punge: 2012

stollen-inspired yule log

Chrimbob!
Ahh, I do love Christmas, the spices, the family time, the cosy. All lovely.

For the past few years I've meant to make a yule log, but as Christmas got closer, I somehow managed to forget. This year I've remembered, but I've also remembered something which will come across as a bit of a confession: I don't like chocolate cake. Sacrilegious I know, but in general I find chocolate cakes disappointing - too often it doesn't taste of chocolate, and can be incredibly dry, relying far too heavily on an over-rich frosting for the taste and the moisture. Even then, to me it just tastes of "sweet", not choc.

So rather than make a traditional chocolatey choccy choccy yule log I decided to make a Stollen-inspired log. For those of you that don't know Stollen, it's a yeast-based fruit bread/cake, often laced with marzipan, which originates from Germany and is the epitome of Christmas-in-your-mouth as far as I'm concerned. I paired it with a variation of the buttercream I made for the warm spice cake, which was chai-inspired, only this time without the tea, which seemed Christmassy as it's full of cloves, ginger and cinnamon, and also a pinch of pepper.

Here it is, a marzipan-laced no-flour swiss roll/roulade with Stollen fruit and a smells-like-christmas (and, interestingly, chai latte) buttercream. Enjoy!

Lydia's Stollen-Inspired Yule Log - serves about 16
If you want a 1 swiss-roll tin amount for 8ish people, halve the quantities and bake for 20 minutes
Ingredients
Roll
12 eggs, separated
300g (1 1/3 cup) caster sugar
100g (1 scant cup) ground almonds
2 tsp vanilla extract
50g (2 oz) glacé cherries (about 8 cherries), chopped,
100g (4 oz) mixed peel
or substitute the cherries and peel for a dried fruit mix with sultanas and mixed peel

Filling
650g (23oz) marzipan
375g (scant 2 cups confectioner's sugar) icing sugar plus extra for dusting
250g (2 1/4 sticks, 9oz) unsalted butter, softened
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground ginger
1½ tsp ground cloves
1½ tsp ground black pepper - it should still look flecky and black, not so finely ground that it's brown - if you only have finely ground pepper, use about ½ to 2/3 of the amount stated here.
pinch of ground star anise (optional)
1 tsp vanilla extract

You'll also need 2 swiss roll tins (about 30 x 20cm - 12 x 8 inches) , or one 30 x 30cm square tin for the 16-serving amount.

Method
Preheat the oven to 170°C (375°F, Gas Mark 3) and line a 30x30cm square tin, or 2 swiss roll tins with baking parchment.

Clean your whisk and bowl thoroughly to ensure no fat is present (which will stop the egg whites from foaming properly) - I usually do this by swilling boiling water in the bowl and over the whisk attachments, but you can also rub a sliced lemon over the surface, then dry with a clean towel.

Whisk the egg whites until very light and fluffy, then add 100g (just under half a cup) of the sugar while whisking. Continue whisking just until you have peaks that can stand alone.

Whisk the yolks with the remaining sugar until very light, fluffy and foamy, then fold in the almonds, vanilla extract, fruit and about a quarter of the egg white mixture.

Fold in the remaining egg white mixture delicately, in about 3 batches, being careful not to beat out the air you've incorporated. Pour into the prepared tin(s) and smooth into the corners.

Bake for 25-30 minutes in the large square tin or (20-25 minutes in swiss roll tins) until golden and springy, and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Leave in the tin for about 5 minutes then turn out onto baking parchment dusted well with icing sugar, gently peel off the parchment the cake was cooked on, and cover the cake with a clean towel.

To make the buttercream, cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the spices and vanilla extract, along with 2 tbsp water to help lighten the mixture a little.

To assemble the log, when cooled, trim the edges off the cake and spread with a thin layer of buttercream.

Separate 150g (about 5oz) of marzipan from the rest and set aside. Roll out the rest of the marzipan to form a sheet and place on top of the buttercream layer.

If using swiss roll tins, turn the cakes so the short sides are closest to you (and you're looking at the cakes in portrait orientation) - if you're doing a half batch using only 1 tin, lay the cake so a long side is closest to you, landscape orientation.

Roll the remaining marzipan to a sausage shape the length/width of your cake (short side if you've used 2 swiss roll tins with 75g (about 2.5oz) marzipan per 1 tin's-worth of cake, long side if you're making a half-batch with 1 swiss roll tin) and lay on the cake closest to the edge facing you. When rolled up, this will form a marzipan core.

To make the roll, fold the cake edge closest to you, away from you, using the marzipan sausage as leverage. Using the baking parchment, tightly roll the cake away from you and when you get to the end, firmly squeeze it to help it keep it's shape.

If using 2 tins, join the ends of your two rolls together with buttercream to form one long roll.

