Mascarpone Orange Streusel Slice from Burnt

 

I'm hosting Food 'n' Flix this month and the film I have chosen is Burnt. (If you haven't seen the film - spoiler alert!). There are so many wonderful scenes that centre around food - at the beginning when Adam has gone to work in obscurity in New Orleans, as a self-imposed punishment for his bad behaviour, he is shucking oysters and only once he has done 1,000 will he stop.

When he returns to London there's a great sequence where he's eating different foods including a lamb wrap and another where he is cooking food late at night in a friend's flat where he is staying. His friend and the guy's girlfriend are surprised to find him cooking in the middle of the night but happily tuck into mussels, summer veg on a bed of ricotta, and smoked mackerel on duck egg.

When Adam is trying to persuade Sienna Miller's character Helene to work for him, he arranges to meet her in a Burger King; she refuses to eat there and there is a conversation around the consistency you get in a Burger King which they hate.

Adam meets Uma Thurman, a top restaurant critic, over a cooked breakfast in a café and when he takes over the restaurant, there are beautiful montages of cooking and food being plated up.

I thought about making turbot for my Food 'n' Flix recipe as in one scene, Helene messes up cooking a piece of turbot and Adam humiliates her by making her apologise to the fish; we then see a sequence where she is repeatedly cooking the fish for her daughter at home (even for breakfast) in an effort to perfect it. I did look at the major supermarkets to see if they had turbot but none of them did. There's also a scene later with Adam at Billingsgate fish market but I wasn't going to go there to buy fish!

Ultimately it's Helene's idea to bring in a sous-vide cooker that changes the way the restaurant cooks food, to great acclaim. A sous-vide seals food in a packet and poaches it slowly at a low temperature to seal in the flavour - you can buy the cookers from Lakeland but I don't have the space or think I would use it that much.

While I was trying to decide what to make, I googled the film to see what recipes were already out there and found an official site for the movie, that actually had recipes on it! Needless to say they were really complicated recipes, sometimes involving things I'd never even heard of (trimolene, anyone?) - but as I'm not one to shy away from a challenge, and I was at the start of a whole week off work, I decided to have a go at this recipe for mascarpone blood orange streusel.

I'm not going to re-post the recipe so do have a look at the link. It was very time consuming and complicated involving four different elements - not including the ice cream which I decided not to make. I had varying degrees of success with each one!

I started by making the mascarpone mousse which should have been fairly straightforward. I mixed the mascarpone, cream cheese, crème fraiche, sugar, vanilla, orange and lemon zest and juice and slowly added the Cointreau, which I already had in the cupboard. I softened the gelatine in water, but when I melted in the pan I had a slight concern that I couldn't get it all out of the pan. I added it to the mousse and blended it but when I strained the mousse, I could see that some bits of the gelatine were left behind in the sieve where it had already congealed. I suspected that the mousse might not set and I was right, so after a couple of hours in the fridge I put it in the freezer to harden. Failure number one.

The blood orange gel was easy enough, other than the fact that I couldn't get hold of blood orange juice and had to use regular OJ. I actually had some agar agar powder - it's a vegetarian alternative to gelatine and was part of a molecular gastronomy kit I was given once, similar to this:
Molecule R-Evolution Cuisine Kit plus Molecular Gastronomy Book with 40 Recipes Introductory Package

 

I simmered the juice and added the gelling agent, and spread the resulting liquid onto some clingfilm. It set quite quickly and I was able to slice it into strips easily. Success!

I was excited about making the honeycomb as it's something that I love to eat and the recipe didn't look too complicated. I put the honey, sugar, liquid glucose (which I already had from making marshmallows) and water into a pan and let it caramelize, then whisked in baking soda which made the whole pan froth up. Apparently all I needed to do was 'pour onto a baking sheet.

Allow to set and then break into pieces'. I ended up putting it in the fridge and even then didn't set - it firmed up a bit, but I had to scrape it up with a spoon and it looked nothing like honeycomb! Another failure.

Finally for the streusel layer which is somewhere between a crumble and a biscuit - I mixed the flour, ground almonds, sugar, salt and butter, moulded it into a block and put it in the fridge. But even after two hours it was still really crumbly and difficult to roll out without breaking. I baked it in the oven for longer than the given time, since after 10 minutes it was still soft and crumbly, but I ended up over-baking it and when it came to cutting up, the strips I cut broke into a couple of pieces. Partial success.

