Apple & Pecan Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Glace Icing

I made this cake for my husband´s birthday even though it´s not a very birthdayish looking cake but he doesn´t really like buttercream or fondant and in this way, I can also practice my cake decorating skills with chocolate!

This cake is moist and not overly sweet so is great for those who haven´t got much of a sweet tooth. The recipe is taken from the book: Best Ever Chocolate Cakes & Slices by Konemann....however it´s not very 100 Mile!!Here´s the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup self-raising flour, sifted
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder,sifted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup oil (I used sunflower oil)
2 green apples, peeled and grated
1/3 cup of pecans,chopped

Method:
1.Preheat oven to 180ºC. Grease and line a 21x14x7cm loaf tin with baking parchment.
2. Mix flour, cocoa and sugar together, then add the combined eggs and oil and beat until ingredients are well mixed and there are no lumps and mixture has increased in volume.
3. Fold in pecans and grated apple.
4. Spoon into tin and bake for 45 mins or until toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

When cool, you can decorate the cake as desired. Instead of the decoration suggested in the recipe, I made a simple chocolate glace icing, using icing sugar, cocoa and water,which I made by guesstimation and iced the top of the cake with, then I decorated the cake with pecan nuts and Dr. Oetker´s Chocolate Hearts, which can be found in LeClerc.

Eating Local: Inspiration from the 100 Mile Challenge

I have been watching two food programmes recently that have really inspired me, one is Junior Masterchef (Australia)....boy, can those kids cook....they´re amazing! The other programme is the 100 Mile Challenge, where about 5 families were challenged to only eat food that was grown locally within a 100 Mile radius. I think it was really interesting and thoroughly reccommend that you watch both of these programmes.

I think the idea behind the 100 mile challenge/diet (I want to read the book now!) , that by eating only local products, you are reducing your carbon footprint by reducing the amount of miles your food travels and therefore helping the environment and the local economy and farmers, is a very provoking idea.However, loving Chinese and Indian food as I do and missing a few favs from England, I don´t think I could fully do the 100 mile diet. Plus I think it really does depend on where you live....if you live in the centre of the country (as I do!) it makes it very difficult to find fish as you aren´t near the sea.However, I intend to try and buy as much local produce as I can and this post (and future posts) are about finding great local produce and shops.

Although, I´m not much of a wine drinker and probably wouldn´t miss it if I had to give it up for the 100 Mile Challenge, there is plenty of local wine to choose from. One of the closest being wine from El Pago de Vicario winery. Its wine has won many awards and we even discovered it was being sold in Pittsburgh. It has white, red and rosé wines. Another alcoholic beverage that is produced locally is Sandevid from Damiel, a tinto de verano fizzy drink which is basically red wine mixed with lemonade or soda and is much more up my street!

Milk is a basic in all diets and it is available locally from Finca Cantarranas. They sell both UHT milk and fresh milk in skimmed, semi-skimmed and full fat. We bought some full fat fresh milk the other day and it was lovely and creamy and reminded me of English milk. My only complaint is that the fresh milk is sold in small bags and not cartons so it doesn´t last very long and is difficult to store so I´m not sure how often we will be buying it! After checking out their webpage though, it seems like they also sell yoghurts and jellies...I´ll have to keep an eye out for them in the supermarket or other shops!

Bread is also a staple in most people´s diets. As of yet, I haven´t found any sandwich bread that is produced locally but rustic loaves yes....one of the nearest and most acclaimed bread is Pan de Picón.

Condiments can also be important in diets or for certain recipes and I have discovered white wine vinegar in the supermarkets which is produced in Toledo. The brand is Vinagres Parras and looking at their website, it appears that they also sell red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar,cider vinegar and many more.

Manchego cheese is famous throughout Spain and is growing in popularity throughout the world too. One of our personal favourites is Rocinante. In fact, we visited the factory where they make it with my parents but unfortunately it was too late to actually visit the factory part. They sell sheep cheese cured and semicured, cheese in olive oil,goat´s cheese mild, with wine and with rosemary,Miguel Manchego D.O. cured, semicured and mature and our favourite (although we haven´t tried all of them!)Rocinante Ibérico mild, cured and semicured. They also sell a variety of cheesecakes too which are delicious too...we bought a lemon one, which was yummy!

That´s about all for now but I´ll be doing more posts about delicious local products and shops which sell local produce.I´d love to hear any reccommendations about any local products you´ve heard of or tried or your local or 100 mile diet food experiences!

Ladybird cake for my daughter´s first birthday & Annabel Karmel´s white and dark chocolate cupcakes

 I can´t believe my daughter has finally turned one!! The year has flown by and it´s been a busy but enriching one full of joy and happiness. My little baby is no longer a baby,now she´s a little girl! They grow up far too quickly in my opinion.

I was busy preparing her first birthday party,preparing and decorating the Annabel Karmel White & Dark Chocolate cupcakes and making and decorating her first birthday cake, a ladybird cake plus preparing two salads and other party food. Luckily, I had my parents´,my inlaws and my husband´s help but parties are definitely hard work....maybe next year we´ll have the party in a ball pool place so all I have to do is stick to making the cake!!!It also means that I´d actually get to spend more time with my daughter on her actual birthday!

