League Of Legends Nexus Cake

'What flavour of birthday cake do you want, darling?' I ask The Man.
'Big.'
'Big what?'
'Muh, dunno.  Chocolate.'

'Chocolate' wasn't good enough for me, so I made a 28cm-diameter chocolate-and cherry cake,

and a 28cm white chocolate-and-ginger cake, cut them into regular hexagons,

iced them with ginger syrup buttercream and chocolate ganache,

and covered them in ready-roll fondant,

and scored the fondant into 'stone walls,' and added more vanilla cake covered in more chocolate and fondant,

hexagons of blue fondant, and made marzipan 'statues' of wizards with blue birthday candles for staffs and cocktail sticks holding their heads on, with fondant cloaks, and six piped triangles and one piped hexagon of macaroon/meringue

assembled into a regular 6-sided pyramid filled with small round macaroon and whipped cream, covered in more blue fondant. 

And added green coconut buttercream 'moss' and candided angelica 'weeds'.

Until it looked something like this:

This was not a Simple Thing to do.  Do not try this at home, kids.

Or do, but be aware that the Faff Index occasionally goes up to 11.

The final thing needed a total of 16 eggs, a kilogram of butter and half a kilo of chocolate.  I think that counts as 'Big.'

Cross-stitch update

As you can see, with little else to do I have been getting on with my cross-stitch.  The brown border does look a little overpowering, but hopefully I can fill out the tree itself a few more bits and pieces and make the main pattern more eye-catching later.

The little animals in the branches have been coming off well; I am particularly pleased with the squirrel.

I also wanted to share with the Internet the following amusing photo of some fried eggs, which I thought rather resembled Edvard Munch's The Scream.

 That's all; it has been quiet on the crafty front the last month while I've been filling in forms and so on in my spare time, but I'm looking forward to the Man's birthday cake this week which should be gracing these pages soon.  Not to mention I have just ordered some more wool from Kemps with which to make my first proper jumper - an aran cardigan to replace the well-worn and over-mothed ones which my mother made me years ago, whose sleeves are suffering.

Fig Upside-Down Cake

I made this cake on the fly as a thank-you present for lots of people.  It needed to be rich and square so that everyone could take a small piece which would satisfy them and not spoil the shape of the cake.  I think it would make a lovely low-key Christmas cake for those who are not big on the traditional version.

Fig Upside-Down Cake
You Will Need: 20cm square cake tin, scissors and greaseproof paper, scales, large bowl, small bowl, teaspoon, kettle, chopping board and knife, sieve, wooden spoon, dinner knife, lemon zester or grater, rolling pin, cooling rack, serving dish.

4 ripe figs
40g hazelnuts
8oz soft butter
6 1/2 oz caster sugar
3tsp honey
12 fresh dates
2 large handfuls of sultanas
2 Lady Grey teabags
4 eggs
zest one orange
8oz self-raising flour
100g golden marzipan

1) Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.  Grease the bottom of your tin. Cut two long slices of greaseproof paper, and cross them in the bottom of the tin.
2) Cut the stalks off your figs.  Slice them into 3mm slices.  Use to line the bottom of your tin in a symmetrical pattern.  Scatter hazelnuts into the gaps between the fig slices.
3) Chop the dates, removing the stones.  Put them in a bowl with the sultanas and teabags; add just enough boiling water to cover them.  Allow to steep.
4) Cream the butter, honey and sugar in the large bowl.  Add one egg at a time, beating in well, followed by some of the flour, then the next egg.  Beat to a smooth mixture.  Zest the orange and stir in the zest.
5) Drain the fruits in the sieve and add the dry fruits to the mixture.  Mix gently.  Spoon half of this mixture into the tin, being careful not to spoil the fig pattern.
6) Roll out the block of marzipan into a square, about 2mm thick and smaller than your tin.  Place on top of the mix in the tin, then pour the rest of the mix on top.  Level the mixture.
7) Bake for about 40+ minutes, if necessary with a tinfoil hat on to prevent browning.
8) Cool for a long time in the tin before turning out, first to the cooling rack and then sliding onto the final plate.

