Red Velvet Cake Balls

Do you have heaps of things that you want to make, but just don't seem to get there? For ages, I have wanted to try making Bakerella's cake balls, but just never got around to it. However, my butt was put firmly into gear when I thought that red velvet cake balls covered with white chocolate would make an elegant morning tea treat for Yan's wedding tea. Yan recently was married in China, and tomorrow, her first day back, we are hosting a morning tea for her at work.


My execution may not have been as elegant as I had hoped, and they took a little longer (and used much more chocolate!) than I expected, but I got there in the end.


I decided to use Bakerella's recipe for red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting for the balls. (I used her old cream cheese frosting recipe, which only has 4 cups of icing sugar instead of 6, and it worked fine.)


Here is my red velvet cake, which looks like a worn leather handbag for some reason:




The next step was to crumble the cake with my hands - a very therapeutic exercise:



After making the cream cheese frosting in the food processor, I mixed just enough frosting into the cake crumbs so that they would bind together into balls (and had quite a bit leftover):



The balls went into the freezer for an hour, and were then dipped in chocolate (half white, half dark) and topped with silver cachous:



I found the dipping part quite tricky, as if handled too roughly, the balls fell apart. They also tended to stick to my hands and the utensils I was using. I eventually found that the best coating method for me was to place a cake ball on a spoon, then holding it over the bowl of melted chocolate, use a second spoon to pour melted chocolate over the ball. I then tipped the ball out onto the parchment lined sheet, and covered the "bald" patch where the ball had rested on the spoon with extra chocolate drizzled over with a spoon.


It was a rather time consuming process to make these, and I used about 500g of chocolate (the cake weighed around 600g). It was fun to do and the balls tasted good, but I probably won't hurry to try it again.


Hope you all had a good weekend!

Daring Bakers - Tiramisu

Tiramisu! It's one of those fascinating words like "entschuldigung" which, when said out loud, remind me of Mary Poppins and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (which according to Wikipedia, means "Atoning for educability through delicate beauty"). "Tiramisu" is in fact Italian for "pick me up", and does indeed pick one up with a healthy dose of sugar, coffee and marsala.


The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.


According to the Daring Bakers forum:


The perfect Tiramisu is a balance of flavors of a sweet zabaglione, strong coffee, marsala wine, creamy mascarpone cheese and the dusting of unsweetened cocoa.


My first experience with tiramisu was not in its pure dessert form, but rather, as a flavour of gelato that my university friend Jen bought on a trip to New Farm. Before that, I'd never even heard of tiramisu. My next encounter with tiramisu was at the movies, when Tom Hanks' character in Sleepless in Seattle, Sam Baldwin, asks his friend what is tiramisu. At that stage, I couldn't have told you what tiramisu was either. Now, I not only know what it is, I have made a low fat version of it and made it in cake form (twice!), and it was served at my friend Charet's wedding in lieu of traditional wedding cake, made by the Italian groom (both the traditional version and a raspberry version).


For this Daring Bakers challenge, we were asked to go one step further. Instead of buying the mascarpone and savoiardi, as you normally would, we were challenged to make our own, together with zabaglione and pastry cream for the filling.


I have never made mascarpone before, and in fact would never have dreamed of doing so. I was very surprised to learn that mascarpone is effectively cooked cream with a little lemon juice, strained through a cheesecloth (or in my case through a Chux superwipe!):




Making savoiardi made me slightly nervous, as the one and only time that I have tried to make them in the past, they turned out dry, hard and horrible. Ho, ho, how far we have come, because this time they were perfect - light, spongy and delicious:




I suspect that when I made them a few years ago, I hadn't a clue that the egg whites should be treated gently and folded in, not beaten vigorously into the other ingredients. However, my yield from the recipe was only 14 biscuits - rather short of the 24 promised, so I was only able to make a double layer tiramisu rather than the triple layer version in the recipe.


Here are my zabaglione, pastry cream and whipped cream respectively for the filling:



None of these components was hard to make, just time consuming. I used Marsala in the zabaglione as called for by the recipe.


