was so much easier boiling up a can of sweetened condensed milk to make the caramel this time around, rather than worrying about candy thermometers and hot sugar syrups. And it's also so easy to spread swirls of 'rustic' (*cough* lazy & messy *cough*) ganache on the outside. If you're wondering how you're able to see a slice of this birthday cake before the birthday boy has seen it; my workmates and I have an unspoken agreement. They help me finish off most of the baked goods that I make for this blog no matter how strange my experiments are, and they also understand that every birthday cake they get from me will probably have a slice pre-removed for blogging purposes. Hopefully they'll enjoy this cake as much as all the other cakes minus one slice that they've tried.

Rolo Chocolate Brownie Cake with Caramel Filling

(makes one 20cm cake, adapted from spicy ice cream's PX Brownie Cake)

400g (about 3.5 sticks) butter (I used salted but unsalted is fine too)

200g (7oz) dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

4 large eggs

200g (1 scant cup) caster sugar (superfine sugar, using white sugar is fine too)

200g (about 1 2/3 cups) plain flour

2 tubes Rolos + (optional) 4+ tubes Rolos to decorate the top of cake

1 can (395g/14oz) dulce de leche (instructions on how to make it here) or store-bought thick caramel
Note: you can replace the dulce de leche and put a layer of Rolos in the middle of the cake instead, now that would be crazy awesome.

For the chocolate ganache:

400g (about 14oz) good quality milk or dark chocolate, finely chopped (I used milk)

300ml (1 1/4 cup) pure/pouring cream (min 35% fat, heavy whipping cream in the US)

Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F), grease and line 2 x 20cm springform tins (or you can bake one cake after another if you only have one tin). Melt butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering, stirring occasionally until smooth. Whisk eggs and caster sugar in an electric mixer until thick and pale (about 3-5 minutes), fold through chocolate mixture then fold in flour until just combined. Pour batter into the prepared tins, smooth top and (if you wish) press rolos over the surface of each cake (1 pack for each) and bake until just firm to touch (25-30 minutes). Cool completely in pan, then very carefully transfer one cake to a serving dish. If you are making your own caramel, make sure you prep it ahead of time so it is cool and ready to be spread at this point.

Whisk dulce de leche to remove any lumps, add a couple pinches of crushed sea salt if you would like to have salted caramel filling. Whisk until combined, then spread a generous layer of caramel over the top of the first cake. Refrigerate this for at least 30 mins, this will keep your dulce de leche firm. Carefully sandwich the second cake on top (upside-down). Don't worry if either of your cakes crack, icing covers everything. Prepare the ganache; place chopped chocolate in a large heatproof mixing bowl. Place cream in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring just to the boil, then remove from heat and pour hot cream over the top of chopped chocolate and leave in bowl for 5 mins. Use a whisk to bring mixture together, if there are still unmelted lumps of chocolate after this, you can place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir until it is completely melted. Chill in the fridge until thick but spreadable and just under room temperature (I sped up this process by placing the bowl in the freezer and whisking the mixture every 5 minutes until it was ready). Using a spatula, spread ganache over the top of the cake. Decorate cake with extra Rolos, I chopped half of them in half so you could see the caramel innards. Can be served immediately, or stored in the fridge until ready to serve. Can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for several days.

Heart Polka Dot Macarons & Vanilla Bean Blueberry Cupcakes

2012-04-16T09:00:00.002+10:00

I was feeling a little selfish when I decided to make these. I was meant to be baking up something sweet to bring along to a BBQ, but I used it as an excuse to practice piping my heart-shaped macarons (which I have made twice before) before the wedding, plus I felt like making something pretty rather than coming up with some crazy flavour combination. Early in the morning I was determined to make some brightly coloured cupcakes with heart macarons on top. Three hours later, and two inedible batches of hideous failcakes in the bin and I was about ready to tear my hair out. Maybe it was the curse of Friday the 13th, even the simplest things were going wrong.

When I'm having a seriously bad day in the kitchen the best thing for me to do is to put my feet up and try again another day. But my stubbornness prevailed and I pushed on, falling back to my foolproof cupcake recipe, which is so easy and never lets me down. At the last minute I decided to throw in 2 punnets of blueberries instead of 1, which ended up being wayyyy too much fruit for the batter. But it still tasted pretty good. Simple, but classic.

I made the macarons in a bright teal shade, I love teal. In a random spasm of sprinkle-loving insanity, I grabbed some white heart-shaped sprinkles and dotted them over the surface of the macarons. I wish I had the regular round confetti sprinkles but the heart ones were kinda adorable too. It's probably an unnecessary embellishment, but it's damn cute. It was comforting that my macarons turned out well, considering all the issues I had with my over-complicated cupcakes. Obviously it's just better to keep things simple sometimes so I went with a old-faithful icing flavour; vanilla bean.

I whipped up the icing with a ton of vanilla bean, I just love the way the little black dots are speckled throughout the fluffy icing. I also added some natural pink food colouring to the icing to give it a light pink tinge as I was inspired by the pink & teal colour combination of this beautiful cake by Sweetapolita. I'm a little bit in love with how dainty and girly the whole thing looks. These cupcakes and macarons are nothing particularly original or different but it looks and tastes fantastic.

Heart Polka Dot Macarons & Vanilla Bean Blueberry Cupcakes
(makes 12 cupcakes, plus a few extra macarons)
For the macarons: (if you are a beginner with macarons, read up and practice plain macarons first. BraveTart has lots of useful advice and info on the subject)
100g aged egg whites (you can use fresh eggs too, just make sure they are room temperature. I always use fresh these days, and zap it in the microwave on defrost for 10 seconds)
110g almond meal, at room temperature and well sifted
200g icing sugar
50g caster sugar
Optional: 1 tsp powdered egg whites (available from The Essential Ingredient), helps to stabilise egg whites but is not necessary
To decorate: blue/green food colouring (powdered or gel), white sprinkles

For the cupcakes:
1/3 cup freshly squeezed orange or mandarin juice
2 eggs
125g (1 stick plus about 1 tbsp) unsalted butter, at room temperature
155g (3/4 cup) sugar
225g (about 2 + 3/4 cups) self-raising flour
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 punnet (150g) fresh or frozen blueberries

For the vanilla bean icing:
250g unsalted butter
575g (about 4.5 cups) icing sugar , sifted
1/4 cup milk
1 vanilla bean pod, seeds scraped and pod discarded (or 1 tsp vanilla bean paste/vanilla extract)
(I also added a few drops of natural pink food colouring for decoration)

Prepare the macarons first; line two baking sheets with baking paper. Place icing sugar in food processor and pulse for a minute to remove any lumps. Stir in almond meal and pulse for about 30 seconds to combine. Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside. Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites and egg white powder in a medium mixing bowl until the egg white powder dissolves and it reaches soft peaks. With the mixer on high speed, gradually add sugar and beat until it reaches stiff peaks. (You can add the blue/green food colouring to the meringue as you are beating it to stiff peaks, it makes it easier to adjust how much colouring to add. Otherwise add it in the next step.)

Add meringue to your dry mixture and mix, quickly at first to break down the bubbles in the egg white (you really want to beat all the large bubbles out of the mixture, be rough!), then mix carefully as the dry mixture becomes incorporated and it starts to become shiny again. Take care not to overmix, the mixture should flow like lava and a streak of mixture spread over the surface of the rest of the mixture should disappear after about 30 seconds. Place mixture in a piping bag with a 1cm round piping tip. Pipe heart shapes using a 1cm piping tip and piping fat 'V' shapes (see end of this post for a video example). Tap baking sheets carefully and firmly on the benchtop a couple times to remove any large bubbles. If you wish, you can decorate the shells with sprinkles to create a polka dot effect, I used the softer (not nonpareils) heart-shaped sprinkles.

Leave to dry for about an hour, so that when you press the surface of one gently it does not break. This will help prevent any cracking and help the feet to form on the macs. These macarons seem to need a longer drying time than regular round ones as they are prone to cracking. Preheat your oven to 140-150°C (285-300°C), depending on your oven. Place on top of an overturned roasting tray or another baking sheet if your sheets are not professional grade, for better heat distribution. Bake for 20-25 minutes, depending on the size of your shells. Carefully test if the base of the shell is ready by gently lifting one and if it's still soft and sticking to the baking paper, then it needs to bake for a few minutes longer. Remove from the oven and cool on the tray for a few minutes, then gently remove from the sheet and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Make the cupcakes; Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Place sugar and butter in a food processor and pulse until smooth, then add juice, eggs, flour and vanilla and pulse until just smooth. (If you don't have a processor, cream butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer at high speed, beat in eggs one at a time and then fold juice, flour and blueberries into the mixture until smooth.) Fold in blueberries with a spatula and then spoon into a 12-hole cupcake tray lined with papers. Bake for about 20 minutes or until cupcakes are golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre of a cupcake comes out clean (ignoring blueberry juice). Remove from the oven and cool in tin for 5 minutes and then cool completely on a wire rack.

Prepare the icing; remove the butter from the fridge 30 minutes before starting. Place in a large mixing bowl and beat at high speed, gradually adding icing sugar (and adding the milk and vanilla about halfway through) and beating until light and fluffy. Place in a piping bag, pipe on top of cupcakes and sandwich between macarons. Place macarons on top of cupcakes and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or overnight in an airtight container. Remove from the fridge and allow to come back to room temperature before serving. Can be stored in the fridge for several days.

Lemon Cake Squares with Cherry Meringue Icing

2012-04-10T09:00:00.004+10:00

Ahhh I love long weekends. All that extra sleep, lazing around catching up on TV shows and doing all those extra chores you usually don't have the time for. And of course, more baking time. I was inspired to make this bright and light cake slice because of the beautifully sunny weather we had this weekend, and the big bunch of white daisies that I picked up on a whim. I really love daisies and I wanted to bake something that was equally sunny and happy. So here are some delicate Lemon Cake Squares with a Cherry Meringue Icing. They are a lot lighter than a big slice of cake, which makes them perfect for afternoon tea or brunch.

I adapted the lemon cake squares from a lemon pound cake recipe and it turned out just like I hoped it would. There's not much rising agent in the cake so it doesn't have much height, but it's not too dense or heavy. It has a lovely fine crumb, crisp golden edges and it's bursting with lemon-y goodness thanks to all the lemon juice and zest in the batter, leaving a really gorgeous lemon flavour lingering in your mouth. It's almost like a lemon brownie but it's more cakey than fudgy. So derrricioussss!

Rather than making a regular buttercream or glaze, I decided that a very fluffy Italian meringue icing would be a great match for the not-as-fluffy cake. I had heaps of frozen cherries leftover so I defrosted and pureed them, folding them through the Italian meringue to give it a beautiful pink tinge. The cherry flavour works well against the lemon in the cake too. I'm not usually a huge meringue fan, but I do love the velvety texture of the cooked Italian meringue, it looks so pretty spread over the top of this cake. It's sorta like a marshmallow cream spread, so fluffy! (But not too sweet) If you're not too keen on that idea, you can alway substitute it with a butter icing, or a glaze of some sort.

Anyway I hope everyone had a good long weekend, I have to spend the next few days weaning myself off the chocolate egg diet. Back to work we go, but at least I can comfort myself with these pretty cake squares. And by the way, thanks to anyone who has commented, tweeted or emailed me photos/feedback of their own versions of the Cheesecake Filled Chocolate Easter Eggs, it makes me super happy to see all the people who were inspired to try it out after seeing my post :) Also, I honestly didn't realise it wasn't that easy to find hollow eggs in the US, they're so commonplace in Australia! That was a bit of a bummer, I love hollow chocolate easter eggs!

Lemon Cake Squares with Cherry Meringue Icing
(makes about 16 squares, cake recipe loosely adapted from Martha Stewart's Lemon Pound Cake)
70g (5 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened, plus more for greasing tin
170g (about 3/4 cup) sugar
125g (1 cup) plain (all-purpose) flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking (bicarb) soda
4 tbsp fresh lemon juice, plus finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1/4 cup milk
2 large eggs

For the icing:(meringue icing can be substituted with a regular butter icing or a glaze)
2 large egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
170g (about 3/4 cup) sugar
3 tbsp water
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup (about 70g) fresh or frozen pitted cherries, pureed (if frozen, drain excess liquid before pureeing) (can be replaced with strawberry or other berries)

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F), grease and line the base of a 17x27cm rectangular slice/brownie tins (or a 20cm square cake tin) with baking paper. Whisk together flour, salt and baking soda in a bowl and set aside. Stir milk and lemon juice together in a cup. Place softened butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat on high speed with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy, about two minutes. Add zest, and add eggs one and a time, beating until well combined. Reduce speed to medium-low and add half the flour mixture, followed by half the milk mixture mixing until just combined, then add the rest of the flour followed by the rest of the milk and beat until smooth. Pour batter into prepared tin and bake for about 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean and the cake is golden brown on the outside. Cool in tin on a wire rack for 10 minutes then carefully remove from tin and cool completely on wire rack.

