Chocolate Hedgehog Hedgehogs

In Australia, a hedgehog can mean the animal or the treat. Today, I decided to combine the two of them and make hedgehog hedgehogs!

Hedgehog Hedgehogs

Ingredients
250g plain biscuits, coarsely crushed
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
100g dark chocolate
100g butter
1 tsbp golden syrup
1 egg

100g chocolate (for dipping)
100g chocolate chips (for decoration)
Black piping gel
Nuts

Method

1. Combine all the ingredients of the first list together.
2. Mold into egg shaped pieces and leave in refrigerator to set for an hour or two or until firm.
3. Dip pieces into dark chocolate and decorate with chocolate chips, black piping gel and nuts.

Below is my rough sketch – originally i was going to do a huge one made out of Hershey’s Kisses as well but decided against it due to the sheer amount of chocolate I would have to consume. Might be cool for one of you guys to make it instead though!

Flourless Chocolate Cake

Hello everyone! It has been a long time. Forgive me if my projects are less dramatic over the next coming months – I’m trying to make things that are less time consuming from now on.

My current challenge is to clear out my pantry that’s bursting with ingredients that I have acquired over the years and the first item to go was almond meal.

I had a massive stockpile of almond meal because I went through a macaron phase at one point (from now on I’ll just buy them, thank you very much!)

Anyway, we had friends over for dinner a couple of weeks back and I decided to go for a flourless chocolate cake – recipe from here. The only difference is that I substituted the hazelnut meal with almond meal.

This cake keeps really moist and has an amazing texture. Definitely worth trying out the recipe.

Raspberry Jam Drops

I have an obsessive personality, and lately I have been micromanaging my apartment into the perfect blend of ‘accidental’ chic and purposeful perfection.

As a break from all of that, I decided to hop into the kitchen to make some jam drops.

First step is to gather up all the ingredients. Story about the butter – Simon Johnson left Echire butter that was 2 days before the expiry date on their shelves and we bought some unknowingly. As an apology they gave us a block of Lescure for free because there wasn’t any Echire left. Not complaining!

Vanilla from Heilala – supposedly award winning and whatnot. I haven’t tried out enough pastes to make a proper comment but seems good so far.

Also, in line with the chia craze, I got a bottle of raspberry jam with chia from Henry Jones & Co. Yes – I’m always searching for the new and novel. That makes this recipe vaguely healthy, no?

Ingredients (makes 15)

60g butter
40g icing sugar
80g self-raising flour
1 egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste
Raspberry jam

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160 Celcius (fan-forced).
2. Cream butter and sugar together.
3. Add egg yolk, flour and vanilla paste and combine.
4. Roll into small balls and press a circle into the center.
5. Spoon raspberry jam into the centers.
6. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden.

 

Photography

Lens: 60mm 2.8f
Processing: Lightroom 4
Props: Brown cardboard, wooden basket, baking paper and jam jar on a white stool

Christmas Swiss Roll

I am alive!

I am sorry I have not been posting – I went away to Europe (thoroughly enjoyed myself – I now want to move to Germany for 6 months if I have the chance!) and have just been so busy catching up with everything when I got back that I just did not have the time or energy to come up with any inspiration. Things have changed though and today I finally got round to making something.

To be honest, I am not the most talented when it comes to Swiss rolls – more often than not they become cake sandwiches. This was a slightly fancier version as well as I had decided to pipe holly leaves and cranberries as a motif.

Recipe as follows:

Ingredients and equipment

2 eggs
110g optima flour (an Asian sponge cake mix)
15ml water
1 tsp vanilla essence
30g butter, melted
Food colouring of choice
20cm x 30cm baking pan
Silicone coated baking paper
Disposable piping bags

Method

1. Line tin with silicone coated baking paper.
2. Whisk eggs, flour, water and vanilla together until light in colour and double in volume – this may take up to 5-10 minutes depending on the speed of your mixer.
3. Add melted butter to the mixture and fold in until full incorporated.
4. Remove a tablespoon of mixture and add colour as desired – in my case I made one tablespoon red and the other green. Place coloured mixture into piping bags.
5. Pipe patterns as desired onto the baking paper in the tin. Place in freezer until fully set (1-2 hours).
6. Preheat oven to 160°C (fan-forced).
7. Pour remaining batter over frozen pattern and even out with spatula. Bake for 8-10 minutes.
8. Remove from oven and roll. Fill with desired filling.