Cut the last third off your log at roughly a 60° angle, place the log on your serving plate with the seam on the bottom, and join the cut third to the main log about half way up, using buttercream on the angled, cut portion, to form a branch. I also cut a chunk off the main log near where the previous cut was made and turned it round so the branch end was straight again, but this is not really necessary.

Cover with the remaining buttercream and score bark shapes and tree-rings into it using the blunt edge of a butter knife, or a knitting needle.

Top with a dusting of icing sugar, and place in the fridge to set nicely until munch-time.

Noah's First Ark

I’ve been working on a cake for some friends of ours whose son turns one in a few weeks. His name is Noah, and what cuter way to celebrate with a Noah’s Ark cake? I was thrilled to be asked to make one for them, I’ve always wanted a good reason to have a go at this much-loved theme, and there are some amazing versions out there! (like this one from "make me studio", also for a first birthday, and this phenomenal one, made for the threadless tees 2009 cake contest). I didn’t want to go down the fondant-covered boat route, as though it looks very very cute, shaping fondant around an awkward shape isn’t something I’ve had that much practice with, and in my experience, if not done perfectly, it can look very shoddy indeed. Also, in my experience (well, at any rate, my mum always did this, not that I was hyper or anything…), parents don’t like their kids to eat too much fondant, so the fondant gets taken off and left, and I hate (expensive) waste, so butter cream it was, with a relatively simple ark shape and animals made out of fondant and/or marzipan, with a few quirks thrown in. Noah’s dad is about as much of a geek as Nick is, and so I had planned to put lots of cute sci-fi tid-bits in there, but the problem with daleks and Cthulu is that they tend to be detail-heavy and thus rather time consuming. So I settled for some waterskiing penguins and some angry birds.

This cake was designed to “feed” 24-30 people, but I have to say it’ll be tight, with quite small pieces each. Which is probably just as well as the recipe I used turned out a rather dense, very moist banana cake with some incredibly sweet toffee butter cream. Yep, banoffee cake, courtesy of Fiona Cairn’s “The Birthday Cake Book”. If I could do it all again, I’d have chosen a cake that rises more and have a full round cake under the ark portion, but realising this at 8pm on the Sunday of delivery, when there’s no more butter in the house, is the most hopeless time for action.

I used 3 times the recipe quantity for one cake, and baked it in a 30cm x 30cm tin (the full size of the Silverwood multisize foldaway cake pan) adding 15-or-so minutes to the baking time, but doing it in several round tins and sticking with the original timings will work just as well, if not slightly better. If you make it with a different recipe (pretty much any other recipe – banana cake is notoriously dense and doesn’t rise very much) then these quantities of cake should easily be enough for 30 people, in my opinion.

I wanted quite a lot of butter cream and cake layers so I cut the cake into 2 layers and sandwiched them back together with the butter cream. I then cut 10cm off one end of the cake for the top of the ark and cut the remaining block in half to give two 20x15cm rectangles and carved both into a basic boat/ark shape. I sandwiched one ark shape to the other with more butter cream, to give a basic boat shape with four cake layers, and carved them so that the bottom of the boat was narrower than the top. I then trimmed half of the 10cm off-cut to fit comfortably as the boxy cabin on top of the boat shape, and covered the remaining off-cut with butter cream as an additional, “behind the scenes” cake for serving. This is one of my gripes with character cakes – I’m not good at carving shapes without wasting a massive amount of cake! The ark was affixed to a cake drum, and the cake drum to a plate, both with a good blob of butter cream.

To the rest of the butter cream I added an inordinate amount of cocoa powder and a smidge of black food colouring paste to get a dark wood colour. The ark was then coated in three layers of butter cream, with a good half hour to an hour in the fridge between each layer, and finally smoothing the whole thing off with a wet palette knife. Using the blunt side of a butter knife and virtually no pressure, I then scored lines along the surface of the whole ark for wood panels, and, using a toothpick, scored rivet holes at what would be the joints of the panels.

For the water, I whipped up a quick batch up butter cream (80g unsalted butter at room temperature whipped with 160g sieved icing sugar until light and fluffy), coloured it with blue food colouring paste, applied it around the boat and over the edges of the cake drum. And finally spent a good few hours rolling animal shapes out of fondant/marzipan coloured with food colouring paste, fixing any “bits” of animals to other bits (e.g. the elephant ears to the elephant head, or the orange spots to the yellow giraffe-head) using water, and affixing the characters to the ark either by pressing them into the butter cream (one of the advantages of a butter cream covered cake), or with the aid of a wooden skewer/dowel for the giraffe and elephant heads. The water-ski-rope for the penguins is a chopped skewer pushed into the cake, and the skewer for the water-ski handle is pushed into (ouch!) the penguin wings for balance.

