Love and Fudge

My dear Valentine,

I made you some fudge. It tastes good.

Love,

Stay

Every year I try to make/bake an edible valentine that I'm able to post out to girlfirends. This year I also gave some to some boys - my housemate and my boyfriend. So, I give out a lot of valentines... everyone deserves a little love, right? I had a couple of packets of Love Hearts and knew I wanted to make something with those, and a colleague had recently told me about making fudge with marshmallows. So I did a bit of research, and decided to give it a go. My fudge is based on the recipes here and here, but in the end I left both my phone and my laptop in my bedroom so just ended up winging it. I think it worked!!

Photo by the wonderful Ms Zoe O.

Ingredients:
25g margarine
300g dark brown muscovado sugar
150ml evaporated milk
180g mini marshmallows
300g white chocolate, broken into chunks
Heart shaped sprinkles and love heart sweets, to decorate

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cool time: at least 3 hours
Makes 25 pieces

1. Line a square cake tin with cling film, and put to one side.
2. Place your margarine, sugar and evaporated milk into a large saucepan and stir over a low heat until the margarine has melted and the sugar dissolved. Stop stirring and allow the mixture to come to the boil for 5 minutes.
3. Remove from the heat and add half of the marshmallows to the pan. Fold these into the hot mixture until they have completely melted, then repeat with the remaining marshmallows. Stir in the chocolate until this has melted and the ingredients come together as a smooth, yummy, gloopy mixture. Pour this into the lined brownie tin.
4. Sprinkle on your sprinkles (ha!) then place the love heart sweets message up into the mixture. It doesn't take long for a film to develop on the top of the fudge, so work quickly and just press your sweets onto the fudge lightly so that they stick, but don't sink. Pop your fudge into the fridge for at least 3 hours, but preferably overnight.
5. Using the clingfilm to help you, lift the fudge from the tin and place onto a chopping board. Use a long knife to slice the fudge into squares, using the love heart sweets as a guide. Pro tip when it comes to fudge slicing (seriously, I was taught to slice fudge by the guys at Cambridge Fudge Kitchen) - place your knife against the fudge where you'd like to slice, and press down in a smooth movement. Then, gently slide the knife out of the fudge towards your body. Hey presto, smooth sided fudge!
6. Taste one before sharing with you friends and loved ones. This is a very important step - you need to show yourself some love, too!

Happy Thoughts
x

Cake'n'Bake Wednesday: Ginger and White Chocolate Cheesecake

The club had decided to try not to repeat themes from the previous year, but we also decided that we couldn't NOT do Christmas in December, so we put a Secret Santa spin on it. Each member had to put a word or phrase which made them think of Christmas into a hat, and then the words were drawn out at random for another member to use as baking inspiration.

The word I drew out of the hat was "Ginger". Originally I was planning to bake a gingerbread house that we could assemble together at the meeting, but as I did the draw I knew that another member had gingerbread, so I decided to go for something a little bit different. A ginger and white chocolate cheesecake!

Ingredients:
200g gingernut biscuits
100g margarine
30g crystallised ginger, plus extra to decorate
150g white chocolate
300ml double cream
300g cream cheese
150g icing sugar
A little bronze lustre dust
Gold edible shimmer spray

Prep time: 20 minutes
Chill time: 3 hours (minimum)
Serves 8-10

1. Crush the gingernut biscuits into fine crumbs, either by putting in a blender, or by bashing with a rolling pin the old fashioned way.
2. Melt the margarine and mix into the biscuit crumbs. Pour the biscuit mixture into the cake tin you are using (I used a 7 inch springform pan) and press down with the back of a spoon to flatten. Pop the tin in the fridge to allow the biscuit base to set whilst you make the cheesecake filling.
3. Start by chopping the crystallised ginger into teeny tiny small pieces, and put these to one side. Melt the white chocolate - either in the microwave or in a bowl over hot water - and put this to one side to cool.
4. In a large bowl, whisk the double cream to soft peaks, then whisk in the cream cheese and icing sugar. Separate 250g (approximately 1/3) of the filling into a smaller bowl, and stir in the chopped ginger and bronze lustre dust. Put this to one side.
5. Whisk the cooled white chocolate into the remaining cheesecake mixture.
6. Remove the biscuit base from the fridge and start to layer the cheesecake fillings on top of this, making sure to level the top of the cheesecake between each layer. Start with half of the white chocolate filling, then all of the ginger filling, then the remaining white chocolate filling.  
7. Spray the top of the cheesecake with the gold shimmer spray, then place one or two pieces of ginger in the centre to decorate. Pop the cheesecake in the fridge for at least 3 hours to set before serving. (It's best to leave it overnight, if you can!)