So when it came to assembling the dessert, I laid pieces of the broken streusel on the bottom, a thick slice of the semi-frozen mousse, then a slice of the gel, and a few pieces of the sticky in-set honeycomb on top. I added some crumbled streusel on the side and a few dots of the gel layer on the plate.

 

 

And how did it taste? The streusel was nice but a bit overcooked; the mousse had a delicate flavour and didn't come out too badly from the freezing (it had the consistency of soft scoop ice cream) but I didn't like the gel layer - the texture was just a bit strange. The amount of effort this took meant it is definitely not something I will be making again - it also shows me how skilled chefs in places like the Langham actually are!

If you want to join in Food 'n' Flix you don't have to make anything this complicated - there are lots of ideas you can take from the film! Find out how to take part here.

 

 

 

Pink Elephant Baby Shower Cake - Almond, Apricot & Mascarpone

My sister is having a baby! I’m really excited that I’m going to have a niece and I expect my parents can’t wait to be grandparents. It’s amazing how many things you need to think about when you are expecting a baby so it’s nice that in the UK we are increasingly adopting the tradition of baby showers. We have always given gifts when babies are born, but I like the American tradition of everyone (well, the women) getting together before the baby is born to shower the mother-to-be with love. It’s also helpful to receive any gifts you might have been given anyway before the baby comes, because otherwise you will probably have bought everything you need by the time it’s born!

 

It’s also a nice way for the mum-to-be to feel spoiled so I was happy to help organise a baby shower for my sister. It was held at the house of one of her friends, as they all live in the same area whereas I live further away, so the host arranged for everyone to bring something different to the shower, such as food, drink and decorations. I brought a few decorations, some games, and of course the cake!

 

You can see and download the games I did at a previous baby shower for a friend.

 

I started thinking about how I would design and decorate the cake before I put any thought into flavour. I wanted the cake to look the part – I had to carry it on a train and it didn’t need to feed hordes of people so much as I loved some of the two and even three-tier cakes I’d seen online, I decided one tier was enough – but I still wanted it to look special.

 

I also didn’t want to use a design I’d done before – partly as I wanted a new challenge but mainly because as it’s my sister, I thought it needed to be unique.

 

I’d made cakes with baby shoes, teddy bears and ABC blocks on before, which seemed the most obvious ideas. I browsed online for quite some time to get ideas for other themes – I wanted the cake to have pink elements as my sister is having a girl, but not for the entire cake to be pink. One motif that kept coming up was elephants, and when I found some baby shower napkins with elephants on, I decided this would be perfect. I also had my eye on the Fmm Easy Bunting Cutters, Set of 3

which I’d bought and wanted to try out. Bunting can be used for all sorts of occasions and themes and it reminded me of both garden parties and also the circus, which worked really well with the elephant idea.

 

 I decided to make the elephant the week before and let the fondant set hard; I knew I wouldn't have much time when I was baking the cake for the baby shower and this would give me extra time to deal with any problems like if the elephant's trunk fell off!

I added a little bit of black food colouring to a ball of white fondant -usually I complain that it's too hard to colour your own black and you have to buy it, as black food colouring only makes the fondant grey. In this case that was exactly what I needed! I had a look at a few pictures of elephants online and moulded the fondant freehand, using a knife to slice into the piece at the bottom to separate it into two legs.

I had these baby girl wafer decorations left from a previous baby shower and didn't want to use them on the cake itself but had an idea after seeing a picture of an elephant holding a balloon - I stuck it onto a cocktail stick and put that in the elephant's trunk.
 

I then used a small heart cutter to cut out a shape from fondant that I had coloured pink and used this for the elephant ears, and cut the tops off two more hearts for the feet. I made an eye from a tiny ball of white fondant and dipped a cocktail stick into black food colouring to dot on the pupil.
 

I had a plaque cutter I picked up ages ago like this one:

PME Plain and Fluted Double Sided Oval Cutter, Medium, 50 mm, 2-Inch

 

that I used to make a plaque from pink fondant and put another 'it's a girl' wafer onto it using edible glue.

I also covered a cake board in white fondant and let it go hard in time for next week.

 

So on to the cake itself. I wanted something light but not lemon as I've made a lot of lemon cakes before. The Baking Book: The Ultimate Baker's Companion (Good Housekeeping) had a recipe for almond and apricot cake and I decided to do this, but I scaled up the recipe by 50% once I found that the quantities given baked two quite thin layers of cake.

 

By the time I'd made three and piled the apricot and mascarpone filling in the middle it was quite a tall stack; it would have looked nice just dusted with icing sugar as the recipe suggested, but I decided to cover it in fondant so I could decorate the cake how I wanted.