For a final touch, I cut out a thinly-rolled rectangle of icing for a number plate, wrote on it using an edible-ink decorating pen (with which I also did the animal’s eyes), and stuck it to the back of the boat with a little water.

Tah-dah!

boozy baked apples

Once again we got to the end of a phenomenal Sunday roast to find that our omission of dessert-making was, in fact, a mistake. Having had a delicious pork belly (thanks Nick for patiently cooking while I went round the flat in a flurry of "making" - placing and stocking the bookcase I'd repainted, cutting and sanding a palette to repurpose it as a shoe-rack, and painting a lampshade to warm the corridor light) roast and a bottle of wine (plonkwedronk.blogspot.co.uk) we attacked the kitchen for emergency dessert. With pork belly in our bellies, apples were calling, and so a bake with pre-made, frozen pastry dough came into rapid existence.

If, like me, you tend to make too much pastry dough and keep it in the freezer, you can get away with calling this an emergency dessert, but I appreciate that not everyone accidentally makes too much dough and has it handily waiting in the freezer, so for you more organised sorts, here's a baked apple dessert where the apples stay quite crisp, the pastry melts to a texturally pleasing doughy gloop, and slightly burned raisins top off a hearty, food-filled day.

Lydia's Boozy Baked Apples
Ingredients
4 eating apples - we used Gala
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 tbsp dark brown sugar
1/4 cup raisins
1 tbsp rum (dark rum would be best, but we only had white)
250g shortcrust pastry, bought or homemade, frozen. (if making, see below)

Pastry - will make 400g, you only need 250g, but really it's up to you if you want to use it all!
1 egg
7½ oz (200g, 1 1/3 cup) bread flour
3 oz (80g, just under ½cup ) confectioner's / icing sugar
¼ tsp baking powder
3 6/8 oz (100g, 1 stick) butter, chilled
1 1/8 oz (30g) ground almonds / almond flour

Method
If you're making the pastry, sift the flour with the sugar and baking powder. Add the butter and blend in using an electric whisk / standing mixer on slow, or cut in with a knife or pastry cutter, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the eggs and continue mixing until the dough begins to come together, then add the ground almonds and mix until the dough comes together. Bring it together to a ball and wrap in cling film (saran wrap) and freeze. If you don't have time to freeze this you can just cut chunks off instead of grating it when it comes to topping your dessert.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F, Gas Mark 6).
Place the raisins in a small bowl and top with the rum.
Slice the apples finely and place in an ovenproof dish approx 20cm x 10cm.
Top with the cinnamon, cloves and sugar.
Grate the frozen pastry and place on top of the apples, and top with the rum-soaked raisins.
Drizzle any remaining rum over the top.
Bake for 10-15 minutes, until the raisins are slightly singed and the pastry has melted a little.

Serve with custard, cream or ice cream. Boozy apply doughy nom nom.

raspberry almond petit-four cake

Aiiiiiiiieeeeee! I'm so happy with today's cake I could do a little dance. But I won't.

Early in this blog (actually, the first entry) I tried a Pistachio Petit Four Cake from Sky High, via Smitten Kitchen. It looked a treat but I have to say, I was a little disappointed with the taste and texture, the pistachio just didn't shine through for me and it was a touch on the dry side. But I loved the use of marzipan between each layer and have been meaning to try a flavour variation of it, as well as changing up the cake recipe (I don't quite understand the use of milk in the original, and there sure are a lot of eggs in it!) to get closer to a texture that I'm happy with.

I wanted to accentuate the almond flavour from the marzipan so used ground almonds and almond extract as the main flavour component. I also wanted to try the white chocolate ganache again as I liked the look of it before, though it turned out sort of blue. And the perfect match for white chocolate and almonds? OK, it's probably cherries but something about raspberries was calling to me. So I tried it, and I think I got it!

So here it is, the quite fussy and time consuming but one of my "favourite-so-far"s, White Chocolate, Almond & Raspberry, Pistachio-petit-four-inspired cake. I might shorten that name.

Lydia's Raspberry Almond petit-four Cake
Ingredients
Batter
225g (8 oz, 1 cup) butter
150g (2/3 cup) caster sugar
4 eggs
300g (2 cups) plain flour
100g (1 cup) ground almonds
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp almond extract or essence

Buttercream
50g (1.8oz, scant 1/4 cup, 3½ tbsp) butter, at room temperature
100g (generous 1 cup confectioner's) icing sugar
1 tbsp water
½ tsp vanilla extract

Ganache
350g (12 oz) white chocolate
230ml (scant cup, 200g) heavy cream (I used Elmlea double light)

Bits and Bobs
1½ cups frozen raspberries - sorry, I don't know the grammage, about 3 good handfulls!
240g (8.4oz) marzipan
6 tbsp raspberry jam (or more if you like it thick)
Food colouring (optional, for the drizzle on top)
Icing sugar, edible sprinkles/sparkles/glitter, to dust (optional)