Here are the four filling components (zabaglione, pastry cream, whipped cream and marscapone) combined to form the filling:



The final step involved dunking the savoiardi in rum-spiked coffee and lining an 8" x 8" tin with them:


then slathering over the cream filling and starting again to build up two layers:


The final step is to dust the top of the tiramisu with cocoa (or otherwise decorate it as you wish):



This tiramisu is of course delicious, and I am serving it at a dinner party tonight. (I have already taste-tested it.) It also froze well, and on defrosting the flavour and texture was still very good.


There will be various versions of the tiramisu popping up everywhere today, and if you'd like to check them out, visit The Daring Kitchen.


Thanks to Aparna and Deeba for being our hosts this month. They will have the tiramisu recipe that we used on their websites, if you are interested in trying it for yourself.

TWD - Honey Wheat Cookies

Another Tuesday rolls around and it's Tuesday with Dorie time again. Our host this week is Michelle of Flourchild, who chose Dorie's Honey Wheat Cookies.

For me, these were a welcome change from a very chocolatey month. I wasn't so sure about the wheatgerm, as this is not a pantry staple for me, but I am glad I made these. They reminded me of a sweet version of Arnotts Shredded Wheatmeal biscuits, and I found them rather comforting and not overly sweet.

I am not sure how Dorie got 36 x 1 inch balls out of the dough - I barely got 22 cookies. However, this is a minor quibble about a delicious recipe that I think would be a great semi-healthy alternative for kids.

For the recipe, check out Michelle's blog, and to see what the other TWD members thought, visit the blogroll.

Endings & Beginnings - Nectarine Slice

As I write this, I am feeling shattered. No, nothing personal has happened. Rather, I have just watched the last episode of Dr Who featuring David Tennant as the Doctor. David was the tenth Doctor, and has been my favourite Doctor.


I was watching in the beginning of the tenth Doctor's reign, when Christopher Eccleston's angry Doctor morphed into David Tennant's Doctor. I was there when he was choosing his wardrobe - I loved the chocolate pinstripe suit, the long brown trench coat, Converse trainers and spiky hairdo. And I particularly enjoyed the episodes featuring the Doctor with the feisty Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) as his companion.


So tonight, for me, it was gut-wrenching to see the Doctor save the world again, only to "die", not directly at the hands of The Master (John Simm), but to save Wilf from a high radiation device created by The Master in which Wilf had become trapped. Before regenerating, the Doctor dropped in on his old pals on Earth, so we had some final glimpses of Martha, Rose and Donna, the tenth Doctor's companions. The end of the episode showed the Doctor regenerating into his new incarnation (Matt Smith). Sorry Matt, my heart stays with the tenth Doctor.


The years of the tenth Doctor have seen a lot of change for me in my life, so I felt a little like I was reviewing those years as the end of the tenth Doctor's reign played out on screen. It caused me to reflect on the good, the bad and the ugly over that period, and wonder if I had done x instead of y, how my life might be different. Would it be better? Would it be worse? I will never know. I try not to think too hard about it, because these are questions with no answers, and I have to deal with the reality of where I am here and now, and not waste time on regrets or "what ifs".


To mark the occasion, I wanted to post a recipe somehow relating to the tenth Doctor, but unfortunately I could not unearth any particular food preferences of this Doctor. Tom Baker's Doctor was rather fond of jelly babies, as were a couple of other Doctors after him, and even The Master was featured guzzling jelly babies in a deft tip of his hat to previous Doctors. However, the tenth Doctor's preferences in food shall forever remain a mystery to me.


Instead, I am going to post the recipe for the slice I made today for no other reason than I had the ingredients on hand. It's a bit like life itself really - for most of us, there are no big bang beginnings or endings, just a continuum of everyday events, some good, some bad, some neither.


This recipe is for Nectarine Slice, out of a recent edition of Woman's Day magazine. I'm not sure of the exact date, because I copied the recipe from one of my mother's magazines during a recent visit, knowing that I had a tray of 7 juicy nectarines in my fridge, waiting to be used.


For the weight conscious, this recipe is low fat, and together with the fruit, is positively healthy - well, almost. It smells devine while baking because of the brown sugar in the batter - a lovely, caramel smell.


