Run Run Run, As Fast As You Can…

Gingerbread

 

GF Gingerbread Men
125g unsalted butter
1/3 cup castor sugar or stevia
1/3 cup golden syrup
3 cups GF plain flour (normal plain flour can also be used)
1/2 tsp ground ginger (use the highest quality ginger you can, the better the ginger, the better the gingerbread)
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tsp bi-carb soda
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla paste

1. Preheat oven to 180C and line a baking sheet with baking paper.
2. Place butter, sugar and golden syrup in a pan and melt over low heat. Set aside to cool slightly.

3. Sift all dry ingredients together.
4. Make a well and pur in butter mixture and then add the egg and vanilla. Mix to form a soft dough. This might take a bit of work, be patient. Once you have the liquid taken up, tip it onto the bench the mix because it’s much easier, trust me. It’s virtually impossible to knead dough in a bowl.
5. Roll out to about 1cm thickness, be careful that it’s even. Cut out shapes using a knife if you want to do something random or cookie cutters. You can re roll out the remaining dough until you’ve used it all.

6. Bake for 10 minutes or until lightly golden. Be careful not to burn it, or the gingerbread will be bitter and no one likes bitter gingerbread.

Now comes the fun part, once your gingerbread has cooled you can decorate! You can decorate them different ways, but I chose to roll fondant icing and cut out shapes. You can buy fondant icing (I have in the past) but if you want to be sure it’s free of whatever you’re allergic to (gluten, lactose, etc etc) probably best to make it. It’s fiddly and takes a while but it’s better than going into anaphylaxis.

Fondant Icing
900g pure icing sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon gelatin
1/2 cup glucose syrup
1 1/2 tbsp glycerine

1. In a large bowl, sift the sugar and make a well in the center.
2. In a small saucepan, add the water and sprinkle the gelatin on top to soften for about 5 minutes. Begin to heat the gelatin and stir until the gelatin is dissolved and clear but don’t boil. Turn off the heat and add the glucose and glycerine, stirring until well blended.
3. Pour into the well of sugar, and mix until all of the sugar is blended. Use hands to knead icing until it becomes stiff. Add small amounts of confectioner’s sugar if the mixture sticks to your fingers too much.

Use this fondant at room temp and don’t refrigerate. Once you’re ready to decorate, colour lumps of it and knead to distribute the colour. Your hands will get messy and stained with colour, but it washes off.

Now the fun part. To decorate, I rolled our the fondant very thinly and cut the shape with the same cutter I used for the gingerbread. This makes it very neat and professional looking with very little effort. Shhh, don’t tell anyone.  Cut the fondant shape, then wet one side with warm water and it’ll stick to the gingerbread. For trees I cut green fondant and used edible green glitter and cachous to decorate. For the stars I used yellow and gold glitter. For the Santas I formed little balls of white fondant and stuck them on to make a beard, then a red strip for a belt.

Ca-ute! And they look way more difficult than they actually were.

Ok so you can’t really see the glitter, but I promise you these babies sparkled more than Edward Cullen in the sun.

Merry Christmas!

xx

Don’t Be a Gooey Chocolate-Chip Cookie

Flourless Peanut-Butter Choc Cookies

“How the hell do you expect these to emerge from the oven as cookies? They’re just peanut butter!” Boy, was I wrong. Peanut-butter: 1, Liv: 0. My brother found this recipe somewhere on the interwebs (I’m going to have a guess and say Youtube because he’s forever watching EpicMealTime) and emailed it to me. To be honest my first response was that little brother has a ca-razy idea of making a normal cookie recipe into a GF cookie recipe by simply removing the flour. It would be something he would do, then claim he had a 50% chance of it working brilliantly, he can be logically challenged sometimes. But no, he clicked his brain in gear and actually found a legit recipe, that despite my skepticism, worked. Little brother: 1, Liv: 0. Wow, I’m not really scoring well today am I? This cookie is brilliantly gluten-free because really it’s just peanut-butter and some chocolate chips. I have no idea how it managed to come out of the oven resembling the cookie, let alone having the texture of one. How does that work without flour? It turned out super gooey and rich, and isn’t that what everyone loves in a cookie? The second pro of this recipe is it takes about 5 minutes to prep and 8 minutes in the oven, and on a day where I had to get to the hairdresser, work during the afternoon and help out a friend at her 18th party, that was an incredible plus. Liv: 1, Time: 0.

Flourless Peanut-Butter Choc-Chip Cookies
250g Crunchy peanut-butter
180g Dark chocolate chips (I roughly chopped a block of Lindt)
1 egg
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 180C and line a tray with baking paper
2. Mix all ingredients together either with your hands or a wooden spoon. Using your hands is messier but it also gives you an excuse to lick your fingers.

3. Using a teaspoon, form balls of mixture and place on your tray, leaving some space between and pressing lightly to flatten. Remember the more you eat of the mixture now, the fewer cookies you will have. I offer you this advice because the recipe supposedly made 30 cookies. I made 12. In my defence my cookies were pretty big so I don’t think this recipe would make more than about 15 decent size ones anyway.

4. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until golden. They will be very soft, don’t stress, they will harden up when they cool. Too many people make the mistake of over-cooking their cookies because they feel undercooked. Resist the temptation to put them back in for a few minutes!

