Chocolate Football Cake

Are you watching the World Cup, and which team are you supporting?

I made this football cake in honour of the World Cup and the only fitting place to photograph it was on the grass!

Yes, this is a cake!

I have got the Wilton Sports Ball pan and thought the World Cup was the perfect opportunity to use it. Unfortunately it was only after I mixed the cake batter and went to look for the tin that I realised it was in my storage unit. It was such a long time ago that I put my house on the market - back in February - and we wanted to declutter to make it look nicer for the viewings. At the time I couldn't think of anything I would need the sports ball pan for, as I thought we would have moved in to the new place by May, or perhaps at a push June. Now we are in July and having just been told that the people whose house we are buying are away next week, then the woman buying my house is away the week after, we now won't be moving until August. And the most annoying thing is we don't have a holiday booked as we didn't think we could go away during this process, though it seems nobody else shared that view!

I had my cake batter and no cake tin so decided instead to use a pyrex bowl. I had to then double the batter and it has meant that the cake is quite big! Decorating it wasn't very easy either but I am pretty happy with the way it turned out.

The recipe I used was Hershey's "perfectly chocolate" cake which you can find online here. To be honest I wasn't that impressed with it; it may have been down to the extended cooking time but the texture was a bit odd. It tasted good though!

As I said, I doubled the quantities. For one cake - or in this case, one half of the football - you need:

2 cups caster sugar

1 3/4 cups self-raising flour

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla flavouring

1 cup boiling water

 Ingredients for the chocolate ganache filling given below.

Preheat oven to 175C. Mix the sugar, flour, cocoa powder and salt in a bowl. Mix the eggs, milk and vegetable oil in a jug and gradually pour into the dry ingredients, mixing well. Finally add the vanilla and carefully stir in the boiling water until you have a thin chocolatey batter.

Spray the pyrex dish with Cake Release (the quantity of cake batter shown here is about a litre) and pour the cake mixture into the dish. Bake in the preheated oven for an hour and a half - it takes a long time as the cake is so deep. If the top starts to burn, cover with foil.

When the cake is cooked, cool in the dish then turn out. As I didn't have my Wilton sports ball tin but wanted to make a round cake, I had to repeat this whole process to make the other half. Of course, you could just decorate half the football and it would still look good!

I made a chocolate ganache for the filling, by melting 100g of plain chocolate in 100ml of double cream in a saucepan and stirring until smooth and glossy. Leave to cool in the fridge until thickened.

I used a spoon to remove a little of the centre of the cake and spooned about a quarter of the chocolate ganache inside. Don't go too deep or too wide as the cake needs to be really stable and strong as you are going to put the other half of the cake on top, and they are quite heavy!

Spread another quarter of the chocolate ganache over the base of the cake and repeat with the other cake so you have used almost all the chocolate ganache. Reserve a little bit to stick on the fondant.

Carefully place one half of the cake on top of the other then place the cake on a cake board.

I had in mind the traditional black and white hexagon pattern to decorate the football but was told afterwards this design hasn't been used on professional footballs for a long time - apparently the different panels made the ball less aerodynamic. Either way, I still think this is the most immediately recognisable football design so that's what I wanted for my cake.

I bought some black roll-out fondant and already had white at home. I made a hexagon template out of card and cut around that to make several pieces.

I put a little of the leftover chocolate ganache on each piece and started at the top and worked my way down. As I got towards the bottom some of the hexagon pieces didn't quite fit properly so the cake looks good from a distance but not so perfect close up!

Stuck In The Tree is a bingo review site that is about having fun online and off; they are running a 'bakespiration' competition so I am sending them my cake in the hope they will include it in their gallery.

 I am also sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World for the final of his World Cup challenge; the idea has been to make something from each of the participating countries which strictly speaking I haven't done with this cake, but hopefully he will agree that a football cake is fitting for the day of the final!

Fathers' Day Decorated Cookies - House Husband Cookie Cutter

Because dads are heroes.... and deserve some special cookies this Fathers' Day! These cookies would also be a great gift for a female friend or to make and decorate on a hen night, because which woman doesn't want a hunky fireman, lifeguard, chef...

I was sent this cookie cutter to review. It's called Bake Your Own House Husband - they are made by a company called Niion and there is also a Bake Your Own Boyfriend cookie cutter in the range. They cost £3.60 which is a fair price I think for a large cookie cutter.

There is a recipe on the back of the packet which I decided to follow, to make a basic sugar cookie dough.

To make about 8-10 cookies depending on their thickness, you need:

150g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
300g plain flour
1 egg
Pinch of salt
Dash of Vanilla Extract

Simply cream the butter and sugar, add the flour then the egg and finally the salt and vanilla. Mix until you have a dough; wrap this dough in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for an hour before using.

Preheat oven to 180C. Roll out the cookie dough on a lightly floured surface and grease and line a baking tray - I used two trays at a time.

The cookie cutter was easy to use; not as sturdy as a metal cutter but I was very happy with it.

