Fiesta Time....

This weekend we celebrated the birthday of my son and my nephew, with a Mexican Themed party and lots of cake!

The table

The table was put together with the help of my gorgeous niece and Alexia Lenoir, who had the unenviable task of trying to stop her from eating all of the sweets before the guests arrived!

The shot glasses with sweets was just too much of a temptation!

Confetti, confetti everywhere!

On the menu were vanilla cakepops, chocolate & ginger cupcakes and birthday cake.

Chocolate and ginger cupcakes, topped with Chantilly creme, chocolate and sprinkles

The cupcakes are a new recipe I'm working on which were inspired by the Primrose Bakery. All will be revealed soon but for now, check this link for the original chocolate and marshmallow version.

The birthday boys

A word to the wise, sparklers don't make great candles for birthday cake, especially if you are trying to light more than one. That said, they look cool so you will be forgiven for trying anyway!

Peace & Love
xxx

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Birthdays And Bows....

Rashonye!

Today is the birthday of my beautiful sister, Rashida, Rashonye, Rae!!!

Here are 10 things you need to know about my sister. 

1. She's my oldest & most trusted confidante, I used to make her squirm with all of my teenage secrets, (things are even worse these days!)

Old school us!

2. Back in the days, when there was stalemate in my flat over who would clean the kitchen and there wasn't a single clean dish, my sister would come and wash up the dishes and tidy up to make my life bearable.

Rashonye, DJ & Ellie

3. When my son was born, my sister took about 6 months (maybe more) after graduating to look after him for me because I wasn't ready to send him to nursery. 

My sis & Bailey

4. I've lost count of the number of times my sister has helped me complete cake orders. Usually, I'm too (proud, disorganised, deluded about my capabilities) to ask in advance. She doesn't ask, she just rolls her sleeves up and gets involved.

5. She never takes any credit for any input or involvement with anything I do. Instead, she sings my praises and celebrates my work.

Chocolate fans, Ferrero Rocher and glitter

6. Rashida is an incredible cook, the OG chef in the family. Whenever I'm going through one of my ever frequent loss of appetite/skinny phases, her food is the only thing that I can eat and have seconds of.

Living life like it's golden

7. She's gotten me out of a tricky situation a ridiculous number of times. Two favourites are the time I missed my train home from Paris and she wired money across so that I could catch the next one. Or the time she paid my hotel bill when I had a problem with my debit card.

Cake fit for a beautiful person

8. She knows me better than myself. To be fair it's borderline witchcraft. She can verbalise what I'm feeling without me having to say a single word, (like I said, it's witchery!!!!!)

African Queen

9. Aside from being beautiful, she is INCREDIBLY talented. She can play the guitar, sing, cook, bake, dance, sew, paint, draw, play sports, teach, entertain, do hair, the list goes on and on and on.

Sister vibes!

10. I love her because she's awesome.

Happy Birthday Sis

Peace & Love

xx

(p.s. The cake is a chocolate sponge sandwiched together with vanilla buttercream and chocolate fudge frosting. It's then covered with chocolate fans and Ferrero Rochers.)

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Advent Calendars & Chocolate Biscuits

“Better late than never, but never late is better..” (Drake)

Yes, it’s that time of year again & even though it’s almost halfway through the month, these biscuits are just too cute to not share with you!

The biscuits are based on a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website, (click here for the link). I’m always on the look-out for a nice biscuit recipe, personally I’m into crunchy biscuits rather than soft ones. I found that the combination of the dark chocolate and the thick layer of white chocolate made this a really tasty mix.

Chocolate, ginger and white chocolate biscuits

• 300g plain flour

• 50g cocoa

• 1.5 tbsp ground ginger

• 120g butter, cubed

• 120g molasses or brown sugar

• 140g golden syrup

• 200g white chocolate

• Glitter, sprinkles and royal icing to decorate

• Put the flour, cocoa, ginger, butter and sugar in a processor, and mix until you can’t see any lumps of butter. You can also rub in the butter using your fingers. Slowly pour in the syrup and pulse until you get a smooth dough.

