Red Nose Cake Pops

It's Red Nose Day!

In order to get involved, spread awareness, and hopefully encourage a few extra donations, I decided to create something a bit special for today's post: Red Nose Cake Pops!

Red velvet cake pops covered in red candy melts make the tastiest red noses you'll ever try. I baked up a batch of Hummingbird Bakery Red Velvet Cupcakes, to use as the cakey-base for these, but you could use any sponge recipe you like!

Ingredients:
12 red velvet cupcakes
75g cream cheese
200g icing sugar
200g red candy melts
1 tsp vegetable oil

Prep time: 40 minutes
Makes 15 cake pops

1. I'm cheating this time, and using a batch of the Hummingbird Bakery cupcakes I made earlier. So, the first step is to whip up a batch of your favourite red velvet cupcakes, and leave them to cool!
2. Whilst the cakes are cooling, prepare your frosting by beating together the cream cheese and icing sugar until it forms a smooth paste.
3. Take the cooled cupcakes out of their wrappers and break them into a blender. Pulse the cakes on a high speed to break them into fine crumbs. Once the cake is sufficiently crumbed, pour the crumbs into a bowl, then mix in a tbsp of the butter cream. Add more butter cream a little at a time until you get a mixture that holds together well without crumbling, but isn't too sloppy. 
4. Now its time to get your hands dirty! First of all, line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and make some space for that tray in your fridge or freezer. Measure out 30g portions of the cake mixture, then shape it into a ball with you hands and place this on the baking tray. Once you've turned all of your mixture into balls put these into the freezer for 20 minutes to set.
5. Melt your red candy melts, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Stir in the vegetable oil to "thin down" the candy to make it easier to dip your pops later. Don't worry - you won't be able to taste the oil! 
6. Take your tray of cake balls out of the freezer and place on your work surface next to the melted candy. The cold cake will set the candy very quickly, so it's important to have everything you need to hand here as you will need to work fast!
7. Dip a lollipop stick around 1cm into the candy and then push this into one of the cakey balls. The theory behind this is that the chocolate will help to stick the cake pop to the stick! Stick each cake pop with a lollipop stick in this way. By the time you've stuck all of the sticks, the first one you did should be set. 
8. Dip each cake pop into the melted candy and give it a quick spin to coat evenly. Take the tap the cake pop on the side of the bowl to remove any excess chocolate, then put the cake pop, stick side first, into a polystyrene block. Repeat with all the pops and then leave to set. 
9. Hey presto - your very own, very tasty, Red Noses!

Cake pop tips:
Use a tall, thin receptacle for melting your chocolate, such as a mug or small bowl. If you use a wide bowl your chocolate will be too shallow for dipping!

When dipping, it's best to get your cake pop in and out of the warm chocolate as quickly as possible, as the temperature of the chocolate and the bowl/mug will melt your cake pop and make it fall off of it's stick. Don't worry too much about doing it, just go for it and it will work.

Line a baking tray with clingfilm, then pour any leftover chocolate onto it and put it in the fridge. Once set, you can break the chocolate into chunks and store in a food bag until next time. Note - this doesn't work so well if you drop cake in the chocolate or keep dipping your fingers/a spoon in!

Finally: Practise makes perfect!

Like this post? get involved in the Red Nose fun by making a donation to Comic Relief: https://www.rednoseday.com/donate

Happy Thoughts
x

Cake'n'Bake Wednesday: Valentine's Cake Pops

Valentines was the theme for our February 2012 meeting, but I had already decided what I wanted to bake. My Mum got me this wonderful Cake Pop recipe book for Christmas, and since then I really wanted to try them. However, I'd had my heart set on making Macaroons in January, so the Cake Pops got pushed back a month and ended up being my Valentines themed bake instead. (Stick hearts and flowers on anything and it's automatically Valentines themed ;-P) I was also lucky enough to have this recipe feature in Macmillan Cancer Care's Little Book of Treats 2012 - the Cake'n'Bake Club voted for this as their favourite recipe for a "luxury treat" and so this was the recipe we submitted. Proud doesn't even cover how I felt when I was able to buy a copy in M&S!

