Chocoholic’s fantasy cake

My dad is a huge chocolate lover and so for a meal for father’s day, my sister Lizzie suggested I make a death-by-chocolate style cake.  As she’s coeliac I decided to make a a version of the flourless chocolate cake I’ve made previously, Torta Gianduia, but instead of hazelnuts, this time I used ground almonds.   

I made three layers of cake – each one made with a different bar of chocolate: white, milk and dark chocolate.  A sweetened whipped cream and a chocolate whipped cream sandwiched the layers together, and then the whole cake was iced with a chocolate buttercream.  To finish, I piped lines of shiny dark chocolate ganache on top, then sprinkled shavings of each type of chocolate over it.  Happy father’s day, Dad!

Spiced honey, fruit and nut muffins

Since getting home from Sark I’ve had the most horrible fluey cold.  I think it is proof that too much fresh air and exercise is bad for you – what I need is CAKE to make me feel better!  Feeling pathetic and also fairly exhausted from all the baking I did for the wedding cakes, I want something really easy and quick, and something to nourish my sickliness.  I’m living on mugs of hot lemon and honey for my sore throat.  The answer?  Honey muffins – the quickest and simplest of all baked goods!

Part of the simplicity of muffin making is using American cup measurements for baking – it is a really quick and simple way of rustling up some delicious muffins in no time at all.  Just pour your ingredients into the cup measures, use a hand whisk to lightly beat together the wet ingredients, then add the dry ones, and give it all a quick stir (muffins shouldn’t be over-mixed – the batter is meant to look lumpy.)  Quarter of an hour in the oven is just enough time to clean up and make a cup of tea, ready to enjoy with your delicious hot muffins!

This recipe is based on a honey oat muffin recipe from the White House – you can’t get much more American than that! I added nuts and dried cranberries (any dried fruit would work just as well).  This makes it feel like breakfast (not that I need any excuse to eat cake first thing in the morning) and since there is no sugar or butter in the recipe, I think I can officially call these healthy, and definitely guaranteed to put a smile on the face of someone feeling under the weather!

Ellie and Ruadhan’s wedding cake: a baking adventure on Sark

Ellie and her wedding cake

This is the first time I’ve ever made a wedding cake, and it was a real honour to be asked by Ellie, my oldest friend, to make the cake for her marriage to her wonderful partner Ruadhan. I’ve already posted the recipes for each tier as I tested it, which you can find by clicking on the links below:

• Chocolate raspberry cake with Earl Grey gold dust

• Carrot, orange and almond cake (flourless)

• Vegan lemon cake with camomile drizzle

But as well as putting up some photos of the final wedding cake, I thought I’d also blog about the adventures and challenges of baking a wedding cake on this scale and in a far-away place!

(If you're reading this on the homepage, click on 'see recipe' below to see pictures and read all about it…)

Chocolate raspberry cake with Earl Grey gold dust

This is the final test for Ellie and Ruadhan’s wedding cake. I made it for a barbecue at our friend’s Emma and Geraint’s house – I had been waiting for a party to test it, as it is 12 inches in diameter and so I needed lots of willing testers!  8 eggs was the right amount to get a lovely tall cake which I can split in half.  For the wedding, I’ll double this and make two cakes, to slice to become either three or four layers (depending on how tall the tiered cake stand will allow it to be!) 

Originally, I tried an Earl Grey sugar syrup to glaze the cakes, but not everyone liked it, so for the final recipe, I’ve decided to use Chambord, an amazing black raspberry liqueur.  I’m not going to turn it into a syrup but use it neat, to keep the cake as moist as possible given that I’ll be making it a day or two before the wedding.

The idea of the Earl Grey dust was to make my own edible gold dust that tasted good rather than was just pretty, and it worked really well.  Despite deciding not to do an Earl Grey glaze, I still think that the Earl Grey taste of bergamot goes beautifully with dark chocolate, and everyone loved this, so it is staying in the final wedding cake!  I’ll definitely do this tea gold dust again for other cakes, but you could try all sorts of flavours – Camomile tea would be lovely I think, and work well with lemon cake.   

Rhubarb, rum and walnut pie

This was a quick after-work invention for a pud. In the shop on the way home, I picked up some ready-made pastry for £1, and a few stalks of rhubarb.  Within 20 mins of getting home, this was in the oven, filling the house with delicious smells.  If you wanted to make the pastry from scratch – it is very easy to do – I’ve a recipe for it in the post about my Spiced Apple, Rum and Pecan Pie.

Caramel pecan muffins

OMG.  Amazeballs.  These are the best thing I’ve made in ages!  Eaten warm straight out of the oven, the caramel is still gooey.  I think you could pop them in the microwave once they’ve cooled to get the same effect the next day.  Try these!

Rhubarb and ginger marmalade turnovers

On the way home from work this evening I popped into a supermarket and spotted some shiny pink rhubarb in the reduced section for 25p!  It was too good to walk past but I was too tired to do anything too complicated, so I also grabbed a pack of ready-made puff pastry and when I got home made these turnovers – just adding a little of my mum’s home-made ginger marmalade and a little freshly grated root ginger.  We ate them with some shop-bought custard for the most simple and scrumptious after work pud!

Carrot, orange and almond cake (flourless)

This is another test recipe for Ellie and Ru’s wedding cake in Sark in June – carrot cake is Ru’s favourite so one of the tiers has to be carrot!  I thought as well as a vegan tier (my vegan lemon cake) I’d try to make a gluten-free cake for any coeliacs at the party.  Today we had a sunny bank holiday lunch on the waterfront in Cardiff Bay for my sister’s birthday (who is also a coeliac) so I decided to give it a whirl and we had it in our garden afterwards.  This is a version of a Venetian carrot cake based on a Nigella Lawson recipe, but I’m using orange instead of lemon, and almonds instead of pine nuts.  

Vegan lemon and camomile drizzle cake

My friends Ellie and Ruadhan are getting married in June on the tiny island of Sark, and I’m honoured that they’ve asked me to make their wedding cake!  Ellie is vegan so I wanted to make sure that at least one tier is a vegan cake.  I tested this recipe when I went for a picnic and walk in the Forest of Dean with Ellie and Ru this weekend.  You’d never know it was vegan!  But it definitely needs the drizzle – without it I think it might be a little too dry.

Nectarine and blueberry upside down cake with orange, Greek yoghurt and almonds

I've been having baking withdrawals since our house flooded a few weeks ago. It's been depressing enough as it is to have had to cope without electricity, heating and hot water for a week, plus the seemingly-endless rigmarole of insurance companies and loss adjustors and asbestos tests before dehumidifiers can be installed, and we're still a long way off getting things repaired and back to normal.  But to be without baking has has been one of the worst bits! So when our friend Kirsty came over last night I decided to make a cake despite the chaos of spotlights dangling from their wires overhead. I made a cake batter with some grated orange, ground almonds and Greek yoghurt, folded in a couple of handfuls of blueberries, and poured it over a couple of nectarines sliced and arranged in the bottom of a cake tin. We ate it warm when it was more like a steamed pudding, but today now it's completely cool it's happily solidified into a lovely moist cake consistency.  Served with a great big dollop of Greek yoghurt with honey, the chaos of the flood-damaged kitchen seems to melt away into the background!