Dorie Greenspan's Carrot Cake

Salutations! Once again, I've somehow allowed months to lapse in between posts. It's not like I've been super busy or anything. Despite being back at uni for almost a month now, I'm still getting my full 8-hours of sleep each night, and taking the time to go for walks, and baking two-layered carrot cakes. Isn't that just disgusting? I should be ashamed to call myself a student.

Photo courtesy of the UNSW Baking Society

I've posted a recipe for carrot cake before, but that particular one has nothing, NOTHING on the one I share with you today. THIS is the mother of all carrot cakes. Once I had my first bite, I knew for certain that this would be the start of a beautiful and complex relationship - between myself, and the most perfect, most gorgeous, most sublime carrot cake on earth. I know that bakers (especially ones who blog about their handiwork) have a tendency to throw in superlatives like they're going out of fashion, but merely calling this the "best" carrot cake recipe would be to do it a supreme injustice (and there I go again...)

I made this cake for a very special occasion indeed. Did you know that the University of New South Wales, my residence away from home for the past three-going-on-four years, has it's own baking society? It's mind-blowing, isn't it. A baking society, dedicated to all things cake and baked, right there on my doorstep. Well, BakeSoc, as it is known, had it's first event of the year a few days ago; a Welcome Brunch for the members. We were invited to bring something (preferably home-baked, of course!) to share with one another. Dorie Greenspan's recipes are always a safe bet when it comes to taste and presentation, and so it was her "Bill's Big Carrot Cake" that I offered up to my fellow cake-lovers.

And the rest is history. This cake features toasted nuts and dried coconut slivers in the batter, which makes for an exciting mouthful. I used mixed nuts - a combination of walnuts, macadamias, cashews, brazil nuts, hazelnuts and almonds. By all means, stick with one type, but that was what I had lying around. 

Photo courtesy of the UNSW Baking Society

If you compare the inside of this cake with that of my previous carrot cake recipe, you'll immediately be able to tell that this one is a lot fluffier and less dense. The reason for that, I believe, is the fact that I grated the carrots more coarsely this time round. I suspect that I grated the carrots too finely for the other cake, resulting in a dense, pudding-like texture. Don't be alarmed by the size of the carrot pieces when you use a coarse grater on them! Yes, they'll show up quite visibly in the baked cake and yes, people will be able to tell there are carrots in there (a potentially alarming concept for the uninitiated). But for those who have experienced the wonder that is a well-made carrot cake in the past, cutting into this cake will prompt all those fond memories (of tea at Grandma's, of cafe brunches, of chillaxed afternoons sipping tea at a girlfriend's place) to re-enter into their consciousness and, awash in the waves of nostalgia, the will turn to you with shining eyes and whisper "what a marvelous, marvelous thing it is you have done."

Photo courtesy of UNSW BakeSoc

Okay, so maybe I've been indulging in one too many Jodi Picoult novels. But bringing the cake to a dinner party or afternoon tea will guarantee you a dramatic entrance. Double-layered and generously covered with thick, cream cheese frosting, it's home-baked charm at it's best. Dorie's version consists of three cake layers, but I chose to go with two because my cake pans are slightly larger and there wasn't even batter for three. I also halved the amount of icing sugar that went into the frosting. Dorie, you've made me a fan for life with this recipe, but a whole pound of icing sugar?! Trust me on this, guys - go with half a pound (250g) lest your teeth fall out :D

Bill's Big Carrot Cake 2.0

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: from my home to yours

Ingredients

(Makes a 2-layered 23cm cake)

For the cakes:

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon salt

3 cups coarsely grated carrots

1 cup coarsely chopped toasted/roasted mixed nuts (unsalted)

1 cup shredded coconut

1/2 cup dried cranberries

2 cups white granulated sugar

1 cup vegetable oil (anything mild-flavoured is fine; I used olive but canola or safflower is also okay)

4 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For the frosting:

250g cream cheese, at room temperature

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

250g confectioners' or icing sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For decoration:

8 walnut halves

Method

To make the cakes:

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius (or 325 degrees Fahrenheit). Place the baking rack towards the lower one-third of the oven. Prepare two round cake pans (23cm in diameter) by lining with baking paper or aluminium foil.

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground cinnamon and salt. In another bowl, stir together the grated carrots, chopped nuts, coconut and dried cranberries.

