Heart-Shaped Cake Balls

I described in a previous post how I made my own Rolo chocolates from a mould provided by the Dot Com Gift Shop. They also sent me a heart-shaped mould and some heart-shaped petit four cases to review.

I decided not to make chocolates this time however and instead make cake pops. Usually these are on sticks but they taste so delicious I don't see why you couldn't just make them as bite-sized nibbles and enjoy them that way. I had made a chocolate cake that was part of the same project, which you will be able to read about shortly, and had to trim the cake a bit. So I had some leftover cake trimmings which I crumbled up into a bowl.

I mixed it with some chocolate buttercream to make a dough.

Simply press the mixture into the moulds and place in the fridge for a little while to firm up.

As the mould is silicon it is completely flexible, making it very easy to turn the shapes out. You could also dip them in melted chocolate to coat them.

The Dot Com Gift Shop also sent me these mini heart-shaped petit four cases, which are just the right size to use with the mould.

Simply place the cake shapes or your chocolates into the cases to serve.

Disclaimer: I was sent these products free of charge by the Dot Com Gift Shop. I was not asked to write a positive review and all opinions are my own.

Homemade Rolo Chocolates

The Dot Com Gift Shop sent me these two chocolate moulds to review. If you haven't been to their website before, I urge you to check it out. The Dot Com Gift shop has a range of items for the home and garden ranging from cake stands and chocolate moulds to lunch boxes to candles and cushions. I've bought several things from the site before both for myself and as gifts, and last summer was invited to preview their Christmas range.

It took me a little while to get around to using the moulds as I had a particular project in mind, which you will hear more about later. I found the moulds so easy to use and I love the way they are packaged (above) - I think these would make a really nice gift.

I decided to use the round moulds to make homemade Rolos. I melted some chocolate and poured a little into each mould so it just covered the bottom, and used the back of a spoon to spread it around the sides. Don't make the layer on the bottom too thin as you want it to hold, but you need to leave yourself plenty of space inside the mould for the filling. Place the mould in the fridge for the chocolate to set.

I used a tin of Carnation Caramel for the filling; it is thick and not too runny and perfect for making these. You need about half a teaspoon or even a little less in each mould.

Melt some more chocolate and allow it to cool so it is still runny but not too hot. Pour into the chocolate moulds until they are filled and place again in the fridge to set.

When set, turn out of the mould. The mould is silicon so you can easily bend it to push the chocolates out.

When you bite into one, the caramel inside is still runny. These are perfect and remind me a lot of Rolo chocolates. They would make a lovely gift; I used them on top of a cake!

Giant Cookie - Nigella's Buttermilk Birthday Cake

This month's Random Recipes asked us "if you had ten seconds to grab one book, what would it be?". That's cookery books of course - the idea being if you were leaving your house in a hurry and could only take one recipe book with you, which would it be?

I knew right away - even though I have over 100 cookery books, one in particular stands out: Nigella's How To Be a Domestic Goddess. Not because it's my favourite or even the one that I use most, but because it was one of the first cookery books that I owned. I was given it as a birthday present by my friends, who all clubbed together (£20 was a lot of money to a student back then!) and presented it to me on what I think was my 20th birthday. It's a huge book with a lot of recipes, and I like the idea that they are all themed around being a 'domestic goddess' - so mainly cakes but with biscuits and savoury pies and the like. My favourite chapter is called 'the chocolate cake hall of fame'. I think that while I was swamped in academia I rather liked the idea of being a domestic goddess at the same time- even though my entire cooking facilities consisted of a double hot plate (provided by the university) and a mini oven (provided by my grandmother who used to have it in her camper van- so I was the only one in my building with an oven!). So I guess the other reason this cookery book would be the one I grabbed in a hurry is because of the memories that are attached to it.

So in accordance with the Random Recipes challenge, I opened the book at random and decided I would make whatever was on that page: it was the buttermilk birthday cake on page 210.

I can't find the recipe on Nigella's official website but there is a version of it - with small differences - on the Guardian website here. 

Preheat the oven to 180C. Cream the butter and the sugar together.

Mix in the eggs, then the flour, bicarb of soda and salt (the recipe I used didn't include the lemon).