Decadent Pear and Chocolate Birthday Cake

A little while ago I mentioned this cake, and this one which I made in response.  My good friend made a beautiful-looking pear and dark chocolate version, although much like me she struggled with unripe fruit and getting the curd to set.  I was sorry I didn't get to taste it, as it has really inspired my second try.

I really wanted to get this right.  It is high time I had a proper show-stopping torte on my resumé which I can whip out for other people's birthdays as well as my own.  This time I made sure to buy my pears a week in advance, so that they would be juicy and flavoursome by the time it came to making the cake.  Thankfully, it is by far the best cake I have ever made!

This is an expensive confection as it involves buying hazelnuts (peeled nuts are a luxury in this country for shame) and a bottle of decent sweet wine.  Thankfully fruit and chocolate are both cheap!  It is also a multi-stage bastard.  As I have said, usually I avoid multi-stage anything like the plague, being of the 'screw it we'll have stew' school of culinary excellence, but for one's birthday as a known baker one has to go the extra mile.

One benefit of these sorts of cakes is that almost any of the stages stands alone.  The praline is a great peanut brittle substitute, the cake is obviously pleasant, the poached pears are a great pudding in and of themselves and the ganache could be used to make truffles.  If you've been paying attention, you'll realise that I made all of these things one at a time over the past few days, to avoid a nine-hour baking binge on the night of the party.

For shopping lists: Total chocolate used overall 500g, total cream used overall 300ml, total hazelnuts 400g

Spiced Pear and Chocolate Cake with Indulgent Pears and Hazelnut Praline

You Will Need:
Hazelnut Praline, one batch - three decorative pieces, the rest powdered
Chocolate Ganache, one batch
Pears Poached in Sweet Wine, - 4 pears' worth including three pear fans to decorate
100g hazelnuts, to decorate

Spiced Pear And Chocolate Cakes
You Will Need: scales, 2 tins, greaseproof paper, wooden spoon, large bowl, chopping board and knife, (small grater),potato peeler, teaspoon, whisk, 2 medium bowls, cup, small saucepan, cooling rack

100g chocolate
200g butter
200g sugar
5 eggs
2 small pears
1/2tsp nutmeg, or 1/2 a nutmeg grated
1/2tsp cinnamon
100g hazelnuts
200g self-raising flour

1) Preheat the oven to 180degC.  Line and grease your tins.

2) Peel, core and chop the pears into small pieces.
3) Separate your eggs, with the whites going into one medium bowl and the yolks a cup.  Cut the butter into small pieces, and break up the chocolate.  Set the second medium bowl over a pan of boiling water, and melt the chocolate, sugar and butter together.  When the mixture is all mixed with no lumps, transfer to the large bowl and whisk in the egg yolks gradually.
4) Grind the hazelnuts, and mix with the flour and spices on the scales.  Wash the whisk; whisk the egg whites to soft-peak stage; fold spoonfuls into the mixture alternately with flour, whisking the whites back up to peaks again between spoonfuls.
5) Pour equally into the tins and bake 30-35 minutes, until risen and clean-skewer.
6) Allow the cakes to cool in the tins for 10 minutes.  Remove from the tins and allow to cool on a rack.

Assembly
You Will Need: Serving dish, breadboard, breadknife, spoon, medium bowl, small bowl, small saucepan, teaspoons, dinner knife

200ml thick cream
200g dark chocolate

1) Allow your ganache to come back to room temperature so that you can work with it.

2) Cut your cakes.  Very gently turn out the first cake onto the serving dish.  Now cut it in two carefully, and shuffle the top half onto the breadboard. 
3) Spread a thick ring of ganache all the way around the edge of the cake on the serving dish, using your teaspoons and dinnerknife to manipulate it.
4) Mix the hazelnut praline powder powder gently with the thick cream only until mixed.  Spoon a round of this mixture inside the ganache ring.  Top with the next round of cake.
5) Turn out the second cake onto the breadboard and cut it in two.
5) For the central filling layer, arrange the poached pear slices in an overlapping layer.  Top with a third round of cake.
6) Use the remaining ganache and hazelnut cream to fill the third round, as before.  Top with the final cake.