3. Cream together the oil and sugar until smooth with a hand electric beater, or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix in the vanilla extract. Add the eggs one by one, and continue to beat until the batter is smooth and thick. Add the flour mixture, and stir into the egg mixture by hand until just combined. Add the carrot, chopped nuts etc., and stir in until everything is combined.

4. Divide the batter between the two cake pans. Place into oven, and bake for 50-60 minutes. Cake is done baking when a skewer or cake tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Allow cakes to cool in pans for 5 minutes, before inverting onto cooling racks. Allow cakes to cool completely before frosting

To make the frosting:

5. Using a hand electric beater or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the softened cream cheese and butter together until smooth and creamy. Beat in the vanilla extract. Gradually add in the sifted icing sugar and continue to beat until the frosting is smooth and aerated.

To assemble and serve the cake:

6. Put one cake layer on a cardboard cake round or plate. Dollop on half the cream cheese frosting, and smooth over the cake evenly with a spatula. Put the second cake layer on top, and on top of that dollop on the rest of the frosting. Smooth evenly with a spatula. Decorate with the walnut halves.

7. Chill the cake in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (preferably overnight) to firm up the icing. Take the cake out of the fridge 15 minutes prior to serving. The frosted cake will last for 5 days in the fridge, and the oil in the batter means that it won't dry out if covered. Cake tastes the best 1-2 days after it's made!

Black Forest Gateau

Some recipes are just too good not to share, and this is one of them. This Black Forest Gateau was made for a dinner party I threw for some friends last night. It was such a hit that my siblings, who are usually only mildly interested in my baked goods, actually squabbled over the left overs.

Black Forest has long been my favourite type of layer cake. And what's not to like? Cherries soaked in kirsch (or some other liquer), sandwiched between layers of intensely chocolatey sponge cake, and the whole thing smothered with freshly whipped cream. The contrast of textures and flavours - plump, juicy cherries against soft, yielding cake, the dulcet creaminess of the fresh cream against the bite from the alcohol - makes a well-made Black Forest a true pleasure to eat.

The key, as always, is to use the best base ingredients possible. In this case, the chocolate cake involved copious amounts of insanely expensive Ecuadorian cacao powder. A slight overkill? Perhaps. But these were very good friends that were coming over, and I like feeding the people I love the real deal in edibles. And also because this was the only cocoa powder I had lying around. Just avoid the nasty cheap stuff that doesn't even smell like chocolate (which, embarrassingly, I have used before in thriftier times) and you should be fine.

Just so you don't end up broke by the time you're done making this cake, you can cut some corners when it comes to the cherries and opt for fresh ones soaked in a liqueur of your choice instead of going out of your way to acquire maraschino cherries. I know it's not traditional, and some people would argue that it's not Black Forest unless it's soaked in kirsch (a cherry liqueur), but as long as it tastes good, right? I myself used a mixture of vodka, schnapps and rum. Add the amount to taste. Drain the cherries when you're ready to assemble the cake, but don't throw away the liquid! You'll need that for brushing onto your cake layers.

A nicely assembled layer cake is a thing of beauty, but it takes a bit of fussing around with levelling the cake layers, and applying a crumb-coat (as seen in the picture above). Since this was to be served amongst friends, I didn't go nutso on the decorating. Just a bit of piping, and going around the edge with a comb tool. You can see bits of the cake showing through the cream frosting, but I quite like the effect.

For the cake itself, I consulted my beloved copy of Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes and went with the chocolate cake recipe used in her German chocolate cake. True to her word, this chocolate cake does indeed remain soft when chilled in the fridge, but has enough structural integrity to lend itself well to carving. The texture is a thing to marvel at - fudgy, almost like mudcake, yet the recipe requires only cocoa powder, not melted chocolate. I think I've found a winner in this recipe, and can see it becoming my default choice for future birthday cake bases.

Recipe for Black Forest Gateau

Makes two cake layers, around 23cm (9 inch) in diameter

Ingredients

For the chocolate cake:

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (66 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup (118g) boiling water

1/2 cup (108g) canola oil

4 large eggs, separated, plus 2 whites

1 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3/4 cup (75g) cake flour

2/3 cup (75g) all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups (300g) caster sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

For the liqueur-soaked cherries

Around 30 medium-sized sweet cherries

5 tablespoons liqueur of your choice

For the whipped cream filling and frosting

600ml thickened cream, suitable for whipping, chilled

6 tablespoons confectioner's (icing) sugar, sifted

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

For decorating

6 medium-sized cherries, with stem attached

Chocolate block at room temperature

Method

1. A day before baking the cakes, remove the stones from the cherries. (I used a specialty cherry de-stoner which allowed me to keep the cherries whole, but you can also cut the cherries in half and pry the stones out that way.) Douse the destoned cherries with the liqueur and toss everything around. Place in an airtight container, and keep in the fridge overnight.

