Baking with Baby 11 - The Chocolate One

Well, as you may know, the other week it was The Parents wedding anniversary - the big golden five-oh!

It having fallen to me to make the cake (being the 'awkward' one - with food allergy/intolerance/whatever) I decided to go for a cake with two layers. The bottom one was to be fruit and the top chocolate - for those who aren't that keen on fruit (like 'Baby').

Having leaped right out of my comfort zone, with the fruit cake (see previous post), I must admit I was really tempted to play safe and opt for a cake mix. Usually, I love Hale & Hearty's cake mixes but even though I was running short of time, I opted to do it the hard way and bake from scratch.

I have to say that it could have been a whole lot simpler if I could have managed to bake it without 'Baby' - who these days, being a bit older, is much too vocal and determined for her own good! I had been puzzling over why I hadn't baked much with her recently... setting to work, I soon realised why!

After a fairly extensive search, looking at various gluten and dairyfree recipes, I decided to use a recipe which wasn't either of those. Just by chance, it happened to be another recipe from Delicious Mag, see here.

The main reason I went for it was because it looked simple and I like simple! It was simple - in that pretty much all have to do is just bung all the ingredients in one bowl and mix. Like so:

Don't worry - we didn't do it all by hand!

It was also simple in that it was easy to substitute the dairy products with non-dairy alternatives. We used Pure sunflower margarine instead of butter (which worked well, as it is quite a lot softer than Stork, so was easier to beat), almond milk instead of milk and Hotel Chocolat dark chocolate buttons for the chocolate. Not having the vinegar in the recipe, I just used some white vinegar that I had in the cupboard. 

The other thing I liked about the recipe was that it also involved chocolate - real chocolate! This involved melting. Now, of course, 'Baby' loves chocolate too, and the best way to keep her quiet, I discovered, was to give her a bowl to lick - the one in which I'd melted the chocolate. And she did lick it too - quite literally!

This is not a carefully staged photo - this is what she actually did!

So what did I learn from this one?

Make sure your tin is the right size, before you start (mine wasn't tall enough, so I just made sure the grease proof paper stood taller round the edge of the tin. Which sort of worked.

Looks alright here!

Except this happened:

Oops! Nothing a little judicious trimming can't solve!

Yes... It cracked and burned baby, cracked and burned! So obviously I had to hack the top of the cake off altogether. But the cake needed slicing in half anyway, so this tutorial really came in handy. Only SHE makes it look so smooth, so easy. It aint!! 

Apparently, it's a good idea to leave a cake overnight before trying this - any crusty bits go soft - much easier to cut through! Only I couldn't, 'cos I was strapped for time. Oh, well now I know!

Another thing I discovered was that covering sponge cakes in fondant is a whole lot harder than covering a fruit cake! The fruit cake is a lot more firm, which really helps! Sponge cake moves all over the place. It was a good job I watched this tutorial. Covering the cake with buttercream first definitely helped - hold it together that is! I used Betty Crocker's Buttercream Style icing - it's good stuff! See here!

So, who knew (hands up)? You should always knead regal icing really well to soften it, or it will crack, when you try to lift it it,to place it on the cake. Which happened to me - as you can see in this picture:

The gold colour couldn't cover the cracks!

To be fair, this was going on whilst I was trying to cook dinner and manage a toddler!

I would have lifted the icing off and re-kneaded it... except for the fact that it was now covered in chocolate crumbs and buttercream! I had hoped the icing polisher would do the trick, but it was beyond even its capabilities. So I decided to spray the whole thing gold and hope it would cover the damage, but no! The icing was still cracked - albeit now a fetching shade of gold! 

Loved these products! *

I have to admit, I was bitterly bitterly disappointed!

Instead of following my original plan for decoration (white hearts on gold background) I tried to cover the cake with as much hastily whipped up decoration as I could (with a bit of 'help' from 'Baby'), but still the cracks showed through.

At this stage, I was tempted to ditch the whole chocolate layer altogether, and just stick with the somewhat more classy-looking fruit layer, but... I didn't. I knew the kiddies just wouldn't touch the fruit cake. So I took it anyway, thinking they really wouldn't care if the icing was cracked - they'd be just happy with the chocolate. And, you know I'm glad I did. You see, Family can be ever so forgiving. The Parents were thrilled with the cakes - both of them! Sister Number Two thought I had bought the cakes (what was she thinking???) and the cake which disappeared the fastest?? Yep, the chocolate one!!

Moral of the story: Never underestimate a cracked cake... especially if it's made with chocolate!!

More dairy free baking adventures can be found by following the links on this page.

*I'm not paid, sponsored, endorsed etc. by anyone - all views concerning products are completely and honestly my own!

Baking with Baby 10 - It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas??

Mmm! It certainly did smell a lot like Christmas, in our house last week, but no, we haven't baked our Christmas cake... just yet. Last weekend we celebrated my parents golden wedding anniversary. 

They didn't want any fuss, but fifty years of marriage just has to be celebrated in some form or another, so we arranged a family meal. 

Then I got to thinking about cake. Well you've got to have a cake for an anniversary, don't you?? Hmm! That got me thinking!

A few years ago, when we celebrated their seventieth birthdays (their birthdays are very close, so we did it in one) I bought a dairy free celebration cake - you know, one of those that are a bit like a Christmas cake - a rich fruit cake. This one was ready marzipanned and iced with plain icing (I wasn't gluten free at that stage) all I had to do was add some ready made decorations on the top. 

