Record deck cake - happy 60th birthday Paul!

For my second 60th birthday cake in as many weeks, I was asked to make a cake in the shape of a lifesize record deck, for a man who used to run his own record shop.  I was certainly up for the challenge, although I had to admit to Kathryn who ordered the cake that it wouldn't be LP size, as the biggest cake I could make was only 12" square (anything bigger won't actually fit in my oven). Having said that, a 12" cake serves 72 portions which was more than enough for the amount of people going to the party.  It ended up as a lifesize 45rpm record player instead:

For this cake I tried a new recipe for Chocolate Mud Cake from my Home Guide To Cake Decorating book.  This is a lovely rich moist chocolate cake, and with over half a kilo of dark chocolate, half a kilo of butter and 1.2kg golden caster sugar it's not surprising it tastes good. I added some finely grated orange zest to the cake batter and filled it with my chocolate and cointreau meringue buttercream. Yu-um is all I can say.  And I don't even really like chocolate that much.  (Just in case you're wondering, there are always trimmings of cake leftover when I level the top of the cake, I don't just cut a sneaky slice out of the middle and hope noone notices)

After I had filled and levelled the cake I covered it with a pale yellow sugarpaste.  I worked the edges with my cake polishers to create a sharper edge to look more realistic.  I then left this overnight to firm up.

The next day I started off with creating the turntable.  I found a cake tin with the right proportions to use as a template for the base.  I don't like to use black sugarpaste very much as it has so much colouring in it that it doesn't taste very nice, so instead I created a turntable out of marzipan and covered it with grey sugarpaste brushed with silver lustre to make it look metallic.  I then rolled the record as thin as I could make it from black sugarpaste and added it to the turntable with some edible glue:

Next up was adding the label in a nice bright red and the central spoke which was secured with a short length of dried spaghetti:

I left this to firm up before adding the writing and got on with creating the arm of the player.  For this I used a cake dowel covered with grey sugarpaste and brushed with silver lustre to create the main part of the arm.  I then made the head from black modelling paste and fixed with a combination of edible glue and dried spaghetti.  I think I was a little naive or just plain not thinking properly when I added a needle made from floristry wire - there was no way that that this would hold up the weight of the arm and show on the final cake, duh....  Anyhow, here's the completed arm, which I left upside down overnight to firm up with a ball of clingfilm to support the handle:

The rest of the cake came together fairly easily, with some details added made from black modelling paste.  I also wrote the label was using an edible pen. 

The trickiest bit was adding the arm.  I made the arm hinge in two parts with a section hollowed out to fit the arm in between:

The final dial was secured to the back using a couple of short lengths of dried spaghetti:

And with that the cake was finished:

But my challenge wasn't over yet.  I seemed to recall saying on more than one occasion that I would never take a big cake up to London on the train and tube again.  I clearly need to listen to my own advice more carefully as this was the heaviest cake I've ever carried, let alone during rush hour and standing waiting at Victoria Station for 20 minutes while they closed the entrance due to overcrowding.  I had given Kathryn advance warning that the cake was heavy, and to prove it I even weighed the boxed cake on our bathroom scales - it came to 1 stone 2.6 pounds, even I was shocked.  It's also darn awkward to carry, I must invest in some kind of cakemobile, at the moment I'm thinking of a suitcase strapped flat to two skateboards and a long handle to keep it travelling level - anyone got any other ideas???

Aside from the awkward journey up to London, it was a sturdy cake and made it there in one piece.  Kathryn collected it and took it home on the bus ready for Paul's party.  She said it was exactly what she'd hoped it would look like.  Paul - I hope you had a fantastic 60th birthday party, sorry we couldn't make it, but hope the cake makes up for it!

Free cake please - my Gluten Free Chocolate Cake recipe

I would find it very hard to live a life without cake - it would be a very rare occasion that you would walk into our kitchen and not be able to find a slice of homemade cake or a sweet treat to go with a mid morning or afternoon cuppa (and even then there is probably a secret stash in the freezer too).  But a few of my friends and Brighton Bakery customers aren't able to enjoy regular cakes as most cakes use regular wheat flour, and that's no fun if you're gluten intolerant.