Cake Pops are, in theory, really simple to make. In practise; well it was a little bit of trial and error, and the recipe in the book (in my opinion) used way too much icing which made the mixture difficult to handle. What I would say is if you want to give Cake Pops a go then just do it! They are great fun to make and even when decorated simply they look fantastic! I've amended the original recipe and directions below to add in some of the hints and tips I learnt in the process. I used chocolate cake with vanilla icing, white chocolate and pink candy melts, however you could use pretty much any flavour (or combination of flavours of) cake, icing, chocolate, candy melts, you name it! One idea I toyed with, but didn't try this time was melting some fondant to coat the cake balls and having fondant fancy inspired pops... Just a thought!

Prep time: Around 2 hours
Make 20 Cake Pops

Ingredients:
125g margarine
125g caster sugar
2 medium eggs
125g self raising flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
50g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
150g white chocolate buttons or white candy melts
300g pink chocolate buttons or pink candy melts
3-4 tsps vegetable oil, as required
love heart shaped sprinkles
8 fondant roses

You will also need some lollipop sticks, and a block of polystyrene to stand you cake pops in as they set!

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, and grease and line a baking tin.
2. Beat the margarine and sugar together until creamy, then add one of the eggs and beat til fluffy. Fold in half of the flour and the cocoa. Beat in the second egg, and then fold in the remaining flour. 
3. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for 25-30 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Remove the cake from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack.
4. Whilst your cake is cooling, it's a good idea to make your sugar roses, and clear some space in your freezer! You can also get the cream cheese icing ready, by beating together the cream cheese and icing sugar until creamy.
5. Once the cake is completely cool, break it into pieces. You want to turn your cake into crumbs and the easiest way to do this is to stick the pieces in a blender and give them a quick whizz, however if you don't have a blender you could always use a cheese grater and crumb you cake by hand, but this takes much longer. 
6. Once your cake is sufficiently crumbed, mix in half of the cream cheese icing. Add more icing as needed to bind the crumbs together, but be careful not to add to much or it may make your mixture too sloppy to work with. 
7. Measure 30g blobs of the cake pop mixture, and roll these into balls. Place the balls onto a lined baking tray and into the freezer for at least 20 minutes. (Gives you a chance to wash up some of those dishes... this recipe uses a lot of dishes!)
8. Once the cake balls are solid, melt your chocolate/candy melts, either in the microwave or over a pan of hot water. A few tips here - as I was only making a few cake pops, but still needed the chocolate/candy melts to be deep enough for dipping, I found it helpful to melt mine in a mug. It was wide enough for me to dip my pops into, but not so wide that the chocolate lacked the depth required. Secondly, it helps to add a tsp of vegetable oil to your mug of melted chocolate/candy melts. Yes, I know it seems weird to do so, but this thins down the chocolate/candy melts just enough to make them much more suitable for dipping!
9. I started with the white chocolate... to begin with, dip each lollipop stick around 1cm into your melted chocolate, and then push that end into a cake ball. (apparently this helps the stick the cake to the lollipop stick!) Once that chocolate has set (which won't take long since you cake balls are very cold!) Dip 8 of your cake pops, one at a time, into the white chocolate. Gently tap the cake pops on the side of the mug to discard the excess chocolate, then stick the pop upright into your polystyrene block to set. Repeat the process using the melted pink candy melts for the remaining 12 cakes pops. However, this time sprinkle a few of your heart shaped sprinkles over each cake pop as the candy begins to set. 
10. Place any leftover pink candy into a piping bag fitted with a very fine nozzle. Go back to you white cake pops, and pipe vertical stripes onto each. Use some melted candy to secure a sugar rose on the top of each of these cake pops.
11. Hey presto, you're all done! The cake pops are best stored wrapped in cellophane bags in the fridge, and will keep for up to a week (if they last that long!!)

Happy Thoughts
x

Reindeer Cake Balls

A Christmas post!? Well, yes. You see for me, the Christmas season always starts on 30th November. This is largely in part because my Mum is absolutely crazy, and would have Christmas all year round if she could, so as a kid Christmas began with our advent calendars. It's also partly because the 30th November is the anniversary of the date that Alex and I first because a couple, and it's become a tradition of ours to celebrate by putting up our Christmas tree together on the 30th November. (6 years today! ♥ ) It makes sense if you think about it, because advent calendars start on the 1st December, so you HAVE to put those up on the 30th November, and if you're doing that, you might as well go the whole shebang, right? So, December will be well and truly Christmas month here at The Princess and the Cake. And I can't wait!