Tip: Roll the cake as soon as it is out of the oven to prevent cracks from forming and make sure the cake is not over baked.

Just a simple project – hopefully I get into more complex things in the near future but for now – that’s it! Glad to be back.

Chocolate Butterfly Tutorial

Guess what? I finally bought myself a camera after years of sponging off my housemate!

To celebrate the fact that it can record HD videos, I decided to make a chocolate butterfly tutorial. I have actually made a template for it in a previous post (Butterfly Chocolate Tart) but I figured this time I’d actually do a tutorial on it as well! You can probably tell I am quite the amateur (half the video was out of focus… oops!) but hopefully they get better as I go along.

The chocolate cakes were tasty – soft on the inside with a slightly crunchy texture on the outside. The addition ganache made everything taste even better – it always does!

Recipe as follows:

Mini Butterfly Chocolate Cakes

Chocolate Sponge Cake

Ingredients (makes 6 small cakes)

1 egg
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup self raising flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1/4 cup butter, melted
Cooking spray

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C (fan-forced).
2. Grease baking tin with cooking spray.
3. Whisk egg and sugar together until light in colour and thickened in texture (3-5 minutes).
4. Fold in flour and cocoa powder.
5. Pour in butter and fold until incorporated.
6. Place mixture into a piping bag and pipe into cupcake pan or mini bundt tins.
7. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until cakes spring back when pressed.

Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients

30g dark chocolate
50ml cream

Method

1. Place chocolate and cream in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 20 seconds.
2. Remove from microwave and stir. Repeat step 1 until mixture is smooth and shiny.

Chocolate Butterfly

For this project, you will need a Butterfly Template (click on link to acquire).

Tips on how to melt chocolate easily also available if required.

Video tutorial link at the top of this page.

Assembly

1. Pour ganache over chocolate cakes.
2. Place completed butterfly on cake.

Photography

Above is my photography set up for this project. It was a frantic race against the sunset and I have to say the good news about that is that I’m forced to take a photograph – any photograph – instead of wasting half an hour rearranging various things. The background is a very well worn baking sheet, which you will all be familiar with by now. The light is coming in from the right hand side of the photograph.

Settings

Lens: 60mm 2.8f
ISO: 100
f: 2.8
Photo editing: Lightroom 4

I’m actually getting very sick of my props but I just have not had the time to go and acquire more!

Am hoping to make more video tutorials from now on so if you are interested in that sort of a thing, subscribe to my YouTube channel. I’m pretty excited about it all.

How To: Make Crunchy Tooth-Friendly Biscotti

So you made a batch of biscotti, attempted to bite into them and failed because they were rock hard.

Instead, you succeeded in breaking a tooth in the process and now you need to schedule an appointment with me. Or your local dentist. Yes – I am a dentist in real life. Of all the things in the world!

In case you’re shaking your head at the high sugar content of my blog posts in direct juxtaposition to my real life profession, it’s all good – looking at sugary food never hurt anyone. 😉

Anyway, I thought I’d share my favourite biscotti recipe that is crunchy but not tooth cracking-ly so. It is still nice and crispy but breaks up easily for effortless chewing. Also, it uses whole eggs, which means I am not left with a stray egg yolk wandering around aimlessly in the fridge for a week.

DISCLAIMER: If you do break a tooth eating these I am not liable – you probably needed a new filling anyway if that happened!

Double Chocolate Walnut Biscotti

Biscotti Recipe

Ingredients

1/3 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1 cup self raising flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1/3 cup chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160° Celcius (fan-forced).
2. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3. Add egg and beat until well combined.
4. Stir in all other ingredients thoroughly, forming a stiff dough.
5. Form dough into a log roughly 12 inches long and 2 inches wide and place on baking tray covered with a sheet of baking paper.
6. Bake for 35 minutes.
7. Remove from oven and leave to cool for 15 minutes. Wrap log in cling wrap and leave in freezer for a few hours, preferably overnight.
8. Take frozen log out of freezer and slice with a serrated knife diagonally into preferred thickness.
9. Arrange biscotti slices flat on baking trays and bake at the same oven settings for about 10-15 minutes, or until biscotti is crisp.

Note: This recipe makes a biscotti dough that does crumble a little more easily than other recipes – which may seem like a bit of a pain. However, it is well worth the effort for the texture and flavour of the end result!

