Chocolate Coffee Bread with Raspberries and Blueberries

Hello and yay! I'm very excited to start baking and posting again after an incredibly boring and fatigued couple of weeks with glandular fever. I have such an appreciation for baking, it just enriches my day and lets me put all my focus into something other than being sick and bored. So I hope you enjoy reading this (and hopefully eating this beautiful cake) as much as I did making it!

I tell you what, having glandular fever has been interesting to say the least. The days all kind of blend into one and you spend a lot of time feeling sorry for yourself, so bored, and yet too tired to do anything except watch a heap of Downton Abbey. And I mean A HEAP.  And then other than that A LOT of sleeping is done. But then, I found, after a couple of weeks of complete rest you start to feel better and can do things, like leave the house for the first time in 14 days to have coffee or, you know, bake!

Also during my recovery I crocheted a bunny and a heart garland (via here), and started drawing bunnies. Like, a lot of bunnies. So many bunnies. I think I have a bit of a bunny obsession going on. Maybe I'll put up a picture of one of them in the next post. 

 Here where I am, it has been raining non-stop for the past two days, and has been super heavy today. Like an "I want to take the doona off my bed and roll myself up in it like a crepe" miserable rainy day. And also an "I want to do nothing else but bake yummy things all day" kind of day. And that's what I did. I made another cake (which I will post about another day soon) but the one I want to show you today is this Chocolate Coffee Bread with Raspberries and Blueberries - aka. the perfect cake to eat while wrapped in your doona and drinking tea while looking out at the grey skies.

So this cake is super light and beautifully choco-packed with the use of real chocolate and cocoa. Putting a healthy dose of instant coffee in there gives it a real intensity too. And then, THE BERRIES. Oh the berries! I've used raspberries in chocolate before with my chocolate raspberry brownies, and this cake further gives the combination a good name. Then, a combination I haven't tried before, chocolate and blueberries, has won me over too! The raspberries give the softness of the chocolate a nice zing (and just look at that beautiful colour when you slice into the cake!), while the blueberries impart a dark sweetness which I love.

So go ahead and make this cake on your next rainy day! But then, you don't need an excuse for this beauty :)

Chocolate Coffee Bread with Raspberries and Blueberries

{via Always With Butter}

Makes two loaves

Ingredients:

1/2 cup softened butter

100g milk chocolate

1 cup caster sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup cocoa

Pinch of salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 tbsp instant coffee

1 cup lite sour cream

1 punnet raspberries

1 punnet blueberries

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Grease and line two loaf pans.

Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a bowl and set aside.

In a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, melt the chocolate. Dissolve the instant coffee in 2 tbsp of boiled water and add to the melted chocolate. Allow to cool slightly and add the sour cream, stirring until there are no lumps.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time.

In alternating batches, add the flour mixture and chocolate-coffee mixture. Mix until combined. Fold in raspberries and blueberries. Divide mixture evenly between the two loaf pans and bake for 30-40 min until a skewer when poked in comes out clean. Let cool completely on a wire rack and enjoy!

Chocolate M & M Cake

Ooh! Hello!

I'm good, thank you :) I'm assuming you're great too? Well, if you aren't, I'm pretty sure that this cake will make you feel jolly again.

I'm feeling sort of jolly right now. Tomorrow, school goes back, and it will by my last term of school EVER in the history of the world! It's extremely exciting, but also kind of scary and a teensy bit sad. But I think I'm ready for life outside of school. There's a whole big world out there waiting for me, and now I can contribute to it. Yay!

But then there's the HSC exams to think about, which occur before any of this exciting stuff happens. Maybe, if I close my eyes and cover my ears, and hum nice songs for the next three months, it will go away? Here's hoping!

In any case, there's always baking therapy to get me through.

Now that I think of it, keeping this blog, and baking for people, making them happy, has been one of the things that have kept me motivated throughout this rigorous period of school. Baking really does have an impact on your emotions. I think I've dealt really well with all the adversities of my final school year.

I mean, who wouldn't be happy looking at this cake? I definitely had a fun time making it, the rainbow-ness of it all put a smile on my dial :)

The "heART" word on the top of the cake is there because I made this cake for my art class last week, when we had an art workshop for the day. I think it went over rather well, very colourful for the bright, bubbly artists! And I can never resist a pun...

