Valentine's Cake 2009

The cake decorating classes are coming on, although I got told off for making sugarcraft flowers last night instead of doing piping like we were supposed to be doing.

I'm quite pleased with the results though. The cake's a lemon sponge covered with marzipan and then sugarpaste icing. I went for the classic look rather than the usual novelty cakes...

Ridic Choc

My cousin made an unbelieveable chocolate cake over Christmas and as it's someone's birthday at work today I thought I'd give it a go myself. I can't remember the proper name for the cake, but we've dubbed it the Ridiculous Chocolate Cake (or Ridic Choc for short) because of the amount of chocolate in it. In fact, the recipe even comes with a health warning that you should limit how often you make it!

The cake's made in two parts - a kind of firm brownie base and a soft chocolate mousse topping. It's a bit of a labour of love, but the end result is well worth the effort.

The Ingredients

The ingredients. Except for the Coke and the toothpaste. Oh, and you need some icing sugar as well.

The Base

Melt some sugar, butter and a load of chocolate together in a bowl over simmering water. It's important to keep the mixture dry as the smallest amount of water will make it seize - even using a wooden spoon can cause problems as it may contain moisture that will leech out into the chocolate.

The melted result.

Mix in some icing sugar and some whisked eggs.

Bung it in the oven for half an hour, and then let it cool (but leave it in the tin). The result is a crispy outside with a soft inside, sort of like an inside-out Dime bar.

The Topping

Melt another load of chocolate over hot water for the topping.

Mix in some icing sugar, egg yolks and butter to make a smooth goo.

Whisk some egg whites until they form stiff peaks, then do the same with some cream in another bowl.

Fold the egg white and cream into the chocolate mixture. The air trapped in the egg white and cream forms the basis for the mousse. Pour this over the base and chill in the fridge overnight.

The Result

People dived in before I had a chance to take a proper picture - this was all that was left after about 2 minutes. The edges are a little rough as you're supposed to use a hot knife to separate it from the tin, but all I had was some plastic cutlery from the canteen.

I made some Creme Anglais (basically, runny custard) to go with it to try and break up the stickiness of the cake - you can see that in a tub on the right of the cake. So far it's all been a bit of a hit but I'll have to wait a while to make this again.

Cake School

My brother enrolled me on a cake decorating course at the local college for a Christmas present so I've been doing that every Thursday evening for the last few weeks.

There's been two practical sessions so far as the first week was an induction session, and here's the results of my labours:

Buttercream icing and piping.

Marzipan covering and modeling. This one got a bit bashed up on the back of my bike when I hit a couple of potholes so the penguins have a bit of a flat head. I might need to rethink my Friday morning transport arrangements...

Incidentally, did you know that marzipan has the same consistency and smell as Semtex? (see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_/ai_n14530173)

83.0773284 miles

I'll try to stop being a bicycle bore after this, but I spotted my total distance traveled on the cycle computer today - 133.7 kilometers...



... which made me smile a little bit.

Riding The Company Bike

I finally got round to buying a bike this weekend (it's a Specialized Tricross for anyone that cares). I'm pretty pleased with it so far, although it looks a *little* bit girly with the front and back panier racks on. I've already clocked up 20km trying frantically to keep up with my brother on a little trek through the rat-runs of around North London yesterday, which nearly killed me.

We're planning a pedal-powered road trip down to Cornwall some time in May so I need to do a *lot* of training to get up to scratch since my exercise regime to date has consisted of, er, absolutely nothing, and we'll be aiming to do about 90-100km a day on the trip. Yikes.

Incidentally, if you run a small business there's a great tax scheme called "Cycle To Work" which lets you save about 35% off the cost of the bike by reclaiming the VAT and offsetting depreciation against corporation tax. You just need to have a half-arsed cover story about using the bike for travel to work - e.g. cycling to a train station qualifies.

That's what I've done, so I will now be literally riding the company bike every morning and evening :-).

Christmas Cake, Part II

It's taken a bit longer than I thought to make (as in I started making it last night at 19:00 and it's now 07:55) but it's finally finished.

God knows how I'm going to get it in to work tomorrow - it weighs a ton.



There's also something not 'quite right' with it. It might just be a bit wonky. I might see if there are any cake decoration night classes going on - my icing needs a bit of work, I think.

Anyway, there you go. Same again in another 12 months...

Update
It melteded...

Christmas Cake, Part I

Not content with moving house this weekend and only being half-packed so far, I've chosen Thursday as the day to take a Christmas cake in to work.

Here's the blueprints. I think Jayce suggested this last year so props to him for the idea:



I'm going to use the same home-made cake stand I used last year so it'll stand about 20 inches high in 4 tiers when done. I'll try to make the arms with florists wire covered in icing.

More info to follow shortly...