Tractor cake - Free Cakes for Kids Sheffield

It's my turn again to bake a cake for Free Cakes for Kids Sheffield. Well, we don't take it in turns, we volunteer for cakes we can do so volunteers don't have to volunteer for every cake. Unless they want to and can of course! More information about Free Cakes for Kids can be found in my xbox cake tutorial (http://mahhattersteaparty.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/xbox-themed-cake.html?m=1) and at www.freecakesforkidssheffield.com

I was asked to bake a chocolate cake for a little boy who's turning 2 who likes tractors and In The Night Garden. I plumped for tractors as I could then make a really chocolatey cake. 

Now I have to state here, that time was short and with my husband away this weekend I had my hands full with my two small children so I did cheat. Me, cheat? Oh my! Yes yes, I hate to admit it but Betty Crocker do an amazing fudge frosting so I plumped for that rather than making my own. Me bad! But it is lovely tasting. However, if I'd had more time I'd have used my devils cake topping.

I made a basic 8" chocolate sponge as follows (I always make my basic sponge in ounces):

8oz caster sugar

8oz margarine

6.5oz self raising flour

1.5oz cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking powder

4 eggs

Splash of milk

Cream the butter and sugar together then add two eggs and half the dry ingredients and mix. Add the last two eggs and the rest of the dry ingredients with a splash of milk until you have a mixed batter. Spoon into 2 x 8" round cake tims and bake at 170 fan for 20 minutes. I cool mine in the tins 

Decoration:

I cut out the name and age in fondant and used the same colours to make a tractor. I didn't take any photos as I made it I'm afraid but I used a small rectangle of green fondant for a base then added a large block of fondant to make the body of the tractor and a smaller block to make the cab. Using small round cutters, I cut out 4 black tyres and 4 smaller circles for the wheels and using a rounding tool I attached them with water and made a small round inside each one. I used a small rectangle of grey fondant to make the grill and used an icing tool to make indents in the grill. 3 squares of white fondant made the windows. To make the funnel exhaust I used a small piece of spaghetti and stuck it into the tractor hood then moulded black fondant round it and used a balling tool to create and indent in the top.

Mine was rather rushed I'm afraid as it was tea time and both my children were simultaneously being fed, watching me and wanting to eat the fondant.

To assemble the cake:

One pot of Betty Crocker Fudge Frosting

(If you do want to make your own try this one http://mahhattersteaparty.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/hen-do-goodness.html?m=1)

Small quantity of green buttercream

19 double fingered kit kats

Place one cake on the cake board and fill with some of the fudge frosting. Place the second cake on top and cover the sides with more frosting. 

Cover half the top of the cake with more fudge frosting then cover the other half with green buttercream and drag a knife through it to make it look more "fieldy". 

Break the kit kat fingers in two and add round the outside of the cake. The frosting will keep them attached. 

Then add your name, age and tractor. 

You could always forget the green buttercream and make a digger cake in a muddy field instead. Or you could cover all the top in green buttercream.

Rhubarb continued

It's not much more than a month ago that I made a rhubarb and custard cake (it's a month and a day), but as I was perusing twitter this morning, I stumbled across a rhubarb and ginger loaf cake. I'm a big fan of the loaf cake and I'll tell you why:

1. It's just cake. No messing, no covering, no decorating, no filling, no piping. Just mix and bake. Simple

2. You can easily get hold of loaf tin liners so once baked they have that professional look

3. Scrub that, it's a lie, I don't care if it makes them look more professional, they're just so much cleaner. You pop one in the tin, fill and bake then once cooled it pops out of the tin and you're left with a practically clean tin. No scrubbing dried cake mixture again!

4. There's so many different flavours you can make and many you can then drown with syrups which soak through making some of the moistest cakes ever.

So tempted by the photo of the cake (which by the way was on Good to Know Recipes @GTKrecipes *) I checked I had all the ingredients then phoned my mum as she grows her own rhubarb and was due at mine in half an hour. Good timing, she hot footed it to the rhubarb patch and brought some fresher than fresh rhubarb.