Anyways - onto the cake! I made these reindeer cake balls with my little sister last Christmas, and we had a lot of fun doing so. This recipe is great for getting into the Christmas spirit, and the decoration part is perfect for getting the kids involved (and that includes the big kids like my sister and I!)

Ingredients:

For the cake balls:
100g margarine
100g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1tsp vanilla extract
100g self raising flour
100g butter
200g icing sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract
Milk, if required.

To decorate:
250g milk chocolate (you may end up with a little left over)
1tsp vegetable oil
1 red smartie
8 chocolate covered raisins
White, red and black writing icing
Sprinkles (for the puddings)

Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Makes 9 reindeer and 7 puds (see photo below)

1. Start by making your chocolate antlers for your reindeer. Melt 50g of the chocolate and pour into a piping bag. Pipe 18 antler shapes onto a tray lined with grease proof paper, then pop this in the fridge to set.
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcakes cases.
3. Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Fold in the flour until the ingredients combined to create a smooth batter.
4. Spoon the batter into the prepared cupcake cases and bake for 15-20 minutes,  until golden brown on top and springy to the touch. Allow the cakes to cool completely on a wire rack.
5. Whilst the cakes are cooling, prepare your butter cream. Beat the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract together until smooth and creamy, adding a little milk if necessary to achieve the desired consistency.
6. Take the cooled cupcakes out of their wrappers and break them into a blender. Pulse the cakes on a high speed to break them into fine crumbs. Once the cake is sufficiently crumbed, pour the crumbs into a bowl, then mix in the butter cream a tablespoon at a time until you get a mixture that holds together well without crumbling, but isn't too sloppy - you will not need to use all of the buttercream! Save the leftover buttercream for decorating.
7. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and make some space for that tray in your fridge or freezer. Measure out 30g portions of the cake mixture, then shape it into a ball with you hands and place this on the baking tray. Pop the tray into the freezer for 20 minutes to set.
8. Melt the remaining chocolate, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Once the chocolate has completely melted, stir in a teaspoon of vegetable oil to "thin down" the chocolate. Don't worry - you won't be able to taste the oil!
9. Take your tray of cake balls out of the freezer and place on your work surface next to the melted chocolate. Dip each cake ball into the melted chocolate and tap off any excess chocolate. Put the cake balls back onto the lined tray and allow the chocolate to set. (this won't take long if your cake balls are cold enough!)
10. Use a little left-over butter-cream to stick two of your chocolate antlers onto the bottom of each cake ball, then stick a nose onto the top of each cake ball (the red smartie is for Rudolph, and the chocolate raisins are for Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen!) Use the writing icing to draw eyes, and facial expressions onto each cake ball, and display on a plate with Rudolph in the middle.
11. Turn any leftover cake balls into Christmas puds by spreading a little of the leftover buttercream over the top half, and decorating with sprinkles (as below!)

Happy Thoughts
x

Witches Hat Cake Pops

Happy Halloween! 

I know my usual blog-post-date is Friday, but as I couldn't let Halloween pass by without sharing my recipe for these cute little cake pops! Besides... a little bird could be heard to say that there will be a new regular(ish) Wednesday blog post coming your way in addition to the weekly Friday posts :-)

It may seem like I've been bitten with the Cake Pop bug (and there's probably some truth in that!), but I absolutely LOVE these Halloween Cake Pops. They are a simple vanilla cake with vanilla icing style cake pop, dipped in dark chocolate. The trickiest part of this recipe was getting the colour of the cakes to match the colour of the fondant icing! The witches hats can also be made a few days in advance, if that helps!


Ingredients:
For the witches hats:
30g orange coloured fondant
30g purple coloured fondant
30g green coloured fondant
A little edible glue

For the cake:
100g margarine
100g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1tsp vanilla extract
100g self raising flour
Orange, purple and green food colouring

For the icing:
75g butter
150g icing sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract
Milk, if required.

