Tiramisu cupcake

Dear all,

Last week I showed you the Yeti cakes, this week I want to show you the other birthday cupcakes: tiramisu cupcakes with mascarpone topping. First off I chose some cute birthday theme cupcake papers, super cute! Next up was whipping up the egg whites and the egg yolks (with coffee en a generous dash of coffee liqueur) and then mixing them together to bake cupcakes that filled my room with the lovely smell of coffee and chocolate (I added chocolate chips to the mix as well).



Next up I made a lush mascarpone topping. Mixing the mascarpone with some coffee liqueur gave it an awesome flavour. But before I dolloped it on I poked some holes in the cupcakes and drizzled some more coffee liqueur on, infusing them with it so to speak. Oof!



To decorate I made some chocolate curls (with a block of dark chocolate and a potato peeler!) and I added some little gold sugar balls. I can't say anything but they looked gorgeous!



And here is a closeup of the final product. Mmm my mouth starts watering just remembering those cupcakes. Sorry to all of you out there who did not get the chance to have any!! But the birthday boy sure was happy with his alcoholic cupcakes!



Hope you all had a good christmas!

xoxo Jennifer

Yeti cake

Dear all,

Recently 2 friends of mine celebrated their birthdays. One of them is called Jettie, which is pronounced the same as Yeti, the abominable snowman. This was a running joke for a while right after we first met, and now, some 5 years later I wanted to make a tribute to that, so I made Yeti cakes for her!

My yeti cupcake recipe is from a book that actually got me into cupcake making 2 years ago. They are little vanilla cupcakes with marshmallow mixed in, with a lovely and sticky white marshmallow (home made!) topping. Also check out the supercute cupcake papers I used~!



Without going into too much detail, I can tell you I transformed these golden brown sticky cakes into winter wonderland big foot cupcakes by making my own marshmallow like icing. This required dissolving some sugar and honey in egg whites over a low heat, adding a bit of vanilla essence and then beating the hell (excuse my french) out of it until it formed a thick sticky consistency. I then added a whole lot of grated coconut to give it some texture.



For the final touch I sprinkled on some more grated coconut (it also kept the marshmallow from gooying all over the place I think). Then I finished them off with some silver sugar balls and white snowflake like candy to make them pretty.



Happy Birthday Jettie!

Next week, her boyfriend's counterpart Tiramisu cupcakes. YUM!

Oh, and MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!

xoxo Jennifer

Double chocolate chip cookies

Dear all,

The bring-chocolate-cookies-to-work tradition actually didn't start with chocolate pretzels: for the first day I wanted to do something familiar. So I made the same chocolate chip cookies as I made in August. This time however I made two batches: 1 original, and one double chocolate!

For the double choc version I added cocoa powder and a little extra egg as the extra cocoa powder would make them dryer. Also, rather than dark chocolate, I added white chocolate, and instead of walnuts I added hazelnuts.




That was one excellent combo, if I may say so myself!! Of course I didn't bring along the slightly burnt one, that one may have disappeared into my own tummy (minus the burnt bits ;) ).

Another success I say! xoxo Jennifer

Chocolate Macaroons

Dear all,

Another week, another chocolate biscuit. This week I present to you: chocolate macaroons!! Another slightly problematic recipe, mostly due to the lack of availability of the ingredients.

First of all I didn't have any blanched almonds, so I got regular unsalted almonds. I wizzed these up in my blender to get a granular substance. Next I whipped up some egg whites until I got soft peaks and folded in some sugar, vanilla and almond essence, the ground almonds and some melted dark chocolate. I mixed this all together and refrigerated it for about 15-20 minutes.



Next up I dolloped the mixture on a baking tray with grease proof paper over it - approximately walnut sized portions. I sifted over some icing sugar and popped them in the oven.



As you can see my macaroons went a little flat. Normally they would not flatten out so much - not sure what happened here! But they still tasted really good (you might notice the missing macaroon on the baking tray, it was consumed almost straight out of the oven, yum!).



