White Chocolate Mudcake - Christmas / New Year Edition

So my White Chocolate Mudcake has always gotten rave reviews from family and friends, and has thus become my regular cake to make for any occasion; its gotten to the point where I could almost make it with my eyes shut!

For two of the Christmas celebrations last year (not used to saying that yet... where did the year go??) I decided to make the White Choc Mudcake and decorate it to be 'christmassy'.

Refer to my original post on White Chocolate Mudcake for the recipe for these cakes - the only difference was in the cooking times: the wreath cake cooked for 1hr 10min(ish), and the christmas tree cake was more 1hr 30min(ish).

Wreath Cake

I used a ring shaped cake mould which meant that the cake cooked a bit quicker (also meant that it was easier to cut up and eat at the end!).

I kept the decorations fairly simple for this one, and just made some lolly-holly to place on top of the normal ganache. The red berries are actually Jaffas and the green leaves are green frogs cut in half length-ways. I had originally thought of using green mint lollies that are in the shape of leaves but couldn't find them so I had to be a little more creative!

Christmas Tree Cake

Similarly to my previous Christmas Tree Cake post, I used a tree shaped cake mould for this one which meant that I didn't have to worry about shaping the tree... but I did have to worry about different cooking times. Speaking of which, I think because of the shape the edges may have been a little overcooked, but because the middle is deeper  than the edges of the treee mould I'm not sure if this is avoidable... I'll have to adjust it next - I mean 'this' year. The beauty of the White Chocolate Mudcake is that it still tastes great if its a little overcooked, its just not quite as moist as it would have been.

The decorations for this cake are also fairly easy because I used the same ganache recipe as I usually do and just added green food colouring to it and tried to 'dab' it on so it was kind of fluffy rather than smooth. I had some chocolate santas lying around that I used as a makeshift tree trunk, scattered some Smarties over the ganache, put a couple lines of candied balls on, and then placed one of my Christmas Chocolate stars on top of the tree - viola!

New Years Eve Cake
We had a quiet New Years with Mr & Mrs Killer and Jnr Killer over at our place, and as a last minute dessert I just happened to have enough white chocolate left over to make another cake. I made the ganache a darkish blue and then tried to put fireworks on with some little candied stars. I chopped up some of the leftover chocolate santas to spell out NYE and then found some sparklers to light it up!

Christmas Chocolates

This is one that I completely forgot to take photos of while making it... and almost forgot to take photos after making it as well... It was only a week or two after christmas that I remembered I had these stashed in the cupboard (the rejects from the batch!) and was able to get a photo of them... You'll also spot some yellow chocolate stars with the other Christmas 2013 desserts that I'll post about (e.g. Gingerbread boxes).

Anyway I wanted to try making some themed chocolates, so I bought some chocolate moulds on eBay that had holly, wreaths, Santa heads, boots, stars, bells, snowmen, candy canes and a Santa. I figured, how hard can it be to make some pretty chocolates? Just melt the chocolate, put some colouring in and then put it into the moulds in layers... easy... right?

Well, I wasn't completely wrong. Turns out you've got to also think about things like how to get the coloured chocolate into the right places in the mould and exactly what colouring to use...

So as the hot cross buns start hitting the stores, here are the 4 key learnings from my first attempt at chocolate moulds - 'just' in time for Easter ;-)

Lesson Number One:
First thing is first. Realise that white chocolate is in fact not white. This is why I have purple and white chocolates in the photo and not pink. I had already realised that it would be impossible to get red without going to a cake shop and buying red colouring specifically (I couldn't be bothered to pack up Jnr Pink and go to a cake shop just for red colouring....), so I had accepted that pink was the best I could do and figured it would look christmassy enough when paired with green and/or white. Well. Turns out when you try to make pink using a cream coloured base, it goes purple. So there you go, lesson number one.

Lesson Number Two:
Use sauce bottles for the different colours of chocolate. It only took about 3 seconds for me to realise that using a spoon to drizzle the chocolate into the moulds in the right spot wasn't going to work. Luckily, for some reason I have accumulated a few sauce bottles over the years and discovered that these come in very handy. I had three on the go, with green, purple and yellow colouring.

Lesson Number Three:
Chocolate does not stay melted. I know, I know, Captain Obvious here, right? Well it just didn't occur to me that while I was filling the moulds, the chocolate inside the sauce bottles not being used would start to resolidify. At this point I found it rather handy to turn the oven onto 50 degrees Celcius, or 'Warm', and place the bottles inside while they were not in use. This served to keep the chocolate nice and liquidy.

Lesson Number Four:
Take photos of all the cool chocolates you make if you plan on blogging about it later... Doh!

Gingerbread Christmas Present Boxes

My lovely lil sister, Mrs Killer, would be rather devastated if I didn't make gingerbread for Christmas... I usually make gingerbread men but this year, I came across these gingerbread boxes in one of the free Coles recipe catalogues that I'll pick up every season for dessert inspiration.