7) Melt the last chocolate in the small bowl over the small pan.  Pour this melted chocolate all over the cake, first spreading a layer to catch all the crumbs, then allowing it to dribble over the sides organically.  Allow to cool slightly.  Fan out the poached pear halves in a trio; wedge the chunks of praline in between the pears.  Place hazelnuts evenly around the edge to mark portion sizes.

Fin! Serve to no fewer than a dozen people at once!

Pears Poached In Sweet Wine

This pudding is one of my father's favourites, from the worst-laid-out cookbook either of us has ever seen, authored by Nigel Slater, one of my favourite food people.  This isn't Nigel's recipe, because it uses sweet wine instead of red, but red is traditional.
It is a law of cooking that if (as generally recommended) you save the sh*te wine for cooking, your cooking will taste of sh*te wine.  Splash out on the £6.99 stuff on offer from £10 - you can always drink the rest of the bottle.

Pears Poached In Sweet Wine
You Will Need: Medium saucepan, measuring jug, wooden spoon, teaspoon, chopping board and knife, potato peeler, plate

4 small pears
350ml good sweet wine such as Muscat
30g sugar
100ml water
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 vanilla pod, split and scraped
6 cloves

1) Peel and cut the pears into halves lengthways, scooping out the cores with the end of the teaspoon.
1a) If making my pear and chocolate birthday cake, make sure that you keep three half-pears with stalks on to make into decorative fans for the top.  Peel and core these too.
2) Melt the sugar in the water in the saucepan.  Split the vanilla pod. Scrape the vanilla seeds with the end of your knife into the pan; add the other spices including the pod, and swirl until golden and fragrant.  Add the wine carefully. (Method from Jamie Oliver).  Bring the mixture to a simmer, and add the pears.  Cook for approximately half an hour, until tender.
3) Retrieve the pears with the spoon.
3a) If you are making the pear and chocolate birthday cake, cut all but three half-pears into long slices for a filling layer.  Carefully cut the stalked three into fans, and keep these aside.

Protip: Save the cooking liquid as a hot toddy - it tastes AWESOME.  Cook's perks!  Or reduce slightly and serve as a sauce for the pears, if doing as a pudding.

Chocolate Ganache

Chocolate Ganache
You Will Need: Small saucepan, wooden spoon, medium bowl, scales, measuing jug, chopping board and sharp knife, clingfilm

100ml extra thick cream
200g dark chocolate

1) Break the chocolate into small pieces and chop as small as you can.  Pour these chips into the bowl.
2) Heat the cream until hot but not boiling.  Pour swiftly over the chocolate, and stir rapidly until all of the chocolate is melted.  If the cream becomes too cool, heat the ganache very gently again over a pan of hot water.
3) When mixed, cover the ganache with clingfilm, and allow to cool back to room temperature.  Chill in the fridge.
4) To make truffles, cover your hands in cocoa powder, take teaspoonfuls of room-temperature ganache, roll into balls and then roll in cocoa, chopped nuts or other flavourings.  Ganache can also be piped as a decoration or filling.

Hazelnut Praline

This. Stuff.  Smells.  AMAZEBALLS.  If you like hazelnuts (and who doesn't?) this is the best way I have ever experienced of getting a proper fragrant waft of them right in your face, covered in sugar.
Use a decent-sized saucepan, to make the change in the colour of the sugar easier to detect.  I burnt one batch because I turned my back on it to grease my baking tray, in the erroneous belief that it would take ages.  This is reflected in the instructions.  Watch your sugar very carefully.

Hazelnut Praline
You Will Need: Baking tray, greaseproof paper, scales, saucepan, wooden spoon, spoon (food processor)

Dissolved sugar, just beginning to colour

butter smudge
200g hazelnuts
200g sugar
100ml water

1) Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and grease the paper with butter.