This recipe doesn't even require you to cream the butter and sugar first. It's literally an all in one with the rhubarb added once everything else is mixed. Ok so technically it's an all in two but hey, it's eeeeeeeeeasy peeeeeeeeeasy

Let's go!

Preheat the oven to 180/160c fan

250g self raising flour

1 tsp ground ginger

150g butter (I used margarine)

150g caster sugar

3 eggs

300g rhubarb (chopped into 2-3cm pieces)

1 loaf tin - 2lb / 1kg lined with a loaf tin liner if you have one or greased and lined with greaseproof paper.

Whisk together the flour, ginger, butter, sugar and eggs until combined then stir in the chopped rhubarb. 

Look at the colour! (That's my mum's chicken's free range eggs for you!)

Spoon into the lined loaf tin and level out. Don't worry it's a very thick batter filled with rhubarb chunks so it needs a lot of help to level it out. 

Bake for 50-55 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean. Serve warm or cold on it's own or go crazy with cream or custard 

And as always.......enjoy!

* recipe courtesy of Good to Know Recipes. I love this site and have baked many delicious things from them. They're a really friendly bunch who reply to tweets and I even won a Jamie Oliver recipe book from them not long after I joined Twitter. If you're looking for recipes and inspiration, head on over!

Early grey biscuits

On my recent trip to Paris I returned to a tea shop I'd come across on my previous trip. It's called Kusmi tea and they have some delicious blends which you can buy there, sample and slurp. Amongst the selection I bought, I bought a large box of their tea called Troika. Troika is very much like Earl Grey only it's made with orange and mandarin as well as the standard bergamot. 

I'd been meaning to make some chai style biscuits for a while but seeing as I have a lot of loose Troika, I decided to make an Earl Grey biscuit. The recipes are more often than not American recipes but I came across one I liked the look of so did a bit of converting and came up with the recipe below.

I've never made biscuits with icing sugar before so thought it would be interesting to try. 

Makes about 30

320g plain flour

2 tbsp earl grey / loose tea of your choice

1/2 tsp salt

225g butter / margarine 

90g icing sugar

Grind the tea so it's more of a finer consistency. I used my pestle and mortar. If you're using teabags then it won't need grinding 

Beat the butter and icing sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the flour, tea and salt and mix to form a dough. Chill in the oven for 30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 180/160 fan

Roll out the dough and I used a 6cm cutter to cut out the biscuits and line on baking sheets.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until the edges are turning golden brown and leave to cool on a wire rack.

They're a light and crispy biscuit a little like shortbread but lighter which would go lovely with a cup of tea. Early grey maybe?!

I love the speckles of tea in the biscuit. I think I'll be definitely trying these with other flavours of tea.

My kids love them!!!!!

Cupcake bouquet

I've seen a few of these recently so decided to have a go at one. I had first intended on making some Cath Kidston cupcakes for my sister in law's 30th and it started off well but my paint brush packed in so I swapped over to the cupcake bouquet instead 

The cupcakes are just my standard Victoria sponge cupcakes but I used my very funky cupcake hollower to add some jam into the middle. I made extra buttercream for the baby shower cake  for these cupcakes, but they're made with at least 50% butter. I whisked the buttercream for about 7 minutes in my Kitchen Aid to make a lovely lighter tasting buttercream and coloured pink. I thought I had various shaped large piping nozzles but it turned out I didn't (that's organisation for you!)

The base of the bouquet was an old flower pot of mine which I stuffed with oasis that was tucked inside some tissue paper 

Decorate the cupcakes how you want then you need some cocktail sticks. Pop two into the base of each cupcake and squeeze gently into the oasis. Keep adding the cupcakes until you've filled the gaps. You can take them out again if you need to move them around a bit. 

A little bit of ribbon round the pot then done!

I added a 3 and a 0 sparkler too :)

Sorry for the rubbish photos, I didn't get one straight on

Baby shower cake - cute as a button

I'm going to be an aunt in a few weeks and this will be my first niece or nephew. I'm more than a little excited about this as apparently our own brood is complete (so says my husband anyway).

