Chocolate Rugby Cake (All Blacks and Ireland)

This is my latest creation.

My former manager, Debbie asked me to make Birthday cakes for her son's Birthdays (which are a week apart).
Her oldest likes Rugby and chocolate. I thought since he is part Irish and New Zealander I would display both teams on the cake and since it was about Rugby, add a ball. I wanted the ball to be carved but I didn't realize/ remember how bad my carving skills were. In hindsight I should have hired a rugby ball shaped cake tin and used that... but from the feedback that Debbie gave me it was a success, so I am a little more pleased than I was when I took those pics. So this is chocolate cake with vanilla frosting, covered in fondant and the accents are Royal Icing.

I tried to pipe the official Rugby World Cup 2011 logo but my icing was too runny.

The jerseys are cake pops mixture covered in fondant. Thanks for looking :)

Thank you flower cupcakes

Last week end was my son's first birthday party as I already mentioned when I posted his birthday cake on my blog but I hadn't mentioned the little drama we went through a few minutes before the kick start. We got locked outside the Community Hall we had rented until my husband thought of calling a couple of ladies who look very well after our dear Community and thanks to them we managed to get in, have a great time and realize that they deserve to be looked after as well once in while... so I thought the best way to treat them a little was to make them some cupcakes.

I made the forever reliable yellow cake I have found on Bakerella's website and made different size cupcakes.

My original idea was to make the bouquet and with the smallest ones make little ladybugs but I didn't have time to do that so it was only a bouquet of cupcakes.

I was inspired by this picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sugarcrush/2521835066/. I wanted to add some roses though. I put them in bright pink boxes. Here are some more pictures. Thanks for looking!

I have to say I struggled with it because I didn't have the correct tip. I had to improvise with another tip I had.

This is the Rose. Doing cake decorating made me realize how much I love yellow roses.

And once it was place in the box:

Pretzels take 2

For a little while now I have been feeling like eating warm pretzels. We sometimes get them from Farros in Auckland but generally they are not warm anymore...
Today the weather was very strange and we decided to stay in this afternoon so I broke the promise I made myself after completing my son's Birthday cake and went back to my kitchen to bake.
I looked for different recipe than the one I have already posted earlier in my blog and I have found this on from a website called CDKitchen, www.cdkitchen.com. (for some reason I could not attach the direct link, I'll try again later).
INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cup warm water
1 1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup bread flour
3 cups regular flour
2 cups warm water
2 tablespoons baking soda
to taste coarse salt
4 tablespoons butter (melted)

PREPARATION:

Sprinkle yeast on lukewarm water in mixing bowl; stir to dissolve. Add sugar, salt and stir to dissolve; add flour and knead dough until smooth and elastic. Let rise at least 1/2 hour.

While dough is rising, prepare a baking soda water bath with 2 cups warm water and 2 Tbsp baking soda. Be certain to stir often. After dough has risen, pinch off bits of dough and roll into a long rope* (about 1/2 inch or less thick) and shape. Dip pretzel in soda solution and place on greased baking sheet. Allow pretzels to rise again. Bake in 450 degrees F (230 degree C) oven for about 10 minutes or until golden. Brush with melted butter and enjoy!

I have done it a little differently.
I have dissolve the yeast in the warm water. I left that bubble a little. In a different bowl, I mixed the sugar, salt and flour. I then added the yeast and mixed with my hands. Once the dough looked like it was coming together I moved into a lightly floured board. I worked the dough a little and then placed it on an oiled bowl. I covered the dough with plastic wrap and left it to rise for about an hour.

I rolled the first ones about that thick:

This is the first batch:

I have also tried different sizes to see what difference it would make in the texture, taste and the speed at which it would bake. It didn't make much of a difference. I let the 2 last batches cook a bit longer and I found they were better. The bottoms were crunchy with still the soft texture in the rest of the Pretzel.
As soon as the first ones came out of the oven my husband told me to take the ones I wanted because he was going to eat them all.

Under the sea cake

So on Tuesday 5th July was my son's First Birthday which is a pretty big deal and I wanted to make sure he had a cake that he would be proud his Mummy made. He really liked his saucer which had under the sea animals so we though we would have that as a theme.
I made him a Birthday cake and some cupcakes. The bottom tier was chocolate and peanut butter frosting, the top tier was a gluten free orange cake and the cupcakes were yellow cake with lemon curd, cream cheese and cream frosting.

I was a little worried about the construction because that was the first time I made a separated tiered cake and I really was not sure about the use of the fish bowl. I made some jelly to fill the bowl. Unfortunately despite the fact that the jelly was supposed to be clear, it turned yellow and so the end product was not the beautiful blue I wanted but a sort of red.
I also did the piping directly on the fish bowl directly. I really wanted to add some candy rock chocolate truffles but I couldn't find any so I used the little crunchy rocks instead which I thought were quite good too.
I wanted the cupcakes to remind the theme but I didn't have time to decorate

Cake and flowers

Well, it's been a while since I posted something on my blog. I have been very busy with different things including this baby....