I made the cupcakes on the Friday two days before the party and froze them,then took them out to defrost early on the morning of the party. I made the white chocolate buttercream and decorated them with red heart sprinkles and yellow and white star sprinkles.

The ladybird cake was a Hot Milk Sponge cake made the day before the party. I found this link about a ladybird cake, which helped me a lot. I covered the cake with red and black fondant and cut black fondant circles out for the ladybird´s spots using a bottletop (a great tip from the link I found)! Who says you need fancy equipment to decorate cakes? The leftover white fondant I had was rock hard but as I had a bit of white chocolate buttercream left I used that for the whites of the ladybird´s eyes but unfortunately it wasn´t quite as neat and round as I´d have liked and two more black fondant circles for the pupils. I was going to use pipe cleaners for the antennae but couldn´t find any so used the bendy part of two straws instead. I covered them in black fondant and then made two small balls for the feelers of the antennae. I was pretty pleased with the end result!

Lemon Curd Butterfly Cakes

I made these butterfly cakes a couple of weeks ago using my Quick & Easy Lemon Curd but have only just got round to blogging about them now. These are light and fluffy sponge cakes filled with tangy lemon curd, taken from Delia Smith´s Complete Cookery Course...Here´s a recipe for Delia´s butterfly cakes similar to the one I used, only the lemon curd is replaced with orange curd and just substitute the orange rind and orange juice in the recipe link for lemon rind & juice.

Butterfly cakes take me back to my childhood. I loved them and my Gran used to make them frequently but filled them the traditional way with jam and cream. Hmmmmmhhhh, delicious! They are so delicate and pretty too- they definitely suit their name!

Easter Biscuits 1

Blogging these days is having to take a bit of a back seat as I don´t seem to find the time to do it, much less visit other blogs! Take these Easter biscuits for instance, I made them about a week before Easter but I´m only just getting round to blogging about them now!! They were a recipe again taken from Hannah Miles' Big Book of Cakes & Cookies and contain sultanas and marzipan. As I didn´t have enough icing sugar to make royal icing, I coloured some fondant yellow and decorated the biscuits with that and some silver balls. As you can see, this is only a quick post...I´m hoping to blog about some butterfly cakes I made recently asap!!!

Mother´s Day Cake

With this Mother´s Day being one of the first I´ve spent with my Mum for a long time and seeing as I´ve never baked her a cake before, I thought I´d make her a Mother´s Day cake from Hannah Miles´ book The Big Book of Cakes and Cookies. However, I couldn´t find shelled pistachios and also all the pistachio´s I could find were salted, plus I wasn´t sure if I´d be able to find organic or free from pesticides roses so ended up making a sponge cake, which I filled with my Lemon Curd. I then made some lemon glace icing, which I iced the cake with (as smoothly as possible), then using some red fondant I had left over from my Valentine´s Day cupcakes, I used my heart plungers to cut out some red hearts which I stuck to the cake and I made a quick fondant rose based on what I had learnt on one of my cake decorating courses. I didn´t use cutters or anything for the rose and it was made in a bit of a rush but I don´t think it turned out that badly. It´s the thought that counts anyway! It tasted pretty yummy though although it was slightly overdone round the edges.....I think my oven thermostat has broken! That´s my excuse at least! Being a mum myself now,I´m finding it quite hard to keep up with my blog and visit other blogs and leave comments so my apologies for that but will try and visit them when I have more time!

Quick & Easy Lemon Curd

Despite the lack of recent posts, I have been baking and cooking as usual.I made a Number One first birthday cake with chocolate buttercream for my friend´s daughter but my husband said it looked like a certain part of the male anatomy so didn´t post it as it wasn´t my best cake. However, it tasted good and my friend´s nephew declared it the best cake he´d eaten, which was very sweet of him!

Anyway, after Pancake Day I had quite a few lemons which needed using up and as I haven´t tried my hand at many preserves,I decided to make a British classic, lemon curd. Lemon curd is great on toast for breakfast or as a snack and is a great filling for desserts and cakes. I´ll be making some cakes using the lemon curd I made. I´ve made lemon curd a couple of times and usually I make it using a bain marie method, which does take quite awhile so I decided to adopt Ruth from The Pink Whisk´s method, and is a much quicker method, great if you´re a busy mother!!This recipe is a bit of a mish-mash of The Pink Whisk´s recipe and a recipe from The Dairy Book of Home Cookery:



Ingredients:
Juice of 3 lemons and zest of 2 of the lemons
3 eggs plus 1 extra egg yolk,beaten
200g sugar
100g butter

Method

1. Grate and squeeze the juice out of the lemons.
2. Place juice and zest in a pan with the butter and sugar and heat until the sugar has dissolved and the butter has melted.
3. Add this mixture to the eggs gradually,stirring after each addition.
4. Pour back into the pan and place on medium heat again.
5.Heat the lemon curd while stirring continuously until lemon curd thickens.
6. When lemon curd coats the back of wooden spoon,it is thick enough so it is ready,place in jars and leave to cool. As it cools, it will also appear to thicken up even more.