Method
Preheat the oven to 160°C (300-325°F, Gas mark 2-3), line or grease (with butter) and flour an 8 inch cake pan.
Mix together the flour, ground almonds, baking powder, baking soda and salt, and set to one side.
Break up the eggs lightly and set aside. It could even be the same side as the dry ingredients.
Beat together the butter and the sugar.
Add the eggs in two goes, alternating with the flour / almond mixture, and mix until everything is fully incorporated.
Finally add the almond essence, give one final mix, and transfer to your patiently waiting cake tin.
Bake for 1hr and 10-15 minutes. If your cake starts to burn, decrease the heat a little (about 10-20°C) and place on a lower shelf. Bake until golden brown, the middle is firm and springy (certainly not wobbly), and you can hear a fizzing sound. To be sure, you can stick a sharp knife / knitting needle / thermometer probe in the centre - if it comes out not covered in gloop then your cake is baked.
Leave to rest for 5 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool, upside-down. This will ensure that you have a nice, flat top.

Once cooled, cut into 3 equally thick slices. When you rebuild the cake, the top piece will be that which was the bottom of the cake when it was the oven, with the crust side facing up.

While the cake is baking you can make the buttercream and ganache.

For the buttercream, ensure your butter is soft - if not, cut unto small chunks and beat. Once softened, add the sugar and mix on slow, or with a fork or spoon, until incorporated, then beat on high speed until light and fluffy. Reduce the speed and slowly add the water and vanilla extract. Beat until just incorporated. Set aside, but don't refrigerate.

Make the ganache by chopping the chocolate finely and placing in a bowl. Heat the cream until it's just simmering, and pour over the chocolate, leave to rest for a few minutes to melt the chocolate, then stir until it's smooth. If you still have lumps at this point, they're unlikely to melt as the temperature will have dropped too far by now, the easiest thing to do is to push your mixture through a sieve to remove the lumps. If you make the ganache while the cake is baking then leave it at room temperature to thicken up. If you make it while the cake is cooling, put the ganache in the fridge.

Divide the marzipan into 3 equal chunks (roughly 80g, 2.8 oz each), knead each piece into a pliable ball and roll out into a circle the size of your cake. I find the best way to do this is to flatten your ball with your hand to just under an inch in thickness, and shape the sides so it's still round. Ensure your work surface and rolling pin are very well dusted with icing sugar, it also helps to lightly dust your marzipan round. Roll your marzipan from the centre out away from you, applying light pressure. Return to the centre and roll towards you with the same pressure. Turn the marzipan 45 degrees and repeat, ensuring that the bottom of the marzipan is coated in icing sugar well enough to not stick to the surface, I do this by "wiping" the work surface with the marzipan every time I turn it. Repeat over and over until your marzipan is rolled out to the correct size, it'll be about 1-2 mm thick. Don't worry if it's not perfect, mine never are and you can either shape it a little on the cake or cut the excess off, depending on how hideously out of shape it is.

Top each layer of cake with 2 tbsp of jam spread to the edges, and cover with a piece of marzipan, trimming off the excess (or push inwards with your finger if there's not much).

Check the layer that will be the top of your cake doesn't have any air bubbles under the marzipan as this will affect the final appearance. If your fussed about it, prick any air holes delicately with a pin or sharp point of a knife to release the air, and re-smooth the marzipan so that the hole can't be seen (otherwise there'll be a dimple in the ganache topping).

Once the ganache has firmed up a bit, spoon enough over the bottom and middle layers of cake, but not the top. Smooth to the edges but don't allow to drip down the sides, about 2-3tbsp should do it, but it depends on how runny the ganache still is.
Take 3/4 of your frozen raspberries and chop them roughly. Top each (two) of the ganached cake layers with them and drizzle with a little more ganache (about 1 tbsp each layer).
Reassemble your cake.

Smooth half the buttercream around the egde of the cake and put the cake in the fridge for about 30 minutes to firm up.
Repeat with the rest of the buttercream to ensure a smooth and evenly-coloured cake coating - if you can see dark patches of cake through the buttercream layers, these will remain visible through the ganache.
Return to the fridge to firm up for about half an hour, then smooth any bumps in your buttercream with a dampened palette knife.

If you want a coloured accent like "what I done 'ere", mix about 2 tbsp of your ganace with food colouring a little at a time to achieve your desired tone. My white chocolate had a bit of a yellow hint in it, so my dream of sky blue drizzle (actually, I had wanted to do a blue cake with white drizzle) turned out greenish - lesson: always test a small amount first before adding colour to the whole thing!

Pour the rest of the ganache over the top (you might not need all of it, you don't want too much to pool off the bottom of the cake) and push it over the edges and down the sides.
Roughly chop the remaining frozen raspberries and pile them up in the centre of your cake.
Return to the fridge, and before serving, dust with icing sugar and (edible) sprinkles/sparkles/glitter if desired.