Sorry about the retarded crop photo. It had my face in it too, but who would want to look at that? Also I looked like I was having a stroke. Sorry for the lack of pretty presentation picture, I’m not kidding they didn’t last long enough for me to take one!

And you my friend, are done! Enjoy these babies.

xx

But It’s Thursday?

Sundae Cupcakes

When I was little, my Dad used to joke that we could only have sundaes on Sunday because you could never get them any other day of the week. My unhealthy obsession with Maccas caramel sundaes with extra sauce has proven to me that sundaes are, in fact, delicious any day of the week. And now I’m going to let my pride get the better of me, these cupcakes are possibly the most aesthetically amazing I’ve ever created. They’re tall, they’re colourful, they’re chocolatey towers of deliciousness.  And you know what? They were super duper easy. I kid you not, in the time my brother was at swim training, I was able to clean up the disgusting mess he left in the kitchen, walk to the supermarket, buy ingredients, walk back home, and have the cupcakes fully completed by the time he pranced back in the door. Impressive, yes? The cake is your basic chocolate cupcake, and the frosting is a marshmallow vanilla-buttercream, decorated with melted chocolate for the sundae sauce, chopped almonds, pink sugar crystals and topped with a glace cherry.

My inspiration for these babies came from a cupcake recipe book I got from my friend Mengtong as a ‘Secret Santa’/KrisKringle  gift. Win. To be honest I looked at the book’s recipe for it and thought it needed some major tweaking so I kinda veered way off script on this one, but the finished result looks almost identical to the pretty picture. Thanks for the best/most useful KK gift ever Meng!

Chocolate Cupcakes
115g S/R flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 eggs
115g castor sugar
115g butter, cubed
55g semisweet chocolate (melts or in pieces)

1. Preheat oven to 180C and line your tray with patty pans.
2. Combine butter and chocolate in a small saucepan and melt together. Please, for the bazillionth time, don’t burn the chocolate. It smells icky and tastes worse.
3. Combine all remaining ingredients in a bowl and add the melted chocolate/butter mix. Beat with an electric mixer on high for 3-4 min or until mixture is no longer granular and has a lighter brown colour.
4. Fill your patty pans about 1/2 full and make the tops nice and even. Bake for 15-20 min, turning the oven temp down if the tops begin to crack. Your cupcakes are ready when the tops spring back to touch or a skewer comes out clean.

Now comes the fun part, the marshmallow frosting. Same drill as always, I’m terribly sorry but my frosting recipes are never exact. I have approximate values used but just adjust them according to taste. Frosting is perhaps the easiest thing to make without a recipe, the icing sugar is your variable. Just keep adding it until you like what you taste. You have my permission to grab a fingerful when no one is looking. 

Marshmallow Buttercream
about 12 large white marshmallows
120g butter, softened
2-3 cups icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla paste

1. Melt your marshmallows in the microwave. Stick them in for about 30 seconds on high, or until they puff up and are soft enough to mix with a spatula. It should resemble glue. I’m not kidding, it’s ridiculously stringy and fun to play with… I’m such a child.
2. Cream your butter until it is soft and pale then add melted marshmallows. Beat on high for 3 minutes, or until they are combined.
3. Add 2 cups of sugar and vanilla, beat on high until fully combined and no lumps are present.
4. Taste. Add sugar if necessary and continue beating. Taste with each addition of sugar until your tastebuds are dancing a jig of excitement in your mouth, just like those old Shapes ads with the ‘flavour you can see’ tag line. Except you can’t see your tastebuds dance. It’s a metaphor, work with me here.
5. Beat until your mixture is soft, fluffy and not gluey like your melted marshmallows were. Spoon into a piping bag with a star-point nozzle and set aside.

We all love a good cupcake assembly line, so have your ingredients out. You’ll need:
- chopped almonds or peanuts
- milk chocolate, melted and placed in a glad bag with the tip cut off
- glace cherries
- pink sugar crystals, optional (I’ve never seen these at Coles, I bought mine at Thomas Dux)
- your piping bag with marshmallow frosting

1. Pipe a giant cone of marshmallow frosting onto your cake, like a soft serve cone. It should look a little messy because of the pressure you’re applying to the bag and the star tip. Don’t worry, it looks lovely rippled.
2. Next, drizzle your melted chocolate to resemble sundae sauce. It’s important you work quickly, else your chocolate will harden and you’ll find it difficult to drizzle, and difficult to stick the rest of your pretty decorations on.
3. Sprinkle your nuts around the sides of the cone, and repeat with the pink crystal sugar. I found it best to hold the cupcake on an angle and rotate so the nuts and sugar were evenly distributed around the outside.
4. Finally stick the cherry on top!

Voila!

If your friends aren’t impressed with these, I’m stumped. Maybe find new friends?

xx

Canadian Cupcakes

Gluten-Free Banana Cupcakes
with Maple Frosting and Candied Bacon

The last 48 hours have been filled with delicious baked goodies. I made 2 batches of birthday cupcakes for a friend (vanilla with strawberry frosting and my coconut lemon that you can find here), a batch of the titled GF cupcakes, which I’ll get to in a second, and went to the Paris to Provence food festival with a friend this afternoon, where I was lucky enough to meet the wonderful and talented Pierrick Boyer, of Le Petit Gateau fame. Not only is Pierrick an awesome guy to hang around with, he can also build a croquembouche in literally 10 minutes. I kid you not, it was pretty darn impressive (and delicious). He also gave us free samples, and what kind of girl doesn’t love free macarons? Om nom nom, salted caramel is easily the numero uno flavour for me.