To make the cakes:

2. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Place the baking rack close to the bottom of the oven. Grease two round cake pans, both 22cm in diameter and 8cm high.

3. Mix the cocoa powder with the boiling water in a bowl until a smooth paste forms. Cover with cling film to prevent the mixture from drying out. Set aside to cool slightly. Add in the oil and egg yolks to the paste, and beat with a hand mixer or stand mixer until it becomes the consistency of a soft buttercream. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add in the vanilla. Beat for another 30 seconds.

4. In another bowl, whisk together the cake and all-purpose flours, sugar, salt and baking soda. Add half of this dry mixture to the cocoa mixture from step 3. Beat on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Add in the rest of the dry mixture and beat on low speed until everything is moistened. Increase mixer speed to medium, and beat for 1 minute, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally. Turn down mixer speed to low, and add in the egg whites. Gradually raise speed back up to medium, and beat until mixture resembles a thick soup. Scrape half the batter into one pan and the rest in the other. 

5. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the middle comes out clean. Take out of oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes in pan, before unmolding and letting the cakes cool completely on cooling racks.

To make the whipped cream filling/frosting:

6. Pour the chilled thickened cream into a a bowl which has been chilled in the fridge. Add vanilla extract and sifted icing sugar. Beat with a whisk or electric beaters until soft peaks form.

To assemble the cake:

7. Drain the liqueur-soaked cherries, reserving the liquid. Set aside.

8. Divide the whipped cream into two portions. One portion will be used to fill and crumb-coat the cake, and the other for decoration.

9. Using a cake-leveller, (or just a serrated knife if you've got a good eye and steady hand), slice off the domed tops of the cake layers. Brush the bottom layer with the liquid from the cherries, then top with a layer of cream, the cherries, and another layer of cream. Brush the other cake layer with the cherry liquid, then place on top of the filling, brushed-side down. Brush the very top of the cake with some more cherry liquid.

10. Using a spatula, crumb-coat the cake with whipped cream. Chill the crumb-coated cake in the fridge for at least four hours, before using the remaining cream to decorate the outside of the cake. Complete the decorating with the chocolate curls (made by scraping the chocolate block with a potato peeler) and fresh cherries-with-stems-attached.

11. Return to fridge to chill. Take out from the fridge 20 minutes prior to serving.

Best Banana Bread recipe!

I love banana bread. Always have, always will! And no matter how many times the health-conscious out there remind me that its sugar and fat content qualify it more as "cake" than any recognisable form of bread, I still prefer to call it by its alliterative moniker.

The humble banana bread has seen me through some stressful times indeed: a particularly taxing day at school (i.e. PD/H/PE classes!) would be incomplete without a trip to the canteen for a thick slice of warm, toasted banana bread. And because calories simply didn't matter when you're a grubby teenager like I was, I would ask for it to be spread with margarine. The margarine (far inferior to butter, but that was what was available) would melt and seep into the airy pores of the fragrant banana bread, and I would savour it bit by bit from the greasy paper bag, breaking pieces off with my fingers.

I unashamedly consider myself to be an expert on banana bread, having eaten and indeed baked so many different versions. I've encountered some truly disgusting permutations (apple sauce! oatmeal! flaxseed!) to an absolute gem like this recipe. I can say with confidence that this is the best banana bread I have ever tasted. No, really, I've made this recipe three times now, and each time it has gone like a flash! And, despite my best of intentions, this banana bread has been the reason why I keep falling off my 'diet'. One taste of it and I'm a goner. I won't scare you with how much of the most recent loaf I ate by myself, but suffice it to say that the only reason I'm holding off on the next loaf is because I'm, er, running out of pants that fit ;D

I should mention that I used coconut oil and macadamia oil to bake this loaf of banana bread. However, I have also made it using only coconut oil. And they've all turned out great. The subtle scent of coconut was present only in the loaf made with purely coconut oil. What I'm saying is that please don't go out of your way to purchase coconut oil especially for this recipe. Any oil will do, and you may even experiment with stronger flavoured oils like hazelnut or olive oil. Do let me know how they turn out :) It's the proportions of ingredients in this recipe that matter.


