Wedding Party Cake Pops

It's been a crazy few weeks, and we've all been looking forward to my brother and his wife's wedding party at the weekend. It was a great excuse for everyone to get back together again and for all those who couldn't make the wedding join in some of the fun too.

Of course with me when there's a party it always means one thing - cake! I loved doing the wedding cake and cake pops for the actual wedding so I thought it was a great excuse to make some more.

The sponge itself is chocolate, crumbed and mixed with white chocolate ganache. One rolled and chilled I dipped them in milk chocolate and decorated with pink sprinkles, pink chocolate curls, white chocolate stars and lots of pink cake glitter.

I really wanted it to look special, as they'd hired their favourite pub for the party I thought I'd stick with the theme and used pint glasses to display them. I know that doesn't sound too special, but I did stuff them with white and star-patterned tissue paper and tied the glass with white and pink ribbon with silver bells and wedding ring decorations on. The finished product looked really good and I think in the end I made about 70 - I think my little brother and niece had about four each!

I really am going to try to make more cake pops, I think they're my new favourite - and it is my niece's birthday next week...there might be a few kicking around there too :)

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Mary Berry's Sachertorte

I've seen this cake around is a few different cookbooks...but I used to always think if a slice of cake wasn't massive, it wasn't worth having - well how wrong was I? I've soon learnt that a smaller slice can pack a powerfully gorgeous punch!

This chocolate cake is said to be invented in Vienna by the chef Franz Sacher in 1832. It traditionally has one layer of rich moist sponge, topped with a layer of set apricot jam and they covered in beautiful ganache. These cakes have a tough reputation as they can be difficult to master to get the right texture and richness. They're meant to be lovely and moist but not underdone. The Ganache has to be silky and shiny. You also have to be able to pipe 'Sacher' onto the top in milk chocolate which some found difficult on the show.

I followed Mary Berry's rule and piped it in one go like handwriting. I always worry about my handwriting, I scribble a lot because I'm used to writing so quick, so I do try practice when I do stuff like this and try not to rush it. Also I didn't heat the chocolate until boiling so it was thicker and easier to pipe. I was disappointed when I realised this wasn't in the 'How To Bake' book from The Great British Bake Off by Mary Berry, but I soon managed to track it down online, and also I aslo got some great tips from The Masterclass they've been airing on BBC2, Thursdays at 8pm.

To do the piping I used one of my Tala Squeezey bottles you saw in one of my previous Baking Buys posts. I thought this might be easier to use than an actual piping bag and boy was I right.  I had such amazing control with it and found it so easy to write with. I will definitely be using this for all future writing tasks and even just decoration. It was a bit of a pain to clean just due to the nature of bottle, but as it was chocolate I let hot water and washing up liquid stand in it over night, and in the morning gave it a good shake and it washed out clean. 

This cake took quite a long time with cooling time etc,  but I think it was completely worth it. I also wasn't sure how I'd feel about the apricot jam...but in an odd way it reminded me of a Jaffa Cake, that's probably a bad thing to say isn't it? ...but it did! The ganache didn't take long to cool at all and I did put the pan in a sink full of cold water to speed up the process, it does cool fast when on the cake, but if you do need to re-smooth it (like I did!) then just run your pallet knife under hot water, wipe clean an you're ready to smooth over. I'm sure I could have got the top even smoother, this way does look more homemade.

 Ingredient:

140g/5oz plain chocolate

• 140g/5oz unsalted butter, softened
• 115g/4oz caster sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 5 free-range eggs, separated
• 85g/3oz ground almonds
• 55g/2oz plain flour, sieved

For the topping and the icing

• 6 tbsp apricot jam, sieved
• 140g/5oz plain chocolate
• 200ml/7fl oz double cream
• 25g/1oz milk chocolate

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease a deep 23cm/9in round cake tin then line the base with greaseproof paper.
2. Break the chocolate into pieces, melt gently in a bowl set over a pan of hot water, stirring occasionally, then cool slightly. Beat the butter in a bowl until really soft, then gradually beat in the sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the cooled chocolate and the vanilla extract and beat again. Add the egg yolks, then fold in the ground almonds and sieved flour. The mixture will be quite thick at this stage.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until they are stiff but not dry. Add about one-third to the chocolate mixture and stir in vigorously. Gently fold in the remaining egg whites. Pour the mixture
into the prepared tin and level the surface.

