Saturday 10 December 2011

Another Office Bake

Blog posts at the minute are few and far in between, I currently do not have an oven!! This is proving most difficult, especially as I have a long list of christmas bakes up my sleeve. Luckily, I managed to fit in some baking for my brother before the oven was removed and, as a thank you, received some wonderful flowers!



As always, apologies for the useless photos! Anyway, I made a chocolate victoria sponge not too long ago and it went down really well, better than any cake I normally make! So, when my brother asked me to make some cakes for work, I decided to make another sponge.



This time, I put vanilla buttercream in the middle and chocolate around the edges. I was a bit worried that the two buttercreams wouldn't work together as the vanilla one was quite strong so I had a taste (a big spoonful of the two, I can't lie) and they were lovely! I don't think it looked as good as the first time I made it, but apparently it went down really well :)


I also made some chocolate fudge cupcakes with chocolate fudge buttercream. Overkill, maybe, but they were really lovely and the fudge melted into the cake. I used my favourite cupcake recipe and substituted the white chocolate for fudge pieces.



I put them in festively coloured cupcake cases, and topped them with Betty Crocker chocolate fudge buttercream. I know this is cheating, but its just sooo tasty!!


I'm still struggling with my icing, if i do it from the middle outwards, it doesn't cover the whole cake. If I do it from the outside, I don't get a good peak, see what I mean?


They went down a storm, which is all I can ask for, I'll just keep practising!


Chocolate Victoria Sponge- adapted from Mary Berry's Baking Bible


Ingredients

For the sponge:
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
3 tablespoons boiling water
225g softened butter
225g caster sugar
4 large eggs
225g self raising flour
2 level teaspoons baking powder

For the filling and topping: I found this wasn't enough and made separate batches for the filling and topping
50g softened butter
175g sifted icing sugar
1 tablespoon milk


-Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160C/Gas 4
-Grease two 20cm sandwich tins and line the base of each with baking parchment
-Mix the cocoa and water in a mixing bowl then leave to cool slightly
-Measure the remaining ingredients into the bowl and beat until thoroughly blended- I've previously found that this method doesn't create a good rise so used the creaming method which worked brilliantly.
-Divide the mixture between the tins and level them out. Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes or until well risen. The tops of the cakes should be springy when touched
-Leave to cool in the tins for a while then turn out and leave to cool on a wire rack.
-For the buttercream, beat the butter, icing sugar and milk until smooth- I found more milk and cocoa powder was necessary!
-Once the cake is cool, sandwich the cakes together with the buttercream and spread the rest on top- or cover the sides like I did
Enjoy!

4 comments:

Jo said...

Yum!! It all looks so good. It's only natural to try, and then double/triple check that the icing tastes good ;) Have you tried using a bigger piping nozzle? I found my swirls looked better once I invested in a big nozzle, like a Wilton 1M or the big ones in Lakeland.

The Caked Crusader said...

Your work mates must love you! Both cakes look fab

Cupcake Crazy Gem said...

Practice does make perfect when it comes to frosting swirls so just keep going! If you start from the outside, you might need to make each ring of frosting tighter on top of the one underneath (if that made sense!) Choc Fudge, you can't beat that for a tasty combo! and I also agree that the 1m nozzle is where it's at!

Rachael said...

Thank you everyone :) I'm currently using a set of large nozzles from Lakeland but I've got a Wilton 1M on my christmas list so hopefully this will improve things!

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