Who doesn’t love birthdays? My own love for these annual celebrations has been well documented, as has my fervent belief that all birthdays should be celebrated with cake. Preferably coloured pink. So what did you think I would bake to celebrate the first birthday of this beautiful little blog?
A pink birthday cake of course!
Note to self: be less predictable.
As I pondered the possibilities of decorating this cake, the work of Yayoi Kusama came to mind. Kusama is a famous Japanese artist who has a penchant for spots with a dash of craziness. Of the very psychedelic variety. See exhibit A:
I first stumbled upon her after buying a t shirt in Japan with her face on it. I had no idea who she was, or even if she was a real person, until a Japanese girl in an art gallery asked me if I was a Kusama fan. Smile and nod.
She brought an exhibition to the MCA in Sydney a few years ago which was clever and playful and ticked all the right boxes. So, while not quite as ground breaking as her work, I thought I would break out the polka dots for my blog birthday cake.
A spot over here and a spot over there and a spot in my ear and a spot in my hair
Well that was just overkill. There were no spots in my hair or ears…
All in all, not a bad effort! Apart from the lumpy ganache, but hey, its not THAT obvious is it? *whistles*
And with a bit of double cream and a cute cake fork, what better way to celebrate a birthday?
So, happy birthday blog, and thank you for keeping me sane over what was one roller coaster of a year! Here’s to many more exciting years together xoxo
So, my lovelies, what is your favourite kind of birthday food?
I’ve had something weighing on my mind recently. Weighing exactly 2.5 kg.
Holy moly. This was one giant packet of chocolate. I bought this in anticipation of Easter. Apparently Easter is really close to Christmas. At least, thats what I surmised after seeing the shops inundated with easter eggs mere weeks after Christmas.
I’m a sucker for the chocolate marshmallow eggs, strawberry cream eggs and turkish delight eggs
However, obsessions aside, I do have to conceed that it is way too early to be eating easter eggs. Boo! So I had to come up with a way to incorporate them into a less ‘holiday’ and more ‘everyday’ food. It had to be rich, it had to be chocoaltey…
Fudge.
Perfect.
Who could resist?
Not I.
So simple, all you need is 350g dark chocolate, 397g condensed milk, 30g butter, a pinch of salt and as many easter eggs/marshmallows as you think you might need. (The original recipe calls for 150g pistachios, but thats pretty boring…)
All you need to do is melt the chocolate, condensed milk, butter and salt in a heavy based saucepan on a low heat.
Try not to eat it at this point. Try…
Stir in the chopped up marshmallows and eggs (quickly because they will start to melt)
and pour the mixture into a tin lined with baking paper (to ensure easy removal!)
Leave to set in the fridge
And did you see the fruit in the fridge? Beside the butter and tim tams?
See, I DO eat normal food. Kind sorta maybe…
Once it is all set, remove from the tin and cut into eatable squares.
Try not to eat it all at once!!
So, my lovelies, what sweet treats are you going to be eating this easter?
When I think of a pretty amazing sandwich, I can see two slices of beautifully soft, fresh white bread framing crisp and succulent greens, a thin smear of home made mayonnaise, marinated artichoke, a few sundried tomatos and some pieces of tangy, tasty salami. It’s enough to get me salivating just thinking about it. And then I think of this
phwoar!
And all my healthy eating plans go out the window. Heart healthy it is not, but tasty and satisfying it most certainly is. A pretty amazing sandwich.
This concoction is simple by nature. Two pieces of Cream Cheese Pound Cake framing gooey, melted lindt chocolate. Normally I don’t mind what kind of chocolate you use but today the Lindt Cafe at Martin place had 50% off christmas chocolate. Who could go past that? I had a few pieces of Cream Cheese Pound Cake (the most amazing pound cake in the world) lying around, so I defy anyone to have a different thought process to this
50% off Lindt chocoate –> left over pound cake –>new years resolution to eat healthier –> sandwich? –>chocolate and pound cake sandwich!
ok, so my logic may be flawed.
But this cake is seriously good. Normally I like my cakes gooey and chocolatey and unbelievably sweet, but I would quite happily eat slice after slice of this gorgeous dense pound cake. Hell, I might even choose the pound cake over the chocolate cake! Does that convince you? Not quite? Read on, my lovelies and hear my case!
I found this recipe in a book called Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor that I picked up in England this time last year. With a title like that, cute pastel design and drool-worthy pictures, I was hooked! You can see how cute the page designs are, thats the cookbook in the top left hand corner. And, while im talking about this picture, how good does that cake mix look? This is definitely a cake mix I could consume (new years resolutions be damned!) before even baking.
I may have licked the bowl.
Look at that sucker! All golden and puffy. Deeelicious!
I know all the other cookbooks behind are are envious that they couldn’t produce such a fine looking cake. Pipe down Nigella! Back off Bourke St Bakery! Mellow out Magnolia! I still love you all xoxo
Perfecto!
And it is loaf shaped. Like bread. Therefore making it healthier…
(see, I can construct a compelling case)
Apologies for this pic, but I was feeling faint from the heady aroma of cake, melting chocolate and sizzling butter. Can you blame me? You heartless wench!
