Firstly I need to apologise to my sister, Kim, who requested that I put up a recipe for my Pop Cakes but I forgot..... sorry.... 

Over the Christmas period I made some Snowmen Pop Cakes with my Niece, we had such fun, so here is my recipe for making the Pop Cakes.  Remember to just let your imagination run wild, you can decorate these little cakes as you want......... and have fun!!! 

 

Ingredients:

1 Day Old Sponge Cake**
250g Cream Cheese

100g Chocolate (for 12 pop cakes) ~ white or brown chocolate
Decorations as required

(** For the Snowmen, I used a plain vanilla cake I had baked the day before / for the Choc Mint Pop Cakes I used a chocolate cake).

1 packet Lollipop sticks (I bought mine off eBay, dirt cheap)
Some old newspapers
1 Colander

Method:

1. Cut your cake into smaller pieces so that it fits into a blender.  Blend the cake till it resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Place all the breadcrumbs in a large bowl. 
2. Mix the cream cheese to soften it a bit (makes mixing easier).  You can add a little vanilla essences if you would like.  (For the Choc Mint Pop Cakes, I added 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder to the cream cheese).*
3. Now mix the cream cheese into the breadcrumbs, mix till completed combined.
4. Line one to two baking trays with greaseproof paper.  Mold the cake mixture between your hands, about the size of a golf ball and place on the baking tray.  To make the Snowmen, I made a row of golf ball size and then another row of smaller cakes (for the heads).  Freeze these till completely frozen, about 2 hours. 
5. Place the old newspaper down over  your counter, near your hob / stove.  Turn the colander over so it is standing on it's head.
6. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler (or a small bowl placed over a pot of hot, not boiling water).  Take care not to get any water into the melted chocolate as this ruins the chocolate and you will have to start again. 
7. Take the tip of the stick and dip it into the melted chocolate then quickly push it to the frozen cake balls (the heat from the chocolate helps the stick to slide easier).  For the Snowmen, remember to push the head on first and then the body (I pushed the stick all the way through to the end of the body.  This also helped to keep the Snowmen standing upright). 
8. Once you have all your cake balls on sticks, you can now roll each ball into the chocolate till well covered.  Gentle tap the stick on the edge of your bowl (or tap your wrist) to get rid of the excess chocolate.  Give it a few seconds for the excess chocolate to drip off.
9. Using the back end of the stick, balance your pop cake in the colander to dry completely.  However if you are going to use sprinkles / candy hearts / stars etc. you need to decorate the balls immediately so that the decorations will stick.   For the Snowmen, I waited till the white chocolate had dried completely before we decorated them using icing pens.

 * Note ~ a lot recipes say to use frosting to combined the cake (i.e. cake frosting) but this makes your pop cakes very rich, which is why I use Cream Cheese.

For the Choc Mint Pop Cakes, I made up the following icing and piped it onto the dried chocolate covered balls.

100g Icing Sugar
A few drops green colouring
A few drops Peppermint flavouring
Water

Sift your icing sugar, add the colouring (till you get the colour you want) and the flavouring.  You need to obtain a smooth icing which you can pipe so it cannot be too runny.  Using a little water (if required) mix everything so it is a smooth paste.  Spoon into a piping bag and snip off the end ~ now pipe the Peppermint icing onto your chocolate balls.  Leave to dry.

Additional Ideas ~ using white chocolate, cover your cake balls and then make up a Strawberry Pink icing using Strawberry flavouring and pink colouring to decorate your cake balls.  You can also use a combination of Lemon and Yellow colouring.   For Valentine you can cover your cake balls with milk chocolate and then sprinkle some candy hearts on.   Here are some other ideas too........

Hope you have fun making these.......

Happy Monday!!!!  Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, mine was great, thanks.  Apologies for not giving you details from the previous weekend but it was a flop so I avoided the kitchen!!!!  I suppose every great Chef has a bad day in the kitchen and Sunday the 20th was no exception for me, ha ha.......  Yesterday however was different and I am pleased to say I am back on track with my baking.....

Decided not to throw the over-ripened bananas out, instead I made a banana loaf which always goes down well in with my Boys and I also made a Stem Ginger Cake with Lemon Icing, which was a huge success ~ eureka!!!!

It was pretty simple to make and smelt divine when it came out the oven.  I hope yours will too, enjoy......(and yes that is the banana loaf you can see in the background)......

