Halloween Birthday Cake

Happy Halloween!! I wish you all a fantastically spooky day! 

I know know Halloween is meant to be a day of scares and squeals, but what I find most frightening is tomorrow is the first day of November. November already!!

This Halloween coloured cake was for a little girls 6th Birthday, decorated with bats to match the birthday girl's costume. The inside of the cake mirrored the theme with orange coloured and flavoured polka dots in my favourite chocolate cake. I love the idea of a Halloween birthday party, maybe next year I'll have my own. My birthday's in October so it's close enough, right? 

Vamp Attack Halloween Cake

It's Halloween time! I thought a vampire themed cake would be fitting this year as I spent most of my spare time reading vampire stories when I should have been writing blog posts. Its started with the Sookie Stackhouse (SVM/True Blood) books, then when the ending of those was an epic disappointment I moved on to fan fiction.

I've never been one to read fan fiction before, but after stumbling upon Bored to Death from ericizmine I'm hooked. Her stories, the multi-verse, are so intricate and well written that I've read each of them a number of times and am hanging out for new updates.

Getting back to Vamp attack cake. I made a red velvet cake figuring the deep red colour is nice and vampy and perfect for Halloween. The filling added to the look in all its raspberry deliciousness oozy gruesomeness. But the best part about the vamp attack cake? Its pretty simple to decorate.

The vampire bites were made easy thanks a set of plastic costume teeth, you know the ones that make you look like your wearing a mouth guard rather than having fangs. Who knew they'd have other uses than looking dorky, pressing the fake fangs into the outer fondant layer of the cake leaves a prefect bite mark. A bit of red makes the bites stand out against the stark white of the cake, giving you a yummy Halloween centrepiece.

Vamp Attack Cake (printable recipe)
600 grams white fondant
plastic vampire fangs

Raspberry Filling
2 cup fresh or thawed raspberries
6 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoon cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoon fresh squeezed lemon juice

To make the filling- Combine the raspberries, sugar, cornstarch, vanilla and lemon juice in a small saucepan. Cook, until the raspberries begin to break apart and lose their juices.

Press the mixture through a fine sieve to remove the majority of the pips, return the strained mixture to the pan, Stir, and cook until the filling boils and thickens (about 5 minutes). Remove from the heat and allow to cool completely. While the filling is cooling make the cakes.

Put 2 tablespoons of the filling aside to make the fake blood for the outside of the cake.

Red Velvet Cake
3 1/2 cups plain flour, sifted
170 grams butter, softened
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
6 tablespoons red food colouring
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons cider vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

To make the cake- Preheat your oven to 180°C. Grease and lightly flour two 8 inch cake pans, line the bottoms with baking paper circles and lightly flour the sides.

Add the butter and sugar to your mixer bowl, beat on medium until very light and fluffy, it will take a few minutes.

Add in the eggs, one at a time, beat well after each addition.

Stir the red food colouring, cocoa, and vanilla in a small bowl to form a paste . Add the red paste to the batter and mix well, evenly dispersing the colour.

Mix the salt into the buttermilk. Add a third of the buttermilk and a third of the flour to the batter, beat until just incorporated (do not over beat). Repeat with the remaining thirds.

Stir the vinegar and baking soda in a small bowl. Add to the batter and mix well.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl making sure all the ingredients are evenly mixed and the batter is smooth.

Divide the batter evenly between the two cake tins. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool in the pans for 1 hour. Gently remove the cakes from the tins and allow to cool completely on a wire rack. While the cakes are cooling make the vanilla frosting.

Fluffy Vanilla Frosting
200 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon of milk (if necessary)

To make the frosting- Beat butter with mixer on medium-high until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Switch the speed to low-medium so you don't end up in a cloud of sugar. Add the confectioners' sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the side with a spatula. Add the vanilla and beat frosting on high for about 3 minutes, it will get very pale and be light and airy. If the frosting is too thick beat in a little milk.

Raspberry Chocolate 'Blood' Sauce
2 tablespoons raspberry filling
1 tablespoon cornflour
1 teaspoon red food colouring
1 teaspoon chocolate syrup

To make the fake blood- Strain the raspberry filling to make sure there are not leftover seeds. Add all ingredients to a small bowl and mix well . The Chocolate syrup will give the fake blood a bit more realistic colour.

To Assemble the cake- trim the raised tops off each of the cakes. Cut each of the cakes into 2 even layers. ( I finally bought a cake cutting wire, its the best thing ever people! If you don't have one I'd really recommend it, even layers every time!)

Spoon roughly 1/2 of a cup of the vanilla frosting into a piping bag. Place bottom layer of cake onto plate. Pipe a ring of frosting around the edge of the cake to stop the raspberry filling escaping.

Spoon in a third for the raspberry frosting and smooth over. Top with the next layer of cake and repeat the piping and filling, finishing with the top layer of cake.

Spread a thin crumb coat of vanilla frosting over the entire cake.

Spoon on the remaining frosting and spread in a thicker smooth layer over the entire cake.

Dust your work surface (I use a silicone mat) with a little cornflour and roll out the fondant to roughly 7mm thickness. 