Happy Thoughts
x

Pudsey's Spotty Sponge

Well hello there! I know I said I wouldn't be posting regular content until December, and that's still the plan, but last night I baked this cake for a Children in Need bake sale and I thought it would be a shame not to share it!

It's a quick and simple Victoria sponge with a spotty surprise... I hope you like it! If you're feeling generous, text DONATE to 70705 to donate £5 to Children in Need :-)

Ingredients:
200g margarine
200g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g self raising flour
40g colourful sprinkles (I used some multicoloured sugar pearls)
3 tbsp raspberry jam
150g trex
300g icing sugar
100g white chocolate
1 tube smarties

1) pre-heat the oven to 180 and grease and line two cake tins.
2) beat together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, followed by the milk and vanilla extract.
3) fold in the flour until the mixture comes together to form a smooth batter. Tip the coloured sprinkles into the mixture and stir in - but be careful not to overmix as you don't want the colours to run!
4) split the mixture evenly between the two tins and bake for 20 minutes,  or until golden and springy to touch. Remove the cakes from the oven and put to one side to cool.
5) whilst the cakes are cooling, prepare the icing. Melt the white chocolate and put this to one side to cool. Beat together the trex and icing sugar until smooth and creamy, then fold in the cooled white chocolate. Put half of the icing into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle.
6) Once the cakes have cooled, place one of them on to a serving plate. Spread the jam over this, then pipe on the icing. Gently place the second cake on top of the frosted layer, then spread the remaining icing over the top of this. Decorate with the smarties, serve and enjoy!

Until December, happy thoughts x

Autumn Spiced Cookies

I promised you a recipe for halloween... so here it is! These cookies are quick and simple to whip up, and great to give out to trick or treaters! These cookies are autumnal in flavour due to the spices, and the pumpkin seeds give a lovely crunch!

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 12-15 minutes
Makes 14 cookies

Ingredients
75g margarine
90g golden granulated sugar
50g golden syrup
1tsp vanilla extract
100g self raising flour
3tsp mixed spice
50g pumpkin seeds
50g white chocolate chips

1) pre-heat the oven to 180 and line a baking tray with grease proof paper
2) cream the margarine and sugar, then add the golden syrup and vanilla extract and continue the beat until combined.
3) fold in half of the flour and all of the mixed spice. Stir through the chocolate chips and pumpkin seeds, then add the rest of the flour to the dough.
4) split the dough into 14 pieces and roll into a rough ball in your hand. Place on the baking tray making sure you leave at least an inch between each, and pop in the oven until golden brown.
5) allow the cookies to firm up on the tray for a minute or two before transferring to a wire rack to cool
Note, when you take the cookies from the oven they'll still be super gooey! Don't worry,  they will set as they cool :-)

I'll return to weekly posts in December, but until then, my friends -

Happy thoughts
X

White Chocolate and Cranberry Biscotti

I love biscotti! I know that traditionally it should be served with a dessert wine, but it’s just so great dripped in tea until slightly soft, but still with a bit of a bite!

I originally baked these white chocolate and cranberry biscotti to go into my Christmas hampers last year – I love white chocolate and cranberry as a combination, as you’ll see when we reach December and I start posting Christmas recipes again! (Oh, dear. It’s July and I’m already talking about Christmas. I really am turning into my mother!!)

One quick tip – be sure to use white chocolate chunks or thickly chopped white chocolate rather than chocolate chips. The biscotti is in the oven for a long, long time and chocolate chips are just a little too small to withstand that!

Ingredients:

200g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

100g light-brown sugar

35g dried cranberries

50g white chocolate chunks

2 medium eggs, beaten

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 50-55 minutes

Makes 16 pieces of biscotti

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 (around 170 degrees) and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.
2. Put all of your dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix together. Create a well in the centre of the dry mix. Add the vanilla extract and the eggs to the well you created then start to beat with a fork, working in the dry mixture a little at a time until a rough dough forms.
3. Knead the dough lightly by hand until it becomes smooth, then break in into two pieces. Shape both pieces of dough into a sausage shape, then place them on the prepared baking tray. Make sure to leave plenty of space in between them as they will grow!
4. Pop the biscotti dough into the oven for 20-25 minutes until it is firm to touch and just starting to turn golden brown. Remove the biscotti from the oven and allow to cool on the side for 5-10 minutes, until cool enough to handle. Leave the oven on at gas mark 4.
5. Once the biscotti is cool enough to handle, slice into it diagonally with a serrated knife, to create pieces1-2cm thick. Put those pieces back onto the baking tray and bake for a further 25-30 minutes, until crispy and golden brown all over.
6. Allow the biscotti to cool on a wire rack before tucking in!