Prepare the icing; in a large mixing bowl beat egg whites and cream of tartar to soft peaks. Place sugar, salt and water in a small saucepan with a sugar thermometer attached. Stir over medium heat until the mixture dissolves, increase heat and let it come to the boil. Cook without stirring until it reaches 115°C (238°F) (about two minutes), then remove from the heat and very carefully pour a thin stream of the hot sugar syrup over the egg whites as you beat them at high speed until stiff peaks form. Gently fold in the cherry puree. Spread an even layer of icing over the top of the cooled cake with a spatula. Chill in an airtight container in the fridge for about 30 minutes, then cut into equal sized squares before serving. Can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for several days, you can also make the cake a day or so in advance and prepare the meringue right before serving.

P.S. I nearly forgot to mention, I finally got around to putting a Pinterest button on my posts for all the people who have been asking! It's hiding next to the Facebook 'like' button at the end of each post. You can't see it from the home page of my blog, so you'll have to click on the title of each blog to open the post page to find it. I freakin' love Pinterest. I also included a link to my own Pinterest, and created a board with pins from my blog for anyone who wants to repin my stuff easily. I was reluctant to do it at first (in the same way that I am still resisting the urge to make a Facebook page for my blog due to sheer laziness) but went ahead and made it after getting a few requests. So feel free to follow me on Pinterest!

Cheesecake Filled Chocolate Easter Eggs

2012-04-02T09:00:00.022+10:00

It's hard to believe Easter is just around the corner. This year is going too fast for me to keep up! I swear it felt like yesterday that I was laughing at how quickly the Easter displays went up to replace the Christmas stuff at the beginning of the year, it has managed to creep up on me. My days are getting busier and busier, so I am easily drawn to the simpler, quicker desserts that I can pull together at the last minute. This recipe could not be any easier; there's no baking involved and it takes hardly any time to create these cute Cheesecake-Filled Chocolate Easter Eggs with a 'yolk' made of passionfruit sauce.

I took it as a compliment when Lisa (who hates eating eggs) said that these looked so much like real eggs that she was a little creeped out by them. The texture of the chilled cheesecake and the passionfruit sauce looks just right, making it a great filling for some regular hollow chocolate easter egg shells that I cut the tops off. I was inspired by the chocolate-mousse filled Easter egg cups that I've seen on sale and decided to do my own spin on that idea but with a cheesecake filling and a deliciously fruity filling in the centre that would look like an egg yolk. So it looks a little like a creme egg. It's not the same but it's just as tasty.

I used my regular chilled cheesecake filling recipe for this, and made up a sauce using passionfruit pulp, apricot jam and a little bit of butter. There's enough sourness from the passionfruit (and the lemon in the cheesecake) to make this a light, creamy and not overly sweet dessert. And it does not get easier than this. It's quite interesting to see how simple this recipe is compared to the Easter Bunny Macarons (including all the hilarious scenarios that I got carried away with while photographing them) and Hot Cross Bun Ice Cream Sandwiches that I came up with last year. This recipe is much quicker and less complicated, but hopefully just as enjoyable to eat!

Alright, I admit I may have taken a few too many photos of these little treats. Probably more than was necessary. But I am still a little scarred from all the trouble I had with the ugliness that way my Twix Cake so I was just happy to have something cute and not falling apart to photograph. Surprisingly A was all excited when he saw these in the fridge and quickly ate two of them, I can never guess which of my recipes he'll end up liking but he was a big fan of the fluffy cheesecake filling and the small hit of passionfruit in the centre. Technically it's more of a cheesecake mousse since there's no crust (though you could put some crust at the bottom of each egg if you wanted) and it's not baked, or a cake.

So if you're looking for a really, really, REALLY easy and light dessert to serve up after a big meal during the Easter break then these are for you. They can be eaten with a small spoon or devoured like a creme egg, whatever floats your boat. I bought the chocolate eggs from the supermarket, but if you're feeling really adventurous you could try making your own. Any plain, regular-sized hollow chocolate eggs will do. I got some very pretty ones that had all different flavours, I especially liked the look of the white chocolate and strawberry shell below. I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter holidays, I am looking forward to some time off!

Cheesecake-Filled Chocolate Easter Egg Cups
(makes 6-8 regular sized easter egg cheesecakes, you may need to adjust the amount of cheesecake filling depending on the size of your eggs)
6-8 hollow chocolate easter egg shells (mine were from the supermarket, approx 6cm tall and 4cm at its widest width, ~~apparently they're not so easy to find in the US so if anyone can find a good online store let me know and I'll link it,~~ apparently you can find them in the US at See's Candy and Costco, thanks Birgit! And HERE at Amazon.com, thanks Tuscadero! Or make your own here. Another commenter rolled melted chocolate around the inside of a cleaned out egg shell and then peeled away the shell when it was set.)
150g (about 5oz) cream cheese, softened
30g (about 1/4 cup) icing sugar (confectioners' sugar), sifted
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
125ml (about 1/2 cup) thickened/heavy whipping cream
For the 'yolk': 1 passionfruit, 1 tbsp apricot jam, 1 tbsp (about 15g) unsalted butter (passionfruit juice can be replaced with about 2 tsp of freshly squeezed orange, mandarin juice or mango, peach nectar, you can adjust the amount of juice to taste), alternatively you can substitute with any fruit curd you prefer.
Optional: you can include some cheesecake crust crumbs at the base of each egg if you really want to include some sort of crust into the dessert.

Using a small serrated knife, carefully remove the tops of the chocolate eggs. (A couple of people have mentioned that heating the knife under warm water will make this easier and neater, thanks for the tip! But personally I like having the jagged edges.) Place the eggs in the fridge to keep them chilled while you prepare the cheesecake filling, you can use egg cups or your fridge egg holder (Don't use an egg carton like me. I shouldn't have used it but I was desperate at the time, I bought the egg cups the day after!). Place the cream cheese, icing sugar, lemon juice and vanilla in a large mixing bowl and beat on high until the mixture is smooth and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes. Set aside and carefully whip the thickened cream in a separate mixing bowl to stiff peaks (watch it closely as thickened cream is very easy to overwhip and split). Using a whisk, gently combine the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture until it is smooth. Carefully spoon or pipe the mixture into the prepared chocolate shells. Chill eggs for at least 30 minutes to allow it to set.

Prepare the passionfruit sauce; strain passionfruit pulp to remove the seeds and place in a small saucepan with the apricot jam and butter. Gently heat on low, whisking until the butter melts and the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat and allow to cool. (If your apricot jam is chunky you should strain the sauce at this point) Place in the fridge and chill until it thickens slightly. Using a small spoon, carefully scoop out a hole in the centre of each cheesecake, about 1 cm deep and wide. Fill hole with some of the chilled passionfruit sauce and return the eggs to the fridge to chill again for at least 30 mins. Remove eggs from the fridge about 10 minutes before serving. Can be made 2-3 days in advance, keep eggs in the fridge in a holder inside an airtight container or covered tightly with clingfilm to stop them drying out.

Twix Cake

2012-03-27T09:00:00.007+11:00

This cake is now known to me as The Cake That the Entire Universe Conspired Against. Okay it was more just my foolish mistakes but I'm frustrated at the moment and would rather blame the universe. This week I am celebrating 3 years since I wrote my first entry on this blog. Happy 3rd Birthday raspberri cupcakes! All I wanted to do this week was to conjure up a pretty little cake to celebrate it with you, a cake that is inspired by my Tim Tam Cake, which I made nearly a year ago. But alas, it wasn't meant to be. I wanted it to be a giant cake version of one of my childhood favourites, Twix. A treat that has followed me wherever I have lived in the world and helped to feed my sweet tooth (and my cavities). Sure, I know that people have attempted to make giant versions of Twix bars before, but I wanted this to be similar to my Tim Tam Cake, a tribute cake version rather than a larger replica. I thought it would be pretty straightforward; my favourite yellow cake mixture on the base, a gooey caramel layer on top, sliced into two skinny finger-shaped cakes and covered with a layer of rippled milk chocolate ganache. But no. My first attempt at the cake was much too flat and had to be redone. My second attempt produced a decent cake layer, but then I walked away from the caramel just long enough to completely over-cook it and it turned into a rock-hard layer of impenetrable toffee, which I only realised after I had poured it directly on top of the cake, decorated with ganache and tried to photograph. RAGE. Plus the proportions were still a bit off, so I was determined to make the appropriate adjustments and perfect it on attempt #3.

I baked the cake in a smaller, skinnier tin. It turned out just right. I made the caramel creamier and softer and set it in a separate tin. I sliced everything up, assembled it easily and covered it with a glossy layer of chocolate. Because I wanted to keep that shiny layer of chocolate for photographs I made the mistake of leaving the cake out in the open in my warm kitchen for more than half the day while I was busy with some wedding planning crap. And I returned to DISASTER. My shiny, pretty cake had literally flopped. The caramel had softened slightly in the warmer temperature, which I should have known (and have been kicking myself for ignoring), and because my cake stand is slightly tilted, the caramel layer had started to slide to one side, making HUGE, ugly cracks in the top of my ganache layer. A lot of swearing ensued. Followed by a lot of desperate attempts to press the ganache layer back together with my hands making the situation even worse, which is why you can see that the surface of the cake went from a shiny top layer (as seen in the process photos at the bottom of this post), to the rough, mottled mess that you will notice in the other couple of photos I was barely able to salvage from this situation. Ugh.

The good news is, the cake tastes pretty bloody good. Pretty much as close to being a twix cake as I had hoped. At least it achieved that in taste, even if it failed in looks. Just DON'T leave it out at room temperatures or warmer for many, many hours like silly me. I know it looks like a LOT of caramel on there. I won't lie, there is quite a lot of caramel because I wanted to make the ratios similar to the actual Twix bar, but the cakes are pretty small (together the two cakes are less than half the size of the Tim Tam Cake) and the caramel is salted to help balance it out. I also tried to reduce the sugar in the cake to stop it from being sickly sweet. But still it's a lot of caramel for one mouthful of cake so a small slice of this cake is more than enough to satisfy. I just wish I had some decent photos of it to share with you, I very nearly didn't post this recipe but then I would have had nothing to celebrate this week with. Oh well, it almost seems appropriate that I celebrate a blog anniversary with a little bit of rage and semi-fail cake, I always said that I would share my baking failures along with the successes.

I tend to forget that I have no luck when caramel is involved, and everything gets incredibly messy in my kitchen when there's chocolate. After those three futile attempts at this cake I admitted defeat, there was no way I had the time or energy to try again, especially when I got so close on the last one! Yep, it might be a while before I can fully enjoy a Twix bar again. But maybe you will have better luck than I did, since you can learn from my mistakes. It's a great cake for a Twix or caramel lover, and not too hard to assemble. Sure the caramel can be a little scary for a beginner and you need a sugar thermometer for it, but if you have all the equipment prepared it's very straightforward. And totally worth it when you get to taste that creamy, smooth caramel. Anyway, here's to another year of sharing my recipes (and sometimes a little rage)!

Twix Cake
(makes two small cakes, serves 8-10, salted caramel recipe adapted from David Lebovitz's recipe, cake adapted from my regular yellow cake recipe)
For the cake:
90g (about 3/4 cup) plain flour (all-purpose)
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
60ml (1/4 cup) milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
60g (1/4 cup) sugar (preferably caster/superfine)
60g (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 medium egg

For the caramel: (note, make sure you read David Lebovitz's post for tips if you are new to making caramel)
1 cup heavy cream (use pure/pouring cream in Australia)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or bean paste
Heaped 1/2 teaspoon sea salt flakes
1/2 cup (160 g) light corn syrup or golden syrup (I used Lyle’s Golden Syrup)
1 cup (200 g) sugar
4 tbsp (60 g), butter, cubed, at room temperature

For the milk chocolate ganache:
200g (7 oz) milk chocolate, finely chopped (please use good quality chocolate)
150ml (2/3 cup) pure/pouring cream (or heavy whipping cream in the US, min 35% fat unthickened)
Optional: crushed Twix bars to place between the cake and caramel, to give it some crunch

Grease and line two 20cm x 10cm (8x4inch) loaf tins (standard sized tin, it actually measured closer to 21x11cm when I checked it) with baking paper. If you only have one tin available, you will have to bake the cake first and then reuse the tin for the caramel. Prepare the cake; preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. Mix milk and vanilla together in a measuring jug.