Tips for Perfect Biscotti

Cream Butter And Sugar Really Well

This is essential because it is a major contributor to the non rock-hard texture I was talking about. To be honest with you, it was a good couple of months into baking before I truly understood what creaming entailed. I will be dedicating an entire post to this at some stage in the future but for today’s exercise, make sure the mixture has:

• lightened in colour – it will no longer be yellowish, but rather a light shade of well… cream.
• increased in volume

If it hasn’t done the above two things – keep on creaming. It’s still not there yet!

Ensure Space Between Logs Is Adequate

So you doubled up the recipe and decided you want to have two logs on the same baking tray because life is too short to prepare a second one. If you have a large tray that’s all fine and dandy. Otherwise, unless you want a large puddle of dough in the middle of the pan, it will be wise to keep them on separate trays. This may have come from personal experience. This rule applies to all cookies that have the potential to spread.

Freeze Logs Of Dough Prior to Slicing

Does it make your job harder because the dough is frozen? Yes, and no. Yes because it is firmer and therefore requires more force, but no because it doesn’t smoosh on itself and the nuts don’t fall out of the dough! Plus, you’ll get beautiful clean slices at the end of the exercise. And stronger and more muscle tone in your arms. So I tell myself. Interested in clean slices in other baked goods? Read How To: Cut Brownies.

Also, if you’re lazy just make your biscotti nice and thick and call them rustic, rather than thin delicate slivers.

Photography

Set up for both of the photographs were on a neutral sheet of paper (as you can see, I have an entire roll of it!) on my trusty piano stool. Shot in natural daylight. The aperture was set at 4.5 for the thin biscotti and 2.8 for the thick ones and shot with a 60mm macro lens.

 

And that’s it! What is your preference – thick or thin biscotti? Let me know in the comments. I ate the entire batch in 4 days and have concluded I prefer the thick ones better but the thinner ones are prettier and more dainty.

How To: Cut Brownies

So you’ve baked a batch of brownies, thought they looked amazing, sliced them and ended up with…

Mushed up pieces that ressembled squares rather than actual nicely cut slabs. Like these:

Brownies that I baked in 2011. Sad and uncrisp.

Oh well – you and your lucky friends and family eat them all anyway. However, if the appearance of them irked you, perhaps this article may come like a knight in shining armour to your kitchen to rescue your beautiful brownie slab before they face the kitchen knife.

This is a particularly common problem if you, like me, love chewy moist brownies rather than the firmer cake-y variety. I have baked many a batch of brownies in my lifetime and today I thought I’d share with you my personal experiences with them and how I finally got my act together and learned how to cut brownies properly. It’s really not that difficult.  All it takes is some patience and planning. Yes – I said patience and brownies in the same paragraph. It’s okay – you can get through this!

Still reading? Great!

Alright, let’s start with baking the brownies! This happens to be my favourite brownie recipe of all time – moist, fudgy, extremely chocolate-y and extremely simple to make. I managed to get a few sequential photos (Hurrah! Gave myself a pat on the back for remembering). In case you’re wondering, the chocolate I’ve used is Lindt Dark Bittersweet Picolli 58% – I bought a 2.5kg bag so that’s going to be the chocolate of choice for the foreseeable future!

Homemade Brownies

Ingredients

125g butter, melted
250g caster sugar
20g plain flour
30g cocoa powder
125g dark chocolate, chopped
60g nuts of choice (walnuts in my case), chopped
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C (fan forced). Line a 7×7 inch tin with greaseproof paper.
2. Place all ingredients listed into a bowl and mix thoroughly.
3. Pour into prepared tin and bake for approximately 40 minutes or until centre is still slightly unset but sides are firm.
4. Put into refrigeration to chill for at least 2-3 hours before slicing.

Important Note: Do not overbake – the point of this recipe is that it produces a fudgy chewy brownie rather than a hard firm one.

Alright. You have brownies now. Let’s get onto the slicing and subsequently, the eating! Listed below are my personal tips – I hope they are helpful to you.

Top 5 Tips on Cutting Brownies

1. Chill Brownies For At Least 2-3 Hours Before Cutting

I know – you want to eat the brownies right now. But chilling the brownies is an essential step if you would like crisp, sharp cuts as it firms up the brownies enough to not buckle under the knife. Leaving it in the fridge will suffice but for really, really sharp cuts, the freezer is a great option too. However, it can get it a little too firm so you might have to keep an eye on it if you choose that route.

