Cake #43 - Mint Crisp Cake

Friends First Friday Cake - Mint Crisp Cake.

This cake is for my daughter's boyfriend, who is a gorgeous and polite gentleman and a real sweetheart, too. He makes my daughter happy in so many ways: he drives her to Tesco to buy sweets late in the night, he brings her flowers and they go to the gym together and after the gym they may sit in his car for hours talking and smelling sweaty. Together.

And The Boyfriend loves my cakes!!

Why do I have to buy my own sweets and flowers and why is it so hard to get The Husband to come with me for a lazy Sunday walk when the sun is shining? We would not even get sweaty. - Just saying.

I got the recipe for this cake from The Boyfriend (or maybe it was from her mother). Absolutely tasty and yummy. Not really baking but compiling, again. Eagerly and ambitiously with no guilt. At least I do not buy ready-made whipped cream.

Mint Crisp Cake

400 g Nice Biscuits

500 ml fresh cream

395 g caramel sauce tin

150 g mint crisp milk chocolate

1. Crumb the bisquits.

2. Whip the cream and mix it together with the caramel sauce.

3. Put half of the crumbed bisquits in a springform pan, then spread half of the caramel whipped cream on top and half of the chocolate grated.

4. Do another layer the same way.

5. Allow to set in the fridge a few hours or overnight.

Cake #42 - Catrousel

Thursday Cat Theme Cake - Catrousel.

I love cat shape cookie cutters. Okay, I am obsessed with them, like my daughter said once. I just do not have very many of them yet. Yet. One of these days I am so going to go through all internet cat-a-logues and see what is available and what I am still missing. I know there is at least a dozen different ones which are a must-to-have. 

Kitchen shops (or any shops) in Dublin are not very good what comes to cat shape cookie cutters. But I still go and check my favourite Stock and Kitchen Compliments regularly and a few times I have been lucky.

This Catrousel - Cat Carousel is a cheesecake I made using my Lime Cheesecake recipe. After spreading about half of the cheese filling on top of the cookie base, I placed four cookie shapes on the cheese. Then I very carefully spread the rest of the cheese around the cookie shapes and put the cake in the fridge to set for a couple of hours.

When the cake was set, I removed the cookie shapes one by one and filled the 'cat hole' with partially set jelly (I used 200 ml of cranberry juice and 2 gelatine leaves to make the jelly) and put the cake in the fridge for another hour before serving.

This cake is worth making again with some more ambitious cat figures of different colours, maybe. But to do so, I definitely need smaller cat shape cookie cutters. Who would have the heart cutting a jelly cat in half and this cake was meant to serve more than four people...

Cake #41 - Strawberry Raw Cake

Wednesday Natural Ingredient / Healthy Cake - Strawberry Raw Cake.

I  have recently seen [in Facebook, that is] a lot of pictures of various raw cakes my friends have enjoyed around the world. The cakes have looked good and interesting and finally I decided to see and test what a raw cake is all about.

Gluten-free. Dairy-free. Mainly vegan (I had never thought that honey is not vegan, to be honest). Nuts. Berries. Coconut Oil. Quite rich with calories but definitely healthy and made of uncooked natural ingredients.

I read through dozens of recipes and because none of them quite matched with what I had in mind nor what ingredients I had in the cupboard, I decided to create my own - a simplified raw cake, kind of. It did turn out great - fresh, smooth and very tasty! And now I am eager to try more raw cakes! Raw carrot cake sounds delicious, doesn't it?

Strawberry Raw Cake

Base

150 g cashew nuts

150 g raisins

3 tbsp coconut oil

Filling

250 g fresh (ripe and sweet!) strawberries

200 g ground almonds

100 ml coconut oil

4 tbsp honey

1. For the base, put all ingredients in a blender and mix until the raisins and nuts are broken into very small pieces (the mixture does not need to be smooth). 

2. Spread the filling into a springform pan with the base lined with baking parchment.

3. Put in the freezer while making the filling.

4. For the filling, put all ingredients in a blender and mix until smooth. 

5. Pour on top of the base and put the cake in the freezer for about an hour to set. It is not meant to freeze.

6. Decorate with fresh strawberries and mint leaves and refrigerate any leftovers immediately as the cake will quickly loose its firm consistency in room temperature.

Cake #40 - Salami

Tuesday Humour Cake - Salami.

Strictly speaking, this is not a humour cake after all, but a serious Southern European style chocolate dessert. It just happened to fit perfectly in my not-so-serious series of humour cakes.

Strictly speaking, humour cakes may get you in trouble. I was just in time in the kitchen when my daughter got home from work hungry and nearly grabbed this sweet salami stick she saw in the fridge to put on her toast.

Strictly speaking, this is the way it has to go. Things are not always what they look like and then you just need to decide if you take it or leave it. If it is not hazardous for your health or life-threatening, I would say take it!

Chocolate salami tastes great on a toast!

Chocolate Salami

150 g Digestive cookies

100 ml cocoa powder

200 g soft butter

100 ml cream

150 g dark or milk chocolate, melted

100 g cashew nuts (or other blanched nuts) chopped

(1 tsp red food colouring)

1. Break cookies into small pieces

2. Add cocoa powder and mix together.

3. Add soft butter, melted chocolate and cream. Mix well. 

4.Add chopped cashew nut into the mixture.