Using an electric mixer on low speed, beat sugar and butter in a large bowl until blended. Increase speed to high and beat for 2 mins or until pale and creamy. Reduce speed to medium, add egg and beat well until smooth. Alternately add flour mix and milk mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture (I did it by adding 1/3 of of the dry mixture followed by 1/2 of the wet mixture at a time). Beat until smooth, occasionally scraping bowl with a spatula. Pour batter into one of the prepared tins, smooth top with a spatula and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer into the centre comes out clean and the outside is golden. Cool in tin for 5 mins and then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Prepare the caramel; Place cream, vanilla, salt and butter in a small saucepan and gently heat, stirring every now and then until the mixture just comes to the boil. Cover and set aside, keeping it warm while you prepare the sugar syrup. In a medium or large heavy based saucepan fitted with a candy thermometer, place golden syrup and sugar and place on medium heat, stirring gently until the sugar dissolves. Once the mixture is melted together and the sugar is evenly moistened, only stir is as necessary to keep it from getting any hot spots. Cook until the syrup reaches 150°C(300°F). Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the warm cream mixture (take care as it will bubble up a lot) until it is smooth and even. Return to the heat and cook the mixture to 120°C(245°F). Remove the pan from the heat and stir until smooth, then pour into the other prepared tin. Leave to cool completely (or chill for about half an hour to allow it to set). Cut the cake and caramel layers into two long halves, and place the caramel layers on top of the cake (you may need to trim off some of the caramel to get the proportions right). Place cakes on a cake stand or plate, I recommend placing the stand on a large piece of baking paper to catch any chocolate that might drip off in the next part.

Prepare the ganache; place chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl and gently heat cream in a small saucepan until it just comes to the boil, then pour hot cream over the chocolate and set aside for 5 minutes to allow the chocolate to melt. Using a whisk, gently combine mixture until it is smooth (if there are still lumps, place the bowl over a pot of simmering water and stir until they are gone). Set aside to cool, when it has returned to room temperature and is thickened but still easily pourable, use a spoon or measuring cup to pour over the top of each cake, coating each one with a thin, smooth layer. You can use a spatula to make sure it covers the entire cake. With the remaining ganache, wait until it has cooled slightly more and then drizzle thin strips of ganache (I used a whisk) over the tops of each cake to create a rippling effect. Scrape off excess ganache from the cake stand with a spatula and clean off with paper towels. Chill in the fridge until the ganache has set, about half an hour. You can keep the cake chilled in the fridge, but you will need to take it out of the fridge for about 30mins to an hour to let the caramel soften a bit before serving.

Kalamata Olive Savoury Shortbread

2012-03-19T10:00:00.003+11:00

At first glance you might mistake these for chocolate chip cookies. If you did, you'd get a bit of a rude shock when you tasted it. Savoury shortbread might sound like a strange idea, but this is more of a savoury cracker but with lots of butter to make it melt in your mouth. It's actually quite lovely. I first tried something like this at Maggie Beer's farm shop in Adelaide. I have very fond memories of that whole trip, especially the amazing kalamata olive biscuits I bought there. I decided that I had to try and make them for myself but with an extra hit of black pepper. I love eating my cheese with black pepper water crackers, so I had a feeling these savoury shortbread biscuits would work very well with some triple cream brie. I wasn't wrong.

I've never been too fond of olives, but I really loved the way the little chunks of kalamata olives worked in these buttery biscuits. There's not too much of it so the flavour is quite mild, and it gives them a unique taste that seems to work really well with soft mild cheeses. I started off with my regular sweet shortbread recipe, but added pepper, olives, a lot of sea salt flakes and took out most of the sugar. Making up a recipe out of nowhere usually has its problems and this first batch turn out way too salty, and a little too crumbly and dry. So I tested a different recipe, which was a little richer and less floury thanks to the addition of an egg yolk and took out half the salt. And they turned out pretty fantastic.

Yep, with a smear of triple cream brie these were incredibly moreish and great for an afternoon snack with a cup of tea. I thought A would be over the moon since I was baking something savoury, which you can probably tell is a bit of a rare occurence. But he's not a fan of shortbread and not that keen on olives either. Oh well, more cheese and biscuits for me! Though if you're really not an olive person you can definitely replace them with something else, maybe some crispy bacon? Damn, I definitely should have tried making a batch of these with bacon. Mmm bacon shortbread...

Obviously there's no need to get cheese involved, these biscuits taste perfectly good on their own. Don't be deterred by the sugar in this recipe, it's just there to balance out the flavour. This is definitely not a sweet cookie. I might even add even more pepper the next time I make them, I can never have too much pepper. These would also be great with some of that roasted garlic I raved about not too long ago. The reason I made these shortbread biscuits this weekend was because they were so quick and easy to whip up, and I needed something like that with the limited free time I've had recently. It's a great little snack to make at the last minute and I'd definitely recommend it even if you're not super keen on olives.

Kalamata Olive & Black Pepper Savoury Shortbread
(makes about 60 biscuits, loosely adapted from this cocoa nib shortbread recipe)
1/3 cup (about 100g) well-drained, pitted and finely diced kalamata olives (if you're not a fan of olives you can replace with an equal amount of crispy bacon)
2 1/2 cups (approx 300g) plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb soda
1 tsp salt (can be substituted with crushed sea salt flakes)
3 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
280g (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
4 tbsp white sugar
1 large egg yolk

Prepare the dough ahead of time, it will need to chill for a bit. Sift flour, bicarb, and salt into a medium bowl, mix in pepper and set aside. Beat butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 3 mins. Add egg yolk and beat to combine, scraping sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure it mixes evenly. Beat in dry ingredients at a medium-low speed and then fold in chopped olives. The dough should be fairly easy to handle, but if it's a little sticky you should dust your hands with flour before handling. Turn out mixture on to a lightly floured surface and pat dough to bring it together. Split into two and roll them both into logs, about 4cm diameter. Wrap well in cling film and refrigerate for at least an hour. You can refrigerate this dough for up to a week, or freeze it for up to a month (defrost overnight in the fridge).

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Line two (or 3-4 if you have them) baking sheets with baking paper. Take dough out of fridge and unwrap. Use a sharp knife to cut rounds, about half a centimeter thick. Place cut dough on prepared baking sheets (leave about 1.5 cm space for the cookies to expand), keep prepared sheets chilled while you cut the remaining dough and while you are baking the other trays. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges turn golden brown. (If baking two trays at once, make sure you switch the top and bottom trays around half way through the baking time) Leave on the tray for 5 minutes to cool and then gently transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Can be stored in an airtight container for several days.

Shamrock Macarons with Baileys Chocolate Ganache

2012-03-12T10:00:00.001+11:00

I know, I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself! I must have no shame. I've already tackled Christmas, Chinese New Year and Easter Macarons (eeee I forgot how cute their fat, white tails are!). St Patrick's Day was calling to me. I haven't celebrated it much in the past, but I wanted to do these for my friend Tomred. And I just needed to know if I was up to the challenge of piping shamrock macarons! I had to at least try, and as always I told myself that if they failed miserably I would fling them into the bin and never speak of it again. But I did it...you can tell it's a shamrock, right? Right??

I'm not going to lie, these were not easy. I'd go so far as to say were a bit of a bitch to make. I have never been a neat piper, and this was a fiddly piece of shizz to pipe. Green splotches of macaron batter ended up pretty much everywhere. I had been inspired by this stunning shamrock cake by i am baker. When I saw those pretty shamrocks piped on to the cake with icing, I just knew I had to try it with macarons. Mine are a bit uglier and messier than my inspiration but they're not too bad. I basically piped smaller heart shapes to create the petals, and then piped a skinnier stem connecting them from the centre. It was nearly impossible to pipe consistently but after a bit of practice I think I got the hang of it.

They're definitely not my best macarons ever, I undermixed my batter which is something I am very, very prone to doing. I was scared of overmixing and not being able to pipe it into a distinguishable shamrock shape so the shells were very bumpy. I was also impatient while waiting for the shells to dry before I baked them, nearly half of the batch cracked and had hardly any feet. So if you are as nuts as me and want to attempt these, remember that you really have to let these totally dry on the outside before baking as the funny shape makes them very prone to cracking.

I couldn't resist making these with a simple Baileys and Chocolate Ganache. Tomred had previously grumbled about how everyone throws Guinness into desserts for St Paddy's Day, and that Baileys would be a much more appealing dessert for the holiday for him. So here you go Tomred! This ganache is very tasty and a little addictive. I have never been partial to drinking Irish Cream, but I do like it when it's mixed into this thick chocolate ganache. My first taste of it was so good that I was tempted to triple the ganache recipe and slather it on a chocolate cake, and then use the macarons to decorate it. But then I realised I'd spent a good hour and a half just piping these macarons, another hour and a half waiting for them to dry, and another hour baking, cooling and filling them. So instead I packed them away and went for a nap. Happy St Patrick's Day everyone!

Shamrock Macarons with Baileys Chocolate Ganache
(makes about 15 macarons)
100g aged egg whites (you can use fresh eggs too, just make sure they are room temperature. I always use fresh these days, and zap it in the microwave on defrost for 10 seconds)
110g almond meal, at room temperature and well sifted
200g icing sugar
50g caster sugar
Optional: 1 tsp powdered egg whites (available from The Essential Ingredient), helps to stabilise egg whites but is not necessary
To decorate: green food colouring (powdered or gel)

For the Baileys Chocolate Ganache:
150g (5.3 ounces) good quality dark chocolate, finely chopped
100ml (just under 1/2 cup) pure/pouring cream (or heavy whipping cream in the US, min 35% fat unthickened)
60ml (1/4 cup) Baileys Irish Cream

Line two baking sheets with baking paper. Place icing sugar in food processor and pulse for a minute to remove any lumps. Stir in almond meal and pulse for about 30 seconds to combine. Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside. Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites and egg white powder in a medium mixing bowl until the egg white powder dissolves and it reaches soft peaks. With the mixer on high speed, gradually add sugar and beat until it reaches stiff peaks. (You can add the green food colouring to the meringue as you are beating it to stiff peaks, it makes it easier to adjust how much colouring to add. Otherwise add it in the next step.)

Add meringue to your dry mixture and mix, quickly at first to break down the bubbles in the egg white (you really want to beat all the large bubbles out of the mixture, be rough!), then mix carefully as the dry mixture becomes incorporated and it starts to become shiny again. Take care not to overmix, the mixture should flow like lava and a streak of mixture spread over the surface of the rest of the mixture should disappear after about 30 seconds. Place mixture in a piping bag. I fitted my piping bag with a narrower tip than usual, a half-moon shaped tip that was about 0.7cm wide so that I could pipe smaller shapes. Pipe three minature hearts at right angles to each other (see picture below, and this post for a description and video of how to pipe hearts). Then pipe a skinnier straight line joining them together from the centre to make the stem of the shamrock. Tap baking sheets carefully and firmly on the benchtop to remove any large bubbles.

Leave to dry for about an hour, so that when you press the surface of one gently it does not break. This will help prevent any cracking and help the feet to form on the macs. These macarons seem to need a longer drying time than regular round ones as they are prone to cracking. Preheat your oven to 140-150°C (285-300°C), depending on your oven. Place on top of an overturned roasting tray or another baking sheet if your sheets are not professional grade, for better heat distribution. Bake for 18-25 minutes, depending on the size of your shells. Carefully test if the base of the shell is ready by gently lifting one and if it's still soft and sticking to the baking paper, then it needs to bake for a few minutes longer. Remove from the oven and cool on the tray for a few minutes, then gently remove from the sheet and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Prepare the chocolate ganache; place chocolate in a large mixing bowl. Gently heat cream in a small saucepan until it just comes to the boil, then pour hot cream over chocolate and set aside for 5 minutes to allow the chocolate to melt. Use a whisk to combine mixture until it is smooth (if the chocolate has not completely melted you can place it over a saucepan of boiling water and continue stirring it until it is completely smooth). Add Baileys (you can adjust the amount to taste) and use whisk to combine. Chill in the fridge until thick but still pipable. Pipe or spoon on to macaron shells and sandwich shells together. Place in the fridge overnight

Funfetti Marshmallows

2012-03-05T09:00:00.004+11:00

I confess I did not feel like baking this weekend. It was a very jam packed weekend, and I hardly had any free time. So I wanted to do something fun and easy. Rainbow sprinkles are always fun, and you know how much I love them so. It's the easiest way to give something very simple that extra little bit of brightness and craziness. And so, inspired by some of the wonderful funfetti recipes that are around at the moment (see Bakers Royale and Sweetapolita), I turned some very normal vanilla bean marshmallows into these happy rainbow funfetti marshmallows.

I know there's nothing ground-breaking about this idea, and it has most likely been done before, but I had so much fun making them and photographing them. It was the perfect excuse to pull out these pretty sprinkles that I picked up recently. I cannot stress enough how much better homemade marshmallows are compared to the store-bought kind. If you have never tried homemade marshmallows, you need to try making them at least once. They are SOOO much better, trust me. Anything with a candy thermometer and boiling glucose/corn syrup can seem a little intimidating at first, but it's really not that bad. And it's so much fun watching it whip up in your mixing bowl, into this huge fluffy white cloud.

