Monday 5 January 2015

Happy New Year!

Christmas cakes gone -  time to bake something new for New Year's and the days around New Year's.

Cake #127 - Maltesers Anti-Gravity Cake
Tuesday Humour Cake - Maltesers Anti-Gravity Cake
Maltesers Anti-Gravity Cake is a cake I had been planning to bake for ages. I had bought boxes of Maltesers a few times earlier - just to make this particular cake - but somehow the crispy chocolate balls had always disappeared into the kids' mouths. Now I was wise enough to hide the chocolates and also wise enough not to let the kids have any before covering the cake - as the cake did need them all - a 360 g box and a 120 g bag!

Again, I used this recipe to make the sponge (Ø 24 cm) which I then cut into two layers. The filling and covering is chocolate buttercream (200 g butter, 400 g icing sugar, 2 tbsp cocoa powder). Inside the upside down chocolate bag there is a wooden chopstick on which I 'glued' the anti-gravity Maltesers with the buttercream. Fairly easy as the 'glue' worked better than I would have expected. And I would certainly have made the pile a bit taller but I simply ran out of chocolates.


Cake #128 - Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Mousse
New Year's Eve Cake - Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Mousse
On New Year's Eve I found myself baking another Naughty Chocolate Cake sponge. What can I do - it is just so versatile and yummy. The consistency is excellent, too - gooey and moist which makes it is easy to cut and it does not crumble much, either.

The filling is raspberry mousse, see recipe for the Lime Cheesecake filling. Instead of lime juice I used raspberry juice and a few drops of red food colouring. The 2015 year numbers I piped with melted dark chocolate and sprinkled with coloured sugars, hundreds and thousands and little hearts.

Only sparkles were missing from this New Year's Eve cake. The ones we had were Monster ones - too tall to stick on the cake and too big to light indoors but the kids got to light them in the backyard at midnight.

Cake #129 - Vasilopita, Greek New Year's Cake
New Year's Day Cake - Vasilopita, Traditional Greek New Year's Cake
For New Year's Day I wanted to find a new recipe and preferable one with some tradition or idea behind. I simply googled for recipes and ended up baking Vasilopita, a traditional Greek New Year's (Day) Cake. 

You can find the recipe here. Instead of slivered almonds I used toasted flaked almonds. As you can see from the picture the cake was very moist in the middle but luckily it was not raw, squeezed rather (you know, the way fresh bread squeezes if you try to slice it when it is too hot). I baked the cake in a Ø24 cm pan (the recipe says 10"so roughly Ø25 cm) but I would recommend baking it in a Ø28-30 cm pan to make it not quite as tall and prevent the middle part squeezing and looking not-so-appealing.

Delicious it was! Not too sweet so goes well for brunch, too. Warm it up and eat with jam. Or with ice cream, or whipped cream. Or just plain.

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