Coca Cola Cake

while browsing Nigella & Mary Berry's cake books on Thursday I stumbled upon Nigella's Coca-Cola Cake recipe. It's chocolate flavoured - exactly what Zack wanted for his birthday. So I rushed off and bought a bottle of coke (the full fat, full sugar, full caffeine version), and made it for the 7th birthday party yesterday. thanks to Haribo and Nigella for the decorative suggestion....

 

it's another really easy recipe, that requires nothing but a wooden spoon and a whisk. and comes out delicious.

Quite a bit of baking went down in August

So our little brother turned 4! and we just had to bake him a chocolate cake - thank you Aunty Erin and the BBC for the delish recipe!

I had oodles of icing left over from various things, so decided to swirl them onto cupcakes and sprinkle them with a bit of happiness (orange & yellow sprinkles). not too shabby.

Here's a South African mainstay : melktert. It's really delicious. I used a recipe in a classic SA cookery book (Kook en Geniet) and they just AREN'T the way I remember them. I will have to hunt for another one and make them again! 's all there is to it

Nigella - chocolate guiness cake

Jackie's 40th called for Nigella's Chocolate Guiness Cake. The frosting is cream cheese, icing sugar and whipping cream - light and sweet and a perfect topping to this dense, moist chocolatey extravaganza.

Beetroot and chocolate cupcakes

We've been reading Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale at bookclub. As I was hosting the evening, I thought it would be appropriate to serve something RED. I proved a little harder to do than I'd anticipated, but the finished product was delish.
I trawled through the recipe books and websites, and settled on this one : http://www.britishlarder.co.uk 's recipe (click on the link)
250g of 70% cocoa chocolate is a lot to go into making 16 cupcakes, but they are fabulous.
A positive: the paper wrappers came away really nicely too.
I made the chocolate fudge spread, but must say it was more like a jelly by the coooling stage, and didn't pour like the photograph shows. It looks to me like crumbly jelly-bits ontop of my cupcakes now. Not to say that it isn't yummy (and oh-so-light), but it could have been more of a "spread".
All in all however, a huge success.

chocolate fudge cake, take 2

You'll possibly remember that I made this cake for Zack's 3rd birthday last year, and you can't go wrong with a chocolate cake. So here it is with different decorations for Calvin's 2nd birthday this weekend.

we've been busy

half way through

eager little fingers

OK, so we've got to Friday and so far we've made wicked chocolate biscuits (Apple Publishing recipe), and Nigella's cupcakes/fairy cakes recipe last night. I decorated them with the blue liquid colouring mixed into the bog-standard butter cream icing. I have now decided that the liquid colouring is terrible - just like they told me at the cupcake decorating evening. It is such terrible quality. I ended up with blue-grey which you can't really fix. What a waste of icing! Thank goodness for "confetti" which Keith sprinkled ontop. I need to buy some colouring paste now and pronto! I have to make the cake & cupcakes tomorrow for the big day on Sunday.

Allyson's Dark Chocolate Tray Cake

Back in good ol' SA we have a supermarket chain called Pick'nPay. They have their own little cookery school - it's been going for some 20 years or more. Just like at Waitrose here, you can pick up a leaflet as you leave the store with some great recipes. Considering that these used to be photocopies, you'll have an idea of when last I took one. Today was our annual community Christmas day at church - when they throw the doors open to harrassed shoppers and exhausted parents - serve up lots of Xmas cheer, spicey apple drinks, and loads of home baking. I contributed with an all time CLASSIC which never fails : Allyson's Dark Chocolate Tray Cake. It's got lots of sugar, cocoa and buttermilk in it. And it is divine.
You bake it straight in a greased inch deep baking tray. You pour the icing on top (I did it while it was still warm). And it is moist and chocolatey and you can't go wrong. OK, I think I've sold it enough

Almond Fig and Chocolate Cake

Keith was given the very decadent Unwrapped by a friend some years ago. It is incredibly decadent and so I don't make things from it terribly regularly, however, I have for some time now been eye-ing a recipe which has almonds, dried figs and chocolate in it. Today we had a wonderful group of friends for lunch and as I hadn't made any dessert I roped Keith and Zack into the manufacture of this fabulous cake. There's lots of grating and chopping and folding involved, so plenty for little hands to do. Unfortunately I didn't have any Amaretto, but it didn't seem to affect the taste enormously. The finished product was slightly overcooked (a bit brown on the edges), but lovely and crunchy from the fig seeds, and deliciously rich. We served it with chocolate icecream – chocolate overdose, but they'd recommended cream. Pity, I didn't have any.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake & Icing

I am dead keen to make a fabulous chocolate cake or choccie cup-cakes. I've been perusing Martha's recipes, and the ones on the Waitrose site, as well as my modest collection of cookery books, and decided to try Nigella's Sour Cream Chocolate Cake because it sounded smooth and very chocolatey. Oh dear me... it's turned out to be a far-too-sweet chocolate affair. It has good chocolatey colour and a lovely fine crumb (smooth texture), but overall it's not chocolatey enough for me. Or rather, it's not as 'dark chocolate' as I'd hoped for. The recipe for the icing produced something that's lovely and smooth and light, but far too sweet. I just feel like it needs to be dark and bitter, rather than light, chocolate, whippy.
Another thing is that my decorating technique is horribly OLD FASHIONED. I don't think it works at all. So, overall, there's heaps of room for improvement.

I think I'm going to pension this cake off (to the grateful & hungry souls at Keith's office), and make the box of brownies Heath sent me for my birthday. It's one of those – just add oil, an egg and hot water – jobs. It looks painless, and might be more satisfying in the chocolate arena. Let's wait and see.