My First Paid Gig! Wedding Cake.

I’m going to start with a back story, just to get you in the loop. My friend’s dad does wedding ceremonies. They’re usually relatively small and independent, but really beautiful too. One day he asked me and his 2 daughters if we wanted to make a cake for this wedding. The only brief was that they wanted it to be chocolate. Perfect! 

  

Needless to say, it took us quite a while to make! We decided to go for a devil’s food chocolate cake. They had asked for chocolate after all. It took us a little bit longer to decide on the style, but classics win every time, so a three tiered cake it was. Not the most innovative idea anyone has ever had but this really couldn’t be a flop. This cake really is my pride and joy! Me and my friends just sat staring at it for ages when it was finally finished, which happened to be about 6 hours after we started!

 

The play mobile pieces on the top were a genius idea of my friend’s 10 year old sister. She even matched the hair colours on the dolls to the ones of the bride and groom! The only slight problem was the eye-patch, we’re just hoping that the groom didn’t notice. 🙂

 

 

This cake has a secret… Do you want to know what it is? To make this cake extra special and extra tall we decided that instead of 3 layers of cake we’d make 6. So in each tier of the cake there happens to be 2 devils food cakes separated by a thin layer of vanilla buttercream icing. I hope the wedding party didn’t die of a heart attack after all the butter that went in.

 

 

I reckon that the hardest part of this cake was the icing. The crumb proof layer was one of the most nerve wracking things I’ve ever done! But we managed it! The cake stayed in one piece.

One of the greatest things about this cake is that it’s super easy. It’s just an easy peasy devils food chocolate cake recipe:

http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/DEVILS-FOOD-CAKE-5310

I got mine off Nigella Lawson.

Topped off with an even easy peasier buttercream icing:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/quick-vanilla-buttercream-frosting-recipe.html

To this I just added a small amount of cocoa powder until it reached the colour I wanted. And voila! Cake made!

 

 

Now, I know in the title I said paid gig. I wasn’t lying, it was paid. Even if it was only 6 euro once we’d paid for food and divided it up between ourselves. 🙂 But it was a million times worth the effort.

 

‘Till next time my friends. 

xxx

 

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Strawberry Strawberry Cupcakes!

Summer… Fruit… STRAWBERRIES!!!

These are the perfect summer party cupcakes. Enjoyable for people of almost any age and best heaped with sprinkles! 

Being the amateur baker that I am I hadn’t actually iced cupcakes before. Ever. Shock horror, I know. It’s unacceptable. So please excuse the lopsidedness of the icing on my cupcakes.

You wouldn’t believe how fun it is though! I got a bit carried away and used almost EVERY single head in the the bag. The amount of wash up was absolutely humongous but 100% worth it. My hands were covered in icing, I had used up almost every single spoon in the house, there was icing on the floor, on my new leather boots (a lot of talcom powder was in order for that one) and there was even some in my hair! But by the end of my icing session those cupcakes were darn freezing! :p

And being the food nerd that I am I of course went as far as to make little chocolate decorations for the tops of the cakes. Using a plastic bag to pipe! (We didn’t have a nozzle big enough!).

 

These cupcakes were sweet as icing sugar! And had the most amazing strawberry pieces scattered the whole way through the cupcake. They are possibly the moistest baked goods I have ever eaten aside from my favourite carrot cake! Which is a given, seeing as they’re from… drumroll please….. SALLY’S BAKING ADDICTION! (And just so you know, I don’t always bake off SBA. Just yesterday I made Brown Eyed Baker’s Mocha Cupcakes with Espresso Buttercream Frosting. They were incredible. So incredible even that I didn’t have a chance to take a picture of a single one!)

Here’s the link: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/01/26/fresh-strawberry-cupcakes/

And my favourite part…. Wait for it…. : They are completely naturally coloured. The pink icing on the top is all freshly squeezed strawberry juice!

The recipe I used was this one:

 http://addapinch.com/cooking/2013/06/20/strawberry-buttercream-frosting-recipe/

I replaced the syrup with the strawberry juice and used normal milk, not cream. It’s fattening enough as it is!

So in conclusion. For a summer snack, tea, dessert, party or almost anything else. Bake them. Bake them I tell you!

Hope you’re enjoying the summer.

xxxxx

 

Incredible low fat Brownies. Nothing more needs be said!

Is this my first post on them? If it is, I am so sorry I haven’t gotten here sooner. You deserve more. :p
Though it is the middle of summer and I should really mention more season friendly recipes that I’ve baked, I’m getting a brownie itch today, and I just have to scratch it!

 

First of all, I have to mention, often when people see the words low and fat together they immediately scroll off to find a more taste-bud friendly recipe. DON’T. This is the densest, fudgiest and richest brownie recipe that I’ve ever tasted. And it’s also the healthiest. In the original recipe there’s no white flour, no chocolate and no butter. Have you ever heard such good news?

What these brownies do have are rolled oats, cocoa powder, yogurt and some optional peanut-butter! They’re perfect for breakfast before your morning jog, the jog being optional in this case!

I did do a few things slightly differently from the original recipe. The oats weren’t a priority for me as I don’t jog so when I baked them I used half oats and half white flour, my blender is non-existant so I had to use a smoothie maker to turn them into a flour. Not ideal! I gave up half way, why persevere?!

I also decided to omit the peanut-butter swirls on the top, calories? No… Well, maybe!

But to me, I think if I had added it I would have made them almost too rich for me to eat. I shared them out with other people as I couldn’t manage more than 2. Those 2 were worth the slight nausea!

It’s midsummer here in Ireland so I should really bake something befitting to the weather but when brownies call… So thanks for reading and here’s the link: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2012/06/10/skinny-peanut-butter-swirl-brownies/

Hope you enjoy!

XXXXXXX

 

 

 

 

 

Summer, and special chocolate cookies…

The summer it is!

Alas, at last it has arrived, those long endless days and those months that seem to go on and on forever. We no longer live for the days during which the sun beats down on us as we cool ourselves off in the ocean, we are in those days!

So because of my truly contradictory nature and the fact that as I’m cycling up to 10 miles a day I decided to go for something a bit unorthodox but never unwelcome for this time of year. Chocolate!

COOKIES!

And now you ask… ‘What’s so special about these cookies? They look pretty ordinary to me.’

And with a smile I reply ‘They are protein packed, on the cookie scale are rather healthy and are still absolutely delicious!’

Now do you see why they’re special? They taste like some sort of incredible fudge, except they’re cookies!

The secret? No flour, lots of peanut-butter. I must admit, I was terrified when making the dough. When you find yourself scooping almost a WHOLE JAR of peanut-butter into a batch of cookies you can’t judge me for beginning to freak! But I had already gotten myself in too deep, I had to keep going. And anyways I thought, I’m giving most of the batch away.  Well, about this much of the batch!

They’re like some funny little army getting ready to march out!!!

These cookies are full of cocoa. I added chocolate chips instead of the recommended peanut-butter chips which was perfect for me because I have a really sweet tooth and though these cookies are absolutely out of this world they would be even better suited to someone who rathers dark chocolate to milk as they had that same slightly bitter tang to them. But regardless, everyone adored them!

They would also be perfect to fuel a morning run, I know, chocolate for breakfast is frowned upon by a lot of people but with the amount of protein packed peanuts in this recipe it would keep you fueled for hours!

And an extra bonus is that they’re gluten free!

So here’s a link to the recipe, SBA (yes I have started abbreviating it! :)) if you’re interested. Go on, add these to your get in shape for summer (or during summer) routine!

http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2014/06/06/flourless-peanut-butter-brownie-cookies/

Hope you enjoy!

xxxx