I originally had grand plans of making everyone a decent sized present box each, say, around 7cm square... but after the first batch of gingerbread only yielded 3 boxes I re-evaluated... everyone got a little gingerbread box each instead! When I thought more about it anyway, I realised that people probably don't want THAT much gingerbread in one hit anyway, so a small box was a much better way to go. (And it meant much less work for me as well!)

One batch should make about 7 boxes (based on a 3 x 3 cm square box)

Ingredients:
Gingerbread:
 - 125 g butter
 - 1/3 cup sugar
 - 1/3 cup golden syrup
 - 3 cups flour
 - 1/2 tsp ground ginger
 - 1 tsp cinnamon
 - 3 tsp bicarbonate of soda
 - 1 egg
 - 2 tsp vanilla essence

Icing & Decorations:
 - 1 x paper square template to your desired size (I used a 3 x 3 cm template)
 - icing sugar
 - a couple tablespoons of butter
 - a couple tablespoons of milk
 - Christmas themed chocolates (Optional)

Method:
Step 1: Preheat oven to moderate (around 180degrees Celcius)

Step 2: Put butter, sugar and golden syrup in a saucepan and heat gently, stirring occassionally, until butter melts. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Step 3: Sift flour, ginger and cinnamon together into a large bowl.

Step 4: Add sifted bicarbonate of soda to the cooled butter mixture and pour onto flour mixture.

Step 5: Add egg and vanilla and mix to a soft dough.

Step 6: Roll the dough out to a thickness of about 5mm.

Step 7: This is where you'll need your template and a long knife of some kind. Cut the dough into strips the using your template as a guide for spacing.

Step 8: Cut the strips into squares using your template as a guide for sizing. Repeat steps 5, 6, 7 until you run out of dough or have enough squares**.

**Note: You need 6 squares to make one box, so make sure your total number of squares is a factor of 6 (e.g. 6, 12, 18, 24 etc)

Step 9: Place squares onto baking trays and bake for around 10 minutes (keep an eye on them as it may be a little more or a little less depending on your oven). Remove and let cool on a wire rack.

Step 10: To construct the boxes, cream 1 tbs of the butter with 1 cup of the icing sugar. Add small amount of milk if needed. Add more icing sugar and milk as needed to get the right consistency - the mix has to be firm enough to stay where you want it rather than drip off the gingerbread pieces.

Step 11: Use a piping bag to pipe a strip of icing onto the edge of a gingerbread square and quickly push the edge of another square against it. Repeat this with each edge until you have a box with 5 sides.

Step 12: As these were Christmas present boxes, at this point I put Christmas themed chocolates into each box and then sealed the top. I also had 3 large boxes for the kiddies (these were my boxes before I decreased the size of the template...) and it was at this point that I piped their names onto the outside and decorated them with Smarties.

Step 13: Put the lids onto the boxes using the same method as Step 11. I then stuck a chocolate star on the lids as some basic decoration for the non-kiddie gingerbread present boxes.

Christmas Cornflake Wreath Cookies

This is first of my Christmas 2013 desserts and my favourite of the lot. Its the quickest and easiest one to make, is surprisingly delicious and somehow does the impossible by making a good looking green dessert...

Makes about 16 and takes about 20 minutes to make.

Ingredients:
 - 1/3 cup butter
 - 4 cups of little marshmallows
 - 6 cups of cornflakes
 - green food colouring
 - red(ish) round candy to decorate (I have a bottle of multi-coloured candies and yes, I was that anal that I went through and picked out the dark pink ones as the closest colour to red for berries... by all means, feel free not to do that! And if you think of a small and easy to find 'red' thing to use instead, please let me know!)

Method:
Step 1: Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Meanwhile, put the cornflakes in a large bowl and lay out baking paper on 3 or 4 baking trays.

Step 2: Add the marshmallows to the saucepan and keep stirring until the marshmallows have completely melted.

Step 3: Add the food colouring until you get the right colour.

Step 4: Working quickly, add the melted marshmallow mixture to the cornflakes and stir to combine.

Step 5: WARNING: This becomes tricky quickly as it is VERY STICKY!! I drafted the help of Mr Pink from here on, he decorated with the red candies, I sculpted the wreaths...

Spoon (as best you can considering how sticky it is...) clumps of the mixture onto the baking trays leaving a hole or making a hole in the middle.

Step 6: Drop the red candies randomly onto the wreaths.

Step 7: To help the cookies set, place them in the fridge for 10 min or so. Meanwhile, go pick at the leftovers in the marshmallow-y cornflake-y bowl!

Upside-Down Toffee and Banana Cake

I usually have banana and weet-bix for breakfast, but I've discovered recently that I need a quick brekkie option for when Jnr Pink just won't cooperate and let me eat my breakfast in peace... Which means that I sometimes have a bunch of bananas left over at the end of the week.

So this is the first of a few banana-themed recipes that I have been trying... and if you ask me, I'm starting with the best one - so moist.... mmmmmm my mouth is salivating just thinking about it. Anyway, don't be fooled by the less than wonderful looking photo above, I admit it wasn't meant to look like that and when I perfect it I'll definitely put a better photo up there! But regardless of its appearance, it is unanimous - it tastes absolutely amazing!

