Salted Caramel Velvet Cake

My first ever original invention. It's a variant of the red velvet cake, except there's no red food coloring (thank goodness!) and there is salted caramel in the frosting. I've also added meringue to the sponge to make it lighter. Personally this is one of my favourite cakes, not just because it's my own recipe. I've always liked the combination of chocolate and salted caramel but sadly it's normally too sweet for my palate. In this recipe I've added the salted caramel to the mascarpone/cream cheese in place of icing sugar to dilute the sweetness but still retain a noticeable hint of salted caramel. I have baked this cake numerous times before as I was trying to perfect it. It's almost there I'd say but I'll have to bake it at least once more to make sure it wasn't down to luck. Plus I certainly don't mind eating a slice of it. Anytime.

It was a tad frustrating when I made this cake as I didn't know how to decorate it. In the end I settled for some hazelnuts dipped in caramel and a few leftover chocolate squares I made before. For some reason it just didn't work for me. I think it could be down to the fact that my caramel decorations were too small compared to the size of the cake and thus lacked the wow factor. Perhaps I should have made a nest of caramel instead. That said, I've learned something important about caramel decorations. I made the cake a day in advance and decorated it with those caramel hazelnuts. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the moisture of the mascarpone frosting, the caramel bits on the hazelnuts had melted by the next day and so the best part of the decoration, i.e; the spikes were practically gone by the time I brought it to the event. Anyway.. the cake was well received and I'm sure it tasted alright (I just learned a trick - to bake an extra cupcake using the same batter and frosting to do a taste test without slicing into a whole cake that you want to present).

I wish I had taken a picture of a slice of the cake but it was literally gone in 5 minutes (after all it was the ONLY cake at the event of 100 people). I just hope I didn't misunderstand what the organiser told me (though I was definitely under the impression that I was meant to bake ONE cake and not cater for the whole event). Oh well, good things come in small packages as they say.

Coffee and Walnut Cake

I was invited to a dinner party last weekend and instead of a usual bottle of wine I decided to bake this age-old classic as a gift. I used a recipe from Brendan Lynch's website but instead of a coffee cream cheese frosting I opted for a swiss meringue coffee and cinnamon buttercream.

The cake had a nice flavour to it but can probably do with a touch more coffee and cinnamon. Unfortunately the sponge was a little on the hard side and I think it could be due to the fact that I didn't have the patience to bring butter to room temperature prior to creaming it with the sugar. I enjoyed eating it nevertheless and I'd like to think my friends did too.

Christmas

It's Christmas. I was invited to a potluck Christmas lunch and it took me no time to come up with the idea of baking a yule log, or Bûche de Noël, as the French would call it. I've never made a yule log before seeing as I only started baking in February this year so this was my very first opportunity to bake for Christmas!

Chocolate Entremet

I first came across this cake on Youtube (one of the few sources that I gain my baking inspirations from). It's quintessentially French and is composed of many different layers of mousse, cream (Cremeux, or Crème Fondante), Croustillant/Feuilleté and sponge. The idea is to produce contrarsting textures from the creaminess of the mousse to the crispiness of the feuilleté, silkiness of the cremeux and finishing off with a  tender sponge base. All these enclosed in a rich and velvety chocolate ganache and coated with a shiny glaze.

The making of an entremet requires a methodical approach. All the layers have to be made individually prior to assembly and frozen before masking with the ganache and the final glazing with the glaçage.

The end result is this:

I have to confess that I did spend HOURS making this. The exact amount of time involved was in the range of 10 hours. Yes, 10 whole hours. Here's the rant: I only had three mixing bowls, work surface the size of an exam desk, fridge space big enough for a packet of crisps and a freezer compartment with a shape that doesn't fit my baking tray. On the other hand, I had to make the seven components of the cake separately and froze them as I went along. That meant I had to wash my mixing bowls seven times and dry them in between washes. Also the... OK I won't bore you further with my endless rant. Essentially it would have only taken me half the time had I had enough mixing bowls to make all the layers in one go and do the washing up at the very end instead of an interrupted work pattern. Extra fridge and freezer space would've helped too. The joys of being student baker who shares one tiny fridge and freeer with three other fellow students.

