Chocolate Caramel Slice

The other day council decided to paint my street. And I don't mean they painted lines, or resurfaced. They literally painted the whole road a blacker shade of black. Questionable use of ratepayers money aside, this also meant my street was closed off for about five hours, and I had no food in the house.

I did however have the basics of food, and managed to muster up the ingredients to make a chocolate caramel slice, which is something I've never made before.

This recipe came from Epicure Chocolate, and what I like about it is that the caramel wasn't made on the stovetop, as it is in most caramel slice recipes. Instead you bake the base, then combine the caramel ingredients, pour them on top and bake in the oven until it goes all brown and gooey.

Thoughts - I had no copha, so I ended up using butter in the chocolate topping. This meant there was butter in all three layers, which made the overall flavour very buttery. Also due to the caramel being baked it went very hard around the edges, a bit like a Scottish Tablet. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Overall I was happy with it, though next time I might ditch the butter/copha in the chocolate layer and just use straight up chocolate.

Handbag bridal shower cake

I was attending a bridal shower this weekend for a very dear friend. She was my bridesmaid once upon a time, and she put so much effort into my bridal shower and hens night, so I wanted to make her something really special.

The theme for the day was "An Afternoon of Glamour", so my original plan was to make petit fours. I was going to bake three different cakes, each of which was going to be cut into nine squares and iced and decorated individually... seemed easy enough until the orange and almond cake fell apart when I took it out of the tin. So I decided to simply things, make just one cake, but make it glamorous somehow. Inspired by the Womens Weekly book of childrens birthdays cakes my first thought was a shoe, but since this was my first ever attempt at a novelty cake I opted for a handbag instead, which seemed simpler.

I used the Chocolate Birthday Cakes recipe from the Crabapple Cupcake Bakery book, but baked it in two square pans instead of cupcake papers. The first cake I just leveled and covered in a thin coat of chocolate buttercream, followed by pink fondant, which I found easier than I expected. The other I cut levelled, cut in half, sandwiched the halves together with chocolate buttercream, then shaped into a trapezoid that resembled a handbag.

Then came the tricky part - I made handles and a front medallion ahead of time from fondant I had dyed black. The first ones I made fell apart, and the replacements didn't have time to dry properly so one of the handles broke, but it didn't shatter like the first one so I could still make it look alright. I covered the bulk of the handbag in white fondant, the sides in pink, and the piping and "zipper" in black. I then gently pricked all the black parts to look like they had been stitched.

Look, for my first ever novelty cake it's not bad. Everyone at the shower loved how it looked and how it tasted. I am really proud of it, but I was frustrated, because I know it could have been better. I'm considering taking a cake decorating course to hone my skills a bit. At the very least I plan to make a few more fondant cakes, because I want to make one for Little Princess's birthday and I want it to be perfect :)

Layed chocolate mousse

In the interest of being a fair and impartial blogger, I think it's fair that I post the good and the bad - and the disasterous. This recipe falls into that third catergory.

The recipe looked simple enough, with the added bonus I could make it a day before having friends over. But since I only own one bowl for my mixmaster, I decided to do the white choc layer first, and the dark one much later. Thank goodness I did.

I managed to get the cream semi-whipped with no problems. Melting the chocolate was a tricky process (some found it's way on the floor) but that went fine. Whipping the eggs in a steel bowl over simmering water proved trickier than I expected, but still went ok.

When it came time to add the eggs to the chocolate that's when things went wrong. Adding the eggs caused the chocolate to seize. Enough stirring just managed to save it, but then I added it to the cream and the whole mixture curdled and went lumpy. I didn't even bother trying to let it set, I just chucked it out.

I'm not sure where I went wrong. I've since re-read the instructions, and I think I did everything right. I may attempt it again one day, for for now I'm just relieved I still have plenty of eggs, cream and dark chocolate left over because now I can attempt something else for my dinner tomorrow :)

Pastitsio

Tonights dinner was yet another recipe from 100 Pasta Favourites - I really love this book. It's essentially a layered pasta bake. The bottom layer is macaroni, with a little egg and parmesan. The middle is a beef sauce, kind of like a bolognese but with a hint of cinnamon. And the top layer is a bechamel cheese sauce.

I didn't have any beef stock cubes, so I substituted chicken stock. And I only used one onion, instead of the two the recipe asked for. And I ended up adding a dash of flour to the meat sauce to thicken it, because it was just taking forever.