To decorate:
200g dark chocolate (you may end up with a little left over)
1tsp vegetable oil

Prep time: 40 minutes
Cook time: 15-20 minutes
Makes 15 cake pops

1. Start by making your little witches hats, as you'll need to give these a little bit of time to dry. Starting with the orange icing, roll out to around 3mm thick and cut out five small circles (I used the wrong side on and icing nozzle for this). Gather the icing back together into a ball, and then tear chunks off to mould five small cones with your hands. Use a little of the edible glue to stick the cone to the circular base, and put to one side to dry. Repeat this step with the purple and green icing. Put the hats to one side to dry.
2. Meanwhile, move on to the cake. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcakes cases.
3. Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Fold in the flour until the ingredients combined to create a smooth batter. Split the batter evenly between 3 bowls, and use the food colouring to create an orange, purple and green batter.
4. Spoon the batter into the prepared cupcake cases and bake for 15-20 minutes,  until golden brown on top and springy to the touch. Allow the cakes to cool completely on a wire rack.
5. Whilst the cakes are cooling, prepare your butter cream. Beat the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract together until smooth and creamy, adding a little milk if necessary to achieve the desired consistency.
6. Using one colour sponge at a time, take the cooled cupcakes out of their wrappers and break them into a blender. Pulse the cakes on a high speed to break them into fine crumbs. Once the cake is sufficiently crumbed, pour the crumbs into a bowl, then mix in a tbsp of the butter cream. Add more butter cream a little at a time until you get a mixture that holds together well without crumbling, but isn't too sloppy. 
7. Now its time to get your hands dirty! First of all, line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and make some space for that tray in your fridge or freezer. Measure out 30g portions of the cake mixture, then shape it into a ball with you hands and place this on the baking tray. Repeat steps 7 and 8 with the other two colour sponges. 
8. Once you've turned all of your mixture into balls put these into the freezer for 20 minutes to set. You'll probably find that you have a small chunk of each different colour left over. You could mash this together to make a multicoloured cake pop, however, it's always best to just eat any leftover mixture :-)
9. Melt your chocolate, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Once the chocolate has completely melted, stir in a teaspoon of vegetable oil to "thin down" the chocolate. Don't worry - you won't be able to taste the oil! 
10. Take your tray of cake balls out of the freezer and place on your work surface next to the melted chocolate and your decorations. The cold cake will set the chocolate very quickly, so it's important to have everything you need to hand here as you will need to work fast!
11. Dip a lollipop stick around 1cm into the chocolate and then push this into one of the cakey balls. The theory behind this is that the chocolate will help to stick the cake pop to the stick! Stick each cake pop with a lollipop stick in this way. By the time you've stuck all of the sticks, the first one you did should be set. 
12. Dip each cake pop into the melted chocolate and give it a quick spin to coat evenly. Take the tap the cake pop on the side of the bowl to remove any excess chocolate, then put the cake pop, stick side first, into a polystyrene block. Whilst the chocolate is still sticky, press one of the fondant hats in the corresponding colour onto the cake pop. Repeat with all the pops and then leave to set. 

Cake pop tips:
Use a tall, thin receptacle for melting your chocolate, such as a mug or small bowl. If you use a wide bowl your chocolate will be too shallow for dipping!

When dipping, it's best to get your cake pop in and out of the warm chocolate as quickly as possible, as the temperature of the chocolate and the bowl/mug will melt your cake pop and make it fall off of it's stick. Don't worry too much about doing it, just go for it and it will work.

Line a baking tray with clingfilm, then pour any leftover chocolate onto it and put it in the fridge. Once set, you can break the chocolate into chunks and store in a food bag until next time. Note - this doesn't work so well if you drop cake in the chocolate or keep dipping your fingers/a spoon in!

Finally: Practise makes perfect!

Funny story - I put the 3 less fortunate looking pops (one in each colour) to one side to use as the ones I would slice into to show you the cross section. It didn't cross my mind at the time that the purple one with chocolate down the stick would still have chocolate down the stick after I'd chopped into it! So this, ladies and gents, is why it's important to tap off the excess chocolate! :-)

Happy Thoughts
x

Eyeball Cakepops

I LOVE Halloween, it's one of my favourite times of year! My mum usually has a big Halloween party where we put up a gazebo in her back garden, spend a whole day turning it into a haunted house, spend another whole day making "scary" food, and then gather our weird and wonderful family and friends round in the costumes to enjoy it! Anyway, it's now mid-October, so I wanted the rest of the recipes I post in October to be Halloween themed - hopefully lots of treats and very few tricks!