You can find the full recipe on the Good Housekeeping website.

I spread the apricot compote onto the cake and topped with mascarpone mixed with icing sugar, between each layer

I spread some of the extra around the sides and on the top of the cake

When it came to decorating the cake, I covered the whole cake in white fondant and placed it on the cake board I had previously covered, with a ribbon around the edge. I stuck another piece of ribbon around the bottom of the cake, and mixed up some royal icing which I tinted pink, to pipe strings for the bunting around the cake.

I used the bunting cutter to cut out the shapes - it just gives you a lot of triangles (joined together which you have to separate) but this does mean that they are exactly the same size and shape.

I used a cocktail stick in pink food colouring to make a polka dot pattern on alternate bits of bunting then stuck each piece on to the cake with edible glue. It was hard to make it as neat as I wanted though.

I put the 'it's a girl' plaque onto the front of the cake, and the elephant on top standing on a circle of pink fondant. I switched the ribbon around the cake for a paler one as I thought the other one was too bright.

 

 

My sister seemed really pleased with the cake and it tasted absolutely delicious - really light and creamy. The decoration isn't as neat as I would have liked but I do think the elephant on top is quite sweet.

Tiramisu Cupcakes - coffee cakes for people who don't like coffee

These cupcakes taste just like the real thing - like you are eating tiramisu!

I made them for a family party with my in-laws; my mother-in-law and husband both love coffee cake but I really don't like it. I wondered if there was a way I could incorporate coffee into a cake so it would still be enjoyed by someone who doesn't like coffee; I've got a great recipe for chocolate cake that uses coffee as one of the ingredients to give depth of flavour but it doesn't actually taste of coffee at all. Then I remembered a dessert that I love, that uses coffee - tiramisu!

The Marks & Spencer recipe book 'Easy Cupcakes' has some really imaginative recipes - it's a very good little book that I've had for about five years but only used a handful of times. It has a recipe for tiramisu cupcakes - in true Caroline style, I didn't read the ingredients list properly and was half way through before I remembered I didn't have any masala or sweet sherry, but I did have crème de cacao and this worked perfectly. Here's what you need to do: the recipe says this makes 12 but I only got 8 (large) cupcakes out of it.

You need:
115g unsalted butter or baking spread like Stork
115g light brown sugar
2 eggs
115g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp coffee granules
25g icing sugar
4 tbsp. water
for the frosting:
225g mascarpone cheese
85g caster sugar
2 tbsp. marsala or sweet sherry, or in my case crème de cacao
cocoa for dusting

Preheat oven to 180C. Beat the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder in a bowl until smooth and creamy and spoon into paper cup cases in a muffin tin.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until risen and firm to the touch.

Place the coffee granules, icing sugar and water in a pan and heat gently until the coffee and icing sugar have dissolved. Boil for one minute then allow to cool.

Brush the coffee syrup over the top of each cupcake while the cupcakes are still warm. Then leave the cakes to cool.

For the frosting, beat the mascarpone, icing sugar and masala in a bowl and spread on top of the cupcakes. Sprinkle with a pinch of cocoa powder.

These cupcakes tasted gorgeous - just like eating tiramisu!

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat at the Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi.

 

Charlotte at Charlotte's Lively Kitchen runs a blog challenge called the Food Calendar and there are several things happening this month that these cupcakes would be great for, including National Cupcake Week from Sept 12-18, International Coffee Day and the Macmillan Coffee Morning.

Spiralized Butternut Squash with Prawns and Mascarpone

I realised I hadn’t used my spiralizer for a few weeks and was inspired to get it out again by this recipe from Ros at A Twirly Whirly Blog.

 

It was absolutely delicious and something that I would definitely make again. You do need to oven cook the spiralized veg for about ten minutes so it was good that I had the oven on anyway to make dinner for my fiancé (I’m never going to get him to eat spiralized veg!).

 

I altered the recipe a little as I don’t like mushrooms and didn’t have any spinach (as I don’t like it much either). I was going to add in some broccoli but realised I had run out, so there was nothing green in my dish in the end. It probably would have benefited from some extra green veg but it’s still a vegetable-based meal and was very filling.

 

I spiralized half a butternut squash – as it’s a chunky veg it is quite filling. I laid out the pieces on a roasting tin lined with foil and drizzled with a little oil, and baked it in the oven for ten minutes.

