Semi naked chocolate buttermilk cake with salted caramel buttercream

My first attempt at a naked cake, or rather semi naked! Made for a lovely lady's 50th birthday (in case you didn't suss that from the sparklers!). It's chocolate buttermilk sponge with salted caramel buttercream. I also added some edible silver leaf to bring together the silver cake board and sparklers.

The recipe for the sponge is another Magnolia Bakery one. This time I didn't convert into grams, for no reason other than pure laziness!

Ingredients:-

2 cups plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar - I used caster however, does granulated make any difference here?

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

4 large eggs, at room temperature

6 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method:-

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Grease, lightly flour and line the bottoms of 2 9 inch cake tins with greaseproof paper.

Melt the chocolate,  either over a  double boiler, in the microwave or on the hob and leave to cool.

In a bowl, sift the flour and baking powder together and set aside. Cream together the butter and sugar for about 3 minutes or until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Pour in the chocolate, mixing the batter until well incorporated.

Add the dry ingredients, in three parts, alternating with the buttermilk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until ingredients are incorporated.

Pour the batter into the 2 cake tins and bake for approximately 25-30 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Leave the cakes to cool in the tins for about 10 minutes, before transferring to a cooling rack to cool completely.

To make the buttercream I use my fail safe recipe, adding a couple of tablespoons of salted caramel to taste.

Ingredients:-

250g unsalted butter

500g icing sugar

2 tbs salted caramel ( I used this one)

Assemble your cake, smothering the middle with a generous dollop of the buttercream and a further tablespoon of the salted caramel. Insert all the heart eye emojis!

Frosting this cake couldn't be easier. There's just one layer of buttercream, scraped down thinly. Decorate how you please, I used fresh flowers (the ends of which I covered in cling film) and some edible silver leaf. Then scoff!

Fondant Christmas puddings

I've been taking a Sugarcraft course for the last 5 weeks now. I'm now really into incorporating fondant into my bakes whenever I can.

I made these cute little Christmas pudding fondant cupcake toppers using Renshaw fondant. The pudding part is made using Renshaw's chocolate fondant (tastes delicious!), then all you need is white, green and red. I made the icing blobs on top using a flower cutter and then the holly and berries are simply small balls rolled and molded to shape. I used a cocktail stick pressed into the holly to give a little dimension.

Comment below if you'd like me to do a step by step post, showing all the stages!

Spooky Halloween cupcakes

I had SUCH a blast making these little guys for a friends' little boys' Halloween themed first birthday party!

They are a mix of vanilla, chocolate and red velvet sponges topped with vanilla buttercream. I made all the little fondant toppers by hand, putting my Sugarcraft course into practice! Cute little spiders, ghosts, Frankenstein heads and pumpkins

One of the simplest toppers (bar the sprinkles) was the gravestone. 

It is simply half of a Biscoff biscuit and I wrote RIP on each using Wilton's black decorating icing squeezed into a piping bag fitted with a fine writing tip. Luckily I had both a piping bag and tip to hand because I had thought that the icing would actually come with something to write with - apparently not! You could alternatively use Royal Icing or melted chocolate. I then crumbed some biscuit crumbs on top to act as the "dirt".

The sprinkles are a mixture of some I picked up back in September from TK Maxx, some black sugar sprinkles from Hobbycraft, some chocolate vermicelli sprinkles and popping candy sprinkles both from Sainsburys.

To colour the buttercream and fondant I used the Wilton food colouring gels. 

I hope that this has given you a bit of inspiration to get baking this Halloween!

Mini Nutella baked donuts

Ingredients:-

150g plain flour 

1tsp baking powder

½tsp salt

110g caster sugar

120ml milk

2 large eggs

20g unsalted butter (melted)

1tsp vanilla extract

Frosting:-

2tbs Nutella

12 squares of dark chocolate (sorry this isn't very precise, it was a bit of an experiment!)

Makes 24 mini donuts

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees. You'll need a mini donut pan for these, like this and grease it like your life depends on it otherwise you'll never get these little buggers out of it when baked! I used sunflower oil and brushed it on and particularly in the centers of the donut pan.

Combine all your dry ingredients. Then combine all your wet. Then using a stand mixer (because I'm lazy) pop the dry ingredients in and gradually add the wet while mixing slowly. I found that I didn't need all of the wet to give a good batter, you don't want it too runny, More the consistency of pancake batter.

Then pour or using a teaspoon fill each of the holes, about 3/4 full and pop them in the oven for 8-10 minutes until light golden and coming away from the edges. As soon as you've removed them from the oven, slide a sharp knife around the edges to loosen them, otherwise they will be really awkward to remove, then pop them out using the knife and leave to cool on a rack. They wont take long.

Then add both the Nutella and dark chocolate squares to a small pan and heat gentle on the hob until it resembles a ganache like consistencey. Remove from the heat and dip your mini donuts into the Nutella goodness, pop them back on the cooling rack and then sprinkle on your desired sprinkle and leave to set.

These are best eaten on the day of making. Thankfully that isn't hard because they are so yummy!

Oaty breakfast bars

I can go from one extreme to the other for breakfasts. One day it can be overnight oats with berries, almond milk and a sprinkling of cinnamon or superfood powder, the next it can be a slice of cake! These are the perfect in between for me, they satisfy my sweet tooth, yet have no refined sugar, no butter and the addition of a nut butter gives them a protein boost.

Ingredients:-
225g  porridge oats
50g almonds, skin on
60g mixed seeds
60g raisins
50g Rice Krispies
100g maple syrup
100g peanut or almond butter
125g  honey

Method:-

Lightly grease a 13x9in baking tray and line with cling film.

Pop the oats and almonds in a food processor and blend until fairly well broken down. They wont stick together if they're too chunky.

Then tip into a large bowl then add the seeds, raisins and Rice Krispies and mix.

Heat the maple syrup, peanut/almond butter and honey in a small saucepan over a medium heat until melted together. 

Then pour this over the oat mixture then stir well making sure that all the oats are coated in the syrupy peanut buttery mixture.

Tip into the tin and spread out evenly using a spatula. Lay a sheet of cling film over the top, then press down firmly (I like to use the bottom of a glass to do this) to squash the mixture flat. Leave in the freezer for about an hour to harden.

Remove the top layer of cling film, then tip out onto a board and cut into bars or squares, whichever takes your fancy.

To keep, layer them up between sheets of greaseproof paper and store in a sealed box in the fridge, they get super sticky so the greaseproof paper is a must!

I cant guarantee that these will last for a whole 5 days of breakfasts - that's all I'm saying!