The men's legs are a little thin so you have to be careful when you transfer them to the baking sheet - I used a spatula.

Bake for around 15 minutes but keep an eye on them - the cooking time will depend on the thickness of your dough once it is rolled out.

I was also sent a few products by Dr. Oetker to review; I have mentioned before how good their Cake Release spray is. This time they sent me a pack of Regal-Ice ready to roll icing which contains green, red, yellow, blue and black. I find decorating cookies with royal icing quite messy so regal ice is much easier and cleaner, and these colours were perfect for what I had in mind.

Use the cookie cutter to cut out your icing so you have the exact shape. The Dr. Oetker icing offers really vivid, true colours - reds and blacks are very difficult to achieve if you are colouring your own fondant, so this pack is perfect. I also find that ready to roll icing doesn't keep that long so having smaller packs is a really good idea.

I decided to decorate my first man as a footballer, and cut out the shape of his body in red and blue fondant then used a knife to cut off the parts I didn't need, e.g. at the end of the sleeves. I rolled out a thin sausage shape from the blue icing and curled it to form the number six, in honour of Bobby Moore (even though it's the wrong colour).

Next, thinking about dads and Fathers' Day I decided to decorate one as 'office worker dad'. So he has a shirt and tie, black trousers and boots.

Many men like to cook and if you are making this for your girl friends I'm sure they would all like a man who knows his way around the kitchen. So here is 'chef', wearing a black top and trousers with a white apron over the top and a white chef's hat.

What girl doesn't love a hunky fireman... the yellow in the Dr. Oetker pack is perfect for the all-in-one suit the fireman wears, with a red trim. Definitely a hero!

This one is more for a hen night than Fathers' Day... unless your dad is a life guard of course! Here's David Hasselhoff in biscuit form (maybe....)

And finally if you are going to have a superhero, either to tell your dad he is a hero or to sweep a female friend off her feet, it has to be Superman. This one was a little trickier. I made a top with long sleeves in blue and also trousers in blue. Then I added red underpants and a yellow belt and also gave him a red cloak. To make the logo on the front of his costume, I had to check the shape online, and cut out a piece of yellow, which I then edged with red (much easier than doing the other way around). I rolled a thin snake in red and curved it to make the S shape.

Here's all six, ranging from ideal husbands to superheros - how else would you decorate these cookies?

If you're looking for other ideas for what to bake for Fathers' Day, Dr. Oetker has lots of great recipes online, including a Chocolate Layer Cake, Chocolate and Guinness Cake and Homemade Chocolate Bars.

Thanks to Niion for sending me the cookie cutter and Dr. Oetker for sending a pack of goodies including the Regal-Ice.

 

Project Namibia 2011 - football cakes

This year I did possibly the most amazing thing in my life ever. I went to Namibia with 40 volunteers and helped renovate a primary school that was in a really bad state. We spent ten days camping with no running water and worked every day on the school. I also raised over £4,500 which was split between the Bobby Moore Fund (a bowel cancer research charity) and the project costs. I'm massively grateful to everyone who supported me and helped with the fund raising.

So what has this got to do with baking? I did several small bake sales at work to raise money, and started in June 2011 when the World Cup was on, and due to the Bobby Moore Fund's link with football decided to make some football themed cakes.

So here is a selection of what I made... I wish I could say I'd made these footballers but I bought them! They are actually made of marshmallow and I found them in Poundland of all places!

I also made an 'England' cake using red roll-out icing and a little chocolate football

These were chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate football on top

You can never go wrong with chocolate brownies! My fail-safe recipe is from Nigella's "How to be a domestic goddess" which was one of my first cookery books - my friends at university clubbed together to get it in my second year.

I also had a stall at a local primary school fete.

And while we're on the subject of things I made....

... this is the school bathroom in Namibia. It was in a pretty terrible state, and I was lucky enough to be working on the girls' bathroom - the boys' was even worse.

I learned how to tile...

... and how to cut tiles to go around taps, which I was particularly proud of, as it wasn't something many people could get the hang of.

So like I said, under the heading of things I made.... along with Roger, Debbie, Claire and David, I give you the girls' bathroom in the Tubusis Primary School, Namibia!

It's actually pretty amazing to think that while we all made a massive difference to the school and to the children, something I did - little old me who had barely changed a lightbulb before - will have such a massive impact on the children's hygiene and therefore their health and I guess therefore their lives. Puts everything else in perspective really, doesn't it?!


June 2012 update: Laura from Laura Loves Cakes and Dolly Bakes are co-hosting a new baking challenge, Calendar Cakes,  with a topical or seasonal twist every month. For their inaugural challenge they've chosen... Euro 2012! The rules state that you can enter old posts as long as you update them with the Calendar Cakes logo and link back to the challenge. So that's just what I'm going to do - it's great timing too as it was exactly a year ago this month that I went out to Namibia to help renovate the school. It's nice - and quite humbling - to reflect for a while on what our group achieved, the difference we hopefully made, and the wonderful children and adults that we met.