I first saw the M & M technique used on Sprinkle Bakes, but the technique is a well-known and well-loved one! It does take a bit of time, separating all the lollies into their colours, putting them individually on the cake etc. But it's impressive, and if you need some baking therapy, this is it my friends!

You could most definitely use Skittles instead of M & Ms, or some other miniature coloured lolly,  but since I was making a chocolate cake, I thought M & Ms were highly appropriate. The cake itself is gorgeous and soft, and the coffee in it brings out the chocolate flavour even more!

I have a large cake tin, but if yours are quite small or shallow, you could divide the mixture into three pans for a layer cake. You could fill it with some chocolate ganache, or the buttercream used as the icing here - you could even be adventurous and sprinkle some extra M & Ms in there, if you aren't convinced there's enough already!

Happy baking folks!

Chocolate M & M Cake

Makes one glorious, jolly cake (serves about 30)

Recipe adapted from the Sprinkle Bakes Cookbook, by Heather Baird

Ingredients:

Cake:

200g dark chocolate, chopped

1 1/2 cups strong black coffee, fresh and hot

2 1/2 cups plain flour

2 cups caster sugar

3/4 cup cocoa powder

2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

3 eggs

3/4 cup canola oil

1 1/2 cups buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Vanilla Buttercream:

250g unsalted butter, softened

2 1/2 cups icing sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

Milk, if necessary

3 packets M & Ms

Method:

To make the cake, preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Grease and line a large (or 3 shallow) 20cm cake tins.

Put the chocolate and hot coffee in a heatproof bowl and stir until fully melted. When smooth, set aside to cool. Sift together flour, cocoapowder, soda, powder and salt. Stir in sugar until combined.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs with a mixer until thickened and light. Add the canola oil and cooled coffee-chocolate mixture. Beat again until combined.

Add flour mixture and beat on medium until just combined. Pour batter into cake tins and bake for 1 hour, until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Let cake cool completely in tins before turning out onto a wire rack. Ice when completely cooled.

For the icing, with an electric mixer, beat together the butter and icing sugar. Mix on low speed until mixture is crumbly. Increase to high and beat for 3 minutes.

Add vanilla extract and beat for another minute, until light and fluffy. If too stiff, add a little milk until consistency is firm, but spreadable.

Spread evenly over cake with an offset spatula. Separate M & Ms into separate colours, and order M & Ms into colour gradient (eg. red, orange, yellow etc.). Starting at the base, press M & Ms individually into butter cream, making your way around the cake. For the next row, above the bottom, position the M & M of the corresponding colour slightly to the right of the first one, and continue around. Decorate the top however you please!

Caramel Apple Birthday Cake

Why hello you gorgeous people!

So it would seem that all my assessments are over... for now. AND it would also seem that the weather is grey, wet and horrible, perfect for staying indoors. AND it would ALSO seem that it was my dad's birthday yesterday... so what can I say?

The stars aligned. I just had to bake a great big birthday cake.

This cake is a bit of an homage to the transition of the seasons (it was kind of autumn a couple of weeks ago, but now, it's, kind of winter.) I thought the flavour combination, and the rich earthy tones of the icing and caramel would...

Ah I'm just kidding, I just made this cake because my dad really likes apple cake! And I kind of like caramel. So I googled 'caramel apple cake', and there it was, from "baked" (I really like these guys, it's a shame I didn't know about them when I was in New York last year!)

I tweaked the recipe for the icing (I just used Heather from Sprinkle Bakes' salted caramel icing, and also the hard caramel decorations - from her new cookbook, which is amazing!)

This cake looks really impressive, but really, it's not that difficult. And the apple cake is so soft and light, and SO APPLE-Y!

You can also decorate the cake however you want, I had never made hard caramel before, so I just kind of improvised drizzling the stuff all over some baking paper, and stuck it all over the cake however I pleased! You don't even have to make the caramel or the icing if you don't want to, I think the apple cake would be really nice just made as a loaf cake.

But as a whole, the cake and icing and hard caramel are sooooo good. Did I mention it was good?

Folks, you will need to crumb coat this one. See above.

I just love the hard caramel on top of the cake. The organic shapes look really impressive, and they taste good too! Just like the toffees you used to get from the canteen and school fetes when you were young. I made some little caramel droplets too, which I decorated the base with.

Dad had a really good birthday. I love you Papa C!

Caramel Apple Birthday Cake

Makes a big birthday cake, serves 20

Ingredients:

For the apple sauce:

6 red apples, peeled, cored and chopped.