So I'm particulary sympathetic to those who are are gluten intolerant, especially as a lot of the gluten free treats I've tried on sale in the supermarket are far inferior in taste and texture to their wheat based versions.  I've dallied with a few GF recipes in the past for our market stalls and for various cakes I've made.  An excellent book I use a lot is Harry Eastwood's Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache, where all the recipes can be made with either regular or gluten free flour, and they have the added bonus of being better for you as they use grated vegetables and ground almonds to reduce the fat and sugar content in the cakes.

So when I was asked to make a gluten free chocolate cake this recipe book was the first one I pulled off the shelf.  The Light Chocolate Cake looked perfect, which uses grated butternut squash in the batter to keep in lovely and moist.    Well how glad am I that I did a trial run of this cake, as it turned out to be a disaster!  The cake took more than twice as long as it should have done to cook and despite the lovely quality ingredients and expensive organic cocoa powder I used it tasted really bland.  Oh dear - having ticked and starred nearly every recipe I've tried in this book, this one got a big fat cross (I've carried on my mum's tradition of marking up her recipes - it's so handy when you try as many things in as many cookery books as I have).

I decided that I could do much better by tinkering with my favourite regular chocolate cake recipe instead.  It turned out so well that I thought I would share the recipe with you - next time your gluten intolerant friends are round for tea you can let them eat cake.

Emily's Gluten Free Chocolate Cake Recipe
serves 25 party portions or 10-12 big slices
165g very soft butter
300g golden caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 medium eggs
265g gluten free flour (I use Dove's Farm)
3 level teaspoons gluten free baking powder
1 level teaspoon xanthan gum
1 level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
70g good quality cocoa powder (I like Green & Blacks)
250ml buttermilk
3-4 tablespoons milk

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line an 8" round deep cake tin.
2. In a large bowl, beat together the softened butter, sugar and vanilla with electric beaters or a freestanding mixer until pale and fluffy.
3. Gradually add the eggs to the mixture, one at a time, beating really well after each one (it's important to add them slowly and mix well otherwise the mixture can curdle).
4. Mix together all your dry ingredients really well and pass through a sieve to ensure the baking powder is evenly distributed.
5. Using a big metal spoon, fold about a third of the flour mix into the batter.  Follow this by folding in about a third of the buttermilk, then keep alternating with the dry mix and the buttermilk until it is all incorporated.  Finally add the milk so that you have a happy cake batter consistency (I find that the GF flour absorbs more liquid than regular flour - it's better to have a slightly looser batter than one that's too stiff as it can end up dry).
6. Bake for about 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes - if a skewer dipped in the centre comes out clean then it's done.  Cool in the tin for at least 5 minutes before tipping on to a wire rack to cool completely.
7. Once cool you can cut the cake into layers and fill with your favourite icing - I think the best is a chocolate meringue buttercream but you could use a ganache or any filling you like.   The cake should keep in an airtight container for up to a week.

I got some lovely feedback from the lady I made the cake for - she said the guests at the wedding couldn't tell any difference from a regular cake and the bride was thrilled she could actually eat the cake for once!

I'll have a pint of cake please

I get a few unusual requests for cakes sometimes, which actually suits me down to the ground as I love flexing my creative muscles to make a cake that is a bit out of the ordinary.  Over the last week I have made two cakes on a tipsy theme - a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and a packet of Marlboro Lights for a 40th birthday cake, and a giant pint of Guinness cake which I made for Melissa to celebrate St Patrick's Day on Saturday.

  

 
As I'm writing this post I'm getting hungry again and might just have to cut myself another slice of the Guinness cake before I tell you how I made the cakes....
 
I've made the vodka bottle cake before, so it was quite handy that I already had the label prepared.  Usually I can find a suitable picture on Google Images but in this case I had to make it up from scratch which took more than 2 1/2 hours that I hadn't budgeted for - oops.  Luckily after some good searching I was able to find the Marlboro images I needed, and with a bit of photoshopping I sent the pictures off to be printed into edible images at a local company in Newhaven.  I got some slightly strange looks when I picked them up and had to assure them it wasn't a cigarette flavoured cake!
 
