Whoopie!

So I'd been seeing lots of people pinning Whoopie Pie recipes and after the seventy eleven zillionth pin showing up on my pinterest page I thought I'd give it a whack.
Unfortunately I picked up the wrong flour tub when I was getting my ingredients together, and instead of my good Doves Farm gluten-free blend I used the '00' Dopia pasta flour. D'oh. The worst thing was I didn't realise until AFTER I'd made the pies and the marshmallow filling.
They looked and smelled lovely, but instead of being soft and cakey they were dry and crumbly.
Mark this one down for 'try again' (this time with the right flour!)

Mothers Day

I'm a bit late posting this as Mothers Day was last month, but here's a quick look at the cupcakes I made.
Chocolate cola cake a the base and fudge frosting on top. I used the BBC recipe again, but instead of pouring hot frosting over the warm cakes, I let the frosting cool completely and beat the bejaysus out of it to make it fluffy.
Then I just topped the cakes with an in-lay 'M' from fondant.

Chocolate Cola Cake

January 27th was National Chocolate Cake day, what nationality I'm not sure, America probably, but it takes very little prompting to bake a chocolate cake right? I decided to try a chocolate cola cake using the recipe from the BBC as a base but modified slightly to make it gluten free. I was using plain gluten free flour so added xanthan gum to help with binding and baking powder for rising.

Ingredients
250g/9oz gluten-free flour
300g/10½oz golden caster sugar
3 heaped tbsp cocoa
generous pinch bicarbonate of soda
250g/9oz butter
250ml/8½fl oz cola drink
125ml/4¼fl oz milk
2 eggs, beaten
5ml/ltsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
1 heaped tsp gluten free baking powder

For the frosting
100g/3½oz butter
2 tbsp cola drink
2 tbsp cocoa
200g/7oz icing sugar

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, xantham gum, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl.
Heat the cola and butter over a low heat until melted but NOT hot.
Combine with the dry ingredients and milk, eggs and vanilla.

At this point the batter is EXTREMELY watery, this is ok.

Pour the batter into a cake pan and bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean at 180C\350F. I have a fan oven so I take the temperature down 20 degrees to 160C.

When the cake is out of the oven heat the butter, cola and cocoa over a low heat and then whack it up to boiling. When the mixture is bubbling (it will get thicker) pour over the icing sugar and beat until smooth. Pour over the cake while still warm and let it all cool in the pan.

I baked the cake in a 9 inch square pan (the original recipe calls for a 9 inch round pan) and while the cake was fine I found that I could have done with a bit more frosting. I think next time I'll add half again to the measurements for the frosting.

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the finished cake, it was amazingly moist and tasty and it didn't last very long at all. I brought it as dessert for Sunday dinner, but most of it was eaten before dinner. Here's a pic of the empty pan.

cookie dough truffles

I found this recipe a while ago on Pinterest and it appealed to me as it was egg free because I'm always wary of raw eggs in a recipe. This one was dead simple, flour, butter and brown sugar creamed into a thickish batter \ dough. I threw in a couple handfuls of chocolate chips to give the 'batter' some texture and then chill it for a while (I left if overnight in the fridge) shape it into balls and chill it again. The recipe said for an hour or so, but I wasn't in a rush so I left it overnight again before dipping it in chocolate.

The one thing I noted and worried a bit about when making these was they tasted of raw flour when first mixed, but the ingredients combined well once they'd been left for a while.I made about 60 dough balls from the recipe and dipped 40 or so. There are still 20 in my fridge that need to be done, but as I'm still new to working with chocolate I'll do those a couple of days before Christmas so the chocolate doesn't bloom.
I served up the truffles at a small party I had last week and they were so good my sister took a bag home. Now I just need to perfect the whole dip and drain thing with the chocolate.

Chocolate Robots

Ahh chocolate how I love you. But first to make some fondant. I looked up recipes online and they all seemed pretty simple, water, sugar and corn syrup brought to a rolling boil of about 125 degrees. But when I looked at comments under these 'simple' recipes it seemed to be all doom and gloom. 'I ruined my pot' said one. 'The sugar syrup destroyed my pans' cried another. So when I did it I made sure to follow the recipe to the letter. I also dumped the pot in boiling hot soapy water once I'd poured it onto the metal tray to cool to ensure I didn't 'destroy my pans!'.

As it turned out the fondant was really dead easy. I let the syrup cool on a cookie sheet and then started the slow folding movement that turned the syrup from sticky and clear to stiff bright white. Then I dumped it onto a table with some icing sugar and kneaded it until it was smooth although it

was still hot, so I had to stop every couple of minutes to be sure not to burn my hands. Once I had it shaped I wrapped it in wax paper, stuck it in a ziploc and left it to 'ripen' for a couple of days.

I wasn't sure how long the chocolates would last and as I wanted them for a party on Saturday I made them up on Thursday evening. Using a makeshift bain marie out of my 'does everything' pot and a ceramic bowl I melted half the chocolate and half filled the molds. Then I melted a lump of fondant down adding some lemon juice for flavour and stirring constantly. The fondant melted down to a smooth cream which I spooned into the molds and then filled the rest of the way with the chocolate.

I've read a lot about tempering chocolate and it all says that you shouldn't refrigerate it to save it from 'blooming' but I wasn't thinking straight (high on chocolate fumes) and I only had one mold and enough chocolate for 2 dozen so I put it into the fridge for about 20 minutes before I could make the next batch. The chocolates turned out lovely and shiny, thanks be to the silicone molds which are dead handy for popping out chocolates. The lemon juice took a bit of the sweetness from the fondant which meant they weren't too cloying and the robots went down a treat at the party.

Chocolate Butterflies

It was my mothers birthday this week and as it fell on a weekday we gathered on the weekend to wish her a happy birthday. I made some gluten-free cupcakes - twice. The first batch I baked on Saturday night turned out like rubber, the tops burnt black and the bottom was overcooked rubber eggs. It was the second time I'd tried this recipe and the first time the cakes were fantastic, I don't know what happened this time round. So Sunday morning found me awake at 8 and running down to the shop to get more eggs to try again. I made the chocolate butterflies and the buttercream during the week so that was all ready to go. The butterflies took a bit of work as my piping skills aren't the best, but I think they worked out ok. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me so only got some shots of the finished product with my iphone.

I coloured the buttercream purple - or at least it was supposed to be purple. I'd bought some Squires Kitchen 'bluebell' liquid colour as I wanted a good deep colour but when I opened the bottle it exploded all over my hands - it's still sitting on my sink where it is leaking slowly down the drain. Because of the food colouring disaster I ended up mixing some blue and red 'Dr. Oetker' colouring I had in the cupboard, which mixed to a sort of pale lilac colour

instead. For the butterflies I created a 'butterfly wing' template and traced it onto wax paper, then piped the melted chocolate around the pattern. As a note to anyone who wants to try this, it's best to wait for the chocolate to cool a little as if it is too hot it will just drip from the piping bag like water. But they do say the best way to learn is to try, try and try again.

I put the cakes together when I got to my mums, rather than decorating them at home and hoping they wouldn't get banged around on Dublin Bus. Despite being a first attempt and with questionable piping skills the cakes went down a bomb. My niece and nephew spied them the minute they came in the door,. although when they did finally get their hands on them they licked off the icing and left the cake. Kids eh, I could've served them up the rubber cakes and they'd not have known the difference!