1 cup apple juice

3 tbsp butter

2 tbsp honey

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

For the apple cake:

4 cups plain flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 tsp cinnamon

180g (1 1/2 cups) unsalted butter, softened

2 1/2 cups caster sugar

2 large eggs

4 cups home-made apple sauce

For the salted caramel buttercream:

3/4 cup caster sugar

6 tbsp water

3/4 cup lite thickened cream

3 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups unsalted butter

1 tsp salt

3 cups icing (confectioner's) sugar

For the hard caramel:

1 cup caster sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

Method:

Apple Sauce:

In a medium saucepan, combine all ingredients, and stir to combine. Cook voer medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes, until apples are soft. Allow to cool, then mash with a fork or potato masher until all solids are removed. Cool till room temperature.

Apple Cake:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line 3 round cake tins of the same size with baking paper.

In a large mixing bowl, sift flour, soda, powder, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy and combined.

Add eggs, and mix until combined.

Add the sugar mixture to the flour mixture, alternating additions with the apple sauce. Stir until combined, making sure no pockets of flour are left unnoticed!

Divide the batter between cake tins. Smooth tops, and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Transfer cakes to a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

Salted Caramel Buttercream:

In a saucepan, stir together sugar and water, bringing to the boil over a medium-high heat. Cook without stirring until the sugar has liquified and has turned a deep amber colour. Be careful of burning it though! You must watch carefully!

Remove from the heat and add in cream and vanilla, stirring to comnbine. Allow to cool until barely warm, yet still pourable.

With an electric mixer, beat sugar, salt and butter until light and fluffy. Reduce speed to low and add icing sugar. Add the caramel, and beat again until misture is light and airy (about 4 minutes). Frosting is now ready to use.

Hard Caramel decorations:

Fill your kitchen sink halfway with icy cold water. Line baking trays with baking paper.

Put sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan and heat over a medium-high heat. Cook without stirring, instead swirling the pan a little, until caramel is a nice amber colour. Remove from the heat and sit the saucepan in the iced water for about 3 seconds to stop further cooking. The pan will sizzle!

Working really quickly, use a spoon to gather caramel in the sauce and drizzle it over the baking paper, in whatever crazy shape you want. You could go for circles, waves or just "abstract" drizzles like I did. Leave to harden.

Assembly:

Place one of the cooled cake layers on a large plate and level off the top using a bread knife. Spread a little of the buttercream over the top so it fully and evenly covers the cake. Repeat with other layers, stacking one upon the other as you go. Put the last layer of cake bottom-side up, so it is nice and flat.

Crumb coat the cake: Using a spatula, spread a thin layer of buttercream over the whole cake. (See photo above). Place in fridge for 30 minutes until the cake is chilled (this will make it easier to ice later).

Once chilled, evenly spread the rest of the icing all over the cake. Now, with the hardened caramel, go crazy! Stick whatever shapes you have all over the cake. Have fun with it!

Congratulations! And also (if applicable), Happy Birthday!

Fading Chocolate Layer Cake For A Very Sweet Sixteenth

Happy January everybody!

How are you liking 2012 so far? I hope it's treating you well. Me? Oh, well I am currently loving this year because four days ago I SAW THE FLEET FOXES AT THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE! Oh, how glorious they were. They are my absolute favourite band, and they exceeded all my expectations entirely. It was like they were heavenly beings sent down to earth to sing for us wee human beings.

Here you can find a link to a video of one of my favourite songs of the night, Blue Ridge Mountains. This video was from 2008, so Robin Pecknold's hair was a lot shaggier than it was the other night, but the performance was just as beautiful as this one, and even better because of the amazing acoustics in the opera house.

So I'm still kind of on a high from that concert. It was just the best thing ever!

Ok Angela, stop and breathe. Whew.

Anyway, onto some of my other favourite things! Birthdays, cakes, baking, yay! Yesterday I had the privelige of baking a cake for my sister Lizzie's birthday party - she's turning sixteen! Gasp! She's going for her L's and gah she'll be able to drive and how did this happen? Ahh, they grow up so fast.

She had a really cute picnic thing up in the Hunter Valley, and I got to bake!

