Eat Me - Cranberry Lime Cake for Melbourne Cake Club - Magic Cakes

Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found in it a very small cake, on which the words `EAT ME' were beautifully marked in currants. `Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, `and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!'

Alice In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

This month's Melbourne Cake Club theme was Magic Cakes.  I knew immediately that I wanted to make, not one of the three layer custard cakes that are currently in vogue, but the "Eat Me" cake from Alice in Wonderland with magical powers to make Alice grow very, very tall.

However, I wanted to modernise the Eat Me cake - currants on top of the cake as decoration didn't sound tempting - so I searched the Web for some ideas, and found this recipe on Hello Giggles for a cranberry lime cake.

I did make a boo boo in that I didn't remember to buy cranberry juice, so I just used lime juice instead.  Hey, it worked for me.  This cake is reasonably healthy for cake, with applesauce and yoghurt replacing some of the fat.  I doubled the recipe, as one batch (for 6 little cakes) only made a single thin 8" layer cake.  To mix things up, I added a cup of cranberries to the batter.

I used a lime flavoured buttercream instead of the glaze, and decorated the cake with "Eat Me" spelled out in cranberries.  To give definition to the edge of the cake, I used brightly coloured cachous around the edge. 

This cake was not my favourite cake ever, as the healthier aspects of it gave it a denser texture than an ordinary full of butter cake.  However, it tasted quite good, and the zesty lime buttercream was delicious.

John Farnham once said that one is the loneliest number, and so it was for me at Cake Club this week.  I did a poll on the weekend before to check if anyone was coming as a couple of people had to pull out, and I had three confirmees, and several people who'd RSVPed to come on Meetup but didn't reply to my email.  For this reason, I didn't cancel it.  However, after half an hour at the venue, it became plain that I was it, so I gave half of the cake to the staff at the venue before departing.

This poor cake was unloved at work too - I threw a few slices out at the end of the day.  Whether it was because they didn't like the cake, or they were worried they would catch the heavy cold I am currently "blessed" with from eating it, I don't know. 

Oh well.  I had fun coming up with the concept of this cake and making it - two months in the planning.  Sometimes you just have to please yourself.

Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Cake - Melbourne Cake Club - Sensational Song Cakes

This month's Melbourne Cake Club theme is Song Cakes.  The Cake Club met on a cold night at Lady Grange in St Kilda to exchange cakes inspired by our favourite songs.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album by The Beatles, so I decided to make a cake inspired by the title song.  The drum skin for Sgt Pepper is iconic, and being round, is the perfect shape for a cake.

I tossed up about making a cake containing pepper as the base cake, but figured that might not turn out well, so instead, I focussed on the psychedelia that went with the Sgt Pepper era, and made a psychedelic zebra cake from this recipe from The Cake Mistress:

The challenge then was how to recreate something at least resembling the graphic art on the Sgt Pepper drum skin.  Originally, I thought about getting an edible icing transfer, but I have used one of those in the past and couldn't get it off the backing paper, so I skipped that. 

My next thought was to use all fondant, so I bought rolled fondant in all of the Sgt Pepper colours.  I hit a snag when I went to actually decorate the cake, as I found that my letter cutters were too big to cut out all of the wording in fondant.  Also, the multiple layers of colours would have made the icing too bulky if everything was made of fondant, so on the go, I opted for a mixture of fondant and edible markers to produce the design:

It's not perfect, but in the end, I think it turned out pretty well. It was definitely a learning on the go experience, and I had to make a few of the pieces more than once.  A trick that I picked up from Whimiscal Cakehouse class that I  used in decorating this cake was that if you smudge colour onto white icing, you can dab it off with a little milk on a cotton ball or bud.  (The blue rings smudged a little as I was placing them, but the milk dab did the trick to remove the unwanted colour bleed.)

And here's a peek inside the cake:

At Lady Grange, in keeping with The Beatles vibe, I ordered a Penny Lane cocktail (vodka, coconut, peach, watermelon):

(Incidentally, Penny Lane was recorded at the same time as Sgt Pepper, but was released as a double A side with Strawberry Fields instead of making it onto the album.)

Club members had a terrific time seeing what everyone else had made, and we all had very different inspiration.