But enough of that, let’s rewind to the second line. Gluten-free banana cupcakes with maple frosting and candied bacon. So I made a bet (a batch of cupcakes) with my friend that netball was an Olympic sport, while he claimed it wasn’t. Turns out it’s an Olympic recognised sport but not actually played at the Olympics. So naturally, as a result of this ‘well, you’re kinda both right a little bit’ stalemate, I was forced to concede defeat. Those who know me well know I am not one to lose debates easily, but since I actually enjoying baking and needed a guinea pig I let this one slide. Also while he makes a cracker tiramisu, I’m not sure he’s any good when it comes to cupcakes, so there was really no point in him losing the aforementioned bet. Hence the resulting combination of maple syrup, banana and bacon in gluten-free cupcake form was born. It’s very Canadian I guess, and images of she-male lumberjacks spring to mind. What, you don’t get images of she-male lumberjacks? Just normal lumberjacks? Oh. Ok then. Anyway, I know some people are if-y about the whole maple-syrup and bacon combo. Trust me, it’s delicious. The perfect mix of sweet and salty and chewy. The banana in the cupcakes also masks the weird (though not necessarily bad) taste of the GF flour. All round these puppies were a hit and I’m kinda wishing I made a double batch…

Gluten Free Banana Cupcakes
1 1/2 cups GF S/R flour (for gluten-ee cupcakes, substitute this with the same amount of plain flour)
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
125g unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (about 4 ripe bananas)
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or paste

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. Make a well in center of flour mixture. In well, mix together butter, mashed bananas, eggs, and vanilla. Beat to incorporate flour mixture, only 2-3 minutes, if you over beat it the cupcakes will be rubbery. Not a great cake texture, I’ll admit.  Fill patty pans about 1/2-2/3 full.
4. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a cupcake comes out clean, about 22-25min.

Don’t stress that your cupcake hasn’t risen/fell as soon as you took them out of the oven. That’s how the GF flour behaves for some reason and even when I double the raising agents it just doesn’t work. If anyone knows why this is/how to fix it that would be much appreciated. Until then, it doesn’t affect the taste of the cake and it’s actually nicely dense and moist. I made these the night before, then the next morning, after they had cooled, started on my candied bacon garnish and maple frosting. The candied bacon, in the wise words of my little brother was like ‘dog treats for humans’, except yummier. I don’t think I made enough to be honest, and I’m still refining my recipe a little but I think this is a pretty good starting point.

Candied Bacon
Preferred cut of bacon ( I wanted to use middle/rasher bacon because the fat candies well, but we didn’t have any)
1/2 cup maple syrup (for the love of lumberjacks use the real deal, you know, from trees and shit)
1/8 cup brown sugar

1. In a small bowl whisk together sugar and maple syrup.
2. Cut your bacon into desired strip lengths.
3. Place bacon on al-foil lined baking tray and generously douse with half the maple syrup mixture. Put in the oven on 180C for about 10 minutes.

4. Turn, recoat and cook for another 10 minutes, or until the bacon reaches your preferred level of crispiness.

While the candied bacon was cooling I made my frosting, which is actually super easy.

Maple Frosting
1 block cream cheese, room temp
100g butter, softened slightly
1/4 cup maple syrup
1-2 cups pure icing sugar, depending on how sweet you like it

1. Cream butter and cream cheese
2. Add maple syrup and sugar in multiple additions, beating until smooth and a thick but smooth consistency is reached.

See? Too easy. I used a 1A round nozzle to pipe the frosting onto my cupcakes obscenely thick, but you can use any nozzel or use a palette/butter knife to smooth it on. Top with as much candied bacon as you like. According to my testers, there needed to be more on mine, but it’s totally up to you, after all you’re he one that put in the hard work making these babies, make them how you want!

xx

 

An Attempt to Attract Alexander Skarsgård

Swedish Cream Cookies

 Alexander Skarsgård. Nom. In fact he’s almost as delicious as these cookies. They supposedly from Sweden, just like him, but I haven’t found solid evidence to support this claim. Unfortunately I hoped that by making these cute mouthfuls of deliciousness, attractive Swedish men within a 100km radius would flock to my door, shirtless, of course. Alas, to my dismay, it didn’t work. Damn. I have just now also realised that I watch much too much True Blood, I warn you, it’s a dangerous addiction and my guiltiest pleasure for sure.  Since my plan failed miserably, I decided to stow these babies away and take them to a gathering I have tomorrow night. I can’t promise my friends any though, because between my Dad and brother, who knows whether the tub of cookies will see the night through. Which is understandable, I guess. The biscuit part is a scone-shortbread hybrid and melts in your mouth, and the filling is vanilla-creamy and colourful! Call me a child, but making food in rainbow colours makes it tastes so much better. Try it for yourself; next time you go to get icecream, get a scoop rainbow and a scoop of vanilla. Rumour has it they’re identical, but if you ask my inner three year old, the rainbow wins hands down.