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

Ready Salted Caramel Cupcakes

My friend Dale is an incredibly talented artist, and he very kindly designed the images of “The Princess and the Cake” for me. You can check out his work on his Facebook page, Whaley'sWorld! As means of thanks, I wanted to make Dale some cupcakes. Dale's a big fan of caramel and white chocolate, but the main thing I wanted to include was ready salted crisps.

This might seem a bit weird, but there is a good reason for it. I grew up in a house of a lot of kids. I have a brother and two sisters so that's already four of us, but then we always seemed to have friends over too, so it all added up. My mum used to buy the big multi-packs of crisps, which never lasted long being as they were so many of us, but there were always ready salted crisps left over. Non of us wanted to eat the ready salted crisps, but my mum wouldn't buy a new multi-pack until all of the crisps were gone. Now, Dale LOVED ready salted crisps, so whenever he came over he would pack them away like a trooper to get rid of them all for us. It was a labour of love. Anyway, that's what I wanted to play with when making cupcakes for Dale, which is how I came up with the idea to make salted caramel filled cupcakes, (and my idea for the unconventional decoration!)

Dale's cupcakes, all packed up ready to go!

I used my basic vanilla sponge recipe, but substituted the caster sugar for brown sugar to give it a more caramel-y flavour. I used Nigella's recipe for Salted Caramel Sauce for the filling, and then topped the cakes with a white chocolate butter cream.

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes:

100g margarine

100g light brown sugar

1 medium egg

A few drops of vanilla extract

100g self-raising flour

For the salted caramel filling:

75g unsalted butter

50g soft light brown sugar

50g caster sugar

50g golden syrup

125ml double cream

½ teaspoon of salt

For the white chocolate buttercream:

100g white chocolate

150g butter

300g icing sugar

1tbsp milk

A few ready-salted crisps to decorate (optional!)

Prep time: 20 minutes

Cook time: 12 – 15 minutes

Makes 12 cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcake cases
2. Start by making the cupcakes. Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract until combined. Sift the flour into the mixture then fold in until you have a smooth batter.
3. Fill each cupcake case around ¾ full (roughly 2 tsp in each) and bake for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown and springy to touch. Place on a wire rack to cool.
4. Whilst the cakes are in the oven, make your salted caramel sauce. In a small, heavy-based pan, melt the butter, both sugars and golden syrup on a low heat then allow to simmer for 3 minutes, swirling the pan occasionally.
5. Add the cream and the salt to the pan and stir in with a wooden spoon. Allow the caramel to cook for another minute before transferring into a jug or bowl. Set the caramel to one side to cool.
6. Whilst the cakes and caramel are cooling, make your buttercream. Melt the white chocolate either in the microwave in short bursts, or in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water, (careful not to get any water in the chocolate – chocolate and water severely dislike one another!) Put the chocolate to one side to cool slightly.
7. Meanwhile, beat the butter, icing sugar and milk together until smooth and creamy. Once the chocolate as cooled enough not to melt the butter, gently fold this into the buttercream. Place the buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a star nozzle and place to one side until ready to use.
8. Scoop a little cake out of each cupcake to make a well in the centre - keep the scooped out bits, as these will become the “lids”. Fill each cupcake with a little salted caramel sauce, then place the scooped out cake lids back on top of the cakes.
9. Pipe a big swirl of buttercream onto each cupcake, then drizzle a little more salted caramel sauce over the top of this. Finally, add a ready salted crisp to each cupcake to decorate!

Of course, these cupcakes are equally as tasty without the ready-salted crisps on top!

Happy Thoughts
x

A Cake?

Disney Pixar # 13 - Brave

For the final instalment of the Disney Pixar collection, we decided to take a family outing to the local cinema to watch Brave (after gathering at Angel's house first to scoff down our cakes!) - however, this meant I had no idea what kind of cupcakes to make for this movie. Originally, as the film is set in Scotland and has a whole lot of bright orange hair flying around, I was planning to make some Irn Bru cupcakes. But that felt like a bit of a safe option, especially as I'd made Inca Kola cake for The Emperor's New Groove (which tastes JUST like Irn Bru, might I add), and then Dandelion and Burdock cupcakes for A Bug's Life. So I did a google image search for "Pixar Brave" to see if I could get any inspiration from the images, and there was one that kept popping up which really caught my eye:

There seem to be various images of that little plate of baked goodies - most of which feature the Triplets naughtily sneaking away with them - so I figured they MUST be important, and decided to use those as my inspiration. I don't want to give any spoilers, but it turns out that cake is a pretty big deal in this film!