This recipe involved a lot of everything - a lot of ingredients, a lot of time, and a lot of dirty dishes. And the end result was a lot of food. Far more than hubby and I could finish. Now that Little Princess is three months and can sit in her bumbo and watch me cook for short stretches of time, it was a little bit easier to cook it because I wasn't as limited to her nap time. But it's certainly not a recipe for the average working mum.

Thoughts - it was ok, but not great. Very edible, it had good flavour and was filling. A bit too much bechamel, but otherwise alright. But I just felt it wasn't worth the two hours it took me to make it, nor was it worth the two hours it took me to clean up afterwards. I certainly won't be making it again.

Chocolate Sponge Cake

There are many things I despise about Christmas, and many things I love. And one of the parts I love is food! I actually really love the traditional desserts like fruit cake with fondant icing and pudding with custard, but I know this makes me rather strange. So I like to use Christmas as great opportunity for me to spread my wings a little and make a really yummy dessert that I'd normally never get away with making. There's always a large crowd at the three family Christmas parties we attend, which means my cooking is always going to get eaten, and hubby and I aren't left trying to finish two thirds of some obscenely fattening dish.

This year for our traditional boxing day lunch I decided to try something I'd never ever attempted before. Sponge cake. It's something I've often avoided, because you hear so many horror stories about sponge cakes. But the recipe in the Epicure Chocolate book said it never failed, and it looked simple enough, so armed with my new mix-master, I gave it a whirl.

To be honest I found the recipe extremely offputting. It's an old family recipe that was submitted to Epicure by a reader, so some of the directions are a tad vague. For example, it asked for a heaped dessert spoon full of cocoa. I'm used to much more precise measurements than that. Also, there was so little in the mixture. I'm used to putting masses of flour into my cupcakes, so the idea of making a double-layer cake with only half a cup of cornflour really threw me.

Thoughts - end result was FANTASTIC! I am so proud of my chocolate sponge. It tasted fantastic, it was cooked just right the whole way through, it didn't collapse or taste like rubber like the horror stories say can happen. The family lapped it up too. My dad did comment there was too much icing, but he always says that, and I thought I put the icing on very thinly. My biggest concern was that the whipped cream might make the cake soggy if I left it in the fridge overnight, but that didn't happen. I'll definitely be making this again and again!

Gnocchi with caramelised pumpkin and sage sauce

Another recipe from 100 Pasta Favorites. I love pasta, and I love gnocchi as well, but I sometimes get frustrated that for the most part pasta means either a creamy, cheesy sauce or a tomato-based one. So when I spotted this one, which is mainly made of pumpkin, I just had to give it a go.

The recipe asked for fresh sage, but sadly the supermarket had none, and I had the little princess with me so going into the big shopping centre just for herbs wasn't on the cards. So instead I used ground, dried sage. Also the recipe called for 1/4 cup of chicken stock, and opening a carton of real stock to only use a sixth of it seemed really wasteful, so instead I dissolved a stock cube in 1/4 cup of water. Aside from that I used all the right ingredients - butternut pumpkin, brown sugar, a leek, and evaporated milk. Though I did accidentally buy full cream instead of low fat, it was still good.

Thoughts - this was basically like eating pumpkin soup with gnocchi in it. The recipe made way more sauce than was needed to coat 500g of potato gnocchi, so by the end I was scooping it out of the bowl, and hubby was sopping it with bread. But none of that was a bad thing. It was really yummy, and it will definitely be cooked again. And with the texture, I can probably feed the sauce to the little princess when she turns one and can handle those sorts of solids.

Chocolate Royal Torte

I had some friends over for dinner on friday, so they could meet the little princess. And I knew they would be expecting something sweet, since sweets are kind of my thing. But I was determined to prove I can make something other than cupcakes, and I wanted something that I could serve cold because of the heat, so I went for the dessert section of a book rather than the baking section.

This recipe comes from the Epicure Chocolate book, which I bought ages ago from one of those book club things we have at work. It's the first recipe I've made from that book. It's basically a cinnamon meringue nest filled with a layer of whipped cinnamon cream and a layer of chocolate mousse. And the best part was I could make it a day ahead. So I was able to do each bit during Little Princess's naps.

Thoughts - this was lush. The mousse was so good I had to restrain myself from licking the plate. I was a bit concerned about how the cinnamon would taste in the meringue but it was really quite tasty. Hubby liked it too. I came back from work the next day to find he'd polished off the leftovers. I'll be making this again for the family this Christmas.