• Take about a quarter of the dough at a time and roll out between 2 sheets of baking parchment to the thickness of a £1 coin. Leave to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

• While the biscuits are in the fridge, heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4.

• Peel away the top layer of baking paper and use cookie cutters to make shapes. Circles, triangles, stars and Christmas shapes, whatever takes your fancy. Leave a small space between each biscuit as they spread slightly while they cook.

• Continue rolling and shaping all the remaining dough and trimmings while you bake a tray at a time, until all the dough is used up and you have at least 24 biscuits.

• Bake for 8-10 mins until firm. The time needed in the oven will vary according to the size of your cookies and your oven. It might be an idea to test with one or two first. My first batch burnt because I left them in for too long! Leave the biscuits to cool completely before decorating.

• While the biscuits are cooling, melt the white chocolate. White chocolate has a lower boiling point than milk chocolate so can be a bit tricky. Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to do it http://www.wikihow.com/Melt-White-Chocolate.

• Pipe a border around the edges of the biscuits and then cover completely using the melted white chocolate. If you don’t want perfect edges you can cover the biscuits using a spoon.

• Whilst the chocolate is drying, add sprinkles, glitter and anything else you want to use to decorate. I piped on numbers using coloured royal icing, but seeing as we are almost halfway through the month, it’s arguable if that’s totally necessary!

Let me know how you get on!

Peace & Love

Xx

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Wake Up To Muff!!

So recently I was asked to guest bake for a dope blog called Wake Up To Muff. 

The basic premise of the blog is this...

"One boy, one bike and a dozen muffins."

Tibbs or Count Spatula as he is also known, set up this blog about 4 years ago. Once a month he has a lottery, and 12 lucky winners across London will have a muffin hand delivered to their door, by a man (Tibbs) & his bike. 

The best way to get a feel for how cool this is is to check out his flickr with pictures of the drops. 

Picture courtesy of WUTM flickr

So enter stage left, me. We managed, via the wonders of social media to connect, and he asked me to guest bake for the 40th post. His original plan was to brew some beer, so I wanted to make something alcoholic in order to toast this milestone in the proper fashion. 

In the end I settled for Nigella's trusty Chocolate Guinness Cake recipe and used it to make cupcakes. The recipe will make about 18 muffin sized cupcakes but I doubled the frosting as you use more on cupcakes than you do with cake. 

Click here for the recipe link.

I'm also super, duper into homemade caramel... Given that there are very few ingredients, it's surprisingly fiddly. I had to make two batches as if you leave the sugar for a moment too long, it burns and tastes bitter. But persevere you must, it is worth it.

Click here for a post I did many moons ago with the recipe

Now that you know all about it, I encourage you to get involved! Maybe one day, you too, could wake up to muff...

Peace & Love

xx

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Chocolate and Orange Torte Cake with Caramelised Oranges

Cake, fruit and chocolate are three of my favourite things. I've literally become addicted to making chocolate cake lately, I love it! I have so many recipes and this one is the latest addition courtesy of Rachel Allen's new book called 'Cake'. There's no flour or ground almonds so it's also gluten free which is a bonus if you like that kind of thing. :)

Chocolate and orange torte with caramelised oranges (adapted from 'Cake' by Rachel Allen)

150g (5oz) Kerrygold Butter
300g (11oz) dark chocolate (70% cocoa)
5 eggs separated
50g (2oz) golden caster sugar
Finely grated zest of 2 small oranges