Serve chilled, and Voila (it's worth it!)!

banana cupcakes with spicy ginger glaze

I have a lot of love for bananas, I think they're amazing. I love the sweet, creamy texture from a perfectly ripe banana, right after a long swim, preferably still cold, and certainly no more than a week after the last of the green has gone and it's still lemon yellow. But I'm a little bit particular about them, I can't stand any bruising, or a banana that has gone golden yellow, the texture totally changes for me and I have a real problem with the furriness that creeps in. Incredibly fussy I know, but that's the way it is.

One of my favourite things to do with bananas in summer is to slice them and freeze them, and have ready-frozen chunks for use in smoothies, ice cream, or nibbling as is, and it's a great way of keeping bananas at the perfect age if I've ended up buying too much. I'm not much of a smoothie or ice-cream lover in winter though, and so my love for mashed banana as an ingredient in baking has grown, though I struggle a bit with the heaviness of a typical banana bread or banana muffins.

So here's my recipe for light and fluffy, deliciously moist and sticky, spicy ginger and banana cupcakes, topped with a seriously strong ginger glaze, for a sharpness that helps to keep the overall flavour out of the stodgy side of the spectrum.

Lydia's Banana Cupcakes with Ginger Glaze - makes 12
Ingredients
Batter
150g (2/3 cup) butter
180g (generous 3/4 cup) caster sugar or light brown sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla extract
180g (3/4 cup) mashed banana, about 2 bananas-worth
170g (1 1/4 cup) plain flour
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Ginger Glaze
200g (generous 1 cup confectioner's) icing sugar
2½ tbsp ginger juice, from a piece of fresh ginger approx 80g (3oz, 2x2x1 inch)

Method
Preheat the oven to 170°C (375°F, Gas Mark 3) and line a muffin tin with 12 cases.
Cream the butter and the sugar till light and fluffy, then add the egg and vanilla extract and beat to incorporate.

Sift the dry ingredients together, and add half to the wet mixture, mixing to combine.
Still mixing, add half the banana, half of the rest of the flour, then the rest of the banana and then finally the rest of the flour. The aim of this alternate adding, making sure all the ingredients are fully incorporated before adding the next ingredient, is to ensure the flour doesn't clump together, and that the sheer volume of liquid doesn't cause the mixture to curdle, both of which can require over-mixing to return to a smooth mixture important for even baking, and over-mixing can result in a tougher cupcake than would otherwise be obtained. Always end with the dry ingredient (I don't know why).

Fill the muffin cases about 4/5 full and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and you can hear a fizzing sound, the centre will spring back when pressed but it's stickiness can cause some of the cake to stick to your finger. More for you.

To make the glaze, peel and finely grate the fresh ginger then squeeze out the juice from the pulp by hand, and mix with the icing sugar to form the glaze. If you don't like your ginger so strong, do half and half juice with water.

Dip the tops of the cupcakes in the glaze and either allow to set or dig right in!

pumpkin & orange cake

A Friday treat! Today I'm putting the rest of the pumpkin puree I made to good use, with a delectable pumpkin cake with orange and cinnamon cream cheese frosting. The frosting is heavy on the sugar but is lightened by the orange and cinnamon, and the combination with a pumpkin cake is just too delicious. It's a good thing that the guys at work liked this one too, it's a big, tall cake and it otherwise would have been a hell of a lot more swimming I would have had to do...

If you don't want to have to swim 28 miles to burn this off, divide the recipe quantities by 3 and bake for 20-25 minutes to make roughly 6 cupcakes instead.

Lydia's Pumpkin Cake with Orange and Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting, serves about 12
Ingredients
Batter
3 eggs
450g (4 sticks) butter
540g (2½ cups) caster sugar
650g (2½ cups, 23 oz) pumpkin puree (recipe here if you have a plethora of pumpkins!)
510g (3½ cups) plain flour
3 tsp cinnamon
1½ tsp ground nutmeg
1½ tsp ground ginger
1½ tsp ground cloves
1½ tsp ground allspice
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt

Orange and Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
225g (8oz) cream cheese (a.k.a. soft cheese), room temperature
225g (8 oz, 1 cup) margarine / butter, room temperature
540g (3 cup confectioner's) icing sugar
1½ tsp cinnamon
zest of 1 orange

Method
Preheat the oven to 170°C (375°F, Gas Mark 3) and line three 8 inch (20cm) round cake tins with baking parchment, or grease with oil/butter and dust with flour.
Lightly break up the eggs and mix in the pumpkin puree. Set to one side.
Cream the butter and the sugar till light and fluffy, then slowly add the pumpkin/egg mixture while mixing. Add the rest of the ingredients to the wet mixture and mix until smooth. Divide among your pans and bake for 30 minutes until the centre of each cake is springy and there's a slight fizzing sound. Leave cakes in the tins for about 5 minutes before transferring, upside down, on a wire rack to complete cooling.