Best Banana Bread recipe


Adapted from Served with love

Makes one 22cm x 12cm loaf

Ingredients

2 cups mashed bananas (use overripe ones)
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 cup of oil (I used 1/4 cup coconut oil and 1/4 cup macadamia oil)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used vanilla bean paste)
3 cups cake flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line the loaf tin with greaseproof paper or aluminium foil.

2. Mix together cake flour, ground cinnamon, baking powder, and salt.

3. Beat together the eggs and sugar until fluffy and a pale yellow in colour. Whisk in the mashed bananas. Sprinkle the baking soda over this mixture and whisk it in.

4. Drizzle in the oil and mix it well into the batter. Whisk in the vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste. Fold in the flour mixture in three additions.

5. Pour batter into the lined loaf tin and bake for around 1 hour and 45 minutes, checking with a skewer for doneness around 1.5 hours into baking, and every 10 minutes thereafter (since baking times vary with ovens). If you find that the top of the loaf is browning very quickly, you may have to cover it with a piece of foil an hour into baking to stop the top from burning. The banana bread is done baking when a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean (no wet batter).

6. Remove from oven and cool slightly in tin before cooling completely on a baking rack. For best results, wrap with cling wrap once completely cooled, and let it sit for two days before serving in order to allow flavours to fully develop.

Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake

All the bakers out there - have you ever made something that looked fine and smelt fine, but disappointed in the taste department? I had one such experience with a caramel cake. The darn thing looked perfect, all nicely risen and golden on top, and had that titillating and irresistible smell of caramelised sugar and butter. It held such promise...I took a bite, and disappointment set in as the cake was so depressingly bland. It tasted nothing of caramel. Indeed, it didn't even taste sweet, an impossible situation given how much sugar (and vanilla sugar at that!) I had invested in the thing. And even though I knew from that first bite that it was a total flop, I kept going back for more, hoping that the taste would improve on standing. All those wasted calories...which could have been spent on this Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake instead.

I had a good feeling about this cake as soon as it came out of the oven. The intoxicating scent of lemons  permeated the whole kitchen, and even though it was the dead of winter and near midnight, I felt like I was swathed in a comforting blanket of warmth and sunlight...*ahem*, yeah creative writing and figurative expression have never been my forte; why don't I simply let the pictures do the talking?

I have made many-a-pound cakes before, and I've had consistently better results with a combination of cream cheese and butter, instead of a "pure butter" pound cake. Problem is, cream cheese is so expensive. And it seems such a waste to use it in anything except a cheesecake, where it can truly shine. And this is where sour cream comes in, because it produces a result indistinguishable from that made with cream cheese - for less than half the price! A quick search on the interweb found a pound cake recipe involving sour cream, courtesy of Cooking with Tanya and Epicurious.

The recipe makes a lot of batter, which is why you should use the 16-cup tube pan that both recipes recommend. I went with a loaf pan, and had about 2 cups of batter left over. One cup I put into a smaller pan and baked for 45 minutes, and the other I microwaved for 3 minutes. The microwaved version was...interesting. Good to eat straight away, but became very dry almost immediately afterwards.

The baked version, on the other hand, is very moist, and will probably stay moist and improve in flavour over the next few days. Simply wrap it with a few layers of cling wrap, and leave it at room temperature for 1 or 2 days before eating. The fragrance from the lemon juice and peel is very pronounced, and goes perfectly with the tang from the sour cream. Serve as is or toasted, with a tall glass of cold milk on the side.

Sour Cream Lemon Pound Cake
Recipe adapted from Epicurious and Cooking with Tanya

Makes 1 10-inch cake (in a bundt pan or chiffon/angel cake pan)

Ingredients
3 cups cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
250g unsalted butter, softened
3 cups white granulated sugar
6 eggs, room temperature
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
Finely grated peel from one large lemon
300ml sour cream

Method
1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius (325 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. In a bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Grease and dust the pan with flour.

3. In a separate bowl, beat the butter with an electric beater until creamy. Gradually add the sugar, and continue to beat for 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time. Beat until incorporated.