For the caramelised orange slices to serve 
4 oranges
125g caster sugar
Water

20cm (8") springform or loose bottomed cake tin

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180oC / 350oF / Gas mark 4 and butter the base and sides of the cake tin.
2. Place the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and place over a pan of simmering water to melt, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat.
3. Whisk together the egg yolks and half of the sugar until it's pale and thick. It can take about 5 mins using an electric whisk.
4. Fold in the melted chocolate and the orange zest and mix until it's combined.
5. Whisk together the egg whites and the other half of the sugar until they are stiff and glossy. I find this easiest in my food processor, but if you don't have one, use a clean bowl and an electric mixer. This takes a little longer than the egg yolks.
6. Gently fold the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, being careful not to beat to hard so that you don't lose too much air but so that it is all combined.
7. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 20-25 minutes until it's puffed up and slightly cracked around the edges. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 20 minutes, then carefully remove from the tin and onto a serving plate.
8. While the cake is cooling, make the caramelised oranges.

Caramelised oranges.
1. Using a small sharp knife, peel the oranges, cutting away the two ends first and then the peel and pith in a spiral until you only have the flesh showing. Work over a bowl to catch the juices.
2. Cut the peeled oranges into 5mm slices (1/4in) then add these to the orange juice.
3. Place the sugar and 75ml (3floz) of water in a saucepan and set over a medium heat. Stir the mixture to bring to the boil. Without stirring, continue to boil uncovered for about 5 minutes until you have a deep whiskey-coloured caramel. You can swirl the ban to make sure it browns evenly. Be careful to keep a close eye on this as I burnt my first mixture!
4. Pour a further 75ml (3floz) of water and swirl over the pan over a low heat, then add the oranges and juice and leave to cool.

Add the slices to the chocolate cake and serve.

This cake was tasty and lasts quite a few days. I experimented with the caramelised oranges and made a couple of batches. As I said, I accidentally burnt my first attempt so the second time around I didn't leave it that long to caramelise. The result was a light tasting juice that went really well with the cake. I then put the remaining slices & juice back on the fire and let it caramelise a bit more (maybe another 5-8 mins). It was a sweeter richer flavour and also quite nice. It depends what you like really, the cake is very rich with a deep chocolate flavour so I think the lighter juice worked best for me, but it's a matter of taste.

Anyways, I hope you try this out, you can also serve it with cream. You can also get more great Kerrygold recipes from the Kerrygold Facebook page. 

Peace & Love

xx

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Chocolate Guinness Cake

I made this cake for the sole purpose of self-indulgence. I do like to bake myself a (chocolate) cake every now & then. The last time it was Delphine's Chocolate Cake - a beautiful authentic French recipe. This time it's a Chocolatey Guinness cake, courtesy of Nigella Lawson - click here for the recipe link.

I got the idea from my cousin. She came one Friday evening and cooked me the most delicious steaks ever ever ever & was raving about this recipe. She was right, it doesn't disappoint!

I made this in a tin that was a bit too big (hence the flatness) but to be honest, I like it & I think it stretched a bit further that way!

If you like chocolate cake, you'll like this one. You can't really taste the Guinness, well I didn't think so, but it's delicious and moist and stays fresh for a good few days after being baked. It's a bit like a giant brownie cake. So try it & let me know what you think!

Peace & Love
xxxx

Ps So I'm sitting down to write all about Chocolate Guinness cake when I realised that it was St Patrick's Day last Sunday. Get it? Guinness, Irish, St Patrick's Day...?
OK, so not the most exciting of revelations to be fair, but mildly amusing nonetheless! :)

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Snow & Chocolate Teaspoon Biscuits

Kindness is like snow, it beautifies everything it covers. 

Let it snow! 

After a mild spell of weather, winter made her presence felt with a week of snow fall.  I must say that we don't do 'snow' very well here: from the time we know that it's coming, we start  planning to stop work and play in the snow!

The snow had barely settled & I was already trying to make snow angels!

There's something magical about snow. You go to bed with the world looking one way & wake up to find it transformed and full of possibilities. As a general rule, people are friendlier, children come out on the street to play and sometimes if you're lucky, you don't have to go to work!