Ingredients:

 225g self-raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tbsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground mixed spice

115g butter , cut into cubes, plus extra for greasing

115g dark muscovado sugar

115g black treacle

115g golden syrup

250ml whole milk

85g drained stem ginger , finely grated

1 egg

For the Icing

50g icing sugar, sifted

1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

1 tbsp lemon juice

 

 

Method

1. Preheat the oven to fan 160C/conventional 180C/gas 4. Butter and line an 18cm round, 7cm deep cake tin with greaseproof or parchment paper.
2. Put the flour, bicarbonate of soda and all the spices into a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Set aside.
3. Put the sugar, treacle, syrup and milk in a medium saucepan and heat, gently stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Turn up the heat and bring the mixture to just below boiling point (it may look like it is separating (black lumps) but this is okay).
4. Add the stem ginger to the flour mixture, then pour in the treacle mixture, stirring as you go with a wooden spoon. Break in the egg and beat until all the mixture is combined and it resembles a thick pancake batter. Pour this into prepared tin and bake for 50 minutes-1 hour, until a skewer pushed into the centre of the cake comes out fairly clean. Leave to cool completely in tin before turning cake out. (To freeze: wrap in greaseproof paper, then in cling film. Freeze for up to 1 month.)
5. To make the icing, mix together icing sugar and lemon zest, then gradually add lemon juice until you have a smooth, slightly runny icing, adding more juice, if needed. Drizzle icing in a zig-zag pattern over surface of cake, turn cake around and drizzle again to create the cross-hatched finish (see below). Cake keeps for up to 2 weeks stored in an airtight container.  

I cannot believe it's Friday already and I haven't added anything to my blog as I promised, I am so sorry!!  It's also hard to believe it's mid-January already too...........

As most of you know, last weekend was the start of my new venture for 2013 ~ making something new every weekend so last Sunday I made a Chocolate Beetroot Cake (recipe obtained from www.uktv.co.uk).  During conversations with family and friends, this cake has been mentioned a few times and really grabbed my attention.  A while ago I made some Raspberry Chocolate Brownies for a good friend and found the contrast between the sourness of the Raspberries and the sweetness of the Chocolate was amazing.  So would Beetroot and Chocolate be the same?  Not quite but there was definitely the underlining taste of something new and from all the comments I've received from my Boys and my Colleagues at work, it was well worth the effort.  The Beetroot makes it a moist cake so don't doubt your oven or cooking when you cut it, it is supposed to be moist and sticks together as oppose to the normal crumb cake........

I also have never made Chocolate Ganache, this is the chocolate icing.  I let my icing cool a little bit, which thickened it to allow me to spread it over the cake but you can "pour" it over the cake whilst warmer, and then smooth it around the sides and top.  I will definitely use this Ganache again, am also going to try it with White Chocolate.

I hope you enjoy........

Ingredients

For the cake

100 g drinking chocolate
230 g self-raising flour
200 g caster sugar
100 g dark chocolate, minimum 60% cocoa solids
125 g unsalted butter
250 g cooked beetroot, (not pickled!)
3 large eggs, beaten

For the cream cheese icing

250 g cream cheese
60 g unsalted butter, soft
200 g icing sugar

For the chocolate ganache

250 g whipping cream
250 g dark chocolate, chopped
grated white chocolate, to decorate

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4.

2. Grease and line a 25cm deep round cake tin

3. Sift the drinking chocolate with the self-raising flour into a mixing bowl, and then mix in the sugar.

4. Melt the chocolate and butter together in a bowl over hot (not boiling) water.

5. Puree the cooked beetroot in a food processor, then whisk in the beaten eggs.

6. Add the beetroot and the chocolate mixtures to the dry ingredients and mix together thoroughly.

7. Pour the mixture into a greased lined 25cm cake tin. Bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

8. Remove from the oven and leave the cake to stand in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.
9. Split the cake in half.

10. To make the filling: beat the cream cheese icing ingredients together until creamy and spread liberally on the bottom half of the cake. Place the other half of the cake on top.

11. To make the chocolate ganache: heat the cream in a pan and bring just to boiling point, then remove the pan from the heat.

12. Place a damp towel on the worktop and place the pan of hot cream on this.

13. Add the chopped chocolate to the cream and beat vigorously until thoroughly mixed. Allow to cool slightly.

14. Spread the ganache on top of the cake and leave to set.

15. Sprinkle with the white chocolate to decorate.

Watch the space for this Weekend's Treat.......



A belated Happy New Year from my kitchen and I !!!   I hope you and your family had a wonderful festive season and wish only the best for you all in 2013.........

Apologies for the lack of correspondence over the festive season but I felt you could all do with a break from my kitchen and I wanted to spend some quality time with my lovely family.......... But 2013 has arrived with a bang so it's back to my promise to bake something new each weekend and give you the details.  Watch the space....... If anyone has some recipes you'd like to share or something you'd like me to make, please feel free to email me on leighandmandy@btinternet.com

Over the festive season I spent some wonderful time with my wee niece in the kitchen so will post our baking achievements with recipes shortly as well as the homemade Steak and Ale cornish pies I made.  Recipes and photos will be posted soon but for now, I am pretty knackered after my first day back so am putting my feet up with a cuppa......

With love
Mands