I really enjoy baking as you may know by now and about 4 years ago I develop a love for cake decorating. I pretty much felt into it. It's not something I ever thought I'd enjoy. I have made and decorated my fair share of cakes in those years but I don't remember making one this big.
This is for the retirement of a very special lady who works with my husband and has been in the organization for 20+ years. When I think of her, for some reason, I think a light yellow, a soft yet vibrant color. She doesn't like chocolate so I decided to keep with the light yellow theme and made a yellow cake from the wonderful Bakerella website: with a lemon curd and mascarpone cheese frosting for the bottom tier and a yellow cake with vanilla buttercream for the top one. I have made both cakes with 3 layers. For the top one I didn't want sharp edges so I bake the top layer in a pie dish.

The cake is covered in fondant, and hand made flowers all in fondant as well. Here are some pics:

I don't generally make fondant flowers because I find them too difficult to make but after a few tries I really enjoyed making them.

I thought that some people at the function might like chocolate so I made some cake pops from the left over cakes when I leveled them. The white chocolate ones are yellow cake, and lemon curd, the ones resting on the yellow flowers on the cake board are yellow cake with cream cheese and banana chocolate coating and the ones resting on the pink flowers are yellow cake with orange curd.

Hopefully it all tastes good. Here are a few more pics of the rest of the cake... Enjoy!

Heatlhy cake for my 1 year old son

My son's First Birthday is coming up and I wanted to make a cake just for him. I wanted it to be healthy with no added sugar and no fat either. So I made up my own recipe using whatever I had at home.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of ground almonds
1/2 cup of oats
1/3 cup of hazelnuts
2 apples, cored and sliced
1/2 cup of water
1 Tbsp of honey
3/4 cup of milk
1/2 cup of yoghurt
2 eggs
1/2 cup of flour
1 tsp of All Spice

Preheat the oven to 170 Degree C.

Blend the almonds, oats,flour, hazelnuts and All Spice together until it looks like fine crumbs. (My food processor is not the best so I had little bits of nuts in there which in the end added a bit of texture). Set aside.
Put the water, the apples and the honey in a saucepan and cook the apples until you can cut them with a spoon. Blend them and let them cool.
In a jug, mix the wet ingredients (yoghurt, milk and eggs).
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix.

Bake for about 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

I made some as cupcakes and 2 is small ramekins.

Notes:
I kept and reduced the juice from apples and once the cakes were cooked I out holes in them with a toothpick and soaked them with the juice. It really helped moistened them.
Both my husband and I tasted them and we found that they were more breads than cakes. My son didn't mind them though.
I mixed some icing sugar with water and drizzled over the cakes just for us. It was quite nice and added a different taste to the bread- cake.
I think that a cream cheese icing with lemon juice could add more to those though.
Any fruit can be used in place of the apples. When I was preparing the ingredients I though either apples or a tin of apricots.
This would be quite a nice tea cake.
Next time I will make it into a load tin with raisins.

While I was typing I thought of another one... Hmmm, let's see what might come out of that idea.

My very own version of healthy cannelloni

Technically it is baking:

Tonight I had some left over chicken from the week end and I wasn't sure what to do with it. I thought Stir Fry... but my husband was more in an Italian mood. So I opted for my version of cannelloni which is the easiest and quickest thing to do...
In place of the actual pasta, I made some savory crepes with dried thyme. So I just added about 1 cup of flour with 2 eggs and enough milk to loosen the mixture. Spray some oil onto a frying pan and add some of the dough, swirl the pan to make sure the dough is covering the whole bottom of the pan. If the mixture does not spread, it is too thick and you need to add some more milk to the mixture. Put the crepes aside on a plate.

For the stuffing:
- Leftover cooked chicken
- About 1 cup of frozen spinach (defrosted in the microwave)
- 3 tablespoons of light Ricotta cheese
- 1 onion sliced
- 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
- Oil spray

Spray a saucepan with the oil. Add the onion and the garlic and let it cook for 3 to 4 minutes (until the onion has soften).
Add the spinach, chicken and ricotta. Mix and turn the heat off. It'll do it's own thing.
Set aside to cool a bit while you make the tomato sauce.

Sauce:
- 1 can of tinned tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons of tomato concentrate
- 1 garlic clove peeled and crushed

Add all the ingredients in a saucepan and leave it to cook for 5 minutes.

Place some of the filling in the middle of the crepe and roll the top part over the filling, then fold the sides and keep rolling until you have a parcel. Repeat with the rest of the crepe. Place them into a baking dish and cover with the tomato sauce. Grate some cheese on the top (I just put a little bit to add another flavor). Put it in the oven for about 5 to 7 minutes and serve.