Cake #15 - Irish Deluxe Sandwich Cake

Friends First Friday Cake - Irish Deluxe Smörgåstårta Sandwich Cake.

My second Friends First Friday Cake I dedicated to a chicken the story of which made the whole family laugh one day the past week. Several times did we laugh cordially. And several times did we also say that was one of those 'only in Ireland' -things and laughed even more cordially...

Because only in Ireland would you walk through a busy village past a big shopping centre and a jammed roundabout and right there, in somebody's yard see a chicken. 

My son had been on his way from school to the bus stop when he had got that awkward feeling that somebody was staring at him. He had looked around and seen a chicken right there, only a few metres away from the busy road, eyes wide open, a fierce look on her face, staring at him. My son had started staring back and finally won the battle as the chicken had loudly said buk buk buk and disappeared behind the house. Surrealistic indeed. 

And only in Ireland would you fill your sandwich with crisps. First times I saw people having crisp sandwiches for lunch I thought it was soo strange. (I do still think serving chips with lasagne is strange.. or do I?) Then I started making crisp sandwiches myself. It has become my guilty pleasure maybe every second Friday for lunch to take two pieces of the whitiest toast I can find in the house, spread lots of butter on them and then empty a bag of salt and vinegar crisps between the two slices. Oh, so good...

My children get crisps on Fridays after school. This Friday they got a crisp sandwich cake with a bit of deluxe instead. - For the chicken! For Friday! For Ireland!

Besides the toast and regular crisps (cheese&onion and salt&vinegar) I had two bags of colourful vegetable crisps to make the cake more 'deluxe'.

I toasted the bread, removed the crust and cut the slices into triangles. Then I spread butter on each triangle and put crisps between two triangles.

I placed the triangles on a plate to form a chicken and then covered the sandwich cake with potato crisps and vegetable crisps. There are cocktail sticks holding together each sandwich and there is an olive as the chicken's eye. More olives were served as side.

Cake #14 - Food Bowl Cake

Thursday Cat Theme Cake - Food Bowl.

I am quite sure every child has at least once in their life had a sudden urge to taste pet food. Straight from the pet's bowl. (Or a piece of 'licorice' straight from the litter box...but that's another cake story.) Crunchy little things that may not look that bad - some brands of chocolate cereal actually sometimes look more suspicious. 

Believe or not, I have never tasted any industrially produced cat food. I let my two cats do the tasting all by themselves and if they happen to approve, I keep ordering the same food in 10 kg bags over and over again... until they let me know they would like to have something else for a change. So far they haven't, phew. Otherwise I might need to fill my next cake with Hill's Tuna...

This Food Bowl was a success with the family. How often are you allowed to eat the bowl, too? The cake was tasty and moist as it wasn't all sponge and icing just for the looks of it but a proper cake filled with berries, cream cheese and white chocolate.

Food Bowl Cake

Sponge

3 eggs

200 ml caster sugar

200 ml self-raising flour

1. Preheat oven to 175C / 350F and grease and flour a Ø 15 cm cake pan.

2. Beat eggs and sugar until white and fluffy.

3. Fold in flour.

4. Pour into pan and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes.

5. Let cool completely before filling and decorating.

Filling

100 g berries of your choice

50 ml white chocolate powder

200 g cream cheese

1. Mix cream cheese and white chocolate powder together.

2. Carve the cake so that it looks like a bowl.

3. Fill the 'bowl' with berries and the white chocolate cheese but leave room for the actual 'cat food', that is, chocolate chips.

Icing

1st layer

150 g white chocolate, melted

100 g butter, melted

100 ml icing sugar

1. Mix butter and white chocolate together and sieve in icing sugar.

2. Mix until smooth.

3. Spread around the cake evenly and let set.

2nd layer

250 g icing sugar

2 tsp yellow food colouring

1 tbsp water (or more if too thick)

1. Mix icing sugar and food colouring together and add water gradually so that the icing does not get too runny but is still easy to spread.

2. Spread evenly on top of the white chocolate layer and also on the brim and inside the bowl. 

3. Let set.

Decorations

100 g dark chocolate 

1. Melt and pipe on baking parchment or silicone mat to form words or signs wanted

2. Let cool - I usually put the tray in the freezer where it takes only a few minutes to set.

3. While the decorations are setting, spread or pipe chocolate on the brim.

4. Remove the decorations from the paper / mat and stick on the side of the bowl.

100 g milk chocolate chips

1. Fill your bowl with cat food chocolate chips. 

2. Remember not to give this bowl to your cat. 

Bon Appetit!