4. Stir in the lemon juice and grated peel.

5. Fold in the dry ingredients from step 2.

6. Mix in the sour cream.

7. Transfer the batter into the greased and floured pan. Alternatively, you could simply line the pan with foil.

8. Bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted near the center comes out clean. You may have to cover the top of the cake with a piece of foil an hour into baking to stop the top from burning. Remove from oven, and allow to cool in pan for 15 minutes before turning onto a cooling rack. Let it cool completely before serving. I recommend wrapping it in cling wrap (once it's completely cool!) and letting it stand at room temperature for 1 or 2 days before eating it, to allow the flavours to develop.

Super Moist Carrot Cake

Could it be that "retro" is making a comeback in the baking world? Maybe it's the influence of a recent delightful visit to The Tea Parlour for a friend's 21st (review soon to follow, hopefully!), but lately, I've been craving simple tea cakes, scones, and slices - basically, the stuff you find in a Australian Women's Weekly cookbook. And so it was in the spirit of "everything old is new again" that I made this delicious and super moist carrot cake.

The carrot cake and I go waaay back. In fact, it was the first cake that I baked from scratch, as the final assessment for a Design and Technology course in Year 8. I remember that class very clearly. In the weeks leading up to it, we'd been put through the paces in basic cookery with various old-school Aussie favourites: chocolate chip cookies, butterfly cakes, etc. For our assessment, we were given an hour and a half to complete a recipe of our choice, working in groups of threes. Come to think of it, it was kinda like a Masterchef team challenge!

Anyway, the carrot cake turned out fantastically, and the cream cheese frosting left so deep an impression on my naive palate that it remains my favourite type of frosting to this day. My fellow team members and I proudly presented a generous slice of cake to the lovely ladies down at reception. The rest we split between the three of us. As I recall, it was a GINORMOUS cake that we made, and my share lasted for days.

And so I have very fond memories of the carrot cake. This particular one wasn't frosted due to time constraints, but I imagine that the maple cream cheese frosting I made for my browned butter apple pound cake a while back would have been perfect for this. The recipe I used for this carrot cake utilised ghee instead of the usual vegetable oil. I do believe that either choice would be fine in the cake. I would describe the texture of this cake as extremely moist; almost pudding like. I was worried that it would be too sweet when I tasted the batter (raw eggs don't scare me! xD), but the baked cake was not very sweet at all. Which means that you can pile on the cream cheese frosting extra thick!

Recipe for a Super Moist Carrot Cake

Adapted from Guilty Kitchen

Recipe yields one 22cm x 12cm loaf AND 7 cupcakes, OR one 9-inch two-layer cake

Ingredients

2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 cup ghee, melted
1/3 cup buttermilk (or 1/3 cup whole milk + 1 tsp apple cider vinegar)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
2 1/2 cups finely grated carrot (I used five carrots)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit). Grease and flour a 22cm x 12cm loaf tin, or line it with aluminium foil. You can reserve leftover batter for another thinner loaf, or make cupcakes out of it.

2. In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Stir in the brown sugar, white sugar, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, powdered ginger and salt. Use the back of the spoon to break up any lumps formed by the brown sugar.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs into the melted ghee, one by one. Whisk in the buttermilk, vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste. Stir in the grated carrots.

4. Combine the dry and wet ingredients, and mix until incorporated and smooth. Be careful not to overmix.

5. Pour the batter into the loaf tin, filling it 3/4 full.

6. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour, or until skewer inserted into centre of the loaf comes out clean. If the top of your cake gets too brown, cover the cake loosely with a piece of foil for the final 10 minutes of baking.

7. Once done baking, remove from oven and allow cake to cool in tin for 10 minutes. Remove from tin, and let cake finish cooling off on a cooling rack.

To make cupcakes:


1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius (or 350 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. Line muffin tray with cupcake liners.

3. Fill liners 3/4 full with batter.

4. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

5. Allow cupcakes to cool in tray for 10 minutes, before attempting to move them onto cooling racks.

Joconde Imprime birthday cake

Back when I was in high school, I used to wish for my birthday to fall on a weekday, so that all my friends could wish me a happy birthday in person. Pretty narcissistic, no? I'd even let them know the day before so that they wouldn't forget. The few that did forget got the cold shoulder treatment and we've never spoken since - kidding, kidding! But I really did get upset when my family forgot to say "happy birthday!". It's usually because we had already celebrated it the weekend before.

