Baileys Chocolate Cheesecake Trifles

This is my last blogpost before the Christmas holidays. My blog will be taking a short break and normal services will resume towards the end of January.  Baileys and Christmas are synonymous and it just isn't Christmas without  Baileys! These Baileys chocolate cheesecake trifles are really quick and easy to make and are guaranteed to be a hit at your Christmas parties. You can make them in a large dish to be served family style or serve them in small individual dishes. We had them at our Christmas drinks with our neighbours and everyone thoroughly enjoyed them. It's full of Baileys and has a lovely creamy richness from the cream cheese and whipped cream. The Oreos add a lovely crunch and chocolatey boost.

I'm sending this to We Should Cocoa guest hosted this month by Munchies & Munchkins on behalf of Choclette from Tin and Thyme. The theme this month is Christmas and as mentioned earlier, Baileys and chocolate pretty much equal Christmas to me! 

Wishing everyone a very Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year! See you all back in Jan 2016 when I will be hosting AlphaBakes.

 cream cheese, cocoa powder, Baileys, whipping cream and oreo cookies 

 Oreo cookie base 

 Cheesecake layer 

 whipped cream layer 

 

Recipe from Life, Love and Sugar

For the cheesecake layer 

450g cream cheese

55g caster sugar

30g cocoa powder

4-6 tablespoons Baileys 

For the whipped cream layer

250mls whipping cream

2-3 tablespoons Baileys

1.5 tablespoon cocoa powder

3 tablespoon icing sugar

Base and topping

15 Oreo cookies, crushed

• Beat the cream cheese, sugar and cocoa powder until smooth. 
• Add in Baileys and set aside.
• In a separate bowl, whip the cream until it starts to thicken then add in the Baileys, cocoa powder and icing sugar and whisk until stiff peak forms. 
• Assemble the trifles by putting a layer of cookie crumbs at the bottom of each dish. Reserve a few tablespoons for the topping. 
• Pipe or spoon the cheesecake layer on top of the cookie crumbs followed by the whipped cream layer. 
• Repeat with a further layer of cheesecake filling followed by the whipped cream filling. 
• Sprinkle the remaining cookie crumbs on top. 

Tiramisu Trifle

I had a Christmas party yesterday and made a lot of festive food for the table which I will be blogging about throughout the week. Every party needs a dessert centrepiece and this year I decided to make a trifle. It was mainly inspired by the Waitrose Christmas Dessert Campaign. Their research shows that the top 5 desserts that people enjoy as a tradition in households at Christmas are the following:

• Christmas Pudding
• Christmas Cake
• Mince Pie
• Chocolate Yule Log
• Trifle

Which one is your favourite and what are you making this year? Personally I'm not a fan of the first 3 so my plan was to make either a chocolate yule log or a trifle. I'm planning to make a yule log for Christmas day so I started thinking about how to put a twist on the traditional trifle. Italian cuisine is ony of my favourite cuisines and if I eat at an Italian restaurant I will almost certainly order tiramisu for dessert. Hence my tiramisu trifle. Waitrose kindly sent me a gift box which included a gift voucher to purchase the ingredients for this recipe. 

This trifle is made with pears poached in marsala wine and mulled wine spices, chocolate panettone soaked in marsala wine, traditional custard and Baileys infused cream. This is topped with Christmas sprinkles from Waitrose. I debated about making a coffee jelly but sadly ran out of time. The trifle was absolutely delicious and really was the star of the day. It's quite boozy but not overly so and anyway it just isn't Christmas with a tipple of alcohol in your dessert! 

I'm sending this to Baking With Spirit hosted by Janine from Cake of the Week. The theme this month is Christmas and this trifle definitely says Christmas!

 Baileys, Marsala wine, Chocolate panettone, double cream, custard, pears, mulled wine spices 

 I've never tried a chocolate panettone - I have some leftover to make panettone bread and butter pudding - look out for the recipe 

 waitrose sells mulled wine wpice packs which contains everything you need to make your own mulled wine

 pour about 3/4 bottle of marsala wine and 100g caster sugar into a pan. Add the mulled wine spices.

 Peel the pears and cut the bottom of so that it can stand upright.  Place the pears in the mixture on a low to medium heat. Cover and allow to cook, turning the pears ocassionally.  Finally stand them up so that the whole pear is infused with the wine and spices. 

 Slice each pear in half and layer the pears on the outside of the dish

 they look really pretty from the outside

 add chocolate panetoone and fill the gaps with more panettone

 pour the rest of the marsala wine on top of the panettone and leave to soak 

 add a layer of vanilla custard - I love how it fills the gaps between the pears 

finish with a layer of Baileys infused cream just because it's not Christmas without Baileys! 

 with Christmas sprinkles. Looks good on the festive food table

 Here's what the rest of the table looks like. The Christmas banner is from Waitrose

Disclaimer: I was sent a gift voucher from Waitrose to buy ingredients for this recipe along with the Christmas decoration and Christmas sprinkles. All opinions expressed are my own. 

Baileys and Guinness Layer Cake

I wanted to make a special cake for a friend's birthday so I decided to use my new checkerboard cake pan set that I bought from America. My friend is not really a dessert or cake person so I struggled to choose the perfect cake to celebrate. However, he does like a drink (or two) so I decided to make a boozy cake with Baileys and Guinness. The final cake was delicious and very boozy indeed (I was too liberal with the alcohol!) and everyone enjoyed it.

