Category Archives: Cake

May 15, 2013

Birthday Party!

So, guess what?

You’re right, I have no way to know if you’re guessing or not, and this is a pointless exercise. But still, guess!

That’s right (she said, hearing your guess through the powers of the internet) – it’s my birthday today! Guess what else? Oh OK, we won’t go through that again – it’s my 30th birthday. I have been rocking around on this planet for 30 years and as I type, I’m swinging between casual acceptance, frank disbelief and what can only be described as stomach clenching panic, at a rather alarming rate.

The casual acceptance part is like ‘Yep, it’s just a number. Plus, life is awesome, and you’re not one of those people who’s set any kind of “life targets” that you now feel like you should scrimmage around and get accomplished in the next twenty minutes. Well done. Let’s party.’

The frank disbelief is like ‘Whaaaaaaaaat? I’m just getting started! It can’t possibly have been 30 years.’

The stomach clenching panic is like ‘DEATH IS COMING.’

So, now you know. Your humble writer is 30 years old on this very day, and as you read this she is probably doing some awesome bouldering. If you’re not familiar with it, bouldering is indoor climbing without ropes or helmets or any of that carry on. The G man and I started doing this in the last couple of months, and even though some weeks I’m really scared of climbing to the top of the walls and/or falling off while I’m doing it (which to be honest I think is probably natural, and I try not to give myself a hard time about it), most of the time I love it, and I feel like a spider monkey. The best parts are where you lose your footing and haul yourself back up with your arms – that makes a person feel BADASS, no doubt about it. I’m already getting people to prod the new muscles in my forearms, which I am disproportionately proud of.

Anyway, that is part of my birthday plan. The whole picture looks like this:

10am or thereabouts: wake up without the aid of an alarm clock and relish being at home, in bed, on a work day.

11am: have a long, leisurely shower. Sing ‘Caledonia’, ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ and ‘Life on Mars’ at top of lungs. Sing any other songs that pop into head, also at top of lungs.

12 noon – 1pm: climb to the top of walls and jump back down again like bouldering rock star legend.

2pm: arrive at astonishingly awesome parents’ house, where astonishingly awesome siblings will also be arriving forthwith. Drink bourbon. Laugh until face hurts. Eat food that I have had no hand in preparing, and will have no hand in cleaning up after. Possibly play enthusiastic if amateurish guitar and sing at top of lungs some more.

11pm: arrive back at my flat, escorted by ever-patient G man. Watch a film with dinosaurs or aliens in it. Sleep the sleep of the just.

Doesn’t that sound great?

While I’m off doing that, I thought I’d give you some birthday party pictures to peruse. The week before last, I threw a birthday party for my beloved Thursday Sister Miss Pig. We had banners, paper plates, wine and more snacks than you could shake a stick at – the works. I took a whole bunch of photos, and today I’d like to share them all with you – after this big bunch of words at the top of the post, you deserve them.

Things started off very civilised.

I made some exciting things for us to eat. First of all, blue cheese and walnut sandwich cracker guys:

The recipe for these is here – Stilton and Walnut Crackers. I Scottished it up by using Strathdon Blue for the crackers, and the filling was some Skinny Crowdie with a splash of cream, a sprinkling of blue cheese and some minced spring onion. Delicious.

Then, sticking with the cheese theme, I made these Homemade Goldfish Crackers.

I used a sharp Cornish Cruncher cheese for these – this cheese is great just on its own, but adds a mega flavour boost to the crackers. They didn’t turn out as crunchy as goldfish crackers, instead being more puffy and pastry-ish, but they hit the spot. I also make them in heart and flower shapes, because those are the shapes that Miss Pig likes (and because I don’t have a fish shaped cutter, of course).

The last savoury joy was these sourdough grissini, of which I was extraordinarily proud. They earned me a proposal of sorts when I took the leftovers into work – that good. My sourdough starter Louie is still going strong, almost 18 months on. He did me proud.