Swedish Cream Cookies
250g salted butter
2 cups plain flour (GF flour can be substituted in this recipe!)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup cream
1/4 cup castor sugar + 1/4 cup plain flour (for dusting)

1. Crumb butter into the flour and baking powder until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs, it takes a little while to work it through with your fingers but stick with it.. Stir in the cream and form the dough into a ball. Leave it in the bowl, cover with glad wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

2. Preheat oven to 180C.
3. Dust a cutting board with the sugar/flour mixture, or use some baking paper and just stick it on your kitchen bench like I did. It saves some mess.  Roll dough out a third of the dough at a time, trust me, you want to use a workable quantity, to 3-5mm thick and cut with a 3cm circle cookie cutter. I didn’t have a circle cutter that small so I used one of those medicine shot glasses that come with cough medicine. I’m not kidding, and I promise it was totally clean. Place circles on a a tray lined with baking paper and prick with a fork (be careful not to go all the way through though!).

4. Bake trays for 9-11 minutes or until just golden on top.

 The fun part comes when these cuties are fully cool and you can start the icing. You can do them all with no colour, with one colour, or with as many colours as you like. The frosting filling is super easy to make, and it’s not too fiddly to make different colours. The result is totally worth it.

Rainbow Frosting
125g salted butter, softened
1 ¼ cups soft icing sugar
1 ½ tbsp cream
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract (optional)
food coloring

1. Beat butter until fluffy and pale. Add the icing sugar and beat until creamy and there are no lumps. Beat in the vanilla and the cream. You can adjust the cream and sugar until frosting gets to a nice spreading consistency and tastes like you want it to.
2. For a 6 colour extravaganza of colour, divide mixture equally between 6 bowls. Add a few drops of food colouring until you reach the colours you like. Scoop frosting into small zip lock bags, and cut the tips off. You could use a piping bag, but the frosting will be sandwiched so it’s not really worth the mess of a full piping bag.

To assemble, pair biscuit halves up so they have a partner of the same shape and size. Pipe one halve of each pair with frosting and gently sandwich it’s pair on top. You should end up with about 4 cookies per colour if you used 6 colours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

xx

Happy Birthday Little Brother

Lachlan’s Triple Layer GF

Lemon-Blueberry Birthday Cake

Happy (not so) sweet 16th birthday to the little brother. For weeks he had harped on about making peanut butter icing (see one of my earlier posts), and then after a shock body fat percentage reading the week before his birthday, he decided that he didn’t want peanut butter icing, he wanted a fruity cake that was gluten-free. Well, that ruined my plans for an 8-layer chocolate-peanut extravaganza. So I started trawling the web for cake ideas, and the lemon/blueberry combo jumped out at me. I can’t say it’s any healthier than the chocolate extravaganza (ok, well maybe marginally), but it’s easily as delicious and while rich, the zestiness (is that a word?) of the lemon is refreshing, especially after a massive birthday lunch. I spent the best part of my Saturday making the cake, then creating the filling and finally late Saturday night, assembling this delicious monster. It consisted of a layer of lemon-blueberry cake, a layer of vanilla cake and another layer of lemon-blueberry cake, sandwiched with homemade lemon-curd and iced with lemon frosting. For those who haven’t made a layer cake, the anticipation is a killer. Unlike a cupcake, you can’t use one to test, and you can’t cut it open to double check if it looks as good as you’d hoped. Thankfully, this beauty turned out (almost) perfectly. After my weekend Colombaris fest (Press Club with a friend on Saturday night followed by a birthday lunch at St Katherine’s), the family finally tucked in to a piece of this beauty. Yum. I can tell you it was certainly worth the previous day’s effort, and even when we thought we couldn’t stomach another morsel of food in our already bulging tum-tums, we all managed to down a piece. Easily. In other news, I’m about 32 weeks pregnant with a food baby…

Blueberry Cake (top and bottom layer)
2 cups plus 6 tablespoons gluten-free plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups fresh blueberries (smaller the better)
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon pure lemon extract
1 teaspoon lemon zest
250g  unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups castor sugar
4 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Prepare two 8″ round cake pans with baking paper, and grease the edges with butter or spray.
2. Sift dry ingredients (except sugar)  into medium bowl. Transfer 1 tablespoon flour mixture to larger bowl. Add fresh blueberries and toss to coat them with flour. Set remaining flour mixture and blueberries aside.

3.Stir milk, sour cream, vanilla extract, lemon extract and lemon zest in small bowl.
4. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar, until pale yellow and very fluffy, about 5 minutes. Beat in eggs one at a time, until well combined. 
5. Mix in flour mixture alternately with milk mixture, starting and ending with flour mixture. Stir until just combined. Gently fold in blueberries.

6. Divide batter equally between pans. Bake cakes until toothpick inserted into centre comes out clean, about 25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Vanilla Cake (middle layer)
3/4 cup gluten-free S/R flour
1/2 cup castor sugar
1/4 cup milk
30g melted butter
1 egg

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Prepare an 8″ round cake pan with baking paper, and grease the edges with butter or spray.
2. Combine all ingredients with an electric beater, beating until smooth and pale in colour.
3.  Pour into cake pan and bake for 15-18 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

This cake doesn’t come without its own hazards, either. I sustained second-degree burns to my finger removing one of the pans from the oven. Ouch. I’ve now lost feeling in the tip of that finger and am pretty sure I’ve burnt my finger-prints off. Lovely. The moral of the story is, buy Liv a pair of oven mitts for Christmas. But seriously, it hurts, so be careful.

