baking
Banoffee Tart
Being a busy mum, I have bugger all time to do anything else these days, like blogging for instance… But I can still pretend I can bake dessert (which is still quite mumsy really).
You can do wonders with just puff pastry, caramel (premade stuff in a jar or can) and bananas – well, you can do one wonderful thing: Banoffee Tart.
Looking good already
Cut, slice, spread, assemble and bake at something like 210° C for 20 minutes… I can’t remember but they should be puffy and crisp, and delicious. A sprinkling of cinnamon and/or chocolate before baking makes it look and taste a little fancy.
Busy-mum banoffee tarts
Here you kiddies – now mummy needs a drink.
Wedding cake dramas
Oh the dramas with this wedding cake!
I was asked to make a simple elegant cake, with a bunch of flowers on top. Sounded like fun – I was looking for an excuse to practice making sugar flowers so was quite excited.
Sugar hydrangea in the making
The cake was three tiers: the bottom was a 12 inch chocolate cake, and the 10 inch and 8 inch tiers were a very delicious fruit cake speckled with dark chocolate bits.
Assembled hydrangea and rose
First drama: Burnt fruit cakes
The last time I made fruit cake was for my own wedding. From that I learnt that the ‘classic bake’ function on our previous oven is a very handy thing. It means that only the bottom element is turned on and when baking for 3 hours it helps prevent the tops from burning. Our new oven doesn’t have this function so alas the tops needed a bit of ‘levelling’. Tasted fine in the end though.
Sugar bouquet version 1
Second drama: Broken bouquet
After hours of labourious intricacies, the hubby accidentally knocked over my completed sugar bouquet, smashing half of the flowers. Luckily I had enough time, and experience by then, to whip up the replacements without too much bother. Luckily for him he was helping me roll fondant and it was indeed an accident. (My husband tells me that I have to mention that “In hindsight I should’ve put them in a better place and not teetering on the edge of the bench”. Who’s writing this post huh!? :D )
Third drama: Squished cake
Well bad things seem to come in threes. During transportation to the venue, a friend’s hands moulded into the sides of the top tier while he held it in the car. We got there and the round cake looked more like an hour glass. NooOoooOO – why now!?! Not now!!! I kept my cool, which is surprising for a pregnant lady, and luckily (yes, luck was the saving grace for this cake) the icing was thick and soft enough to mould back into shape. It wasn’t perfect but it at least it was round (mostly) again!
The finished cake, repaired and displaying the second version bouquet
Plenty of lessons learnt from my first commissioned cake and it was worth it all in the end to see how happy the bride was.
You can view the gallery of my cakes on the Cakes page.
Chocolate Sponge Roll
Want cake and want it fast and easy? Try this chocolate sponge roll recipe that is off the Swiss roll tin I’ve got. It takes hardly any time to prepare, only 8 minutes to cook, a few to cool down, and then spread it with jam if you’re really lazy, or spend a couple minutes whipping some cream. I filled this one with Morello cherries, and cherry liquer whipped cream, then dusted it with icing sugar.
A sweet and simple cake
Rolling it can be a little tricky – sometimes I get a great roll, sometimes it cracks and flattens, but it still tastes great!
Oh, and a word of warning – don’t leave it on the coffee table where your dog can reach it. I came back to one once that had the cream from one end licked clean out of the roll as far as Fez could reach!
Chocolate Sponge Roll
Makes 1
Ingredients
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup flour
- 2 Tbsp cocoa
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 Tbsp boiling water
- Whipped cream sweetened with icing sugar, and jam for filling. Use whatever you like – could be buttercream too or just jam or just whipped cream, or add in some tinned fruit.
Method
- Preheat oven to 230°C.
- Line a sponge roll tin with baking paper. I have an expandable tin, and usually the dimensions are about 24cmx25cm for this recipe, but you can vary this a little.
- Beat eggs and sugar until thick and creamy (about 4 minutes with an electric beater).
- Sift flour, cocoa and baking powder onto egg mixture.
- Fold dry ingredients in carefully with a spatula or wooden spoon.
- Add boiling water and mix again.
- Spread mixture into sponge roll tin and even out with a spatula.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes until cooked.
- Cool completely before filling.
Once cooled, I turn the cake out onto a clean tea towel so the top is lying on the tea towel, and remove the baking paper.
Then I spread the filling evenly onto the cake, leaving a couple of centimeters at the top edge for the filling to spread during rolling.
I use the tea towel to lift and roll up the cake, like sushi. I pick up the tea towel from the side closest to me and lift the cake up with it, and slowly roll the cake onto itself (while holding the tea towel as well as using your fingers to roll). I continue to lift using the tea towel to support the cake, and roll little by little until the cake is completely rolled up.
Dust with icing sugar to make it look pretty. If the ends are looking a bit dry, you can slice those off before serving to guests.
Wedding cookies
A friend asked me to make some wedding favours for her – either cupcakes or cookies. Cupcakes would have been great but we had to fly from Wellington to Auckland, and then they’d have to get transported via ferry to the venue on Waiheke Island. Auckland is also notorious for its humid summers so I ruled out making frosted cupcakes pretty quickly. So cookies it was.
The original plan was to make gingerbread ones because I know the gingerbread recipe I have is delicious. However, we experienced a bit of humidity ourselves here in Wellington and my trial cookies turned into cake. They became so soft that they fell apart if you tried to pick them up! So we went for a simple sugar cookie by Alton Brown which proved hardier and still yummy.
100-something cookies
After several test runs of different icing colours and patterns, the final product was a heart flooded with light pink icing, and piped with blue and dark pink criss crossing. I have to say the hardest thing about all this was the piping. I almost gave myself carpal tunnel syndrome again from the hours of piping to achieve the stripes – my hands ached and started tingling that night.
The iced wedding cookies - not bad for a novice
But it was worth it. They looked really nice on the tables and tasted pretty good too.
The table layout
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