To prepare the frosting, beat the cream cheese and margarine / butter on slow until you get a homogeneous mixture. Add the sugar one cup at a time, mixing until incorporated then increase the speed to fast until it's nicely whipped up. Add the cinnamon and orange zest and blend until just incorporated.

To assemble, cut each cake layer in half lengthways, creating 6 thin layers. Sandwich them together using a thin layer of frosting between each layer. For a smooth finish, cover the top and sides of the cake with a thin layer of frosting and refrigerate for 30 minutes before repeating with your final layer of frosting - either piped on or smoothed on with a palette knife. The first layer will act as a "crumb coating" and prevent any stray crumbs from the cake from appearing in the frosting, giving a neater finish.

On account of the cheese in the frosting, any leftover frosting and cake should be stored in the fridge. Hah, "leftover" cake.

hallowe'en lime 'n' choc spiders

Whoo! Hallowe'en is upon us, we've decorated the flat, Nick's carved a pumpkin, and I've made cupcake spiders :) I love the pairing of lime and chocolate, and it works beautifully on what is essentially a red velvet cupcake made using yogurt instead of buttermilk (purely because I'm more likely to have yogurt than buttermilk). The minimum cupcake batter produces 12 cupcakes, while the rest of the recipe is to make 6 spiders. I made just 2 spiders (the only difference in recipe quantities needed being the dark chocolate under "Additional") and covered the remaining cupcakes in the remaining frosting for extra treats. Hopefully the recipe will make sense - here it is!

Hallowe'en lime 'n' choc spiders - makes 12 cupcakes, for 6 or 2 spiders, with plain cupcakes leftover
Ingredients
Red Velvet Batter (from Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook) - will make 12 cupcakes
60g (just over ½ stick) butter, softened
150g (2/3 cup) caster sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp cocoa powder
½ tsp vanilla extract
120ml (1/2 cup) plain yogurt / buttermilk
150g (1 cup) plain flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
1½ tsp white wine vinegar
optional: 20ml (1tbsp & 1tsp) red food colouring (artificial, as natural will lose its colour on baking)

Lime & Chocolate Buttercream
175g (1½ cups) soft butter
300g (1 2/3 cup confectioner's) icing sugar
zest of 1 lime,
3 tbsp lime juice (from 2 limes, or 1 lime and bottled lime juice)
50g (6 tbsp) cocoa powder

Additional
300g (10-11oz) dark chocolate (100g, 3½ oz if you're only making 2 spiders)
smidge (<1 square) white chocolate - you just need some shards chopped off it for the eyes
150g (5oz) chocolate sprinkles (75g, 2½ oz for 2 spiders)
1-3 tbsp red jam (raspberry/cherry/strawberry)

Method
Preheat the oven to 170°C (375°F, Gas Mark 3) and line a muffin pan with 12 cases.
Whisk the butter and sugar till light and fluffy, then slowly add the egg while beating.
Mix the cocoa powder with the flour and the food colouring with the yogurt/buttermilk, if using.
Alternately add the yogurt/buttermilk and flour to the butter/sugar/egg mix until both are fully incorporated, then beat until the batter is smooth and even. Add the salt, soda and vinegar, incorporate into the batter and immediately divide between the cases and bake for 20-25 minutes until the centre is springy and the cakes have a slight fizzing sound. Cool on a wire rack.

While the cakes are baking, prepare the chocolate legs and eyes: melt the dark chocolate over a pan of simmering water. Once melted, allow to cool slightly to firm up a bit so it holds its shape, then pipe eight "L" shapes and 2 eyes per spider cupcake, on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper. In the centre of each of the eyes, place a shaving of white chocolate, and cover the legs in chocolate sprinkles while still wet. You can let these cool at room temperature, but as the chocolate is mostly covered with sprinkles (and so it doesn't matter if the chocolate doesn't set shiny), you can speed the process up by placing them in the fridge.

While the cakes are cooling, prepare the buttercream by combining the butter and icing sugar at a low speed until incorporated, then increase the speed until light and fluffy. Add the zest and juice, mixing until combined. Take 1/4 cup (60ml, 4 tbsp) of this mixture and gently swirl in the jam to create a marbled effect, the amount of jam depends on how runny you want it - I used 1 tbsp jam to 1/4 cup buttercream and it was quite solid, if you want it to splurge out when you cut the spider, use 3 tbsp jam, or use just jam, (i.e. don't use buttercream inside at all).

To the rest of the buttercream, add the cocoa powder and blend to incorporate.