At 32 weeks, my sister in law had a baby shower and I made the cake! I came across this cake a few weeks before and instantly fell in love with it. Here's the original link http://www.icedjems.com/2012/07/buttons-cake/

I never intended on following the recipe but as it turns out, the way I made it anyway is the same which I realised after I had made the cakes. The difference I did make though was that I made my cake peppermint flavoured and coloured the sponge green. I had originally intended on making an orange flavoured cake but when I went to buy my candy melts*, I could only get dark blue. I bought white to lighten the blue to baby blue but could only get mint flavoured white candy melts. So I changed the whole cake to mint flavoured and coloured the sponge to add to the mint effect as we eat with our eyes too!

*Candy melts - what are they? They're mainly a combination of sugars and vegetable fats. They look and react a bit like chocolate but they're very very sweet. They set quite quick once melted and are mainly used to make cake pops. This page is an interesting read about them http://bakingbites.com/2012/10/what-are-candy-melts/

You can buy them in Hobbycraft, but I got mine from my local cake decorating supplier.

I've seen the button mould several times before and just love it. It's very cute! I got mine off eBay (gotta love eBay) and I know I'll use it again and again.

Making the buttons is time consuming depending how many you need but it's really easy. All you need to do is melt the candy melts in the microwave. I melted about 1/5th of the packet at a time as this was about the amount needed to fill the mould once. I just put them into my small Pyrex jug and blast on high for 30 seconds, stir, blast, stir, blast etc until they're melted. A rubber spatula is great here to pour them into a piping bag, snip the end off and squeeze into the mould. I guess you could fill the mould without a piping bag, but it would get everywhere! The candy melts melt to a thicker consistency than chocolate - top tip - if you want it runnier (it definitely needs to be runnier to make cake pops), then add in some vegetable oil little by little until you get a consistency you want.

To speed up the setting time, I popped into the freezer for about 6-7 minutes then they pop out easily and set. I repeated this 3 more times with blue and then 4 times for the pink to get enough buttons for the cake. I did have a few left over so I could have got away with filling the mould 3 times for each colour.

The cake assembly itself is easy as there's no fondant involved - yeeehaaaaaa :D

 

I made buttercream (I can't say how much I made as I made extra for some other cakes), but the original recipe says 3 cups worth. It's important you make the buttercream with at least 50% butter. I often make my buttercream with margarine, but here you definitely need butter for taste and also because it sets harder.

Place one of your larger cakes on your cake board and fill with your filling choice (I used buttercream but you could use ganache, jam or anything you like). Add the next cake and fill then add the final cake and top with buttercream. The whole cake then needs covering with buttercream. I did a thin layer as if I were crumb coating then I added more on top. I then placed three dowels in the cake to support the cake above 

Do the same for the smaller cakes (on a thin cake board) but you don't need to put buttercream on the top as it's being covered with ganache and place on top of the larger cake.

For the ganache, heat the cream then add the chocolate, leave a few minutes then stir until it's all combined and melted. As this makes a thick hard set ganache you need to get your timing right. You need it cool enough so it's not very very runny but warm enough so it's still pipeable. Leave it too long and it will be too stiff. When it's how you want it for piping, fill a piping bag and go crazy! Cover the top letting it drip down the sides, or force it down a bit if it's a bit thicker by this stage. Pipe between the two cakes and let it drip down again. You can add some to the cake board base as well if you want. Then add the buttons to the base, the middle and the top, arranging how you want. 

At this stage my cake was very wobbly and I was a bit worried but just pop it in the fridge and the ganache hardens to act like a glue between the two cakes and the butter in the buttercream sets too to harden and support the cake 

I love this cake, it's easy to make and very effective. And very very cute!

Creme egg cake

Trying to decide what cake to make for Easter was really tricky this year. I just couldn't choose a design I liked. 

My SIL is lactose intolerant which normally rules out a lot of chocolate based cakes. Or so you'd think. Actually, being lactose free isn't that difficult at all these days. I always use margarine in cakes and Vitalite is dairy free as is cocoa powder. Happy days!

Since I refound my love for my Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, I decided to have a look through for inspiration and came across the Brooklyn Blackout Cake. There's a large quantity of milk in it but you can buy lacto free milk too. So I decided to bake a lacto free version of this cake and turn it into a creme egg cake. I made creme egg buns last year very similar to this but fancied a whole cake this year.