Cake #13 - Chili and Dark Chocolate Cake

Wednesday Natural Ingredient / Healthy Cake - Chili, Dark Chocolate and Buttermilk Cake.

Originally this was supposed to be my Monday Mood Cake on some Monday when I would feel hot but can anyone actually feel hot on a Monday? I mean hot-hot-hot like good-looking and amazing and wanting to wear a tight skirt and high heels and putting on bright red nail polish. Nope? Me either. Probably not even on a Tuesday.

Besides, when you bake a lot, you really cannot have any nail polish unless it is edible and the shade is called Eggs&Butter. 

Chili and dark chocolate are both said to be healthy with vitamin C (the former) and flavonoids (the latter). Combining these two does not then only lead to a burst of flavours but also to something that may be good for your well-being. I also added some buttermilk to the dough to sooth the burn - although to my surprise the cake wasn't as hot as I would have wanted. Lindt Chili Chocolate was very mild indeed, almost disappointingly mild, and adding 2 tsp of fresh chili was not clearly enough and you could hardly taste the chili. - Next time I will try to make it perfectly hot by adding some hot chili powder, too. 

Chili, Dark Chocolate and Buttermilk Cake

100 g dark chili chocolate

200 g butter

150 g golden caster sugar

150 g soft dark brown sugar

2 tsp fresh chili, finely chopped

150 ml buttermilk

150 g self-raising flour

2 eggs

1. Preheat oven to 175C / 350F and grease and flour a 23 cm spring-form pan.

2. Melt butter and chocolate and mix in both sugars and chili and stir until smooth.

3. Pour in buttermilk.

4. Fold in flour and eggs.

5. Pour into pan and bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes until a stick comes out slightly moist.

6. Remove from oven and let cool on a rack for at least 15 minutes.

7. Enjoy with vanilla ice cream, especially if you were able to make your cake a hot one! 

Cake #12 - Rotten Apple Cake

Tuesday Humour Cake - Rotten Apple.

It is the apple picking season and rather pick them from the tree than from the wet and muddy ground or else - this may happen!  This is not the apple to give your teacher nor does this apple need a doctor any more... or how did the old saying go? Also it might be a good idea to take your horses to pastures new, far from the orchard with rotten apples.

In real life, this apple cake was sweet and delicious to enjoy. The worms were sour but still they disappeared first (maybe they slithered away when nobody was there?). 

I baked the body of the apple with a basic Swiss roll recipe and cut it into circles when cooled down. Then I piled the circles and put some apple jam in-between and with my hands pressed it all around to be more ball-shaped.

The first layer of icing was a mixture of melted butter and white chocolate with some icing sugar. With that mix is it easy to cover any bumps and holes on the surface too. Then I made some red and yellow icing to colour the apple and piped a some melted chocolate here and there. The stem is a cinnamon stick and the green leave is made of green fondant icing. The worms are Jelly Squirms by Natural Confectionary. 

This cake would work well for Halloween, too. Or how about a whole orchard with lots of rotten apples? Trying to visualise it just now!

Cake #11 - Courgette Cake

Monday Mood Cake - "Autumny". 

It is September and it is time to feel autumny. The schools have started. Yes, finally! The nights are getting darker. No they are not. The mornings are getting colder. No they are not. The trees are turning from green to yellow. No they are not, not quite yet! On my way to my son's school I checked each and every tree and they were all still green. So many little pines, so many walls covered by ivy - all green...! No, seriously, even the big maples were at least 90% green. 

So the trees whispered me my Autumny Mood Cake should be something green. Probably because of seeing quite a few posts with pictures of courgettes in Facebook lately, courgettes came into my mind first. Courgettes I would have in my cake then.

As the autumn goes along, there will certainly be more autumny cakes. With golden apples. With carrots and sweet potatoes and with beetroots. It is just the matter of the trees telling me when.

Courgette Cake

200 g butter, melted

250 ml sugar

300 ml grated courgette (one small courgette)

3 eggs

400 ml self-raising flour (if you use plain flour, add 1 tsp baking soda)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp cinnamon

pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 175C / 350F and grease and flour a 2-litre bundt cake pan. 