I mixed these sprinkles throughout the marshmallow mixture, and also sprinkled them on the outside as well. I would definitely recommend using the softer type of sprinkles rather than the crunchier nonpariels variety. You don't really want to encounter those super hard sprinkles throughout your fluffy, soft marshmallows. But imagine how cute these would be in smores and hot chocolates!

Of course you could make these marshmallows whatever flavour or colour you want, I'm totally wishing I had made some Bailey's flavoured ones with green sprinkles for St Patrick's Day now! I was really really tempted to try making rainbow marshmallows as well as using rainbow sprinkles, but I just didn't have the time.

I totally confused myself on the quantities I usually use for this recipe (I fixed it up in the instructions below), so I ended up with double the amount of marshmallow than I needed, which is why the sprinkles throughout the marshmallow mixture might seem a little on the sparse side. So I made one tray of regular marshmallows, and used the leftover mixture to make a funfetti marshmallow and oreo slice. It was just a matter of crushing some oreo biscuits and baking it with butter to make a crust. I love the contrast of the dark biscuits against the white marshmallow! And if you're a fan of the combination of oreo and marshmallows you should check out these ones.

Funfetti Marshmallows (and an Oreo Slice)
(adapted from my Oreo Marshmallow recipe, makes about 25 marshmallows)
250g (about 1 cup) sugar
2 tsp liquid glucose or light corn syrup
1 tbsp gelatine powder
1 large egg whites
1 tsp vanilla extract (or 1/2 tsp extract + 1 /2 tsp vanilla bean paste)
1/4 cup rainbow sprinkles, plus extra for decorating (softer ones are better than the crunchy ones)
Vegetable oil (or melted butter) for greasing
1/2 cup (75g) icing sugar, sifted
1/2 cup (75g) cornflour (cornstarch)

Grease and line the base and sides with baking paper in a 20cm square cake tin or a 17x27cm slice tin. Place caster sugar, glucose and 100ml water in a small saucepan. Place on low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Place 100ml cold water in a small bowl and sprinkle gelatine powder over it and set aside to soften. Increase heat on saucepan to medium-high and insert a sugar thermometer. Boil for 3-5 minutes, until sugar thermometer reaches 120°C (250°F) (I got my candy thermometer from a $2 dollar shop for those wondering). Remove from the heat and carefully add gelatine to mixture and whisk until gelatine dissolves and no lumps remain (if you are worried about this step you can heat the bowl of gelatine over a pot of simmering water first to make it smoother before adding it).

Place egg white in a large mixing bowl and start beating with an electric mixer with a whisk attachment on high speed. Gradually add hot sugar syrup to the egg white while mixing, if you are using a hand mixer you should beat your egg whites to a stiff peak before you start adding the syrup, but it works fine to add it as soon as you start beating the egg in a stand mixer. Beat until mixture is glossy and white, about 5 minutes on a stand mixer and closer to 10 with a hand mixer. Fold in vanilla and 1/4 cup of sprinkles (or more if you wish!). Before mixture starts to cool too much, pour mixture into prepared tin and use a spatula to quickly smooth top. Leave to set at room temperature overnight. Use a greased knife to cut into 25 squares. You can then roll or top with extra sprinkles on the outside of each marshmallow. Mix icing sugar and cornstarch together and use to dust each marshmallow. Place on a piece of baking paper to dry about an hour, then store in an airtight container. Best eaten within two days.

Alternately, if you want to make this into an Oreo slice, before making the marshmallow mixture press 2 packs of oreo crumbs (centres removed) mixed with 1/3 cup (90g) butter melted into the bottom of your tin and bake at 180°C (350°F) for 10-15 mins, then pour the marshmallow mixture over the top. Top with more sprinkles and chill in the fridge until set.

Mocha Marble Cake with Choc Coffee Beans

2012-02-27T10:00:00.002+11:00

I'm not exactly sure how it happened. I used to be one of those people who almost never drank coffee, who would gloat at the people who would stumble around bleary eyed until they had their morning caffeine hit, who would get by on cups of tea with my breakfast. But somehow, I have recently become completely dependent on coffee. I no longer feel human until I've had my morning jolt. I blame the many months of sleep deprivation and stress from to juggling work, wedding planning and well, a lot of other personal crap. I thought I had managed to avoid it. Other than a brief love affair with large mochas in my first year of uni, I was always a tea girl. Now I'm a tea and coffee girl. And I love hot chocolate and milo too. I'm a hot beverage slut...

Even though I never used to drink coffee, I've always quite enjoyed coffee in desserts. Tiramisu, affogato, coffee cheesecake, all good with me. I thought I'd celebrate my new love of coffee with a layered cake that was lightly layered with coffee and cocoa. I decided to make a classic marble cake, but instead of just swirling vanilla and chocolate cake batter together I also added a bit of coffee to the chocolate batter. And then a slathered the whole thing in a very fluffy and light icing with just a hint of chocolate and coffee. I didn't want the coffee flavour to be too intense and overpowering, and it turned out just like I hoped. Then I covered the whole thing in lots of dark chocolate covered roasted coffee beans, for that extra hit of coffee flavour and bitterness. So good! Though you will probably be bouncing off the walls after having a slice of this, especially if you have a cup of coffee on the side.

I adapted my mocha marble cake recipe from Martha Stewart's best marble cake recipe. I might have gotten the ratio of vanilla to mocha cake batter slightly off as the marbling is on the light side, but the flavour is spot on. I love this cake. It's not too sweet, with just a hint of coffee and not enough to make it bitter (though make sure you don't use super crappy coffee or it will be bitter). It's soft, fluffy, with a very fine crumb and the buttermilk ensures that it's not the least bit dry. I would have preferred to have made at least another layer of cake to give it some impressive height, but I only had enough butter to make two. We go through a lot of butter in my house.

You could eat the cake on its own if you were feeling guilty about the masses of sugar and butter in the icing. But I'd rather eat a delicious slice of icing-covered cake (translation: happiness-covered cake) on the rare occasion as a treat, rather than have a less tasty, butter-free, sugar-free version more often. Plus it would be a shame to miss out on this luxurious icing. It's whipped up to be as light as a cloud, it's so creamy and smooth and the lovely mocha flavour lingers lightly on your tongue as you eat it. The added crunch and bitterness of the coffee beans on top is a good contrast in texture and flavour.

Mocha Marble Cake with Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans
(makes one 18cm round cake, adapted from Martha Stewart's Marble Cake recipe)
For the mocha marble cake:
115g (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for greasing
300g (1 3/4 cups) cake flour (not self-rising, I used 270g plain flour + 30g (3 1/2 tbsp) cornstarch as per these instructions)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
225g (1 cup) sugar (I used caster sugar)
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2/3 cup buttermilk, room temperature
1/4 cup boiling water + 1 tsp instant coffee granules (or 1/4 cup freshly brewed coffee)
1/4 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder

For the mocha icing:
250g salted butter (or unsalted butter + 1/4 tsp salt)
575g (about 4.5 cups) icing sugar , sifted
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp instant coffee granules
1 tsp cocoa powder
Optional: Chocolate covered roasted coffee beans to decorate (I got mine from Captain Coffee)

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F), grease and line the base of two 18cm round cake tins with baking paper. (You can also use a 20cm tin but the layers will be thinner, I used one 18cm tin and baked one layer after the other) Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and use a whisk to combine, set aside. Place butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat on high with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. With the mixer on medium speed, add eggs one at a time until combined, scraping down the sides of a bowl with a spatula when needed. Add vanilla and beat again until combined. Add flour mixture in 2 batches, alternating with the buttermilk and beginning and ending with the flour. Place 1/3 of the mixture in a separate bowl.

In a small bowl, mix the cocoa, instant coffee granules and 1/4 cup of boiling water, whisking until it is smooth. Gently mix into the separated bowl of cake batter until combined. Spoon half the vanilla batter and half the mocha batter into the prepared cake tin, and the other half of each batter into the other prepared tin, alternating spoonfuls of vanilla and mocha to simulate a checkerboard. Run a table knife through the batter in each tin to create a swirl effect. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of each cake comes out clean. Cool in tin for 10 minutes and then remove from tin and cool completely on a wire rack. Cakes can be made the night before assembly, wrapped in clingfilm and chilled.

Prepare the mocha icing; remove the salted butter from the fridge 30 mins before starting. Place butter in a large mixing bowl and beat on high with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Place milk, coffee granules and cocoa in a small bowl and whisk until dissolved (I zapped the bowl in the microwave for 15 secs to help it dissolve faster) I use a food processor to get the lumps out of my icing sugar, to save me a lot of sifting. With the mixer on low, gradually add icing sugar until combined, then increase speed and gradually add coffee mixture. Beat on high until fluffy and well-combined. You may need to add more sifted icing sugar if your icing is too runny. It should be smooth and fluffy, easy to spread but stiff enough to hold its shape.

Assemble your cake; if the cakes are slightly domed in the centre you can use a long serrated knife to level the tops of the cake. Place one cake layer on your cake stand and use a spatula to smooth a decent layer of icing over the top of it. Sandwich other cake layer on top and then crumb coat the whole cake with more icing. Chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes to set the crumb coat. Cover whole cake evenly with the rest of the icing, using an offset spatula to smooth the surface (regularly running the spatula until hot water will help with smoothing it). Decorate the top of the cake with chocolate covered coffee beans. Chill for at least another 30 minutes before serving. Can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for several days.

Earl Grey & Poppy Seed Muffins

2012-02-21T10:00:00.009+11:00

Keeping it simple. That's what I was talking about in my last post. And that's exactly what I did when I decided to bake these. Can you believe this is the first muffin recipe I've ever posted on this blog? What can I say, I'm a cupcake girl. Muffins always seem boring and naked in comparison to pretty cupcakes covered in icing and sprinkles. But now that I think about it, I probably eat more muffins on a regular basis than cupcakes. It's that wonderful trick you play on yourself with food items that are half a step away from having cake for breakfast. I'm a sucker for orange and poppy seed, blueberry and warm chocolate chip muffins with my morning coffee. But for some reason I almost never bake them.

I decided to adapt a regular orange and poppyseed muffin recipe, replacing the orange zest and juice with the citrusy fragrance of Earl Grey tea. The beautiful & girly Earl Grey Cake with Rhubarb Cream Cheese Glaze that I posted last year turned out to be a surprising favourite of mine, and I've been determined to bake more with the tea. I infused it into warm milk as part of this recipe and it filled the muffins with that unmistakably wonderful flavour and smell. Just lovely. The best part about muffin recipes is how easy they are to whip up; all mixed up in one bowl without the need for your electric mixer. No fancy paper liners either, just some small squares of baking paper.

I glazed the tops with warm marmalade, it's a fantastic extra touch of sweetness. Though don't be lazy like me and just brush it straight on to the tops of your muffins without stirring the lumps out of it. Of course you could just serve the muffins unglazed and slather them with a much larger portion of marmalade, which is what I did for breakfast this morning. These muffins beg to be enjoyed with a giant cup of tea.

Earl Grey & Poppy Seed Muffins with Marmalade Glaze
(makes 12 muffins, adapted from this Orange & Poppy Seed Muffin recipe from Taste.com.au)
4 Earl Grey Tea bags (or about 4 tsp loose tea leaves)
250ml (1 cup) milk
375g (2 1/2 cups) self-raising flour
155g (3/4 cup) caster sugar
1 tbsp poppy seeds
125g (1 stick plus about 1 tbsp) butter, melted
2 eggs, lightly whisked
To glaze or serve: marmalade or apricot jam

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and line a 12-hole muffin/cupcake tin with liners or folded squares of baking paper. Warm the milk until it is nearly boiling in a small saucepan, then add tea bags set aside to infuse and cool. Place sifted flour, caster sugar and poppy seeds in a large mixing bowl and stir to combine. Add milk mixture, butter and eggs and use a whisk to gently combine until smooth. Spoon mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of a muffin comes out clean. Try your best not to over-bake them as it will dry them out.

Remove muffins from the oven, remove from pan and cool on a wire rack. While the muffins are still warm, place marmalade or apricot jam (about 1/2 cup) in a small saucepan and stir over low heat until runny. Brush the tops of each muffin with marmalade. Alternatively you can serve the muffins warm with marmalade to spread. Best served with tea. Can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for several days.

EDIT: You MUST check out this post from one sheepish girl, who made a not only made these muffins but also made the most perfect video for it. It is so darn adorable, I want to give it a hug and pinch its cheeks. Go watch it now.