Getting towards to that golden colour that you want

2) Heat 100g of the sugar and 50ml water in the saucepan.  Let the sugar dissolve, and then let it cook on a medium-high heat without stirring it at all for a while until a golden colour.  DO NOT SUCCUMB to the stirring monster.  If the sugar gets too dark it is burnt; throw it away and start again (use boiling water from a kettle to clean sugary pans).
3) When the sugar is golden, pour in the hazelnuts, and coat them in the sugar as well as possible.  Pour the mixture out onto the baking tray, and spread it out into a single layer using the back of a metal spoon.  Leave to cool.
4) Meanwhile, clean the pan; make another batch of caramel with the remaining sugar and water, and pour over the hazelnuts to fill in the gaps.  Leave to cool.
5) When cool, peel the brittle off the greaseproof paper.  You now have different things you can do with it:

• Coat or drizzle with chocolate and break into pieces for a decadent sweetie/candy present.
• Break into pieces to use as cake decoration.  If making my pear-and-chocolate birthday cake, break off three large pieces for this purpose.
• Smash into small pieces and blend in the food processor until the texture of sand.  This can then be added to other ingredients to make homemade Nutella OR, if making my birthday cake, saved to mix with cream to make a pipe-able hazelnut filling.

SO TASTY

Birthday ingredients: left, decorative chunks; right, praline powder

Toffee Banana Crackle Trifles

Crap!  Dinner party in half an hour, haven't bought ingredients yet!  Smooth organising there E!
-Buy bananas, pasta stuff, peas (for soup).
-Make soup.  Cook half the pasta things, get pan of hot water going.  Toast porridge oats (bear with me).
-eat soup.  Finish my soup first, leave others chatting, finish pasta things.
-Eat pasta.  Finish my pasta first, start making pudding.

This is a super-easy, foolproof (if you time it right) good-looking pudding with minimum Faff Index (I would say a Faff of 4/10, because other than watching a grill (bear with me) it has absolutely no difficult steps) - which is perfect for small or large dinner gatherings.  They went down a storm, with only one complaint/suggestion from the Man which I have incorporated here.  This was lucky as I spent some of the evening going OMG why did I agree to make nice food at 5 minutes notice per course I am an idiot, and having a successful, bloggable pudding makes me feel worthy and nice again :)

Toffee Banana Crackle Triflets (Serves 4 +)
You Will Need: serving bowls; chopping board and sharp knife; baking tray; two teaspoons; small saucepan.

Number of bananas equal to number of people who deserve them
Extra thick double cream OR vanilla / nutty icecream
porridge oats
walnuts
caster sugar
butter

1) Scatter the porridge oats on the baking tray, and toast them under the grill until branflake coloured and fragrant, about 4 minutes.  Allow the tray to cool.
2) Cut the bananas into narrow diagonal pieces and arrange the pieces in the bowls, one nana per person.
3) Dollop cream or icecream on the nanas.
4) Scatter porridge oats on the cream to give a good scatty coating.  Chop the walnuts not too finely and scatter these too.
5) In the small pan, heat about a heaped dessertspoonful of caster sugar per person and a *tiny* slither of butter over a high heat, until the sugar has completely melted and is a rich dark brown.
6) Using your clean teaspoon, drizzle the toffee crackling over the puddings.  Listen to the crackly noise!  Try to avoid getting the crackle on the sides of the bowls as it will dry on and be harder to get off.

ProTip: When washing up toffee apparatus, boil a kettle and use to rinse / soften baked on sugar, and scrape at it with wooden implements.  Don't try to pick at it with your fingernails or other apparatus it will just break things and you.

No-Scales Easy Chocolate And Banana Cake

Leftover bananas.  There are always some, at least one little black bastard sitting there getting smelly and ripening all your other fruit.  What to do with them?  My mother used to make milkshakes with vanilla icecream; the mother-out-law makes smoothies (which I can't stand); I make cake.  I do have a 'banana bread' recipe somewhere, but this stodgy wonder is a good'un for pudding.  It's also mostly banana, which is kind of the point.