Once you’ve removed your cakes from the oven and have them sitting peacefully on a cake rack to cool, you can breathe a sigh of relief and kick your heels up. LOL JKS this cake is more difficult than that. Now it’s time to make the lemon-curd filling. Do this now because it needs to cool before you can fill the cake with it. It’s seriously delicious, and I recommend this recipe to top pancakes/french toast or use in lemon meringue pie or lemon slice. It’s pure noms. I doubled this recipe so I had bucketloads in the cake and some left over.

Lemon Curd Filling
3 large egg yolks, strained
Zest of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup lemon juice
6 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces

1. Combine yolks, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar in a small saucepan. Whisk to combine. Set over medium heat, and stir constantly with a spoon or spatula, making sure to stir sides and bottom of pan (burnt curd is a bitch to get off your saucepans). Cook until mixture is thick enough to coat back of wooden spoon, 5 to 7 minutes.
2. Remove saucepan from heat. Add butter, one piece at a time, stirring with the wooden spoon until consistency is smooth.
3. Transfer mixture to a medium bowl. Lay a sheet of glad wrap directly on the surface of the curd to avoid a skin from forming; wrap tightly. Let cool then refrigerate until firm and chilled.

Ok, so now you’ve got your first set of elements done you can go and watch some True Blood for a few hours. Alexander Skarsgard will help you pass your time. Once your cakes and curd are totally cool you can begin making your frosting. It’s really, really, lemony sweet. You can add the yellow food dye or not, I did just to make it look more like a happy sunshine cake of love.

Lemon Frosting
250g  soft unsalted butter
2 teaspoons lemon zest
5 cups icing sugar
60 ml fresh lemon juice
6 tablespoons whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon pure lemon extract
yellow food dye

1. Cream butter and lemon zest in bowl of electric mixer, about 3 minutes if you make sure your butter is really soft creaming it shouldn’t be difficult.
2. Slowly add icing sugar, mixing on low speed for about 2 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and beat on med-high for 3-4 minutes until very fluffy. If using food dye add it now and beat until it’s evenly distributed and the frosting is smooth and creamy.

Cake of deliciousness, assemble! Assembly really isn’t as tricky as you might think, it’s fairly straight forward actually.

1. Fill a piping bag with some of your lemon frosting.
2. Place a layer of lemon-blueberry cake with the bottom side facing down, so it’s flat.
3. Using your piping bag, pipe a layer of frosting around the edges of the cake, this will act as a dam so the lemon curd stays in place.
4. Spoon half of the lemon curd onto the cake and spread evenly. Try not to eat it, I know it’s delicious, but it needs to be in the cake.

5. Gently place you vanilla layer on top of this, making sure it’s in line and repeat. Then place your remaining blueberry layer of top of this, except this time invert the cake so the even bottom side is facing up.

6. Generously cover the outside of your cake with the lemon frosting. Use a soft spatula to spread, then when you’re happy with the thickness and evenness of your frosting, use a palette knife or butter knife dipped in hot water to smooth it all out.
7. At this point, use a spatula or large flat knife to transfer your cake onto whatever plate you plan on serving it on. This process really needs two people, you don’t want your cake hitting the dust now! …Then again it would probably still taste amaing off the floor…
8. Now you can add whatever decorations you like. It’s best to do something around the bottom edge to hide where it’s difficult to ice. I used a plain round nozzle of my piping bag to create little balls around the bottom edge of my cake. You can try you hand at shells or even just pipe a ring around the bottom.
9. For the top of my cake, I used a flat tip and made little ribbons which were cute, I thought. You could pretty much do anything, including writing ‘Happy Birthday’ or profanities on the top of your cake.

I refrigerated mine overnight so the frosting firmed up and the layers set nicely, which made it easier to cut. Voila! Your masterpiece is complete!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

xx

Brownie in Disguise

Flourless Chocolate-Orange Cake

There is a reason I’m in love with flourless chocolate cake. It’s like a giant mofo brownie, disguised as cake. Being dense and obscenely rich has never been such a good thing, in my opinion. I’m sure you’re reading this title and thinking, “But Liv, putting fruit in a chocolate cake completely defeats the purpose of a chocolate cake!” and usually, I would agree. I’m of the school of thought that the only things that should be put with a chocolate cake are equally as unhealthy as the chocolate itself (read: whipped cream, marscapone, more chocolate or alcohol). Well, I’m eating my words. Almost literally. Oranges and dark chocolate go together amazingly, even better than dark chocolate and white chocolate. My personal trainer just got back from an overseas Poliquin training course, so I know when I go Monday morning, there will be pain. Lots of new kinds of pain that are meant to make me stronger/fitter/thinner but I think are really just secret ways to sadistically punish me while I pay him by the hour. I know he has a soft spot for chocolate so hopefully this chocolately, dense GF cake will prevent him from grinding me into the ground. And so today I present to you a giant, fruity, delicious brownie in disguise. It’s rich, moist and dense (just like Bill likes his women hardy har har) and will hopefully save me from being pummelled tomorrow in the gym… Who am I kidding, nothing’s going to save me. At least I’ll have a slice of this baby to come home to.

