Chocolate Owl Cake

My Mum is really good at birthday cakes. When I was little I had an ice cream cake, treasure chest cake, my name written in Smarties, a teddy bear, a princess cake and more over the years. So for her birthday this year, it was time to return the favour! She requested this owl cake, purely for its cuteness, and my sister and I obliged.It took us a couple of read-through’s of the recipe to fully understand how the cake gets carved up into the adorable owl shape, and I may or may not have cut it wrong initially but that’s nothing a bit of chocolate buttercream gluing couldn’t save! It’s actually not too complicated to make, with a round sponge making the main body of the owl and then a square cake carved up for the rest.

It was really fun to do something different and it felt pretty indulgent – chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream, marzipan, white chocolate buttons, milk chocolate buttons, Cadbury Flake’s and chocolate fingers all together, but hey, when better to indulge then a birthday? Especially when the result is this adorable. I don’t have any pictures of the inside of the cake as it felt a little morbid and also we didn’t use the original recipe. The suggested cake was made with melted chocolate and we wanted it to be a little bit lighter so used the chocolate version of this. The cake was huge when finished, and lasted a good few days, but happily it stayed moist even after being cut into lots of pieces. The link for the original instructions (with helpful step by step photos of the cake carving) is here – enjoy!!

After 10 Chocolates

Doesn’t Christmas seem a whole world away now that spring is evidently on its way? Shortly before Christmas, Jamie Oliver had a festive special on television and one of his ideas, After 10 Chocolates, really stuck out to me. So often with cookery books or shows the same recipes keep appearing over and over again. Chocolate cookies, treacle tart, Victoria sponge, lemon cupcakes – there are endless recipes in nearly every recipe book you buy. The After 10 Chocolates were really refreshing because it was an idea I hadn’t seen before and hopefully its new to you to!

Flavoured sugar soaking before being arranged in stripes The idea is you roll out a long piece of parchment paper – over a metre. Then you get five or six (although you could do as many flavours as you wanted) bowls and add a small amount of demerara sugar to each. Then you flavour each sugar bowl differently with a few drops of extract – I used almond extract, orange blossom water, lemon extract, rose essence and vanilla extract. These form pastes, and you spread these in separate vertical strips down sections of the paper. You can add non sugar flavourings as well – I did a strip of coffee and a strip of salt. It helps to label the different strips before the best part: going crazy drizzling a whole lot of melted dark chocolate all over the sugars. Write your name, write a secret, draw a picture with the chocolate – it all merges together into one long, lacy piece of chocolate with all the different flavours hidden inside…You can either go Russian Roulette with your chocolate – break it all into shards and jumble them up so nobody knows what flavour they’ll get, or keep all your flavours separate. It is so much fun to make – especially when you’re mixing up the sugars and your kitchen suddenly feels like a science laboratory. Favourite flavours in my family were the rose (although be careful not to add too much as it can become overpowering and taste like strong Turkish delight) and the surprise hit – coffee granules. I think this would be a fun, different talking point at a dinner party instead of normal shop bought mints especially as its so easy to do. You can find Jamie’s proper recipe here, enjoy!

Cherry Chocolate Snow Cookies

I’m back! And just in time for Christmas – only two days to go! Cookies come in to their own at Christmas, I think, as part of cookie exchanges, gifts for party hostesses, decorations for the Christmas tree or simply as a last minute and simple festive bake. There are a never ending amount of recipe variations and cookies are a great way to incorporate many Christmassy flavours into one mouthful – such as in these cookies. With chocolate, sweet dried fruit, a snowy icing sugar covering and a little bit of virtue from oats, these make the perfect holiday treat. If you’ve left a present last minute, or have a unexpected visitor now coming for Christmas lunch, these cookies will make the perfect gift – everybody else will be jealous! The dough is really quick to make because you add the egg, butter and sugar all at once, saving you time in the busiest period of the year. The recipe comes from Dan Lepard who originally uses dried cranberries – obviously a very appropriate flavour for Christmas. However we didn’t have any so I used dried sour cherries instead which have the same chew and sour taste and so were just as delicious. The cherries worked nicely with the dark chocolate – all coming together to make a perfect Christmassy bite. Enjoy!