The cake itself is a vanilla madeira cake made from two 5" round cakes that I filled and cut in half to create the main bottle shape:
  

 
Then it just needed a small amount of shaping with a sharp knife to create the domed top and to make sure the sides were smooth and even.  Once carved, the cake was then covered in a thin layer of buttercream:
 

The neck of the bottle was made from a sausage of marzipan, then I covered the whole thing in grey sugarpaste and trimmed neatly:
 

 
The cigarette packed was made from a rectangle of cake cut to just smaller than the image and covered in white sugarpaste.  I've learned the hard way to always use plenty of icing sugar underneath so that when you come to move it to the board the sugarpaste doesn't stick to the surface.
 

 
The surface of the sugarpaste is dampened with a little water before fixing the edible image (see my Monkey Street Art post for top tips on using edible images):
 

 
The bottle label is added to the cake in the same way and the cigarette packet is secured to the board with a little icing.
 

A few finishing touches and a happy birthday message in royal icing and the cake is finished:
 

I think making this cake gave me the inspiration for the Guinness cake, and I instinctively knew that the recipe I had to use was Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake.  I'm not a huge fan of chocolate cakes, but this one is a little bit different - moist and dark, with a hint of bitterness coming from the Guinness and then lashings of cream cheese icing really makes it a special cake.  Nigella's recipe is for a 9" round cake, which I split between a 5" and a 6" tin to give the basis of the famous pint glass shape.

 
This is quite a damp cake and not really suitable for carving, but I had my heart set on making this cake work and just took shaping the cake very slowly, glueing crumbs back on with a little more icing to fill in any holes.  Usually you can freeze cakes before carving to make it easier, but I didn't want to risk the cream cheese icing in the freezer.   I also stuffed cake crumbs on top of the layers of icing to make as stable a surface as possible for the sugarpaste as the icing isn't as firm or stable as buttercream (so also not really suitable for a carved cake like this!).  Before I started carving I placed strips of greaseproof paper just under the edges of the cake which protect the board from crumbs and smears of icing.  It doesn't look very pretty at this stage, but it's now got just about the right shape:

Then for a thin layer of icing so that the sugarpaste will stick and once that's smooth you can carefully remove the greaseproof paper and you will have a nice clean board underneath:

And then time for the sugarpaste - I like to use Renshaw Chocolate Sugarpaste which has a lovely chocolate flavour.  I covered this up to nearly the top, then covered the top part with white sugarpaste for the head of the pint.  I then cut through both layers of paste and removed the excess to give a nice clean line:

All that was left was to add the logo using some edible gold paint and some superwhite mixed with a dash of water to create the white for the writing.

And it just so happens that this is excellent timing as I am celebrating my blogiversary this week - one year of writing the Brighton Bakery blog.  Thanks to everyone for reading, and I hope you all have a pint of cake to celebrate with me!

Turtle Wedding Cake - congratulations David and Inessa

I love it when people ask for cakes that are a bit different - it's really rewarding for me to make a cake that not only stretches my creativity and also one that's completely original and personal to the customer.
So I was really excited to make this turtle wedding cake for happy couple David and Inessa:

The story behind the design, is that the turtles represent that it has taken a long time for the couple to finally get married, and it matches the design on their wedding invitation.  As the groom is not a fan of white icing, the couple plumped for a chocolate orange cake covered with chocolate sugarpaste and filled with chocolate and cointreau ganache.  Yum.

I started about a week before making the toppers to give them plenty of time to dry and harden - a drooping bride and groom on top of a wedding cake would be a disaster!  I used modelling paste, which is simply regular sugarpaste with gum tragacanth added and left overnight.  I started with the bodies, which I made out of yellow modelling paste and a small amount of chocolate brown paste:

I rolled the brown paste into thin sausages and wrapped that around a fat yellow sausage.  I then rolled this round and folded it over a couple of times to get the marbled effect:



Using the same technique, I used a slightly darker brown to make the legs, stretching it and folding over 3 or 4 times to get the thinner marble effect.  So that each pair of legs matched, I made four sausages about half the size of the body and cut each sausage into two to give eight legs.  I shaped the hind legs into an "s" and cut in the claws using a craft knife:

I fixed the legs on using a short piece of dry spaghetti (yep - it works a treat!) and some edible glue.  I added a tail which I made from an offcut:

I made the neck and head using the same technique again, with a piece about half the size of the body for each.  I inserted a longer piece of dry spaghetti nearly all the way down the neck and left enough at the end to push right into the body and secured with edible glue to make sure it stayed put.  I then supported the necks while they dried:

I actually kept them supported this way for about a week to make sure they were as strong as possible.

