Obsession

It's not the most elegant of cakes. It's covered with crumbs which defaults to messy. Very messy. Messy in a sweep all the counters and a few floors cake. It is however, really rather yummy in a Sara-Lee / Trifle kind of way. I did this for my sister's birthday when she requested a chocolate and cream cake. I didn't quite do double cream but it did meet the not too sweet criteria. I would say this though. Lower the sugar in the cake. The frosting is actually really nice. Not too sweet, pleasantly foamy and easy to cover the cake. The cake itself just has a slight aftertaste which may have came from my choice of chocolates and cocoa. Words of warning to follow: Watch out when you transport it. The top two levels slid an inch across and left the rest of the cake... it did gently smush back in place, but just in case it's for company. Warning 2. The book may have it showing beautiful, full, crisp white layers in between the chocolate. Mine... less so. And based on

My nephew turns ONE this week and so we made a cake to celebrate. This little number was my usual vanilla buttermilk sponge, which encountered a lot more problems than usual. Check this. Firstly I forgot to put the sugar in which I didn't notice until I poured the batter into the tins - when I thought, hang on, usually there's more of it. Which after tipping back into the mixing bowl to remix, might have resulted in the cake becoming a little more flat than usual. Brilliantly though, my solution was effective - slice the layers really thin, sandwich with whipped cream and peaches and you don't notice the texture issues. Really. The peaches were so beautiful. I have to make a chinese style fruit cake with them before the season is over. White peaches. Beautiful and pale with a light flush. It was such a shame to hide them inside a cake. This is the sheep in production. It was my first time working with fondant for modelling. We've played around with making roses and

I'm gonna say it. I like these better than my chilli brownies. Check out that picture. I took them to work the next day. The chocolate lumps were still molten. No idea how the science works but it tasted yummmmmy. They didn't have the papery crust as promised, but possibly it's my oven. As it was, it was blatantly uncooked  when the timer pinged so I left it in for ten minutes longer, then turned the oven off and left it in for a further ten minutes. Bizarre, but just the mood I was in. Anyway, the recipe was from Dorie Greenspan, but I omitted the coffee, the nuts and the cinnamon and because my tin was about 8 inch square, my brownies were about an inch square (I like small brownies so they don't bend and break). Recipe found already typed by this lady .