Valentines Raspberry and White Chocolate Cake.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I'm easily distracted

Oooh, look, Cake!

Ok, this is a quick post for now for various reasons, I'll upgrade it when BT give me my own broadband back :) *It's back now, this is the upgraded/old post mash up :) *

I finished this cake about an hour ago and to be honest I was bloody glad it was all over lol
The last thing the cake did to try and thwart my attempts to finish it was throwing my pack of lovehearts out of my trolley in Tesco without me noticing, or remembering until I'd got outside. Re-joining the uber-queues for 1 packet was not an option. All praise be then to my lovely local shop that had some!

So finally done, this is a 2 sponge cake with a hint of raspberry in the sponge, a layer of white chocolate buttercream and Raspberry jam in the centre and covered with white chocolate buttercream. I then added home made dark chocolate hearts, 'Red' (I tried lol) buttercream blobs, big and small, white regalice hearts, the stand-up silver lustre'd chocolate hearts, the Lovehearts atop the blobs (They don't half have some weird things written on them nowadays!)

What the...?

 and finally wavy maltesers!!! Whooop!

I made this cake not only to eat, although it looks like the snow is might put pay to getting it to where it was going to be eaten tonight :( , but also to see what I could come up with knowledge i've picked up over the last few months (If any! haha), and also to enter in some Valentines Bloggy Bake comps! Yay!

This is entered in the wonderful @cakeboule's Valentines Craft and bake Competition (Do have a browse of her awesome creations while you're there, after putting a drool-capture device on your keyboard!)

I'm also entering it in @EnglishMum's 'Baked with love' Bake-off!

Ingredients:

• 225g Self raising flour
• 25g Cornflour
• 250g Caster sugar
• 250g Soft Butter
• 4 Medium eggs
• 2 tbsp Raspberry puree 
• 2 tbsp Milk
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract.

For the filling and icing:

• 500g icing sugar
• 200g Soft Unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp Milk
• 200g White Chocolate, melted then cooled a bit.
• 200g Seedless raspberry jam.

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 180c. 
2. Prep the tins - Grease and line 2 x 23cm/9" cake tins. (Or in my case spray cake release around 2 non-stick 23cm/9" springforms.) This recipe amount makes fairly shallow sponges but quite a nice depth cake once the icing and filling is added. If you want a deeper cake use 20cm/8" tins. 
3. Mix the caster sugar and butter together in a bowl.
4. Sift the flour, cornflour and baking powder into a seperate bowl.
5. Add 1 egg at a time and some of the flour whilst mixing, until all the eggs and flour mix are added.
6. Add the raspberry puree, milk and vanilla extract whilst mixing. 
7. Split the batter between the two tins.
8. Bake for about 30 mins or until a cocktail stick comes out of the middles clean.
9. Eat. Oh, wait, not yet haha.
10. Allow to cool in the tins for 10 mins, then tip out onto cooling racks to cool completely.
11. Put the white chocolate in a bowl and melt over simmering water or in a microwave, heating for 30 secs at a time.
12. Meanwhile mix the soft butter in a bowl slowly adding the sifted icing sugar and a splash of milk at a time.
13. Keep mixing and add the melted chocolate.
14. Apply about a quarter to a third of the icing to one of the sponges.
15. Put the jam in a small bowl and mix a bit with a fork just to loosen it up a bit.
16. Spread the jam over the iced sponge and sit the other sponge on top.
17. Using a palette knife apply the rest of the icing to the cake.
18. If the icing cools too much it can become a bit of a sod to spread out, prefering to stick to the knife, even a heated one, rather than the cake. If you leave the icing to set a short while then it dries a bit and doesn't stick so much but you can still smooth it. I quite liked the fluffy look but I wanted the top smooth for the decorations. I was planning to stick icing hearts on the side but after fighting the choc icing decided to leave it fluffy :)
19. Eat, or decorate, then eat.

The heart chocolates were made by just melting dark chocolate and using silicon moulds, saving some to cool slightly and be piped into heart shapes on some baking paper. Something that I managed properly on the 3rd attempt after the choc cooled too much in the piping bag lol

White hearts were rolled out Regalice and cut out with heart cutters.

'Red' blobs were buttercream with red food colouring (And then you added too much black food colouring didn't you? - ed.) Yes.

A second version of the cake.

Mega cake! = Mega Tune Selection

Fell in love with a girl, fell in love once and almost completely.... White Stripes - Fell in Love With A Girl.