The day before the cake was to be delivered, I baked the cake and while it was in the oven I finished off the turtles.  Having tried one technique for the shell I wasn't happy with it so I took it all off and started again.  I added a small lump of paste on top of the back and then covered with a circle of chocolate sugarpaste.  I added the textured effect using the end of my edible pen! 

I added the eyes and cut a slit with a craft knife for the mouths.  I made a top hat from black modelling paste and the bridal headdress from white paste which I shaped at the bottom using my scallop tool (I knew I'd find a use for that tool at some point!).  I added lots of details - daisies cut from flower paste filled with handmade edible pearls, some tiny yellow roses I made using a new mould I recently bought and yellow teardrop jewels and more edible pearls to finish it off:

They really came to life once the hat and headdress went on.  I was so pleased.  I left them overnight again, with a support, just in case.

The next day, I had until 3.30pm before I had to deliver the cake.  Plenty of time, or so I thought.  I had a bit of a disaster with the first batch of ganache filling, so it was about midday before I had the cake cut, filled, iced and in the fridge to firm up before covering.  So much for an easy relaxed day just adding the finishing touches...

Once the cake had firmed up in the fridge for a couple of hours I covered it with chocolate sugarpaste:

I also covered the drum in chocolate sugarpaste and secured the trimmed cake on top with some royal icing:

Next it was ready for the lilypads.  I made these from green sugarpaste mixed with a little chocolate paste rolled into a circle.  I then texturised the edges using a toothpick:

I cut a triangle out of each of the lilypads and shaped the edges a little to make them look more realistic before adding to the cake using some edible glue:

Time to add the turtles and a message piped in royal icing:





I finished the cake off with some yellow ribbon round both the cake and the drum, secured with a flower detail to tie in with the bridal headdress:

Congratulations David and Inessa - I hope you had a fantastic day yesterday and wish you a long and happy life together xx

A quirky character cake for Sheena

Sometimes Melissa and I can be a bit rubbish at remembering things, especially important dates like friends' birthdays.  No matter how many times we mention it and remind ourselves in the weeks before the event, the date will fly right past us until that forehead-smacking moment when we realise it's too late.

So when it's a really good friend's birthday that escapes us (sorry again Sheena!), we usually make up for it by making an extra nice cake. 

I had borrowed this great book in the library called Fun and Original Character Cakes and I had been waiting for an excuse to make this really cute cake that appears on the front of it.  Sheena and her husband Nathan have just had a beautiful baby boy called Murphy, so we thought that Sheena deserved a little pampering in return for the sleepless nights she's been having with the little one.  This cake seemed to fit the bill.

The cake was a beetroot and chocolate loaf cake which I based on a Diana Henry recipe.  I was a bit worried about how the cake would turn out as we had a power surge that blew the fuse for the cooker right in the middle of baking it.  Luckily we replaced the fuse quickly and it didn't make any difference to the final result.

The book gives step by step instructions for making all the decorations.  I made a few tweaks to the design, mainly making it into an old fashioned roll top bath shape on a chequered floor.  The original design has a round bath which is covered with black sugarpaste, but I try not to use black very much as it has so much colouring added it doesn't taste very nice.

About half way through making the cake, Melissa and I had a little panic that Sheena might be offended by giving her a cake with a hippo on it.  At this stage I'd already spent hours making it and they were due to arrive soon so there wasn't really time to change plans.  I just had to hope that it would be cute enough and she would appreciate the effort we had gone to.  And the main thing that matters is the taste right?