To make your own Nectarine Slice, you will need:


125g low fat spread (I used Devondale Light)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups self-raising flour
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup light evaporated milk
6 nectarines, seeded and sliced (I only needed 3!)
icing sugar for dusting


Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and grease and line with baking paper an 18cm x 28cm slice tin. Leave the baking paper overhang by around 5cm on each long side so that you can use it to lift the slice out of the pan once baked.


Sift the flour and cinnamon together into a bowl and set aside.


Using a stand mixer, beat the butter, sugar and vanilla extract together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.


Add the flour and evaporated milk to the batter alternately, using a rubber spatula to fold them in.


Spread the batter evenly into the slice tin. Press nectarine slices decoratively into the top of the batter, then bake the slice in the preheated oven for 40-45 minutes or until cooked through. (I think that granulated sugar sprinkled on the nectarines just before baking would be lovely.)


Remove the cooked slice from the oven, and allow it to cool in the pan for 5 minutes before lifting it out, using the overhanging baking paper, and allow it to cool completely on a wire rack.


Dust the cooled slice with icing sugar, and cut into ~ 16 squares.

TWD - Dorie's Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Our Tuesday with Dorie host this week is Kait of Kait's Plate, who chose My Favourite Chocolate Chip Cookies as our Dorie recipe of the week.

These are very chocolatey cookies, with a crispy edge and chewy centre. The recipe calls for nuts, but I left these out - in my view, chocolate chip cookies should not contain nuts.

You get heaps of rather large cookies from the recipe, which is a necessary return on the investment of 350g of chocolate. I used dark chocolate cut into chunks, although the recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate.

These cookies are delicious - if you are a chocolate chip cookie fan, then you will probably like these.

Visit Kait's Plate for the recipe (Tuesday US time), and check out the TWD blogroll to see what everyone else thought of these cookies.

Tandoori chicken

Although the focus of this blog is baking and sweets, I have to confess that I do not live off baked goods! So, for a change of scenery, I am sharing one of my main meal recipe with you today - a lovely Tandoori Chicken from the Heart Foundation's The New Classic Cookbook by Loukie Werle.

The chicken was delicious - although I was a little naughty and left the skin on (the recipe requires the skin to be taken off - to reduce fat, of course). I served the chicken with boiled beans and corn, and baked beetroot and sweet potato. Perhaps this is an eclectic combination, but it tasted good!

To make your own Tandoori Chicken, you will need:

1.3kg whole chicken, skin and fat removed (guilty - I removed neither)
150g low fat natural yoghurt
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon garam marsala

Make four shallow cuts in each chicken breast. Combine all of the other ingredients in a bowl, reserve 2 tablespoons of the mixture, and rub the rest over the chicken. Cover the chicken and marinate for at least 2 hours.

On the day of cooking, preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Place the chicken in a non-stick roasting dish, and bake for 30 minutes. Drain the fat, and spread the reserved two tablespoons of marinade over the chicken, and bake for a further 30-60 minutes, until the chicken is cooked to your liking.

This is an easy, spicy, delicious meal, and I would absolutely make this again.

The Kitchen of Love - Nana was married for 69 years because of these cookies

To coincide with Valentine's Day, Chris of Mele Cotte is once again hosting The Kitchen of Love, where we are asked to make something delicious, for any part of a meal, that includes at least one food/ingredient considered an aphrodisiac.


The aphrodisiac food that I have chosen is almonds, in the form of freshly ground almond meal and contained in these biscuits:




You can find out more about the aphrodisiac qualities of almonds here.


These biscuits have a rather long name - Nana was Married for 69 Years Because of These Cookies. The recipe comes from Meals Men Love by Lana Vidler, a Sydneysider who came to the conclusion that guys just want simple, home-cooked meals rather than overly fancy creations. The book is partly tongue in cheek, with saucily named recipes, and partly deadly serious. Each recipe has allegedly been chosen by and tested on guys.


Living up to one of the book's claims, these biscuits are quick and easy to make, and would be an ideal after dinner with coffee treat for that romantic evening. Tempted? To make these biscuits, you will need:


3/4 cup plain flour
1/4 cup self raising flour
1/2 cup almond meal
3 tablespoons + 1/4 cup icing sugar
1/3 cup melted butter
2 beaten egg yolks
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar (optional)


Sift the flours and 3 tablespoons of icing sugar together into a bowl. then stir in the almond meal. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, and pour the melted butter and egg yolks into the well. Stir the ingredients together to form a dough, then knead it lightly. Cover the dough in cling wrap and refrigerate it for ~ 15 minutes.