The first of my Halloween inspired recipes is these eyeball cake pops, which weren't originally Halloween themed at all, in fact, they were made for Valentines Day. You see, one of my friends was doing an internship at the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies - London's only purveyor of quality goods for monsters of every kind. Part of Helen's responsibilities at HSMS was to look after the volunteers, and so she often put on social events for them to help them get to know one another better, but also to improve the human volunteers understanding of monsters, and vice verse. So, for Valentine's Day this year, Helen, another of the interns, Dee, and their monster colleague the Yeti decided to host a Monster Speed Dating event, and I was called in to do the catering. Below is the recipe for my "Eyes for You" cake pops, suitable for humans at Halloween, or for monsters at Valentines!

Ingredients:
For the cake:
100g margarine
100g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1tsp vanilla extract
100g self raising flour

For the icing:
50g butter
100g icing sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract
Milk, if required.

To decorate:
200g white chocolate
1tsp vegetable oil
50g coloured fondant (in the colour of your choice - I used half green and half blue, but it might look fun with more spooky colours!)
Black food colouring or a black edible ink pen

Prep time: 40 minutes
Cook time: 12-15 minutes
Makes 15 cake pops

1. Start by making the cake. I usually bake cupcakes if I'm baking specifically for cake pops, as they tend to cook and cool faster than a large cake would. However, cake pops are also a great way to use any leftover cake or cake scraps, so just use whichever cake tin is your favourite - your cake will end up in crumbs anyway!
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcakes cases.
3. Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Fold in the flour until the ingredients combined to create a smooth batter. Spoon the batter into the prepared cupcake cases and bake for 15-20 minutes,  until golden brown and springy to the touch. Allow the cakes to cool completely on a wire rack.
4. Whilst the cakes are cooling, prepare your butter cream. Beat the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract together until smooth and creamy, adding a little milk if necessary to achieve the desired consistency.
5. Take the cooled cupcakes out of their wrappers and break them into a blender. Pulse the cakes on a high speed to break them into fine crumbs. One the cake is sufficiently crumbed, pour the crumbs into a large mixing bowl, then mix in half of the butter cream. Add more butter cream one tablespoon at a time until you get a mixture that holds together well without crumbling, but isn't too sloppy - you might not need to use all of the butter cream for this!
6. Now its time to get your hands dirty! First of all, line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and make some space for that tray in your fridge or freezer. Measure out 30g portions of the cake mixture, then shape it into a ball with you hands and place this on the baking tray. Once you've turned all of your mixture into balls put these into the freezer for 20 minutes to set. Eat any leftover mixture (a 15g cake ball is no good to anybody!)
7. Meanwhile, prepare the decorations for the cake pops. Roll out the coloured fondant and cut out circles - I used the "wrong" side of a Wilton icing nozzle which seemed to be around the perfect size. Use the black food colouring / food colouring pen to draw on the pupil of the eye in the centre of your coloured fondant then put these to one side to dry.
8. Melt your white chocolate, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Once the chocolate has completely melted, stir in a teaspoon of vegetable oil to "thin down" the chocolate. Don't worry - you won't be able to taste the oil! My tip here is to use a tall, thin receptacle for melting your chocolate, such as a mug or small bowl. If you use a wide bowl your chocolate will be too shallow for dipping!
9. Take your tray of cake balls out of the freezer and place on your work surface next to the melted chocolate and your decorations. The cold cake will set the chocolate very quickly, so it's important to have everything you need to hand here as you will need to work fast!
10. Dip a cocktail stick around 1.5cm into the chocolate and then push this into one of the cakey balls. The theory behind this is that the chocolate will help to stick the cake pop to the stick! Stick each cake pop with a cocktail stick in this way. By the time you've stuck all of the sticks, the first one you did should be set. 
11. Dip each cake pop into the melted chocolate and give it a quick spin to coat evenly. Take the tap the cake pop on the side of the bowl to remove any excess chocolate, then put the cake pop, stick side first, into a polystyrene block. Whilst the chocolate is still sticky, press one of the fondant irises onto the cake pop. Repeat with all the pops and then leave to set. My tip for dipping is to get your cake pop in and out of the warm chocolate as quickly as possible, as the temperature of the chocolate and the bowl/mug will melt you r cake pop and make it fall off of it's stick. Don't worry too much about doing it, just go for it and it will work. And don't forget: Practise makes perfect!

