Obsession

I made one attempt at finessing the chocolate cake, but with no melted chocolate and 50g less cocoa (replaced with flour) it STILL tasted super rich. So when we found out the cake was to serve 40 we figured super rich was fine. Tiny slices, super rich... it all works. So recipe wise, we used the recipe below but made two batches worth in a roasting tin. I actually carried my nice flat based roasting tin home from my house to my mum's to make it. Anyway, it was fairly standard, left it in for about 5-10 minutes more and it was baked through. The only problem is the edges are slightly more crumbly than normal (but that might have something to do with adding twice the required baking powder to one batch because I forgot whether I had added it or not! The Totoro is made of rice krispies and melted marshmallows with a bit of butter. Coated in a little ganache, the icing went over the top. Can I say, this was the BANE of my night. It's the reason that having started bak

I got a request for a birthday cake for the end of the month and how she put it was  "please make the same chocolate cake [from last year] as everybody loved it".    Gleep.  I tried to move her on to trying something a little new... Oreo buttercream maybe? But I knew she really didn't want it.  "heavenly"  as she described the cake last year.  Gleep two.  Admission time. It took me two days to remember(ish) what her cake was. I did a ninky nonk. That was known. But all I remember was that I thought the cake was dry. Very dry. So I sandwiched it with extra layers of ganache. Three in fact. I am now (post searching online and realising it wasn't there) that I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's cake recipe from her book the Cake Bible. (How bad is that I forgot I actually used my hundred odd books sometimes?!) After wandering the shops I realised I used Galaxy in the ganache rather than dark which is quite bitter and grown up. Afterall, this was a cake for

I bought this transfer ages ago on a whim and finally tried them out for my sister's birthday (faux birthday as we celebrated with Bea's of Bloomsbury cupcakes on the day!) Since they were a bit worse for wear you can see where the transfer was a bit patchy even before we stuck chocolate on it, but it decidedly worked better with a thick coat of milk chocolate than the dark. I assume it's because there's more fat to make the transfer stick but that's a guess. It worked anyway. Pretty simple to use. Put it out with the transfer on the right side. Pour over chocolate. Leave to set. Done. The cake was an oil based sponge which I won't make again (Rachel Ray) but that's because I always know that any sponge that involves a lot of milk in the mix tends to be a bit "tighter" and I don't like that texture. The coating is some chocolate stuff I bought in Brazil. Bear with me, that was a year ago but it worked fine. For some reason when I starte

How do you follow the farm cake and the Ninky-Nonk? With a Carcrash cake that's what! My nephew's latest obsession is Traffic lights. In fact he ran off with the two spare ones and then complained loudly every time we removed them so he could, you know, eat dinner, get a bath that kind of thing. A bit of a low effort one from me, but I'm studying at the moment. The cake was baked before midday and iced quite quickly in the afternoon. Mum (aka grandma) was disappointed I wasn't going to be making a carved number but personally - study and the prospect of needing a chiropractor after I'd made it... figured I'd wait till he was older. I'm sure car cakes will make an appearance again. Traffic lights made of those sweets called Drumsticks (Poundland!!) dipped in water and wrapped in black fondant with jelly tots dabbed with water and then pressed in. Now that was impressive - I thought they'd fall off pretty quick but they lasted all the running aroun

This is getting worse than my ACTUAL journal!! When was my last post? Err... best not to ask. Forgive me - I have an excuse. I have many excuses *slaps self*. I moved into my own place. Ergo tiny kitchen, lack of equipment.... who am I kidding? I've baked quite a bit here, but nothing too interesting. The first bake was a rhubarb eve's pudding of sorts, then there was a brownie at my housewarming, lemon curd bread and butter pudding for my neighbour, key lime pie... for my neighbour and my colleague... the list goes on. It's just that there wasn't anything particularly inspiring  as such. Until this. A lemon drizzle. Which I've probably baked a million times before. But this time, I used the Guardian's "perfect" recipe. Which, apart from using normal granulated sugar instead of demerara on top (this is what happens when you leave your purchase on the till in M&S - picking it up tomorrow!) I actually followed the recipe. It was yum. The best to

I'll post the On recipe (french) at some point but my current go to will be the following from Bravetart . Read her post first. What I actually absorb from it is as below. I think at this point I'm going to say it's all technique and less about the recipe. On my oven (and my oven alone) I have it on the middle shelf at Gas Mark 4. Bravetart lists it as 300 degrees F I use a normal metal baking tray of a reasonable thickness. It's old and probably slightly warped. There's nothing special and I don't put two trays down. When I cook using the new, thicker and flatter brownie tin to cook some of them on, that works as well. I cook on baking parchment because that's what I use. I have a sil-pat which I would use but I still haven't cut it to the right size. Good luck! 4 ounces (115g) ground almonds 8 ounces (230g) icing sugar 5 ounces egg whites (144g) (I used fresh in the picture, I've used aged and microwaved before) 2 1/2 ounce (72g) ca

So I admit it, I've been a little bit loony tunes on the whole macaron front recently because, well finally if I get this right, I don't have to keep paying Herme and Laduree for theirs, albeit the once in a blue moon foie gras number isn't too bad (seriously, in a macaron. Not bad.) If you go back enough, I've had a go a few times over the years, but not tried consistently starting from the very beginning with the Roux brothers recipe. Anyway I went to a Groupon course taught by On Bakery . We took the basic and advanced class which goes through the french meringue method and the swiss meringue method (I also took the choux class which is another story).  The first thing you should probably know is that the teacher Loretta Liu is a bit loony tunes. Not an insult by any means. Normality is overrated. She is Singaporean and those traits are really, really present. Her english is fine, there is no "la"s at the end of sentences like in university and a