Turning Yet Another Famous Pie into Cake

Ok, I love Love LOVE experimentation while I'm baking and one of my favourite things to experiment with has to be birthday cakes. Typically I ask the person who's birthday it is what their top 5 favourite desserts are, their 5 favourite chocolate bars, favourite fruit,nuts and colour. Most of these questions are throw away, and have them thinking all kinds of crazy things are going on *insert maniacal laughter and cat*


I always have the most fun with the favourite desserts answers which have resulted in previous experiments involving Chocolate Brownie Chocolate Cheesecake (recipe soon to come) and Lemon Meringue Pie Cupcakes (also, soon to come). This one was a challenge as it was a 1930's theme party. I toyed with the idea of a white cake decorated as a 1930's hatbox complete with fondant hat. Then I remembered I'm quite useless with fondant. But the final end to that idea came when the birthday girl listed her favourite desserts and Banoffee Pie was there. It was going to happen, I had to make it happen, and so I did :P


Banana cake, Sandwiched with caramel and caramel buttercream frosting and apparently it tasted as good as the real thing. I did cheat a little and used store bought Dulce de Leche, home made caramel will come next.


Banana Cake
Makes 2 10" / 3 9" rounds

• 180g butter, softened
• 360g packed light brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 4 medium bananas, mashed
• 1.5 tsps vanilla extract
• 360g flour
• 3tsps baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 250mls buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 180 C

Line/grease and line 2 10" or 3 9" round tins

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy

Add eggs, beating well after each addition

In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients

Add to the butter and sugar mixture, alternating with buttermilk

Pour into prepared tins and bake for 25-30 mins 

Cool in the tins for 20 mins then cool completely (for 2 hours) on a wire rack

Caramel Buttercream Frosting

Makes 6 cups (enough to frost and then colour and decorate this cake)

• 750g icing (confectioners) sugar
• 4 tbsp caramel
• 320g butter, softened
• 2 tsps vanilla extract

Whip butter until light and creamy

Add vanilla and sugar and beat until fluffy

Add caramel and mix well

Assembly

For the caramel layer you will need 2 cans of store bought dulce de leche minus the 4tbsp that went into the frosting.

When I went to assemble this cake I suddenly realised (after putting the top layer down) that the thick caramel layer I envisioned for the centre wasn't going to work (it all started to squeeze out the sides). So I had a bit of a think and decided I'd try something. If it worked it worked, if not hey it was gonna be a little messy but still tasty.

I piped a ring of the icing around the edge of the bottom layer and THEN filled it with the caramel and lo and behold I had a slightly thinner caramel centre layer :P. I the covered the outside of the cake in the frosting and coloured the remaining frosting blue and purple and then it was DECORATING TIME :D

Thanks to Evil Shananigans for the picture :)

Nutella Brownies

Yesterday was one of my housemates birthdays and while he's not really into cake he loooves brownies. Also, since his party took the form of a Bring Your Own Food, Booze and Cigars (BYOFBC), they suited perfectly. I also happen to know that Davey has a real love of Nutella so with that I set about tweaking a brownie recipe I got from my mum to make it work. I've made brownies once before and unfortunately they did not end happily. the recipe came from a childrens cookery course I did and they were dire. Needless to say that knocked my brownie confidence a little but I figured now was about time to give this devilishly moreish treat another go.

I scoured the town where I live for the best quality Hazelnut spread I could find and eventually settled on the Choco Nusse spread sold in LIDL. The spread itself is darker in colour and has a richer taste. The cocoa is stronger and the hazelnuts are more flavourful in comparison to the traditional Nutella. The original recipe called for 60-75% cocoa chocolate but I could only get my hands on 50%. As it turns out this was a bit of a blessing because had there been any more cocoa the hazelnut flavour would have been totally overpowered and the brownies too rich.

Roasted Hazelnuts
Preheat oven to 150C
Spread the required amount of hazelnuts onto a baking tray
Roast for 15 mins, turning once.
Allow to cool, then skin them by rubbing them vigorously between your hands

Chocolate Hazelnut Brownies
Makes around 20 medium brownies

• 180g butter
• 270g chooclate (50% cocoa)
• 370g Nutella or chocolate hazelnut spread of your choice + 170g extra
• 180g light brown sugar
• 130g roasted hazelnuts
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs
• 120g flour
• 1.5 tbsps cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 175C

Line a 10x12"/9x13" pan with greaseproof paper

Melt butter and chocolate over a bain marie

Stir in Nutella, remove bowl from the bain marie and cool mix until it reaches room temperature

Mix in brown sugar and vanilla

Add eggs 1 at a time beating well after each addition (the mix should be glossy and smooth)

In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder

Combine with the wet ingredients

Stir in roasted hazelnuts and pour out into the prepared pan, spreading the mix evenly

Heat remaining 170g of Nutella over a bain marie and drizzle over the mix in the tin. 