Me hard at work!

This week was cool because I had my very first set of visitors in my new home (well ones that stayed over anyway!) Maarten and Liz from Belgium came to re-live our festival days at the Worldwide Festival Awards show at Koko in Camden. We had a lovely weekend but to be honest it was too cold to do any sightseeing with them. As wonderful as snow is, after a few minutes you just want to get inside and get warm already!

My Belgian Homies :)

I did manage to squeeze some baking into my chilled (get it!) weekend and made chocolate biscuits while the guys were finishing up their Sunday lunch. We nibbled on them while we listened to good music and watched classic movies. Yay for lazy weekends and good company!

The recipe for the chocolate biscuits, comes from one of my most recent books, Boutique Baking by Peggy Porschen. You can also click here for the recipe. They are really easy to make and you can make them in any shape you like...

I'll leave you with this cool snow quote;

"Advice is like the snow; the softer it falls, the longer it stays and the deeper it sinks into the mind" Samuel Coleridge

Have a great week!

Peace & Love

xx

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Feliz Cumpleaños

Many things make me happy: music makes me happy, sunshine makes me happy and making other people happy makes me happy.

I used to paint & draw and make stuff, I was never good at art per say but I liked to mess around. My favourite thing was making personalised cards for friends and posting them as a 'just-because' surprise. I used to love writing letters and still do, there's something beautiful & special about a hand written letter. Emails are great and quick but getting something hand made can never be equalled. 

These days, I buy my cards but pour that creative energy into the cakes that I make. 

A few weeks back I made a joint birthday cake for a couple whose birthdays are days apart. The plan was to make it for a family BBQ but I got the dates mixed up & ended up making the cake a week early (in time for the actual birthday celebrations I might add!) 

I really wanted the cake to reflect the fun and energy of the couple and also to incorporate their beautiful little boy. I decided on a small 2-tier cake (chocolate and vanilla with strawberries), in bright colours with a funky stick man family! I mixed the colours from Mummy and Daddy to make baby and had fun making them cut some shapes on the dance-floor :)

I must say that I'm so glad to have a creative outlet, I thought that once I 'grew-up' I would have to put all of the things that I love (but don't make money) aside. I realise now that is not true and that enjoyment and passion is not only for the 'young'.

What do you still do that makes you feel that little bit childish?

Peace & Love
xx

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Chocolate is the answer, who cares what the question is...

 Can all the chocolate cake lovers please stand up?

I hardly ever get requests for chocolate cakes. It's always plain sponge or cakes that "aren't too sweet". This always throws me because surely cake is sweet. In my head, I'm like "So do you want a cake or a vegetable?" 

What's more distressing is that I have spent years perfecting the chocolate cake as I thought this was obviously the most important cake... Apparently that is only the case for me!

I'm being a bit of a hypocrite to be honest, as I don't like it when cake is too sweet either. I think that is a quintessentially British thing. We like middle of the road, nothing too fancy. I've noticed Americans have an amazing array of flavours and combinations but if I suggest anything like that to someone here, they give me a strange look & then say "that sounds great, but can I have a vanilla sponge please, nothing too sweet?"

Sometimes it's nice to do something a bit different so I did.

This cake is basically anti-establishment; it's rich, decadent and totally over-the-top. Four layers of Death by Chocolate sponge; filled with strawberries & cream, then covered in chocolate buttercream and Oreo cookie crumbs.

One slice of this cake probably meets your daily calorie requirement!


Bonus How To Picture Guide:

Step 1

Bake your cake. I've gone for four layers so I sandwiched two pairs together with the chocolate buttercream, but I'm sure that two would be fine.

Step 2

 Put the layer with the topping in the freezer for about an hour so that it hardens and can support the top layer.

Step 3

And there you have it... I think it looks pretty impressive and can feed quite a few people. My cake is only 6" round but because it is so deep and rich you only need thin slices.

Enjoy

x

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