Anyway, the cakes looked to me to be either an iced bun, or a scone, and in the end I went with scones as they feature prominently in Scottish High Tea. So that was my next dilemma - this is a Pixar movie, and that means I should be making cupcakes, not scones. Unless, that is, I could make cupcake scones. So I decided to bake my little scones in cupcake cases! Yes, this is bending the rules more than a little, but I think it still counts. ^_^

Prep time: 15-20 minutes
Cook time: 15-20 minutes
Makes 12 cupcake scones (or 6 normal sized scones)


Ingredients:

225g plain flour
baking powder
pinch of salt
50g butter
25g sugar
50g white chocolate chunks
25g dried cranberries
Up to 100ml milk (you might not need to use it all!)
Beaten egg, to glaze

To decorate:
25g white chocolate
12 dried cranberries

1.  Preheat the oven to gas mark 6 and line a bun tray with cupcake cases
2. Tip the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl and mix together by hand. Add the butter and rub this into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
3. Add the sugar, white chocolate chunks and cranberries to the mixture, and stir in my hand until evenly distributed. 
4. Stir in the milk a little at a time until the mixture comes together to form a soft, smooth dough. Fill each cupcake case with around 2tsp of the mixture then brush each cupcake scone with the beaten egg to glaze. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown on top.
5. Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack. Meanwhile, melt the remaining white chocolate and drizzle this over the top of each cupcake scone. Place a dried cranberry on top of each cupcake scone and leave to cool before serving.
   

The white chocolate and cranberry make these scones very sweet, so they can be eaten without jam and cream. They can also be eaten with jam and cream, if you have a super sweet tooth like I do!

So that's the entire Pixar collection to date! I've had a great time doing this again, and hope that you've also enjoyed reading the recipes! Even though we're now out of Disney movies, the Princess will still continue to bake - all will be revealed in the next post! Until then, my friends,

Happy Thoughts
x

... Ever After

Disney Classic # 50 - Tangled (again!)

OK, ok, so I know I've already given a really, really long post about the Rapunzel's Tower cake I made for Tangled at the Disney Night Finale. However, this wasn't my first choice of baked goodie for the 50th Disney Classic. You see, way back when I can't remember, I came across this recipe for white chocolate and macadamia brownies. Now, I'm a massive fan of white chocolate and macadamia anything, but what really drew me to this recipe was that these particular brownies, not being brown, were actually called "blondies". Perfect! In the movie Flynn's not-so-affectionate-to-begin-with nick name for Rapunzel is "Blondie", so these fitted in with the movie, and would be delicious, so they were on the list next to Tangled for a long time.

The problem was, as the finale grew closer, and the Disney Movie gang planned on having a big fancy-dress BBQ to celebrate, I started to realise that blondies weren't really "grande finale" material. I mean, they were delicious, seriously delicious, like so delicious I would recommend that if you only try one recipe from this whole blog that this is the one you try delicious.They just didn't seem to express the joy/sadness/relief that came with the approaching end of a project that took over a year of our lives. And so the tower cake was born.

But, (there's always a but!) white chocoate macadamia brownies just seemed like the right thing to do. So I did both. It's not the first time I've baked two different things for one movie (Robin Hood had two recipes, and Make Mine Music saw three varieties of Whoopie Pie produced!) and this was going to be the last one, so I don't feel bad. Doubled the baked goods = double the fun!

Prep time: 20 mins
Cook time: 20 mins
Makes around 12 brownies (depending how big/small you'd like them)

Ingredients:

125g margarine
200g white chocolate chunks
2 medium eggs
100g caster sugar
1tsp vanilla essence
125g plain white flour
A pinch of salt
75g macadamia nuts

1. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4 and grease and line a square baking tin.
2. Heat a medium sized pan of water until just boiling, then remove from the heat. Place the margarine and half of the white chocolate into a glass bowl and rest this in the pan of hot water. Stir continuously until the margarine and chocolate have completely melted, taking extra special care not to get any water in the bowl of chocolate. Once the margarine and chocolate have completely melted and combined, remove from the pan of water and leave to one side to cool slightly.
3. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence. Once combined (and once it has cooled sufficiently!) add the chocolate and margarine mixture to to the eggs and sugar and continue to whisk until a smooth and glossy batter has formed.
4. Add the flour, salt, remaining chocolate and macadamia nuts to the batter and fold in until only just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared baking tin and bake for 20 minutes, or until springy to the touch and completely golden on top.
5. Allow the blondies to cool in the pan for at least 15 minutes before cutting into squares to serve. Best served slightly warm!