Luckily Sheena loved it, and really liked how long Miss Hippo's eyelashes were.  She took the cake to her family gathering the next day and they all gave really great feedback.  What was interesting was that the cake actually got more chocolatey and moist the following day -  I think that might be because of the beetroot.

There are some other quirky cake designs in the book that I really want to make.  I guess I'll just have to wait to miss another friend's birthday to try one out ;o)

Chocolate Campfire Cupcakes - Happy Birthday Mark x

Mark is a friend of Melissa's from work and a follower of the Brighton Baker blog from the very start.  I'm told that he often asks Melissa when he's going to get a mention and I was half tempted just to stick his name randomly at the end of a completely unrelated blogpost just to appease him.

But Mark - as it's your birthday - our gift to you is a post dedicated entirely in your honour.  Last night I cooked up a batch of birthday cupcakes that Melissa should be delivering to you as I type.

Knowing that Mark has a sweet tooth and loves chocolate cake, we found a recipe in the lovely Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days recipe book that looked spot on.  The recipe is actually called S'moreanne Cupcakes, but if you live in the UK like me then this name might not mean much to you either.  Apparently a s'more is an American campfire treat: marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched between crackers and toasted.  Sounds like my kinda treat - think I'll be trying that one next time we do a barbecue on the beach.  But S'moreanne sounded a bit girly and obscure so I have renamed these little beauties Chocolate Campfire Cupcakes.  And look how pretty:

These cakes begin with a chocolate cupcake baked with a topping of crushed biscuits and grated dark chocolate, then they're finished off with an Italian meringue frosting, a sprinkling more of crushed biscuits and a square of chocolate.

The chocolate cupcakes were a cinch to make, but I've not made Italian meringue since pastry school and I was a bit nervous as to how it would turn out.  It involves boiling sugar and water to exactly 121°C and pouring it in a steady thin stream into half whipped egg whites.  I'm not sure if I got it totally spot on but it turned out pretty well and I love how you can create little peaks in the icing which look a bit like the flames of a campfire once you flash it under a hot grill. 

If I made these again I think I would change the crushed biscuits for honeycomb which would give these cakes an extra dimension in terms of texture and sweetness.  Also as honeycomb is also known as cinder toffee it would go even better with my new name of Chocolate Campfire Cupcakes.

So Mark, you've finally got a mention on the blog.  Hope you like it, and the cakes too :o) x  

White Chocolate, Almond & Apricot Cookies

As you may be able to tell from this blog, I love to experiment with new recipes and ideas in the kitchen.  To be honest, I'm not even sure I can ever follow a recipe exactly word for word, not that I have a problem with being told what to do, but more often it's that I'm not usually organised enough to have all the ingredients in the cupboard in advance, so I have to improvise.
 
This cookie recipe came about in just such a way.  I was in a baking mood, and while flicking through my copy of River Cottage Everyday for inspiration I stumbled upon a recipe for Ten Minute Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I was in a greedy mood and the speedy rewards promised by this recipe made it instantly appealing.  I didn't have any chocolate chips in the cupboard, but I happen to think that the flavour combination I tried instead was a real winner, so I thought I would share it with you.

White Chocolate, Almond & Apricot Cookies
Makes 14-16 generous cookies
 
125g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
75g soft light brown sugar
1 medium egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
150g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
A pinch of sea salt
50g white chocolate, chopped
75g blanched almonds, roughly chopped
75g dried apricots, chopped
 
1.  Preheat the oven to 190C (170C fan assisted) and line two baking sheets with baking parchment.
2. Gently melt the butter in a small saucepan.  Meanwhile add the sugars to a large bowl, then beat in the melted butter well with a wooden spoon. 
3.  Next beat in the eggs and vanilla extract.  Once it's nicely mixed, sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl and stir them in.  Finally add the chopped white chocolate, almonds and apricots and you'll end up with a nice sloppy mixture.
4.  Spoon blobs of the mixture onto your prepared trays using a dessertspoon - make sure you leave about 4cm between each as the cookies really spread out while cooking. If you don't then you'll just end up with one big cookie!
5. Place in the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes until the cookies are just beginning to turn golden brown.  As with all biscuits, they will firm up as they cool so don't worry if they still feel very soft.
6. Leave on the hot trays for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Happy baking :o) 

Chocolate Thank You Cake

This Tuesday I really felt like we made it.  The first official day as Brighton Bakery.  The reason being that we had our first commission from someone we didn't know. 

