Super Awesome Dairy and Wheat Free Chocolate Cake

Hi Peeps, hope you're all well. This week I'm going to tell you how I made the awesome dairy and wheat free chocolate cake I showed you a few weeks ago. I remade it and discovered that its even nicer with served hot with ice cream. hmmmmmmm. You can find the full recipe here: http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/CHOCOLATE-OLIVE-OIL-CAKE-5551 

This recipe uses ground almonds instead of flour and olive oil instead of butter. You mix up cocoa powder and boiling water and set aside along with a bowl of the ground almonds, salt and bicarb. Then beat together eggs, olive oil and sugar and add the chocolate and dry ingredients slowly. The batter is extremely runny and I would advise using a paper casing in your cake pan if you have one, especially if there's more batter than pan like in my case!

The cake does sink once you take it out of the oven but don't fret, you haven't done anything wrong. Let the cake cool a bit and then gobble it all up!! 

Other bakes this week:

 Fifteens. I discovered these whilst at Uni as one of my flat mates is Northern Irish. She got sent some by her Gran and I fell in love! They're so simple but so delicious. The recipe is: 15 crushed digestives, 15 large chopped marshmallows, 15 chopped glace cherries and enough condensed milk to combine. Roll into a sausage and over some desiccated coconut, chill and slice.  

 Meringues. Classic summery meringues. Good think I baked them in the morning as I didn't think to check how long they took to cook, 2 hours!! It was worth the wait to eat with strawberries and cream. Hello? Eton mess? You're amazing, thanks x

Ribena Ice Lollies. If you've been in England this week you wont be surprised by the fact that its been over 20 degrees and not cloudy!! How out of character, but how awesome. It is perfect weather to put my new lolly moulds I got for my birthday into use. And they're just so cute! :)

Marshmallow Chronicles:

This week's flavour is.. *pause for effect* ..Lemon meringue!! 

Just look at the pie slice made from many squishy pillows of epicness. The bottom layer has fresh lemon juice and zest and some natural lemon flavouring to give it a bit more of a kick. The top layer is the normal vanilla marshmallow. They complement each other perfectly and it actually tastes like the real thing without the pie crust. Simply Divine, definitely a make again. 

Thanks for reading, I'm gonna go out and enjoy this strange English weather.

Toodles,

Somnium x

Cinnamon and Caramel

Hello people of the world wide web. I've not left you hanging for once and actually got this post out the week after the last! Success and all thanks to making a blogger pact to write once a week with a friend (check out her blog which will hopefully grow week by week along with mine: http://thescientistcaptain.wordpress.com/). 

Not much has happened this week baking wise, however I did turn 19!! I celebrated by watching World War Z in the cinema. Good overall zombie film but much better as a book; they changed too many parts for my liking. 

So since the last post I kicked off by cooking up some quick cinnamon swirls.. rolls.. spirals? You know what I mean. I got some left over puff pastry from tea and mixed up equal quantities of butter and sugar into a paste then added what I believed to be copious amounts of cinnamon (I was wrong) and then spread over the pastry, rolled, chilled, sliced, egg glazed and then cooked till golden. They turned out wonderful and were eaten so quickly I didn't have time to get a photo, although they could have been more cinnamonny. 

I also whipped up some salted caramel using sugar, butter, cream and of course, the salt! To make it you're meant to melt the sugar to the right temperature, add in the cubes of butter, whisk, take of the heat and whisk in the cream and salt. Did this happen perfectly for me? Of course not. I managed to start melting the sugar, but chose a pan that was too small so by the time some had got the the right temperature some still hadnt melted and it went over temperature. Then of course the butter took ages to mix in and by the time I added the cream I had to keep it on the heat as it was a gloopy mess. However I carried on and it came out looking and tasting well, tasty! except for a few blobs of solid caramel at the bottom, ah well :)

 

 

Marshmallow Chronicles:

This week on Marshmallow Chronicles I used the above caramel to make caramel marshmallows!!! I whipped up my usual vanilla mallow, removed around a third, mixed with some caramel, then swirled through the rest of the marshmallow to make a marbled-ish effect. The taste was awesome but unfortunately I forgot to add extra gelatin to counteract the extra liquid of the caramel so they were extremely soft and not that good a texture. However, I will learn from my mistake and hopefully remember for future attempts at new flavours! 

Thanks for reading,
Somnium x

Big Catch-Up

Sorry that I have been neglecting you guys! I've really gotten out of writing these but that is ending. From now on I'm going to add a new post every WEEK!  So hope you're looking forward to that. 

This is only going to be a photo journey with what I've done (that I can remember) since my last post. Only just realised that it's been half a year! oops..

One of my friends got me a cake pop maker for Christmas so I made chocolate cake pops and jam filled doughnut balls! 

 

Lovely buttermilk pancakes with ice cream and raspberries = heaven. Baking a milkloaf in a soup tin, why ever not?

 

The bread was nice and soft and a nice one person portion. I also made some honeycomb which I mixed with dark chocolate to make 'Crunchie' cakes.

I've also started my own sourdough starter, called Sammie. Which created this lovely sourdough loaf which I ate with ham and some soup. 

Not too long ago was World Baking Day, so I put away my revision and made something I never had before; Gluten and dairy free chocolate cake! The last is my raspberry ripple ice cream, the first I've ever made with a custard base. 

Before I stop this post I have a new section that is going to be in every post from now one (or so). Its my...

Marshmallow Chronicles!! 