2. Mix melted butter and sugar together.

3. Add grated courgette.

4. Mix dry ingredients together and fold into courgette-butter mix.

5. Pour dough into pan and bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until a stick comes out clean.

6. Let the cake cool in the pan first and then on a rack before you cut it into slices.

Cake #10 - Brita Cake

Brita Cake is a traditional Finnish summer cake. It is often baked in late summer when your garden produces an abundance of berries and you desperately need to eat them with every meal before the birds eat them all. If not baking Brita Cakes you could be making squash or jam or simply freezing berries to be used during the dark winter months when you need all vitamin C you can get to keep you going and to prevent winter depression. But cakes are the most fun...!

Sunday being the last day of August and therefore the last day of summer, I wanted to bake one more summer cake and what could have been a better choice than Brita Cake to celebrate once more the beautiful summer lived and now gone.

Brita Cake is a combination of a cake and a meringue. Filled with whipped cream it is fluffy and airy and the berries (rather choose some that are a bit sour if you can) give it freshness and elegance. Good Bye Summer of 2014!

Brita Cake

Base:

250 g butter

200 ml caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla sugar

4 egg yolks

200 ml milk

300 ml plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

Meringue:

4 egg whites

300 ml caster sugar

Filling:

500 ml double cream to be whipped

2 tbsp caster sugar

500 g berries of your choice, I had raspberries, blueberries and strawberries

1. Preheat oven to 175C/350F and line an oven tray (mine is 400 mm x 300 mm) with baking parchment. 

2. Cream together butter and sugars.

3. Add egg yolks and mix well.

4. Add dry ingredients and milk.

5. Spread dough evenly on baking parchment.

6. Whip egg whites together with sugar until stiff.

7. Spread egg white mix evenly on top of base dough. 

8. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes until slightly brownish. 

9. Remove from baking tray and let cool before filling.

10. Cut your cake the way you like - I cut mine into three rectangles to make the cake a 3-layered one. 

11. Fill with whipped cream and berries of your choice and leave some berries on top if you like or decorate with edible flowers. 

12. Do not bake only in the summer but all year round!!! - Brita Cake with cranberries at Christmas?

Cake #9 - Chorizo and Olive Loaf

Baking my second Saturday Savoury Cake became a more demanding task than originally planned. Not because The Husband had decided to cook something Spanish for dinner and I thought I would make my savoury cake to go with it, but because I browsed various savoury cake recipes and then started thinking what actually is the difference between a cake and a bread. This is a Cake Challenge and I don't want to bake something regarded as bread! 

If you think about savoury cakes, a Scandinavian style 'Smörgåstårta' - sandwich cake -  is definitely a cake and so would be a savoury cheesecake (although Wikipedia disagrees with me by saying that cheesecake is not a cake but a pie...) - like the Salmon Cheesecake I made for The Husband's birthday. But how about savoury loaves like this Chorizo and Olive Loaf I ended up with? It is a cake, isn't it! It is.

Of course I will not post a picture of a Finnish-style rye "Limppu" bread as a cake - unless I make a sandwich cake of it; neither will I ever insist that an apple pie is a cake. A single pancake is definitely not a cake, either, but if I make a pile of them, spread jam in-between and whipped cream and sprinkles on top, in my opinion, it is a cake then. 

Please comment if you disagree with me on any of my cakes that they are not cakes and especially tell me why you think so. Your arguments will be read carefully but no corrective actions will be made regarding the cakes already eaten as cakes. For future cakes I will definitely listen to your opinions if they are relevant.

Chorizo and Olive Loaf

100 g chorizo, chopped (if uncooked, cook it first)
100 g olives - green or black or both, chopped in halves
300 ml plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
250 g quark
100 ml milk or water
30 ml good olive oil or rapeseed oil
4 eggs



1. Preheat oven to 175C / 350F and grease and flour (I use dried breadcrumbs) a 3 lbs (100 mm x 30 mm) loaf pan.
3. Mix all dry ingredients together.
4. In another bowl, mix quark, milk/water, eggs and oil.
5. Together with the chopped chorizo and olive, fold the dry ingredients into the quark mix gently.
6. Pour the dough into the pan and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a wooden stick comes out of the cake clean.
7. Let cool a little before removing from pan. The texture of the cake is gooey and soft so it is easy to cut it into slices even when slightly warm. Enjoy as a snack or with salad. Use sundried tomatoes or artichoke hearts instead of chorizo for a vegetarian option.