Love this bit of Love! Courtney Love - Mono.

The best remix of this! Flip and Fill ft Kelly Llorenna  - True Love Never Dies (Kenny Hayes Remix)

and Awwhhhhh, to get you all in a Valentines frame of mind, a snippet of The Wedding Singer :)

Big stringed classic love bought to you courtesy of Holly and co. Frankie Goes To Hollywood - The Power of Love.

Talking of classic love songs.... G n R - Used to love her

Oh Wendy! *Drools* :) Transvision Vamp - I Want Your Love

Eh oop! Another Classic! A couple of versions of this one, First off Candi Staton and The Source - You got the Love.

And then Florence gets her lungs pumping for this, really quite good, cover. Florence and the Machine - You Got the Love 

Can you feel my Love Buzz? No? Ok, I'll turn it up a bit... Nirvana - Love Buzz (I really am sounding like a crap cheesy DJ now lol)

Couple more.... Killing Joke - Love Like Blood! Soooooo good!

I do love a big dose of Freemasons! - ft Amanda Wilson - Love On My Mind

Um, a couple more :D

Huge! Huge! Classic Neil Young cover from St Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Taken from one of their best albums, Disintegration, The Cure - Love Song

and finally.... aaaarrrghh, too many to choose from..... 

Daniel? Daniel who? Hehe. Natasha Bedingfield - Soulmate

...and the final finally Madness - It Must Be Love

Love to you all.

P.S.  :)

Flappy Jam Jacks.

             A bundle of raspberry, white chocolate and oaty deliciousness! This is one of my little arsenal of tray bakes that, when I'm working, end up in my lunch tub to be eaten in unison with a yoghurt. They have an absolutely gorgeous texture to them with the kickin bonus of the jam and white choc layers. I would happily eat the entire 9" x 9" slab in one go! :) The basic recipe is another from the heavenly treat producing Mary-Anne Boermans's blog which, one day, I may have eaten the entire contents of!

Ingredients:

• 125g Wholemeal flour
• 90g Demerera sugar
• 1/4 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• Pinch of salt
• 125g Unsalted butter
• 125g Rolled oats
• 200g Seedless raspberry Jam
• 100g White chocolate or White chocolate chips.

Preparation: 

1. Preheat the oven to 180c
2. Grease or spray a 9" square tin and line with baking paper.
3. Put the Jam into a small saucepan and heat gently whilst you...
4. Put the flour, sugar, bicarb, salt and butter into a food processor and mix until breadcrumby.
5. Add the oats and mix so that they're incorporated but not smashed to pieces.
6. Put two thirds of the mix into the prep'd tin and press flat and to the edges.
7. Pour the warmed jam onto this and spread across the surface.
8. Spoon the rest of the oat mix around on top of the jam and spread out flat and even and pressed down gently.
9. Bake for about 35 mins.
10. For the chocolate topping you can either melt the white chocolate and drizzle or pipe pretty patterns when the bake has cooled a bit. Or, do what I did and tip a bag of white choc chips over the top as soon as it's out of the oven, leave for a few mins and then spread about a bit with a fork. You can do this with chopped up white chocolate as well. 
11. Leave to cool and then cut into whatever sized pieces you will count as having 'just the one' :)
12. Eat (Just the one, or two...)

I also tried another version of these by chucking a tin of caramel in as a filling and topping with dark chocolate. They worked, and were very nice, but didn't quite have the 'OMG THESE ARE LUSH!!!' of the raspberry ones.

Right, kicking off with the obvious ones! The Flappy Jam Jacks with Down in The Tube Station At Midnight!

Pump it! Pump it! Pump it! Pump it! etc etc... Classic from Technotronic - Pump up the Flappy Jam Jack!

Whooooah.... It's Ram Flappy Jam Jacks - Black Betty!

Ooohhh, there's more! Pearl Flappy Jam Jacks with Do The Evolution! (Seriously, don't try and make these with pearl jam...)

Oh, wait, BREAKING NEWS!!!

...and more! Rolling Stones - Jumping Flappy Jam Jack Flash.

...and finally! Flappy Jam Jack White in his White Stripes incarnation with Blue Orchid.

Chocolate selection Pack 1

After making a few batches of the original choc truffles I got rather excited about making more chocolates that maybe, just maybe, looked like those chocolates you can purchase in ye olde shoppes. So after snooping around on the net I decided to buy some little silicon moulds and play with a few ideas and flavours.