In the meantime, preheat your oven to 140 degrees Celsius and spray a cookie tray with baking spray.


Remove the dough from the fridge, and shape it into 12 small crescent shapes, approximately 2cm thick. Bake the biscuits in the oven for 15-20 minutes until lightly golden.


Remove the biscuits from the oven and, while they are still warm, roll them in the combined remaining icing sugar and sugar. Cool (before things hot up).


Check out the roundup of The Kitchen of Love in a few days.

Valentine's Cake - White Chocolate Cake with Strawberry Mousseline and Cream Cheese Frosting

Sunday is Valentine's Day. Now, even though Valentine's Day has always been a non-event for me, I like the idea of it. It's an opportunity (even if commercialised) for couples and loved ones to acknowledge their regard for each other amid the hurly burly of every day life.


Also, the pink girly-girl in me loves the hearts and flowers symbols associated with Valentine's Day.


To indulge my fondness for pink hearts, I made a Valentine's Cake - a little early, but as Valentine's Day falls on a Sunday this year and I need to be able to share my baking at work, I made it this week.


I used Rose Levy Beranbaum's white chocolate cake recipe for the Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Cake in Rose's Heavenly Cakes (p91) as my base cake. In keeping with the Valentine's theme, I baked the cake in two heart-shaped tins, and also made 5 mini heart cakes (I ate one before the photo was taken!) with the leftover batter:

The two large cakes were split into 4 layers and filled with strawberry mousseline (a meringue-based buttercream):

I then frosted the cake with cream cheese frosting made from Leila Lindholm's A Piece of Cake (p85). (Originally, I was going to use white chocolate frosting, but I thought that may have been way too sweet.)


The base white chocolate cake was delicious on its own. It's not overly sweet, and I actually liked eating the unadorned cake the best. I am not a buttercream fan, so the mousseline was not my thing, but a lot of people do like it, and the cake disappeared rapidly. Besides, it was in perfect keeping with the theme of my cake. The cream cheese frosting was good in that it added a little tang to a very sweet cake.

If you'd like to make your own Valentine's Cake, you will need:

Cake

227g chopped white chocolate
6 large egg whites (I had heaps of egg whites in my freezer from TWD)
1 1/3 cups milk (divided into 1 cup and 1/3 cup)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
5 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
170g butter, at room temperature

Strawberry Mousseline

284g softened butter
3 large egg whites
2/3 cup sugar less 3 tablespoons
3 tablespoons sugar, extra
3 tablespoons water
1/4 + 1/8 teaspoons cream of tartar
2/3 cup strawberry butter (I used strained strawberry jam)
1/2 cup strawberry butter, extra
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
red food colouring

Cream Cheese Frosting

60g softened butter
300g icing sugar
100g cream cheese
1 tablespoon lemon juice
red food colouring

Heart shaped sprinkles to decorate

Cake

Line your cake tins (Rose used 2 x 9 inch round tins and 2 cupcake papers) with baking paper, then spray the baking paper with baking spray and dust the inside of the tins with a fine coating of plain flour.

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius.

Melt the white chocolate by placing it in a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, and stir until just melted. Allow the chocolate to cool slightly.

In a bowl, whisk together the egg whites, the 1/3 cup of milk and the vanilla until just combined.

Using an electric mixer, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt on low speed for 30 seconds. Add the butter and the 1 cup milk to the bowl, and mix on low speed to just moisten the ingredients, then increase the speed to medium and beat the mixture for 1 1/2 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

On medium low speed, add the egg white mixture to the batter in 3 lots, beating after each addition. Add the melted white chocolate to the batter and beat the mixture just until the chocolate is incorporated.

Fill each of your cake tins 1/2 full of batter and the cupcake papers 2/3 full of batter. (The hearts were just a guessing game!) Bake the cakes for 30-40minutes or until cooked through, and the cupcakes for 25-30 minutes.