The Parents seemed happy with that (they like fruit cake) - job done!! However, being gluten free presents more of a problem - you don't exactly find gluten free celebration cakes in most shops now, do you? So I knew (big gulp) it was all down to me to produce the goods, because it wouldn't occur to my sisters to sort it out and even if it did, I wasn't sure that they would be able to avoid cross-contamination!

Not having made any cakes of this sort before (I've never needed to, someone else - usually my mum - has always made them for me) I consulted my guru - t'Internet and hey presto! I found this Christmas cake recipe from Delicious Magazine. A recipe that is specifically dairy and gluten free - result!! You can find it HERE by following the link.

It is a great recipe, in that it details everything stage quite well, but there's a few little things I'd like to add:

1. It might sound a bit silly... if you do a lot of baking you probably won't be too bothered, but I didn't want lots of little left-over bits of packets of fruit and nuts - just in case I don't get 'round to using them before they go off. Tesco's packs are all the wrong size for the quantities required for this cake, so, for example, you have to buy more than one pack of pecans and then you have too many. The same with the figs and the glace cherries. I gave up looking for my ingredients there, when I realised that! In Sainsbury's, however, you can buy the ingredients in packets which are all about the right amount.

Oo! Get me! Very 'Saturday Kitchen' - with all my ingredients in little dishes :)

2. When the recipe says you need to beat the sugar and fat until the mixture becomes lighter, it means keep going for some while... and then some!! It may not have helped that I used Stork margarine (the block not the tub version - the block version is the ONLY Stork margarine that isn't made with dairy). Usually I would have used Pure sunflower margarine, which is a lot softer.

It turns out that even though I gave it a good go, I didn't beat mine quite long enough (my hand mixer got rather heavy and my arm started aching). Consequently, the mixture looked like it had split, and I discovered later that this may mean that your cake won't rise as much as it should. Personally, I think this recipe alone is grounds for buying a Kitchen Aid - to take the strain out of it, but The Hub is yet to be convinced on that score ;) Despite all that, I don't think the cake came out too badly.

Fresh from the oven

3. Add more booze! This coming from one who hasn't knowingly touched a drop since she was pregnant (still breastfeeding now). I opted for the port, rather than the rum. Having measured everything carefully and boiled my fruit, it seemed a bit dry, so I chucked in another 30ml, gave it a bit of mix, decided it needed a bit more. At this stage I realised I didn't have enough plain flour. Not wanting the fruit to get all dried out overnight, I sloshed in some more port before I went to bed... and a bit more next morning. I the end I must have used he best part of half a bottle, but to be honest it could, perhaps, have taken more?? Certainly my sister thought so, and I think I would agree.

4. Always use an oven thermometer! Thankfully I trusted mine and NOT the thermostat on our new oven (which came with the house). The thermostatic control was way out!!! This was the position of the knob on the oven, when the oven was at the correct temperature for the cake:

Believe it or not, it's 180 degrees C inside the oven.

5. If, like me, you have a small determined child living in your house... do yourself a favour and do all your baking when they're asleep. Just saying!! Let's just say that trying to bake with the LO around led to a few bottle royals and leave it at that, shall we?

'Baby' added the jam layer - which I 'tidied up' once she'd had her fun!

6. If, like me, you're new to adding a layer of marzipan to your cake, there are online tutorials that can help you out. Such as this one, by BBC Good Food. If you like, you can get Dr Oetker's or Tesco's ready rolled marzipan (I got mine half price because it had a short date). This really took the stress out for me, as I was trying to get it all done as quickly as I could. You just unroll a roll of marzipan over the cake. 

Ready rolled!

However, I thought the layer of marzipan was a bit on the thin side.

See? Went on quite nicely but quite thin!

7. You can, of course make all your own icing - indeed I have all the stuff in my cupboard, BUT, being short of time, I decided to cheat. Here's what we used: 

NOT a promotion for Dr Oetker's - promise!

Please note none of the Dr Oetker products stated that they were specifically gluten free, but there were no gluten containing ingredients, or dairy, for that matter, either :)

As for applying the icing itself,  I watched this tutorial here. However, the vital part (how to iron out the folds around the side) was strangely missing!! I found one of these was the answer (I bought mine from Hobby Craft):

Great for buffing your icing!

Finally, however, the cake was completed and looked like this: 

Not perfect, but could be worse!

Of course the test of any cake, is not how well it looks, but how well it tastes. This cake seemed to go down okay (my Dad particularly loved the dried figs), but not as well as the other layer I made (blog post to follow). Although a little dry (probably my fault 'cos I always worry about my cakes being under baked) I thought it was quite yum too, but I think I might just sub the figs for something else another time (maybe prunes) as I'm not so keen on all the little pips that you get in figs! 

Unlike the gluten free Christmas cake I bought last Christmas, this one didn't cause my gut any unpleasant reactions and now I have decided I am going to make another for Christmas - but this one will get plenty of 'feeding' to see if I can keep it nice and moist :)

Delicious!

By the way, just in case you're wondering, no, I was not paid a sausage for mentioning any products. I bought everything I used myself. However if Kitchen Aid are listening seeing as The Hub's not convinced I need one... ;) 

Oh, who am I kidding?? THAT would be most unlikely. Still, I can but dream :)

Other posts about baking dairy and gluten free can be found by following this link.

If you're looking for ideas to do with Christmas here are some posts from 2012:

Dairy free ways to decorate your tree

Oo! Ah! Christmas Chocolat!

Treating Father Christmas

Dilemmas of the Christmas cake variety

Baking with Baby 8 - Gingerbread