#20 - Melon Surprise

Wednesday Natural Ingredient / Healthy Cake - Melon Surprise.

My daughter had seen pictures of a fresh watermelon cake in Facebook and had said a few times already that she would like me to make this cake. - Cake? Is it a cake? Well, let's see. 

I bought a watermelon, removed the rind and cut the melon into a cylinder. Still a watermelon.The frosting I made by mixing 200 g soft butter, 400 g cream cheese and 400 g icing sugar. Then I spread the frosting all around the cylinder. Still a watermelon, a watermelon with frosting. The little hearts on top of the cake are cut off a watermelon slice with a cookie shape. A garnished watermelon with frosting. Some fresh berries to go with it and...

...12 candles! 

Happy Birthday to my beautiful daughter! Hope you enjoyed your garnished watermelon birthday cake with frosting! 

If nothing else, the candles finally made me call the watermelon a cake.

PS The Birthday Girl will get a proper 'cake-cake' when she is having her party for her friends.

Cake #19 - Le Hamburger

Tuesday Humour Cake - Le Hamburger.

- I would like to bake a hamburger. 

- No, you don't bake hamburgers. You go to Burger King.

- I would like to bake a hamburger. For dessert.

- No, you don't bake hamburgers for dessert. Unless... unless it's a...?

- Cake, yes. I would like to bake a hamburger cake. For dessert.

So I did. No new idea but a fun cake to make! - And now I am playing with the idea of inviting friends over and making several small hamburger cakes and not saying anything that they actually are not savoury ones. I could bake sweet buns and even garnish them with sesame seeds to make them look more real... Watch out!

Le Hamburger

Sponge

150 g soft butter

150 g granulated sugar

3 eggs

150 g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp cream or milk

1. Heat the oven to 190 degrees C (375 F) and grease and flour a Ø 15 cm round cake pan.

2. Mix together the dry ingredients.

3. Cream together butter and sugar.

4. Add eggs and mix well.

5. Add the dry ingredients and cream or milk.

6. Pour the mixture into the pan. 

7. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until solid in the middle.

8. Let cool completely on a rack.

Garnishing

Milk chocolate to make the 'burger'

White chocolate to cover the bun

Chopped nuts to be sprinkled on top of the bun

Yellow fondant icing as cheese

Green fondant icing as lettuce

Raspberry (or other red) jam as ketchup

Whipped cream with a drop of yellow/brownish food colour as hamburger sauce / mayonnaise

Apple slices, pineapple slices... 

The garnishings can be made of nearly of whatever (sweet) you have in your fridge or food cupboard. Just use your imagination!

I cut the sponge in three layers. The middle one was to become the burger so I cut off the crust. The top layer  I brushed with white chocolate and sprinkled with chopped nuts.

The burger I brushed with melted milk chocolate and it does look quite meaty!!

I had a chunk of yellow fondant icing and using a cheese plane I got thin slices of it as the cheese for the hamburger.

On the bottom layer I first spread raspberry jam as ketchup. The on top of the burger I put the 'cheese' and whipped cream and then  in-between stuck some slices of green icing as lettuce and slices of apple. There are also slices of canned pineapple inside the hamburger.

Bon Appétit!

Cake #18 - Banana and Walnut Cake

Monday Mood Cake - Banana and Walnut Cake for 'not only going nuts but bananas, too'.

It does not need to be a Monday to feel like going nuts or bananas or - very often - both. Any day goes, but on Mondays it is usually the most likely. Going nuts does not need to be a bad thing, though. I usually end up laughing after moments of despair, then I sit down, have a deep breath and prioritise.

What it is that makes me go nuts?

Too many things going on simultaneously. Too many things or people around wanting something from me right now. Toothache which cannot decide if it is real or imaginary. Cat who has brought a live mouse into the kitchen and the mouse has disappeared somewhere. Somebody ringing the doorbell. (Thanks to texts and emails the phone does not really ring that often nowadays!!) Clock ticking and telling me I just missed the bus. Various (brilliant!) ideas coming into my mind and I cannot find  pen and paper to write them down (And no, I cannot use my laptop for that. It would be like starting to implement the ideas right away which you just cannot do as the paper needs to be lost and found several times first, and then the ideas refined!) 

And finally: Half a dozen overripe bananas in the kitchen attracting banana flies and reminding me of something... something?

Cake! Once again I know my priorities. Deep breath.

Do what you enjoy doing the most and forget the irrelevant, as long as you have checked the kitchen and made sure the mouse is not there any more to come and nibble your cake.

Banana and Walnut Cake

Batter
200 g butter
250 ml golden granulated sugar (or demerara sugar)
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 large eggs
100 ml Greek yogurt
3-4 overripe bananas, mashed
400 ml self-raising flour
100 g chopped walnuts

1. Preheat oven to 175C/350F and grease or line with baking parchment a 25 cm x 25 cm square cake pan or Ø 24 cm round cake pan.
2. Cream butter and sugars.
3. Add eggs and mix well.
4. Add dry ingredients together with yogurt and mashed banana.
5. Pour batter into pan and bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes.
6. Let cool on a rack before spreading on frosting.