I chose these individual moulds because I wanted to play with a lot of shapes for as little money as possible. A tray mould would be easier if you wanted to line each mould with hard chocolate first for eg making truffle or caramel centres, but these work very well for making hard chocs. I tried a truffle mix in these with a view to freezing and then peeling off the moulds but even then the mix was too flexible to come out with out being misshapen.
The hazelnut truffles I did try, then, with a swift bit of manipulation, became truffle balls.
      When using these moulds, even though they peel back off of the chocolate, it's still a good idea to give them a bit of non-stick help. I did this by means of putting all the moulds in a 9" x 9" tin, tilting it, and giving them a light spray of Cake Release Spray, then dabbing any excess off with kitchen towel. Not sure if the solid chocs would come out ok without spray, but better safe than sorry.
      So, the 3 new flavours I tried (In the top photo - The Snowball in the middle was a Damson Gin Liqueur truffle rolled in grated white chocolate, and the plain chocolate one is a naked Hazelnut Crunch.) were the following:

Hazelnut crunch:

• 200g Dark choc (around 50% cocoa)
• 200g Dark choc (70%+ cocoa)
• 150g Double cream
• 2 tbsp Roasted hazelnut bits.
• 2 tbsp Nutella (Or similar spread)
• 20g crushed Coco-Pops (About a variety pack size)
• 100g crushed crunchy cereals eg Rice Krispies, Coco-pops, Honey Nut loops

Preparation:

1. Chop the 200g 50% chocolate into small pieces.
2. Heat the cream in a saucepan until it starts to bubble at the sides.
3. Add the chocolate to the cream. Leave for a few minutes then stir gently for a while until thoroughly mixed. 
4. Add the Nutella and mix thoroughly.
5. Add the Hazelnut bits and 20g Coco-pops and mix together thoroughly.
6. Pour the mix into a shallow bowl and chill in the fridge for at least an hour
7. Line a tray with baking paper, and spoon out marble sized lumps of truffle mix rolling each one into a rough ball shape.
8. Place the tray of rough truffle balls back in the fridge for for at least 30 mins.
9. Just before they're ready melt 200g 70%+cocoa  chocolate either in a bowl over simmering water or in the microwave, heating 30 secs at a time.
10. Break up the cereals. I put mine in a deep tupperware and squished with the end of a rolling pin. and place in a shallow bowl
11. Take the truffles out of the fridge and roll each one into a neater ball. If they get too messy whilst doing this then put back in the fridge for 5 mins.
12. Chuck a truffle ball into the melted chocolate then fish out with a fork, forks or cocktail sticks, hold for about 10 secs while the the excess drips off, then chuck it into the crushed cereals, and cover with cereal. Leave that one and do another ball in the melted choc, when that's in the cereal roll the first ball around in the cereal. Then do another ball into the chocolate and into the cereal. By this time the first ball should be cool enough so the choc doesn't run anymore and will be solid to handle. Place it on a tray. Continue like this, with 2 or 3 truffles in the cereal all the time until finished.(It's simpler than I make it sound lol) 
13. Any left over melted choc can be poured onto some baking paper to cool, then broken up and eaten kept to be melted another day.

White Chocolate Peppermint Crunch:

These nice solid chocolates I made in the prep'd moulds and they came out lovely loike :)

• 200g white chocolate
• 1 tsp Peppermint extract
• 1 heaped tablespoon Granulated sugar.
• Melted dark chocolate for decoration.

Preparation:

1. Melt the chocolate
2. Add the peppermint extract (As much as you want to your taste) and stir in thoroughly
3. Add the sugar and stir in gently
4. Teaspoon the chocolate into the Prep'd moulds
5. Leave to cool completely
6. When cool, put in the fridge for 15 mins
7. Melt the dark chocolate
8. Remove from moulds onto a piece of baking paper
9. Either drizzle the melted dark chocolate from a spoon tip over the chocolates, or use a fine tip nozzle and piping bag to do more detailed and controlled decoration. (I used spoon for mine)
10. Eat.