Last week, we celebrated my sister's birthday with a nice dinner out at Dooleys in Lidcombe. I always get major guilt when it comes to birthdays during this time of year, because they usually coincide with the end of a university teaching period, and that means EXAMS. And when you literally have a mountain of textbooks to get through, and fifty thousand lectures to revise, and...I think you get my point. It's hard to find the time to bake your relatives a beautiful birthday cake, even though you really, really want to. And if it so happened that their birthday fell on a weekday; well, the chances of making them a cake just went from 'unlikely' to 'impossible'.

However, it appears that the stars aligned on my sister's birthday and, not only did I not have exams coming up in the near future, I got the day off from uni! A bit of research and planning beforehand meant that I was able to put together this joconde imprime birthday cake with relative ease. I especially credit the Daring Bakers challenge from a while back, and all the blog entries it'd spawned. No doubt it would take some practice yet for my joconde imprime to look as good as some of the ones made by other bloggers.

It tasted better than it looked!

As for the filling - I decided early on that I wanted several, distinct layers. My brainstorming yielded the following: a cream cheese mousse at the bottom, with a layer of strawberries in the middle, and topped with a berry mousse of some kind. As you can see from the picture above, things didn't exactly go according to plan. The cream cheese mousse turned out all right, although I would use a tad less gelatin in the future (or go with sheet instead of powdered). The fresh strawberry middle layer was replaced with plums, due to the fact that 1) plums are cheaper and 2) I needed the precious punnet of strawberries for decorating the top of the cake. And as for the berry mousse...major, MAJOR disaster. Seriously, the moment I saw the mousse splitting - it felt like my heart was being split apart as well, no joke. I beat myself up over it for days afterwards, regretting the time, materials and effort wasted.

And so I baked a sponge cake and used that instead that as the top layer. It looked rather plain, so I covered it with jelly and strawberries. I wish I could say that this cake was what I'd envisioned all along, but the truth is that my cakes often bear no resemblance to the original plans. But since those original plans exist only in my head, I guess no one else will be any the wiser, right? :D

Ben 10 Cake (and the PERFECT chocolate ganache buttercream)

It was my brother's birthday last weekend, and to celebrate, we threw him a party at one of those laser-tagging places that is all the rage with hyperactive boys his age. My personal present to him was a Ben 10 birthday cake!

I've never really been interested in cartoon/anime, apart from my obsessive viewing of Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Cardcaptor Sakura on Cheez TV every morning before school back in the 90s. Therefore, I was unsurprised (though slightly put out) when one of the brother's little friends informed me snidely that "Ben 10 [was] for babies!" I was suffering from severe sleep deprivation at the time, due to having gotten up at an obscene hour to put the edible icing transfer and other finish touches on the cake, and it was only out of consideration for my dignity that I didn't snark back. Making little kids cry is uncool, no matter however much they may deserve it xD

This particular cake marked many 'firsts' for me. It was the first time I've put an edible icing image transfer on a cake, and that was a nerve-wracking task in itself. It involved letting the image harden in the freezer, and then taking advantage of the 5 seconds it remained hard when taken out of the freezer to remove the backing sheet, and position it on the cake. I was a bit slow, and as a result some of the image didn't come off the backing sheet, but I managed to cover the boo-boo with the fondant border.

Talking about the fondant...you can see from the close-up above at how shoddy a job I did, but again, this was a first for me! Not only have I never worked with fondant before, but this fondant was one that I'd made myself, using the marshmallow fondant technique. I wouldn't say that it was necessarily cheaper than store-bought fondant when you count the costs of the raw materials and the time and effort that went into making it, but it did turn out to be tastier than the store-bought stuff. There were huge, visible cracks running down two sides of the cake and along the top, and for one heart-stopping moment I thought all was lost when the fondant tore as I pulled it over the cake. Thankfully I was able to rescue the cake, employing the same resourcefulness as I did in those disastrous Design & Technology classes back in high school. 

See, I wasn't exaggerating when I said the cracks were HUGE.

All in all, not the neatest looking cake, but the cake itself (and the filling) was more delicious than any birthday cake we've ordered from professional cake shops. I decided on a no-frills cream cheese pound cake base, filled with chocolate ganache buttercream.

Spreading the buttercream on THICK; I like a 1:1 ratio of cake to filling!