Frosting
200 g cream cheese
100 g soft butter
200 ml icing sugar

1. Whisk all ingredients together until smooth.
2. Spread evenly on cake (and add a few whole walnuts to garnish).

The texture of the cake is quite dense but gooey and moist and 'easy' to eat. Very good and sophisticated taste. Long live us nuts and bananas!

Cake #17 - Black Forest Cake

Sunday Classic Cake - Black Forest Cake.

I was looking for the perfect recipe for a Black Forest Cake/Gâteau / Schwarzwald/wälder Kirschtorte/Kuchen... you know this traditional German cherry and chocolate cake which seems to have not only various names but also spellings and especially looks, too. What does not change, however, is the delicious combination of cherries and chocolate. 

I ended up choosing this revamped Black Forest Gâteau on BBC GoodFood website to deliberately avoid any debate whether or not my cake looks like a real Black Forest Cake. In the end it did not look like the GoodFood cake, either. But a baker has her ways to save what can be saved. 

Architect covers it with vine and doctor covers it with sod. Chef covers it with sauce and baker covers it with whipped cream. - Mistake or failure, that is.

If the mistake is not fatal - you really cannot save a burned cake - there is a lot you can do and you should do!! I tried my best. And when the taste is a success that is what counts in the end anyway.

The essentials: can of black cherries (no fresh ones in the shops!!), cherry yogurt (to replace buttermilk/natural yogurt in the recipe), fresh eggs and dark chocolate.

Batter whisked smooth, ready to be baked. Instead of 3 pans, I baked the cake in one big pan, in 170C for about 45 minutes.

After the cake had cooled down I cut it in two halves. The bottom half came out fine and I spread cherry jam on it. The upper half just collapsed when I was lifting it, so I had to plan the cake again... I rebuilt the upper half as well  as I could, spread some jam on it and then poured the chocolate ganache on top. 

I piped cream on the sides and some on top of the cake and then placed the canned cherries in the middle. Then I finalised the cake with some grated chocolate.

Not much was left after serving the cake to 7 people. Very moist and chocolaty but not bitter at all (some dark chocolates unfortunately are). Fresh cherries would of course have been the best but the canned ones I did not need to pit...

Cake #16 - Pizza Boston

Savoury Saturday Cake - Pizza Boston.

Feeling like making something neat for Saturday lunch or maybe there are friends coming over for tea but your fridge is half empty? 

A little bit of this and a little bit of that, a little bit of rolling and a little bit of baking and you have your Pizza Boston. You can basically fill it with whatever you have in the fridge. If you do not have cheese, simply mix one egg and 100 ml of creme fraiche and use that instead. If you fancy a veggie version, use chopped peppers, red onions, fresh tomatoes. The main thing is that you do not need much to make this tasty and even festive-looking savoury cake. And compared to pizza, even the last crumb will be eaten so there will be no pizza crusts left on the plate. (Yes, my kids never eat their pizza crusts.)

Pizza Boston

Dough
300 ml lukewarm water
25 g fresh yeast (or 7 g fast action dry yeast)
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
800-900 ml strong white flour
50 ml olive oil

Filling
100 g tomato puree
basil, oregano, celery salt, paprika, black pepper
100 g salami and / or pepperoni, chopped
100 g grated Mozzarella
125 g fresh Mozzarella, chopped

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water.

2. Add salt and sugar and mix well.

3. Start adding flour gradually.

4. After you have kneaded in about half of the flour, add olive oil.

5. Knead in more flour until your dough is not sticky any more but still soft. It is better to leave the dough a little too soft than make it too dense as the buns/cake will be too dry and hard after baking.

6. Leave the dough to rise in a warm place until double in size, for about half an hour.

7. Line a 25 cm x 25 cm pan with baking paper. My favourite way to do this is to wet a piece of baking paper and crumple it into a ball to get rid of the excess water and make it softer so it is easier to line the form.

8. Roll your dough into a rectangle, about 0,5 cm thick.
9. Spread tomato puree first on the pizza cake base, then sprinkle herbs and spices, salami and cheese.
10. Roll the dough into a cylinder and then cut it into slices of about 5 cm / 2" long.
11. Place the slices in the pan, side by side but not too tightly to leave some room to rise.
12. Let the cake rise for about half an hour.
13. Preheat the oven to 200C / 390F.
14. Bake you Pizza Boston in the oven for about 30-40 minutes.
15. Take it out of the oven and sprinkle some cheese on top and bake another 5 minutes until the cheese has melted.
16. Garnish with fresh herbs, olives, jalapeno slices and tomato slices and serve with green salad.

I prefer using fresh yeast. In Ireland the easiest places to find it are the Polish and other Eastern European shops.

Pizza dough to be rolled and filled. Pan lined with wet baking parchment. 

Pizza rolled and topped with tomato puree, herbs and spices, salami, pepperoni, fresh Mozzarella and grated Mozzarella.

Pizza rolled and cut into slices and slices placed side by side into pan.

Gooey Pizza Boston garnished and ready to be enjoyed!

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!