The Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge: Hot Chocolate Souffle

 It´s been awhile since I´ve done a GBBO technical challenge and when trying to decide what to make for Valentine´s Day this year, I knew that this Hot Chocolate Souffle was the perfect dessert for this special day.

My husband isn´t a fan of fondant or buttercream and while I like to experiment and perfect different skills on Valentine´s bakes...it is pretty much wasted on him. However, he does love anything chocolately so thought I´d be onto a winner with this souffle.And this delectable, gooey,chocolately yet light souffle did not disappoint.Chocolate is always a necessity on Valentine´s Day!! I think both of us could even have gone back for seconds!!!

This is not the first souffle I´ve made as I´ve already made Mary Berry´s lemon souffle(here´s a link to my previous GBBO souffle challenge) also for a GBBO challenge, and they were also delicious if a little sunken.This is only the secod time I´ve made souffles and the first time being out of chocolate. The recipe(click here for the Queen of Baking Mary Berry´s recipe!) itself is actually fairly simple if you follow it closely although I think it´d be a whole lot more difficult under the time pressures and only the basic outlines of the recipe that the contestants had to face. The hardest part for me was adding the cooled cocoa milk to the eggs and whisking as I thought it hadn´t cooled enough so I thought the eggs had started cooking and then when I put it back on the heat , it didn´t appear to be thickening!I thought it was going to be a complete disaster!!
                                                  The only changes I made to the recipe were that I only made half the amount as the original recipe is enough for 8 people and as I don´t have a souffle dish big enough, I decided to make it in individual ramekins,which were pefect portion sizes. Half the recipe made 3 and 1/2 ramekins-thought the 1/2 portion would´ve been ideal for my toddler but he didn´t seem too keen and surprizingly (or maybe not!) my daughter wouldn´t even try it! Oh well,more for us...tomorrow´s dessert is sorted out too!! I also made a heart template and dusted the souffles with icing sugar to decorate it more for Valentine´s Day. Served warm with a nice dollop of cream or ice cream and you have the perfect Valentine´s dessert to dive into.This dessert has now become a new favourite of mine and one that I will be making again!                    

Valentine´s Cupcake Course with La Fábrica & Valen Cupcakes

 Cupcakes are really gaining in popularity here in Spain and now it is possible to participate in cupcake courses even in Ciudad Real.The most recent cupcake course which I took part in, was held in conjunction with La Fábrica, a company which holds various workshops for all manners of crafts and Valen Cupcakes, a self-taught cake decorater, with the topic of Valentine´s Day.

The course started at 11pm and finished at 2pm and was held in La Fábrica. There were about  6 or 7 of us so it was nice to meet other cake fanatics.The course was very professional. Valen,the teacher gave us lots of information and tips about the materials needed, for example the different paper cases, measuring cups and spoons, piping bags and different nozzles, colouring gels, essences available etc. He made some buttercream, which he flavoured with sweet or marshmellow essence and gave us each some buttercream and we coloured our buttercreams various colours with toothpicks.He also gave each of us an icing bag and various nozzles and showed us how  to pipe a rose swirl,stars, leaves and even a rose, depending on which nozzle you used!

We were then let loose to decorate four cupcakes as we wished and unleash our creativity.My mind went blank. First of all, I used my peach buttercream to pipe little swirls. I found that sometimes it wasn´t very neat and was a bit blobby and a bit gappy (which Valen explained was because I was lifting the piping bag too high) so I sprinkled some gold balls over it to try and hide the gaps!!I then had two goes trying to do a rose swirl,one with pink buttercream and the other with white. I was pretty pleased with the end result but wished they were a little neater or more perfect. I topped the pink rose swirl with heart sprinkles and some red edible glitter although I was a bit heavy-handed with it!!Then I piped orange stars around the white swirl and topped it with a single red heart. I also tried my hand at a rose but couldn´t start it off so Valen showed me how to start it off and then I finished off piping the rose. It was not the best rose but for a first attempt,I was quite pleased with it, I then hurriedly piped some green leaves and some swirls in between the leaves. So all in all I was happy with my efforts although I´d have liked a little more time to do the decorating and try and make them neater as I ended up rushing the rose!One girl had not done any decorating before and her cupcakes were much better decorated than mine!!!I really need to practice my piping skills!!

We were given a little booklet with the cupcake and buttercream recipes at the end of the course and a good time was had by all. The course cost 25 euros so was definitely reasonable and well worth the money. I look forward to the next one and would thoroughly reccommend it!

Belated Valentine Heart Biscuits

I made these Valentine´s biscuits based on a Hannah Miles recipe last week but haven´t got round to posting about them till now. The biscuits were a plain biscuit recipe but were delicious and I decided to decorate them with royal icing in pink and white polka dots similar to the Christening biscuits and a design that appears in the Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits, only mine don´t look quite as pretty as those in the book.I also piped I heart U on some of the biscuits for variety and extra piping practice!!! I think my decorating skills are improving slowly but surely, just wish I were quicker! Unfortunately they´re not quite up to the level required to sell them professionally ; ( Also, most people that tried them found the royal icing too sweet,my husband and mother-in-law included, which meant I was the one who ended up eating the majority of the biscuits! I don´t think I´ll ever be able to set up my own cake business in Spain....they just seem to find fondant and buttercream etc too sweet!