So there they are, chocolate macaroons! I think they my colleagues appreciated them, which in the end was my goal!

xoxo Jennifer

Cherry Clafoutis

Dear all,

As a Foodie I also have to watch what I eat, and so I have started this semi-diet. Don't worry, I won't stop baking!

Anyway, I had a look at some of the recipes that came with the diet magazines, and some of the deserts they showcase look pretty good! One of the ones I tried was the cherry clafoutis, which looked a little something like this!

A Cherry Clafoutis is a desert where cherries are covered by a thin pancake-like batter and baked in a hot oven until the batter has set with nicely browned and slightly puffed edges. My version used light fromage frais, which made it a lot less pancake-y. It was more like baked cheesecake if you ask me. This is what it looked like before going in the oven:



And here it is baked and all! Due to a lack of fresh cherries I used tinned ones, something I wouldn't use if I made it again. It tasted a little too much like diet-desert for my liking, though it certainly didn't taste bad!



xoxo Jennifer

Chocolate Pretzels

Dear all,

It's been too long! I had a blog post lined up for last Wednesday, but due to starting a new job I didn't even get round to posting it. Anyway, from now on you will probably get a series of chocolate cookies/biscuits - a new routine as part of my new job. For my first day I was asked to bring chocolate cookies; and so I did! The next week I did the same (different cookies) and now this week I decided to make chocolate pretzels for work (it always has to be chocolate as per popular demand).

For the chocolate pretzels I first made the cookie dough, and then refrigerated it for an hour (according to the recipe). I assume this is to make the dough firmer and easier to handle after. My dough didn't really firm up so I had a little trouble with rolling it out. With a bit of extra flour I made it work though. Here it goes!

First I separated the dough into smaller, even portions and then rolled them into little balls. After refrigerating them a bit more I then rolled out each little ball into a 20-25cm strip.



Next I folded the end bits inwards, twisted them together, and folded them further up to form the pretzel shape. To finish them off I dabbed on a little bit of egg white and sprinkled them with caster sugar (sugar crystals would have been better, but I didn't have any of those!).



And this is the end result! A crunchy, yummy chocolate pretzel!!



Unfortunately about half broke in the process of getting them off the baking tray and onto the cooling rack. Next time I won't roll them out so thin I think. But they sure taste good anyway!!

xoxo Jennifer

I AM a foodie

Dear all,

Although my blog is called [I'm a Foodie], which means a love of all foods, I have focused on baking until now. However, recently I have made a couple of nice dinners as part of dinner parties for friends, and some of them I just have to share with you (because I'm proud of them!). So every now and then, if I make something yummy, I will post these dishes on Sunday evening, to inspire a good start of the week. Enjoy!

First up: Spicy rice and zingy coconut chicken



Spicy rice: fried up with onion, garlic and some curry paste. Added: chickpeas, spinach, handful of raisins and cashew nuts.

Zingy coconut chicken: marinated overnight in lime, curry powder, bit of chilli powder and seasoning. Right before going in the oven I rolled the bits of chicken in some desiccated coconut. Then I sprayed it with a bit of oil and cooked in the oven.

For serving: I added a dollop of greek yoghurt to the rice to give it a bit of freshness.

Boy was this good food! I have another couple of portions in the freezer to take with me for lunch too - excellent!!

xoxo Jennifer

Castle Cake

Dear all,

Since it has become well known that I like to bake, people have started showering me in baking-related presents, for which I am eternally grateful. Some of these presents come in the form of fancy baking tins, such as the angel shaped tin last week. This week, however, I would like to present to you: CASTLE CAKE!! This awesome baking tin was a present as well, and I in fact made it in honour of the birthday of one of the people who gave it to me.

For the cake itself I decided to follow the recipe that came with the tin, just to see how it would turn out. This recipe was for coconut pound cake, quite delicious!