 

Meanwhile I fried half a chopped onion with some chopped bacon – I didn’t have any pancetta either but did have bacon and prawns in the freezer, so this was a good meal to make without having to buy any extra ingredients. I stirred in some mascarpone cheese so it would melt, added the prawns (already cooked) and the butternut squash and stirred it all through. You can sprinkle the dish with grated parmesan as Ros did, but I think it’s perfectly nice without – and if you are counting calories, a little bit of mascarpone in the sauce is probably enough.

I'm sharing this via my Spiralizer Saturday challenge - please link up any spiralizer recipes!

 

Lemon and Mascarpone Mothers' Day Cake with Painted Flowers

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about painting flowers using food colouring, which we did in my cake decorating class - though we did it on a covered cake board, not on an actual cake. I'd seen a few pictures of wedding cakes online - when I was researching what to do for my own - that were covered in painted flowers or designs and thought it looked really nice, so when it came to making a cake for my mum for Mother's Day today my starting point was that I wanted to paint flowers on it!

Since the cake was going to look floral and spring-like I wanted a lighter flavoured cake. I found a recipe for a Finnish lemon Mothers' Day cake that used mascarpone cheese and looked really tasty. The cake is covered with a piped mascarpone buttercream but in order to paint on mine I needed to cover it with sugarpaste. I also decided the cake would benefit from the addition of some cloudy lemonade to the mixture! In fact I changed the recipe quite a lot in the end as it also called for 4 tbsp. potato flour which I didn't have, and after I added the lemonade I decided it needed a bit more flour. And I used self-raising flour rather than plain flour and baking powder! So here's what I did:

5 eggs
200g caster sugar
200g self-raising flour
150ml no-added sugar cloudy lemonade

for the syrup:
juice of 2 lemons
150g icing sugar

for the filling:
200ml double cream
200g mascarpone cheese
2 tbsp. icing sugar
6 tbsp. lemon curd

Preheat oven to 180C and grease a deep 8-inch cake tin - if your tins aren't deep enough you could use two as I did.

Whisk the eggs with the caster sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in the lemonade then fold in the flour.

Pour into your cake tin(s) and bake for 35-45 minutes (more like 45 if you have a deeper cake in one tin, less if you are splitting the mixture across two tins).

Meanwhile make the syrup - heat the lemon juice and icing sugar in a small pan, stirring until the icing sugar has dissolved. Leave to cool.

Remove the cake(s) from the oven and allow to cool. If you have made one large cake, cut into two or even three layers. Soak the cakes with the lemon syrup.

To make the filling, whisk the cream until thick, then add the mascarpone and icing sugar and whip again. Spread a layer of lemon curd then a layer of cream over the bottom layer of your cake and place the other layer on top. Repeat if you have three layers.

This looks really nice and I'd have been happy just to serve it like this!

Spread a thin layer of the cream over the top and around the sides of the cake.

Roll out about 500g of fondant on a surface dusted with icing sugar until it is in a large enough sheet to cover your cake - an easy way to check is to measure both sides and the top of your cake against your rolling pin, so I know for instance my fondant needs to be as wide as 3/4 of my rolling pin.

Lift the fondant using the rolling pin and drape over the cake. Pat down the sides and cut off the excess, then smooth the top and sides using a smoother or the side of your hand and trim off any more excess.

To do the painting, it's best to leave the fondant to dry but it doesn't need to be completely hard to do this. See this post for full painting instructions. Essentially all you do is mix one or two drops of clear alcohol (the little bottles you get on planes are perfect for this) with some gel food colour. The best way I found to do this is to get some colour on a toothpick or cocktail stick, place the cocktail stick in a bowl or in an artist's palette, and pour a drop or two of alcohol onto it. Use your paintbrush to scrap the colour into the liquid, mixing until you have a liquid colour that isn't too runny. You can tell when you start to paint on the cake if it's too runny or pale, in both cases just add a bit more colour in the same way.

I decided to do different types of flowers in different colours and painted them on the top of the cake and around the sides, then mixed up some green and added stems connecting similar flowers and added leaves. I left some white space but I think with the green giving a connecting detail it looks quite nice - sort of chintzy but that was the look I was going for!

I'm sharing this cake (not literally...) with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, my co-host for Alphabakes as the letter she has chosen this month is C and I've used cream in this cake as well as mascarpone cheese.

I'm also sending this to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Jane at the Hedgecombers and Karen at Lavender and Lovage, as their theme is Easter and spring.

Finally I'm sending it to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen, as it's Mothers' Day this month (in the UK anyway!).