Drape the rolled fondant over the cake. Smooth the fondant over the cake, starting at the top then working down the sides. Pull the fondant away from the cake sides as necessary to avoid creases forming.

Run the fondant smoothers over the top and around the sides to get a nice flat Finish. 

Trim the excess fondant from the base of the cake with a sharp knife.

Now for the fun part. Press fang marks all over the cake using the plastic teeth.

Spoon some of the raspberry chocolate 'blood' into a small squeesy bottle. Fill each of the teeth marks with a little fake blood. Add drips and puddles where you like.

To make the spray splatter look, start by placing the cake on top of newspaper to ensure you do not make a mess. Make sure you cover the wall behind too.

Empty most of the remaining raspberry chocolate sauce from the squeezy bottle.The little bit of sauce left the the bottle should squeeze out in a splatter. The less sauce in the bottle the finer the spray with be. Go crazy and cover the cake as much as you like.

Have A fantastic Halloween Weekend!!

S'mores Brownies

A recent trip to the video store (yep they still exist) had me thinking about my favourite movies from my childhood. I must have had a thing for sports movies, The Mighty Ducks was pretty high on my list and another movie that got borrowed over and over was the Sandlot Kids. Sure I always had to close my eyes through the carnival scene, but the thing I really remember from the movie is being taught how to make s'mores. It was the first time I learned of s'mores and I've been fascinated since.

Mix those thoughts of s'mores with my current craving for brownies and you get a fudgey chocolate treat topped with clouds of gooey marshmallow and melty chocolate, sound dreamy? Well they sure are! If that description isn't enough to temp you to give these ago, did I mention I give them two thumbs up.

Dreamy S'mores Brownies (printable recipe)

For the crust
100 grams melted salted butter
1 1/2 cups graham crackers crumbled (digestive biscuits in Australia)
2 tablespoon sugar

For the brownie
115 grams butter
120 grams dark chocolate broken into pieces
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 eggs
1 cup plain flour
3 tablespoon cocoa powder

For the topping
250 grams white marshmallows ( I used a mixture of big and smalls)
1/3 cup roughly crumbled graham crackers/ digestive biscuits
1 cup chocolate pieces or chips (I used a broken up Hershey bar)

To make the brownie base- Preheat oven to 180 degrees c. and line a brownie tin with baking paper, my tin is roughly 7-11 inches.

Add the biscuit crumbs, butter and sugar to a medium bowl and mix well. Press the crumb mixture into the base of your prepared pan. Bake the crumb base for 15 to 20 minutes until golden.  Remove from oven while preparing the brownie filling.

To make the brownie filling- add the chocolate and butter to a medium microwave safe bowl and microwave for one minute intervals, stirring after each minute, until melted together.

Add both sugars, vanilla and salt into the melted chocolate mix and stir until well mixed.

Whisk in the eggs, one at a time, until the mixture thickens and get glossy.

Finally add the flour and cocoa and mix until just combined.

Pour the brownie mixture over the baked crumb crust and return to the oven for about 30 to 40 minutes, until the top of the brownie is set and a skewer to the centre of the brownie comes out almost clean.

For the s'mores topping- turn on grill/broil part of your oven to high. Sprinkle the marshmallows, cookie crumbs and chocolate pieces over the top of the baked brownie.

Grill or broil the topping for 1-2 minutes until nicely toasted and golden. Make sure to watch it the whole time, it could burn quickly.

Allow the brownies to cool slightly before removing from the pan and cutting with a wet knife, clean knife after each cut for best cutting result.

Enjoy!!

Vintage Birdcage Wedding Cake and Cupcakes

A little while back I was lucky enough to get to do a wedding cake and matching cupcakes for a friends special day. I thought I'd share a few pictures before sharing a yummy new recipe over the weekend.

I had so much fun with the cake, loving the vintage birdcage theme I had to work with. The cake was a mix of chocolate and white chocolate mudcakes while the cupcakes were vanilla with my favourite vanilla buttercream. 

Each guest got their own cupcake to take home in one of these cute little boxes, lovingly decorated by the bride and friends.  

Malteser Cake

This time last week Butter Hearts Sugar turned 3! While I've had a lot on my plate at the moment and my posting has been sporadic at best, I'm not one to miss a Birthday or a Birthday Cake!

What better way to celebrate than with this Malteser cake, which just happens to be the richest cake I think I've ever made. I noticed the cake on the front cover of Good Taste magazine and the picture was enough to have me leaving the shop with the magazine and a couple of bags of Maltesers.

The recipe described the cake as amazeballs and I whole-heartedly agree, as well as adopting the word amazeballs as one of my favourite words.

The shinning coat of Maltesers on the outside of the cake is enticing enough, but the malt buttercream filling is where its really at.

In fact if I made this cake again I'd probably skip the outer layer of ganache and fill and cover the cake with the buttercream. I'll leave you with just one one word of advice, have a cold glass of milk handy, this cake is decadent!

You can find the recipe here if you'd like to give it a shot.

Vintage Floral Raspberry and Coconut Cake

This was a special cake for a special person, one of the people I love most in the world, my beautiful Grandmother! It was my Grandma's 85th birthday and I wanted to make her a cake that was as pretty inside as it was out.

