Chocolate Orange pt 3 (final)

Dear all,

So here's part three of the Chocolate Orange adventure! Today I present: "Marquise with chocolate and orange" or what I call the Jasper cake. Jasper made me this cake two years ago for my birthday and I finally felt up to making it as the recipient was apparently very fond of the chocolate orange combination. So, I set to work, first melting a massive amount of chocolate.

What was special, or difficult? about this cake is that when baking it in the oven the tin has to be place in water, to keep the temperature constant. First off I hadn't really thought about this enough so when the cake was ready to go in the oven I was short an oven dish large enough to put the cake tin in! I improvised well, I thought, until after well past the alotted time the cake still wasn't done... And this included several attempts at taking the cake out of the tin because a skewer came out clean and finding out just in time that well.. it really wasn't done! No one wants a runny cake. So after 2 (!!) hours of changing the temperature, taking the cake out of the water etc etc the cake was finally done. Thank goodness!!!



By this time my kitchen was an absolute disaster site. Making three desserts in 1 day is not ideal - as I found out that day. Anyway, the next step for the cake was making candied orange peel, another technique I had never tried before - but succeeded at!!



With a lot of help and tips from Jasper I cut the orange peel, and boiled the strips in water and sugar until it looked like syrup. I then let it cool, which actually turned the whole into one massive block of orange and sugar. Heating it up again a bit allowed me to take out the orange peel, which was now beautifully candied!!



Here is a picture of the end result: a beautifully moist and rich orange chocolate cake with candied orange peel as decoration on top!




And here's a detail picture of the candied orange, because it's so pretty, and the seriously happy recipient. Boy that was good cake. Marquise. YUM!



Absolutely definitely for sure a cake I want to make again. It's THAT good.

xoxo Jennifer

Chocolate Orange pt 2

Dear all,

And so the Chocolate Orange adventure continues, time for part 2! Another friend of mine who is leaving once introduced me to what is now one of my favourite drinks: Licor 43 (a vanilla liqueur). I couldn't find a more fitting way to say good-bye to him than by making... *insert drumroll*.... Licor 43 tartlets! Oh yes. I found the recipe on the official Licor 43 website. Unfortunately it didn't come with a picture, so I have no idea what they were supposed to look like, but I think mine turned out more than alright! Let's have a look:

For the base I smashed some digestive biscuits (and actually broke my rolling pin in the process - in the mean time I figured out I can do the same thing with my mini blender..sigh) and mixed them up with melted butter. After placing a small bit of baking paper at the bottom of each cup I filled a muffin tray with the cookie crumble mixture, shaping it so that they would be little cups. After leaving them in the fridge for a couple of hours I filled them with a chocolate/licor 43/gelatine mixture and again, let that sit in the fridge for a few hours.



What came out were really cute little chocolate mousse-like tartlets! Unfortunately getting them OUT of the muffin tray is something I hadn't thought about quite as much as I should have! They came out, though a little crumbly.



Inspired by some friends' pictures I couldn't resist when I found this sugar alphabet sprinkles in the shops. I had bought it a while ago, and figured this was the perfect occasion to use them. Decorating the tartlets in another way would take away from the effect and I wanted to do something cute. So I wrote my friend a goodbye-cake message :D And for the remaining tartles I might or might not have used left over ganache from the earl grey cupcakes. Shhtttt :P




I think this "stuffing-his-face" picture attests to the success of the Chocolate Orange adventure, part 2! (and don't mind creepy dude in the background ;) ;) )

xoxo

Jennifer

Chocolate Orange pt. 1

Dear all,

Due to lack of proper internet connections I'm a little behind on my blog posting. Luckily for you this means that I have a back log of posts to be finished, which gives you all something to look forward to! First off is the Chocolate Orange baking adventure, part one!

Last week was a busy baking week, with a long promised congratulatory cake and some good bye yummies. First up, Earl Grey cupcakes for a friend who is leaving to study abroad for a year. I have made these cupcakes before but I added a topping. So what's chocolate orange about earl grey cupcakes? The Terry's Chocolate Orange chunks! As well as the chocolate orange ganache topping. Yum!


I thenk baked the Earl Grey cupcakes. They are made with earl grey loose leaf too steeped in milk, giving the cupcakes a subtle but distinct earl grey flavour. I added chunks of terry's chocolate orange to the mixture as a fancy extra. It makes the cupcakes slightly more interesting, and as my earl grey tea was already infused with orange blossom I thought it would be a perfect match (which it was!)




I finished the cupcakes off with a chocolate/earl grey/orange ganache I had made the day before. It again uses earl grey loose leaf tea steeped in milk, and I added some orange zest for fun. The ganache turned out perfectly which I dolloped on and turned into a pretty swirl. To finish the whole thing off I sprinkled on some gold sugar balls and eadable glitter. Fancy Smancy!!

So far for Chocolate Orange pt 1. Part two will follow soon!

xoxo Jennifer

Tarte Tatin Failures

Dear all,

Yes, sometimes I too fail (more often than I let on on this blog anyway XD). Either way, the other day a friend asked me to bake cupcakes for him to take to a pot luck. I was foolish enough to think I could try out a new recipe for that, because it failed, miserably! But so that you can all share in my misery (or have a good laugh at my expense), here is what happened:

I saw a recipe for Tarte Tatin cupcakes, which involved caramelised apples and making caramel. Making the cupcakes themselves was easy, a nice falvoursome vanilla-y cupcakes. Then the drama started. The apples burned, turned soggy, were too big/too small to go on the cupcakes, and did not caramelise.



In the end however I got a nice set of apple slices that at least looked decent enough to go on the cupcakes. Then disaster part two: the caramel. Judging from the pictures in the book I thought I would get a nice clear caramel-like substance, maybe a little treacle like. I was wrong. It was semi-solid light brown opaque muck (which tasted quite nice actually!).



Anyway, so I thought the idea was to dribble some on, but that looked terrible.



After some deliberation I decided the caramel was to be used as icing with the non-caramelised apples on top. I'm so sorry for ruining the cupcakes friend, you know who you are. I hope I didn't kill anyone with them or put them off my baking forever :(

My result:



And on the right, what is was
supposed to look like XD




I'm not giving up however, I will try this recipe again someday and make it work for me, muahaha.

Until next time!

xoxo Jennifer