Chocolate and caramel cake

I very rarely use cake mixes but after this experience I have to say they definitely have their place. I have to admit that I was initially quite sceptical and was worried that the cake would be dry or too sweet or not sweet enough. I was given this box of Thornton's Chocolate Cake mix by someone at work so I decided to give it a go. It was really simple to put together and I added my own filling and decoration to jazz up the cake.

To my surprise the cake was extremely moist and chocolatey. I added a layer of canned caramel filling in between and made a simple chocolate ganache for the topping. I then added grated chocolate and giant chocolate stars. The final result was very impressive and one comment was that it looked and tasted better than the store bought Thornton's cake! Everyone thought I'd baked the cake from scratch and were really impressed with the taste and texture. I'd definitely use this cake mix again especially if I need to bake a cake quickly. It would also be perfect for bake sales and with a little imaginative decorating, everyone will think you spent ages baking the cake!

milk, vegetable oil, cake mix (white packet), chocolate pieces (came with the cake mix) and eggs 

 mix all the ingredients together 

 add in the melted chocolate 

 add a layer of caramel in the middle 

 decorate with chocolate ganache topping, grated chocolate and chocolate stars

Happy 5th Blog Birthday & Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all. Hope 2015 brings you everything you wish for and more. It's been an amazing 2014 for me and I hope 2015 will be even better. Today is my blog's 5th birthday which is really hard to believe as time has just flown by. I honestly never thought that my blog would be what it is now when I first started writing it on 2nd Jan 5 years ago. 

I had an afternoon tea party on 1st Jan to celebrate the new year. I baked everything myself and I will be sharing some of the recipes over the next few posts. 2 of my guests had birthdays in the next few days so I baked a birthday cake which is also to celebrate my blog's birthday. One of my guests is gluten intolerant so I made a gluten free cake so everyone could enjoy the birthday cake. It's a take on a black forest gateau which is one of my favourite childhood desserts. 

I made Nigella's Chocolate Olive Oil Cake which is one of my favourite gluten free cakes. There is morello cherry jam and a generous helping of freshly whipped cream followed by canned cherries in the middle. It's topped with a chocolate ganache and fresh cherries. The cake is wonderfully moist and chocolatey and the cherries pair well with the chocolate. The fresh cream in the middle helps to cut through the rich chocolate and the jam added extra sweetness. 

I am off on a short holiday and will be back next week with more recipes. Happy New Year again!  

Shabby Chic Hampton 7 piece Cake Set Review and a Giveaway

5 more sleeps to Christmas! I can't believe that it's the last weekend before Christmas, where has the time gone? Luckily there's always time for cake and tea in my house and it's a real welcome for this busy weekend. I've made a classic Victoria sponge as it's J's favourite cake and we do love a good Victoria Sponge. Fortunately I have a beautiful Shabby Chic Hampton 7 Piece Cake Set to help me serve the cake. It's a traditional design cutlery gift set from House of Fraser. It's beautifully packaged in a gift box and the set includes 1 cake slice and 6 cake forks. It's made of stainless steel and it's also dishwasher safe. I really like the presentation of this set and it would make a great engagement or wedding gift. It's also perfect for tea parties at home or just a treat for yourself :) 

If you like the look of this set then here's your chance to win one for yourself. House of Fraser have kindly sponsored 1 Shabby Chic Hampton 7 Piece Cake Set for one of my lucky readers.


Terms and Conditions

Entry is via the rafflecopter widget below.

You have to answer the question which is a mandatory option to unlock further entries to the giveway.
This giveaway is open to all readers over 18 with a postal address in the UK.
Closing date is 1st January 2015 at 12 midnight GMT.
The winner will be chosen at random via Rafflecopter and will be contacted by email. If no response is received within 48 hours, another winner will be selected at random.
I am running this competition on behalf of House of Fraser who will be sending out the prize directly. By entering you are giving me permission to pass your email address on to them so they can contact you for delivery of the prize.
All entries will be checked and verified.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclaimer: I was sent a Shabby Chic Hampton 7 Piece Cake set by House of Fraser for review purposes. A positive review was not required and all opinions expressed are my own. This is not a sponsored post. 

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. 

Key Lime Pie

This is my late entry to AlphaBakes which I am hosting so I am obviously allowing the late entry! It's been a really busy month what with going away for my birthday and moving house and being ill so I've not really had a chance to bake or blog much. I'm still living in a sea of boxes which makes it harder to bake as I don't have all my regular equipment. I had to be inventive with opening the can of condensed milk as I couldn't find my can opener. 