2. Ensure Knife is at 90° Angle to Brownie Surface

Before making any cuts, make sure that the knife is as close to 90° as you can. This is to ensure that you get beautiful cuts that are at exact right angles, rather than creating undercuts or tapers. You will notice that I got a little too eager and unintentionally tapered the edge of the top brownie in the photograph at the top of this blog post. To ensure this doesn’t happen to your brownie, line the knife up carefully.

3. Use a Serrated Knife

I have experimented with a few knives and have concluded that a serrated knife creates the best and cleanest cut. In case you were wondering what knife I use, I have a Wusthof Classic Bread Knife which has served me well over the years. In case you were wondering even more – my 2011 brownie and the cover photo were cut with the exact same knife, which suggests that perhaps the other steps in this write up are more crucial.

4. Use Sawing Action When Cutting

Ensure that you use a gentle sawing motion when cutting the brownie – this ensures that the serrated edge of the knife does not leave an unsightly wavy indentation on the surface of your brownie. I also like to slide the blade backwards at the end of the cutting motion right against the brownie surface to kinda smooth of the edges when I finish the slice.

5. Clean The Knife After Each Cut

After each cut, you will notice that the knife would have picked up some crumbs or gooey bits (especially with moister brownies). Wipe them off with a paper towel and rinse the knife under hot water and dry off before making the next cut. This will eliminate crumbs from sticking onto the top of the brownie or the next cutting surface.

And there you have it! Please comment if you have any other tips that you would like to share with everyone.

Cupcake Decorating Idea: Daisy Bee Cupcakes

If you live in Australia and you head to your local Coles or Woolworths, you will notice one thing – they do not sell ordinary plain cupcake liners. You have to commit to a damask pack or a multi-coloured pack – no ifs or buts.

At first that irritated me – I prefer to work with neutral wrappers e.g. white, black, brown. However, they seem to be here to stay so I decided to try to go with it rather than fight it!

I was pleased with results of this one – a forest green wrapper topped with a pastel green glaze, decorated with bees and daisies.

I went for lemon flavoured cupcakes this time – topped with a very simple lemon glaze. Scroll down for the recipe. It is divided into 4 parts – the cupcake, glaze, decorations and lastly, the assembly.

 

Daisy Bee Cupcakes

 

Cupcake

(makes 9 cupcakes)

Ingredients

100g butter, room temperature
100g caster sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
2 eggs
100g self raising flour

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160° Celcius (fan forced).
2. Cream butter and sugar together until light in colour and fluffy (about 5 minutes).
3. Add zest and eggs and mix until combined. Mixture may look slightly curdled but nothing to worry about.
4. Add flour and mix until well incorporated. Pour batter into a piping bag.
5. Pipe mixture into cupcake liners in a cupcake pan (fill 2/3rds of the way up).
6. Bake in oven for 18-20 minutes or until cupcake springs back when pressed gently.

Glaze

Ingredients

Juice from half a lemon
100g icing mixture
Food colouring, if desired

Method

1. Mix all ingredients together to form a smooth glaze.
2. Add more icing sugar or lemon juice depending on the consistency desired.

Note: Glaze will form a dry surface but will not be completely set underneath.

Fondant Decorations

The fondant decorations for these cupcakes have their own dedicated posts, as linked below:

Daisy Flower Tutorial
Bumble Bee Tutorial

Assembly

1. Pour glaze onto cupcakes carefully, using a skewer to move the glaze into the corners of the liner. Leave to set.
2. Press daisy into the centre of the cupcake.
3. Stick floral wire into the cupcake in desired spot, making sure that it is fully embedded and right down to the base of the cupcake for maximum support.

That’s it! Let me know what you think and if you have any requests or suggestions in terms of what you would like me to make next. 

Caramel Spiral Cupcakes

I have always been intrigued by sugar work, and recently I decided to make some cupcakes with caramelized walnut spiral toppers.

I make chocolate cupcakes on a fairly regular basis. I have been experimenting with a few recipes and I have finally come up with a fairly simple recipe that does not require milk. Milk is not a staple ingredient in my household so I find it irksome to have to go out and buy a carton and end up pouring the remainder down the sink 2 weeks later because nobody drinks it.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun making these – not too time consuming but quite striking in appearance. Recipe has been divided into 3 parts – the cupcake, chocolate buttercream and the walnut caramel spirals.