She loves chocolate (and hey, who doesn't?), so I decided to jump on this food blog fad of making "fading" layer cakes. People also do those ones where they make each layer a colour of the rainbow, so when you cut into the cake, a dazzling spectrum of colours peeps out at you! So instead of doing the colours using mountains of food colouring, I decided to attempt to make a cake where dark chocolate faded into creamy vanilla. The layers worked really well, and were really defined - they went down a treat at the party. I also used my brand new piping set that I got for Christmas to pipe on the vanilla bean buttercream on the outside.

This was my first attempt to make a full-on massive layer cake with smooth icing, so I am pretty damn proud of myself! It took the whole day and I was absolutely covered with sticky sugary substances, but it was so worth it! It's not perfect, but I love it!

Also, I had heard of crumb coating before, so I gave it a shot, and found that it was totally necessary to catch any naughty crumbs that wanted to be stuck in the outside layer of icing! I still got some stuck in there, the little fiends, but my buttercream was vanilla bean, so the crumbs just look like little vanilla seeds! Yay, I'm so sneaky!

{Here's the recipe - inspired by the Purple Sprinkles Ombre Cake that Steph from Raspberri Cupcakes made, except with chocolate! Initial chocolate cake recipe adapted from 'Chocolate Magic' by Kate Shirazi, basic buttercream from Raspberri Cupcakes.}

Fading Chocolate Layer Cake with Vanilla Bean Buttercream

Makes one hell of a birthday cake - 5 layers, serves about 20.

Ingredients:

For the cakes:

450g unsalted butter, softened

900g caster sugar

3 tsp vanilla essence

6 large eggs

450ml milk

10 tbsp sour cream

400g self-raising flour

6.5 tbsp cocoa powder

250g dark chocolate

100g unsalted butter, extra

For the icing:

900g icing sugar

450g unsalted butter

2 tsp vanilla essence

2 tsp vanilla bean paste, or the seeds from 2 vanilla bean pods

[Optional:]

Milk/Dark chocolate freckles

Royal icing - 1 large egg white, 1 cup icing sugar, food colouring

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Grease and line however many uniform cake tins you possess (20cm  diameter would be ideal).

In a large moxing bowl, beat butter, sugar and vanilla together until thick, pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition. Add the milk and sour cream and beat well (it may look curdled, but don't worry, that's what it's meant to do). Sift both flours over the mixture , and fold until combined.

Divide the mixture into 5 separate bowls. In one bowl, sift in 3 tbsp of the cocoa, in the next, 2 tbsp, in the next, 1 tbsp, in the next, 1/2 tbsp, and leave one plain vanilla. Now, in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of boiling water, melt the butter and chocolate until smooth and glossy. To the darkest cake batter, add about 1/2 of the melted chocolate, and to the second darkest, 2/3 of the chocolate that remains in your bowl. To the third darkest, add the remaining chocolate. The mixtures should have a defined gradient of shading. Bake 2 (or however many cake tins you have) of the mixtures in the oven for 45 min, or until a skewer comes out clean. Cover the rest of the mixtures with cling wrap. Once the first batch is cooked and transfered to a wire rack to cool completely, repeat with the other batters until all are baked and COMPLETELY cooled. With a breadknife, trim the tops of the cakes so they are flat and level.

To make the buttercream, sift the icing sugar into a large mixing bowl, and add the softened butter. Mix with an electric whisk until fluffy and light. Add both the vanilla substances and mix well.

Stack the cakes on top of each other, darkest first, and in between each layer, spread a thin layer of buttercream, spreading almost to the edges.

Once all the cakes are stacked, crumb coat the cake - using a spatula, thinly coat the whole outside of the cake so you can still see the crumbs. See how they get caught in the icing? Refrigerate for 15 min.

Once refrigerated, spread a thicker layer of buttercream evenly over the cake. I used a spatula which I intermittently dipped in warm water, and ran vertically up the cake. Place freckles around the base of the cake.

To make the royal icing - whisk eggwhite until slightly frothy, then sift in enough icing sugar to make a stiff, yet pliable paste. Colour as desired, and, using a piping bag, pipe whatever the hell you want onto your cake!

Mulberry Butter Cake

Hello once again. Have you had a good week? I hope so. Mine's been good. Beautiful weather makes all the difference, doesn't it?

I'm sorry, I'm making small talk again.