Roasted Garlic & Gruyere Cheese Toasties

2012-02-19T19:00:00.008+11:00

I don't have a proper recipe post for you today. I seem to be suffering a bit of baker's block again, and I didn't want to force the issue by baking something when I didn't feel like it. So yesterday, instead of baking, I woke up super late and I made myself a cheese toastie (aka a grilled cheese sandwich to those in the US) for lunch. I recently had an eye-opening experience with a cheese toastie at the Gazebo Wine Garden and I have been craving them ever since. So I made a very simple sandwich with bread, butter, cheese and garlic. In case it's not obvious from 99% of my blog, I love my sugar. But I love cheese and garlic nearly as much. I'm sure everyone has their own favourite way of making a grilled cheese sandwich, and this is now officially my favourite version. I fried this baby up in butter (wishing I had invested in a cast iron griddle), using a nifty trick I read about online to cover the pan with a lid to help the cheese melt faster before the bread burns. It was golden and crunchy on the outside with a perfectly melted inside. This cheese toastie was good. Effing good. Like the combination of a regular boring cheese sandwich and garlic bread plus a sprinkling of fairy dust. So good that I made another one straight away. And I made one for A and took a photo of it because sharing is caring. Then I ran out of cheese and weeped silently to myself.

Roasted garlic is something truly magical, it's sweet, soft, buttery and mild enough to eat on its own, and doesn't give you anywhere near as crazy garlic breath as the garlic sauce from El Jannah (not that the death breath ever stops me from eating it by the bucketload). It might look like a lot of garlic to be eating on its own but the way it's cooked means it's much easier to eat. The caramelisation makes it lovely and sweet, which is the perfect addition to that beautiful melty, creamy gruyère cheese in this toastie. It's something so easy and uncomplicated, but your tastebuds will be so freakin happy they might get up and do a little dance. So this isn't really a recipe as it's just a humble grilled cheese sandwich, more like a public service announcement; if you love cheese and garlic as much as I do, you want to be eating this right now. Sometimes it's best to keep things simple, to go back to the basics. Of course gruyère isn't exactly cheap, but it is so worth splurging for it every now and then.

Roasted Garlic & Gruyère Cheese Toasties (Grilled Cheese Sandwiches)

Per sandwich:
1 head of roasted garlic (I prepared it using this recipe from Simply Recipes)
30g (2 tbsp) unsalted butter
2 slices white bread (I grew up with the regular, super processed full of sugar bread so I love it but you can use another bread if you want)
1 fairly thick (about 4 mm or 1/6 inch) slice of Gruyère cheese (or any other good melting cheese you prefer)

Remove the roasted garlic cloves from the head and mash in a bowl. Place cheese on top of one side of bread and spread the mashed roasted garlic over the cheese, top with other slice of bread. Using a non-stick pan or a cast iron griddle, place on medium-low heat with a 15g (1 tbsp) butter and heat until the butter completely melts. Place sandwich in pan, so that the cheese is closer to the bottom of the pan, then cover the pan with a lid or a piece of foil. Fry until the cheese melts and the bread has turned golden brown, about 3 minutes, and then add the same amount of butter to the pan, flip the sandwich over and fry until golden. Eat immediately, try not to make any excessive moaning noises while enjoying the melted cheesy goodness.

I was in such a good mood after eating these that I got back in the kitchen and baked something equally simple and satisfying. I guess you just have to stick to the basics every now and then. So I'll be back with a proper baking post in a couple of days.

Sticky Date Madeleines with Butterscotch Sauce

2012-02-13T10:00:00.002+11:00

I am in desperate need of a hug. I'm not afraid to say it. I've been hiding in my house for most of the last two days with some eye issues, feeling sorry for myself and waiting for my eyes to fix up. So I really needed some comfort food. One of the most comforting desserts has to be the sticky date pudding. It holds a special place in my heart. It's one of the first desserts that my brother and I learnt to make together, and we would whip up a giant portion and eat it with tons of butterscotch sauce and vanilla ice cream until we felt totally ill. It's just one of those great winter desserts that makes you happy.

Even with the un-summery weather we've had in Sydney this summer, it's still not quite chilly enough to have me craving the rich warmth of a regular sticky date pudding. Sometimes I find them a tad too heavy and sickeningly sweet, especially the butterscotch sauce. So I decided to do something in the same vein as a sticky date pudding but without the heaviness. I made these sticky date madeleines with a butterscotch dipping sauce. Check out that sexy dipping action shot. Oh yeah.

I love love love madeleines. They are fluffy, buttery clouds of shell-shaped sponge cake happiness. But I'm still a little traumatised from the week where I could not bake a decent madeleine to save my life. It was the baking equivalent of the yips. I've never been so confident about a recipe and had so many successful attempts at it, only to have it completely fail over and over again. I've always thought that a real madeleine doesn't use any chemical leavening, but that week I eventually gave up after numerous failures and used self-raising flour just so I could stop making shell-shaped pancakes. The other day I came across Gourmet Traveller's madeleine recipe and they use baking powder in the batter. I've never had a failure with a GT recipe, so why should I argue with them? I decided to give it a go, but instead of a regular lemon madeleine, I adapted it to be a brown sugar and golden syrup madeleine with chunks of dates. It smells so good while it's baking in the oven.

The one thing that the GT recipe really emphasised was the necessity for resting the batter. I've heard this plenty of times on madeleine recipes, but always ignored it since I had never done this from the very start. And I am too impatient. But I decided to give it the proper overnight resting time to see what difference it made. Ohhh what a difference. The madeleines emerged from the oven with the most GLORIOUS humps (that signature bump on the top of each madeleine, which makes you do the same kind of dance around your kitchen as when you see feet on your macarons). Glorious! So even though I'm still stuck on the idea that a madeleine shouldn't have chemical leavening in the batter, this recipe is very reliable and the madeleines turn out beautifully. And I can use it without fear of failure.

As for the butterscotch sauce, it's a pretty basic one. You can't go wrong with butterscotch sauce. I did use salted butter for mine, which helps balance it out a little so it's not sickeningly sweet. I really insist you make the sauce if you're going to make the recipe. I specifically adjusted the madeleines so they wouldn't be too sweet to eat with the sauce. Together they tastes like a miniature, lighter sticky date pudding. It's the finger food dessert equivalent of the pudding. It's pretty fantastic.

Sticky Date Madeleines with Butterscotch Sauce
(makes about 24, adapted from Gourmet Traveller's Madeleine recipe)
NOTE: This recipe needs to be started several hours ahead of time or the night before
120g (about 1 stick) butter
100g dates, pitted and finely chopped
3 eggs, at room temperature
120g (about a packed 1/2 cup) brown sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
A pinch of salt
175g (approx 1 1/4 cups) plain flour, sifted
1 tsp baking powder

For the butterscotch sauce:
1/2 cup cream
25g (about 2 tbsp) salted butter (or unsalted butter + 1/2 tsp salt)
100g (a bit less than half a cup) brown sugar
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Melt butter, either in a saucepan over low heat or zap it in the microwave for a about a minute, set aside so it cools to room temperature but stays liquid (about 2-3 mins). Whisk eggs, golden syrup, brown sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer on high speed until pale, fluffy and tripled in volume (about 4-5 minutes). Sift over flour and baking powder and fold until just combined. Fold in butter mixture a little at a time until just combined. When you are about to add the last bit of butter, fold in the chopped dates until just incorporated. Cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

Remove batter from the fridge. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and butter two 12-hole madeleine trays very well and then lightly dust with some flour. (I only have one madeleine tray so I baked one batch after another, regreasing the tray, and it worked fine). Spoon mixture into madeleine holes, filling them up about 2/3-3/4 full. Tap the tray firmly on the bench to expel any bubbles. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until golden and cooked through. Tap tray to remove madeleines.

Prepare the butterscotch dipping sauce; place cream, butter, sugar and vanilla in a small saucepan and stir over low heat until butter and sugar has melted. Increase heat to medium to bring just to the boil and then reduce back to low and simmer for about 5 minutes or until the mixture thickens. Best served warm. If you do not want to serve with a dipping sauce you can use it to glaze the madeleines.

Chocolate Chip Cherry Cheesecake

2012-02-06T08:30:00.001+11:00

This is one sexy cheesecake. Somehow it turned out too sexy, if that's possible. A Chocolate Chip & Cherry Cheesecake that's made with my old faithful biscuit base, a magically fluffy and addictive no-bake filling that is full of itty bitty dark chocolate bits and cherry pie filling, and then I decided to top it off with a thin layer of rich dark chocolate ganache. I think I may have gone a step too far, I kind of regret adding the that layer of chocolate ganache now, but it seemed like such a good idea at the time and it looks so pretty especially with those cherries nestled into its surface.

The cherry and chocolate chip cheesecake filling is outstandingly good. I could quite easily eat the filling on its own straight out of the bowl. I used a simple chilled cheesecake recipe base and added a cherry mixture that's similar to the cherry pie filling from my cherry pie shortbread, so it's all lusciously jam-like. I also added little nibs of dark chocolate, like the chocolate chip bits in my mint chocolate chip cake. It's fantastic to eat, like eating a cloud of cheesecake, and every now and then you get a bite of juicy cherries or a hit of bittersweet chocolate. I considered using maraschino cherries and bigger chunks of dark chocolate so it was just like Ben & Jerry's cherry garcia ice cream, but decided that it would be a waste not to use the fresh cherries that we have available at the moment. But you can use frozen cherries or maraschino ones if you prefer.

The inspiration for this rectangular-shaped cheesecake was partly from Sweetapolita's Dark Chocolate & Raspberry Buttercream Cake with Ganache Drizzle and partly from Heston Blumenthals Black Forest Cake from his 'In Search of Perfection' series. I've done so many round cheesecakes, it seemed like a good time to try something a little different. At some point I decided that I needed to use a thin layer of chocolate ganache on top, just to make it a little prettier and so I could top it off with some fresh cherries. At first I thought cheesecake filling on its own looked a little sad and messy. But the truth is, it really didn't need it and it tasted better before I put the ganache on. So I probably wouldn't recommend adding the ganache layer unless you really like the presentation and if you wanted a dessert that was a little bit more decadent and chocolatey. I personally thought the ganache made it a tad too rich. Oh well.

If the cheesecake looks a bit messy, it's because I was even more of a klutz than usual in my kitchen. While making this cheesecake I managed to knock my food processor bowl full of chocolate chip bits on the ground, snapping some of the plastic off it and sending chocolate flying in all directions. And later on I somehow managed to upend the bowl of warm chocolate ganache, in the exact same spot where I had just cleaned up all the chocolate chips. Put chocolate & I in the same room and it will always end in disaster. But it's usually worth it. Definitely worth it in this case.

Chocolate Chip Cherry Cheesecake
(serves 6-8 people, loosely based on this cherry cheesecake recipe by Nigella Lawson)
2 cups (about 200g) of crushed disgestives biscuits (or graham crackers)
1 tbsp sugar
60g (about 4 tbsp) butter, melted
150g cherries (fresh or frozen), pitted and diced
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tbsp cornflour (cornstarch) + 2 tsp cold water
150g finely chopped dark chocolate, or 3/4 cup mini dark choc chips (I blitzed my chocolate in the food processor to make the pieces really tiny)
300g cream cheese, softened
60g (about 1/2 cup) icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
250ml thickened cream

(Very optional) chocolate ganache:
100ml pouring cream (min 35% fat pure unthickened cream)
150g dark chocolate
Fresh cherries to decorate
Note: I found that this ganache was too rich and overwhelming for the rest of the dessert, you can definitely skip it, or replace it with a layer of cherry jam or make another batch of the cherry filling above.

For the crust; preheat oven to 160°C (325°F). Grease a 10x30cm rectangular loaf tin (or a 21cm springform tin). Line the base and two long sides of the loaf tin with baking paper leaving some extra baking paper hanging over the edges, this will make it easier to lift the cheesecake out of the tin later. Mix crushed biscuits and 1 tbsp sugar together in a medium bowl. Add butter and stir until well combined. Using your hands, spread mixture out in an even layer, then use your fingertips to press crumb mixture into bottom of tin to form an even crust. Transfer to a baking sheet and bake until crust is set and golden in places, 15–20 minutes. Set crust aside until cool.

Place chopped cherries, lemon juice and 1 tbsp sugar in a small saucepan and place on medium-low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add the cornflour mixture to the saucepan and stir over heat until mixture starts to thicken, then set aside to cool. Prepare the cheesecake filling; Place cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla in a large mixing bowl and beat on high speed with an electric mixer until smooth. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the finely chopped chocolate and beat until it is evenly distributed. Stir cherry mixture into the mixing bowl until combined. In a separate mixing bowl, carefully beat the cream to stiff peaks (keep a close eye on this as the thickened cream is easy to overbeat). Fold cream into the rest of the mixture and then pour over the cooled crust. Chill in the fridge for at least 3 hours or overnight. Lift out of the tray using the baking paper flaps and peel away from the sides, you can run a knife under hot water and then use it to slice a thin layer of the sides to make it look neater.

