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.