Only takes about 15-20min to make, the most time-consuming bit is the fiddly cutting up and mashing of the bananas.

Ingredients
 - 1 cup caster sugar
 - 1 cup water
 - 1 medium banana sliced thinly
 - 2 eggs, beaten lightly
 - 2/3 cup vegetable oil
 - 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
 - 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
 - 2/3 cup plain flour
 - 1/3 cup self-raising flour
 - 2 teaspoons mixed spice
 - 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
 - 1 cup mashed banana (about 2 medium bananas)


Method
Step 1: Preheat oven to 170degrees Celcius. Grease a deep 22cm round cake pan.

Step 2: Stir caster sugar and water in a medium saucepan over heat, without boiling, until sugar dissolves, and bring to the boil. Boil, uncovered, without stirring - about 10 minutes or until caramel in colour. Pour toffee into prepared tin, top with sliced banana.

Note: This is the bit I have yet to perfect... I've made this one twice already and can't get the toffee bit right (it was my first time working with toffee and apparently its not as simple as it seems). The first time it crystalised (below left), I think possibly because I tried to save time and was doing Step 3 while I was doing Step 2...? And the second time (below right), the toffee stayed runny so when I added the mixture to it all the beautifully placed bananas were pushed out to the edges... Hopefully third time lucky, and when I get it right, I'll update this post!

Step 3: Combine egg, oil, brown sugar and extract in medium bowl. Stir in sifted dry ingredients, then mashed banana. Pour mixture into prepared pan.

Step 4: Bake cake for 40 minutes.

Step 5: Stand cake in pan 5 minutes before turning onto a wire rack covered with baking paper; turn cake top-side up.

Step 6: Serve cake warm or at room temperature.

Buttermilk tart with lemon & berries

The perks of being at home on parental leave is that you can have visitors during the week while other chumps have to work; this week an old uni friend, Lulu brought her gorgeous son Lulu Jnr for a visit to meet Jnr Mr Pink (and to see me again too, I'm sure...). Anyway, I needed a quick and easy dessert that I could make while Jnr Pink was having one of his trademark 40 min naps and this one was perfect.

The hardest part was making the lemon zest and lemon juice... which was easy. Once you've got those, its basically a matter of putting most of the ingredients in the blender and you're done...

Serves 8
Took 15 min to prepare, 30 min to cook plus cooling time

Ingredients
 - 1 cup buttermilk
 - 1/2 cup caster sugar
 - 60g butter, melted
 - 3 large egg yolks
 - 2 tbsp plain flour
 - 1 tbsp lemon zest
 - 1 tbsp lemon juice
 - 1 tsp vanilla extract
 - 1/2 tsp sea salt
 - 1 1/2 cups of mixed berries
 - 1 ready made sweet tart pastry case (or of course if you're ambitious and don't have to worry about a little baby waking up in the middle of your preparations, feel free to make your own pastry!)

Method
Step 1: Preheat a fan forced oven to 155degrees Celcius.

Step 2: Combine buttermilk, castor sugar, melted butter, egg yolks, flour, lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla and salt in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.

Step 3: Arrange berries over the pastry.

Note: I used frozen berries for this one, and as they were defrosting the they created a purpley-red liquid that consequently made the tart a purple-stained yellow (you'll see what I mean). To avoid this, you could try straining the berries of as much liquid as you can before putting them in the pastry.

Step 4: Pour the filling over the berries and give the pan a gentle jiggle to make sure the berries are coated.

Step 5: Bake for 30 mins, or until the filling is just set in the centre. Cool completely.

Now I actually had some of the filling left over, so I made up a couple little lemon tarts with some frozen pastry sheets I almost always have in the freezer for 'emergencies' like this...  Mr Pink assured me that without the berries it was very yummy, but with the berries it was absolutely delicious!

Lemon Slice

This one definitely has a place on my list of the easiest slices in the world to make... So easy in fact, that it can essentially be made in 3 steps that take a total of 20 minutes to do if you dawdle. Yes, you read correctly, I said THREE steps, twenty minutes. You basically just put all the base ingredients together, all the topping ingredients together and then put those two together. Simple. Oh, and it tastes pretty good, I suppose I should mention that too, huh? ;-)

Ingredients
Base
 - 1 1/2 cups crushed Corn Flakes (I used a sandwich bag and a rolling pin to achieve the crushiness. Also beware, I had an almost full box of Corn Flakes in my pantry for almost a year before getting around to throwing them out! ... maybe I should have made this more than once... anyway I digress - ingredients...)
 - 120g melted butter
 - 1/4 cup castor sugar

Topping
  - 1 x 395g tin of condensed milk
 - 1/2 cup lemon juice
 - finely grate zest of lemon
 - 1 egg yolk


Method
Step 1: Lightly grease a 23 cm square slice tin (if you want to you can do what I did and line it with baking paper to make it easier to get the slice out)

Step 2: Mix all the Base ingredients together and then press into the tin. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.

Step 3: To make the topping, beat ingredients together until thick and fluffy. Pour evenly over the base and return to refrigerator until set.

Done. How easy is that?! (Answer: Very.)