Chocolate ganache buttercream combines the best of two worlds, as its name suggests. There are a few recipes on the internet under the common moniker of "chocolate ganache buttercream", but because I didn't like the sound of any of them, I decided to invent my own. I started by making a chocolate ganache, using the best chocolate I had in the house: 200g of Lindt milk chocolate, 100g of Lindt Excellence 70% dark chocolate, and 100g of Callebaut 70% dark chocolate. I intentionally used double cream which had a high fat content, around 48%. After the chocolate had melted into the 600ml of double cream over low heat, I added in 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter. I poured the whole concoction into an airtight container, put it in the fridge and left it overnight. This is what it looked like when I scooped it out the next morning:

Looks good enough to eat with a spoon, doesn't it? :D My original plan was to use the ganache as is to fill and crumb-coat the cake, but there were issues with quantity (i.e. not having nearly enough ganache to frost three layers) and the fact that the ganache was simply too rich and sweet. The solution: aerate it by whipping it with some butter. The result: a chocolate mousse-like buttercream that was not too sweet, but was unmistakably chocolatey!

I also made some iced cookies using the Easter-themed cookie cutters I recently purchased, but I'll leave the details for another post :)

Here's the recipe for the amazing chocolate ganache buttercream!

Recipe for Lucy's Chocolate Ganache Buttercream

Makes around 3-4 cups of buttercream

Ingredients

200g Lindt Excellence Milk Chocolate

100g Lindt Excellence 70% Cocoa dark chocolate

100g Callebaut 70% bittersweet chocolate

600ml double cream (I used Pura Double Thick Cream, but any cream suitable for cooking should be fine)

375g + 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

Method

1. Put double cream and all 400g of chocolate in a thick-bottomed saucepan, over a gentle heat, until chocolate has melted completely. Keep stirring the mixture and scraping the sides and bottom of the saucepan to stop it from burning.

2. Take the mixture off the heat, and add 3 tablespoons of butter. Stir until butter has completely melted.

3. Transfer the ganache mixture into an air-tight container, and chill in fridge until the ganache has firmed to a spreadable consistency. If ganache is too hard, microwave in 5 second bursts until soft but not liquid.

4. Beat the chilled ganache with a hand beater or stand mixture, until light and fluffy. Add in the 375g of unsalted butter. To help with the butter combining with the ganache, you can chop it into 2cm cubes beforehand.

5. Beat the butter and ganache until it looks like an aerated mousse. Chocolate ganache buttercream, done!

The Happiness Cake

I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a pessimist, but there are certainly times when I fail to see the silver lining in anything. It's usually a case of wallowing in self-pity, and I get over my bouts of folly and narcissism quickly enough. Nothing cheers me up quite like baking a cake, and taking my time decorating it. Sometimes I get accused of wasting precious time by experimenting with swiss meringue buttercream, or building a gingerbread house, when I could have been studying, or cleaning my room, or doing some other 'not meaningless' thing. My only retort is that people have different ways of dealing with stress. Some people go get drunk. Others turn to retail therapy. I play with nonpareils and silver dragees.

This cake proved to be the ultimate stress-buster. For starters, it's hard to obsess over the ever-increasing pile of uni work when you're positioning each dragee with a pair of chopsticks (the only tweezers I own are the ones in my dissection kit). And then there's the anticipation of tucking into a slice of chocolate cake in bed right before lights-out on a Sunday night; a prophylactic dose of sugar before the weekday crazies start anew.

(Yes, I eat in bed. Nigella Lawson said it was okay, so cease your disapproving muttering at once!)

 

So, what's with the "B"? No, this isn't some homage to Nathaniel Hawthorne, or an attempt at disguising my shoddy frosting skills (okay, maybe a little of the latter). This cake is actually for my sister to take to her school chapel service on Sunday, and the "B" is the first letter of the name of the House she is in. Since everyone in her House will be bringing something to the service, I have no doubts that there'll be chocolate cake left over. But if this Happiness Cake proves to be especially popular, I'll make sure that the sister saves me a slice for my planned cake-eating-in-bed.

Some other things which make me HAPPY:

Macarons!

Flowers!

And some more flowers.

Beautiful views.

Eating pieces of the beautiful view (a shard of glacier in this case).

Fruit in bulk.

Jumping in fields of gold.

And, of course, cupcakes.

So...what makes you happy? ;D