A fondant fancy for people who don’t fancy fondant.

I am not really a fan of icing….at all. I have covered cakes in the most inventive icing I can think of to make sure the cake looks special or pretty, or beautiful, or super fancy, but inevitably I will pull it off and smudge it across the plate, and play with it for a couple of hours. Its so sweet, and causes an ache in my tooth that I feel for days. Unfortunately, it makes baking so much more special, so I just suck it up, make it- then ignore it.

However, I wanted to try something for this blog, something that Mary Berry perfected years ago, but I needed to try and get around the inevitable sweetness and creepy smoothness of fondant icing. So I came up with this instead. And I really like it. A Lot. The sponge is modelled on the HummingBird’s vanilla cupcake mix.

Livi’s Passionfruit and White Chocolate Fancy

Ingredients

Sponge

240g Plain Flour

3 tsp Baking Powder

280g Caster Sugar

80g Butter

3 Eggs

240ml Milk

Tablespoon of Vanilla Essence

Passionfruit Buttercream

3 Passion Fruit

125g Butter

300g Icing Sugar (a bit more just in case)

Marzipan

Coat

600 g White Chocolate

Vegetable Oil

200g Dark Chocolate

Method

Beat together the butter and sugar- it’ll look sandy.

In a separate bowl beat together the eggs, vanilla and milk. Add to the butter and sugar.

Beat in the flour and baking powder.

Pour into a large rectangular roasting tin and bake at 190c until golden and a skewer comes out clean.

Whilst it bakes, make the buttercream.

Mix the butter and the icing sugar together until thick and smooth- add the icing sugar bit by bit, taste testing as you go!

Scoop the insides of the passion fruit out, and add to the buttercream bit by bit. It will separate a bit, add more icing sugar to smooth it out.

When the cake is cooled, use a ruler to cut it into 3 by 3cm squares.

Assembly

Thinly roll out the marzipan.

Cut each square in half horizontally.

Sandwich them together with buttercream.

Dirty ice the outside (smooth the icing around to ensure the crumbs don’t get everywhere.)

Once the whole cube is covered in icing, place a 3x3cm square of marzipan on top .

Melt the white chocolate. Add a few tablespoons of oil to the chocolate until it is thin enough to pour.

The next move is up to you! You can pour over the chocolate, or dip the cakes, or use a spoon. I dipped them using a slotted spatula, then topped them up with a spoon.

Put in the fridge until the chocolate sets.

Melt the dark chocolate and drizzle over.

Woah…mammoth instructions, but just so worth it I promise. Not too sweet and full of gorgeous flavours. Passionfruit in particular is such a fresh and gorgeous taste, and it beats fondant hands down, no contest.

Photos?

I’m going to go and see if one if left from last night. Have a great week!

❤ Stay Unchained

 

Lemon and Lavender

You know the scene in Alan Partridge where he talks about his Toblerone addiction and driving to Dundee in his bare feet?

That is the inspiration for this blog post.  The Dee chocolate problem.

This problem is a strand that snakes through my family tree, skipping some and engulfing others, which is why certain members of my ancestry have a chocolate drawer, a cupboard, a shoebox and why certain family members will drive to a garage at 2am for an M and S chocolate mousse or some 3 for 2 Cadburys. In a truly bizarre coincidence (yeah right) this strand in my family tree is also the strand that suffers severe mouth ulcers.

To put it simply, I don’t trust people who say they don’t have a sweet tooth… I think they’re lying.

A woman at a restaurant I used to work at once took a piece of brown bread from me saying

 ‘oh go on then…I’ll be naughty’

…. and inside…silently… I celebrated my life choice.

BUT HAVE YOU SEEN THE WEATHER? Even the most dedicated chocolate obsessed baker would struggle today. I was given a welcome break from my dissertation in the form of Mary Berry’s ‘Simple Cakes’….thank you Mum. Today was the kind of Cotswold day where the air looks dusty with pollen and I play Johnny Cash over and over so I can pretend I’m a 50’s Southern American country singer too…..(sidetrack….another dream). Chocolate was not on the cards. So I went retro to the Grandmother of English Baking, Mary Lovely Berry. Feeling Lemony and Gingery I tried the Ginger and Treacle Spiced Traybake and had a go at reinventing the lemon cake.

(Ginger and Treacle Spiced Traybake recipe here: http://100cookbooks.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/ginger-and-treacle-spiced-traybake-mary-berry-baking-bible/)

Livi’ Super Easy Lemon Cake with Ginger

6oz caster sugar

6oz butter

3 eggs

6oz plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

grated rind of two lemons (unwaxed)

200g icing sugar

lemon juice

powdered ginger

Cream the butter and sugar by hand or in a food processor, then add the eggs one at a time. Blend in the flour and baking powder. Pour into a square sponge tin. Bake at gas mark 4/5 until a knife plunged into the centre comes out clean.

Mix lemon juice with enough icing sugar to make a opaque white paste and cover the cooled cake.

Mix water and icing sugar to make another opaque paste, and add ginger to taste- either ginger syrup or powder works. Drizzle this is crazy zigzags over the top.

Decorate with stalks of lavender (for summery colours)

This lemony spicy cake is a sure fire cure for a cold or hayfever…………………………………………probably.

 

Stay Unchained ❤