Flourless Chocolate Orange Cake
2 valencia oranges
200g dark chocolate, chopped (use good quality chocolate, not compound chocolate. Lindt 70% = noms)
100g butter, chopped
8 eggs (I’m not joking, this thing is eggy)
1 1/3 cups caster sugar
3 cups almond meal

1. Preheat your oven to 180C. Start with your oranges, place them (whole) in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring it to the boil, then let it simmer for 30 minutes while you go wash your hair. Once they’re done, stick them in a food processor and blend until it forms as coarse paste. Don’t stress, the rind won’t make your mixture bitter.

2. If you’re a daredevil or good at melting chocolate and not burning it, place butter and chocolate in a small saucepan and melt over a low heat. If you’re a scaredy cat or not very good at stopping your chocolate burning (ew) place your chocolate and butter in a small metal bowl over a pot of boiling water. This basically guarantees you won’t burn it. Melt the butter and chocolate completely then set aside to cool slightly (but not enough that it firms up).
3. Beat together your 8 eggs and sugar in a large bowl. Until well combined. Then add your almond meal, chocolate-butter mixture of deliciousness and orange paste. Beat gently until totally combined.
4. Spoon this mixture into a large cake tin. The orginal recipe called for a 22cm round one, but I used a 20cm round one and had enough mixture for two cakes so either be prepared to make two cakes, or use a bigger tin (maybe 30cm, don’t quote me on that just yet, I’ll get back to you on it).
5. If you use half the mixture, bake your cake in the oven for about 50 minutes, if you use the whole mixture, 1hr 20-25 minutes should do it. Watch to make sure it’s not burning and when it’s cooked a skewer/cake tester should come out clean.

Dust this baby with icing sugar and serve with a dollop of whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla icecream. Yum.

 

I’m not even joking when I say my family ate this in 5 minutes. They were ravenous.

xx

When Life Gives You Lemons

GF Lemon Polenta Cake

When life gives you lemons…check your pantry to make sure you have some polenta and make this cake! I was in serious procrastination mode yesterday and so decided to make this baby. It really was pure procrastibaking at its finest. My result was a delicious, not too sweet, moist, crumbly slice of deliciousness. This morning, I had a second piece for breakfast (cake for breakky is seriously underrated, although despite the fact I had a late breakfast, by 10am I was hungry and looking for another slice of cake). Good decision, because this cake tastes even better the next day. I hear what you’re saying ‘polenta? In cake? Really?’. It’s true. The Italians have done it for yonks and they tend to make some pretty delicious stuff and I’m now regretting that I haven’t tried it before. It gives a rougher texture and crumbles beautifully. The lemon rind gives it an acid-yellow colour and is quite pretty while the syrup hardens on the bottom and gives it a lemony-sweet bottom crust. It’s my dream cake; rich, moist, and not overpoweringly sweet. The recipe claims this cake serves 16, but don’t deprive yourself by sharing it with too many others, you and a friend could easily devour this baby or if you’re peckish, eat it all by yourself. It’s dangerously good and you’ll easily get carried away.

Lemon Polenta Cake
200g soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing
200g caster sugar or stevia (I used stevia)
200g ground almonds
100g fine polenta/cornmeal
1 1⁄2 teaspoons baking powder (gluten-free if required)
3 eggs
zest 2 lemons (save the juice for the syrup)

1. Line the base of your cake tin with baking  and grease its sides lightly with butter. I used a 22cm circular cake tin and that yielded a good size cake. If you want a shallower cake, use a bigger tin. Preheat the oven to 180C
2. Beat the butter and sugar till pale and whipped, either by hand in a bowl with a wooden spoon, or using a freestanding mixer.
3. Mix together the almonds, polenta and baking powder, and beat some of this into the butter-sugar mixture, followed by 1 egg, then alternate dry ingredients and eggs, beating continuously. I give you fair warning, it’s difficult because there isn’t any fluid in the mixture and mixture ended up being spattered all around my bowl and decolletage.
4. Finally, beat in the lemon zest and pour, spoon or scrape the mixture into your prepared tin, smoothing the top evenly and then bake in the oven for about 40-45 minutes. Watch carefully for the top burning, if it does, turn the oven down.
5. It may seem wobbly but, if the cake is cooked, a cake tester should come out cleanish and, most significantly, the edges of the cake will have begun to shrink away from the sides of the tin. Take it out of the oven but leave it in its tin too cool.

So this lemon polenta cake isn’t very lemony yet. That’s where this cake is different to the rest. About 5 minutes before you take it out of the oven, start making your lemon syrup. Your cooked cake will be drenched in this syrup of deliciousness so when it cools you end up with a crystallised layer of yumminess around the cake. Just like the crunch top part is the best part of a muffin, the syrupy coating on this cake is so good that it’s really quite acceptable to eat only the outside.

Lemon Syrup of Deliciousness
125g icing sugar
juice of 2 lemons

1. Place both ingredients in a small saucepan. On low heat, simmer until all the sugar has dissolved.
2. Try and have the syrup warm when your cake is done. Then, using a fine skewer or cake tester, prick little holes all over the top of your cake. It should still be in its tin at this point. Then, pour your hot syrup over your warm cake, letting it seep through the holes and down the sides of the tin.

