Boogie Shack Breast Fest Charity Dance!

Recently, our wonderful friends Carla and Paul moved into the flat downstairs.  I love it and I know the cats are glad of each others' company.  It's also very handy to have a couple more cake testers so near by. As far I'm aware, this isn't too much of a burden for them.

Anyway, Carla and Paul are expert swing dancers!  I signed up for lessons during freshers week at uni but never ended up going and now I'm quite jealous of their skills.  Although I am aware of "rock step pump, forward and back", I don't really understand how they relate to my feet. Anyway, their dance crew, Jive Swing put on a monthly Friday social dance called Boogie Shack and this month's event was in aid of Breast Cancer, hence the cheeky name!  I was asked to donate some Yay Cakes! to be used as raffle prizes.


I am told the winners were thrilled with their prizes!


So, I got out the pink dye and came up with a rang of butterflies, boobies, dresses, flowers and bras to go on top of some vanilla cupcakes.  Here are some pics of the final products!

And here are a few snaps taken by Nicky David, photographer for the evening:

Aw, Carla and Paul

Cupcake Bites

a-ma-zing mini fast food.

So...today I had my first go at making little teeny cupcake bites.  I have been admiring the work of the magnificent Bakerella for some time now and pretty much want to try everything she's ever done.  But I had to start somewhere.

I ordered myself a peanut butter cup candy mould the other day and have been itching to use it.  A couple of days ago I made a chocolate cake and had someleftover mix.  So, I stored it in the fridge and the next morning before work, i scooped little dollops of it onto a baking tray and cooked it on a high temperature for about 15 minutes.  Delish.  I had little caked cookie things.  They were very nice to eat as they were but I thought they would be put to better use as mini cupcakes.


So...


I followed Bakerella's instructions, but altered them slightly to accomodate what I had in my kitchen.


First off I crumbled up my cake and mixed it with some chocolate buttercream until it was moist enough to shape into little balls.  


I then popped these onto a baking tray and into the freezer.

Meanwhile, I melted up some choccie and drizzled it into the mould.


Once the balls were set, I squished them into the chocolate and then popped those into the freezer.


I then melted up some white chocolate flavoured cake covering (next time I'll use better stuff, because really, this was too thick) and coloured it pink with some gel dye.


Once the mini cupcakes had set into the chocolate, I popped them out and began dipping them into the chocolate and decorating them with everything I could find!

Here are some of my favs...

 These little treats are extremely mini!  In fact, I measured them and they average at around 3cm tall and 2cm wide! awwwwww!

This one in the middle has a little hand pointing to the cupcake next to it...yea, I did that on purpose.

Must say, I'm rather chuffed with my first attempt at these.  I'm gonna do a take 2 of them soon, so watch this space!

Crunchie cupcakes. No I'm not kiddin ya...

Oh I do like my chocolate dipped honeycomb.  Cadbury's Crunchie is always my milkshake flavour of choice, so I thought, if i can stick it in my shake, I can stick it on my cake.

There's something very satisfying about post-food processor Crunchie dust.  For a start it looks a lot less fattening, which means it tastes even nicer.

This is a vanilla cupcake with Crunchie icing, decorated with Crunchie fairy dust. 

Chocolate Brownies with Raspberry Creammmmmmmmmm

The other day, my friends and I had a little dinner party.  It was all quite last minute but came together beautifully.  By that I mean we all stuffed ourselves silly with stupendous food. Everyone made and brought a different dish. 


This was our menu...

 Chez Mau

Starter

Halloumi Risotto stuffed peppers

 Main course

Spiced pork with red wine sauce

 Autumn vegetable selection

 Home made garlic bread

 Dessert

Double chocolate brownie with raspberry cream

Selection of coffee and teas

********

And this was our pretty table...

My dish, would you believe, was the pud, so I decided to bash together some brownies as you can't go wrong with a brownie.  I always add huge chunks of white chocolate to mine because it tastes heavenly!

I went for some raspberry cream because I thought it would be nice and refreshing. 

And it was.

To make Raspberry cream...

