Chocolate Owl Cake

My Mum is really good at birthday cakes. When I was little I had an ice cream cake, treasure chest cake, my name written in Smarties, a teddy bear, a princess cake and more over the years. So for her birthday this year, it was time to return the favour! She requested this owl cake, purely for its cuteness, and my sister and I obliged.It took us a couple of read-through’s of the recipe to fully understand how the cake gets carved up into the adorable owl shape, and I may or may not have cut it wrong initially but that’s nothing a bit of chocolate buttercream gluing couldn’t save! It’s actually not too complicated to make, with a round sponge making the main body of the owl and then a square cake carved up for the rest.

It was really fun to do something different and it felt pretty indulgent – chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream, marzipan, white chocolate buttons, milk chocolate buttons, Cadbury Flake’s and chocolate fingers all together, but hey, when better to indulge then a birthday? Especially when the result is this adorable. I don’t have any pictures of the inside of the cake as it felt a little morbid and also we didn’t use the original recipe. The suggested cake was made with melted chocolate and we wanted it to be a little bit lighter so used the chocolate version of this. The cake was huge when finished, and lasted a good few days, but happily it stayed moist even after being cut into lots of pieces. The link for the original instructions (with helpful step by step photos of the cake carving) is here – enjoy!!

After 10 Chocolates

Doesn’t Christmas seem a whole world away now that spring is evidently on its way? Shortly before Christmas, Jamie Oliver had a festive special on television and one of his ideas, After 10 Chocolates, really stuck out to me. So often with cookery books or shows the same recipes keep appearing over and over again. Chocolate cookies, treacle tart, Victoria sponge, lemon cupcakes – there are endless recipes in nearly every recipe book you buy. The After 10 Chocolates were really refreshing because it was an idea I hadn’t seen before and hopefully its new to you to!

Flavoured sugar soaking before being arranged in stripes The idea is you roll out a long piece of parchment paper – over a metre. Then you get five or six (although you could do as many flavours as you wanted) bowls and add a small amount of demerara sugar to each. Then you flavour each sugar bowl differently with a few drops of extract – I used almond extract, orange blossom water, lemon extract, rose essence and vanilla extract. These form pastes, and you spread these in separate vertical strips down sections of the paper. You can add non sugar flavourings as well – I did a strip of coffee and a strip of salt. It helps to label the different strips before the best part: going crazy drizzling a whole lot of melted dark chocolate all over the sugars. Write your name, write a secret, draw a picture with the chocolate – it all merges together into one long, lacy piece of chocolate with all the different flavours hidden inside…You can either go Russian Roulette with your chocolate – break it all into shards and jumble them up so nobody knows what flavour they’ll get, or keep all your flavours separate. It is so much fun to make – especially when you’re mixing up the sugars and your kitchen suddenly feels like a science laboratory. Favourite flavours in my family were the rose (although be careful not to add too much as it can become overpowering and taste like strong Turkish delight) and the surprise hit – coffee granules. I think this would be a fun, different talking point at a dinner party instead of normal shop bought mints especially as its so easy to do. You can find Jamie’s proper recipe here, enjoy!

Cherry Chocolate Snow Cookies

I’m back! And just in time for Christmas – only two days to go! Cookies come in to their own at Christmas, I think, as part of cookie exchanges, gifts for party hostesses, decorations for the Christmas tree or simply as a last minute and simple festive bake. There are a never ending amount of recipe variations and cookies are a great way to incorporate many Christmassy flavours into one mouthful – such as in these cookies. With chocolate, sweet dried fruit, a snowy icing sugar covering and a little bit of virtue from oats, these make the perfect holiday treat. If you’ve left a present last minute, or have a unexpected visitor now coming for Christmas lunch, these cookies will make the perfect gift – everybody else will be jealous! The dough is really quick to make because you add the egg, butter and sugar all at once, saving you time in the busiest period of the year. The recipe comes from Dan Lepard who originally uses dried cranberries – obviously a very appropriate flavour for Christmas. However we didn’t have any so I used dried sour cherries instead which have the same chew and sour taste and so were just as delicious. The cherries worked nicely with the dark chocolate – all coming together to make a perfect Christmassy bite. Enjoy!

Christmas Gifts No2: Orange Chocolate Marzipans

With all the gifts I give to my friends or family, I think its nice to give something a bit different or special. Even if I am giving someone a specific thing off their list, I like to give a small extra gift as a surprise. It just makes present giving more fun. Which is why these little sweets appealed to me – I hadn’t seen a similar recipe before and they looked like they tasted truly delicious. And again, there’s just something in the name that lets you know these are going to be good.

These marzipans are another simple gift – requiring a total of about ten minutes hands on time. You just blend the ingredients to form a soft and squidgy (and full of flavour) marzipan, cut into small circles and let dry for a couple of hours. Then cover each one with a swirl of chocolate and piece of candied peel – if you are a fan of this often-hated treat. What could be easier?
These went down a storm as after-dinner treats in front of Strictly Come Dancing! They have all the perfect textures – soft soft marzipan, light crunch from the chocolate and chew from the candied peel. The orange flavour in the marzipan adds a little bit of Christmas “zing” and you could enhance this with orange flavoured chocolate if you so wished. You will be popular when you make these – find the recipe here.

