Melting Moments and Chocolate Butter Cream

So our twin group get together has come around again and after several weeks of making kiddie fun food I wanted to make something that the Mamas could enjoy as well. I knew my week was going to be a hectic one so it had to be something uber delicious but with very little effort so I decided on melting moments.

I love melting moments, I think it's all that butter! It's also slightly magical the way the biscuit just crumbles and melts that makes it so much fun to eat.

I had a recipe that made the most stellar biscuits but I lost it. It was scribbled on a piece of paper that is normally tucked in a cook book but it's gone. I am terrible disorganised in the way I have my recipes kept. Some are scribbled on pages within cookbooks, some are just torn bits of paper from note pads and none are in a folder or any kind of smart system. I'm just chaos and one day I will get around to making my cooking life easier. But until then this recipe from taste.com.au will have to do. It's delicious.

Melting Moments with Chocolate Butter Cream

250g butter (room temperature)
1/3 cup icing sugar (sifted)
1 and 3/4 cup plain flour
1/3 cup cornflour
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Chocolate Butter Cream
65g butter (softened)
2/3 cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 heaped tablespoon cocoa powder

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees and line a couple of baking trays with baking paper.

2. Beat the butter, icing sugar and vanilla essence until fluffy and pale and creamy.

3. Sift the flour and cornflour into it and mix on low until well incorporated and a crumbly soft dough forms.

4. With your floured hands roll small balls and place them on lines tray about 5cm apart. Dip your fork into the flour and flatten the balls into a flat but not too thin biscuit.

5. Bake for 15 minutes. Don't bake too long as you want to retain the pale colour of the biscuit and baking too long will make the edges brown. Cool on tray before putting icing.

6. To make chocolate butter cream simply add all ingredients and mix well.

7. When biscuits are completely cool put chocolate cream on one half and sandwich with another biscuit.

Maltesers Slice

This will be my second recipe made using the ever delicious always scrumptious Maltesers. I can not describe what it is about it that I love so much but I just know I do and I'm not alone. It's just so addictive. I have made a healthier Maltesers treat, Maltesers Fudge, a low fat low sugar calorie conscious Weight Watcher's version. This one is NOT. It's jam packed with malt and chocolate goodness.

I must admit that I do think this is a tad too sweet for my palate. The recipe I followed is an Eric Lanlard's recipe Malteser Square. The next time I make it (oh there most certainly will be a next time) I will use a semi sweet chocolate as opposed to the milk chocolate the very French and very cute Eric Landlard uses.

This is a super easy recipe, one for the time strap cook (moi!). It's melt, stir, tray and chill. In under 15 minutes you'll be done. Enjoy.

Maltesers Slice

100g butter
200g milk chocolate (or semi sweet if you prefer less sweet)
3 tablespoons golden syrup
225g Digestive biscuits
approx 300g Maltesers
75g white chocolate

1. Grease a 20 inch shallow tin - or skip the greasing and use silicone bake wear.

2. Crush the biscuits. I put them in a plastic bag, grab the rolling pin and bash my stresses away (very therapeutic)

3. Melt butter, chocolate and golden syrup.

4. Mix in crushed biscuits. Let cool a little because the next step is to stir in about 250g Maltesers.
*** if you put the Maltesers in when chocolate mixture is very hot all the chocolate coating will melt****

5. Once mixed pour into tin. I use some of the remainder chocolate balls to garnish the top randomly and I eat the rest.

6. Chill for 2 hours or more.

7. Cut into small square or rectangular slices, melt some white chocolate and drizzle over to finish.

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

Here's another recipe with an extremely low degree of difficulty but the wow impact is maximum. Every body loves a cupcake, everybody loves an ice cream cone. So why not put the 2 together to bedazzle the kids.

This is by no means an original idea of yours truly. I can not remember exactly where I got the inspiration from but there's a gazillion examples on the net. Once again I had very little time to make something for our gorgeous twin friends so I went for my party trick of little effort for maximum impact. Everything came out of a box, just a matter of putting it together. Here's how I did it.

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

1 x cupcake mix (any brand, I used Greens)
1 x tub of vanilla frosting
24 flat bottom ice cream cones
whatever topping or sprinkle you like

**** of course if you want to avoid premix cake mix then knock yourself out making any cake base you like and butter icing works best for consistency ****

1. Take a piece of foil and cover 2 muffin trays. Make a small slit over each muffin hole and place ice cream cone in. This is done to stabilise the cone as it can fall if cake batter shifts too much in the baking process.

2. Mix cupcake mix according to directions on box.

3. Fill cone up to 2/3 full. Any more and the cake will over flow and look more like a melting ice cream cone.

4. Bake for 20-25 minutes in a preheated 180 degrees oven. Remove to cool.

5. Take a sharp knife and make a small hole at the bottom of the cone.This will help release some steam and keep cone crisp for longer.

6. Fill a pipping bag with your favourite icing and pipe. I used a star nozzle on some and also a plain nozzle on the others just for the different finish.

7. Decorate with sprinkles.

8. Watch the children's faces when they bite into it thinking it's real ice cream!!

Spiderman Cake

My little Big Boys have turned 3 years old. Celebrations all round!! Of course I wanted to bake their birthday cake so I asked them what they wanted. My boys are really into all things superhero at the moment and the superhero du jour is Spiderman so they wanted a Spiderman Cake.

