Chocolate and Yogurt Coated Blackcurrant Cookies - We Should Cocoa

This is my entry for this month We Should Cocoa hosted by the lovely Choclette over at Chocolate Log Blog. 

She started off announcing that this month chocolate pairing ingredient was challenging. 

Blackcurrents, Pah I thought, easy. I love chocolate and tart fruit. No probs!

However I was very wrong, I've searched high and low for these cheeky little things with no joy!

In the end I managed to find one pack of yoghurt coated blackcurrents at 2 am in the small shop I went to to buy eggs and bacon for breakfast.

My plan was to make blackcurrant and chocolate cookies. I was looking forward to the juicy blackcurrants in contrast with the chocolate but I went ahead with the recipe anyway. I didn't get the pretty splashes of purple I would have got with fresh blackcurrants, but I did get little bits of fruit chewiness which was pretty pleasing!

The yogurt melted and you couldn't really see any blackcurrant pieces - here is one on the left just above the chocolate chunk! You could say it was surprise eating!

The cookies were chewy and super easy to make. I am a chewy cookies girl rather than a biscuit person so a chewy cookie is a must for me!

Chocolate and Yogurt Coated Blackcurrent Cookies:

• 250g plain flour
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 170g melted salted butter
• 200g dark brown soft sugar
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 150g chocolate (Chopped in to pieces with a sharp knife)

1. Preheat your oven to 170C and line two (or more) baking trays with greaseproof paper.

2. Using an electric whisk, beat together the melted butter and sugars until fluffy.

3. Beat in the egg and yolk and vanilla bean paste until the mixture is creamy.

4. Sift in the dry ingredients and fold into the creamy mixture. Try not to over mix.

5. Fold in the chocolate pieces and yogurt coated blackcurrants (feel free to substitute with real blackcurrants!)

6. Scoop the cookie dough with a tablespoon or ice cream scoop and drop on to your prepared trays. Leave 6 cm between each dough ball and you don't need to flatten the dough.

7. Bake for 15 mins for chewy deliciousness!

8. Nibble hot or leave to cool on a wire rack.

I hope you are all enjoying the weather ( I had to mention it, I'm British right!?). It's not really baking weather but you can still make many delicious desserts that are no bake, so it's no excuse not to quench our sweet tooth's.

It is two days until the Olympics officially start! Where are you watching the Olympic ceremony? I am watching it on a big screen in Walthamstow. I am so excited about the Olympics, I just can't wait!

Cake Fairy x

Chocolate Oreo Cake - United Bakes of America

My first Oreo cake finally!

Double layer moist chocolate cake filled with Oreo cream cheese buttercream...Yum!

I made a chocolate cake and substituted some on the cocoa for ground up oreos. You couldn't taste the oreo that well in the cake so in hindsight I would just roughly break up the oreos and stir them in to the batter to get the crunch of the oreos.

I am not going to give a recipe for a chocolate cake as I know we all have our fav moist recipe, just  chuck in some ground up Oreo's.

The icing is used was an Oreo cream cheese buttercream. Loved it! Cream cheese icing is so creamy a light, a great combo with the choc cake. I got the recipe from Cupcake Crazy Gem. All in all lovely cake and super easy to make.

Speaking of Cupcake Crazy Gem, I am entering this cake for Cupcake Crazy Gems United Bakes of America Challenge.

Next challenge I will branch out a bit, but I really wanted to try an Oreo cake and what better chance!

Happy Baking all x

Happy 1st Birthday - Chocolate and Strawberry Cake

Hi all,

I hope your having a lovely weekend! I went to a friends wedding yesterday and it was such a beautiful day. The rain also stayed away which was great!

The most important part of the day, the dessert (!), was a scrumptious chewy pavlova with strawberries. I don't know how they got it so chewy!

I have now been blogging for 1 whole year so this is birthday post just for me.

Happy 1st Birthday Cake Fairy Blog!

I've written 47 posts which is about 3-4 cakes a month and I've loved writing them.

What better way to celebrate my blogs birthday than with my favourite combination - Chocolate and strawberry!

I found some freeze dried strawberry sprinkles in the supermarket on Friday and thought I had to use them. I'm not the only one who picks out the freeze dried strawberries from cereal boxes, right?! I just love freeze dried strawberries. I especially like the chocolate covered ones.

Vanilla Savoy Cake


This is such a great recipe, my new favourite. The cake is so fluffy and delicious. It has no butter in it which I actually like as I find getting butter to room temp so difficult in my flat and I hate butter lumps. The air that is whipped in to the eggs makes the cake rise.

4 egg whites
4 eggs yolks
200g caster sugar
100g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and put a shelf in the middle of the oven.
2. Grease and line two 8in tins with greaseproof paper. I can never be bothered to fully line the tin (oops) but I find just putting in a circle at the bottom is enough the get the cake out with no problem.
3. Using an electric whisk, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until pale yellow and very fluffy. This takes about 6 minutes. Don't skip on this step because it is key.
4. Add the two vanillas and whisk in until fully combined into the yolk mixture.
5. Whisk the eggs whites until you have firm peaks. This is where having two electric whisks is very handy!
6. Sift the flour in to the yolk mixture and fold in.
7. Fold in the egg whites. As you can tell I'm quite impatient but you do have to make sure your folding delicately to keep the air in the batter.
8. Pour the batter in to the two tins and put in the oven to bake for 20 minutes.
9. Make the buttercream and strawberry puree while the cakes are baking.