Happy Thoughts
x

Bonus Features

More often then not, the features in the Disney Classic collection last between and hour to an hour and a half. But for the Disney Movie gang and I, that simply isn't enough time! So to prolong our nights of Disney nostalgia, fun and too much cake we often play the bonus features. Sometimes these are great (like the AWESOME mining game on Snow White's bonus disc) and sometimes they are not - nevertheless we have a great time watching them. (Inside joke: Beauty and the Beast is the most loved Disney Classic EVER!)

Now that we've finished all 50 of the Disney Classics, I do feel a little sad. I invested my time, money and sometimes tears into this project, and whilst I'm glad to have completed it (almost) successfully, I do kinda wish we had a bonus disc, just to give us a little more time.

So, even though there are (as yet) no more movies in the Disney Classic collection, here's a quick little recipe which uses up leftover cake and icing, just to give us a little more time until the end.

The number you make, the time it takes and how much cake and icing you need really depends on how much you have leftover, but as a general rule of thumb I would advise having 3 times as much cake as you have icing.

1. Take your leftover cake and break it into fine crumbs. (You can use a blender if you want to speed things up, but it does mean more cleaning!)
2. Stir in the leftover icing until it forms a smooth gloopy paste.
3. Press the mixture into a silicone mould, and place in the freezer for 15-20 minutes. Or, it you don't want to use a mould, just roll teaspoon sized blobs of the mixture into balls, place on a tray and put in the freezer to set.
4. Once set, remove from the mould and place a lollipop stick into them (or cocktail stick, as I had no lollipop sticks available!)
5. Dip the into some melted chocolate, candy wafers or other cake covering and then pop into a styrofoam cup to dry. (As you can see from my picture, I did not get chance to complete this step as I dropped my plate of pops - d'oh!)

Happy thoughts!
x

PS - please don't get the wrong impression from this post... it's not all doom and gloom in the Princess and the Cake HQ! In fact, after taking a little break from Disney Movie Nights, rumour has it the Disney Movie Nights gang will soon be getting back together to start the Disney/Pixar Collection - coming soon!

Make Mine Whoopies - Part 3

This is the final of the three recipes I baked for Make Mine Music - Chocolate Whoopie Pies! You can find my natter, ideas and reasoning for choosing whoopie pies, and the recipe for the Salted Peanut variety on the original post here. The recipe for the vanilla variety can be found here. I had originally posted all three together, but it made a mega long blogpost of doom which was not useful in any way, shape or form, so I decided to split them.

Besides, Make Mine Music is an anthology of shorts, so it makes sense for there to be an anthology of recipes for this Disney Classic. I couldn't have planned it better!



Chocolate Whoopie Pies

Ingredients:


For the cakes:

60g cocoa powder
300g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
100g unsalted butter
175g brown sugar
1 medium egg
1tsp vanilla essence
125ml milk

For the Filling:

200g dark chocolate
100ml double cream
50g unsalted butter

For the Topping:

200g icing sugar
3 tbsp cocoa powder
warm water
chocolate sprinkles/decorations

1. Start by preparing the filling, as this needs 30 mins to set. Break the chocolate into a heatproof bowl over a pan of gently simmering water, and add the butter and cream. Stir until all of the chocolate has melted and combined with the other ingredients. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and leave to one side to set.
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 3 and line a baking tray with grease proof paper.
3. Into a large bowl, sieve together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cocoa. In a separate bowl, beat together the butter, sugar and egg until creamy. In a third bowl, lightly beat together the milk and vanilla extract.
4. Add the flour mixture and the milk mixture to the butter mixture in alternate spoonfuls, beating well until all of the ingredients have combined.
5. Using two teaspoons to shape the batter into rough balls, dollop balls of the mixture onto the baking tray, leaving adequate space for the to expand. Bake in the preheated oven for around 10-12 minutes, until firm to touch.
6. Leave the cake rounds on the baking tray to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire wrack to cool completely. (Note: I couldn't fit all 24 rounds on one baking tray, so I did them 12 at a time.)
7. Once the rounds are completely cooled, prepare your topping. Sift the icing sugar and cocoa into a bowl and add a few drops of warm water. Keep adding warm water a few drops at a time until the icing reaches a thick but spreadable consistency. Spread the icing over the peaked side of half of the cake rounds and garnish with your choice of decorations.
8. Once the chocolate cream filling has cooled, beat this for 5 minutes on full speed with an electric hand mixer, until the chocolate cream filling is light and fluffy. Spread a generous amount of the filling on the flat side of the other half of the cake rounds, then sandwich the rounds together to make your whoopies!

