Cappuccino Cake

I haven't baked for a while, but now I am back in the kitchen:) I found a great recipe on  the bbcgoodfood website and this is one of the few recipes I haven't modified. The cream is truly wonderful, but you have to use a very good quality coffee  to get the favours just right.

Cappuccino Cake

Ingredients

250 g unsalted butter, softened

250 g light soft brown sugar

300 g self-raising sugar

4 eggs, beaten

50 walnuts, toasted and finely chopped

100 ml very strong coffee (made fresh) cooled

Frosting

500 g mascarpone

3 tbsp light soft brown sugar

100 ml very strong coffee (make fresh) cooled

cocoa powder to decorate

Heat the oven to 180C. Butter 2 x 20cm sandwich tins and line the bottoms with greaseproof paper. Beat butter and sugar together with electric mixer until pale and creamy. Add the flour and eggs in one go and keep beating until evenly mixed.

Fold in the walnuts and the coffee. Spoon the mix into the prepared tins and bake for 25-30 mins or until golden and well risen.

Leave the cakes in their tins for 5 mins before turning onto a wire rack. Sweeten the coffee with the sugar and sprinkle 4 tbsp over the sponges. Leave to cool completeley.

While the cakes cool make the frosting. 

Tip the mascarpone into a large bowl and beat in the remaining of the coffee until smooth and creamy. Use about half of the frosting to sandwich the sponges together then using a palette knife spread the rest of he frosting over the top of the cake. Decorate with dusting of cocoa powder.

Jaffa Cakes

Ok I used yet again a different technique than the author suggested, but I think the end result is better and more suitable for a bigger batch. Although it says jaffa cake you can use any other flavoured jelly to make it more interesting, but I will give you the author's original recipe for the jelly I found as well in a Hungarian culinary magazine by Judit Stahl.

Jaffa Cakes

Ingredients (for 24 sponges)

For the sponge
4 eggs
100 g sugar
2 tbsp melted butter
100 g plain flour

For the jelly
2 l Fanta
200 g sugar
juice of a lemon
12 gelatine leaf (20 g)
or
Hartley's or other jelly of your choice

For the chocolate
100 g good quality dark chocolate
2 tbsp sunflower oil

muffin tin

Preheat the oven to 180C and spray the muffin tin with vegetable oil based release agent.

Whip the eggs and sugar in a bowl above boiling water for 5 minutes. Take off the bowl from the heat and stir in the melted butter and flour. Pour a tablespoon worth of batter in each cavity and bake in the preheated oven for 8-10 minutes.

When ready leave it to cool completely. In the meantime prepare your jelly either by the jelly instructions (if you use shop bought jelly) or do it from scratch. 

Pour the Fanta and sugar in a big bowl and boil it for about 30-40 minutes until the liquid is reduced to 600 ml, then off the heat and leave it to cool. Put the gelatine leaves in cold water for about 5 minutes. When the gelatine leaves are soft, squeeze them to get rid off the excess water and dissolve them in the Fanta syrup.

Stirring the jelly constantly (to avoid jelly lumps) cool it down and when it is just about to set, spoon as much jelly to each sponge as you can.

My husband suggested that next time I should place the sponges round side down and spoon the jelly to the flat side. He is right, as this way you can put more chocolate and  jelly on each sponge and it would create the both side rounded shape.

 Leave the jelly to set completely on the sponge and melt the chocolate in a bowl above boiling water. Add the vegetable oil to the chocolate and spoon it to the jelly.

Once the chocolate is hardened your jaffa cakes are ready.

Coffee Cake

The Book People visited us today.........and that can only mean one thing: I bought yet another book. I had to try it straight away, so my first recipe from the Teatime Collection book is Coffee Cake. I love coffee and I always wanted to bake one of these....Yumm

Coffee Cake

For the sponge

175 g butter, softened

175 g light brown soft sugar

2 tbsp strong coffee

3 eggs lightly beaten

175 g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

For the butter cream

110 g butter, softened

200 g icing sugar

2-3 tbsp strong coffee

80 g walnut chopped

To decorate

icing sugar

8 walnut halves

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease two 20 cm sandwich tins and base line with non stick baking parchment.

Cream the butter and sugar together, add the coffee and beat in the eggs little by little, keeping the mixture stiff. Sift the flour and baking powder together then fold in.

Divide the mixture between the prepared tins and bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and the tops spring back when lightly pressed with a fingertip.

Allow to cool in the tins for a few minutes then turn out, peel away the paper and cool on a wire rack.

Make the butter cream by blending the butter, icing sugar and coffee together until smooth.

Take one cake and arrange wooden skewers/toothpicks over the top to mark out eight portions. Sieve icing sugar over the top and then remove the skewers. Pipe on eight butter cream rosettes and top each with a walnut piece.

Add the chopped walnuts to the remaining butter cream and spread over the second cake. Put the first cake on top of this.

Rum&Coconut Cream Roulade

This is a twist on a traditional recipe: the cream isn't just a butter and dessicated coconut mix, but a more healthier, tastier version. We ate this often as a child as it doesn't require any baking, and quite cheap but delicious at the same time. 

Rum&Coconut Cream Roulade

For the roulade (for approx 30cm)

500 g grounded biscuit -I use plain household biscuits in Hungary so if you make it from digestive just cut back a little on the sugar

320 ml milk

20 g butter-melted but cooled to room tempeature

3 tbsp dark rum

3-4 tbps cocoa powder

100 g icing sugar

For the cream

250 g coconut cream (strain the excess juice from the cream)

80 g icing sugar

20 g ground almond

100 g dessicated coconut

3 tbsp dark rum - optional: if you make for adults for the weekend:)

plus some extra dessicated coconut to roll the roulade in

 Put all ingredients for the roulade in a bowl and mix it together until you get a slightly sticky dough. Cover it in cling film and put it into the fridge for 30-50 minutes to rest.

In the meantime you can prepare the filling. Mix all ingredients with a spoon, and place it to the fridge as well.

When the dough is rested, place it on a big piece of baking sheet and roll it to a rectangle shape. It should be thick enough roll without breakage, but if you leave it too thick (like me) you won't have that nice roulade effect. 

So roll it to 4-5 mm thick and spread the cream on top. With the help of the baking sheet roll it tightly and cover the roulade with dessicated coconut. Cover it and leave it to rest for at least an hour in the fridge, then it is ready:)

If you don't eat it at one go, keep it in the fridge...