When the phone rang, I was completely caught off guard, I didn't have any prices to hand, but I was so pleased to get the order I agreed to do it for less than I should have charged.  And to top it off, she needed the cake in just two days time.  I was due to be working in London on that day so I made it even harder on myself by saying I would deliver it on Wednesday evening instead.  I had my work cut out but I was determined to do it.

The cake was fairly simple - a 10 inch vanilla cake iced with chocolate buttercream, with a piped message and some handmade sugarpaste roses.  I prefer to cover cakes with sugarpaste rather than buttercream as it gives a better finish, but as they say the customer is always right so I had my first brief to work to.  Just a quick trip to the shops to buy the ingredients and I was good to go.

I used my trusty madeira cake recipe and enhanced the flavour by substituting a tablespoon of the milk for vanilla extract.  Luckily I still had time to make this and leave it overnight to settle ready for filling and icing.

The following morning I started off by making roses out of red modelling paste (I'll do another blog soon showing how I make these):

Annoyingly, I didn't have a tried and tested chocolate buttercream recipe and didn't feel like the one in my book that uses cocoa powder would produce a high enough quality flavour.  I found one on the internet that had rave reviews, but as it contained raw egg I didn't want to risk it.  The one I plumped for was a traditional buttercream with a generous helping of chocolate ganache mixed through.  Delicious.

As with most of my cakes, I levelled the top, then flipped it over and secured it to the cake board with a smear of buttercream.  I was feeling brave and cut it horizontally into 3 even layers and smothered each with the luscious buttercream as I rebuilt the cake. I covered it with a thin 'crumb layer' of buttercream on the top and sides of the cake and put in the fridge to set.  This way, when I did the final layer of buttercream it wouldn't be spoilt by any stray crumbs.

I did the final layer of buttercream on the top and sides and did my very best to make it even, smoothing it out with a palette knife dipped in hot water.  It is so hard to get a good finish using buttercream (if anyone has any tips please let me know!) but I reached the point that I had to stop as I would start making it worse.  Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to get right - if it had a design on top it could have covered any slight mistakes.  But I was working to the customer's brief so I made it exactly how she had specified.  I finished off the cake with a piped pearl edge around the bottom:

After about half an hour of practising my piping technique I had the confidence to pipe the message with plain buttercream on top of the cake.  I then added my sugarpaste roses and the cake was done:

I delivered the cake just a couple of hours later and the customer seemed very pleased, which is all I can ask for.  Let's hope she tells all her friends and the orders start to roll in :o)

More recipe trials - eggless chocolate cupcakes

To the untrained eye, it might seem like I am trying to avoid redecorating the spare bedroom today, but since the oven was already hot from the Sunshine Marmalade Flapjacks coupled with the fact it gave me an excuse to use my lovely birdie cup measures, I decided to tackle an intriguing vegan chocolate cake recipe I found on the internet yesterday.

There are quite a few versions of this cake on various websites, but the Suzanne Martinson recipe I plumped for was highly recommended on a forum so I figured it must be a good one.  What's handy is that you're likely to have all the ingredients in your cupboard already, even the egg substitute, which by the way is vinegar.  Yep, I agree it sounds disgusting, but if you know me by now, this only made me more curious to try it.  I already have quite a few cake recipes on the list for the next market so I thought I would try this recipe as cupcakes instead.

Try as I might, I just couldn't imagine how using cider vinegar in place of eggs in a cake recipe could possibly taste good let alone still deliver the indulgent richness a good chocolate cake really needs.  But like Alice down the rabbit hole I went and if they were going to go wrong then nobody needed to know.  The first thing I was pleasantly rewarded with was how simple and quick it was to make the batter - no bingo wing busting creaming butter and sugar, no worrying about the mixture curdling as you add the eggs, just sift together the dry ingredients, stir together the wet ingredients then mix.  Easy peasy.  Then finally add the magic ingredient of  the cider vinegar which curiously fizzes up as it reacts with the baking soda and makes you feel slightly like a mad scientist.  Then the only stressful bit is making sure you get the mixture in the oven as quickly as possible after adding the vinegar.

