Chocolate Yule log

First things first, I’ve never rolled up a cake into anything, I’ve never made a Yule log etc. so to say I was pleased with the results of this first attempt is an understatement. I had a sense of achievement that I haven’t had for a while with my baking.

Once again, I turned to Mary Berry for the recipe. I know bang on about her recipes, but hand on heart, I have never had one of her recipes fail on me, the only shortcomings are ones of my own making.
here is the link to the recipe

Now, I lost my bottle, I doubted The Berry. I left it in the oven for five minutes longer than I should have and the result was a lot of cracking when I rolled it up. If only I’d listened and paid heed to the instructions.

Never mind! I rescued it by covering it in chocolatey butter cream and making log type lines with a fork. No one will be any wiser. 🙂 I actually used butter cream in the middle of my log rather than whipped cream.

As a final ‘flourish’ I sprinkled icing sugar snow over the top. I think icing sugar snow is obligatory at this time of year 🙂

Rolling it up wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, I followed the advice and used baking parchment to help roll it up, and my only additional advice would be – once you’ve started, don’t stop! keep rolling until its done and use a long fish slice to lift it, and don’t lift it far! Once it’s on that serving plate it goes no further! Mine was far too fragile to stand much moving. Obviously, if yours doesn’t crack as much, move it anywhere you like!

 

Festive cupcakes 2011

First post in what feels like ages!

I had a dreadful cold that I’m only just shaking off, it put a stop to my cooking activities and I even missed the hen party I was making the party dress for so I haven’t even finished the dress 😦

However, I’m almost back to full fitness so let the festive cooking commence!

I started with Christmas cupcakes. I work in a large science department and I find that Christmas cards are quite wasteful so I’ve made a big batch of cupcakes for the last couple of years.

This year I decided to do a simple design, and as always I used Mary Berry’s cupcake recipe. It’s very simple.

In a bowl put 100g butter, 100g self raising flour, 100g caster sugar, 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 2 eggs (I sometimes add cocoa powder, vanilla essence etc too) mix it all together with an electric whisk until smooth then spoon into cases (you can get about 12 out of this amount of mix). Then bake at 200 degrees for 15 mins.

When the cakes are completely cool I make a thick butter icing, then dye it Christmas green. I use a gel colour for this as I find the colour is more intense. I fill a piping bag and fit it with a star shaped nozzle.

Then I pipe a swirly twirl in the middle of the cake lifting it up and into a point – ta dah! One tiny Christmas tree.

I decorated mine with coloured sugar sprinkles, I wanted to use edible glitter dust but I didn’t have time to get any. Then I give them a dusting of icing sugar for snow and voila! You’re done.

Super easy, super quick and tasty 🙂