Sachertorte Cupcakes and Home Bake Box Review

I've written before about the Home Bake Box mini box I ordered and made macarons from; I subscribed for a second month to see what I got and once again it was something I'd made before, though this time much more successfully than the macarons: Sachertorte.

Again all the ingredients were neatly weighed and packaged in little labelled bags with a recipe card. There was also a note saying that when they had packaged the first few bags of jam they had leaked so they were double bagged, and wouldn't be sending jam through the post again!

When I made it before, I made the traditional round cake with the word Sacher written on the top. This time instead of suggesting we pipe that word (which is how I thought it was always made), we were given some gold leaf to decorate the top. I was also interested to see the recipe gave instructions for making three different sized cakes, either a larger single layer, a smaller two layer cake, or cupcakes.

Since I had made it before I thought it might be fun to try out the cupcakes. There's not a lot of point me posting the recipe here as it isn't a recipe as such - the sachets were labelled things like 'cake mix' so I couldn't tell you exactly what quantities of which ingredients you need.

The method was quite interesting in that I had to beat the egg whites - this made for a really light and fluffy cake.

 

Almost there...

 

The cupcakes before and after baking. Afterwards, I spread a little of the apricot jam as a glaze on top.

Finally I had to make a chocolate ganache to cover the top but couldn't see the amount of cream I needed to add to the chocolate that was provided. By this point I had gotten so used to all the ingredients being pre-measured that it never occurred to me to turn over the recipe card and look on the back, so I just guessed how much cream to use (I was getting impatient by this point) and my chocolate ganache ended up too runny. It still worked ok, but was a little thinner on top of the cupcakes - you can still see some of the apricot jam in places.

We were also provided with a small piece of gold leaf and instructions to use scissors or tweezers, not our fingers. So I used scissors but when the pieces stuck to the scissors and I tried to get them off with my fingers they stuck to my fingers - doh! This was the first time I had used gold leaf - I know it's normally pretty expensive - and it's not something I'd be particularly bothered about using again unless it was a really integral part of a cake decoration.

Here are the finished cupcakes, with all the gold leaf that I could get onto them (the rest ended up stuck to my fingers!) - they tasted a lot better than they looked!

Bucket of Maltesers Chocolate Birthday Cake

This is the cake I made for my boyfriend's birthday last week; it was very popular with his family and also his work colleagues so I would say it was definitely a success. I was going to use a recipe for chocolate buttermilk cake from Tea With Bea (recipes from Bea's of Bloomsbury) but the carton of buttermilk I bought split on the way home so I ended up with a carrier bag full of buttermilk which had to go in the bin. I needed to make the cake that evening and had nowhere local that would stock buttermilk; I know you can make buttermilk yourself by adding a dash of lemon juice to milk, but instead I just adapted the recipe. The idea for the decoration was also my own so I guess I can say that this is an original recipe.

Bucket of Maltesers Chocolate Birthday Cake - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

You need:

225g plain chocolate

60g cocoa powder

175g butter

4 eggs

300g caster sugar

175g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

150ml milk

For the buttercream:

150g margarine or butter, softened

300g icing sugar

60g chocolate, melted

For the chocolate ganache:

200g milk chocolate

100ml double cream

For the decorations:

Approximately three packs of Cadbury's chocolate fingers

Large pack (200g) maltesersl;po09

Edible gold shimmer spray e.g. from Dr. Oetker

Start by making the cake. Preheat the oven to 180C. Melt the chocolate and butter in a small pan over a medium heat, and stir until melted. Then stir in the cocoa powder until smooth.

In a separate bowl whisk the eggs and sugar.

Fold in the chocolate mixture then mix in the flour, bicarb of soda and the milk.

Grease and line a baking tin or spray with Cake Release. I used an 8-inch cake tin which meant the cake was very deep and took quite a long time to cook in the oven; you may prefer a 9 inch tin.

Bake for 1 hour in the oven, testing with a skewer. The cake rose quite a lot so I ended up slicing off some of the top.

You can see here how deep the cake is!

When the cake has cooled (first in the tin then on a cooling rack) trim the top so it is flat and cut the cake through the middle so you have two layers.

Make the buttercream: cream the margarine or softened butter with the icing sugar. Melt the chocolate in a bain marie or the microwave and mix in to the buttercream when it has cooled. Spread between the two layers of the cake.

Spray the maltesers with edible gold spray, following the instructions on the can. I think it's best to do this on newspaper or kitchen towel so you don't mess up your work surface. Leave the maltesers to dry for a few minutes.

To make the chocolate ganache, melt the chocolate in a small saucepan and add the cream; the mixture will thicken quite quickly as it cools. When it has cooled enough to put in the fridge, refrigerate for about half an hour.

Spread the chocolate ganache around the side of the cake and stick the chocolate fingers around the cake.

Spread the rest of the chocolate ganache on top of the cake.

Then fill the top of the cake with the gold maltesers.

Here's a view of the cake from the top

... and from the side.

 Yum....

Delicious!