I was suprised that the cakes rose much better than I had expected in the oven, and just 20 minutes later I was rewarded with 11 brunette beauties (in hindsight a couple were overfull so this mix would make 12 comfortably). 

Because I have the winning combination of being both greedy and impatient I had to try one while it was still hot from the oven.  Curiouser and curiouser, these cakes are really good!  Who would have thought it.  I might even go as far as saying they are better than most chocolate cakes I've tried - they're moist, rich and chocolatey, not too heavy and you would never know they were made with vinegar instead of eggs.  I also tried one once they had cooled down in the name of quality control and can confirm that yep they are still yummy. 

I have to say though, the raspberry and chocolate glaze that Suzanne recommends for the top is pretty horrible and I'm glad I tasted it before ruining the cakes with it.  I don't think it really needs a glaze in any case.  I might consider adding some dark chocolate chips though for a bit of added texture.

So my only dilemma now is whether I promote these cakes as vegan on the stall - will this put non-vegan people off buying one?  I'll have to put my thinking cap on again to come up with a good name :o)

Chocolate Cigarello Fudge Cake - Happy Birthday Dad x

At the start of this year I made a resolution that instead of buying birthday presents for my friends and family I would make them cakes instead - it would give me a chance to practice different cakes for my portfolio and also I would be able to give people something handmade with a personal touch, something I always appreciate in a present.

It was my dad's birthday yesterdat and Melissa and I were hosting his birthday party for 10 of our family at our new house.  It went without saying that I was going to bake Dad a cake for the party and I wanted to bake something that looked and tasted really impressive so that everyone could see that I had the skills to make our new bakery business a success. 

I had already asked my dad his favourite cake flavour but didn't realise his request would be so specific - he wanted a plain victoria sponge cake, with buttercream filling and fudge icing.  I've done a plain sponge with buttercream loads of times before so wasn't worried about that, but my big worry was how I was going to make this cake look elegant and special - fudge icing isn't known for being forgiving when it comes to looking good. 

I had my thinking cap on about this one for about 2 weeks until I walked past the window of Patisserie Valerie in Soho and was inspired by one of their amazing gateaux which was decorated using chocolate cigarellos round the outside of the cake.  This was just the thing I needed to elevate the design of Dad's birthday cake.  To fit with the fudge icing I decided to add some chocolate ganache piped writing and chocolate covered strawberries to the top to complete the cake.

After some searching I found a fudge icing recipe on the Waitrose website (I doubled the quantity in this recipe) and Melissa discovered a great cake supplies wholesaler Cavalier of Brighton just up the road in Rottingdean for the chocolate cigarellos.

As sponge cake doesn't keep very well I had to make everything on the morning of the party and as usual we were up against it getting everything done before everyone arrived.  It's never a good idea to try and rush icing a cake and I was cursing my dad trying to get the fudge icing smooth with 5 minutes before everyone was due to arrive.  Then the chocolate cigarellos didn't want to stick to the icing so thinking on my feet I added some ribbon to hold them together and it actually finishes the cake off really nicely.  Luckily everyone was running late so I had a few minutes to quickly grab a picture of the the cake before anyone arrived:

I know my piping technique needs a bit more practice but overall I was really pleased with how it looked.  If I'm completely honest it was a bit sweet for my taste, but it was exactly what my dad had asked for and he loved it.

And there's no rest for the wicked as it's Melissa's dad's birthday tomorrow so I'd better get the apron back on to bake him a cake too!

Spotted collar cappucino cake - a birthday suprise

While everybody else was enjoying the Mayday bank holiday, on Monday 2nd May in the Grogan family we were celebrating twice as much as it was the birthday of my Sweet Mother-In-Law (as I have been asked to call her).  I made a pledge when we moved down to Brighton that instead of birthday presents I would make everyone a special cake - as a token of how much they mean to me and also to help fill up my cake portfolio for the business.