Well, here's where I'd normally say what I'll be baking next time, but without any further Disney classics on the cards for a while, I'm afraid there isn't a "next time" as yet! Don't be too sad though, because Disney morals teach us to see every end as a new beginning, and coming to the end of one collection may just signify the right time to start another collection. Watch this space, and until then...

Happy Thoughts
x

Well Gee, eh, You're One Big Beaver

Disney Classic # 43 - Brother Bear

 

So originally I was thinking I could sorta maybe try an Inuit recipe, and that yes, it may be a little unusual, but it has been fun trying out recipes I usually wouldn't throughout the Disney movie nights, so I went ahead a did a google search for "Inuit dessert". It turns out that there aren't many Inuit desserts, but one that did crop up every so often was Akutaq, or Eskimo ice-cream. "Perfect!" I thought, as I opened the recipe.

I'm sorry to say that I absolutely draw the line at serving and/or eating whipped reindeer fat and seal oil. Besides, I struggle to find simple things like shortening, pumpkins and hominy here in Cambridge - where on earth does one even buy reindeer fat (from the back) and seal oil?? So Akutaq was a complete no-go.

I tried to have a think about other aspects of the movie, and thought for a while about doing some sort of salmon cake (relating to the bears' time at the Salmon Run), but then I thought about my favourite scene from the film, when Kenai and Koda are looking at a cave painting of a human hunter and a bear, and Koda says "Those monsters are real scary" and Kenai looks at the painting of the bear but then Koda continues "Especially with those sticks" and the Kenai looks at the picture again and starts to see that from the bear's perspective the humans are the monsters, and not the bears as he had originally thought. Basically this scene:

So I decided to decorate a cake using that scene as my inspiration. I've made a lot of vanilla cakes and very few chocolate cakes throughout this series, so I figured I'd make a nice white chocolate cake underneath all of my pretty decoration, with the same yummy chocolate frosting I'd made last week for Treasure Planet (original recipe found here.)

Prep time: 20 mins (including frosting)
Cook time: 40 mins
Makes 12 slices
Ingredients:

For the cake:
300g margarine
300g caster sugar
3 medium eggs
300g self raising flour
200g white chocolate

For the frosting:

120 ml milk
2 tbsp plain flour
pinch of salt
120g dark chocolate
100g butter
150g icing sugar
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

For decoration:
300g ready to roll white icing
Brown food colouring
1tsp icing sugar
Drop of vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5, and grease a round baking tin.
2. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, then put to one side to cool slightly.
3. Beat the margarine and caster sugar together until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the melted, cooled white chocolate to the mixture and fold in gently, before tipping in the flour. Continue to fold until all the ingredients combine to a smooth mixture.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking tine and bake for 40 minutes, until the cake is springy to touch, or a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow to rest in the tin for 5-10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
5. Whilst the cake is cooling, prepare the decorations. To make the frosting, whisk the milk, flour and salt in a small saucepan over a medium heat until the mixture thickens. Place this into a small bowl to cool. Melt the chocolate and place to one side to cool. Grate the butter into a large bowl, then add the icing sugar and cocoa powder. Beat with an electric mixer on a low speed for 1-2 minutes, than add the milk mixture, followed by the cooled, melted chocolate. Continue to whisk for 5 minutes until smooth and creamy. (Tip: placing the frosting in the fridge to set for 20-30 minutes before use will make it firmer and easier to manage.)
6. To prepare the covering, knead the ready to roll icing until pliable. Create a well in the centre of the icing and place a drop of brown food colouring. Knead the colour into the icing, stopping when the icing is mostly coloured but still shows signs of marbling. Wrap tightly in clingfilm until ready to use.
7. Once the cake has fully cooled, cut into three layers. Sandwich the cake layers with the chocolate frosting, and spread a thin layer of frosting over the top and sides of the cake to help stick the ready to roll icing down.
8. Roll the rtr icing to the desired thickness and place over the cake smoothing gently with your hands, then trim the edges.
9. Dip a cocktail stick into the brown food colouring and carefully draw your designs around the edge of the cake by making small dots and dashes with the cocktail stick. Mix a drop of brown food colouring with 1tsp of icing sugar and a drop of vanilla extract to create an edible paint. Paint the design on the top of the cake, then smudge the edges slightly with your brush. Leave the colouring to dry for 10-15 minutes before cutting into slices and serving. (this one is especially good with a cuppa!)
    

Next time we're watching Home on the Range and I'll be making a giant Wagon Wheel.

Happy Thoughts
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