Swirl throughout the top of the mix using a knife or skewer

bake for 25-35 mins, until a toothpick comes out mostly clean and the texture is still slightly fudgy when touched.

I hope you enjoyed them as much as Davey and the other party goers did! I must say brownies aren't as scary as my previous experience would have lead me to believe; I will definitely be making them more in the future :)

Many thanks to Making Life Delicious for the first picture in this post, my camera's been a little out of sorts lately :/

x

Mum's Pavlova

We've moved into our new house and we finally have internet which means I can finally post up my pavlova recipe :) It was one of my housemates birthdays last week and his favourite dessert is Pavlova with cream and strawberries so that is what I set about making. 


I used my Mum's pavlova recipe which is the best Pavlova I've ever eaten. It's chewy and pillowy at the same time and tastes absolutely amazing! Slightly abnormally there's custard powder and white vinegar in the recipe which helps give it this consistency. The recipe has no measurements whatsoever so I'm gonna do my best to approximate.


Mum's Pavlova
(Serves 12-16)

• 6 egg whites
• 2 mugs of caster sugar
• 2 heaped tbsp custard powder
• 2 tsps white vinegar

Preheat the oven to 160 C

Beat egg whites and 1 and 3/4 of the sugar with an electric whisk until they form the stiffest peaks you've ever seen

Fold in the rest of the sugar, custard powder and white vinegar

Pour out onto a rectangular baking tray lined with greaseproof paper

Bake for 35-45 mins, until slightly golden at the edges

Enjoy :) x

Pancake Tuesday

I love love love this holiday because it's a chance for my to bring together two of my great sources of happiness; my friends, and cooking :)! I missed out on having a big Pancake party last year (sad face) so I decided I'd make up for it this year by making totally super awesome pancakes :D! 


I was always going to make crepes because in my mind they are pancakes (we Irish don't tend to do the whole fluffy American style ones over here), but for the first time I was faced with the exciting task of making the fluffy type. Ethan (being from the U.S.) wasn't too keen on crepes so I went hunting for recipes. I eventually settled on a cinnamon pancakes recipe because I know how much he loves that spice (I also had some lengthy consultations with him). So yesterday at 3:30 I set about making pancakes for 6 people. I flipped the last one onto an eagerly awaiting plate at 5PM (boy was I sleepy afterwards). Oh, I didn't quit making them because I was out of batter by the way, everyone was just too stuffed! I still have crepe batter left over, which is the reason I haven't included how many this batter makes in the recipe below. It's in my fridge in a milk carton...I really hope no-one makes that mistake when they go for cereal...


Also, what are people's favourite toppings? Lemon and sugar, Nutella and banana and fresh blackberries in that order are my top 3 :)


Crepes

• 200g plain flour
• pinch of salt
• 2 eggs
• 600 mls milk
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 2 tbsp caster sugar (superfine sugar)

Sift flour into a mixing bowl

Make a well in the centre and add the eggs, butter and half the milk

Gradually mix all the ingredients together and beat well until the batter is smooth

Add the remaining milk

Leave to stand in the fridge for 15-30 mins before cooking

Heat a small pan over a high heat and then reduce to a medium heat

Grease the pan with butter (I use kitchen towel to spread it), you can use oil instead.

Put enough batter into the pan and tilt the pan to spread it evenly into a thin layer

Cook until the top of the pancake is dry (around 1-2 mins), then turn over with a pallet knife/fish slice

and cook the other side.

Cinnamon Pancakes

(Adapted from Sugarlaws)

• 2 1/2 cups milk 
• 3 cups flour
• 4 1/2 tsps baking powder
• 5 tsps cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 5 tbsp caster (superfine) sugar
• 3 eggs
• 3 tbsp butter (melted)

Sieve flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl

Add cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar and combine

Combine butter, eggs and milk in another bowl and add 1/2, mixing well

Add remaining liquid ingredients and combine

Leave to stand for 15-30 mins

Heat medium pan on medium and grease with butter/oil

Add 1 ladel of batter to the pan and cook until bubbles start to form 

on the top of the pancake (approx 1 min)

Flip and cook the other side for approx 1 minute

Serve both with your choice of toppings, applesauce goes amazingly well with the cinnamon pancakes!

Happy Mardi Gras/ Pancake day/ Fat Tuesday

x