New Year's Malt Choc Cheesecake

Planning a New Year's Eve buffet or lunch on January 1st? This cheesecake would be great for either occasion. It's a malt chocolate cheesecake with a milk chocolate and malt (Horlicks!) layer and a white chocolate layer on top of a malted milk biscuit base...and what else could you decorate a malt cheesecake with, other than malteasers!!

A lovely easy cheescake which will certainly help you win friends and influence people!! ;-) It's not strictly a bake but it's definitely a winner.

• 200g malted milk biscuits
• 100g salted butter
• 5 tbsp caster sugar
• 600g full fat soft cheese
• 300ml double cream
• 300g white chocolate
• 200g milk chocolate
• 2 tbsp malt or Horlicks powder
• Bag of white malteasers

Bash the biscuits until they resemble crumbs... I blitzed mine in the food processor but there's always the traditional method of plastic bag and rolling pin if you wish to take out some aggression! Melt the butter in a pan and then add 2tbsp of sugar and the biscuit crumbs and mix before pressing the mixture in to a 23cm loose bottom or springform tin and chilling.

 

Take two bowls and divide the cream cheese and the cream between the two. Add the Horlicks, milk chocolate and remaining sugar to one and the white chocolate to the other, mix well, it may be best to do this with an electric whisk.

 

Spread the milk chocolate mix over the biscuit base in an even layer before adding the white chocolate mix on top. Gently smooth the white chocolate layer, making sure you push it right to the edges of the tin so there are no gaps between the layers. Finally, decorate with Malteasers.

A Lovely Little Gingerbread House

Having heard all the stories of blood, sweat and tears whilst making a gingerbread house, it was with some trepidation that I began my construction. There were a few hairy moments along the way (not literally!) but nothing an awful lot of royal icing and sweets couldn't fix! My favourites are the chocolate button roof tiles! The house also comes complete with a gingerbread man in lederhosen!!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Penguin Party Christmas Cake

This year I decided to hijack my mum's Christmas cake for a spot of decoration! She made the cake a little while ago and then covered it in the marzipan and royal icing... the only credit I can take is for the decoration. However, any geography teachers out there will have to excuse the geographical faux pas...the penguins are just on their Christmas vacation to the North Pole!!

This design is in Good Housekeeping's Christmas Collection magazine. It is designed for a 13 inch cake but mine is an 8 inch, so it's a little crowded but still very cute! I made the penguins entirely out of regular sugarpaste in the following way:

1. Roll a small ball of black for the head and an oval shape for the body.
2. Roll out a small amount of black and then cut a straight edge down the middle. Using a suitably sized round cutter, cut out slightly less than a semi-circle down that straight edge...this will give you the wings.
3. For the feet roll out two small balls of orange and flatten slightly. Using a mini pallette knife mark in two indents to give 3 toes.
4. To make the beak, make a small yellow cone and then using your pallette knife, gently cut in to it to seperate the top and bottom of the beak.
5. For the white stomach area, take a small ball of white paste and gently roll flat in to an oval.
6. To assemble use edible glue or water. Put the feet next to each other and sit the body on top before attaching the white oval for the stomach. Glue on the wings and then gently insert a short piece of spaghetti into the top of the body, upon which the head can be attached. Glue on the beak and then for the eyes, take two tiny balls of white icing and press them into position. Finally, dip the end of a cocktail stick into black paste colour and insert into the centre of each eye.

The method for making the sea pool was quite interesting! It required Fox's Glacier Mints to be melted in a foil cup in the oven for around 20 minutes. Blue paste colouring was then immediately swirled through with a cocktail stick before pouring the mixture quickly into a recess on the cake... it does set very quickly. The fishing rod is just a cocktail stick and some florist wire. The finishing touch was a little disco violet edible glitter to give it that snowy sparkle!

These are just very simple penguins but if you'd like more detailed instructions then check out
May Bakes Cakes on Facebook as she provides a photographic guide to penguin construction!

Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

These tasty chocolate orange cupcakes are my entry for Chocolate Log Blog's monthly 'we should cocoa' competition...and yes, you guessed it, all entries must include the magic ingredient...chocolate! Every month there is also a special ingredient which must be added. This month it was orange.

In terms of chocolate and orange, these cupcakes tick all the boxes and then some! The cakes themselves are chocolate sponges, made with melted chocolate rather than cocoa and then when cooling an orange juice and sugar syrup is drizzled over each one.

Finally, to top it off the buttercream has melted white chocolate in it, along with grated orange zest. The finishing touch is grated orange chocolate sprinkled over the completed cupcakes and a segment of Terry's Chocolate Orange... phew that's a lot of chocolate and orange!

The recipe for these cupcakes came from Jo Wheatley who baked them on the Great British Bake Off and you can find the recipe here.

I do like a good cupcake and these seemed like the perfect combination. However, if you're going to attempt them, here are some of my thoughts on the recipe as the methodolgy was slightly unusual!

1. The dry ingredients are pulsed in a food processor before adding the wet ingredients... they didn't mix very well and left little lumps which took a little bit of mixing in.
2. It only made 12 smaller cakes, so if you want to fill the bigger cupcake cases I would probably go for 10... and it's quite runny, so helpful to use a piping bag to fill the cases.
3. Don't be too hasty to add the white chocolate to the buttercream...as I was too quick and as it was quite hot, caused it to melt a little.
4. Wait a few minutes before piping the icing on... again I was too hasty and because it was very loose, my piping swirls didn't hold as well as they usually do!

The cakes were well received and I would certainly recommend the recipe, although it is slightly more time consuming than your average cupcake.

Happy baking!