As you can see the outside of my cake is a bit too brown, I got a little carried away with something else and didn’t turn the temperature of my oven down when I noticed the outside browning. So watch your cake carefully! If this does happen to you, don’t stress because it has no effect on the taste of the cake.

Om nom nom. Enjoy!

xx

Coconut-Lemon Summer Cupcakes

Coconut Sponge Cupcakes with

Lemon Cream-Cheese Frosting

I’m going through a bit of a phase where I am obsessed with coconuts. Coconut exfoliant, coconut moisturiser, coconut water, coconut slices and in coconut cakes. It’s amazing. I’ve self-diagnosed this addiction to the most difficult fruit to ‘peel’ (read: spend 20 minutes, 2 people and a large rock trying to crack one open yourself) as a craving for summer to hurry up and be here already. Coconuts are like the poster child for tropical holidays, warm weather and deserted beaches. Also for going stir-crazy and making friends with a volleyball but let’s leave that part for now, shall we? To me nothing says summer like the flavours of coconut and lemon. It’s also a handy coincidence that these flavours taste delicious together. Also if anyone’s interested you can trot down to Costco and buy whole coconuts dirt cheap (thanks for the heads up, Andrew!). Not sure I would recommend using whole coconuts in the next recipe because while they’re awesomely delicious I spent the better part of an hour attempting to open one…

I made these babies a couple of weeks ago to take to a party (hence the lack of process photos) and they were snatched away from me pretty quickly so if I were you, I’d set a couple aside for yourself before you offer them around. They’re divine.

It’s worth noting that you can’t use any GF flour substitute in the cupcakes, purely because the sponge won’t rise properly. I’m working on finding a way to get GF flour to rise properly in sponge cakes, if anyone knows what I need to add/remove to make it work, let me know!

Coconut Sponge Cupcakes
1/2 cup sugar + 1 tbsp sugar
4 eggs
1/3 cup cream of coconut (find it in your supermarket in a can)
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup S/R flour

1. Preheat oven to 180C and line your cupcake tray with patty pans.
2. Separate eggs into 2 large bowls.
3. Beat 1/2 cup of sugar into the egg yolks until it turns a pretty pale yellow colour and smooth (about 3-4 min).
4. Add your coconut cream and half of the salt and continue beating. Beat in the flour.
5. In another bowl beat the egg whites, 1 tbsp of sugar and remaining salt until stiff peaks form.
6. Fold egg whites into yolk mixture gently.
7. Fill your patty pans about 1/2 full (they should rise a considerable amount!) and bake for 20 minutes or until lightly browned. After about 8 minutes, if they look like they are about to crack turn the heat down to 160C.

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, I forgot to turn my oven down and so the top crust of my cupcakes were cracked. This makes absolutely no difference to the cupcake and it’s easily disguised with plenty of frosting.

 

 

 

***Tip: To have perfectly beaten eggs whites have them as close to room temperature as you can. You can also try warming your bowl and beaters up in some hot water, but make sure they’re dry before you beat the eggs***

These cupcakes are delicious even without the frosting but if you like lemon cheesecake you’ll want plenty of frosting piled on top. It’s not a particularly sweet icing so those who aren’t keen on the (sometimes) overwhelming buttery, sweet taste of buttercream frosting will love it. Add as much lemon or sugar as you like – if you beat it enough it will combine.

Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting
1 lemon – rind and juice
1 cup pure icing sugar
250g tub cream cheese (you can use fat-reduced but it doesn’t taste quite as good)

1. Juice your lemon til it can’t be juiced no more and set aside.
2. Using a fine grater peel the rind off your lemon and set aside.
3. Beat your cream cheese until it becomes smooth, then add lemon juice and rind and continue beating.
4. Add sugar in 2 or 3 additions, beating well each time. Once you reach a smooth consistency and you like the taste stop your beaters!

To assemble your cupcakes, use a palette knife or butter knife to spread the icing on, leaving a margin of about 5mm from the edge of the paper. Load it on and don’t be stingy, my frosting was about a centimetre thick and I probably could’ve piled on more! As an option try putting some coconut flakes on top, they add a little extra coconut flavour and a slightly chewy texture.

Just out of interest next time I make these (and don’t end up with cracked tops!) I’ll be cutting them in half and sandwiching the frosting between, then dusting them with icing sugar. Like cute miniature versions of classic sponge cakes! If anyone tries this, let me know and send a picture please!

Unfortunately a cupcake that tastes like summer is as good as I’ll be to summer for another couple of weeks…Damn you, Melbourne weather!
xx

Happy Halloween Casper Cupcakes

Casper Cupcakes

Halloween is not celebrated in our household, “it’s stupid Americanised holiday” according to my father. But it’s the one day a year that a girl can dress up as sluttily as she wants and no one can actually call her a slut. Sorry to disappoint, but there will be no photos of me in a french maid outfit in this post. So today, to celebrate Halloween, instead of going trick-or- treating, I decided to make some cupcakes with cute…ahem, I mean spooky…decorations.

