Chocolate wedding cakes make

Wedding cake number 2 (chocolate) is made - eek!
Only six weeks to go now so my blogging might be a bit sporadic from now on!

Practise Wedding Cakes

I had a practise run for my wedding cakes!
Im making 4, the fruit cake isnt shown as someone else is decorating that

This is them with their crumb coat - they always look so cute like this i think, all new and yummy!




This is the red velvet with toasted marshmallow frosting. I stupidly forgot to take a picture of this one cut - doh! Its totally the most dramatic :(
Anyway i used this Nigella recipe for red velvet cupcakes, just made it as a cake, and this marshmallow frosting. I spread the frosting smoothly on the sides and then piped little mini meringues on the top and then toasted it all with a blow torch

The chocolate fudge cake - by far the most popular! Its a fab recipe, again by Nigella, which ive been making for years. i love it because it isnt too sweet, and it has a really fudgey texture without being heavy. This one is topped with basic chocolate butter cream piped as roses. Its really just a swirl, piped with a large star tip nozzle. Its really easy but looks like its really complicated!

Any finally this is a lemon cake with lemon swiss meringue buttercream
Yet again, a nigella recipe, i just doubled the quantities for her Lemon Drizzle cake. The topped it with this amazing swiss meringue buttercream. Ive never made it before and it does take a little while but it sreally delicious, and very stable, which i great for a summer wedding. This was supposed to be a little better finished off but i ran out of steam somewhat on the third cake! Something to consider when making the real things...



Makes me hungry just remembering them!

Chocolate Swirl buns

Ive been dying to make these for ages and had a great excuse the other week as i returned to my 'proper' job after a year on secondment to a different department. These were my 'im back!' cakes :) They were easier than i thought they would be to make and by goodness were they yummy. I liked them because they were chocolatey but not too sweet and when theyre warm out of the oven they are fabulous! The recipe is from the always delicious Smitten Kitchen

Oat Biscuits/Cookies

We had a family lunchtime party recently and i made some biscuits for everyone to nibble on in the afternoon. I used this recipe by Created by Diane but reduced the amount of icing to just a drizzle and made some chocolate drizzled ones too. They were lovely, a bit like flapjacks but in biscuit form, definitely a winner :)

Speckled birds egg chocolate cake with whipped buttercream and nutella butter cream

It was my birthday recently and i like to make a cake for the folks at work each year. This year i decided to combine a few techniques i'd been wanting to try out. The folks at work never mind being my guinesa pigs!

So i started with my go to chocolate cake recipe by Nigella Lawson -its brilliant you must try it.
And added nutella butter cream as the filling. When i saw nutella buttercream on pinterest i couldnt believe id never though of it before - such a brilliant idea!


I also used the nutella butter cream as the crumb coat. Id never crumb coated before but as my icing was going to be pale and my cake was dark i thought it would be a good idea.



I let that chill for a couple of hours and then i made my whipped butter cream topping. I find butter cream too heavy and quite sickly so i was very pleased to find this whipped butter cream recipe from Can you Stay for Dinner. It really is a winner, almost mousse like in texture, so much lighter than regular buttercream and nowhere near as sickly.
So i covered my cake with the delicious topping, coloured a pale blue in anticipation of the next step.


I fell in love with this speckled egg cake from The Cake Blog the minute i saw it and have been dying to make one for ages. So i gently speckled the cake with cocoa and water and this was the result. The picture genuinely doesnt do it justice. It was so pretty, even with my slightly dodgy cake decorating skills! I would definitely make the icing darker next time, i was worried about it looking too fake but i should have gone the whole hog and made it blue instead of pale blue!

Everyone at work loved it and it all got eaten - the biggest compliment of all!

Chocolate biscuits

 

These are made from the left over dough from my ice cream sandwich biscuits - the dough froze well and the biscuits tasted the same as the fresh ones. They do make me crave ice cream though....

Nutella french toast with raspberries

 

Just plain delicious... Not much else to say really, follow this recipe (i used raspberries not strawberries) and eat heaven!

Granny Hunter's Chocolate Chip Cookies

My gran made the most wonderful cookies, theyre like shortbread but with chocolate!!
Here's her original recipe - enjoy :)

Granny Hunter's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients
4oz margarine
2oz caster sugar
few drops vanilla essence
5oz plain flour
pinch salt
2oz dark chocolate chips

Method
Grease a baking sheet
Cream together margarine, sugar and essence in a bowl
Stir in the flour, salt and chocolate chips
Put heaped dessertspoonfuls onto the baking sheet
Bake for 10-15 mins at 190C (375C) or gas mark 5
They will be light coloured golden brown when cooked

Chocolate brownie pancakes

I saw these chocolate brownie pancakes by skinny taste on pinterest and knew i just had to make them! They dont look as appealing in my photo i know, they even look a bit burnt which they definitely werent, but thats just my terrible photo, they were actually pretty tasty. I think the high percentage of cocoa and the spelt flour did make them a bit heavier than regular pancakes but i still liked them. They would have work well with ice cream as well... maybe thats this mornings breakfast idea sorted!