So for my Sweet Mother-In-Law it couldn't just be any regular cake as her birthday gift.  I needed something a bit special.  If I was in a reality TV competition I would be saying this cake needed the "wow factor".  I consulted my Home Guide to Cake Decorating book and the Spotted Collar Cake immediately jumped off the page.  It's a regular cake iced with white chocolate buttercream dusted with cocoa, but the twist is that it has a collar of dark chocolate with white chocolate polka dots.  It looked really impressive and (so I thought) not that difficult to make.  All I need to get is some acetate (clear plastic) for the chocolate collar and I'd already planned my own twist on it to make a cappucino cake instead of the boring vanilla one in the book.  My SMIL's favourite cake flavour is coffee so I thought I was on to a winner.

Oh my goodness.  Cue Melissa and me traipsing around Brighton on a wild goose chase to try and find some acetate for the chocolate collar.  We went from cake shops to homeware shops to decorating shops to stationers until several shops later we found Clarkes Stationers in the Lanes and the only piece of acetate big enough to wrap round the cake cost nearly £10.  I was gobsmacked.  That's probably twice the cost of the ingredients!  Still, knowing that I could use it again and rather than rethink the whole cake I bit the bullet and bought it.

Baking the coffee cake was straightforward (thanks Delia - the all in one method never fails) and the buttercream was fine too, the addition of coffee was a good one and will go really well with the cake.

As for the chocolate collar, you cut a strip of acetate long enough to fit round the cake, pipe on dots of melted white chocolate, leave to set and then cover with melted dark chocolate before wrapping round the cake.  Seemed easy enough to me.  Well, piping the dots was fine, but when I smoothed over the dark chocolate it melted the dots and a lot of them smeared.  I was gutted.  With no chocolate left to make another one I put the collar round the cake and it prayed that it would set.  Luckily this part went pretty well and it didn't crack when I pulled the plastic off so I was quite pleased about that. 

And so here it is (with the worst smears facing away from the camera!):

Although the chocolate collar caused me a bit of trouble, overall the cake still turned out well and my Sweet Mother-In-Law was thrilled with it.  Next time I think it would be a good idea to freeze the dots before covering with the dark chocolate so they don't melt so easily.  Smeary spots or not, it still tasted really good and that's what really counts.

Easter bake off - Emily vs Melissa

A belated Happy Easter to everyone!  I hope you suitably overindulged like we did and are ready for another long weekend courtesy of the royal family in a few days' time.

This Easter, instead of giving each other chocolate eggs, Melissa suggested we should bake each other some Easter inspired treats.  I jumped at the idea - not only would we save money, but receiving a homemade gift means so much more than a shop bought egg that anyone can give.  We had a week to plan our presents and budget of £4 each and the challenge was set.

I scoured all my recipe books and what felt like half the internet trying to search for something creative and Easter related, but with the glorious weather outside the last thing I wanted to bake was a big rich simnel cake.  I spent 5 days humming and ha-ing, then I remembered the gorgeous Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits that I was given as a Christmas present by my aunt and uncle and was inspired to make some Easter biscuits.  When Melissa saw me making the biscuit dough and spotted the 'plain biscuit recipe' over my shoulder she cried out - "Is that all you're making for the bake off?  Plain biscuits??"  I sheepishly replied, "I'm putting vanilla in them," which she scoffed at, as she thought her creation was going to take much more effort and it didn't seem like I was trying very hard.

Oh how the tables turned the next day.

More than 3 hours of icing and dozens of piping cornets later, my Easter biscuits were ready:

I knew the biscuits would take a while but I really had no idea what I was in for with that amount of icing and all those colours.  I'll remember to take a very deep breath before climbing that mountain again. 

And in the green corner, Melissa baked up a cracker of an Easter chocolate tart from our trusty Rachel Allen Bake book which was absolutely divine (and this comes from a girl that doesn't even really like chocolate):

And hats off to her for managing to make it in a deep cake tin because we left our fluted flan tin round at her sisters.

PS Although we were both completely full from all the Easter treats, Melissa did have to eat her words afterwards about me not trying hard enough....