Dark Chocolate Orange Crunch:

Another easy chocolate to make with the moulds using as strong a dark chocolate as you like and incorporating the rather posh, exclusive ingredient of crushed Frosties to add a crunch :) (I'm a classy geeza!) As you can see from the photos the decoration is, well, frankly, bloody atrocious! lol I experimented with my first baking paper piping bag, and instead of being sensible and sliding in a fine nozzle that I had, I just snipped the end to make a little hole, but, well, it didn't work well and it looks like a drunk T-Rex trying to balance on a Pilates ball did the piping. Ah well, they taste ace. You need:

• 200g Dark chocolate.
• 1 tsp Orange extract (Or to taste)
• Variety pack of Frosties, crushed, or blitzed in processor. (About 17g)
• Melted white chocolate and food colouring (Orange, or Red & Yellow)

Preparation:

1. Melt the chocolate.
2. Add Orange extract and stir in thoroughly.
3. Add Frosties and mix in gently.
4. Spoon into prep'd moulds.
5. Leave to cool completely.
6. Place in fridge for 15 mins then remove from moulds onto baking paper.
7. Melt small amount of white chocolate and stir in food colouring to the colour you want.
8. Drizzle or pipe ex-white chocolate to decorate.
9. Cool and eat.

Some tunes for the chocolate!

One of the best Oasis tracks - Oasis - Some might say (Fact - The original title was Some might say that chocolates are bad for us but I say they aren't! alright?)

Oh, ok, another one of the best tracks, Oasis - Live Forever from the awesome live DVD Familiar to Millions, and if you want to feel bloody old it was recorded July 21st 2000! (Fact - The original title for the song was 'If you want to live forever eat lots of chocolate!'

...and finally, I'm going for another rather spiffing tune from that era, the wonderfully catchy Ash - Burn Baby Burn. (Fact - The original title for this song was 'Be careful to melt your chocolate slowly or you might burn it, and baby, you really don't want to burn it. )

Ah, more organic blogginess, after having a snoopy through Elpiniki's Greek tradition blog (See comments) I was reminded of this absolute dance classic from La Rissa - I do both Jay and Jane. I had no idea La Rissa was a Greek county! Education is fun kids! This version is taken from 2001 Club Nation album.

Pork, Sage and Apple burgers.

      I don't know about your body, but sadly mine demands foodstuffs that aren't cake now and again. Shame really. So I thought I'd throw these cheap and tasty morsels on here. Simple to make, you can even indulge in child labour for the squishy mixing bits. I'm sure some pork mince squelching through the (washed) fingers would get a few "eeeeeeuugghh"s from them. The ingredients will make 2 meals worth for me, or about 6 fat burgers :) So here's what you need:

Ingredients:

• 500g Reduced fat pork mince
• 1 Onion finely chopped
• 1 Free range egg
• 1 Heaped tablespoon of dried sage
• 5 Heaped tablespoons of breadcrumbs (I knew I'd forgotten something in the photo)
• 1 apple - cored and peeled
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 Clove of Garlic - pressed or 1 tsp dried garlic granules (Optional)
• A sprinkly of Salt, pepper, mixed herbs to taste.

Preparation:

1. Prep breadcrumbs in a processor or however you like to make them.
2. Finely chop an onion and place in a bowl.
3. Add breadcrumbs, sage, salt, pepper and dried garlic and mix.
4. Add pork mince and break it up/mix together with a knife.
5. Add the beaten egg.
6. Add Worcestershire sauce.
7. Core, peel and grate in the apple.
8. Get your hands in there and start squishing it all together, about 5 mins is plenty for medium speed squishing.
9. Take bits of the mix and using those hand things you used just now, and pat together to make burgers the size you want. The mix will make about 6-8 burgers.
10. Fry, grill, BBQ (Trying to not charcoal them too much) and eat.
11. Myself, after spending time lovingly crafting these burgers, I like to cut them up and mix together with new potatoes and baked beans. I know, I'm a posh git :)

There is a lazier version of these in which they don't end up as burgers, or with apple in lol 

Boil some spuds. Gently fry off some onion then add salted spuds and fry them. Stick them on a plate. Tip 250g pork mince into pan, add a sprinkling of Worcestershire sauce, sage, salt and pepper. Beat an egg and mix that in. When cooked, add the potato back to the pan, mix together, then either chuck some baked beans on top or heat them seperately, fry for a bit longer to heat the potato back up. Serve in a big heap on a plate!

Being of a herby stylee, I thought I'd add this to the Lavender and Lovage Herbs on Saturday blog challenge run by Karen, mainly just to balance out the inevitable quality, fancy recipes that will be entered :D

Keep watching this blog for more Michelin star recipes :D

To thank the pigs for providing a tasty treat, here is the story of them heroically out-witting the nasty wolf. Pigs in a Polka from 1943, set to Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dances

Now for a bit of Brett and the boys from the 90's Suede - We are the Pigs.

