Cooking On The Range: July 2012

These truffles are rich and aromatic, with the delicate taste of the champagne woven in. I used them as a birthday gift for another friend, and I think she liked them. The recipe makes about 50, so there's plenty to go around, and if you like dark Chocolate, I'd say this is definitely a recipe that you should try out! They look gorgeous with glitter or gold dust, or decorated any way you choose

Ingredients: (Makes about 50)

250g Dark Chocolate (at least 70% Cocoa solids), chopped
200g Milk Chocolate (at least 40% Cocoa solids), chopped
150ml Double Cream
50g Unsalted Butter
100ml Champagne, or other sparkling wine
1 tbsp Brandy
700g Dark Chocolate (at least 70% Cocoa Solids), tempered (See in recipe)
Icing or Confectioners sugar for rolling
Icing sugar, edible glitter or gold dust

Grease an 8" / 20cm square baking tin and line with cling film. Line a separate baking tray with greaseproof paper or baking parchment. Put the 250g of Dark Chocolate and 200g of Milk Chocolate into a heatproof or glass bowl and put to the side. Put the cream and butter in a small saucepan and heat over a medium heat until its just before boiling. Keep gently stirring the mixture so that it doesn't burn. Pour this over the chocolate in the bowl and add the champagne and brandy. Whisk quickly by hand until the mixture is smooth. Keep going as long as possible, but if there are still lumps then remove them, as you wont be able to pipe the mixture later. Then pour this into the cling film tin, and leave until it begins to harden slightly (About 30 minutes). Then fill a piping bag half full with the firmed mix and pipe into even blobs onto the baking tray using a plain nozzle, and put the tray in the fridge for about 60 minutes.
This is the messy bit, and the longer you can leave the truffles in the fridge, the better. They melt fast so handle them as little as possible and using icing sugar, roll the blobs into small balls and put back on the tray. Return the tray to the fridge. This is where you need the tempered chocolate. It's used so that the chocolate looks smooth and glossy. This is how to do it (Use this method only for Dark Chocolate, as White and Milk need different temperatures. You will also need a sugar thermometer for this);

Put about 2 thirds of the chopped Dark Chocolate into a heatproof or glass bowl.
Put the bowl over a double boiler, or heat some water in a saucepan until simmering. Don't get any water into the chocolate, as it will ruin it.
Rest the heatproof bowl on the saucepan and place the sugar thermometer on the side of the bowl. Melt until the chocolate is 30-35'C or 104-113'F. Keep gently mixing with a wooden spoon.
Now take the bowl off the pan, and put on a folded kitchen towel and add the rest of the chocolate. Allow the chocolate to cool down to about 27-28'C or 80-82'F. Keep stirring until nearly all the pieces are melted. It may take up to 30 mins.
Now put back on the pan, and bring the temperature back up to 31-32'C or 88-89'F

Once you have the tempered Chocolate, use two spoons to take each of the refrigerated truffles, and dip them in the mixture. Allow them to drain slightly, and put them back onto the baking tray. I did attempt to put them onto a cooling rack, but they stuck solid so I had to re-dip them a second time. Put them back into the fridge for about an hour. Now you can use your edible glitter or gold dust to coat the truffles, and Enjoy!! Alternatively, you can streak the melted chocolate over the truffles with a fork for an interesting effect
You will have a lot of chocolate left over, but this can be used in any other recipe :)

So cover the tray with this, but it can rip when scraping so be careful

Using a glass bowl is a good idea, as they're easy to look at and you can cool them down quickly

Putting the Butter and cream into the pan

Pouring the cream over the chocolate, it looks awesome as it melts down

Whisk quickly to try and melt down all of the chocolate pieces as fast as possible, and it's quite tempting to try!

If there are still any lumps, then remove them, as it won't allow you to pipe the mixture

Now add the champagne and brandy and being to whisk again

This will make the mixture even more amazing, but it will be very rich, so don't eat too much!