There are three kinds of breadstick there – sesame seed, poppy seed and salt, pepper, garlic, chili and fennel. Oh yes. Add a bit of humus and you’re golden. You can find the recipe for Sourdough Grissini on YeastSpotting.

I also made some sweet items for us. First up, a batch of brigadeiros, which you can read a blog post about here. The original recipe is here.

They’re fudgy, chocolatey truffles, which are so much lighter than your usual chocolate truffle while still delivering a rich flavour. They’re a little trickier and more time consuming to make than normal truffles, too, but worth the effort. People make a face when they eat these – a GOOD face.

Next I made some little tartlets which I’m struggling to name – they’re somewhere between jam tarts and meringue pies, except the meringue is soft, more like marshmallow. This is because I freestyled it, by whipping up an unspecified amount of egg white with enough sugar to make a glossy meringue that stood up in peaks. I eyeballed it, and then piped it over the baked jam tarts and used my cook’s blowtorch to cook and colour the surface of them. Then I sort of looked away when someone took the first bite out of one in case the marshmalloweringue exploded everywhere, instantly sticking everything in the room to everything else in the room. When there were no cries of alarm I looked back – turns out that they were soft and pillowy but not excessively sticky and definitely not explosive. Phew – bullet dodged.

The other great thing about these is that they represent my first successful attempt at wheat free pastry – are you excited about this? Because I *definitely* am. I’ll blog it properly on my next attempt, but for now suffice to say it was light and crisp and did not crumble into ash in our mouths, which is always the fear when you make wheat free pastry and biscuits. Also I made the tartlets flower-shaped, and I loved the end result. They’re so pretty! The jam was rhubarb and ginger, from a jar (shoosh, I made the pastry, what more do you want? Jam on it? Oh…).

The piece de resistance was these wee pig cupcakes, which were inspired by an idea in the book Cupcakes, Cookies and Pie – Oh My!

Check out the colour difference in those photos. THE LEVELS! MY EYES!

The ears and noses are mini marshmallows – to do the ears you snip some marshmallows diagonally to form those sweet wee triangles, and then you wedge them into the icing. The cakes are Devil’s Food Cake (my go-to chocolate cake recipe) and the icing is a vanilla buttercream, tinted pink. The eyes are reversed chocolate chips, and the smiles are drawn on with an icing pen after the icing has set a little.

I was heard to remark that I thought they looked a bit like I made them at nursery – I still feel that way. It’s not a criticism, necessarily, but they do look like a project you might do with your kids. However, given that I don’t have any of those, I get to do this fun stuff myself. Miss Pig, as her name suggests, likes pigs – when I happened across the pigs idea in that book, it was a no-brainer.

The night progressed in the way that these nights do…

Wine was consumed…

Sparklers were lit…

Things were knocked over…

We laughed, and listened to 80s tunes, and ate until we couldn’t eat any more. We took photographs of all the food with our phones:

It was a simply lovely party. When everyone went home I had a one-woman dance party round my flat until it was really silly late – and when I say dance party, I really mean it. That thing about dancing like nobody’s watching? That.

Looking over these photos and writing this post was an absolute joy – it’s been a long while since I took on a big kitchen project like this, and having everything work out so successfully was reassuring and pleasing in equal measures.

So, while I’m off enjoying my birthday (30? Really??), I hope you’ve enjoyed checking out our birthday party. I can recommend throwing one, complete with paper cups and a disposable tablecloth. You’ll have a great time.

Baking to excess is optional.

16 comments | tags: birthday cake, birthday party, party food, pigs | posted in Bread, Cake, Chocolates, Confectionery, Dessert, Other people's recipes, Pastry, Snacks

May 8, 2013

Mothers Day High Tea 2013 (and Devilled Quails Eggs)

By Rock Salt

Before I give anyone in the UK a panic attack, this post is late, late, LATE. To those in the US, it is just in time. Everyone else, I have no idea…

I hereby sentence myself to five hundred lines for blogging lateness. Except they’ll have to wait until I’ve written all the other stuff I’ve got lined up, and the delay caused by this will probably incur a further set of lines, which will have to wait… Hm. Perhaps I will be lenient with myself instead.