I guess this week was a bit overwhelming for me. I started Year 12! As soon as we got back to school, it was go, go go. Quite frankly, all the important talk gave me the heebie-jeebies. But I guess it's kind of exciting at the same time too. Hopefully I'll be able to keep this blog up throughout the year! It's relaxing and fun for me :)

Mulberries, to me, are the ultimate symbol of my childhood. We have a mulberry tree in the backyard, and as a kid, my sister and I used to wait for months until the berries began to appear, and when they did, we would pick bucketfuls, the purply-red juices staining our hands (and our mouths) in the process. So this cake is special, and extra delicious to boot!

It's taken from Bill (once again). He uses blueberries, so if mulberries are lacking to you, you could use them, or even blackberries would do the trick. I just love the juiciness and dark flavour of the humble mulberry, so I substituted those into the recipe. The crumble topping gives a little bit of crunch too, which is highly desirable for any cake, I think.

*You need a springform pan to make this cake.

Mulberry Butter Cake

Makes one big, glorious cake. (Serves 12)

Ingredients:

- For the topping:

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup plain flour

75g cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes.

- For the cake:

2 cups plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

125g unsalted butter, softened

1 cup caster sugar

3 eggs, beaten

1 cup sour cream

2 cups mulberries, washed and de-stemmed

Method:

To make the topping, combine brown sugar and flour in a bowl. Add the butter cubes and rub with your fingertips, mixing with the sugar/flour until the mixture is crumbly and coarse. (This may take a while, but perservere!)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Place the butter and caster sugar in a bowl and cream using electric beaters. Add the eggs and mix again. Add the dry ingredients and sour cream little by little, alternating. Mix yet again until the batter is smooth.

Pour batter into a greased 23cm springform pan. sprinkle with mulberries and the crumble topping.

Bake for 50 minutes - 1 hour, until a skewer comes out clean. Leave in the pan for 10 minutes, then spring the pan out and transfer the cake to a wire rack.

Serve the cake warm, or at room temperature, with vanilla ice cream. (See delicious picture below!)

Crunchy-Top Banana Bread

Hello! Well it's holiday time again - a would-be perfect opportunity for lots and lots of baking - however, as I'm jetsetting all over the place, I have next to no time for foing anything at all! Pfft. Oh well. I shouldn't be complaining, should I?

And isn't spring just lovely? I was so over winter. So dreary and cold. My favourite thing about spring is probably all the flowers  - their colours and smells. When taking some photos of the banana bread(my family's absolute staple),  I used a couple of poppies my pappy picked in the petal-garden protected by a picket fence. Nice alliteration, eh?

But seriously, I adore flowers, especially poppies!

Speaking of words beginning with 'p', did you like the plates I posted earlier? Just another project that I've decided to dabble in. Maybe I'm doing too much, but I like it that way. It's better than being bored! Some could say I'm "spreading myself too thinly". Ha! A baking pun! Ha!

All this good weather must be affecting my brain. Let's get on to the recipe. What I love about this banana "bread" (but let's face it, it's a cake people) is it's texture - texture texture texture! The cake itself is similar to shoving a tasty pillow into your mouth, while the almondy top adds the nicest of crunches! A perfect treat, whatever the weather!

 (P.S you can freeze slices of this cake for up to 3 weeks. Just defrost it and it will be restored to just about the same level of deliciousness you had before.)

Crunchy-Top Banana Bread

Makes 2 loaves

Ingredients:

45g brown sugar

30g dry-roasted almonds, roughly chopped

20g shredded or dessicated* coconut

255ml sour cream

1 tsp bicarb soda

100 unsalted butter, melted

230 caster sugar

2 medium eggs, lightly beaten

250g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp ground cinnamon

2-3 medium, overripe mashed bananas

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line 2 loaf tins (10x18cm) with baking paper.

In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar, chopped almonds and coconut. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the sour cream and bicarb soda with a metal spoon and leave to stand for 5 minutes. Stir in the melted butter, caster sugar and eggs.

Sift flour, baking powder and cinnamon together into the bowl.  Add mashed bananas. Lightly fold the dry and the wet ingredients together (again using a metal spoon) until just combined. This 'light touch' will make you banana bread delightfully fluffy!

Pour mixture evenly into two loaf tins, and sprinkle equally with the brown sugar/almond/coconut mixture. Bake for 1 hour, or until golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the bread comes out squeaky clean!

 

Let cool in the tins for 20 min, then turn out onto a wire rack and let cool completely.

{Recipe adapted from Bill Granger}