Once the cakes are cool, remove the liner paper and turn them upside down. Cut out a circle from what is now the top of the cakes and hollow out a small hole to make space for the filling. Place about half a tablespoon of the marbled jam/buttercream mix into each cake and replace the lids. Cover with the chocolate buttercream. I found the easiest way to do this was to start by placing a dollop of the chocolate buttercream on top of the cupcake and smooth it towards the base using a palette knife. Top the cakes with sprinkles.

Once the chocolate legs and eyes have set completely, gently remove them from the paper and position on the spider bodies, pushing the legs into the body to keep them in place.

Tah-dah!

pumpkin spice latte pie cups

I consider myself a confident baker, I really do. There's nothing I wouldn't attempt, and it's rare that something goes irrevocably, depressingly wrong. The last time it did was when I learnt to make naan bread 3 months ago and even then it didn't turn out horrendous, and since then I've learned to do it well, so all's good there.

Four years ago when The Great British Bake-Off started, I applied to be on the series and will admit I was hurt when I didn't get called back. But as the series have gone on, I've realised more that my current comfort zones are only really applicable around cakes and biscuits, and that just doesn't cut it in the GBBO world. And another thing, every week there's a challenge that the bakers have no advanced warning of, and they're given only the most basic of instructions to complete the bakes with. This series there was a good 70% of these technical challenges that I would have been lost on for one reason or another. This disturbs me.

In a bid to not only increase my handiness with all sorts of baking but to gain experience and knowledge with a lot more of these unknowns, I've bought Michel Suas' Advanced Bread and Pastry, a bible in all things baking. It's a hefty 1000-page textbook with minimal food-porn-pictures, just lots and lots of words. The breads section alone covers 120 pages before it even gives you any formulas (base recipes), and the book jumps about in such a way that to gain anything out of the formulas, reading the pre-amble really is not optional. So over the next few weeks/months I'll be basing my recipes around the formulas and techniques found within my new best friend, and see how we get on.

With that, on to today's bake - pumpkin spice latte pie-ettes. Pie cups, if you will. Ohhhh yesss.

On this year's Big Canadian Adventrue, Nick and I fell in love with the pumpkin spice latte's available just about everywhere, and got to starting the day, pre-hike, with one of these. The pumpkins are also ripe and ready at the allotment so I thought this would be a nice tie-in for seasonal baking, although I'll admit that the pumpkins I eventually used were shop-bought. These are essentially mini pumpkin pies with the spices kicked up a notch and caffeinated, with a meringue topping, but (and I'll admit this straight away) these are fiddly and faffy, especially the way I did them. But they're so worth it. I mean, just look at how cute they are!

First, you'll need pumpkin puree, which in the UK is not that easy to get hold of, and quite expensive. There should be some in supermarkets now, look/ask for tinned/canned pumpkin. For a cheaper but more fiddly alternative, if you can get hold of pumpkins now you can make your own. If pumpkins are unavailable, butternut squash works too. I used 2 small/medium pumpkins, weighing a total of 2.6kg, and got about 500g/ml puree from them - plenty for lots of baking! De-seed and chop them up to roughly 10cm chunks and roast them (no oil/salt/anything) in the top of an oven at 180°C (350°F, Gas Mark 4) for 35 minutes, then decrease the temperature to 160°C (310°F, Gas mark 2-3) and move them to the centre of the oven for another hour, adding a little (~100ml, just under 1/2 cup) water to the tray. Once cooled, remove the skin and liquidise in a blender / with a stick blender / using a whisk, without the water in the bottom of the tray. The consistency should be like baby food, if it's much more liquid than that then simmer it in a pan until reduced, just bear in mind that when cooled it'll be thicker than when warm so be careful not to over-reduce it in the pan. Pour into sterilised jars (boiling water, dry in a cool oven) and seal. It'll keep for about a week in the fridge.

Lydia's Pumpkin Spice Latte Pie Cups, makes 8
Ingredients
Pastry (of the Pâte Sucrée variety) - this will actually make enough for ~30 cups I think, but is the minimum pastry quantity to make with a whole egg
1 egg
7½ oz (200g, 1 1/3 cup) bread flour
3 oz (80g, just under ½cup ) confectioner's / icing sugar
¼ tsp baking powder
3 6/8 oz (100g, 1 stick) butter, chilled
1 1/8 oz (30g) ground almonds / almond flour
butter for greasing,
8 espresso cups - preferably flat-bottomed and straight up.
Greaseproof paper (baking parchment) and baking beans / any dried beans, for lining and blind baking the pastry cases.