Once you have made your cake, all you need to do to construct the sandwich is lightly butter one side of each slice of cake, place one piece butter side down on a frying pan on medium heat and scatter it liberally with your crushed or chopped chocolate. Top with the other slice of cake (butter side up) and cook until brown on the bottom, then flip and cook some more, until the chocolate is melted. Voila! A pretty amazing sandwich.
So, my lovelies, what filling would you have in your amazing pound cake sandwich? And will you be taking advantage of some 50% off chocolate this new year? A little bird tells me that you can find discounted chocolatey treats at many supermarkets still…
My Favourite Cream-Cheese Pound Cake – From Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor (The original recipe makes two loaves, I have halved the recipe so as to only make one. Feel free to double it!)
Ingredients
170g unsalted butter
110g cream cheese
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
Method
1. Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature and preheat oven to 160 degrees celsius
2. Beat butter and cream cheese until smooth and creamy. With the mixer still running, gradually add the sugar and continue beating until pale and fluffy
3. Beat in the salt and vanilla
4. Add the eggs to the mixture one at a time and beat well after each addition
5. sif the flour and baking powder into the batter and fold in until smooth
6. Pour the mixture into a prepared loaf tin and bake 60-75 mins or until the tops are golden and slightly cracked. Check with a skewer if you are unsure, and if the top is browning too quickly make sure you place some aluminium foil over the top top stop it burning.
The lights are twinkling, the tree is up and all the presents are wrapped and underneath! (I was super organised this year.) This is the first christmas in many years that I have not been working which means that i’ve been very relaxed and able to thoroughly enjoy the lead up to the festive season. Decorating the tree was something I could spend time doing without being zombified from lack of sleep or worried sick that I was meant to be spending that time doing something else. I particularly enjoyed putting up my favourite ornament…
It’s how I imagine I would look if I had a bob… and wings…
she says ‘life is short eat dessert first’
some wise words, don’t you think?
Another great thing about being on Christmas holidays is that I have time to do some Christmas cooking. I try to do this every year but this year I can enjoy it properly. Yay! Ive been doing a big of cooking for gifts which I will post about in the next few days, but first I want to show you some quick and easy and delicious Christmas Cupcakes. I got this recipe from Nigella Lawsons How to Be a Domestic Goddess (recipe can be found here) to make for my friend’s annual christmas party. The recipe is very straightforward but makes the most deliciously light and christmassy cupcakes with chocolate and spices. The chocolate is not overpowered by the spices and it was good to find something christmassy without ginger (as the mothership has a great aversion to ginger). These were definitely a winner!
and you can decorate them to look like christmas puddings!
I know that holly leaves are a much darker green but hey, you can only work with what you have! If you have a darker green food colouring feel free to use it
So they are pretty straightforward to decorate but here are some tips if you have not used fondant before. I baked my cupcakes in red and green paper patty pans and iced them with white royal icing. You want your icing spreadable but not too runny or it will slide off the cupcake, or too thick as it will not stick properly. Remember that royal icing starts to set as soon as you finish mixing so you will want to work quickly.
To make the holly berries and leaves you will need:
1. 1 quantity of fondant (I use Orchard White Icing from any supermarket but you can use any fondant you like. Im just too lazy to make my own or go to a specialty store to get some)
2. Red gel food colouring (use gel as liquid food colouring will make your fondant too slippery and sticky. You don’t want it to be too wet!)
3. Green gel food colouring
4. a rolling pin (I find a small plastic rolling pin is best for rolling out small quantities of fondant
5. A small holly leaf cookie cutter
6. an implement to make leaf vein indentations on your holly leaves (I use the scalloped end of a fondant shaping tool. Pictured below)
7. Some icing sugar to dust your work surface and stop your fondant from sticking (the fondant will be quite soft in the summer heat so its good to have some icing sugar on hand in case it becomes too soft or sticky)
Now that you have your ingredients, you can begin!
Firstly you need to colour your fondant.
Dust your work surface with icing sugar and add a little green food colouring to your fondant to make the holly leaves.
Knead your fondant until the colour is evenly distributed. Wash and dry your hands, and repeat with a new piece of fondant and the red food colouring for your holly berries.
You will end up with two smooth coloured balls of fondant. You will need more green than red but you can always make up some more if you run out.
Roll your green fondant out to a thickness of about 5mm. I bought this little Wilton rolling pin in Melbourne and its fantastic because of the little rubber rings on the end. They allow me to consistently roll the fondant out to an even depth. Cool hey!
Use your leaf cutter to cut two leaves from the fondant
This is the tool I use to create the veins in my leaves. I like it because it looks a little crinkly and interesting.
Dot a vertical line from the bottom of the leaf to about 3/4 of the way up. Then dot some diagonal lines from the center of the leaf outwards to the pointy edges.
Like so! You can be a bit rough as it just adds to the charm of the finished product. When are leaves ever perfectly identical?
Roll three small balls out of the red fondant and attach in a cluster like holly berries. And there you have it!
It is easier to attach them to the cupcakes as you go so that the royal icing doesn’t set. Therefore it is important that you make the leaves before hand as they can be a little time consuming. You can make the berries as you attach them to the cupcakes.
Voila!
So, my lovelies, what do you enjoy baking for christmas? And were my instructions ok? Any tips?
A pink birthday cake of course!
Apologies for the blurriness.
Then came the spots.
And with a bit of double cream and a cute cake fork, what better way to celebrate a birthday?