Enter fondant icing. It’s an absolute b*tch to make yourself. Trust me, I’ve tried before and it’s much too much effort and too time-consuming to make it worth your while, so I highly recommend that you trot down to your local supermarket and in the sugar isle you will find a cardboard box filed with…pre-made fondant icing! It tastes pretty much identical to homemade and takes about 5 seconds to cut open the packet as opposed to 2 hours of intense labour and fiddly recipes.  Fondant icing is amazing because it’s pliable, much like marzipan and can be used basically like edible plasticine, “but isn’t all plasticine edible?” asks little brother and I yet again wonder about how hungry the boy gets.

This is just a basic vanilla cupcake recipe – not my special secret recipe, I can’t tell you all my secrets just yet! – but a good recipes that yields about 12 large cupcakes. You can also buy packet mix. This post isn’t about the cake it’s about the decorations and having a bit of fun with icing.

Basic Vanilla Cupcakes
125g unsalted butter, melted
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla paste
1 ½ cups SR flour
¾ cup milk

1.  Preheat oven to 180C and line cupcake tray with patty pans.
2. Sift dry ingredients together.
3. Add wet ingredients and beat on an electric beater for 3 minutes or until all the lumps have gone and the mixture is a pale yellow colour.
4. Fill pans about 2/3 full and even the tops.
5. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until the tops spring back when poked and a skewer comes out clean.

By the way, this is my helper for today,
Julia

So now you’ve got your cupcakes out of the way you can begin with your buttercream frosting, this will act as the base for your fondant sculptures and is addictively delicious. I was caught numerous times having a ‘taste test’. The trick with good chocolate frosting is using melted chocolate, not cocoa powder. Steal my trick of sneaking a fingerful of icing every now and again and adjust ingredients according to how you like it.

Addictive Chocolate Buttercream
125g softened unsalted butter
½ cup dark or milk chocolate pieces (I use a combination of both)
1 cup pure icing sugar (pure icing sugar sets firm so won’t end up on the sides of your container)
1 tsp vanilla paste

1. Cream butter and sugar until pale yellow in colour.
2. Temper chocolate slowly, being careful not to burn it because frankly burnt chocolate not only smells foul but tastes even worse.
3. Beat in vanilla and melted chocolate until smooth and pale brown in colour.

Graveyard Decorations
1 store bought packet of fondant icing
black food colouring (if you can find it) or red, blue and green
green coloured castor sugar
½ cup milk or dark chocolate pieces, melted
toothpicks

Finally we reach the fun – and messy – part. Start by rolling out some baking paper and spread it with a little icing sugar – you’ll thank me for this later because your bench top won’t be stained by food colouring and the bit of icing sugar stops your fondant sticking.

Tombstone decorations
1. Start by preparing your packet fondant icing according to the pack. Mine said knead until pliable or microwave if you’re a weakling. I nuked mine for 10 seconds to soften it up a bit. Halve your icing and use half for tombstones and half for ghosts.
2. Make a little well in your kneaded fondant icing and add some black food colouring, or if your Coles is as dodge as mine and didn’t stock black colouring, use red, blue and green colouring in the ratio 3 red: 3 blue: 2 green, until the desired colour of your fondant is reached. I made mine a mottled gray-green colour. Your hands will get stained – it should wash off with warm water but if it doesn’t you can always claim that you’re a leper for Halloween.
3. Roll out your fondant so it is about 1.5-2cm thick on your icing sugar coloured baking paper.
4. Using a non-serated sharp knife, cut little tombstone shapes out of your fondant. Make the a little wider than normal so it’s easy to write on them.
5. Once you have your tombstone shapes cut out, stick them on some baking paper and into the freezer for 5 minutes to harden them up a little.
6. During this time temper your chocolate, then stick it in a little snap lock baggie. Cut the teeniest, tiniest corner off the corner of the bag to make a tiny hole you can use to write with.
7. Using your improv piping bag, write the letters ‘RIP’ or a little cross or whatever else you would find on a tombstone in little letters. It sounds finicky but it’s not as difficult as it sounds, I promise.
8. Stick toothpicks in your tombstones to secure them when you stick them into your cupcakes.

Casper decorations
1.  Roll 6 little balls of fondant icing and stick the on the tops of your tooth picks.
2. With your remaining fondant icing, roll out until it’s about 2-3mm thick.
3. Use a glass or circular cookie cutter to cut circles from your thinly rolled icing. Drape the circles over your ball topped toothpicks and create creases around the bottom so it looks like a ball with a sheet draped over. Stick your toothpicks in something (I used an apple) and stick them in the freezer for 5 minutes to harden up a little.
4.  Take them out of the freezer and using your little improv chocolate piping bag, pipe on 2 little chocolate eyes onto the head of your ghost.

Assemble your cupcakes!!
So you’ve got a million and one separate pieces, now it’s time to assemble them!

1. Ice your cupcakes with the chocolate buttercream using a butter or palette knife. Keep a mm or two around the edges to keep it pretty and stop it flowing over the cupcakes.
2. Sprinkle half with green coloured sugar crystals and stick your tombstones into these cupcakes. It’s nice to leave a couple with just the green sugar crystals for presentation.
3.  The other half of the cupcakes, stab with your ghosts on toothpicks.

Too easy! Stand back and admire your work!

Happy Halloween!!
xx