4. Bake in the oven for about 45-50 minutes, or until well risen at the top and the cake springs back when lightly pressed with a finger. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes then turn out, peel off the paper and finish cooling on a wire rack. Mine was a little to risen, a while it did sink a bit, it wasn't enough so I turned it upside down after 5 mintues to level it, and then turned it back and left it to cool.
5. To make the topping, heat the apricot jam in a small pan and then brush evenly over the top and sides of the cold cake. Allow to set. (See it does look a bit like the jelly part of a Jaffa Cake!)

6. Make the icing by breaking the plain chocolate into pieces. Heat the cream until piping hot, remove from the heat and add the chocolate. Stir until the chocolate has melted, then cool till a coating
consistency. Then pour the icing on to the centre of the cake. Spread it gently over the top and down the sides, and leave to set.

7. For the ‘icing’ writing, break the milk chocolate into pieces then melt gently in a bowl set over a pan of hot water. Spoon into a small piping bag or bottle and piper the word 'Sacher'' onto the top in one go, not letter by letter.

Serves 12 Pin It Now!

St Ives French Market

This weekend was the first in a while where I didn't have a million things to do and a million places to go. I had no cake orders or specific meals to cook. It was one of those brilliant weekends where you could just do exactly what you wanted, which was great! But of course I couldn't leave the food and baking side out of my weekend too much...or at all really as you saw that Saturday was pretty much taken up by the croquembouche! I thought I would go with huge photos so you can see everything in it's ultimate glory!

Me and my mum decided to have a girly day as we hadn't been able to have one in ages. We noticed that the French market was in town and shockingly, after all the time I have lived here I have never actually been to one when it's bee here, which is crazy! So as Saturday morning was free we decided to check it out. While it was good, it's a fraction of the size it used to be and the town would be filled with French cars, it's a shame it's decreased so much but all the best bits were there as far as I'm concerned, e.g bread and cheese!

You can't got to a market like this without picking up some bread, a lot of it was baked right in front of you which was brilliant when you knew you could pick up a fresh and even warm loaf. There were so many to choose from. I've been on a bit of a bread detox so it was nice to be able to buy some good quality stuff to fall off the wagon with. We chose a loaf of corn bread as you can see below. I've never had a loaf like this before and it was actually quite sweet tasting, I would never have thought to put corn in bread but it was delicious!

Now the cheese, I never used to like cheese, crazy right? I did when I was little but not when I was growing up. This was until I went to University and I fell in love with it. Brie in particular after having it baked one time. I think I could easily just live on brie...it's just such a shame it's so bad for you and in my books - the riper the better! We managed to pick up these three for only £5 - one brie, one camembert and one which is a mix of the both (apparently). So trying to be good we put two in the freezer for using at christmas and the third...the brie...well, it didn't last long. We literally cut up all of the bread in fancy slantly slices, sliced/spooned the brie onto them and grilled them until melty perfection - and feasted! Nom! It was good to fall of the healthy wagon for a day (don't worry I'll never stop baking, I try to eat healthy so I can eat more cake! )

OK we bought one last thing...it's an odd choice because it wasn't French, it was from an Italian stall! They had all of these slices of chocolate there that we initially thought were cake, but no - chocolate! All with gorgeous flavours like Amaretto, coffee and orange, which is the one that we bought - only one slice though as they looked quite heavy.  The texture was very odd, not hard like chocolate but more like set ganache which was actually lovely and this too didn't see the end of the weekend.

Now that I know what stunning finds I can get at markets like these I'll be sure to check out the farmers one that comes into town now and then especially with the countdown to Christmas starting it'll be time to stock up!

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