I think this would also be a good cake to make at Easter; the maltesers look a little bit like small eggs or you could also fill the top of the cake with mini eggs. So I am sending this to a few Easter-themed blog challenges:

Choclette's We Should Cocoa, guest-hosted by Rachel Cotterill

Love Cake, hosted by JibberJabberUK

Glitz & Glamour Hummingbird Cake

Cake clubs are springing up all over the place and last year Baking Addict (a.k.a. Ros) and I heard about one run by Cakes4Fun, a company that runs cake decorating classes in Putney, west London. For £10 we could gain a place in the evening session where we had to bring a cake on the theme of "glitz and glamour", and would be able to meet like-minded bakers, swap ideas and recipes and more importantly try all of their cakes!

This was before I had really got into baking or cake decorating in a big way and was struggling to think of something I could make - especially as pretty much the only rule was "no fondant!". In the end I turned to a cookery book that I had recently been given - the Hummingbird Bakery's Cookbook - and realised that I had never actually made their namesake cake. I was also pretty unsure what a hummingbird cake would turn out like, since it contains pineapple, nuts, and bananas (I hate bananas!) - I have to admit I prefer chocolate cakes or ones without banana at least and I thought that making it for the cake club was a good idea, because if I didn't like it, I wouldn't have to eat it!

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos while I was making the cake, as it was before I had started this blog (though there are pictures of the finished product further down).

I found the cakes very springy when they came out of the pan, but they also looked quite thick - I had split the mixture into three pans to make three layers as shown in the recipe, but maybe the diameter of my pans was smaller than suggested, as the cakes turned out pretty deep and when I layered them together, I had a very tall cake!

I also found the buttercream frosting far too runny and had to add a lot more icing sugar in order to be able to cover the cake without it all running off. Since then I've met a few people who have said they always have problems with the frosting recipes in the Hummingbird Bakery books so it isn't just me!

I also wondered how I could make it more glitzy and glamorous and around the same time had a rare shopping trip to Hobbycraft, where I came across a Wilton candy melt mould in the shape of girly items such as a handbag, lipstick and compact mirror, and also for the first time came across edible lustre spray. This was about 6 months ago or more, and since then I've seen Dr Oetker has brought out a spray which you can buy in Tesco, but at the time it seemed pretty unusual.

I began by melting the candy melts - which were pink - in the microwave, and filling the shapes in the mould.

They looked pretty cute when they were set!

But they just weren't glitzy enough... so I sprayed them gold!
I discovered two things at this point - firstly, the lustre spray didn't hold well to the shapes. I think it's because the surface of the candy melts was too shiny or slippery and it would have worked fine if I was spraying fondant or cake, but as you can see from the picture below, when I touched the candy melts the gold rubbed off. It was a little better after it had set but I don't think the lustre spray was particularly designed to be used in this way.

The second thing I discovered was that I don't particularly like the taste of candy melts! This was the first time I had used them and I think I was expecting it to taste like, well, candy! Instead it tastes like icing sugar and as if you are eating a giant lump of icing. I think it would be fine if it was covering something like a cake pop but I don't particularly recommend eating candy melts by themselves. However, I've noticed more recently that there are flavoured candy melts available - I think I saw peanut butter - which might be nicer than the standard flavour, which I think is vanilla.

Here are the candy shapes placed rather haphazardly on top of the cake.... and then I sprayed the whole thing gold! I don't think I really knew what I was doing at this point - and I want to underline again that this was before I got into cake decorating in a big way! It looks quite random and having an entire cake sprayed gold is not something I would do again!

It's pretty bling!

I thought my cake looked very poor in comparison to the other members of the Cake Club, though none of them were as novice as I was. Funnily enough I was the only person who had not made a chocolate cake, so mine was quite welcome after the chocolate overload.... and while it may look a bit OTT, I can promise you that the Hummingbird cake tasted great! It was really light and moist and is definitely something I would make again. I just wouldn't spray it gold this time!

Here are some of the other cakes that people brought along to the Cake Club. If one of these is yours please let me know!

This cake below with the amazing chocolate collar and gold-sprayed maltesers (see, I wasn't the only one with the lustre spray!) was made by Ros from TheMoreThanOccasionalBaker.

We tried a piece of everyone's cake but after a while could only manage a few bites of each one, as there was a lot of cake! Here's the haul that I got to take home :-)

I think that cake clubs are a great idea and I'd love to go along to one again, but I was a little surprised that Cakes 4 Fun charged £10 per person - I know they have overheads as they run a shop and classes, but we didn't actually learn or gain anything from the class other than talking to the other participants about their cakes. As far as I know, other cake clubs are more informal meet-ups that don't charge a fee. Unfortunately the other reason I'm banning myself from joining the Clandestine Cake Club at the moment is that I am supposed to be on a diet and really do not need any more excuses to eat cake!
As this is a Hummingbird cake I am entering it into this month's Alphabakes challenge that I am hosting as the magic letter is H. I baked this several months ago before I had started this blog, and kept meaning to add it as a new post, so now seems as good a time as any!