 

Chocolate Cupcakes

(makes 12-16 cupcakes or 1 6 inch cake)

Ingredients

LIST A

125g dark chocolate, chopped
125ml water
140g brown sugar

LIST B

100g butter, room temperature
140g brown sugar
2 eggs
180g self raising flour
10g cocoa powder

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160°C (fan forced).
2. Combine all ingredients from List A in a microwave safe bowl and cook in 30 second intervals until ingredients are melted, stirring in between each interval. Mixture may look like it has split slightly but that is okay. Set aside.
3. Working off the ingredients from List B, cream butter and sugar in a food processor until light and fluffy.
4. Add eggs one at a time, beating and scraping the sides of the bowl down between each addition.
5. Pour warm mixture prepared from List A into the bowl and mix. Add self-raising flour and cocoa powder and mix until well combined. Mixture will be fairly runny.
6. Spoon into cupcake liners and bake for about 20 minutes or until skewer comes out clean when pierced through the middle of the cupcake. Leave to cool completely before decorating.

Chocolate Buttercream

Ingredients

150g butter, softened
150g icing sugar
50g dark chocolate, melted (my favourite method for melting chocolate outlined here)

Method

1. Cream butter and sugar together in mixer until light and fluffy.
2. Pour melted chocolate in and mix until well incorporated.

Caramelized Walnut Spirals

 

Ingredients and Equipment

50g sugar
25ml water
Walnuts, halved
Toothpicks or skewers
Cylindrical rod (I used my sharpening steel but you can use anything from whisk or spoon handles – whatever you can find in your kitchen)
Cooking oil spray

Method

1. Attach walnuts to toothpicks.
2. Spray some cooking oil onto cylindrical rod to facilitate easy removal of spirals.
3. Pour sugar and water into a small pot and heat, swirling the pot around gently every so often. Once it turns a lovely caramel colour, turn off the heat.
4. Leave to cool for a while, checking intermittently by dipping the a walnut into the mixture and lifting it out. Caramel is ready to be spun when a thick thread of caramel drips off the walnut rather than small drops. This may take some experimenting.
5. Lift walnut out and wrap the caramel strand around the cylindrical rod in a spiral around the rod. Slip rod off and place walnut on a silicone mat to cool.
6. Repeat with other walnuts. If caramel hardens too much during the process, reheat gently until it softens again.

Notes: Caramel is extremely hot so always be careful. This method takes a little practice but once proficient it can be very rewarding. Also, these decorations are extremely sensitive to humidity – they are best prepared 2-3 hours before serving.

 

Carved Carrot Rose Cupcakes

So I got it into my head that I could carve carrots if I wanted to after watching this video on YouTube. Sure, I didn’t have the right knife (used my smallest utility knife that was still too large) and I’ve never had any experience carving carrots and it was rated as an Advanced Lesson. But hey, I can cut vegetables – surely I can carve a rose! It’s practically the same thing! Right?

As you can see from my rather indelicate roses, no – they are not quite the same thing. I actually tried to practice a little more and try to make a more respectable specimen but failed miserably. I would like to think they still echo the vague idea of a rose, but you can be the judge of that.

My first attempt. Very blocky result. 

I nearly decided not to post these up but I decided that I should show my failures as well as my successes. After all, not everything I make is going to turn out the way I want them to. In this particular case, I really do think the knife was to blame (poor workwoman blaming her tools) because the blade on mine was just too thick and wide to make cuts that were as delicate and curved as they needed to be. I might have to try to bring home a surgical scalpel next and see if that helps.

I still had fun and I think I will try to acquire a Thai carving knife before pursuing any more carving projects in the future. However, the cupcakes tasted great so I guess it didn’t really matter. Recipe below:

Carrot Cupcake Recipe (makes 6 cupcakes)

1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup self raising flour
pinch of salt
pinch of cinnamon
3/4 cup grated carrots
1/4 cup chopped walnuts

1. Preheat oven to 160 Celcius (fan forced)
2. Combine all ingredients and divide into cupcake liners.
3. Bake for 15-20 minutes until skewer comes out clean after insertion.
4. Leave to cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1/4 cup cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup icing sugar

1. Cream all ingredients together until light and fluffy.
2. Transfer to piping bag with a large round tip and pipe a spiral on the cupcakes.