If you decide to do the chocolate ganache on top, place cream in a small saucepan on medium heat until it just comes to the boil. Chop up chocolate and place in a mixing bowl and pour the hot cream over, leaving for 5 mins to let the chocolate melt. Whisk mixture together until smooth and pour a very thin layer over the top of the cheesecake. Top with fresh cherries and chill for another hour before serving.

Lychee & Raspberry Mousse with Candied Violets

2012-01-30T08:30:00.003+11:00

After all the festivities that we've had over the last month, it felt like a good time to step back from doing gimmicky stuff and do something easy and pretty instead. This dessert seemed like a perfect way to enjoy the summer fruit that has been available in Sydney at the moment, but it also has the added bonus of being just as delicious when made with frozen and canned fruit for those who aren't as lucky as us Sydney-siders. I adapted one of my favourite past recipes; a Watermelon & Honeydew Mousse, to make this light and girly Lychee & Raspberry Mousse with Candied Violets.

Originally I wanted to do this dessert with homemade candied rose petals to make it a total Pierre Hermé ispahan-inspired dessert, but I wasn't able to get my hands on pesticide free roses in time. So I settled for some crushed candied violets instead, which was fine with me because I love the subtle floral flavour and gorgeous purple colour of the violets. I've been holding on to my tiny stash of candied violets with all my stingy Asian stubborness because they are bloody expensive, but I think this dessert was decent enough to use up a few of them. Feel free to adapt this recipe to include a rose element if you prefer!

This is such a simple dessert to whip up, the actual prep time is about 20 minutes, but there's a little bit of waiting time in between the prep while you let things cool and set. I used fresh raspberries for the raspberry mousse because the ones available at the moment are so cheap and great looking. I realised that recently I've been using raspberries to flavour a lot of my desserts, which I had avoided a lot in the past. I usually get pretty irritated eating fruits that have a lot of tiny seeds, because one of those little seeds inevitably lodges itself in the small gap between two of my back teeth and refuses to budge. But these days I can't resist adding raspberry puree to lots of my recipes because it adds such a rich flavour and colour, and I make sure to strain out as many of those pesky seeds as I can. The raspberry mousse layer is a lovely blush colour with a slightly tart berry flavour.

In my opinion the lychee mousse layer is the star of this dessert. I was surprised by how strong the flavour of the lychees came through in the mousse, it is absolutely divine. It provides a great balance against the more sour raspberry layer, and the violets help to finish it off perfectly. I ended up using canned lychees for my puree because the fresh ones at my supermarket weren't as great as the other ones I've seen around recently, I'm sure the fresh ones would taste even better in this.

I made a few tweaks to the original mousse recipe; taking out some of the gelatine in the hopes it would give it a more delicate texture and completely get rid of the tiny aftertaste of gelatine that I really don't enjoy. The result is this wondefully fluffy mousse, I probably could have reduced the amount of gelatine even more but I was too scared that it wouldn't set. The timing of this super pink and girly dessert might make it perfect for those planning a Valentine's Day meal, though personally I think this dessert will probably be enjoyed more by the girls than the boys. It will definitely be enjoyed a lot more by this girl than her boy :P

Lychee & Raspberry Mousse with Candied Violets
(serves 4-6 people, adapted from my Two Melon Mousse recipe)
For the raspberry mousse:
1 punnet (125g) fresh or frozen raspberries, pureed and strained (makes about 2/3 cup puree)
1 1/2 tsp powdered gelatine
1/8 cup cold water
1/4 cup (60g) sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup cold pouring cream (min. 35% milk fat unthickened pure cream)

For the lychee mousse:
200g peeled and pitted lychees, pureed and strained (I used 1 can of lychees, which made about 3/4 cup of puree)
1 1/2 tsp powdered gelatine
1/8 cup cold water
1/4 cup (60g) sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup cold pouring cream (min. 35% milk fat unthickened pure cream)
To decorate: 1 crushed candied violet per serve, or make your own candied rose petals (make sure they are pesticide free)

Prepare the raspberry mousse first; place gelatine and cold water in a small bowl to allow the gelatine to soften. Add about 1/3 cup of water to the raspberry puree, or enough so that it makes 1 cup liquid in total. Place this in a medium saucepan with sugar and lemon juice and heat on low until the sugar dissolves completely. Add softened gelatine to the mixture, heat and stir until the gelatine dissolves completely. Remove from the heat and chill mixture in fridge until it reaches just below room temperature and is starting to thicken. Whip cream in a large mixing bowl to soft peaks. Add vanilla to raspberry mixture and then fold whipped cream into it until all the lumps are removed. Pour into 4-6 individual serving glasses, half-filling each of them, and chill in the fridge until set, at least 45 mins.

Prepare the lychee mousse; repeat same steps for raspberry mousse but with lychee puree. Pour over the top of set raspberry mousse and chill until set or overnight. When ready to serve, remove from the fridge about 10 minutes before serving, then sprinkle candied violets over the top of each mousse (don't do it too early or the sugar from the violets will dissolve and stain the top of the mousse blue). Otherwise, you can top it with candied rose petals or fresh raspberries and lychees or whipped cream flavoured with rose water.

Chinese Lantern Macarons with Jackfruit Buttercream

2012-01-23T10:00:00.001+11:00

Happy Chinese New Year (or Lunar New Year) everyone! I hope everyone who was celebrating with a big dinner last night had a great time and lots of delicious food. I definitely did, we prepared our usual masses of dishes including my favourite, the yee sang (I wrote about it a couple years ago if you have no idea what it is). As an extra treat I decided to make a little Chinese New Year-themed sweet, these Chinese Lantern-shaped Macarons with Jackfruit Buttercream. I have yet to try to master any of the traditional biscuits and sweets that are usually served during Chinese New Year, but I thought it might be fun to do something with my own spin instead.

In case it's not immediately obvious, I was attempting to make my macarons look like the red paper laterns that are usually hung up as decoration during Chinese New Year (something like this) It was pretty easy to pipe the basic shape of the lantern, but originally I had wanted to put a bit more detail on them by using gold glitter sugar, but that just made them look ugly and messy. So I kept them plain, and stole a bunch of little gold strings off my old Christmas ornaments (I knew they would come in handy eventually!), and some little red tassles from some other Chinese New Year decorations. I'm pretty satisfied with the result; they're quite cute and very festive, if a little plain.

I struggled a lot with choosing an appropriate flavour for these macarons. Something orange seemed like the obvious choice but it was little too boring for me. I was tossing up between lychee, mango or jackfruit and finally decided on jackfruit because it was the most unusual and strongest flavoured fruit. I have no idea if jackfruit is a good or bad fruit to serve during CNY (I've only heard that pears are a nono), for all I know I've just given myself 444 years of bad luck. But jackfruits are something that I strongly associate with going back to Malaysia to visit all my relatives, so it seemed appropriate for me. The flavour of the fruit is something that not everyone will like, it has a very strong smell that's nowhere near as pungent as durian but definitely still distinctive. I used the canned jackfruit in sugar syrup which isn't quite as strong smelling/flavoured, and I think it worked beautifully.

I added the jackfruit puree and some of the sugar syrup to my usual Swiss Meringue Buttercream, since it is capable of taking up quite a lot of liquid while still staying thick and creamy. Overnight the flavour matured well and you could really taste the jackfruit in the macaron. If that flavour of filling doesn't appeal to you or you have no idea what the heck a jackfruit is, I mention in the recipe below that you can replace it with lychee or mango. You could completely switch it up and make this pineapple jam as the filling instead. I would have loved to make the jam but I didn't have enough time, or the patience to carve the pineapples :P Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous new year, and sending my love to my parents and all my other relatives overseas. I would love to be in Malaysia right now eating all kinds of yummy things and receiving red packets, it's the last year I'll be able to receive them!

Chinese Lantern Macarons with Jackfruit Buttercream
(makes approximately 10-12 macarons)
100g aged egg whites (you can use fresh eggs too, just make sure they are room temperature. I always use fresh these days, and zap it in the microwave on defrost for 10 seconds)
110g almond meal, at room temperature and well sifted
200g icing sugar
50g caster sugar
Optional: 1 tsp powdered egg whites (available from The Essential Ingredient), helps to stabilise egg whites but is not necessary
To decorate: red and yellow food colouring (powdered or gel), gold string

For the jackfruit buttercream:
2 egg whites
1/2 cup caster (superfine) sugar
150g unsalted butter
1/2 cup canned jackfruit puree (about 3-4 pieces of canned jackfruit) + 1/4-1/3 cup jackfruit sugar syrup from can to taste
Note: if you don't like jackfruit or it is unavailable, you can replace with canned lychee, fresh mango or even durian if you're feeling adventurous
(If you're new to making Swiss meringue buttercream, these wonderful tutorials from two of my favourite bloggers will help)

Line two baking sheets with baking paper. Place icing sugar in food processor and pulse for a minute to remove any lumps. Stir in almond meal and pulse for about 30 seconds to combine. Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside. Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites and egg white powder in a medium mixing bowl until the egg white powder dissolves and it reaches soft peaks. With the mixer on high speed, gradually add sugar and beat until it reaches stiff peaks.

Add meringue to your dry mixture and mix, quickly at first to break down the bubbles in the egg white (you really want to beat all the large bubbles out of the mixture, be rough!), then mix carefully as the dry mixture becomes incorporated and it starts to become shiny again. As it just comes together, place about 1/4 of the mixture in a separate bowl. Add yellow food colouring to the smaller amount and red colouring to the other and continue mixing until it is the right consistency. Take care not to overmix, the mixture should flow like lava and a streak of mixture spread over the surface of the rest of the mixture should disappear after about 30 seconds. Place red and yellow mixture in separate piping bags, the red with a wider 1cm tip and the yellow with a much narrower tip (see photo). Pipe fat oval shapes with the red mixture, and then carefully pipe smalls strips of yellow on the top and bottom of the ovals. Tap baking sheets carefully and firmly on the benchtop to remove any large bubbles.

Leave to dry for at least half an hour to an hour, so that when you press the surface of one gently it does not break. This will help prevent any cracking and help the feet to form on the macs. Preheat your oven to 140-150°C (285-300°C), depending on your oven. Place on top of an overturned roasting tray or another baking sheet if your sheets are not professional grade, for better heat distribution. Bake for 15-20 minutes, depending on the size of your shells. Carefully test if the base of the shell is ready by gently lifting one and if it's still soft and sticking to the baking paper, then it needs to bake for a few minutes longer. Remove from the oven and cool on the tray for a few minutes, then gently remove from the sheet and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Prepare the buttercream; whisk together egg white and sugar in a large heatproof bowl. Clip a candy thermometer to side of bowl. Set bowl over a pan of simmering water, and whisk until mixture reaches 70°C (160°F) and sugar has dissolved, about 5 minutes.

With a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg white mixture on high speed until cooled and thick, about 5 minutes. Reduce speed to medium, and add butter, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until incorporated after each addition. If mixture is runny at this point, refrigerate for 10 minutes and then continue beating until it starts to hold its shape (this can take a while). Mix in jackfruit puree and then gradually add the jackfruit sugar syrup from the can depending on how strong you want it, taste testing as you go. Spoon or pipe buttercream on to macaron shells, sandwiching them together and adding a gold string sticking out of the top of each one if you wish. Refrigerate overnight in an airtight container to allow the flavours to mature, serve at room temperature.

Green & Gold Checkerboard Cake with Milo Ganache

2012-01-16T09:00:00.000+11:00

Okay so I know Australia Day isn't for another week and a half, but I'm attempting to be a good planner/organiser this year and trying not to leave things to the very last minute. Plus as soon as I decided I wanted to make this crazy Green & Gold Checkboard Cake covered in Chocolate Milo Ganache for Australia Day, I knew I better give myself an extra weekend buffer just in case I completely effed it up on my first attempt. This cake took a bit of planning and had a lot of potential to go horribly wrong. But YAY for me, it turned out pretty good! As someone who was born in Australia and has spent the majority of my life in this country, it's important to me to have recipes on the blog that celebrate being Australian. In that same spirit you could also try my Arnott's inspired Tim Tam Cake, Mint Slice Cake or Iced Vovo Cake for any Australia Day BBQs you might have planned.

I've always wanted to try making a checkerboard cake, ever since seeing instructions for it in my Le Cordon Bleu book. It's usually done with vanilla and chocolate flavours, and to get that lovely checkerboard effect when you cut into the cake you need to create alternating layers with the two flavours so that each layer looks like a bullseye/the Target logo. It looked like a lot of work, especially since that recipe involved piping concentric circles of cake batter. A lot of recipes on the internet instruct you to use a special pan that has these circular plastic dividers so that you can bake your layers with two alternating colours, but personally that felt a bit like cheating and I don't like buying a whole new pan for one specific purpose. So I decided to do it the third way, by baking cake layers in two different colours and then cutting concentric circles out of the layers and then swapping the middle circle of the two colours so that they alternated. (It's a mouthful to explain in words but if you look at the picture in my recipe below you should be able to get what I mean.)

