Chocolate Tacos

Posted in Dessert by cakecrumbs

A while ago a friend of mine introduced me to the concept of chocolate avocado mousse. I had my first play with it with this mousse cake. But the moment I heard about it, this is the dessert I instantly conjured in my mind. I’ve just been waiting for the excuse to do it: a wait that’s stretched to well over a year, but the wait was certainly worth it.

I starting having a look around the net for hard-shell chocolate taco recipes, but there really wasn’t one. Most were just covered in chocolate, or were more pancakey. So I had to come up with a way to create a hand chocolate taco shell on my own. There was one obvious solution: chocolate tuiles.

I’ve steered clear of tuiles after my first attempt with them many years ago went horribly. They were sitting in my ‘Too Hard’ basket waiting for the day I became brave enough to try once more. Necessity forced this reunion.

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1Aug2013

Spherical Concentric Layer Cake Tutorial

Posted in Tutorials by cakecrumbs

This tutorial will show you the most basic and least equipment-heavy way of baking the concentric layer cake as seen in both the Earth cake and Jupiter cake. You can stop at half way and just make a hemisphere cake, or make two hemispheres and join them into one as in this video.

How big you make the cake is up to you. For the Earth cake I baked the largest layer in a 2 litre pudding basin. As the Jupiter cake one was for a tute and not for a group of people, I only baked it as big as a 1 litre pudding bowl. There’s no other reason why I baked the sphere smaller – you can make it as big or small as you like.

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27Jul2013

Daring Bakers: Chocolate Marquise

Posted in Contests and Challenges, Dessert by cakecrumbs

I’ve had a slight hiccup with the Jupiter cake tutorial: I have the video done but it just won’t save! All my attempts at troubleshooting haven’t worked so I’m having to sort that out. I’ll have it for you soon!

In lieu of that, it’s time to move on to the Daring Baker’s challenge this month!

This month’s challenge was entitled ‘Eenie Meenie Miney Moe!’ In a celebration of past Daring Baker and Daring Cook challenges, Lisa challenged all of us to search through the Daring Kitchen archives and pick any one we’d like. The real challenge was picking which delicious recipe to try!

I set about trying to find the hardest recipe I could. I was going to challenge myself to the most ludicrous challenge I could find. But I struggled to find something that scared me. The most fearsome challenges I’d heard about from other bakers were things I have or now regularly bake: french macarons, joconde, croquembouche. The desserts I hadn’t tried all used techniques I’m familiar with. It was actually a nice moment to reflect on how far I’ve come and how much I’ve learned over the last 3 years.

I couldn’t find something as challenging as I’d wanted, but there was one…

The chocolate marquise. It was the challenge from May 2011. I’d never heard of it before and it looked divine. But the recipe was massive and had a bunch of pressure points that seemed difficult, so I decided to take it on.

I discovered as I made it that it wasn’t that scary, but it does force you to plan ahead. You need to be organised and to think through the components, particularly during plating. You have to have a plan of attack and stick to it. I’m a hot mess in the kitchen so perhaps this was the biggest challenge of all…

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24Jul2013

Jupiter Structural Layer Cake

Posted in Decorating by cakecrumbs

When I posted the Earth cake, I did not expect it to get anywhere near the amount of attention it received. Getting featured on the Facebook pages Think Geek and I Fucking Love Science was a total highlight of my blogging life. I’m big fans of both pages so it was kind of surreal. A lot of my Zoology graduate mates are also fans of IFLS and you’d often hear conversations in the Masters office beginning with, “Did you see that post by IFLS today?” So I woke up to several of them messaging me about it and we all got super excited over it.

With the exposure those pages brought came a whole lot of people who wanted to know how to make it. I still get a couple of emails a week asking for a recipe. The cake was a total experiment on my part, and not one that went flawlessly. There were many imperfections within the cake and I never share recipes unless I know it’s absolutely tried and true. I’d hate to be responsible for a baking fail simply for giving a botched up recipe. But I also hate letting people down. So I decided to re-visit the concept so I could make a tutorial. That will come later in the week as I’m still editing it. But first, here’s the result of round 2.