I usually despise Americans for measuring things by volume, but in this case it's just too easy.

Easy Banana and Chocolate Cake

You Will Need: Chopping board and knife; dessertspoon; large bowl; wooden spoon; small bowl; fork; 8 inch circular tin
3 bananas
1/2 bar dark chocolate
large handful walnuts
1 egg
4 dessertspoonfuls walnut/groundnut/vegetable oil
3 rounded dessertspoonfuls brown sugar
3 heaped dessertspoonfuls self-raising flour

1) Preheat the oven and grease the tin.  Chop the bananas, chocolate and walnuts into small chunks, and mix in the large bowl.
2) Add the sugar.  Beat the egg and add to the bowl; add the oil.  Mix well until gloopy.
3) Heap out desserspoonfuls of flour one at a time, mixing as you go.  Add a little more if the mix looks too runny; you should be able to pull a clean track through the mix with your spoon and it should look pretty sticky.
4) Pour into the tin and bake for 25-30 minutes until a skewer comes out clean and the top is golden brown.  Look out for skewering choccy chunks as they will give a false negative.  Cool, turn out and cool some more.

5) Om nom nom!

White Chocolate Nectarine Cake

I don't usually make cakes like this.  I usually despair of the faff of multiple-stage, gooey, sugar-heating concoctions with complicated fillings.  They go against all my principles.  They are (I believe) really no tastier than simple ones.  And yet, when a friend approached me with this recipe, and I said 'i'm not making this, see above also I hate mango,' she was able to persuade me to do an Elisabeth-friendly version.  It uses proper British measures by weight (not those blasted 'cups'), nectarines (one of my favourite fruits) and white chocolate.  It went down a storm at the girly baking day yesterday, and I'm already thinking up ways to improve it and riff on it to use as a birthday cake in a few weeks' time. You will notice that much of the equipment for this cake overlaps in the different stages, so don't be afraid to wash up as you go along.

Stupidly Complex Squidgy Ginger, White Chocolate And Nectarine Toffee Cake

Nectarine Curd

You Will Need: sharp knife, chopping board, small saucepan, blender, sieve, cup, two small bowls, wooden spoon
11oz ripe nectarines, stoned (about three; also you will need one or so for decorating later)
2 egg yolks
6 oz sugar
2 oz butter
1) De-stone the nectarines by cutting all the way around them and twisting gently on each half.  Chop them into small pieces.  Put them in the saucepan with a splash of water, and simmer until disintegrating.  Blend the mixture to a smooth puree, and keep aside in a small bowl or the blender compartment.

2) In a clean saucepan, heat a little water and set another small bowl above it.  Melt the butter in the bowl.  Separate each egg with the whites going into a cup and the yolks into the butter.  Add the sugar to the butter and eggs, and mix well over a gentle heat.  Add the puree.
3) Cook for about half an hour or until the mixture coats the back of the spoon.  If too runny, add another egg yolk.  Strain the mixture through the sieve, forcing it through with the spoon, into a bowl.  Discard any fruity bits which can't go through the sieve, and set the curd in the fridge to cool fully.

Cake
You Will Need: Tin 23cm across, baking paper, scissors, scales, large bowl, wooden spoon, small bowl, strong whisk, spatula, skewer, cooling rack, two plates, breadknife

3 eggs
8oz butter (Kerry Gold)
6oz sugar
8oz self raising flour
4tsp ground ginger
1) Preheat the oven to 180degrees C.  Line and grease the tin.
2) In the large bowl, cream the butter and sugar.  Separate the eggs, with the yolks going into the big bowl and the whites a small one.  Mix in the egg yolks; add the flour and ginger a little at a time.
3) Whisk the eggwhites to soft peaks in the small bowl, and carefully fold them into the cake mix until it is runny enough to use the whisk.  Whisk the mixture together, and pour into the tin.  Smooth down the surface of the mixture, leaving a dent in the middle to encourage a flat cake.
4) Bake approximately 45 minutes, or to clean-skewer.  Remove when done to a cooling rack, and turn out.
5) Leave to cool for a good while.  Turn right-side up and trim off the domed top of the cake.  Eat this later.  Put the remaining cake on a plate; carefully saw through it to make two layers with the  breadknife and shuffle the top half onto the second plate.  Leave to cool completely (I had to set a 15-minute timer and use peer pressure to stop me fiddling with it.)