Finally fold in the buttermilk and vanilla

In the book, Nigella talks about using different moulds like Barbie or a train - this is after all meant to be a children's birthday cake. I had a giant cookie mould I'd bought ages ago and never used, and thought this would be a good opportunity.

There are two silicon moulds of equal size, with a flower pattern and 'cookie' word in the middle. The moulds are very strong and robust and worked really well.

Spoon the mixture equally into the two tins and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes (the exact time will depend on the size and depth of the mould you are using).

You can see the pattern on the baked cake, though it is a little hard to read the word 'cookie'.

I mixed icing sugar with butter and some melted white chocolate to make a delicious buttercream, and used it to fill the cake.

It does look like a giant custard cream!

I'm sending this to Random Recipes, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.

A romantic Valentine's Day dessert - chocolate mousse in a chocolate cup with a biscuit spoon

My boyfriend and I decided to stay home for Valentine's Day for the first time this year (which isn't as extravagant as it sounds, this is only our third Valentine's Day together!). I knew immediately that I wanted to try to recreate an amazing dessert we had at a hotel in Amsterdam, so I give you....

A chocolate cup, filled with chocolate mousse, sprinkled with candy hearts, accompanied by a biscuit spoon. All homemade, apart from the candy hearts. For our main course, we had beef Wellington (or possibly horse Wellington, who knows these days?). 

I started by making the biscuits the night before, using a recipe I adapted from Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes.

I halved the recipe and made five spoons; for that you need:

50g caster sugar, or ideally a packet of Dr Oetker vanilla sugar (though I bought this in Germany) with the rest of the weight made up with caster sugar. Though according to Jen, it's easy enough to make your own vanilla sugar by infusing a vanilla pod in a pot of caster sugar for a couple of weeks.

50g butter

100g self-raising flour

A silicon spoon mould from Lakeland comes in quite handy too!

Mix the sugar and vanilla sugar if you are using it

Add the butter and cream together

Mix in the flour to make a dough

Here's my Lakeland mould - it was only a couple of pounds in their sale.

I pressed the mixture into the mould, which wasn't that easy - this mould would probably be better for something you could pour, like chocolate or candy melts, or even cake mixture. But I got there in the end...

Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until the biscuits are turning golden. Unfortunately they spread quite a lot over the sides of the moulds...

 

Here it is the other way up - it came out of the mould in one piece.

 

However, using a small, sharp knife I was able to cut between the spoons and trim off the excess, leaving me with five cute little biscuit spoons.

 

 Now for my next trick... to make the chocolate cups to contain the mousse. I also bought a set of six silicon moulds recently - I wasn't entirely sure what else I could use them for but had this recipe in mind.

Melt some chocolate - about 50g should be enough

Using a silicon pastry brush, brush the melted chocolate around the inside of the mould. You need to make sure there aren't any gaps.

Leave to set in the fridge. I left these overnight, but they seemed to set within an hour or so. Now for the tricky part - carefully peel off the silicon mould (I found I could roll it down), leaving you with a chocolate cup. I was actually quite surprised this worked, and admittedly only one of them came out this well -the other one broke up quite a bit!

I made chocolate mousse from this recipe I have already blogged. I made the whole quantity as milk chocolate mousse rather than doing half white chocolate, and left out the pomegranate seeds. This is up there with the nicest chocolate mousse I've ever had, and is now my go-to recipe whenever I want to make it. I left this overnight in the fridge but again it did seem to have set within a couple of hours.

 

Fill your chocolate cup with mousse

As it was Valentine's Day, I sprinkled some candy hearts on the top

Serve with the biscuit spoon. This worked incredibly well and we managed to eat about half the mousse before eating the spoons! Luckily I had made spare spoons :-)
My boyfriend was very impressed with this dessert and I was very happy with it too.

I am sending this to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Kate at What Kate Baked and Karen at Lavender and Lovage, as their theme is perfect puddings - and this is to me the perfect pudding!

I am also sending this to Calendar Cakes, hosted by Rachel at DollyBakes and Laura at Laura Loves Cakes, as their theme is Valentine's Day.