Put the mixture into the prepared tin and spread with a spatula so it is relatively even

Half fill either a pastry bag, or a makeshift bag with the mixture. If you'd like to know how to do this, leave a comment, and I'll make a tutorial

Pipe the mixture onto the prepared baking tray. Some of these didn't go to plan as I hadn't removed all the unmelted pieces, so I eventually just had to use a spoon to get lumps of the mixture, but I'd fix this if I do it again.

Now using lots and lots of icing sugar, dust your hands, and roll the refrigerated blobs into balls. Here, some of them are done

Here are all the rolled truffles before dipping

This is how to Temper the Chocolate

Put the 2/3 of the chocolate in the bowl

Attach the thermometer on the side, it should be about 2" deep in the chocolate. But read the instructions about the thermometer

This is the bowl on top of the saucepan with simmering water. Use a wooden spoon to slowly start mixing the chocolate to help with the heating

It should start to melt relatively quickly, so keep an eye on the temperature so that it doesn't overheat. Check the saucepan to make sure it's not overboiling

Add the rest of the chocolate and mix

It may get a little stiffer, but keep mixing and it will go smooth. Now reheat the chocolate

It should look something like this

Dunk the truffles with spoons or forks to get them covered

Let them drain slightly

Put them back on the tray, as the cooling rack sticks to the truffles

Do the same with the others

As always, ENJOY! :D

This month it was my best friend's Birthday. She was 17!!! Woooooooooooooo! Which meant she would be able to drive. As this was such a special occasion, I decided that I would make her an extra special cake. So here it is. Now before you turn away and say 'How the hell am I supposed to make that?!' Let me tell you, it may have been the most interesting cake I've ever made, but it was also extremely easy. I adapted the recipe, and added some bits and pieces such as the marble purple top layer and buttercream between the layers I simply duplicated a simple recipe for a sponge cake that all goes into one bowl, with no extra adding or fussing. And just to help you out, I'll be there every step of the way ;) HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESS! xxxx

I have to say, this cake did look gorgeous, and the slices were out of this world!!!!

Okay, so now we've established that even I went gaga for this cake, lets find out how to make it. I had to multiply the original recipe by 3 and a half times to get the 7 layers, so these are the TOTAL ingredients that you will need so you know how much to get a so on...

Total Ingredients: (Makes all 7 Layers!!! Don't put all this in one bowl!!)

385g Self-Raising Flour
3 and 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
385g Butter or Margarine, at room temperature
385g Caster Sugar
7 Large eggs
10 drops Vanilla Essence
7 Different Food colourings of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Lavender, Purple. I used Sugarflair Food colours which you can find on ebay. I bought the set of 14 colours for about £25. Or you can buy them separately for about £2.99. These are high qaulity and give really bright effective colours, without affecting the flavor of the cake. They also have squeeze droppers so no need to tip the colour.
450g Pot of Betty Crocker's Vanilla Buttercream Style Icing

Ingredients for Marbled Top;

6-10 drops food colouring of your choice
250g Ready to Roll Icing

Okay, so now we have this out of the way we can move on to the single recipes and how to make the cake! So here is the recipe to make each 2 layers;

110g Self Raising Flour
1sp Baking Powder
110g Butter or Margarine at Room Temperature
110g Cater Sugar
2 Large Eggs
2-3 Drops Vanilla Essence

Right, to the Making!! Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 3 / 170'C / 325'F and grease two 7" Cake tins, which are no less than 2.5cm Deep. Use greaseproof paper or teflon sheets. First of all weigh the mixing bowl that you will use as this will be important for later. Put all the ingredients to make 2 layers into the mixing bowl. Mix with an electric hand-whisk until thoroughly combined. Test the mixture by putting some of the mixture on a wooden spoon and gently tapping it on the side of the bowl. If it doesn't fall off easily, add 1tsp of warm tap water, and whisk again.

Now weigh the mixture in the bowl, and find out how much it weighs by subtracting the bowl's weight. Then divide the mixture evenly between two glass bowls. Then add about 10 drops of Red Food Colouring to one bowl and 10 drops of Orange Food colouring to the next. Don't be afraid to make the mixture very bright, as it will look much more effecting. So be daring with your colouring. In the end I had to use about 10-15 drops of colouring to each mixture and sometimes mix several different reds together to get the best effect, so experiment.