My Grandma loves going out for coffee and cake, any outing we have ever gone on has been punctuated with a 'cappuccino break'. When I was little it was always exciting getting treated to an iced chocolate and something yummy. Grandma especially likes carrot cake and raspberry muffins, as the last cake I made her was carrot I decided to go with raspberry for this one.

This raspberry coconut cake is a new favourite of mine, I'm a little obsessed with coconut at the moment.  I blame the coconut bread from the coffee shop near work, It might be overpriced but the yummy toasted coconut flavour always brightens my day. 

The coconut in this cake made it yummy and moist and the raspberries dotted throughout are not only pretty but add lovely bursts of flavour. Coconut and raspberry are meant to be together and along with the white chocolate they make this a cake difficult to pass up.

For the Raspberry and Coconut Cake Printable Recipe

220 grams butter (softened)

1 3/4 cups caster sugar

1 teaspoon coconut extract

3 eggs

1 1/3 cup desiccated coconut

360 grams self raising flour

360 mls buttermilk

200 grams frozen or fresh raspberries ( if frozen, do not thaw)

To make the cake- Preheat oven to 180 degrees c. and grease two 8 inch round cake pans. Line the base and sides of the the cake pan with baking paper allowing about about an inch extra out the top of the pan.

In a medium bowl sift the flour and add the coconut, stir to combine.

Add the butter, sugar and coconut extract to a second mixer bowl and beat until light and fluffy.

 Add one egg at a time beating well after each addition. 

Fold in a quarter of the flour coconut mix at a time, alternately with the buttermilk.

Fold through the raspberries. (keeping the raspberries frozen stops them breaking up in the mix)

Divide the cake mixture between the 2 prepared pans and smooth over the tops.

Bake the cakes for about 1 hour, or until a skewer poked into the middle of the cake comes out clean. 

Allow the cakes to cool in the tins for around 10 minutes before turning them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

For the White Chocolate Ganache

720 grams white chocolate (4 blocks)

220 mls cream

To make the Ganache- finely chop the chocolate and place in a large heat proof bowl.

Pour the cream into a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Pour the boiling cream over the chocolate. 

Stir the ganache mixture with a hand whisk until smooth. Allow to cool and set for a few hours before spreading onto cake. (I find if I make my ganache before work, its the perfect consistency when I get home in the afternoon.)

Sandwich the two cakes with a layer of ganache. Spread the remaining ganache over the top and sides of the cake. Allow the ganache to set. Decorate as you like or just cut a slice and enjoy.

Easy Leftover Easter Cookies

I really dropped the ball with my Easter posts, only managing to share one single recipe. I had great intentions, I even had lots of fun shopping for new pretty props, bought some yummy ingredients and made a whole list of things to try but just ran out of time. In fact this recipe was meant to be a last minute post before Easter, but I couldn't even manage that. So now lets just pretend it was always meant to be a 'what to do with all that Easter chocolate' post.   

But first a little explanation on why I've been so slack lately. The last month was an exceptionally busy month for birthdays! All my spare baking time was spent on birthday cakes for family and friends, which I promise to share shortly. Last week was even busier and more exciting again as I got to make my second wedding cake and a hundred matching cupcakes, I'm just dying to post about them. 

Boyfriend and I have also decided to take a step toward being actual adults and are looking to buy our first house. Honestly the house hunting and and the buying process has been a been a little overwhelming, there is just so much competition. Every Saturday for the last couple of months has been given up to to countless house inspections, let alone all the time spent searching online, researching areas, values and all the other little things. Its starting to make my brain a little numb, and I often day dream that someone will just come and give me the prefect little house. I'm sure we will find the perfect place with time, I just need to be patient.

Back to these cookies! This easy recipe takes no time at all and make a nice soft almost cakey cookie.I chose to use mini candy coated eggs because I had a whole lot of them and liked the pretty pastel colours, but feel free to use whatever you like.

For the Cookies (makes 24)
125 grams butter (softened)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
300 grams candy covered chocolate mini eggs

To make the cookies- Preheat oven to 180 degrees c. and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Beat the butter, vanilla and sugars with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.

Add the egg and beat until well combined.

Mix in the flour and baking soda until the cookie dough comes together.

Stir through the candy coated eggs.

Roll the cookie dough into tablespoon size balls and place on the tray. Leave a 2 inch space between the cookies to allow for spreading.

Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes or until lightly golden.

Allow the baked cookies to cool on trays.

Ahoy It's A Boy Baby Shower

Back in January I put together this last minute sweets set up for my brother and his fiance's baby shower bbq. Its seems fitting that I share it today as they finally welcomed a beautiful baby boy, earlier tonight.

I'm pretty darn excited about being an aunty! I'm already coming up with first birthday cake ideas. I now have a little niece and baby nephew to spoil rotten.

The 'ahoy! its a boy' theme came about because I really wanted to make sailor onesie cookies, the anchor cookies and other details were just made to match. The baby shower/bbq just happened to be on the hottest most humid day of Summer, so although the cake melted a little it turned out okay considering.