As for the decoration, I was a little Halloween inspired, as my friend's birthday was actually the 30th of October, right before Halloween. With sugar paste I made a couple of decorations myself: 2 tomb stones, an axe, a cross, a ghost and 2 skulls. The rest of the decoration I actually bought in Scotland, including chocolate rocks, gold and black decorations and coconut mushrooms.





As the cake shape hadn't come out as clearly as I wanted, I had to find a way to accentuate the finer details of the castle cake. I had made a cocoa paste (water + unsweetened cococa powder) which I covered the edge of the plate with to stick all the rocks etc. on. With the same paste and a toothpick I started filling in the grooves on the cake to accentuate the stone pattern etc. And this is what the cake ended up looking like:





And here's a quick look at what the cake looks like cut in half - with my friend's rather large portion!! (Always a good sign I guess?!)



This was another one of those cakes I had an absolute blast making and was the perfectly delicious ending to a wonderful evening.

Until next week! (for which I still have to come up with something, hehe)

xoxo Jennifer

Angel Cake

Dear all,

A cake that has been on my wish list for a while is the British version of an Angel cake (not to be confused with angel food cake which is the American version and quite different). When my mum gave me an angel-shaped cake tin I just couldn't resist, so here it goes!

Angel cake uses lots of egg whites and no flour, so it's quite an interesting cake to try out (and perfect to make along side the key lime pie that only uses egg yolks ;) ). So first up was whipping the egg whites into shape:


The egg whites need whipping until they almost have a whipped cream texture then you add the rest of the ingredients. I used 2 cake tins to make this cake, one the angel shaped one and a simple round one to form the base of the cake.



I decorated the round cake with white chocolate, eadable glitter and some shiny sugar decorations.



As for the cake colour, as you only use egg whites the cake turns out very white. Angel cake, however, is usually a mix of white, yellow and pink cake, so that's what I did!! I left the angel white, and added food colouring to the cake mix for the round cake, yes, yellow and pink. So the angel on top was white, then a layer of pink, and yellow at the bottom. Which is exactly right according to Wikipedia:

"Angel cake is called angel cake because it has three layers and is pink in the middle. All angels look like this when cooked correctly."

Unfortunately this part was removed shortly after I discovered it, so you'll just have to take my word for it. And you know I'm not witty enough to come up with that myself!





And so here it is, a before and after picture, of my angel cake, Rafaël.



And with this post I complete my back log of cake posts - I better get baking for next week!!

xoxo Jennifer

Pear and Chocolate Pie

Dear all,

Today I have a post with plenty of pictures for you! For a 'girls' night' recently hosted at my friend Roxy's, I made a pear and chocolate pie (to continue the autumn theme I started last week). BIG success!!

The pie has a simple shortbread pie crust. The next step was to grate a whole bar of chocolate (I was absolutely covered in chocolate I can tell you! Lots of finger-licking going on when I was done ;) ) which then goes into the pie first. See for yourself!



Next I halved and peeled 3 pears and removed the core (not an easy task when you can only halve the pears, not quarter them!). I then sliced them quite thinly, making sure to keep the shape of the half-pear. This was for the next step, placing the sliced pear halves on top of the chocolate to form something that resembles spokes of a wheel (as described in the recipe).



As it turned out I apparently had big fat pears, so instead of 6 spokes I only had five (leaving me with half a pear to munch on while the pie was in the oven, yum!). I then ladled some custard (mix of egg yolk, egg and cream) over the pears and then sprinkled the whole lot with caster sugar.



Tadaa, chocolate and pear pie! With a nice golden brown custard and slightly caramelised pears, it sure looked good! One of the girls brought some autumn decorations, looked amazing with the pie! And our host sure was happy!



Finally, here are some pictures of the yummy slices of pie we munched on. Now tell me that doesn't look good!!!



The recipe actually recommended serving the pie warm, which I would definitely like to try next time. I can imagine that the goo-yness of the warm chocolate mixed with the custard can be absolutely heavenly. Definitely worth trying again!

xoxo

Jennifer