I'll save how I make these for a later date, for now here are the pictures of these squishy pillows of sugar. 

The first are plain vanilla so that I could sort out my base recipe, after some advice from the batch beforehand I included more gelatin which worked out well. The latest ones I made last night, which are raspberry marshmallows with a strawberry powder top, looking very lush! My first gourmet mallow, hopefully ill get more comments when I give them out at the pub tonight!

Love you and leave you for now, but I'll be back soon,

Somnium xx

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas everyone, hope you're enjoying the festive season with lots of mince pies and hot coco next to somewhere warm. Or in my case, eating my cake whilst procrastinating in front of my laptop instead of revising for my exams. At least the cake makes a nice break :)

I decided that this year I was going to have a white Christmas and decorate a completely white cake with white icing. A proper fruit cake covered in marzipan and royal icing; grand indeed. I chose to show the classic sleigh being pulled by reindeer. Here it is!

And here's how it was made:

First I had to make the actual cake. I decided to make a fruit cake, but I didnt have enough time to make a proper Christmas cake, so I cheated and made a simnel cake, ah well :) It taste just as nice, if not nicer!

                    

I then covered it in marzipan which involved me flipping the cake (covered in apricot jam) over into the middle of it in one movement, I prayed to god that my aim would have improved since P.E. My fears were not needed and it worked perfectly.

The next step was to cover it in royal icing, instead of my usual fondant. The making of the royal icing went well given I only had a hand beater. My hopes were high that I would get a perfectly smooth professional finish in only one coat. How wrong I was, but for my first attempt and for only doing one coat I'm fairly happy. 

The next step was planning my decorations that I was to make out of the royal icing. I got out my pen and paper and drew, and drew, and drew. In the end I came up with the following designs that I than drew to nice proportions and then piped. Multiple Times.

All that I had left to do was to assemble the pieces and arrange them on the cake using balls of un-clinging cling film as support. 

                                                  

And there it is, my finished masterpiece. Hope you enjoyed it, and I wish you a very merry christmas!

Bye,

Somnium xx

P.S. So Tasty!!

Boo!

Its Halloween!! (well it was..) The night where all the ghouls and beasties come out to play, the monster under the bed takes a holiday and the skeleton in your cupboard has a welcomed walk. But what every kid wants are sweets! So lets not stop just because we're getting older, we just have to be more creative to satisfy our sweet teeth (tooths?). So here was my plan. Halloween cupcakes to give out to my flatmates, and maybe one extra for me :D

It was the night of the biology deadline, spirits were high, stomachs needed sugar, and I needed to get my bake on! And there in the corner, was a dusty spider web glistening away. Its mesmerizing pattern drawing your eyes closer. You are unwillingly drawn towards it.

And what should you find but a HUGE fuzzy spider! All brown and hairy but definitely not cuddly. You wouldn't want this thing anywhere near you. You can see its eyes taking in your own bedraggled state. You can see its HUNGER and its THIRST. 

You try and run away, you can see its intent, but its too late. Its on your arm. You can feel its many legs unnaturally crawling along. It doesnt stop. It moves to fast to brush it off, scuttling in one direction to the next. Now its on your head, it crawls over your mouth, nose and eyes, never pausing for a second. You can do nothing but remain frozen in fright as it crawls into your ear. You cant see it anymore, it doesnt matter that you can now move, its disappeared. Its gone to your BRAIN!

Its too late, you know its too late. All hope is gone. you sit down in a state if shock. You can imagine it in there, crawling about, munching to its hearts content. You cant take anymore. You collapse into a dead faint. Only to wake up on Halloween morning. It was a dream.

There's all my cupcakes that I made, and hope I didn't scare you too much! Here's to what was hopefully a very spooky sweet filled Halloween.

                                                    

Other Bakes:

CHOCOLATE MOUSTACHE COOKIES!!

Now I must dash..

Somnium x

Flat Bake!!

Hello awesome people! One day I will get into the habit of posting more frequently, until that far away day, here's the latest :)

I've moved into University now (Woooo, Go St. Andrews!! You Rock!!) and therefore have moved into a flat with 4 other wonderful people! It was very nerve wracking moving in but as soon as I got to know my new neighbors all was good. A lot of other things have occurred including, my adoption to an academic family where I have way too many relatives to keep track of, my first kayaking river trip and of course, lots of studying baking!

 ICING MONSTER!!

So the first bake that our flat did were good ol' cupcakes. I baked them in the afternoon once i'd finished my very exhausting day of 3 lectures and then let each of my fellow flatmates have one to decorate themselves. I'm just so kind! One flat mate decided that the icing should be green and then we were off. I explained how to hold the decorating bag and how to pipe and soon they were all better than I was! Here are the finished masterpieces:

Aren't they cute! but we didnt stop there, oh no! The night after a flat mate and I we're sat around the table debating what we should do this fine friday night. We could go out? We could go to the cinema? Instead, of course, we went shopping and then went into a baking frenzy! We had lots of carrots in the fridge needing to be eaten so whats better to do with them than a carrot cake?! Soon enough it was in the oven cooking. But why stop there? so we also made some cinnamon twirls (whirls, swirls, twists?) and cooked them as well. The carrot cake tastes amazing, which made up for it falling apart when we took it out of the tin but we soon glued it together with scrummy icing.

So there you have it. I obviously live in an AMAZING flat were we can make AMAZING bakes in an AMAZING town!

Type soon,

Somnium

xx

P.S. Some pics of St. Andrews cause its so nice looking :)