Abi made an Over the Rainbow cake, complete with lemon drops spelling out melting "Troubles", and a bluebird over a rainbow layer cake sandwiched with vanilla buttercream and lemon curd:

Sue made a gluten free, fudgy mocha Count Down cake, with the Count Down logo emblazoned in cachous on top of the cake:

Alex made banana, mango and macadamia muffins, inspired by the tropical sound of Mr President's Coco Jumbo:

Dalya sings You Are My Sunshine to her daughter, so she made a delicious lemon and almond sunshine cake:

Last but not least, Karen made a cake inspired by The Bangles' Eternal Flame, being banana and raspberry cake with orange icing to mimick the colour of flames and decorated with modelling chocolate:

So there you have it - our sensational song cakes!

If you would like to join us in August, our theme is Magic Cakes - the details are here.

Lady Grange

1 Fitzroy St

St Kilda VIC 3182

Phone: (03) 9534 3056

Echidna Cake - Animals in Autumn - Melbourne Cake Club

The Melbourne Cake Club met on Thursday evening a couple of weeks back, and our theme was Animal Cakes. 

I had by chance purchased a book called Aussie Cakes for a mere $7 prior to this theme being chosen, and as you would expect, it contains quite a lot of ideas on how to make Aussie animal cakes.  This book is more of a design and concept "how to" book; you wouldn't buy it for the recipes as it talks about packet cakes and ready made icing.  However, some of the cake designs are really clever and it is a fun book if you are into Australiana.

After being tempted by the Barbara the Bat cake (after my Bendigo trip), I went for the Emma the Echidna Cake.  The concept is quite simple:  make two chocolate cakes, one large and round for the back (I used a metal mixing bowl to give it a more 3D effect), and one small and rectangular for the snout:  

Carve your snout and glue it to the body with a little melted jam: 

Smother your cakes in chocolate buttercream and use chocolate bits, chocolate melts and a jelly snake to create the  eyes, nostrils and tongue:

Get 3 packets of Woolies choc finger biscuits and arrange them as the echidna's spines, et voila:

Linda Lomelino probably did not have an echidna cake in mind when she wrote her recipe for Chocolate and Espresso Cake in Lomelino's Cakes, but that is the recipe for the cake and icing that I used.  (Yes, as the folks on the Amazon forum point out, the recipe omits what to do with the melted butter in the method for the cake; if you are a baker at all, you can work it out.) Someone else has posted the recipe online here, fixing up the omission,  if you are interested in making this cake and don't have the book (which, by the way, is scrumptious, especially the espresso icing).   

That's me done.  Now onto the other animal cakes brought by the Club.

Here is Sue's gluten free hummingbird cake - a moist tropical delight with cream cheese frosting:

This is Karen's gorgeously decorated Noah's Ark Cake, which hides an orange cake with fig buttercream icing:

Dalya, our Club founder, made a gluten free chocolate hedgehog cake which was superbly moist (and can I add, I just loved those Flake spines):

Our fun evening was hosted by the good folks at Pause Bar in Balaclava, who were very gracious in accommodating us and our cakes.

Chocolate Hidden Heart Cake - Melbourne Cake Club - Made with Love

We had our first Melbourne Cake Club meeting for this year on Tuesday night, and our theme was Made With Love.

That left plenty of scope for what I could have made.  However, my instant thought was to make a Hidden Heart Cake - something I had wanted to do forever, but just never got around to.  On one level, I could not believe that the cake baked for the shapes would not dry out when baked again inside the cake.

I was also a little scared about whether there would be a "shape" when I cut into the cake.

I'll leave you in suspense while I explain how I made this cake.  First, I made a red velvet sheet cake in a slice pan using a half recipe of my favourite red velvet cake by Libbie Summers, from Sweet and Vicious.  (Libbie hasn't shared the recipe online, so I won't either.) I then cut out heart shapes from the cake using a heart shaped cookie cutter, and froze then until it was time to assemble the cake:

I then whipped up a half recipe of my favourite chocolate cake, the Dinosaur Rock Cupcake recipe from the Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook (so sad that the bakery itself folded).  I spooned a fifth of the batter into the bottom of a greased and lined loaf pan, then placed the frozen hearts upside down and close together on top of the batter.  I finally spooned the remainder of the chocolate cake batter into the pan, covering over the hearts, then baked the whole thing (it took over an hour).  And the end result before decorating was this rather plain looking cake:

I left the cake upside down so that the hearts would be right side up when I cut into the cake.  Next, I whipped up a batch of Dorie's ganache, and poured it over the cake.  Finally, I decorated the cake with sugar hearts from Coles and one big heart made by placing the heart cutter into the wet ganache and filling the cavity with crumbled red velvet cake left over from cutting out the hearts:

At the Melbourne Cake Club, it seemed that great minds think alike, as all three cake bakers baked hidden heart cakes, made in different flavours and using slightly different techniques.