Remove the cooked cakes from the oven, and allow them to cool in the tins for 10 minutes before unmoulding them onto an oiled wire rack to cool.

Strawberry mousseline

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter on high speed until creamy, and set aside.

Put the egg whites into a bowl with an electric mixer set up nearby, ready to go.

In a small saucepan, stir together the water and the 2/3 cup less 3 tablespoons of sugar until the sugar is moistened, then heat the mixture over low heat on the stove, stirring constantly, until the sugar melts and the mixture bubbles. Stop stirring, and reduce the heat to low.

Beat the egg whites until foamy, add the cream of tartar, then continue to beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add the 3 tablespoons of sugar to the mixture, beating in until stiff peaks form.

Increase the heat and bring the sugar syrup to the boil, and allow it to boil (without stirring) until it reaches 120 degrees Celsius (firm ball).

With the mixer running on low speed, add the sugar syrup to the egg whites in a steady stream, being careful to ensure that it doesn't hit the sides of the bowl or bounce off the beaters onto the bowl. Once the syrup has been incorporated, decrease the mixer speed to medium and beat the mixture for 2 minutes. Stop beating the mixture, then refrigerate it for 5-10 minutes or until it cools to 21 degrees Celsius. (Rose recommends whisking after the first 5 minutes to test and equalise temperature - I didn't.)

Put the creamed butter reserved from earlier back into the stand mixer, this time with the whisk attachment in place, and beat on medium-high for 3 minutes or until the butter lightens in colour. (It should also be no warmer than 21 degrees Celsius - try that in a kitchen that is 29 degrees Celsius!)

Scoop the meringue into the butter and beat on medium speed until smooth, then beat for a further 2 minutes. Remove the mousseline from the mixture and stir in 2/3 cup of strawberry butter (or jam or preserves), the vanilla and enough red food colouring to tint the mousseline the desired shade of pink.

Assembly

Split each of the large cakes into two layers with a serrated knife, and cut off the rounded tops so the layers are level. Stick one layer of cake onto a cake plate or cardboard round with a dab of mousseline. Spread one cup of mousseline and some of the reserved 1/2 cup of strawberry butter evenly over the top of that layer:

Repeat until all layers have been used:

Frosting

Put all of the ingredients except the colouring into the bowl of a stand mixer, and beat until smooth. Tint the frosting the desired shade of pink using food colouring.

Spread the frosting over the top of the cake, and decorate with heart sprinkles (or as desired).

Inside, your sliced cake will surprise you with lots of lovely layers:

This cake is my entry to Nina's Bake-A-Cake Event over at Confessions of a Bake-a-holic.

To participate, you just need to bake a cake from scratch with a Valentine’s Day theme, then follow the directions on Nina's site.

Finally, in keeping with the Valentine's Day theme, I wanted to show you this cute Valentine that I cross-stitched:

Have a great day!

Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia

This week's Tuesday with Dorie is hosted by none other than the Chocolatechic herself, Tanya. Now it wouldn't be right if Tanya hadn't chosen a chocolate recipe, and she chose a very rich, chocolatey, decadent one at that - namely, Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia.

Wow, what can I say - these brownies pack a chocolate punch. You only need a small square to be satisfied. They are very fudgey and, until they've been in the fridge for 4 hours or so, quite gooey in the middle. I made an error of judgement in deciding to bake them an hour and a half before our body corporate barbecue, and had to make do with taking the ones around the edges which did not ooze their contents. These were not very pretty - as you can tell from the photo at the top of the post. But heck, they tasted good!

The remaining brownies went into the fridge, and firmed up nicely. They ended up definitely more like fudge than cake.

These brownies were good, and I'd make them again.

Thanks to Tanya for hosting this week - she'll have the recipe. And check out how the other TWD members went by visting the TWD blogroll.

Mango Lime Syrup Cake

Last night, my friend Jane and I went to see Daniel Kitson's latest show, 66A Church Road. For those who have not run across Daniel, he is an English comedian - and if last night was anything to go by, a very good one. If you are in the UK, this show is old hat for you, because I notice that he started this show in 2008 - but for us Down Under, this is his latest material.