Anyway, Mothers Day here in the UK (and possibly in other countries) is in March. In our family, we have started a tradition of having a special afternoon or high tea to celebrate – you can see 2011′s here and here and 2012′s here.

I still don’t know where to put the apostrophe. IT’S A DAY OF MOTHERS, OK?

Here is a picture of our table from this year:

We got out the special china again, and proper cloth napkins, and we feasted.

Now, last year I made a big fuss of the devilled eggs, and said I was going to make them loads and bring them back and eat them all the time. This didn’t happen. I didn’t make one single devilled egg until it was time for the next high tea, a year later. I decided to make them a wee bit different, though, and try quails eggs (no apostrophe here, either).

Quails eggs are delicious – I want to get that straight right now. If you get the chance to try them, definitely go for it. I can take or leave a duck egg, but these little blighters are on another level. They are also a bit more work, being smaller and fiddlier (not in the musical sense), but worth it.

Even though that picture is too dark, I really like it. Something about looking at all those freshly-peeled eggs was very satisfying. I tried lightening it and it lost some of its personality. Quails eggs have personality, people. You heard it here first.

Also, the shells are a beautiful colour inside, a really pretty pale blue. I have almost convinced myself that the eggs themselves have a hint, just a tinge, of this blue about them, too. Really, it is lovely to look at.

I used the same recipe to make the devilled quails eggs as I did with the normal eggs last year – mustard, vinegar, minced spring onion, mayonnaise, salt and pepper combine with the egg yolks to make a creamy, savoury, tart filling the you can then pipe back into the hollowed out egg white. Then you sprinkle a bit of paprika over the top – retro is in, you know.

Here they are in their finished form:

Yes, it is more work to make devilled quails eggs, but they were perfect picnic-style food, and tasted perhaps even better than normal devilled eggs.

There was a whole host of other food on offer, of course. Here’s a wee peek at all the different items on the table:

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Miss J (that’s my sister) and I made all the bits and pieces between us – she was responsible for the cream cheese and fruit parcels, which were like superior mince pies, the bagels and the scones – we served the scones with butter, jam and clotted cream, of course. I pitched in with the eggs, heart-shaped mini sponges, caprese skewers with added salami and fairy cakes. It was nice to make a fairy cake instead of a cupcake, for a change, and I loved the little sugar diamonds and pearls! I thought they were suitably pretty for a mum who likes bling and sparkles.

All in all, we had another lovely day, and drank fizzy wine from the china cups, with cocktail umbrellas because I’m really into cocktail umbrellas at the minute. Once you start, it’s hard to stop.

Love you, mum!

5 comments | tags: Mothers Day, party food, picnic | posted in Cake, Snacks

May 1, 2013

Flashback: Death Star Cake

By Rock Salt

Remember this guy?

It’s my Death Star cake from last year – a cake I made in part to indulge my own desire to make a Death Star cake, and in part to raise some money and awareness for the MS Society. Miss L from Too Much TV and Diary of an Office Girl is organising another fundraiser this year, again on May the Fourth (Star Wars day… geddit?) and I will be contributing something rather less imposing, but hopefully still fun and, above all, delicious.

If nothing else, it will be delicious. Repeat until feeling calm. No pressure. Etc.

Pictures to follow.

Now, I am going to ask you, my readers, to help Miss L and I out again this year. Last year, we had some super kind donations from Rock Salt readers – I was really touched that people would be generous enough to make a donation to this important charity. If you would like to contribute a few pounds, you can do so here: https://www.justgiving.com/GeeksFightMSWithCake/

However, if you’re in or around Glasgow, you can do one better than that – you can actually turn up and buy and, crucially, EAT some of the cake that will be available. The event is happening in one of my favourite places in the world, The Flying Duck, this Saturday – here, why don’t you just check out the Facebook event. It begins at 1pm, and after Miss L’s event is over, there will be dancing and, if you’re of the drinking persuasion, drinking. I might be wearing a Jedi cloak.

