Chocolate and oranges

I had this sudden craving for these two flavours together, at the beginning of this week, so purchased three likely looking oranges (and checked our cocoa stores. As always, the level was high. Ha!).

I used this recipe for chocolate orange sticks, as it looked to be the easiest. It was still a special kind of hell (that took hours) on account of how fiddly it was, and I have a new-found respect for my mother's efforts each Christmas as I was growing up.

I also decided to try my hand at chocolate-orange cake, using the juice of my oranges. I altered the chocolate orange muffin recipe over here by substituting one of the eggs with about 180mLs of orange juice (all of what my oranges gave up). I ended up with a kind of fudge-consistency sweet and sharp cake thing. It is very tasty, but I think next time I'll use less juice.

Now, does anyone know what I can do with 2/3 cup sugar syrup and 4 litres of orange water?

Ooh, Crumbs!

I'm not the world's greatest cook, but I do enjoy baking. And after experiencing two amazingly iced first birthday cakes in the past two months I'm feeling like the bar has been set pretty high.
I'm currently googling fondant icing recipes, but I'm also taking great joy in the gorgeousness of the plain old buttercream iced cakes in this flickr stream and this craft blog, that my search threw up.
They look so good it would be a shame to eat them!

Experimental Cake Making

So I've been fiddling with that white cake recipe I posted last month, and come up with a sweet, dense variation that is a little moister than the original recipe. I didn't get a picture of the finished product (with peppermint buttercream icing) because we ate it ALL before I had a chance. It was that good.


ingredients

* 1 cup white sugar
* 125g butter
* 2 eggs
* 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
* 1 1/4 cups plain flour
* 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/2 cup cocoa powder
* dash of milk
* 1/3 cup coca cola or cola drink


what to do
The order seems to make a difference to the final texture and taste of the cake.

* Preheat oven to 180C.
* Cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. essence. You could substitute this for peppermint essence if you like.
* Combine flour, cocoa and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well.
* Stir in the milk and then cola, a dribble at a time, until mixture is smooth. Pour or spoon into a prepared pan.
* Bake for 35 minutes or so.


Peppermint Buttercream Icing
This is adapted from the Buttercream Icing recipe in Jane Price's the home guide to cake decorating.

ingredients
*125g of softened butter, margarine or (in my case) soy-based margarine substitute
*Approx 1 1/2 cups of icing sugar, sifted
*1 teaspoon of peppermint essence
*food colouring

what to do
*Use an electric mixer to beat the butter until it is light and fluffy.
*Slowly add the icing sugar, beating all the while, until it tastes 'right' (ie, like icing, not soy-based margarine substitute)
* add peppermint essence, beat well.
*add food colouring, beat again.
*Smush on cake. I used a spoon and then a butter knife but it's up to you. Really.


EAT THEM!

Adventures in Cooking

As my friend Jenni says "I am NOT a Domestic Goddess".


In my case, people are even less likely to get confused than in hers, as I am also decidedly not a dab hand in the kitchen anyway. So after reading about all the additives in packet cake mixes it was with some nervousness that I resolved to try making cake from scratch from now on.
Australia Day presented the perfect opportunity to test out my caking abilities - with green and gold cakes! So I headed over to trusty Allrecipes and found this easy-peasy white cake mix recipe.


I'm happy to say the cake proved super easy to make, and just over an hour later I had two dozen tiny cupcakes, iced with peppermint butter icing. They were very well received, and went within about ten minutes.



I'm now wondering why on earth I've been using packets all these years - the recipe was just as easy, only required a little more measuring, not really any more time, and tastes so much better! I think I'm sold on the cake-making from scratch from now on, and am going to try tweaking the recipe a bit to make extra moist cake (extra plain yoghurt or sour cream?) or chocolate (choc bits or cocoa powder).