I absolutely adored this show - it was funny in a way that only English comedians are, subtle and gentle rather than "in your face" begging for a laugh. As the name of the show suggests, 66A Church Road is about an address in the London suburb of Crystal Palace where Daniel lived for 6 years. Daniel loved that flat, with all its flaws, and desperately wanted to buy it and the entire building which housed it, but was continually rejected by his landlord, who figured he could make more money out of it by keeping it. Daniel had created clever little models of various aspects of the flat in old suitcases, but the focus of the show was on what he had to say rather than the models, which were very much background props.

Daniel thought that he loved the physical entity that was the flat, hence why he desperately wanted to buy it. However, when the inevitable happened and he moved out, he realised that it was not the physical flat that he loved, but rather, the memories that had been created there. Having moved oh so many times in the last decade myself, I understood what he meant. It is those memories that create the familiarity that grows into love of a particular place or time. It also brought home to me how much my heart has hardened against where I currently live, and why I must summon the courage sooner rather than later to go back to the place where I know my heart lies.

This creates the perfect opportunity for a segueway into Mango Lime Syrup Cake. What do Daniel Kitson and Mango Lime Syrup Cake have in common? Well, Daniel is currently performing in tropical Brisbane, and this is a very tropical cake. Ta da!

I tore the recipe for this cake out of the Brisbane News. I can't tell you the date (other than that it was this year), as there is a rubbish Bunnings ad stuck where the page number and date should be. The recipe comes from Andrew Mirosch, a regular staff cookery writer at the Brisbane News.

The combination of nutty vanilla cake with tangy lime and mango topping is very good. However, don't be tempted to leave out the syrup - the cake would be rather dry without it.

If it's mango season where you are, and you'd like a little bit of edible tropical sunshine in your life, the recipe is as follows:

3 small mangoes
125g butter
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon grated lime zest
1/4 cup lime juice
1/2 cup finely chopped macadamia nuts


For the syrup:

1/2 cup lime juice
1/2 cup sugar

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and grease and line a 24cm cake tin.

Scoop the flesh out of the mangoes and slice thinly, then lay it in a pattern on the bottom of the lined cake tin.

Using a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.

Sift the flour and baking powder together into a bowl, then fold into the batter with the lime zest, lime juice and macadamias.

Spoon the batter over the mangoes in the cake tin, smooth out evenly, then bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes or until cooked through.

While the cake is baking, put the lime juice and sugar for the syrup into a medium saucepan, and stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Increase the heat, bring the syrup to the boil, and simmer for ~ 8 minutes or until the syrup thickens slightly. Cool.

When you take the cake out of the oven, immediately poke small holes in the top of it with a skewer, and pour 3/4 of the syrup over the top of the cake. Leave the cake stand for 10 minutes in its tin before unmoulding onto a wire rack.

Brush the mango on top of the cake with the reserved syrup, then leave the cake to cool.

Enjoy!

TWD - Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

Our TWD host this week is Kristin of I'm Right About Everything, who chose Dorie's Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes.

Because of a drama involving my flat and the flat directly above me, these cakes nearly never got made, and as it was, they were made by torchlight last night. I have consequently not yet tasted these cakes, but they sure smelled good during cooking.

I loved the nutty cocoa ribbon through the middle of these cakes - it looked quite pretty on the outside of the baked cakes, and is sure to give them an interesting texture. I used the last of my pecans left over from Christmas baking for the ribbon. Heck, I even bought milk chocolate, as directed, for the cakes. (You have no idea how much it hurt to melt an entire block of Cadbury's Dairy Milk!) However, I do confess to using water icing for the glaze - I was not going to melt yet more chocolate for that, and many fellow bakers in the P&Q said that the glaze was a fail for them.

I ended up with 12 mini bundts. I had originally planned to make a single bundt cake, but once the batter was together, I realised that that was never going to work - there just wasn't enough batter.

These cakes are certainly cute, but I am not sure I'd make them again, no matter how good they are, when they contain a whole block of good eating chocolate. Me, myself and I, chocolate wins over cake any day!

To see what the other TWD members thought of these cakes, visit the TWD blogroll. Thanks to Kristin, our host this week, who will have the recipe at her site.