Ingredients:
100g margarine (vitalite if dairy free)
260g caster sugar
2 eggs
45g cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
a pinch of salt
170g plain flour
160 ml whole milk (or lacto free milk if dairy free)

For the chocolate custard:
500g caster sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
125g cocoa powder
200g cornflour
85g margarine (or vitalite if dairy free)

Mini creme eggs 

(I actually used only half of this custard recipe and it was enough to fill and cover the cakes in my opinion. I did make a mistake by not halving the amount of corn flour so it was very thick however I found it perfect for a filling and it was easy to spread and held it's weight).

You need 3 x 20cm cake tins, base-lined with greaseproof paper. Preheat oven to 180 / 160 fan

Beat the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well and scraping any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula after each addition.

Turn the mixer down down to slow speed and beat in the cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt until well mixed.

Add half the flour, then all the milk, and finish with the remaining flour.
Mix until everything is well combined.

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tins and bake in the preheated oven for 20 mins. (The recipe says 25-30 minutes but that's too long in my oven).
Leave the cakes to cool slightly in the tins
before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely. They're a really light sticky sponge.

Chocolate custard based on how I made it: Halve the ingredients above and put the sugar, golden syrup, cocoa powder and 300ml of water into a large saucepan and bring to the boil over medium heat, whisking occasionally.

Mix all (not half) of the cornflour with 120ml of water, then whisk into the cocoa mixture in the saucepan.
Bring back to boil, whisking constantly.
Cook until very thick. Remove from the heat and stir in the margarine.
Pour the custard into a bowl, cover with clingfilm and chill until firm. If you're in a rush to make the cake, spread it out on a baking tray and cover with cling film. This way it'll cool quicker.

Make a buttercream using 140g vitalite and 280g icing sugar and colour half with orange (I use gel) colouring.

Put one cake on a cake stand and cover with some of the custard. Then add some of the two coloured buttercreams and spread around so it looks like the inside of a creme egg.

Place a second cake on top and spread more of the custard over it then more of the buttercreams.

Top with the last cake and spread the remaining custard over the top and sides then add the last of the buttercreams

Now the non dairy free part - top with mini creme eggs in any way you like 

Happy Easter Everyone!

Today is Easter Sunday so it's time to bake a cake as it feels like forever since I've made a cake that's not been Victoria for decorating. No decorating today, just a yummy new cake to try instead. 

I was originally planning on making a simnel cake as I've never even tried it and I love fruit cake and marzipan. But no one in my family particularly liked the idea so I decided to just make an Easter themed cake instead.

But that's for tomorrow.......

Today's bake is purely because I've got some rhubarb to use. My mum grows it and it's got to the sweet stage. Seeing as she has loads she palmed some off on me. Last year I made rhubarb and custard cupcakes (http://mahhattersteaparty.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb.html?m=1) so this year I bring you rhubarb and custard cake.

Rhubarb & custard cake

Ingredients:

400g fresh rhubarb (not inc the leaves)

50g caster sugar 

250g butter/ margarine

250g golden caster sugar

250g self raising flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

4 eggs

150g pot of ready made custard

You need to prepare the rhubarb in advance so it has time to cool. Wash the rhubarb and chop into finger sized pieces then sprinkle with the caster sugar and line in a tin. Bake at 200/180 fan for 15 minutes covered with foil then for a further 5 minutes uncovered. Drain and cool.

When you're ready to make the cake, grease and line a 23cm tin. Preheat oven to 180/160 fan.

No creaming butter and sugar here, just whack the butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, eggs and 3/4 of the custard into the mixing bowl and mix until combined.

Spoon 1/3 of the batter into the tin then dot with some of the rhubarb. Add another 1/3 of the batter and more rhubarb, then add the last of the batter, too with remaining rhubarb and dollop on the remaining custard.

Bake for 40 minutes until risen and golden then cover with foil and bake for a further 15 - 20 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the tin and dust with icing sugar for serving 

Most of the rhubarb has appeared to have settled at the bottom but I doubt it'll affect the taste!