Please do consider donating, or coming along. I know it would mean a lot to Miss L (and therefore me) personally, and the MS Society as a whole.

Leave a comment | tags: baking, cake decorating, charity, Death Star, May the Fourth, MS Society, Star Wars | posted in Cake

February 11, 2013

Review: The Brownie Post

By Rock Salt

Just so that you know, this is a review of a product of which I was sent a free sample. The opinions in the post are, as ever, mine, and the review is honest. Please note my Patrick Stewart-worthy sentence arrangement in the first line there.

Anna from The Brownie Post got in touch with me recently, to ask if I’d like to try out their lovely brownies by post service. Do you think, from all that you know of me, that I had to think twice about this offer? I certainly did not. Even though her email got lost in among a hundred emails about other things, and so I was extraordinarily late in replying (a week, to be exact), Anna still cheerfully parcelled up some home baked delights and sent them my way.

I describe them as home baked – this is exactly the vibe of The Brownie Post. It’s like getting a care parcel from a favourite aunt, a little hug in a box. A chocolatey, chocolatey hug. I asked to try the gooey double chocolate brownies, you see, and I can confirm that ‘gooey double chocolate brownies’ is not just a clever name. They are soft and fudgey inside, dense and rich and sweet and packed with actual chocolate chunks, as well as the lashings of cocoa throughout. You’ll see from my photos that the ingredients list is pretty reassuring – all things that you’d put into your own brownies, at home, but without any of the dishes to wash afterwards. It’s a win-win situation – and who doesn’t like getting a parcel in the post?

The brownies are available in lots of different flavours (hellloooooooo pecan and bourbon, sour cherry or gooey double choc banana), and with or without gluten so that nobody has to feel left out. They cost just under £13 for a box of six, and this price includes first class post. That’s just over £2 a brownie.

I can recommend The Brownie Post without reservation. I thoroughly enjoyed the brownies, the contact I’ve had with Anna has been friendly and warm while still being professional, and the presentation of the brownies is gorgeous. You can also include a special note to the recipient of the parcel; to quote from TBP website:

If you’re sending the brownies as a gift, not only do they look great, you can also add a short personalized message to the lucky recipient! And if they’re just for you, why not write yourself a wee message saying how brilliant you are!

I think this is a splendid idea. Go ahead and buy yourself a treat today.

6 comments | tags: care parcels. The Brownie Post | posted in Cake

January 16, 2013

Chocolate and Basil Verrine

By Rock Salt

Altogether now – oooooOOOooooh! A verrriiiiiiine!

Yes, that’s right, a verrine. They are hip and happening, unlike the phrase ‘hip and happening’, and for my birthday last year I got a whole book of recipes for terrines and verrines, and two lovely verrine glasses. It’s worth noting that my birthday falls in May, so it took me long enough to get round to posting a verrine here on Rock Salt.

For the uninitiated (as I was, prior to this gift), a verrine is a terrine made in a glass, so you can see all the lovely layers before you devour them. They can be either sweet or savoury, and some of the recipes in my book sound absolutely divine.

I particularly like the wee quiff in this one.

Cut to a few weeks ago, when I was visiting Amy from Wicked Good Travel (that’s right, I’ve had the privilege of actually meeting Amy AND eating some of her delicious cooking). Amy was cooking for us, and I was bringing dessert. It had to be something I could put together the night before, and also something that wouldn’t take too long to make. I managed to tick both of these boxes, though perhaps taking a little more time over the recipe wouldn’t have hurt… As the title of today’s post suggests, I made a chocolate and basil verrine. If you’ve never had chocolate and basil together, I can only recommend that you do so at your earliest convenience.