Christmas Gifts No1: Chocolate Truffles

On the blogs right now, you’d have to have been severely absent not to notice the huge amount of Christmas Gift posts. There are cookies and candy-canes, jams and jellies. Anyone would be overjoyed to receive a scrumptious hamper of goodies, jars of chutney or box of chocolates as a gift from a foodie friend. I haven’t given away homemade Christmas presents before, but for Christmas this year on the blog I thought I’d show some gifts really worth making. I’ve got several goodies coming up but first – chocolate truffles. Chocolate & Cointreau Truffles, to be precise. You can surely tell they are going to taste good when you read the name! But also, these are so simple to make, so you can make lots quickly for every lucky recipient. I can never resist a truffle. For my tenth birthday I held a truffle-making and cookie decorating party – that is the strength of my affection for the truffle. For some reason I do always think of them as a Christmas thing – perhaps because they are so rich – and this is the first time I have made them in a very long time.
From my experiences, I learnt several things about making truffles:

• Heat the cream gently but don’t let it get too hot or your truffles will split.They take practice to get the perfect sphere, but even a misshapen pentagon truffle tastes delicious.
• Cut your chocolate very small (you could even grate it) before pouring the cream over it so that the chocolate melts faster.
• Do not make the truffles too big. Glorious as they are, a plate full of mini truffles looks far nicer than half a plate of huge ones. Plus, they are very rich.
• They only need a light roll in the cocoa-covering – mouthfuls of cocoa powder ruins the effect.
• After making your truffle balls, they need to firm up before you attempt to put them in pretty gold cases.

I made chocolate truffles with a splash of Cointreau and grated zest of an orange. I chose to roll in either cocoa powder or coconut but you could do chopped pistachios or almonds, icing sugar, crushed amaretti biscuits, hundreds and thousands, festive chopped candy-cane or edible glitter – whatever takes your fancy. You can also cover the truffles in melted chocolate (tempered if not coating, there’s not much need if you are) for more richness.
Chocolate Truffles
150ml double cream
150g chocolate
1. Heat the cream gently – either in the microwave for 1.5minutes or over a low heat.
2. Put the chopped chocolate in a bowl and pour over the hot cream. Stir slowly to form a ganache. Cover and chill for a few hours or overnight.
3. Take teaspoons of firm ganache and roll into balls. Set out plates of your chosen coatings, and roll the truffles. Leave for about 30minutes to firm. Place delicately in boxes, cases or on plates. Enjoy!

Digestive Biscuits

Recently my parents went to stay in a beautiful hotel (Le Manoir de Raynaudes) in the tarn region of South-West FranceThey had a lovely time and brought back lots of presents! First up, for me and my sister, some very pretty and totally French chocolate baguettes :)

They also bought home two bags of crackly, nutty, almond tuile biscuits which my Mum adores and were greatly appreciated at my Dad’s work!

Finally, Mummy took her book that Orlando Murrin (the owner of the hotel) has written all the way to France. It is full of recipes for the food that Orlando serves at the hotel. He signed it too!

It is a beautiful book and my parents had a lovely long weekend there. Because they had such a nice time and they told me how good the food was, I decided to recreate some of the yummy food they had had over there back in rainy England...no easy task! They had told me about some delicious digestive biscuits they had been given and as the recipe was in the book, and I adore digestives I chose to give these a go.

Sure enough, they were truly scrumptious! Nutty from the oatmeal, crunchy round the edges and softer in the middle. I like these because they could be used either truly savoury for a cheeseboard, or sweeter by being dipped in chocolate for homemade chocolate digestives!

Here is the recipe – try them and see what you can do! Also, buy the book as there are lots more yummy things in it – I would like to try the mint truffles next :)

Home-made digestives, from A Table In The Tarn by Orlando Murrin

Makes 15-30, depending on size

100 medium oatmeal or rolled oats
100g wholemeal flour
45g brow sugar
75g butter
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
3-4tbsp milk
squeeze of lemon juice

1. Process the first 3 ingredients until well combined.(Oatmeal, brown sugar, wholemeal flour)

1. Add the butter, bicarb and salt, then most of the milk and lemon juice. Whizz until the mixture comes together, adding the remaining milk if necessary. The dough will be slightly tacky.
2. Roll out on a floured surface to biscuit thickness and stamp out rounds of whatever size you fancy. Making them small and elegant is harder work than making large ones. Prick once or twice decoratively with a fork.
3. Bake at 200’C (190’Fan) for 10-12 minutes, till just starting to go brown at the edges, not all over. Smaller ones might take less time.

Veryy yummy! Oh, whilst researching for a fun topic for me and Chloe to do as a form assembly, I stumbled upon a great website with a National Food Day for every single day of the year, as well as Food Weeks and months. Every time I post I shall update you on that days day (if you are still following!) although I warn you some are extremely random! Today, October 21st, is Apple Day and National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day! October is the month of many random foods, including National Cookie Month – very appropriate considering my last post! Also, this week is Chicken Soup for the Soul Week!