As for using the bright green and yellow colours for the cake rather than just chocolate and vanilla, I was particularly inspired by the gorgeous and brightly coloured Battenburg cakes that Sprinkle Bakes made. I thought it would be a great idea to use green and gold in the cake as a celebratory Australia Day cake, and that idea was enough to give me the courage to try this cake. After all, I had managed to pull off the Purple Ombré Cake pretty well (that cake still makes me smile from ear to ear), so I had a pretty good feeling about this cake. Of course, there's no reason why you can't do this cake in different colours for other occasions, you could change the recipe from 4 layers into just 3 layers and use red, white and blue for 4th of July celebrations in the US, or do red velvet and vanilla for Valentine's Day. I ended up using the same trusty yellow cake recipe from the purple cake and it didn't let me down. I even tried my best to convert the measurements into volumes for US readers but no guarantees I did it correctly since there's so much variation in cup sizes and all that (and I'm still a firm believer that if you are a baker you should invest in digital kitchen scales. David Lebovitz agrees, you should listen to him. He has much knowledge).

To hold the cake layers together, I made a quick white chocolate ganache which I spread thinly between each layer. It worked just as I expected, holding the cake together quite nicely without being too visible. I would really recommend you don't skip this step since the cake is likely to fall apart if you don't put some sort of icing/filling in between each layer, especially if you manage to crack some of the circles of cake that you have cut out. I managed to crack a few of the circles, but the ganache and the way the circles fit snugly into each other held it together. The only crack that caused me any trouble was the top outer ring of yellow, which you might be able to see going a bit wonky in some of the photos. So be extra gentle with those outer rings of cake.

Originally I was going to cover the outside of the cake with my usual salted butter icing recipe like I did for the sprinkles cake to give it that stark white exterior with the colourful surprise on the inside, but I decided I wanted something a little more Australian. I was seriously, seriously tempted to try something like a chocolate vegemite ganache, but I chickened out since I'm not a huge fan of vegemite myself. Maybe next year! So I decided to use my sexy chocolate & Milo ganache instead, because it's so tasty and Australians love their Milo. And who doesn't love chocolate malt? The texture of the icing might look a little odd in the photos because I had just taken the cake out of the fridge and it had small beads of condensation on the surface, but I can assure you that it's shiny, smooth, gorgeous and so addictive. So if you're feeling up for it try this checkerboard cake for Australia day, it's not actually too hard or complicated so long as you plan ahead. And it's so pretty!

Green & Gold Checkerboard Cake with Chocolate Malt Ganache
(makes one round 18cm 4-layer cake, yellow cake recipe adapted from Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cooking Step-by-Step)
Note: For US readers, you could also do this cake using only three layers of red, white and blue cake. I tried my best to convert the measurements for you!
355g (approx 2 & 2/3 cups) plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
225ml (about 1 cup minus 1 tbsp) milk
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
400g (approx 1 & 2/3 cups) white sugar (I used caster/superfine)
225g (approx 2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
4 medium eggs
Green and yellow food colouring (I used Wilton gel colouring)

For the white chocolate ganache filling:
200g white chocolate, chopped
200ml pouring cream (min. 35% milk fat unthickened pure cream)

For the chocolate malt ganache:
Note: If you prefer a white exterior, look here for a salted butter icing recipe that you can use instead
400g good quality dark chocolate, chopped
300ml pouring cream (min. 35% milk fat unthickened pure cream)
1/2 cup Milo powder (you can increase this to 3/4 cup if you like it more malty, can be substituted with Ovaltine if unavailable)

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease whatever 18cm (7 inch) round cake tins you have (I only had one so I had to bake each cake one after the other and this worked fine). You can also use 20cm (8 inch) pans but the layers will be thinner, or use the special checkerboard cake tins that come with the circular dividers. Line the base of tins with baking paper and grease paper and dust tins with flour. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. Mix milk and vanilla together in a measuring jug.

Using an electric mixer on low speed, beat sugar and butter in a large bowl until blended. Increase speed to high and beat for 2 mins or until pale and creamy. Reduce speed to medium low, add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Alternately add flour mix and milk mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture (I did it by adding 1/4 of of the dry mixture followed by 1/3 of the wet mixture at a time). Beat until smooth, occasionaly scraping bowl with a spatula. Divide mixture evenly into 2 medium bowls (I did this by weighing the batter, it ended up being about 700g per bowl for me). Gently fold yellow colouring into one bowl and green colouring into another bowl until it's smooth.

Pour HALF of each bowl of batter into the prepared tins (so you end up with two yellow layers and two green layers) bake each layer for about 15-20 minutes or until a skewer into the centre comes out clean and the outside is golden. Cool in tin for 5 mins and then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely. Wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour or overnight. If your cake layers are slightly domed in the middle you may need to slice a little bit off the top of them to make sure they are flat. If you are not using the special checkerboard cake pans you will have to cut concentric circles out of your cake layers as shown in the photo above. For an 18cm cake, I cut a 6cm diameter circle out of the centre of the cake, then cut a 12cm diameter circle out of the centre of the remaining cake by tracing my knife around a plate of the same diameter, so you end up with one central circle and two outer 'rings'. (Obviously if your cake layers are a different size you will have to calculate the right diameter to cut your circles, mathematics is fun!) Swap the middle 'ring' of a yellow cake layer with the middle 'ring' from a green layer, and fit the cut pieces back together as shown in the bottom left photo above. Try your best to handle the cake pieces without cracking them, especially the outer 'rings'.

Prepare the white chocolate ganache, this will act as the 'cement' to hold your cake layers together. Place white chocolate pieces in a medium heatproof mixing bowl and heat your cream in a medium saucepan to gradually bring it just to the boil. Remove from heat and pour hot cream over the chocolate, leave to sit for 5 minutes while the chocolate melts. Whisk gently until the mixture is smooth, then chill until it is just below room temperature, thick but still pourable. Place one of the prepared layers, I started with layer that had a yellow outer ring, and spread a thin layer of white chocolate ganache over the top, then place a layer with a green outer ring over the top of it. Repeat with the remaining layers, so that the colours alternate. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

Prepare the milo ganache; place the finely chopped chocolate in a large mixing bowl. Gradually heat the cream and milo powder together until it just starts to boil, then remove from the heat and pour over the chocolate. Leave to sit for 5 minutes while the chocoltae melts. Whisk gently until the mixture is smooth. If the mixture is quite runny you may need to chill it until it thickens more, it should be easily spreadable but should not run straight off the sides of your cake. If it starts to run everywhere simply scrape it back into your mixing bowl and chill for longer. Spread over the outside of your prepared cake, smoothing with an offset spatula. You can achieve a smoother finish if you dip your spatula in a cup of hot water regularly, or run it under hot water in the sink. Chill cake for at least half an hour, serve at room temperature (I find it is best to leave it sitting out of the fridge for at least an hour to allow the ganache to soften nicely). Can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for several days.

Salted Caramel Apples with Popcorn

2012-01-09T10:00:00.003+11:00

I was feeling very selfish this weekend. It was very much a weekend full of 'me' time. I made these salted caramel apples coated in popcorn bits for purely selfish reasons. I wasn't trying to make anything interesting, original or pretty for the blog, I just really wanted to eat a toffee apple and I really wanted caramel popcorn, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I figured that if it turned into an ugly mess, I would just eat it and no one would ever have to know. Turns out they look quite pretty, so here they are. It might seem like a stupid, unnecessary or even gross combination to some people, but I wanted it. So I made it, I ate it and it was deeelicious.

In Australia we call them toffee apples, and they're usually coated in a hard, clear (or red tinted) toffee. I loved them when I was a kid, though my Mum hardly ever let me buy them because I would always eat all the toffee and throw out the apple and then run off in a sugar-high daze. It was understandable, the toffee apples were always from the supermarket and the apple inside was always an old, bruised, sad looking thing. And I really like sugar. I found it interesting that the as well as having toffee/candy apples in the US, they also have caramel apples that are covered in a creamy, softer caramel coating and sometimes dipped in toppings. I really love creamy caramel, and I decided that I needed to make these with an awesome salted caramel and then dip them in buttered popcorn.

Anything that involves boiling sugar syrup scares me, because it usually ends in me covered in burns. I decided not to take any risks, I did this salted caramel with a candy thermometer and I used David Lebovitz's salted caramel recipe. It worked perfectly, the caramel turned out beautifully smooth, dark and shiny. And I didn't get any sugar burns! It coated the apples nicely, set well and tasted amazing, with just the right amount of salt. I learnt a nifty tip where you should pour hot water over your apples and then rub them dry before you use them for caramel apples; this helps to remove any wax coating and helps the caramel stick to the surface of the apple easier. I still had a little trouble getting the caramel to stick at first, when the caramel is at its hottest it ran off the surface a little too easily. But once the caramel started to cool and thicken slightly it worked fine. I immediately ate as many of these evil apples as I could, and then wandered away from the kitchen in a familiar sugar-high daze. Unfortunately this did mean that I left a few of the leftover caramel apples on the kitchen counter and they didn't keep so well in the open, I woke up the next day and all the caramel had melted off the apples. I really should have wrapped them up in cellophane, so I will have to remember that for next time. There will definitely be a next time. P.S. Your teeth will not be happy with you because of all the chewy caramel, apple skin and popcorn bits.

Popcorn Salted Caramel Apples
(makes 8-10 caramel apples, salted caramel from David Lebovitz's recipe)
3/4 cup (180 ml) heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or bean paste
Heaped 1/2 teaspoon sea salt flakes
1/2 cup (160 g) light corn syrup or golden syrup (I used Lyle’s Golden Syrup)
1 cup (200 g) sugar
4 tbsp (60 g), salted butter, cubed, at room temperature
8-10 small/medium apples (I usually prefer Fuji but this time I had to use Pink Lady) + wooden sticks
100g popcorn, popped and crushed into smaller pieces (I just used microwave butter popcorn as this was all I had available)

NOTE: This recipe creates a soft, chewy and creamy caramel to coat the apples. If you prefer to making a hard, clear toffee apple, this recipe from BBC good food looks decent.
Line a baking tray with baking paper. Remove stalks from apples and place in a large bowl and pour hot water over them and leave for a few seconds, then remove from the water and dry thoroughly. This supposedly helps to remove the wax coating on the apples and helps the caramel to stick to their surface better. Push a wooden stick into each apple, take care not to spear the stick all the way through. Place cream, vanilla, salt and half the butter (30g/2 tbsp) in a small saucepan and gently heat, stirring every now and then until the mixture just comes to the boil. Cover and set aside, keeping it warm while you prepare the sugar syrup.

In a medium or large heavy based saucepan fitted with a candy thermometer, place golden syrup and sugar and place on medium heat, stirring gently until the sugar dissolves. Once the mixture is melted together and the sugar is evenly moistened, only stir is as necessary to keep it from getting any hot spots. Cook until the syrup reaches 155°C(310°F). Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the warm cream mixture (take care as it will bubble up a lot) until it is smooth and even. Return to the heat and cook the mixture to 127°C(260°F). Remove the pan from the heat, lift out the thermometer, and stir in the cubes of butter, until it's melted and the mixture is smooth.

Working quickly, dip and swirl your prepared apples in the hot caramel mixture, hold it over the pan to let the excess drip off then carefully dip the caramel covered apple into the crushed popcorn. With the first few apples the caramel may be quite hot and run off the surface of the apples too easily, so you may need to leave these to set for a few minutes before coating with popcorn. If you work slowly (like me) and the caramel starts to get too viscious for dipping the apples, return it to a low heat and stir until it's runny enough. Place apples on the prepared baking tray and leave to cool completely. Serve immediately, the sooner the better as the popcorn will get soggier and the caramel will soften the longer you leave it/the longer it sits uncovered, you can try wrapping it in cellophane once they are cool to help avoid this. You can also mix any leftover popcorn and caramel together for an extra snack.

Chocolate 'Cupcake' Fudge

2012-01-02T19:30:00.003+11:00

When all else fails, sprinkles will fix everything. Sprinkles (especially rainbow sprinkles) are awesome. Sprinkles make me happy. And after a trip to the party supply store I had mountains and mountains of of them in all difference colours. I was determined to make something with these sprinkles. The first thing didn't turn out so great. It's not everyday that I have to go around asking people, "Do these unicorn horns look more like mystical penises?". Yeah.

I was still determined to make something with these sprinkles. They are just too darn pretty. So I decided to try Karen's recipe for easy chocolate fudge, it looked so freakin delicious. I just made a plain chocolate fudge, but poured it into mini cupcake papers and topped it with vanilla icing so they look just like cupcakes. All so I had something to put the rainbow sprinkles on. So cute!