White Chocolate Chip Cupcakes for Valentine´s Day

I´ve been dying to try out my Sugarcraft heart plungers from China,which I bought for Chloe´s Christening cake then never used, so with Valentine´s Day looming up, I thought it was the perfect opportunity! I also had some white chocolate chips from Asda(ordered and brought to me by my mum as you can´t get them here)so thought I´d try out the following White Chocolate Chip cupcakes based on a recipe from my cupcake calender.

I decorated the cupcakes with a simple & quick Glace icing, then coloured some fondant red and set to with the heart plungers,cutting out small,medium and larger hearts,which I stuck on overlapping one another.Once again,very simple but this was more about trying the plungers out etc and I was hoping it would be more striking than it actually turned out! All in all, I was very pleased with the plungers, they were very cheap but did take awhile to arrive, they are very easy to use.My one complaint is that they didn´t always cut the fondant hearts out completely(but then that could just be me!) but I found that if you held the plunger down for a few seconds,you got a neater cut.

Here´s the recipe for the white chocolate chip cupcakes:
Ingredients: (makes about 18 cupcakes)
1 cup butter at room temperature
1 cup caster (superfine)sugar
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup (about 100g) white chocolate chips
1/2 tsp bicarbonade of soda (baking soda)

Method
1.Preheat oven to 175ºc (350ºF) and place 18 cupcake cases (I used cases with red love hearts on to ooze more Valentine Day love) in a muffin tray.
2.Stir all cupcake ingredients together except the chocolate chips for 2-3mins.
3.Stir in chocolate chips.
4. Spoon mixture into cupcake cases and bake for 20mins until toothpick comes out clean when inserted.
5. Leave to cool and then decorate.

Valentine´s Surprise Cupcakes/Fairy Cakes

I decided to make these cupcakes/fairy cakes to enter in a Valentine´s Day competition held by Dulce Kitz & in conjunction with Fabricando Delicias.... so wish me luck! I saw the recipe in my Big Book of Cakes & Cookies by Hannah Miles and had been wanting to try it out. As I copied the recipe exactly and didn´t change anything, I´m not going to blog the recipe but I´ll just tell you that the cupcakes contain cocoa and natural yoghurt.

The surprise element is that you place a chocolate-covered sweet or candy in the middle of the cake, which I suppose is supposed to melt,leaving a gooey, sticky centre when you bite into it. I wasn´t sure what kind of chocolate-covered sweets to use(seeing as my book is in Spanish and I wasn´t very sure of the translation). In the end, I found some white chocolate skulls (not really very romantic!) with a strawberry filling which I used. The sweet didn´t melt as I expected it to but still tasted ok in the cake!

I bought some Wilson heart cupcake cases and some heart sprinkles from Fabricando Delicias. After the cakes had cooled, I covered the cake with a chocolate ganache and decorated it with silver balls and the heart sprinkles. Just one idea of what you can make or give to your sweetheart this Valentine´s Day!

Love Muffins-ooer! (11th Feb, 2009)

Love is in the air! It´s coming up to that time of year again, Valentine´s Day and if the way to a man´s heart is truly through his stomach, then these simple cakes will do the job....he´ll be wanting to grab more than these love muffins!



This recipe is from my cupcake calendar which takes its recipes from 500 Cupcakes. I couldn´t find fondant icing or silver balls in the supermarket but instead found these great icing pens from Cake Mate which come in a variety of colours and with the aid of a knife managed to ice the cakes. As you can see, I need to work on my icing skills!



Ingredients (makes about 18 cakes)
1 cup (around 227g) of unsalted butter, softened
1 cup(around 192g) caster sugar (superfine)
2 cups (around 222g) self-raising flour
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2oz red fondant icing
2oz white fondant icing
3tbsp raspberry jam
Silver balls

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 C).
2. Place all ingredients in large bowl and beat with electric mixer until all ingredients are combined (if you haven´t got a mixer, you can do it by hand although I´d cream the butter and sugar together first and then add flour, vanilla extract and eggs gradually as it´s easier!)
3.Place backing cups in muffin or sponge cake pan and place on middle shelf in the oven.
4. Bake for 20 mins
5. Cool cakes for 5 mins
6. If using fondant icing, roll both red and white out to 1/8 in. thick, then cut white fondant icing into circles using a 2 1/2 in. cookie cutter.
7. Cut out 18 hearts using a small heart shaped cookie cutter or a heart template and knife.
8. Brush each muffin with a little jam and place white fondant circle on top and place a heart on top of the circle.
9. Decorate with silver balls.

I´m sure your loved ones will enjoy these simple yet delicious treats. Enjoy your Valentine´s Day with your loved one(s)!