I panicked at first but once the challenge was accepted by me I set out to find the easiest way I could make something that resembled our friendly neighbourhood Spiderman. The answer was very obvious, just make the face and get the colours right and tadaah ... a superhero cake.

The plan was to use fondant on the whole cake and then just fill in the web and eye details. Alas all good plans can come unhinged. I have not worked with fondant successfully EVER and this time was no different. I didn't have enough for the size of my cake and rolled it too thin and then I couldn't get it back off the rolled surfaced and when I did get some off it was sticky and broken and just awful. So I opted to just make a fondant top of cake and ice the sides that way I could get a thick enough fondant base that would not be stuck to the surface. Because I did not have ingredients to whip up a batch of icing (nor did I have the will as it was almost 10pm at that stage) I used store bought Betty Crocker's vanilla icing .. yum yum yum!

Here's what I made.

Spiderman Cake

1 round butter cake (approx 8.5 inches)
1 pack store bought ready to roll fondant
1 tube of Wilton's black icing
1 tub of Betty Crocker's vanilla icing
red gel colouring
blue liquid colouring

1. Draw a template of Spidey's face and pin on cake. Then neatly cut the shape out.

2. Ice the cut cake with a layer of icing. Not too thick as it's there mainly to help hold the fondant in place.

3. Use red gel colouring on fondant until you get the colour you want. Then cut Spidey's face out and place on top of cake.

4. Use a small tip needle or stick to trace the lines for eyes and web.

5. Fill in the blanks with the black icing. Either fit a small plain nozzle at the end of tube or put black icing in a pipping bag.

6. Make the icing for the side of cake blue. Then pipe to cover the sides.

7. Watch the excitement on the faces of the kids when you show them for the first time their Spiderman cake ... and then watch in horror as they stick their fingers into the blue icing almost immediately "just to taste" your efforts.

Lime Baby Cakes

I was wondering aimlessly on Pinterest one day just browsing at all the amazing creative things people do. I saw a photo of the most gorgeous looking green cakes with luscious icing. I knew I had to try making it. So I checked out a farmgirl's dabble and just fell in love with her Lime Baby Cakes

I loved my first attempt so much that you'll be able to see it as my background photo of this blog.

The moistness of the cake is just lovely and the tang from the lime is insanely amazing when countered with the cream cheese icing. This is a perfect cake for those people who say they don't like sweet things (they are out there). This recipe is also great for parties as it makes heaps. I got 3 dozen mini cupcakes and 1 dozen standard cupcakes.

LIME BABY CAKES

3 1/2 cup plain flour
2 1/2 cup caster sugar
250g soft butter
5 eggs (or 4 if it's large)
1 1/2 cup buttermilk
2 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
5-6 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
2 tablespoons lime zest
green food colouring

Icing
250g cream cheese - soften
1 1/2 cup icing sugar
125g soft butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon lime zest

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Get your trays ready, if you're using metal tins please grease them or use paper liners. I used both metal tins and also silicone moulds.

2. Beat butter and add sugar until well creamed. Add the eggs one at a time and then mix in lime juice and zest and food colouring. The lime juice will make batter look a little curdled but that's okay.

3. Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl. Add the flour mix and buttermilk into the batter alternately.

4. Fill batter 2/3 full in tins and moulds. Bake for approx 20 minutes. Let cool before icing.

5. For the icing simple mix all icing ingredient together and either pipe on cooled cakes or just spread with a butter knife.

6. Shove in face and sigh with happiness.

Pavlova

The Queen of all Australian desserts has got to be the amazing Pavlova. Just like the ballerina it was named after it is delicate and fragile and sweet and so pleasing to the eye.

This is one of those desserts that I find is easy and quite fuss free as you make it, it goes in the oven and it can stay there cooling for hours out of sight until you're ready to dress it and shove in face. It's definitely one of the desserts from my repertoire of desserts that gets made often.

I am posting this blog in honour of my sister and my soul sista who have asked me for the recipe. So here you go ladies. This is a Margaret Fulton recipe, can't go wrong. Give it a go. As my rascally twins say "paf ro va is yummy for the tummy"

PAVLOVA

6 egg whites (MUST be room temperature)
a pinch of salt
2 cups caster sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

For the topping
200-300ml cream (depends how much you love cream)
2 tablespoons icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
fruits of your fancy, anything goes

1. Preheat oven. If it's a gas oven preheat to 230 degrees Celsius and if it's an electric oven preheat to 150 degrees Celsius.

2. Beat egg whites and salt until soft peaks form. Then add sugar a tablespoon at a time making sure it's mixed well between each addition. Once all sugar is in and is well incorporated you may stop when the peaks are stiff.

3. Fold in vinegar and vanilla.

4. Pile mixture into your dish of choice or on foil. You may use either a greased china flan dish or a greased springform tin or just draw a circle about 20cm on baking foil on a tray. Pile mixture high and use a spatula to shape.

5. If baking in gas oven turn heat down to coolest and bake for 1.5 hours. If using an electric oven bake for 45 minutes, turn oven off, keep door shut and leave for 1 hour. Then remove from oven or leave it there with door slightly ajar.

6. For cream topping whip cream, sugar and vanilla. Then top the cooled Pavlova and garnish with whatever you like.