There are many things I love about this fudge recipe. Karen's instructions were super easy to follow and the best part is that there is no sugar thermometer involved. There was a heck of a lot of stirring involved, my arms nearly fell off and my favourite silicon spatula snapped :( But it was totally worth it. The chocolate fudge is so tasty. And with the pink icing and sprinkles on top it looks so fun and cheerful.

The two things that usually freak me out about chocolate fudge is the risks of it not setting, or the chocolate seizing and making the whole mixture turn grainy. This recipe worked perfectly, the mixture sets pretty quickly so you have to work fast. I even kept my fudge at room temperature all day and it didn't go soft or melty at all. My first batch of fudge actually seized up as soon as I stirred in the chocolate and I completely freaked out, but I returned it to the heat and gradually added hot water to the mixture and it totally fixed it. It was like magic!

I wish I had been able to make these in time for our New Year's celebrations, the confetti sprinkles are just perfect for that kind of occasion. But these little cupcake shaped fudge bites are perfect for any party, they are nice and bite-sized, which I prefer since the fudge is quite sweet and you don't want to eat too much of it in one go. And everyone needs more rainbow sprinkles in their life.

Chocolate 'Cupcake' Fudge
(slightly adapted from Citrus & Candy's Easy Chocolate Fudge, makes 24 'cupcakes')
1 x 395g tin of condensed milk
80g butter (I used salted, but you can use unsalted and add 1 tsp salt)
200g light brown sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
180g dark chocolate, finely chopped

For the icing:
125g butter
2 cups icing sugar, sifted
Optional: Pink/Red food colouring, a few drops
Sprinkles to decorate

Line two 12-hole mini muffin trays with papers. Place condensed milk, butter, sugar, and golden syrup in a heavy-based saucepan. Stir constantly over low heat for about 5 minutes or until the mixture is glossy and sugar has dissolved (do not boil whatsoever).

Increase the heat to medium-low and bring to a simmer while stirring (there’s gonna be a lot of stirring involved here!). Continue to stir and cook for about 6-8 minutes until the mixture has thickened and it 'comes away from the sides' (check out Karen's video at the end of her post, it was a really useful reference for this part). Fudge is ready when a teaspoon of mixture forms a soft ball when dropped into cold water.

Remove from heat and working quickly, add in the finely chopped chocolate, stir until chocolate has melted (work fast otherwise the mixture might seize. Don't fret if it does, return it to the heat and add hot water 1 tbsp at a time and stir until the mixture turns molten again). Carefully spoon into prepared cupcake papers, smooth tops with a spatula and cool for 30 mins on a wire rack. Chill in fridge until firm.

Prepare the icing; remove butter 30 mins before starting. Chop up butter and beat in a large mixing bowl on high with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Reduce speed to low and gradually add sifted icing sugar, vanilla and food colouring. Increase speed to high and beat until smooth and fluffy. Peel cupcake papers away from the set chocolate fudge (I sliced a thin layer off the tops of each of them before doing this, so they had flatter tops). Place icing in a piping bag with a 1cm star tip and pipe over the top of the fudge and decorate with sprinkles. Store fudge in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.

Bourbon & Brown Butter Brownies

2011-12-28T10:00:00.004+11:00

As 2011 draws to a close and people make plans to welcome in the new year, I can think of nothing but brownies. Brownies are one of those things that I will randomly get cravings for every few months, and then I will make them and gorge myself to the point where I can't look at brownies for another few months. So this New Year's Eve, you could either work up the energy to make this stunning Pink Champagne & Strawberry Cake, complete with sparklers and chocolate covered strawberries, or you could take the easy route and make these incredibly quick and deliciously satisfying Bourbon & Brown Butter Brownies.

I've already gone on and on about the magic of adding brown butter to baked goods, so I knew that bit was going to be fantastic. But this time I took a leaf out of Lisa's book and boozed these babies up. These brownies are strictly for the grown ups. It's for New Year's Eve after all! The bourbon adds a wonderful depth to these gooey, fudgy brownies (extra gooey and fudgy because I doubled the amount of chocolate in them!). I was also tempted to whip up some boozy chocolate ganache to spread over the top but they tasted pretty great on their own so I decided against it, though feel free to do it if it tickles your fancy.

I hope everyone has had a lovely holidays and is ready for the new year. It's been an exciting, exhausting and tough year for me but I'm ready to take on 2012. These boozy brownies are the perfect dessert to make for any New Year's Eve dinner, serve it warm with some vanilla ice cream and everyone will love it. I am now going to eat way too many of them and will probably regret it later. See you in 2012!

Bourbon & Brown Butter Brownies
(makes 16 brownies)
250g good quality bittersweet chocolate (if you want them to be less gooey/fudgy then only use 175g)
100g butter
120ml (about 1/2 cup) bourbon
2 eggs
3 tbsp dutch process cocoa powder, sifted
75g (about 1/2 cup) plain flour
190g (about 3/4 cup) sugar

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Grease very well and line the bottom and two long sides of a 20x30cm slice/brownie tin (can be substituted with a 20cm square cake tin but you may have to bake it slightly longer as it will be thicker). Let the baking paper hang over the long edges, it will make it easier to lift brownie out later. Prepare the brown butter; place butter in a small saucepan on low heat until it melts, continue to stir over low heat but keep a close eye on it, as it begins to bubble and the milk solids separate and settle at the bottom of the pan. Stir it frequently at this point, so that the milk solids do not settle at the bottom of the pan for too long and burn. Continue until the mixture turns brown and smells nutty but take care not to leave it for too long or it will taste burnt. Remove from the heat.

Break up chocolate into small pieces place in a heatproof bowl. Heat over a saucepan of boiling water, or very carefully in 30 sec bursts in the microwave. Stir and set aside to cool for a few minutes, then add the brown butter and stir to combine. Sift cocoa powder, sugar and flour into a large mixing bowl. Add melted ingredients, bourbon and eggs to the dry mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until just combined. Take care not to overmix or the brownies will be tough. Pour into prepared tin.

Bake for about 25 mins, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out with a few moist crumbs attached (start checking on it from the 20 minute mark, it is better to undercook it and have to return it to the oven later than to overcook it and let it go dry). Remove from the oven and place tin on a wire rack. Cool completely in tin before removing and cutting into 16 pieces. Can be stored overnight in an airtight container (they actually taste best the day after).

Christmas Red Velvet Snow Cake

2011-12-23T15:30:00.005+11:00

Ohhhh my god. This cake was a freaking nightmare. A messy, messy nightmare. For a few weeks now I've had this image in my head of a pristine white cake that looks like it's made of snow. I kept putting off making it because I couldn't think of the right flavour cake or the right toppings. I saw Mowie's stunning Snow Cake and nearly gave up the idea entirely because I knew I couldn't make anything near as perfect. I don't know why but a few days ago I suddenly decided I had to go ahead and make this cake. I wanted it to look like it was covered in snow on the outside by topping it with coconut, with little Snowman macarons on top and a vibrant red velvet cake with cream cheese icing hiding inside. I thought it would be the perfect dessert to bring along to Christmas lunch.

Things went pretty smoothly at first; I piped the macarons and was halfway through decorating them when I realised that I had forgotten to leave half the macaron shells undecorated for the back of each snowman. I really didn't want to have creepy double sided snowmen with faces on their fronts and backs. I managed to stop myself before I drew the faces on but they still have buttons on their backs. Then came my red velvet drama. I know I should have just gone with my trustly vanilla cake recipe and adapted it with cocoa and red food colouring, but instead I used an internet recipe and it just tasted really strange. Like it was made of playdoh. I have no idea why, it was probably because of something stupid I did. I don't think I'll be able to bring it to Christmas lunch :( So unfortunately I don't have a red velvet recipe to go with this post, but I'm sure most of you will have your own favourite red velvet cake recipe that you can use.

Then came the icing drama. I was totally impatient and didn't let my cakes cool for long enough before I started icing them. You'd think I'd have learnt my lesson on this issue by now. The icing started melting down the sides of the cake and it was a total mess. So that's why the cake isn't very straight on the sides, as A described it: 'The cake has hips'. I tried to fix it by patting the coconut on top of the icing and pushing it back up the sides of the cake, but it just made things worse. After the sprinkles mess I made with my purple ombre sprinkles cake you'd think I'd never decorate the sides of my cake with toppings again. But I did. And coconut went EVERYWHERE. At least coconut doesn't bounce as much as sprinkles do when they hit the ground. But it does stick to you. I was this scary coconut covered monster by the end of it.

Things didn't get much better the next day when I went to take photographs of it. I managed to drop that poor slice of cake twice, knocking off the poor snowman's nose. I had to perform emergency snowman surgery. And then I slipped and nearly fell into the damn cake. I'm not kidding. There was a lot of swearing. I was pretty much ready to give up on the whole thing, but look at how pretty it looks! I just had to share the idea with you guys.

My favourite part is definitely the snowman macarons. I filled them with the same cream cheese icing that I covered the whole cake in, and used orange Starburst chewy lollies to make their little noses. I know they've been done before (I think my favourite version that I've seen are from MiniCuisine), but they were just the perfect topper for this cake, along with the mountains of coconut to make it look like it was covered in snow. I really do love the bright contrast of the super red cake innards against the stark white exterior. It's definitely got a little bit of wow factor for when you cut into the cake. Of course feel free to make the macarons on their own, or you could just make the cake and icing. The cake would look just as cute topped with coconut macaroons or those white ferrero chocolates. And that's it from me for this year's Christmas baking, have an fabulous holidays everyone! Eat, drink and be merry :)

Red Velvet Snow Cake with Snowman Macarons
(makes 10-12 macarons)
2 x 8-inch round cakes, use your favourite red velvet recipe (mine was a bust unfortunately)
250g cream cheese, softened
250g unsalted butter, softened
2 tsp of lemon, or adjust to taste (you can also add the zest of one lemon if you wish)
6 cups (about 750g) icing sugar, sifted
About 125g dessicated coconut

For the macarons:
100g aged egg whites (you can use fresh eggs too, just make sure they are room temperature. I always use fresh these days, and zap it in the microwave on defrost for 10 seconds)
110g almond meal, at room temperature and well sifted
200g icing sugar
50g caster sugar
Optional: 1 tsp powdered egg whites (available from The Essential Ingredient), helps to stabilise egg whites but is not necessary
To decorate: black food colouring or edible ink pen, silver cachous and orange Starburst chews

Bake the red velvet cakes and cool completely. Prepare the macarons; Line two baking sheets with baking paper. Place icing sugar in food processor and pulse for a minute to remove any lumps. Stir in almond meal and pulse for about 30 seconds to combine. Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside. Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites and egg white powder in a medium mixing bowl until the egg white powder dissolves and it reaches soft peaks. With the mixer on high speed, gradually add sugar and beat until it reaches stiff peaks.

Add meringue to your dry mixture and mix, quickly at first to break down the bubbles in the egg white (you really want to beat all the large bubbles out of the mixture, be rough!), then mix carefully as the dry mixture becomes incorporated and it starts to become shiny again. Take care not to overmix, the mixture should flow like lava and a streak of mixture spread over the surface of the rest of the mixture should disappear after about 30 seconds. Place in a piping bag and pipe snowman shapes (I piped small 2cm rounds next to 4cm rounds) on baking sheets. Tap baking sheets carefully and firmly on the benchtop a couple times to remove any large bubbles. If you wish, decorate with silver cachous for the snowman 'buttons'.

Leave to dry for at least half an hour to an hour, so that when you press the surface of one gently it does not break. This will help prevent any cracking and help the feet to form on the macs. Preheat your oven to 140-150°C (285-300°C), depending on your oven. Place on top of an overturned roasting tray or another baking sheet if your sheets are not professional grade, for better heat distribution. Bake for 15-20 minutes, depending on the size of your shells. Carefully test if the base of the shell is ready by gently lifting one and if it's still soft and sticking to the baking paper, then it needs to bake for a few minutes longer. Remove from the oven and cool on the tray for a few minutes, then gently remove from the sheet and place on a wire rack to cool completely. Decorate half the macarons with the black food colouring to draw on the faces and cut a small triangle of orange Starburst chews for the nose.

Prepare the cream cheese icing; place cream cheese and butter in a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer on high until smooth and fluffy. Add lemon and icing sugar, one cup and a time, and beat until smooth. You may need to adjust the amount of icing sugar to obtain the right consistency, it should be spreadable but not runny. Spread over the top of one cake and then sandwich the other cake on top and crumb coat with more icing. Chill for about 15 mins to set the crumb coat slightly. While it is chilling, sandwich the macarons with some of the cream cheese icing and chill in the fridge in an airtight container. Cover the cake with the remaining cream cheese icing, smoothing with a spatula. Chill in the fridge for about half an hour. Place cake in a wide container/tray and carefully sprinkle coconut all over the top and sides of the cake to decorate. Top with macarons and chill in the fridge overnight. Serve at room temperature.