Candied nectarines

You Will Need: sharp knife, chopping board, small pan, tray, greaseproof paper, small plate, wooden skewers, wooden spoon, kettle
1 1/2 nectarines
4 tablespoons caster sugar
2 tablespoons chunky brown sugar
1) Slice the nectarines.  Line the tray with greaseproof paper.
2) Heat the caster sugar in a clean, dry, small saucepan until melted and golden-brown.  Meanwhile put the chunky-grained brown sugar on the small plate.
3) Coat each slice in toffee, then turn it out first into the chunky sugar, and then onto the tray.  Leave to cool.
4) Boil the kettle and pour into the toffee pan to get the crusted sugar off easily.  Then wash up as normal.

Ganache
You Will Need: chopping board; sharp knife; bowl; small pan; measuring jug, spoon
400g white chocolate
200ml cream
1) Measure out 200ml of cream, and heat it very gently in the pan without boiling it.
2) Chop the white chocolate into very small pieces, and put in a bowl.  Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and stir gently until the ganache is smooth.  If the cream cools too quickly to get rid of all the lumps, heat the ganache over a pan of hot water on the hob, stirring all the time until smooth.

Assembly
You Will Need: Small plastic sandwich bag, scissors, spoon, knife, cake components
1) Gather everything you need.  Spread the sandwich bag securely open, and spoon some of the white chocolate ganache into it.  Squeeze all of the mixture into one corner of the bag, and cut a little corner off with the scissors.  Pipe a wide spiral of ganache all around the lower half of the cake.

2) Fill the gaps around the spiral with the nectarine curd.  Any left over will keep in a jar in the fridge for 3 weeks.
3) Lift the top cake onto the bottom cake.  Spread the remaining ganache over the cake, letting it drip down the sides.  Decorate with the candy slices.  (n.b. version pictured used half as much ganache, but I doubled it in the blog recipe so that your crusts would be covered.)

4) Eat, eat, enjoy!

How To Make Cake And Influence People

Stock photo women networking

Any of my friends networking

Nothing brings people together quite like food.  It's a common theme in recipe books, cookery shows, anthropological documentaries (you know, the ones where they get the Oxford-educated young grey-haired lad in practical khakis to drink blood straight out of the cow and have a Revealing Meaningful Experience Of Tribal Life).  And no food, to my mind, brings women together quite so well as cake.

Eating  tons of cake at a sitting nowadays is so fraught with taboos and so frowned upon by Society (as handed down to us in the glossies) that it is akin to visiting a fetish club.  Both of these activities make for excellent female bonding rituals for exactly this reason.  Much like going on a hunt, or competing in a stupidly dangerous sport, cake-eating and getting naked in public form a common pool of perilous experience which draws people together in a throb of adrenaline and oxycytocin.  We shouldn't,  we think.  It's so dangerous for my waistline/social standing/skeletal integrity.  But it looks so GOOD.  And, 'I'll just have a slither,' we say. 'Ooh, just a slither.'

Once consumed, the remains of a gigantic cake act as a further injunction to its destroyers to keep together.  We can't tell anyone else that we did this.  We'll look greedy and silly.  But we all know how tasty it was, our own reasons for doing it.  So we forgive each other, and get a bit closer... and set a date to do it again...

I could be wrong.  I could be over-egging the pop-psychology pudding (although I don't think it is physically possible to over-egg any pudding).  All the same, when I get the Girls round for a massive baking session on Sunday, I know we'll come out of it closer - not because we spent time together sitting in my kitchen and drinking wine, although that helps.  No, it's the food.