Surprisingly it turned out pretty close to what I had in mind:

Good old no-bake lemon cheesecake

I know I know, two entries in a row, i.e; two bakes in one weekend. A bit too much don't you think? Well it couldn't be helped since I had wanted to make the chocolate tartlets for ages and it just happened that my flatmate's birthday is on the coming Monday and he requested for a no-bake lemon cheesecake. I have a bad habit of going for the more technically challenging bakes and ignoring the simpler stuff. It was almost like a perfect excuse for me go back to the basics.

The recipe couldn't have been simpler. As always I wanted to make mine look slightly different from the ones I normally see so I decided to go with an oblong shaped lemon cheesecake instead of a round one. That was partly because I've previously bought a terrine mould that had so far been sitting there collecting dust. In simple terms, I just wanted to make myself feel less guilty for buying something that I don't even use. :)

Here's the cheesecake:

Flowers in a Basket

The last weekend was manic. First of all my placement in Somerset has come to an end and as with any placement, it meant I had deadlines to meet. The presentation went well in my opinion, and I don’t think I could’ve done anything differently. I was glad that I went with a Sexual Health topic since no one could ever get bored of it. Presentation sorted, I still had to finish off my portfolio which was due on the coming Monday. If that wasn’t enough I was also hosting a tea party for my belated birthday since I wasn’t in Bristol to celebrate with my mates two weeks back.

I came across the whipped cream cake during my usual aimless procrastination search for baking inspirations while revising for Obs and Gynae. I’m sure you’d agree me that the cake itself sounds so absolutely delicious. Strangely I had never heard of it prior to that and its recipe wasn’t particularly popular on the internet either. Being adventurous as always I decided to give it go and this is what I ended up with:

Red Velvet #2

So the medics society has organised a bake off to amass enough cakes to feed the first years. In return the medic bakers are in for a chance to win a top prize of 50 pounds. Frankly I have always wanted to take part in a baking competition of some sort and I have been shamefully spending hours thinking of how I was going to decorate my cake. I knew I wanted to bake a red velvet cake since that's the best cake I've ever made and is a family favourite. The issue was to decorate it in a way that's pleasing to the eye as well as to the taste buds.

In the end I decided to pipe some rose swirls using the cream cheese frosting on the sides and decorate the top with some macarons.

Red Velvet Cake

It's been ages since I last updated. Come to think of it my last update was more than a month ago! I have been traveling quite extensively in the UK with my mum followed by visits to my friend and grandma in my home country before I came home. Being on term break and at home has allowed me to venture into my very long to-bake list and get one ticked. I suppose anyone who has seen a red velvet cake would never forget its strikingly red appearance. I'm no exception.

 

First entry of the blog: Cheesecake with a (massive) twist

So it's summer, the season of sunshine and the much dreaded exam period for a Uni student. Sounds a little random you might say, in which case may I gently remind you to read the title of my blog. Yes, I literally just started out baking about 3 months ago, reason being I was under too much stress from writing my final year dissertation. I wanted to find a way to get rid of the stress without getting wasted at the pubs. Long story short, here I am 3 months later still extremely into baking and in fact I consider this as one of my favourite hobbies now! Not sure if it's going to last after my last exam in June but judging from the way it is now I'd imagine myself doing this for quite a while!

Enough introduction, here comes the cheesecake. It's got a massive twist to it because it's not heavy and dense like the conventional NY cheesecake. It's not as creamy either. In fact, it's got banana and caramel in it. And it doesn't even have the traditional biscuit base. You might be tempted to stop reading by now but do bear with me.

This cheesecake has got a souffle base, i.e; it has got meringue incorporated to give it the rise. As a result, it has a very fluffy and soft texture and extremely light. In fact, the actual name for this type of cheesecake is cotton soft Japanese souffle cheesecake. Imagine cheese souffle but a sweet version. 

I've made this cake a couple of times before I decided to add my own twist to the flavour and the two random flavours that sprang to my mind were banana and caramel,. I must say I am fairly particular when it comes to the aesthetic side of baking and I always try to find ways to glam up my bakes. There's no exception to this one. I came across this guy on Masterchef whose name I've forgotten (sorry mate!) making some ornaments out of caramel and I thought I'd it a go based on what he did on the show!