Chocolate Brownie Meringue Cake for World Baking Day

Today is World Baking Day...last year it was 'Caking', this year it is Baking Brave. If you check out the World Baking Day website, you'll find 100 different recipe increasing in difficulty from 1 to 100. All you have to do is choose your level and then get baking!

My initial thought was to go straight to recipe 100 but then decided that it was probably actually better to pick something that I'd really enjoy baking and that other people would enjoy eating, so I plumped for level 91 which falls into the category of 'I bake, therefore I am!'. The recipe in question is a Chocolate Brownie Meringue Cake from World Baking Day Ambassador Miranda Gore-Brown who you may remember was a finalist on the Great British Bake Off. I chose this recipe as what's not to love about chocolate brownie, meringue, hazelnuts, raspberries and lashings of cream!

I'm not really a brownie aficionado but this was a really simple recipe to follow, it contains chocolate, icing sugar, margarine, eggs and flour. The brownie base was baked for 8 minutes before taking it out of the oven half cooked, at which point the hazelnut meringue was spread on top and it was then baked for a further 25 minutes.

Once the brownie and meringue was cooled the two halves were removed from their tins. In order to do this, a knife had to be run around the tin but this did give me a slightly scruffy finish. The final touch was to whip up some cream, icing sugar and raspberries to give the lovely pink layer in the middle.

I'm a bit of a baking perfectionist but I think for this one it is impossible to get a really smart finish, however the slightly dishevelled appearance is part of the charm of this cake I think! Cutting it neatly is also a bit of a challenge.

This is a lovely recipe which everyone will enjoy, it might be particular nice if you have friends with kids coming over for Sunday lunch for example. If you'd like to give it a whirl you can find Miranda's recipe here.

I'm entering this cake into this month's Calendar Cakes challenge as the theme this month is Baking Brave. So if you've baked anything for World Baking Day you can enter it here. We're also after any bakes that you have made in the month of May that are out of your comfort zone or particularly challenging and bear in mind that everyone's level of challenge is different, so whatever your own personal triumph, you're welcome to enter it into Calendar Cakes.

Calendar Cakes is hosted on alternate months here at Laura Loves Cakes and over at Dolly Bakes. You can find out the theme on the first of each month :-)

Vintage Bird Cage Cake

It's been one of my cake decorating ambitions to make a bird cage cake...and now I have! Last Sunday I attended a course at The Cake Parlour in Wimbledon Park (yes I know...another one...I think I'm addicted to courses!). The Cake Parlour is owned and run by Zoe Clark who makes the most beautiful cakes, Zoe has also released a range of cake decorating books.

This cake started life as a 12 inch slab of vanilla sponge. In order to create the shape we cut out three 6 inch rounds from the slab. To create the rounded top, an upturned cake baked in a hemisphere tin was added. Each layer has buttercream and jam in between and the whole think was then crumb coated before being covered in sugar paste.

All the bars were rolled by hand and stuck on, as were the swirls at the bottom. To create the bird an outline of royal icing was piped on acetate and was then flood filled, I'm sure you'll agree that the bird really brings it all together.

The pink flowers are rolled roses and the white blossoms were made using a cutter. To give them a bit more depth they were then dusted with a pink colour. Finally, to tie everything in we piped small green leaves around the flowers.

I love the finished effect and as usual was very loathe to cut into it but in the end the lure of cake to eat won out! :-)

I really enjoyed my course at The Cake Parlour and if you've got a minute or two to spare, I'd definitely recommend checking out Zoe's cakes.

Cherry Bakewell Muffins

If you're looking for a tasty muffin recipe then you can call off the search here. I was rather taken with these little muffins...when they came out of the oven they looked alright and I thought they'd be ok but actually they were really quite tasty! The taste testers concurred...so if you're a fan of the Mr Kipling cherry bakewells, I'm sure you'd love these.

The texture of the muffins is spot on and they're lovely and moist too as the recipe includes 175ml Greek yogurt. The flavour comes from 100g of ground almonds and also from the almond extract. I used Neilsen-Massey's Pure Almond Extract which is very good, they also manufacture lemon, chocolate, orange and coffee extracts.

 

 

The distinctive cherry flavour of the Bakewell comes from a teaspoon of cherry jam that is baked into the centre of each muffin.

When it came to the cases, these red and white spotty cases from Culpitt were the perfect addition to the theme. I would definitely recommend Culpitt cases as they come in vibrant colours but most importantly they're greaseproof and therefore retain their colour after they have been in the oven.

On the whole, I don't tend to bake the same thing twice but I may have to give these another whirl next weekend for a charity bake sale as they were so tasty!

Ingredients

150g golden caster sugar
1 egg
125g melted butter
175ml Greek yogurt
1 tsp almond extract (Nielsen-Massey recommended)
200g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g ground almonds
10 tsp cherry jam
150g icing sugar
Flaked almonds
5 glace cherries

Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/gas 4 and prepare your muffin tin with 10 muffin cases. These muffins are easy to make, have two bowls at the ready, one for the wet ingredients and one for the dry ingredients.

Mix the sugar, butter, egg, almond extract and yogurt in a bowl using an electric whisk. Sift the flour and baking powder into a separate bowl and then add the ground almonds. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix quickly, it doesn't matter if there are some lumps as apparently this helps to give muffins their texture. Spoon half the mixture into the bottom of the muffin cases, then add a teaspoon of cherry jam to each one. Finally, finish by dividing the remaining mixture between the cases to cover the jam.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, they should be golden and risen. Once the muffins are cool, make up the icing to a smooth but thick consistency and then spoon over the top of the muffins. Finish with half a glace cherry and sprinkle over some flaked almonds.

* Original recipe from BBC GoodFood

3D Dinosaur Cookies

I've been looking forward to making these 3D dinosaur cookies for a little while now and with a long weekend upon us, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. I bought the cutters from Folly Home, I made the stegosaurus and the T-Rex but you can also get a brachiosaurus and a triceratops!

These do take a little bit of time to make but the end result is worth the effort. They would also make a lovely gift for a little boy!

Each set comes with several different cutters, you need to make each of the cookies and then when they're cool you can fit them all together to make your 3D dinosaur. I used this basic biscuit dough from the BBC as I couldn't find my usual recipe. The cookies tasted great but they were quite fragile so it is important to be really careful not to break any of the pieces. Another tip is to ensure that the little slots on each cookie are suitably opened before baking, if they're too close when they go in then the slots will be too narrow to fit the cookies together. To avoid the cookies spreading too much when baking I put them in the freezer (already cut out) for 5-10 minutes on the baking tray to firm up the butter.

 

One top tip I would recommend is using a cookie spatula. By using the spatula you can easily pick up your cookies without altering the shape, as sometimes the cookies can become misshapen. Also after using a cookie cutter, you may end up with some slightly rough edges, to give a neater finish, pick up the cookie and gently pat down these edges or run your finger around the edge...but be careful not to change the shape again.

You can leave the cookies undecorated but I like the idea of lots of different coloured dinosaurs, so I decorated them using royal icing and the flood filling technique. If you want to know more about how to do this, I previously briefly outlined the process when I made Love Heart Cookies. Once the royal icing on these dinosaurs had set over night, I secured the legs on with a little more icing.

I'm entering these 3D dinosaur cookies into this month's Tea Time Treats challenge which is hosted alternately by Kate from at What Kate Baked and Karen at Lavender and Lovage, this month it's Karen's turn. The theme for May is Biscuits and Cookies.