Ingredients

300ml whipping cream

100g icing sugar

150g raspberries

All you need to do, is whisk the ingredients together until the mixture becomes firm (but not too stiff).  I highly recommend using an electric whisk here to prevent your arm falling off.

I garnished mine with some extra raspberries and a few sprigs of fresh mint from the garden.

For the brownies, I've slightly adapted a Nigella recipe...

Ingredients

180g unsalted butter 

180g dark chocolate

3 large eggs

1/2 tbsp vanilla extract

250g caster sugar

120g plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

whatever else you fancy...white chocolate, cherries, walnuts,...chuck in around 150g's worth

*Pre-heat the oven to 180°C

*Line your tray with foil or baking paper (better than buttering it).

*Melt the chocolate and butter together on the hob.  Then allow it to cool down a bit.

*Beat the eggs, vanilla and sugar together in another bowl.

*Combine the salt and flour in another bowl.

*Beat the eggy mixture into the chocolatey mixture and then add the flour and any other ingredients you've gone for.

*Beat it!

*Scrape it all out into your pan and bake it for 25 minutes or until the top of it is a bit paler than the inside and the inside is all gooey and delicious and chocolatey and....mmmm.....

Gelatin Flowers!

WOWEE! ELECTRO FLOWERS!

I have always shied away from gelatin in cooking because it's a bit weird.  You use it to make things wobbly and I never really understood it. So i suppose I have missed out on making a fair few flans and tarts. BUT I have most certainly made up for lost time by making FLOWERS out of the stuff!  I will apologise now for all the capital letters but the truth is, I just find it all a bit exciting.

The process of making gelatin decorations involves boiling up gelatin and mixing it with food colouring.  Using wire bent into different shapes, you then dip into the gooey gelatin, like you would with bubble mixture and then leave it to set and form a film.

You need a lot of patience to do this as you can be sitting there for AGES trying to get the gelatin to catch onto the wire and not just pop.  Once it has caught, there is a swirling motion needed to spread it all around evenly.

This spray took a number of hours to complete as it takes a long while to make all the individual parts, dip them, dry them, paint them, tape them.  They're quite sturdy and can withstand being dropped but it's reeeally easy to stick your finger through them too. Boo.

You can make all sorts of things using this method.  The mind boggles!

Rolo Cupcakes. Mmmmmmm

Well.  These babies went like hot hot cakes.  But, I'm not surprised because the middle of each one was a chocolately caramely gooey delight.  Just look at the UTTER JOY in Natty's face.

The massive milkshake craze that is sweeping the nation at the moment had got me thinking.  If i can literally chuck any chocolate bar into a milkshake then perhaps I can do the same with my cupcakes.  I don't imagine every type of chocolate bar will produce results as yummy as these but I'm more than happy to work my way through them and find out.

I used a nice light chocolate batter, popped a rolo in the middle of each cake and then covered it up before bunging them in the oven. And Bob was my uncle.

The taste of the middle bit reminded me a bit of the syrup sponge that we used to have at school which i absolutely loved.

I covered them all with some chocolate butter cream and topped each one with a chocolate heart.  I made these by melting up rolos and putting them into a heart shaped mould.  They looked really pretty as they had the streaks of caramel running through them creating a sort of marble effect.  When I ran out of rolos I went on to make some 'mystery chocolates' by melting up a load of Quality Street.

I've just bought some Crunchies and I'm going to try popping some of them in the middle next time, as well as crushing them up to make what I imagine will be an incredible icing!  Then I'll be trying some mars bar, followed by some lindt lindor........suggestions on a postcard please...

Sugar flowers

Before i learnt how to make sugar flowers I simply could not fathom how people could make something that was made out of sugar look so incredibly real and beautiful!  I now know that it takes an awful lot of time and patience and an awful lot of tools.  Some of the steps involved in making sugar flowers can literally take hours.  Personally I absolutely love getting stuck into making something, losing track of time.  I've heard several people say that they find projects like this really relaxing and I totally agree.  Once you've spent days following step after step, making petal after petal, gluing, taping, steaming, dusting, breaking, re-making, the end result can be really quite exciting!

Here is a spray I made recently. Yay!