When a Chicken Cries for Love

Hey

Over Easter I was in charge of cooking. I barely left the kitchen on that Sunday (apart from when completing a egg hunt that my sister did for us). So I spent the day slaving over a roast dinner, with a chocolate-ish dessert, baking and decorating cakes.

The roast I cooked was chicken French style with hassle back potatoes. The chicken was very simple, basted in melted butter, cooked breast side down covered with foil for the first 30 minutes, before turning basting in butter again and leaving uncovered for the rest of the cooking time (mine was 2 hours for the size of chicken I had). The chicken just had a chopped carrot, halved shallots, with sprigs of thyme surrounding it to flavour the stock that was created with the cooking juices from the chicken, which was then used to make the gravy.

The hassle back potatoes were simple as well. Slice the new potatoes two thirds of the way through, then brush with a mixture of butter and oil before roasting for an hour.

It was lovely to have a simple main when my dessert required more attention.

xxx

Rabbit Heart

Hey

This Easter, I was in charge of cooking. Saying that, both me and my sister made an Easter cake this year.

I knew how I wanted to decorate my cake, but not what type of cake I wanted to bake. My sister suggested I do a simnel cake, so I googled a recipe and decide to use this Mary Berry one. I have to say, although I'm not the biggest fan of fruit cakes, this one smelt amazing with all of the ingredients in the bowl.

I wanted to decorate my cake with little white rabbits, so I turned my hand to modelling. I was the first time I had tried to model anything free hand (I generally use a mould for anything 3D). I had step my step instructions to follow which I liked and I don't think they turned out too bad.

The bunny bottoms where the easiest to make (as there was less parts obviously), but they were definitely the most effective on the final cake.

xxx

Chocolate Love

Hey

I'm working my way through my bake of calendar and this month is a chocolate fudge pudding. Hot fudge chocolate pudding with a chocolate sauce, I can't think of anything better especially for a lazy weekend.

Ingredients:
Pudding
125g butter
12g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
75g self raising flour
4 tablespoon cocoa powder
50g dark chocolate, chopped
1 tablespoon milk
Sauce
4 tablespoon cocoa powder
125g light muscovado sugar
300ml very hot water

1 baking dish (1.7 litres)

1. Cream the butter until pale

2. Add the vanilla extract and butter, and cream until pale and fluffy

4. Add the eggs one at a time, with an addition of 1 tablespoon of the flour with the final egg

5. Fold in the flour and cocoa powder until combined.

6. Gently fold in the chopped chocolate and the milk

7. Pour in to dish

8. Whisk together the ingredients for the sauce, then evenly pour over the pudding

9. Bake at 180 degrees for 30-35 minutes

10. Serve with ice cream and enjoy!

xxx

My Favourite Things

Hey

New bed and bedding

Finally getting round to reading the book of one of my
go to films

New home for my favourite quite

xxx

POP #2

Hey

As I had a open pot of frosting, I decided to try this recipe as my second attempt at cake pops.

The texture of these pops were lighter (may have also been as I made them smaller by using a scope as a measure). But I still struggled to dip and coat my pops post refrigerating. I also tried using candy melts as my coating this time round instead of melted chocolate. I couldn't seem to get the consistency to go thin enough so that a nice smooth coating could be achieved. I'm still wondering how you can gain such a smoothed finished to a cake pop.

I found how I like to form any future cake pops I venture to make. Would appreciate any advice regarding coating cake pops before I tried them again. 

xxx

POP

Hey

We had some spare cakes going spare the other week (as a result of them sticking to tins or being so light they collapsed under their own weight), so I decided to do some experimenting with cake pops. I've never made cake pops (or even had one) so I really don't know texture wise what they should be like. As a result I tried out 2 recipes. One using chocolate and one using frosting.

Firstly I tried out this recipe. I had seen it on a food show so saw how they should turn out. Mine weren't that successful.

Making the cake pops were fine, it was the coating and decorating that didn't work so well. I think I made them too big for the strength of the sticks I was using so there was a tendency for them to fall off into the melted chocolate when dipping and then into the selection of toppings I picked from our baking cupboard.

Taste wise, you can't beat chocolate. 

The second recipe I tried was slightly more successful but still needs practice. That attempt will follow shortly.

xxx