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.

Sugar, Sugar

Those of you who follow me on twitter will know that I went to a beginners sugarcraft workshop a few weeks ago. It was a one day class in the back room in cakebox.ie in Dun Laoghaire. Below are the fruits of my labor.

Sugarpaste roses. These were gorgeous when I left the shop, but getting bumped around on the DART and LUAS in a box too shallow for the height of the cake they got a bit mushed by the time I got home.

Fully frilled cake - actually it's not a cake. Under that 2 kgs of sugarpaste is a styrofoam form. However everything *on* it is edible. Oh wait, except for the yellow ribbon on the bottom, ok except for THAT, everything is edible. I forgot to take a closeup photo of the frill which is probably for the best as it would also show my woeful piping.

Baby Booties - Nomnomnom-what? sorry? were you saying something? *wipes sugarpaste off face*

Sleeping baby - it's supposed to be a baby, but eh. Oh well at least if I ever have to make a Wallace and Gromit cake I've got it sorted.

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.

update: halloween cupcakes

yeah, yeah, only 3 months later. But I actually found some pics of the finished Red Velvet cupcakes I made for halloween. Here they are in all their finished gory (glory)

Princess Peach

'Hey' I texted my sister on Monday. 'Do you want me to bake the kids birthday cakes? Let me know!'
I didn't catch the reply until Monday evening.

'Yeah, that would be great, C wants a princess cake, I'm having a tea party for her on Wednesday'

!!!!!!

Which left me one day to bake and design an appropriately pink and pretty princess cake. yoiks!
Tuesday morning found me up an early down at the top of Grafton st in the cake shops getting pink icing, pink food colouring and basically any other pink thing I could find. I'd lain in bed that morning doing google image searches for 'pink princess' and I had decided on either Princess Aurora or Princess Peach. It would depend on how skillful I was with a tracing wheel really.

The cake baking part of the process didn't go so well, the first cake was pure dough when it cooled. The second cake worked out and the third cake (supposed to be the next layer) fell to pieces when I took it out of the pan while it was still too warm. doh! AT this point I just said fuck it, and cut the one cake I had in half to make a sandwich. It was only a small tea party for family so I didn't need a full 9 inch square.

To fill up the space on the cake board I cut out some extra daisies, and a couple of butterflies and embossed the letters of my nieces name in pink stars. As you can see I went with Princess Peach - although her lips are black as I forgot to get pink edible marker and I didn't trust my free hand painting skills.

The niece was thrilled with the cake, luckily 6 year olds are easily impressed. I didn't get any shots of the cake when it was cut, but yes of COURSE the cake was pink - the only part of the cake that wasn't pink was the buttercream in the sandwich.

Next week I have to start the prep for my nephews birthday cake. HINT: Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

Marshmallows!

Yes I used an exclamation mark in the title, because if you can't get excited about home-made marshmallows then you have no soul. This is another recipe I spotted on Pinterest which piqued my interest. It is not a beginners recipe as at one point there are 2 bowls and one pan of sugar syrup on the go at the same time but I'm proud to say I managed to get everything to come together properly. The only thing I kinda messed up with the 'marbleizing' technique, which looks pretty on top, but as you can see from the picture below didn't go all the way through the marshmallow. I let everything set overnight and dusted an icing sugar \ cornflour mix over the cut up pieces the next day. These are lovely, very like those 'Princess' mallows you can buy, but fluffier. This is definitely a recipe I'll try again, but next time I'll do a better job on the marbleizing.