5. Shape the mixture into the shape of a log and wrap it tightly with clingfilm.

6. Refrigerate the salami for a few hours (or freeze a shorter time) until it hardens. 

7. Dust with icing sugar before slicing the salami.

Cake #39 - Angel Food Cake

Monday Mood Cake - Angel Food Cake for feeling light-hearted. 

Every now and then I just deliberately want to forget all stress and worries and duties for a day. Breathe. Smile. Dance. Make faces and goof around in a good way! For one day. It does not mean that I would pretend to be happy forever and ever, nor does it mean everything is grand. I just set my mind to joy and act that way. For one day. 

Monday was one of those days. A busy weekend behind and a dentist appointment the following day but no urgent duties, worries or stress on that particular day. So I breathed, smiled and even danced. I made faces with the kids and goofed around. Of course I acted like an adult and a parent, of course I took care of my responsibilities. I just stopped worrying for a day. And there is nothing false with that!

I used to hate this song in the 80's and I still do but this is it. Don't worry, be happy. For one day try to feel as light-hearted as you can. 

The recipe for the Angel Food Cake can be found here. I did not use almond extract myself, otherwise I followed the recipe as I had never made an angel food cake before. If you do not have cream of tartar, you can substitute it with lemon juice (1 tsp cream of tartar = 2 tsp lemon juice). I do not own a real angel food cake pan but a regular bundt pan worked out great and the cake turned out delicious!

Cake #38 - Tarte Tatin

Sunday Classic Cake - Tarte Tatin.

Strictly speaking, Tarte Tatin may not be a cake but a tart. However, it is often called an upside-down cake. And in Wikipedia it is listed as a cake so let me stick to that and tell you about this memorable cake baking session when I nearly set my oven in fire.

I had bought some gorgeous cooking apples to be used for baking. Tarte Tatin had been on my 'should try this' -list for some time and a rainy and grey Sunday seemed like a perfect day for this autumny cake. The only thing that was missing was a proper pan suitable for both caramelising sugar and baking the cake. Clever as I am, I thought I would do well if I just caramelised the sugar on a frying pan and then poured it into the cake pan - which happened to be a springform pan. Yep, yep.

So I did caramelise the sugar on a frying pan and poured it into the cake pan. I placed the apple slices neatly in the pan, too, and put the pan into the hot oven. A few minutes later I saw black smoke coming out the oven as the caramelised sugar was leaking out of the springform pan and turning black on the bottom of the oven. No flames, though. 

After all drama, the cake turned out superyummy and there will be plenty of Tarte Tatins in the near future. Baked in a proper pan, though!

***

Later in the evening I was scraping the oven and got black ash all over myself and the kitchen. The Husband was at the same time flying to the UK to his business meeting. 

Avoid ash clouds at home - step onto an airplane!

Tarte Tatin

Pastry

400 ml plain flour

200 g butter

200 ml icing sugar

3 egg yolks

Filling

5 big apples, I used Bramley cooking apples

50 ml lemon juice

150 ml sugar

100 g butter

1. Preheat the oven to 250 C/ 500 F.

2. Mix flour, cold butter and icing sugar until crumbs. 

3. Add egg yolks and mix well.

4. Form a ball of the dough, wrap it in clingfilm and put in the fridge for at least an hour.

5. Peel and cut the apples into slices and squeeze the lemon juice over.

6. Caramelise 100 ml of the sugar on a hot pan.

7. Place the apple slices on top of the caramelised sugar, sprinkle the rest of the sugar and the butter on top. 

8. Bake in the oven until the apples have softened a bit, about 10 minutes.

9. Take the pastry out of the fridge and roll into a circle of the size of your pan. 

10. Place the pastry on top of the apples and put back into the oven.

11. Turn the heat down to 220 C /425 F and bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes.

12. Let cool a few minutes.

13. Take a serving plate and carefully flip the cake pan and the plate so that the pan is on top, then lift off the pan. 

14. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Cake #37 - Sausage Cake

Savoury Saturday Cake - Sausage Cake.

First time during 36 days I nearly decided to skip a cake. Behind I had a day full of action, that was, decorating cakes at my daughter's birthday party, and a massive lack of sleep - and more sleep loss expected as three of my daughter's friends were staying for a sleepover after the party. Our living room was already conquered by these pre-teens and their air beds so sofa and X Factor in quiet and peace was not a choice for me. 

To the kitchen I went, started listening to some inspirational music and googled for a recipe for a savoury cake, preferably with sausages in it as we had lots of leftover sausages from the birthday party. 

It is amazing how exhaustion can vanish just like that when you start doing something you are passionate about!

I found this simple recipe and used it with a few alterations. I chopped the cooked sausages we had into little cubes. I did not add any onion or sage, and I used Mozzarella instead of Cheddar.  Easy and fast! Something to be enjoyed for breakfast or brunch the following morning and The Husband just loved it, too!

I think this recipe would be worth trying with a full Irish breakfast as filling. To be seen in the near future. With or without black pudding, that is the question.