All posts tagged: chocolate ganache

Bonfire Roulade

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If you are entertaining tomorrow night, with or without fireworks for Bonfire Night, and haven’t settled on what to serve for dessert, then I have the very recipe for you. I made a version of this last Hogmanay, and it was a dream dessert. It was Tiramisu Swiss Roll Cake by Izy Hossack at Top With Cinnamon. When I heard that Baileys were bringing out a Pumpkin Spice edition, I knew I had to incorporate it into this dessert, instead of the regular Marsala. I take no credit whatsoever for coming up with the roulade idea, and my recipe is simply a tweaked version of Izy’s. I don’t feel too bad, however, because I know Izy adapted the sponge element from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum (Rose’s website), so all is good. Bonfire Roulade Sponge 5 Large Eggs 100g of Golden Caster Sugar 1 Teaspoon of Gingerbread Syrup (If you don’t have any, use Vanilla extract) 75g Butter, melted and cooled 100g of Plain Flour 25g Cornflour 2-3 Tablespoons of Icing Sugar mixed with 1 …

Cookies and Cream for my boy

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Some people call this Hump Day; others, Wednesday. But for me, it’s like Friday. It’s my last paid working day of the week working as a teacher. But I figured that some of you who work all the way through to Friday could do with a little cheer, so I thought I’d write up the recipe for this Cookies and Cream cake quickly. I made it for my son’s 9th birthday on Monday. He asked for a Cookies and Cream Cake (I think because he loves that flavour of ice-cream), so I googled a few recipes, but, in the end, I went with our family favourite: Nigella Lawson’s Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake as the cake base and decided to come up with the icing myself. (I used half of her chocolate icing to sandwich the two cakes together, but you could easily make more of the cookies and cream icing and use that if you prefer). Cookies and Cream Buttercream Icing 300g of Soft Butter 300g of Icing Sugar 80g of White Chocolate, melted 2 Tablespoons of …

Pistachio and Chocolate Cake

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I have a confession to make. Well, not so  much a confession but a disclaimer. This recipe isn’t entirely original and mine. To be honest, I am fed up of seeing people posting their alleged “new recipes” when they have clearly been reworked from someone else’s and have not given them credit. So, I want to be clear, that this cake is a re-working and scaling of other people’s recipes, with a minor element being mine. The sponges that make up this cake are a scaling up of Annie Bell’s Chocolate and Pistachio cake in her Baking Bible.  I have long been a fan of hers since I picked up a very reduced copy of her Gorgeous Cakes in a discount book shop. To this day I have no idea why she isn’t a household name: the woman knows her stuff and her recipes are great. I opted to make my own filling of Pistachio Buttercream, mainly because I had some leftover. But I think it really works and adds to the pistachio flavour. The chocolate …

Not your average Chocolate Orange Cake

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I had been looking forward to making this cake for ages. Cakes like these are all about getting as much of someone’s favourite flavours in, but also about looking spectacular. The cake was for a friend of a friend, who had tried the Pistachio and Rose cake that I made in November of last year, and she wanted me to make the cake for her special celebration. Initially undecided about what kind of cake she wanted, she settled upon chocolate and orange. Instantly I knew which chocolate to use: Green and Black’s Maya Gold. It is dark with gently spiced orange through it. The first thing I did was make some chocolate bark with 200g of Maya Gold, scattering chopped Candied Orange Peel (my new favourite ingredient) and sprinkles across it. I left this to set in a cool place overnight. Then I set about making two batches of Nigella Lawson’s Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake. Whilst they were cooling I made an orange sugar syrup with 5 tablespoons of fresh orange juice, the zest of an orange …

A 40th celebration in Pistachio, Raspberry and Rose

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I shall try to keep this post brief. I should really be doing some of my Sunday chores in the house before heading out galavanting with my daughter to a Christmas craft fayre this afternoon. But I couldn’t wait to share the details of the cake that I made for my friend’s 40th birthday party last night, even if the photos are a bit ropey. I met this particular friend as a Glasgow Baking Club event at least a couple of years ago, and we share a common interest in baking and good food. She is an excellent and adventurous baker and first class cook who understands flavours very well. She wanted someone to make her special cake and charged her husband with the task of organising it with me. The only essential was that it was to be a fondant free zone. Very quickly, we came up with the idea of a Pistachio Cake filled with Raspberry and Rose Italian Meringue Buttercream and decorations of Meringues and Macarons. She had also expressed a desire …

“If this cake was a woman…

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…she’d be a really luscious beauty living it large.” That’s what the lovely Christine, a woman who follows my Facebook page, said about this cake. Another, an old school friend, said, “It’s so sensuous and decadent”. I wasn’t especially going for either of these descriptions or responses when I set out, but I am thrilled that this cake, my mum’s 70th birthday cake, has garnered such praise. All she asked for was a chocolate cake. She didn’t care what it looked like really. She’s not that into aesthetics, and she’s not that into cake or chocolate either. But, despite this, she likes a good chocolate cake, and has a weakness for simple chocolate buttercream (butter, icing sugar and melted dark chocolate). Having been given a total free rein with the design, I went through about ten different ideas and designs. There is so much inspiration out there, especially on Instagram, and especially from cake makers and pastry chefs in Australia. I went back and forth between fondant designs and less formal cakes, adorned with additional …

Blondes do have more fun.

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I think it was a few weeks ago when I first heard about Valrhona’s Blond Dulcey chocolate. Somebody on Instagram was talking about it; raving about its deep and sweet caramel notes. Having used Valrhona’s Caramelia chocolate in a few bakes (and nibbled a few morsels along the way) I was intrigued. Like all Valrhona chocolate, it does not come cheap, and I kept putting off ordering it and trying it out. Then I saw a couple of stunning creations on Instagram that were made with Dulcey and illustrated the rich colour of this confection. The images screamed “eat me!” So I bit the bullet and ordered a 250g bar. I knew what I wanted to make with this caramelised white chocolate in order to test its taste and its qualities in a simple form, and that was to make a ganache. And not in or on a cake but between two macarons. Macarons are the perfect carriage for ganache, creams and sweet butters. I was expecting the ganache to be very sweet (and I …