When I chose the letter K at the beginning of this month, J mentioned that he wanted a key lime pie. I've never made one before and was keen to make it for AlphaBakes but time ran away with me. Anyway I managed to bake this quickly earlier tonight and it looks really good! I've had a little taste (saving it for tomorrow)  and you can clearly taste the lime. I love the crunchy biscuit base and the sweetened cream adds extra indulgence whilst cutting through the rich filling. 

As mentioned this is for AlphaBakes which I am hosting this month with my co host Caroline from Caroline Makes. The letter is K for Key Lime Pie. The round up will be ready later tomorrow or Monday at the latest - apologies for the delay. 

 adding lime zest 

 baked crust 

 add the filling and bake for 15 minutes 

 looks a little plain... 

 add whipped cream and lime zest 

Recipe from BBC Good Food 

Chocolate and Mint Loaf

Remember I mentioned in previous posts about getting goodies from a friend who visited America? I asked for Andes creme de menthe baking chips as I've baked with them previously and they were really tasty so I was really pleased she got me a bag of these. Unfortunately it was one of the hottest days of the year when I received these and we were out for the whole day so these sat baking in the car boot. Unsurprisingly when I got to them they had melted completely so I popped them in the fridge when I got home and it solidifed again but in a giant lump. I didn't want to waste them so I decided to incorporate them into a chocolate and mint loaf cake. I put about 1/2 of the bag into the cake and sprinkled some on top of the cake before baking. I used the remainder to make a minty chocolate ganache to go with the cake. The result was a really moist chocolatey and minty cake with a delicious mint chocolate ganache. You could still taste chunks of the mint chocolate in the cake which was my favourite part. I suspect these would be good in brownies too which was my other option. 

 This is what it looked like after it had melted and then been refrigerated 

 

For the cake
100 grams plain flour
100 grams caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
20 g cocoa powder
90 g unsalted butter
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
75 ml sour cream
~150g Andes Creme de menthe baking chips + ~25g for the topping

For the ganache
50 mls double cream
~100g Andes Creme de menthe baking chips

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Place all the ingredients for the cake in a stand mixer and mix until smooth. Alternatively mix everything by hand in a large mixing bowl.
• Pour the cake batter into a loaf tin.
• Sprinkle the top with Andes creme de menthe baking chips.
• Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
• Heat the cream in a small saucepan until it's almost boiling.
• Remove from the heat and stir in the mint baking chips.
• Continue stirring until smooth.
• Pour the ganache over the cake before serving. 

Marmalade Chocolate Croissant Pudding

There was an opened pack of stale croissants at work sometime ago that was about to be binned. It was only a few days old and I thought it would be a shame to waste it, perhaps I can make something with it. I love bread and butter pudding and have not had one for a long time. So I decided to turn these stale croissants into marmalade chocolate croissant pudding. It's really simple and a great way to use up stale croissants/brioche or bread.

I sliced the croissants in half and spread a thick layer of dark marmalade on each side. I placed them marmalade side up in a dish and sprinkled some dark chocolate chunks on top.Then I soaked it in the custard mixture for about 30 minutes before baking. The result was amazing. The buttery croissant combined with tangy marmalade and hints of dark chocolate was absolutely divine. The eggy custard held it all together and even though we were completely full after dinner, we managed a hefty portion as it was just so good. I'm tempted to buy fresh croissants and leave them for a few days just to make this again!

I'm entering this to the No Waste Food Challenge as I used up leftover croissants for this recipe. This month it's hosted by Laura from I'd Much Rather Bake Than... on behalf of Elizabeth from Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary

 spread marmalade on croissants which have been sliced in half 

 sprinkle over some dark chocolate chunks 

 soak in custard 

 fresh from the oven 

 yum! 

3 stale croissants, sliced in half 

150mls double cream

75mls milk

2 egg yolks

2 tablespoons caster sugar 

Dark marmalade 

50g dark chocolate chunks

• Place the cream and milk in a pan and bring to a boil. 
• Remove from the heat.
• Beat the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl. 
• Pour the cooled cream mixture into the egg yolks, whisking as you go.
• Prepare the croissants as shown.
• Pour the custard mixture over the croissants and leave to soak for at least 30 minutes or until soft. 
• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Bake for approximately 30 minutes or until golden brown.