Karen made a butter cake with a strawberry heart and strawberry frosting:

Her technique was similar to mine, but she did not freeze her hearts, and "glued them in place before baking with apricot jam.

Dalya made a Lemon hidden heart cake with chocolate hearts on top:

Her heart was made by digging out a cone in the bottom layer of her cake and a tube in the top half (using her finger as a guide), then filling the cavities with crumbled chocolate cake before joining the cakes together with lemon curd.

Here you can see the surprise hearts:

Here's a close up of my heart inside the cake:

We also enjoyed some lovely cocktails and mocktails at our host venue, The Ugly Ducking in Richmond:

I hope you enjoyed these cakes, Made With Love!

If you live in Melbourne and would like to join The Melbourne Cake Club, you can find us here on Facebook.  Meetings are 8pm to 9.30pm on a weeknight, with meetings held in the Melbourne CBD or in the southeast.

Strawberry Cream Cake for The Melbourne Cake Club - Springtime

On Thursday night, seven members of The Melbourne Cake Club met at Lady Grange in St Kilda to celebrate Springtime and eat cake.

My cake was a Strawberry Cream Cake decorated with a flower and spring-coloured decorations.

The recipe for my cake came from Christine McConnell's Deceptive Desserts, which was a birthday present this year.  The book is gorgeous and the cakes spookily sensational.  However, I am largely going to use the book for its unusual cake and icing recipes, as there is very little guidance in the book as to how to go about assembling Christine's detailed creations.  The cake layers contain fresh strawberries and strawberry jelly crystals:

as does the icing:

Instead of decorating my cake as in the book, I left the strawberry icing as the outer layer, and stuck non-pariels over the top of the cake, and positioned coloured cachous around the outer edge.  I finished it off with a sugar rose:

This is what the finished cake looks like inside:

To make the strawberry cream cake, you will need:

225g butter
2 1/2 cups plain flour (I used gluten free flour)
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 tablespoons strawberry jelly crystals
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk (I used 1 cup milk with 1 tablespoon lemon juice in it)
2/3 cup chopped fresh strawberries

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Grease and line 3 x 9" cake tins.

Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer.  Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until combined.  Add the melon juice and vanilla and beat well.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, jelly crystals, baking soda and salt.  Add the flour mix and buttermilk to the cake batter alternately, starting and ending with flour, and beat on low speed until combined.  Fold in the strawberries by hand with a rubber spatula.

Divide the batter evenly between the three cake tins and bake for 35-45 minutes or until cooked through.  Allow the cakes to cool in their tins for 10 minutes before unmoulding and immediately wrapping in cling film, and refrigerate until chilled.

For the icing:

1 cup fresh strawberries
250g softened butter
4 cups icing sugar (I accidentally only used 3 and it worked fine)
2 tablespoons strawberry jelly crystals
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt

Hull the strawberries and blend to a puree in a food processor.  Put the puree in a small saucepan and simmer over medium heat until reduced by half.

Cream the butter in a stand mixer, then add the icing sugar, 1 cup at a time, until well combined.  Add the jelly crystals, vanilla and salt and beat well.  Add the cooled strawberry reduction and beat until combined.

Decorate the cakes as you want to!

The other array of springtime cakes at The Melbourne Cake Club were:

Lavender Marble Cake by Judy

Mango Coconut Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting by Nicole

Orange Blossom Cake by Abi

Ricotta Cheesecake by Sue

Vanilla Cake with Blueberries and Lemon by Karen

White Chocolate Cake with Rose Flavoured White Chocolate Buttercream and Modelling Chocolate Roses by Dalya.

If you are in Melbourne and would like to join The Melbourne Cake Club, you can - our Facebook page is here and our Meetup page is here. We meet on the second Thursday night of each month from 8pm to 9.30pm at various venues.