Happy Thoughts
x

Make Mine Whoopies - Part 2

This is the recipe for the Vanilla Whoopie Pies I made for Make Mine Music. You can find my natter, ideas and reasoning for choosing whoopie pies, and the recipe for the Salted Peanut variety on the original post here. The recipe for the chocolate variety can be found here. I had originally posted all three together, but it made a mega long blogpost of doom which was not useful in any way, shape or form, so I decided to split them.

Besides, Make Mine Music is an anthology of shorts, so it makes sense for there to be an anthology of recipes for this Disney Classic. I couldn't have planned it better!

Note: this recipe called for 250ml Buttermilk. Unfortunately I couldn't get my hands on any buttermilk, so I made my own substitute using 250ml milk and 2 tbsp lemon juice. If you can get buttermilk it's probably best to use that! Also, I followed the recipe and decorated my vanilla whoopies with pink icing/sprinkles, but any colour would look just as well!

Ingredients:

For the cakes:

125g margarine

200g caster sugar

1 large egg

Few drops vanilla essence

450g plain flour

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp salt

250 ml buttermilk (or 250ml milk and 2 tbsp lemon juice)

For the Filling:

150g unsalted butter

250g icing sugar

pink food colouring

drop of vanilla essence

For the Topping:

150g icing sugar

warm water

Pink sprinkles/ hundreds and thousands to decorate

1. If you are making the buttermilk substitute, start by preparing this, as it will take 30 minutes to 1 hour for the milk to curdle. Add the lemon juice to the milk and put to one side for at least 30 mins to thicken.
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line a baking tray with grease proof paper.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the beaten egg and the vanilla essence and beat until combined.
4. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a separate bowl. Gradually add spoonfuls of the flour mixture and spoonfuls of the buttermilk to the margarine mixture, mixing well each time to create a thick batter.
5. Using two teaspoons to shape the batter into rough balls, dollop balls of the mixture onto the baking tray, leaving adequate space for the to expand. Bake in the preheated oven for around 10-12 minutes, until firm to touch.
6. Leave the cake rounds on the baking tray to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire wrack to cool completely. (Note: I couldn't fit all 24 rounds on one baking tray, so I did them 12 at a time.)
7. Whilst the cake rounds are cooling, prepare the buttercream filling by placing the butter into a bowl and beating until soft. Add the icing sugar to this and continue to beat until combined. Mix in the vanilla essence and food colouring, until you reach the desired colour.
8. Once the rounds are completely cooled, prepare your topping. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add a few drops of warm water. Keep adding warm water a few drops at a time until the icing reaches a thick but spreadable consistency. Spread the icing over the peaked side of half of the cake rounds and decorate with your sprinkles. (Tip: work quickly with the icing and the sprinkles, the icing dries quite quickly!)
9. Spread a generous amount of the pink buttercream filling on the flat side of the other half of the cake rounds, then sandwich the rounds together to make your whoopies!

Happy Thoughts
x

Make Mine Whoopies - Part 1

Disney Classic #8 - Make Mine Music

So this post comes a little later than planned, (I originally started writing it on the 27th June!) Unfortunately I fell quite seriously ill at the end of June, so the Disney cakes and the blog took a back seat... I'm now starting to get back on track though and have a few cakes to write about, so hopefully the blog will return to its former glory (and a weekly post).

Again I'd never seen this movie (although I had seen a couple of the segments!) so it was difficult at first to come up with an idea for a cake. So I did a little background research into the movie.

During the war many of the Disney Studio animators were drafted into the army, and those remaining were given the task of creating propaganda shorts. This lead to Disney having very few resources to continue to create full length features, despite their growing popularity, and this lead to a series of feature length "anthologies" of shorts until the release of Cinderella in 1950.

Make Mine Music was intended to be a contemporary version of Fantasia, using popular music rather than classical music.