Kenny Everett as Julian Mince. Well, I LOL'd :)

And now for something completely different... Birdy - People Help the People. Wonderful.

Also, One of my favourite Jane's Addiction songs Pigs in Zen , and a nice messy March of the Pigs from Trent and co. 

Happy Summer Cupcakes.

There was a nice idea and theory behind these cupcakes, a chance to slap the cold, miserable days of January  in the chops and taking a bite, let your mind wander, happily, to a warm, summers afternoon. They kind of succeeded, and kind of failed. But most importantly of all, they taste gorgeous!

They contain the fruit of summer - Strawberries, and also Bananas which, amongst their other many qualities, are high in tryptophan which aids production of the mood-stabiliser Serotonin and therefore in my theory will stop you getting any January blues!, the healthy goodness of rolled oats and oat bran so that you can feel no guilt at all from eating them ;), a hint of dark chocolate, and we all know that chocolate = happines! Topped off with with hazy warm sunshine lemon tinged buttercream. See, a recipe for complete January joy.

It's a nice theory, but the truth of the matter is I'm like a kid throwing whatever sounds good into a bowl and hoping for the best. In the recipe I made the strawberries get lost under the taste weight of the bananas. It didn't help that I had to use tinned strawbs as the local shop had no fresh ones (In January!?! shocking! - ed), and the cakes were quite sticky to the cases, although they were much better when chilled in the fridge. I'll come back to the idea of a taste-of-happy-sunshine cupcake in the future when I have more knowledge :) but for now, here's what you need and do:

Ingredients:

• 250g Plain flour
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 40g Porridge oats
• 40g Oat bran
• 40ml Vegetable oil
• 60ml Milk
• 1 Free range egg
• 100g Light brown sugar
• 100g Strawberry Yoghurt
• 100g Strawberries
• 1 large or 2 small ripe bananas mashed.
• 50g Dark chocolate chopped small

Preparation: 

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/170c Fan/Gas 4.
2. Line a 12 hole muffin tray with muffin cases.
3. Sift the flour, Bicarb, Baking powder, and salt into a large mixing bowl.
4. Put the Milk, Oil, Yoghurt and Egg into a separate bowl and mix in the Oats and Oat bran. Leave to stand for 5 minutes.
5. Mash the banana and chop the strawberries smaller.
6. Add the Sugar to the liquid mixture and stir.Leave for 5 minutes.
7. Chop up the Dark Chocolate into choc chip sized bits.
8. Add the Liquid mixture, the banana, and Strawberries to the Flour bowl and mix together thoroughly making sure all the flour is mixed in.
9. Spoon or pipe the mixture equally between the muffin cases.
10. Bake for 25-30 mins or until an inserted skewer/cocktail stick comes out clean.
11. Cool in the tray for 10 mins, then transfer the cupcakes to a cooling rack to cool completely.
12. Eat as they are or decorate.
13. I used the Depression Era Buttercream from the Melting Moments (I'm an addict and wanted to see what it was like as a topping), but for a generous covering for 12 cupcakes you'd need about 190ml milk, 3 tbsp Flour, 165g butter, 165g caster sugar and 1.5 tsp Vanilla extract. I also added some grated lemon zest. I then took a third of this and added red and yellow colouring for the sun, and added blue colouring to the other two thirds.
14. To make Banana and choc version, leave out strawberries, use plain or another flavour yoghurt. Drizzle with melted choc of choice.

Happy Happy Sunny Joy Joy!

One of the happiest, sunniest tunes out there - Katrina and the waves - Walking on Sunshine

Going back even further, a funky bit of Donna Summer - I Feel Love 

Haha, sing along to the chorus of  LFO - Summer Girls! You do know it! Oh yes you do!

Oh, I nearly forgot this! How could I??? Fuzzbox - Pink Sunshine

And now, it's time for pointing at your body parts! Yay! It's almost a workout if you point dramatically, a choice of the original Beach Ft Tia - Suntan with video, or the Freemasons Vocal mix without video!

And finally, grabbing the last bit of sun as it melts into the hazy horizon, Sunshot - Stop Me. (An awesome 90's band featuring Toby Bricheno on guitar, you know Toby! brother of Tim! Tim! Yes, Tim from All About Eve, Yes, that Tim! )