Brazilian Banana Cake (Cuca) for Melbourne Cake Club - Olympic Cakes

The Olympics for 2016 are gone but not forgotten.  September's meeting of The Melbourne Cake Club never happened, but the theme was going to be Olympic Cakes.  I decided to make a Brazilian Cuca (Banana Cake) for the occasion, using a recipe given to me by a lovely Brazilian lady, Patricia.

Patricia's Cuca is different to most recipes for Cuca that you will find online in that it doesn't have a crumb topping.  The recipe for Cuca is thought to have come from the German immigrants to Brazil and been adopted as a national dish.

Because Patricia's Cuca does not have a crumb topping, I could decorate my cake in a non-traditional fashion by icing it with vanilla buttercream and placing a very appropriate gold medal on top.  The medal was made from a Mint Pattie, topped with a fondant "1", sprayed with edible gold paint, and "hung" from a fruit rollup lanyard.  I had fun making it. 

Patricia critiqued my cake and said that while it tasted good, it wasn't quite like hers.  For starters, she said that her cake is taller.  I have to admit that I struggled to get enough mixture to make the layers.  She also said that she would have baked it longer.  Oh well, given that I had no idea what I was doing, I am happy with the result. 

Patricia's recipe for Cuca is as follows:

10 tablespoons wholemeal flour
8 tablespoons brown sugar
100g butter
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
6-7 bananas, sliced lengthways into thin slices
2 eggs
250ml milk

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and either prepare a regular 20cm round cake pan (or, as Patricia suggests, use a silicone pan).  Do not use a springform pan like I did, as the mixture bakes out.

Mix the flour, sugar, butter, baking powder and cinnamon together in a large mixing bowl with your hands to create the batter.

Spread one third of the batter over the base of the cake pan.  Top with a layer of bananas.  Repeat.  Mix the eggs and milk together in a separate bowl and pour over the top of the cake batter.

Bake the cake in the preheated oven for 1 1/2 hours or until cooked through.  According to Patricia, the cake should be fairly dry when properly baked.  (Mine was moist, but hey, I liked it that way!)

There you have it - a Brazilian cake from a Brazilian lady's recipe to celebrate the 2016 Brazilian Olympics.

Anne of Green Gables' Nut Cake for Melbourne Cake Club - Novel Cakes

On the table reposed a nut cake which she had baked that morning. . .a particularly toothsome concoction iced with pink icing and adorned with walnuts. Anne had intended it for Friday evening, when the youth of Avonlea were to meet at Green Gables to organize the Improvement Society. But what were they compared to the justly offended Mr. Harrison? Anne thought that cake ought to soften the heart of any man, especially one who had to do his own cooking, and she promptly popped it into a box. She would take it to Mr. Harrison as a peace offering.

Chapter II, Anne of Avonlea, L M Montgomery

The Melbourne Cake Club met last week at The Oriental Tea House in Little Collins Street.  Our theme this month was Novel Cakes - that is, cakes that are inspired by novels.

Dalya brought a Lemon Drizzle Cake containing mashed potato and topped with Candied  Potato Peelings, inspired by The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by A Burrows and M Shaffer: 

Sue made an adult Gingerbread Cake with Caramel and Cream in the shape of a castle, inspired by Hansel and Gretel by The Brothers Grimm:

My cake, pictured at the top of the post, is inspired by the passage in Anne of Avonlea where Anne realises she has sold Mr Harrison's cow by mistake, and decides to take him her nut cake as a peace offering.

Here are my slices of all of the cakes:

My nut cake is made to a 1902 recipe for Hickory Nut Cake that I found on World Turn'd Upside Down.  A quick search revealed that pecan nuts are a type of hickory nut, so I made my cake with ground pecan nuts.  This is the unadorned cake:

It is surprisingly light and spongy, and delicious to eat.  The icing adds a touch of sweetness:

Here' s a peek inside:

The recipe is as follows:

113g butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup milk
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 egg whites
1 cup ground pecan nuts

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease and line 2 x 9" round cake tins.

Sift the baking powder and the flour together in a medium sized bowl, and add the ground nuts. 

Bake for 60 minutes or until cooked through.  Unmould onto a wire rack to cool. 

For the incing, mix  together 1 1/2 cups icing sugar with a tablespoon of vanilla extract and sufficient hot  water to form a stiff paste. Colour with pink food colouring to taste.  Spread half the icing in the middle of the cake and half on top of the cake, and top with walnut halves.  Serve!