And that was my inspiration for the cake... a contemporary version of a classic. Ladies and gents, allow me to introduce to you the "whoopie pie" - described as a modern twist to the classic cupcake, whoopie pies are the new "in vogue" baked good. (Or so the Internet tells me - I didn't even know that baked goods had a vogue.) And doubly relevant considering I made cupcakes for Fantasia!!

Those Whoopie Pies really made my mouth water!

I'm going to take a moment here to apologise in advance for the length of this post. I got a bit carried away and decided to make three different types of whoopies, so below, rather than one recipe, there are actually three!! Original recipes found here, here and here.

EDIT October 2012: I decided this blog post was too long to be useful to anybody, so I've decided to split it into three parts - one part for each of the recipes. Below is the recipe for the Salted Peanut Whoopies. The Vanilla Whoopies can now be found here, and the Chocolate variety can now be found here!

Salted Peanut Whoopie Pies

Prep time: Overnight     Cook time: 10-12 mins    Makes 12 Whoopies

For all of the other whoopies, I made the frosting while the cakes were cooling. However, as the peanut frosting uses cream cheese it's best to make it the night before and leave it in the fridge to set, otherwise it can be quite runny!

For the cakes:

280g plain flour

30g cocoa powder

1tsp baking powder

2tsp bicarbonate of soda

150g light brown sugar

60ml sunflower oil

125ml creme fraiche

1 large egg

60ml boiling water

For the filling:

200g soft cheese
250g icing sugar
50g butter
100g salted peanuts

For the topping:

100g dark chocolate
100ml double cream
150g icing sugar
handful of crushed peanuts to decorate

1. Start by making the peanut frosting for the filling. Crush the peanuts until they are like breadcrumbs. I did this by hand, mortar and pestle style, but it would be a lot easier if you had a blender. Melt the butter and set to one side to cool.
2. Place the icing sugar and soft cheese into a large bowl and mix with an electric mixer for two minutes, gradually building up the speed. Add the cooled butter and crushed peanuts and continue to beat for a further 3 minutes. Transfer the frosting into a small bowl, cover with clingfilm and refrigerate until needed.
3. Make the cake rounds. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 6 and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
4. Place the sugar in a large mixing bowl and break up any lumps with your hands. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder into the bowl and then mix together.
5. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, creme fraiche and oil together. Add the boiling water whilst still whisking then immediately stir the liquid into the flour and sugar mixture. Be careful not to overwork the mixture - once it has all combined stop mixing. Leave the batter to rest for 5 minutes.
6. Using two teaspoons to shape the batter into rough balls, dollop balls of the mixture onto the baking tray, leaving adequate space for the to expand. Bake in the preheated oven for around 10-12 minutes, until firm to touch.
7. Leave the cake rounds on the baking tray to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire wrack to cool completely. (Note: I couldn't fit all 24 rounds on one baking tray, so I did them 12 at a time.)
8. While the cake rounds are baking/cooling, make the chocolate cream for the topping. Break the chocolate into chunks and place in a small saucepan along with the cream. Heat on the lowest temperature, stirring continuously until all of the chocolate has melted.
9. Remove from the heat and then sift the icing sugar into the chocolate and cream mixture. Beat the chocolate cream for around 5 minutes and then transfer into a small bowl. Leave the mixture to one side for 20-30minutes to thicken and cool.
10. Once the cake rounds, topping and filling are all cooled/set, assemble the whoopie pies. On the peaked side of 12 of the cake rounds, spread a generous amount of the chocolate cream mixture and then sprinkle with a few crushed peanuts to decorate.
11. Spread a generous amount of the peanut frosting on the flat side of the other 12 of the cake rounds, then sandwich the rounds together to make your whoopies!

Phew! Still here? Well, after all of that you will end up with a kitchen full of delicious whoopie pies! I think I'm going to have to try to refrain from doing too many different recipes at once as the posts end up ridiculously long (plus I had way too many whoopie pies, even after we'd all gorged on them during the film, I ended up sending everyone home with 2 or 3 pies each and still had some to spare!)

Next time it's Fun and Fancy Free, and I honed in on making the Giant's chocolate pot roast with pistachio gravy from Mickey and the Beanstalk. Yum yum!

Happy Thoughts

x