This dessert consists of three layers – none of them take a long time to make, but of course it’s more of a commitment than your average cake. It’s worth it, though, because these really look like something special. The bottom layer is a chocolate and basil brownie; the middle is a plain chocolate mousse; the top is a tart cheesecake-style mousse. Then you can decorate it with shaved chocolate and glitter and stars and generally go completely over the top.

Here are the recipes for each layer, the amount in which make four desserts in 2 1/2 inch square glasses:

Basil and Chocolate Brownie

1/4 cup cocoa
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 cup golden caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup yoghurt
1 cup milk
1/4 cup basil oil

Heat the oven to 180C.

Whisk all the dry ingredients together thoroughly, making sure to knock any lumps out of the cocoa – if you sift it into the bowl you’ll eliminate most of the lumps ahead of time.

Grease a 7 inch square cake tin, and use a large pinch of the dry ingredients to flour it. This will stop the cake from sticking without leaving any white patches round the outside.

Now whisk together the wet ingredients in a jug, then scrape into the dry ingredients and mix together. Scrape out into the pan and bake for about twenty five minutes. Cool in the tin for ten minutes, then turn out and cool on a rack for as long as you have – ideally for several hours, until completely cool.

Cut out four appropriate shapes and then gently press the brownie into the base of your verrine glasses (or whatever you’re serving the dessert in).

Chocolate Mousse

2 eggs
75g dark chocolate
2 tsp caster sugar
small pinch salt

Did you know that chocolate mousse is really easy to make? I apologise if this is destructive information to you…

Separate the eggs, putting the whites in a medium sized, clean bowl and the yolks in a small dish – or keeping them in the shells, if you can manage it without breaking them. I did, and I felt like a boss, but nobody saw it and I didn’t take a picture. It still happened.

Melt the chocolate in a large bowl, then set aside to cool while you whisk the egg whites.

Add the sugar to the egg whites and whisk (preferably with a hand held mixer, unless you count baking as exercise in which case do it with a balloon whisk and prepare for aching elbows) until you get soft, billowy peaks.

Add the egg yolks to the melted chocolate and stir briskly until combined and glossy. Now add a scoop of the egg whites to the chocolate and fold in carefully. This is called ‘lightening’ the mixture, and makes it easier for you to add the rest of the egg white without deflating it.

Add the rest of the egg whites and fold through until absolutely no streaks remain. Keep the folding motion light and make sure to scrape the bottom and edges of the bowl while you go along.

Once the mousse is completely combined, spoon or pipe it evenly on top of the brownie in your verrines. Place them in the fridge to start setting.

Cheesecake mousse

1 tbsp warm water
1/2 tsp gelatine
heaped 1/4 cup sour cream
50g cream cheese (sorry, I’m mixing my measurements! Bad note taking…)
4 tsp caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract

Put the water in a tiny bowl and sprinkle the gelatine over the top to bloom for five minutes.

Put the other ingredients in a bowl and whisk together until combined.

Take a teaspoon of the sour cream mixture and stir into the gelatine to break it up. Then add the gelatine mix back into the sour cream mix and whisk again until evenly distributed.

Pipe or spoon the cheesecake mousse evenly over the top of the verrines. It is safest to wait until the chocolate mousse is set to try this, but I didn’t wait and still got a good end result. So I guess the question is, do you feel lucky, punk?

Decorate the verrines however you like – I went with crumbled Flake and chocolate and glitter stars. Subtle.

I made these in square bourbon glasses that I had at home. You can make them in anything you fancy, you just have to cut the brownie into whatever shape fits your container. Or you could probably make one big trifle with the layers and serve up into bowls, but you wouldn’t get the nice clean lines that way – the chocolate mousse isn’t robust enough to stand up to slicing and serving. You could also make more of the final cheesecake mousse or replace that layer with some slightly sweetened whipped cream, instead.

This recipe is inspired by this Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake at A Periodic Table – I made this cake for Christmas day, and it was worth all the effort. Try it – you can space the baking out over a couple of days, and the results are absolutely stunning.