One question I got asked a lot was if it was possible to make it a sphere. Absolutely it is. If you can make the hemisphere a sphere is easy. I didn’t want to make another Earth cake as I hate repeating bakes, so I opted to decorate it as something new. I threw around a few ideas ranging from something floral to a giant pokéball, but in the end I just wanted to make another planet.

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18Jul2013

Molten Chocolate and Pear Pudding

Posted in Dessert by cakecrumbs

There’s seldom a wrong time for a molten chocolate pudding. But being in the middle of winter makes it all the more welcome. Winter warmers are the ultimate comfort food. The colder the day, the sweeter the moment.

This molten pudding is combined with one of my favourite fruits: pears. There’s so many varieties available in the fruit shop at the moment, but this is made with the common Packham pear. You can use most any variety available to you as this recipe doesn’t demand a particular flavour profile — chocolate goes with everything!

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17Jul2013

Rhubarb and Nutella Tart

Posted in Dessert by cakecrumbs

Winter has well and truly set in now, which means it’s a perfect time to take advantage of winter produce. I’m very passionate about buying local and about supporting the small fruit and veg shops. On one hand, I hate to put money in the hands of supermarket chains that pay a pittance for produce then raise the prices sky high. I’d much rather support small businesses. But I also love cooking with seasonal produce. It makes you really think about where the food is coming from and understand the growing process. It’s cheaper, tastier, and most importantly for me it has a much lower environmental impact. It’s a win all round.

Cakcrumbs Nutella and Rhubarb Tart

Rhubarb is one of those winter staples we all tend to turn to for dessert in lieu of all those wonderful summer berries. A staple I’d oddly not cooked with before. I grew up in a household of plain eaters, afraid to try anything outside the box they’d made for themselves. Rhubarb was well outside that box. In my adulthood I’m now trying to make up for that by trying all the different things I never got to as a kid. It was high time I knocked this one off the list. I bought a bunch with my weekly shop and settled for making a crumble. Then Cameron’s mum gave him a tart recipe to bring over on the weekend and I was sold.

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11Jul2013

Piranha Plant Pops

Posted in Baked Treats, Decorating by cakecrumbs

This is an idea I’ve been sitting on for quite some time now. As in, well over a year some time now. I’d got components for it) here and there but kept putting it off. I’m procrastinating my procrastibaking. Now there’s a new level of avoidance for me. So yesterday I finally decided that enough was enough and I was going to get this idea out of my head: piranha plant pops!

These iconic little beasties from Mario have been recreated into so many different mediums. From paintings to sculptures to earrings, so many skilled people from all genres of art have paid tribute to these little guys. I wanted to join in and recreate them in a way that makes them almost entirely edible.

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10Jul2013

One-Pot Chocolate Brownies

Posted in Baked Treats, Dessert by cakecrumbs

It’s no secret that I love making endlessly complex desserts. Concoctions that take days to carefully prepare following processes that feel like a labyrinth. But some days, I just feel like making something easy that doesn’t leave the kitchen looking as though a miniature tornado swept through it, y’know?

One -Pot Chocolate Brownies

It’s been ever so long since I’ve made brownies. I have been saying to Cam for years now that I had to make them at some point, but for some reason I always put it off. Well, I needed a little brownie mixture for a separate concoction I was dreaming up so I finally set about making them.

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5Jul2013

Parmesan and Herb Crusted Lamb Rack

Posted in Dinner by cakecrumbs

Some of my favourite meals are ones I get to have very rarely. Lamb seems to feature in quite a few of them. It’s such an expensive meat these days: one a Uni student on a strict budget has to be mindful about adding to the shopping cart.

One blessing, I suppose, is that when I do find an excuse to bring a cut of it home with me you can be sure it’s respected. It won’t turn into the next slap together weeknight meal. It’s reserved for an occasion when I’ve got the time to make it a little more lavish. All the better the savour it.

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3Jul2013

Cinnamon Knots

Posted in Baked Treats by cakecrumbs

Cinnamon is very not so secretly one of my favourite things to cook with. If I can find an excuse to put cinnamon in a thing, there will be cinnamon in the thing. Be it a bowl of yoghurt or just a hot chocolate, a little cinnamon turns it into the most exciting thing in the world.

So it’s no surprise that the simple cinnamon bun is high on my list of loves. Every now and then, I like to try something new with my standard recipe to change it up a little.

Cakecrumbs Cinnamon Knots