Unfortunately it was more a layer cake than a checkerboard cake. The cakes spread quite a lot during baking therefore obliterating the checkerboard effect. Plus the cake batters cooked at different times so the Baileys cake was slightly overdone and the Guinness cake was slightly under. Next time, I'll make a sponge recipe and add flavour and colour so that the cakes will cook evenly and hopefully I'll get the checkerboard effect as seen on the box. For now, let's just pretend that I intended to make a layer cake from the beginning :) 

I'm submitting this to AlphaBakes hosted by me and co-hosted by Caroline from Caroline_Makes. It's a monthly challenge where we bake from a random letter each month. This month, the letter is "B" which is perfect as I used a whole bottle of Baileys! Have you made your AlphaBakes entry yet? 

 I used a whole (small) bottle of Baileys! oops!

 checkerboard pan set 

 It has a nifty separator which you place on the cake tin then fill the cake batters in alternating colours 

 I had leftover batter so I made some cupcakes 

 As you can see the Baileys cake spread out a lot so you can't really see the ring effect with the Guinness cake 

 This layer is even worse! 

 Cover with frosting and add candles. 

 Layer cake as it was always meant to be ;) 

I made 2 recipes of each cake as 1 recipe was not quite enough - the checkerboard cake pans are quite large. I did have leftover batter to make 11 cupcakes (Recipes below are for 1 recipe)

For the Baileys cake

125g butter
200g caster sugar
2 eggs
250g plain flour (I used self raising flour which in hindsight was not a good idea!)
1 cup or more of Baileys (adjust to taste)

• Cream the butter and sugar.
• Add the eggs, sugar and flour.
• Finally stir in the Baileys.
• Alternatively, you can mix all the ingredients together in a mixer.

For the Guinness cake

I used Nigella's chocolate Guinness Cake recipe which is available on her website.

For the chocolate ganache

200g dark chocolate, chopped
250mls double cream
25g butter (optional)

• Heat double cream in a small saucepan and bring it to the boil.
• Remove from the heat and add chopped chocolate and butter and whisk until smooth.

Guinness Cupcakes with Baileys ganache filling and Baileys buttercream icing

Happy New Year 2011!! Hope everyone had a good time. Incidentally my blog is also 1 year old today so happy birthday to my blog :) Lots of reasons to celebrate.

I went to a fabulous New Years Eve party and made some boozy cupcakes for the occasion.  I decided on a slightly Irish theme - Guinness cupcakes with Baileys ganache filling topped with Baileys buttercream icing! I had lots of ganache left over so I rolled those into little truffle balls.  I have to admit that I didn't follow the recipe exactly when measuring the Baileys. I just kept pouring until it looked about right! The Baileys is quite strong in the ganache and icing but I don't think anyone got drunk on my cakes! The guinness cake was quite dense and you can't really taste the Guinness in it.  I made a batch of vanilla cupcakes today to go with the leftover Baileys frosting which works better as the frosting by itself is delicious.
Here's to another year of fabulous baking. Thank you everyone for reading, commenting and/or stopping by. I hope 2011 brings you everything you wish for and more.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011!! 

 guinness and butter 

 ready to go in the oven -the batter is quite liquid but cooks well 

 adding Baileys to the chocolate ganache - i used a 'glug' method! 

 make a hole in the centre of the cake 

 fill with ganache and replace the cover

 cakes and truffles at the party 

Makes ~ 20
For the Guinness cake 
250mls Guinness
225g butter
85g cocoa powder
220g flour
250g caster sugar
1.5 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
157mls sour cream

For the Baileys ganache filling
225g bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
157mls heavy cream
28g butter
2 teaspoon Baileys Irish cream (I just poured - see pic!)

For the Baileys buttercream frosting
113g unsalted butter, at room temperature
330-440g icing sugar, sifted
4-8 tablespoon Baileys Irish cream (again I just poured it in!)

• Preheat oven to 180C.
• Combine Guinness and butter in a medium pan over medium heat. 
• Add the cocoa powder and whisk until smooth.
• Remove from the heat and allow to cool slighlty. 
• In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.  
• In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the eggs and sour cream to blend. 
• Add the guinness-butter mixture and beat just to combine.
• Mix in the dry ingredients on low speed until just incorporated.
• Divide the batter evenly between the cupcake liners, filling them about 2/3 to 3/4 full.
• Bake until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean, about 17 minutes.
• Allow to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 
• To make the ganache filling, place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl. 
• Heat the cream in a small saucepan until simmering, then pour it over the melted chocolate.
• Let sit for one minute and then whisk until smooth. 
• Add the butter and Baileys and stir until combined. 
• Set aside to let the ganache cool until it is thick enough to be piped. 
• Meanwhile, cut out a portion from the centre of the cupcake.  Once the ganache has reached the correct consistency, transfer it to a piping bag fitted with a wide tip and pipe it into the cupcakes. (I was in a hurry so mine were a little liquid but it still worked fine)
• To make the frosting, place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.
• Beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy.
• Gradually add the icing sugar until it is all incorporated. 
• Mix in the Baileys until smooth.