Filling
1 egg
6 oz (170g) pumpkin puree (see above)
4 3/8 oz (125g, 3/4 cup) light brown soft sugar or light brown muscovado sugar
1tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp ginger
½ tsp cloves
½ tsp allspice
½ tsp salt
2tsp espresso powder
4 3/8 oz (125g, ½ cup) evaporated milk
14g (1tbsp) butter, melted

Caramel, and Caramel Sauce
1 3/4 oz (50g, 1/4 cup) caster sugar
4 tbsp (60ml, 1/4 cup) evaporated milk

Meringue topping
4 egg whites (~150g, 5 1/4 oz), at room temperature
5 1/4 oz (150g, 3/4 cup) caster sugar
1 tsp espresso powder
1 tsp caramel sauce (above)
candy or meat thermometer

Method
To make the pastry cases, sift the flour with the sugar and baking powder. Add the butter and blend in using an electric whisk / standing mixer on slow, or cut in with a knife or pastry cutter, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs - this is known as mealy pastry (as opposed to flaky pastry in which the butter is less worked in, leaving larger chunks), and if the butter isn't worked in enough then a wet filling like used here will soak through and make the cases soggy.

Add the eggs and continue mixing until the dough begins to come together, then add the ground almonds and mix until the dough comes together. Bring it together to a ball and wrap in cling film (saran wrap) and refrigerate for 4 hours (according to Michel Suas. The minumum for pastry tends to be 30 minutes to 1 hour, but I've tried this pastry with less time in the fridge and it's just too soft to roll before 4 hours. Painful but true).

Roll the pastry to 1.5-2mm thick, cut out circles to fit the bottom of the cups, and strips approx 3-4cm / 1.5 inches thick and long enough to cover the circumference of the circle with just under 1cm overlap. As a simple rule, multiply the diameter by 3 and add a bit more, for espresso cups you'll be looking at somewhere in the region of 18-24cm. Refrigerate again for 30 minutes. All the refrigeration will help with lining of the cups and help to prevent the pastry from shrinking away from the cups and losing it's shape.

Grease the cups lightly with butter and place the pastry circles in the bottom of the cups, and line the sides with the strips. Press the overlaps together firmly to meld them together, and use your fingertip (no nails!) or something smooth-ended (I used a small rolling pin I have for rolled fondant work) to make sure the base pastry and side pastry are fully joined. Gently prick all over with a fork and line with baking parchment. Return to the fridge, place a baking sheet in the oven and pre-heat to 160°C (310°F, Gas mark 2-3).

For cup handles, cut strips of pastry ~ 1cm wide by 4-5cm long, drape over a wooden spoon handle on a baking tray. Wrap remaining pastry in cling film and refrigerate for another recipe for up to 2 days, or freeze for longer periods. When the oven is up to temperature, fill the lined cups with the beans, and bake together with the handles, until the pastry is golden, ~ 7 minutes for the handles, ~ 20 for the cups. Remove from the oven, and after a few minutes remove the beans and lining, and tip the pastry cases out of the cups - they may need a bit of upturned slamming and jiggling. Cool.

For the filling, drop the oven temperature to 150°C (300°F, Gas Mark 2), keeping the baking tray inside. Break up the egg with a fork, stir in the pumpkin, sugar, spices, salt and espresso powder and stir until mixed. Mix in the evaporated milk and melted butter until smooth, being careful not to incorporate any air. Place the pastry caes back in the espresso cups and fill to about half a centimetre below the rims, Bake on the preheated tray for about 30-35 minutes, until the centres of the pies are only just set. Allow to cool, then they should come away from the cups easily.

To stick the handles to the cups, first prepare a large bowl of ice cold water. Make caramel by dissolving the sugar in 2tbsp water, then heating the sugar over a high heat in a heavy pan (not non-stick - that'll cause the sugar to crystallise). It's important not to stir or shake the sugar as this will cause it to crystallise. At most, turn the pan gently if one side is becoming more "done" than the other, but shaking will also cause crystallisation. Once bubbling calms down and the sugar takes on a caramelised appearance and smell, take the pan off the heat and place into the ice-cold water to stop the caramel cooking. Immediately dip the pastry handle tips in the caramel and attach them to the cups. Return the caramel to the hob to re-melt it, again, again avoiding stirring it. Once melted, stir in the evaporated milk a little at a time with a rubber spatula to create a caramel sauce. Keep at room temperature until ready to use.

To make the meringue topping, combine the sugar and egg whites in a stainless steel bowl that has been thoroughly cleaned (I use boiling water) to remove any traces of fat which will hinder the egg whites from expanding. Heat over a pan of boiling water while whisking by hand to avoid scrambling. When the eggs reach 71°C (160°F) or 49°C (120°F) if the eggs are pasteurised. Once they've reached temperature, whisk with an electric mixer / whisk, or continue whisking by hand, until you reach the stiff peak stage - peaks of meringue will stand on their own. Gently fold in the caramel sauce and espresso powder, and top the pumpkin cups either with dollops of meringue, or pipe it on. Drizzle the caramel sauce over the top, collapse in an exhausted heap and when you come-to, devour with a steaming cup of coffee. Or tea. All good.

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