Chocolate buttercream

As usual my buttercream recipe is from Cupcake Crazy Gem's trusted top 10 frostings.

Strawberry purée

You can find the recipe here. Just substitute the Martini for water. I don't sieve my purée just because I quite like the texture and pieces of strawberries but you can if you like it that way. You can also just use your favourite strawberry jam.

Assembling

1. Take the cakes out of the oven and leave to cool.
2. The cakes usually come out fairly flat but level the cakes out with a bread knife if you need to.
3. Cover one cake with the strawberry puree and sandwich the other cake on top.
4. Cover the cakes in chocolate buttercream, smoothing out with a palette knife.
5. Scatter over the freeze dried strawberries.

Enjoy with friends!

Happy Baking.

Nutella Cupcake with Nutella Marscapone Buttercream

These cupcakes are called self frosting as they have a dollop of nutella added to them which acts as a frosting but you know me I can't be doing with no frosting so I had to make some as well.

I made these with the boys little bro when he was over visiting from Japan ( We are going to see him out there in two weeks - super excited!). We had him over for dinner and trust me to ask my guest to make his own dessert!

The batter is quite a simple vanilla batter but, the exciting part, you add a dollop of nutella to each one after you have put them in to the case.

You then bake. Some of the nutella sinks in so you have a soft fondant centre and some stays on the top for the cute marbled effect.

Even thought nutella is delicious sometimes I find it can be a bit dry so I wanted to make the buttercream a bit creamy to counteract the dryness so I went for a buttercream with marscapone. Delicious, chocolately but creamy light! 

Nutella Cupcakes

Recipe can be found on allrecipes.com

Nutella Marscapone Buttercream

Recipe can be found on http://piccantedolce.blogspot.com/

Great combination, even if I do say so myself, finished off with a small swirl and large chocolate button.

Highly recommend for someone who loves chocolate but is maybe looking for something not too rich. I also think these would be really fun to make with kids.

Happy Baking x

Giant Brownie Cupcake with Peanut Butter Frosting

My beautiful friend had a 1950's Hollywood murder mystery party and I made the dessert. My first giant cupcake!

I wasn't the murderer but I did do an awful awesome "ill defined foreign accent" haha!

She requested chocolate brownie cupcake with peanut butter icing! Delish!

I got the cupcake recipe from here, but had to multiply it by 3.5. Immense amount of batter but worth it.

The peanut butter icing is from this great blog by Crazy Cupcake Gem!

I'm not gonna lie, it was slightly too rich for me but then I'm not a huge fan of peanut butter but if you like it then you'll loooooooove this.

Just a note: Don't leave your giant cupcake next to an oven that's on while your eating the main course because you'll have a melty drippy mess on you!

I'm back and feeling happy. Happy baking!

Peppermint Tea Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

I was racking my brains for a "healthy" ingredient to go with chocolate for this months We Should Cocoa set by Chele from Chocolate Teapot.

I was browsing around the different blogs I follow and found Nom! The Indulgent Baking Blog and What Kate Baked talking about types of tea.

Tea is healthy! Thanks for the inspiration girls!

So I went with a peppermint tea cake with a chocolate cream cheese icing.

Peppermint tea is not only healthy, it's almost medicinal and will help you meet the love of your life! Okay maybe I'm exaggerating but it is good for your tummy, does help with stress and gives you minty fresh breathe for all that potential smooching!

Peppermint tea cake - This recipe is adapted for a 9" cake from the Hummingbird Bakery Book - Cakes days Earl Grey cupcake recipe.


4 peppermint tea bags
4tbsp boiled water
105g softened, butter
320g plain flour
340g caster sugar
small tsp salt
1 tbsp and 1/2 tsp baking powder
270ml milk
3 medium eggs


1. Preheat the oven to 190C and put a shelf in the middle of your oven. Line and grease your 9" cake tin.
2. Leave the tea bags to soak in the boiled water for 30mins.
3. Cream together butter and sugar with an electric whisk.
4. Whisk in the eggs.
5. Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt. Put your whisk on a low speed or stir until just combined.
6. Squeeze every last drop of water out of the tea bags and combine with the milk.
7. Pour in a quarter of the milk mixture  in to the batter and combine. Stir in the rest of the milk until the batter is smooth. Don't over mix.
8. Pour in to your greased baking tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 30 mins. Until when pierced with a skewer it comes out clean. Try not to open the oven too early as your cake might sink.
9. Leave the cake to cool and slather with chocolate cream cheese icing or cut the cake in half and sandwich with  icing.


Chocolate cream cheese icing


This recipe has real melted chocolate in it and can be found here, over at the cupcake project.

Decorating


I used my new mini whisk and a heart stencil to make this cute heart (remember peppermint tea helps you find love!). I sifted cocoa powder over the stencil and voila! Cheap and easy way to decorate but looks quite striking I think.

Happy weekend x