Then put the mixtures into the separate cake tins and level off. Cook in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes or until you can insert a knife and it comes out clean. Loosen the cake from the sides using a palette knife.While the first two cakes are cooking, wash out the bowls and make up the next mixture for the next two layers. Do the same, splitting the mixture up, but this time colouring these two layers Yellow and Green. Leave the coloured mixtures until the first two cake layers have cooked and leave them in the tins for about 30 seconds. Then take them out of the tins by tipping the first one them upside down onto a sheet of greaseproof paper. Then put another square of paper on top of the first layer and put the orange layer upside down on top of that. Clean and grease the cake tins, and cook the Yellow and Green Mixtures.

While these cook for the next 30 minutes, make up the next two layer mixture of the Blue and Lavender Layers (Make this one quite pale so that the final layer clearly has a different colour). As before, layer up the cooked cakes separated by greaseproof paper. While layers 5 and 6 are cooking, half the two layer recipe, and make the final layer mixture. Colour this one Dark Purple. And after layers 5 and 6 have cooked, clean and grease a tin, a cook the final layer. Tip this one on top of the pile of other cakes, still separated by the paper. Okay, now it should look like everything is starting to come together now.... You'll probably notice that the central part of the cake looks much more vibrant than that more browned edge, don't worry, as we'll sort this out at the end ;)

Now flip the whole cake over and remove the top layer, which should be Red and place on the work surface next to the cake, with the paper on the bottom. Now use a knife to spread a layer of Buttercream evenly over the top. Next take the second layer and put in one hand while you peel off the paper then lay the same way up on top of the Red Layer. Carefully place on top to make as flat as possible, choosing the best roatation if one side is thinner than the other. Then put buttercream on top of this and so on until the whole cake has been assembled. It will still be upside down, but now we'll sort out the edges. Your cake might look a bit dull at the moment, so to bring out the gorgeous colours, take a large sharp knife and gently shave around the edges of the cake using a slow sawing motion holding the knife handle above the cake so you're cutting all the layers at the same time to keep it even. Keep going all the way round until you've trimmed off all the brown edges revealing the inside colour. The tiny coloured shavings are rather delicious :D Keep going around until you're happy, but don't be tempted to cut away too much! Now flip the whole thing over and VOILA! You've made your very own rainbow cake.

You can decorate this any way you choose, but as my friend's favorite colour was purple, I decided to put marbled purple icing just on the top

To make the marbled Top;

Take your Icing and Roll it out on a non-stick cake board. However, if you're like me and can't affort a huge one, then buy a thicker sheet of Teflon from Amazon for about £5. It worked just as well and is much easier to store. Just make sure you buy a single sheet and that it's about 450mm by 500mm. Or something similar. Put a light sprinkling of icing sugar on the teflon beforehand, but not after, as it will pale the colour

After rolling out the icing to about 4mm thick, put about 8 drops of food colouring in 2 lines over the surface of the icing. Then fold the icing about 4 times and roll again. After rolling it out, look to see if you'r happy with the result, and if so, Use the cake tin you cooked in to score a circle in the icing then cut away the excess. If not happy, fold and roll again, but be very careful as it's all too easy to mix it too much and make the colour solid. Put a little buttercream on the top layer, just so it'll stick and carefully peel the icing off and place on the cake. You can smooth down using a cake smoother. Well, I think that's it! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and Happy Baking!!

I always crack my eggs into a cup before adding them to the bowl to make sure there aren't any shell pieces in there

It's so simple its crazy, but this recipe is awesome. Just add everything into one bowl and mix!!!!

This batter tastes really awesome, so try not to eat it all beforehand! You need some for the cake!

After weighting the mixture, separate into the bowls. Give or take 10g for how much you can split, because it would be near impossible to get all the mixture out the bowl.

Add the colouring a few drops at a time. That's one of the benefits of the Sugarflair colours as they have dop tops so you don't need to tip the colours and get it all over your hands!! I did however, check the draws for other colourings and still get it all over my hands...

This was my first attempt at colouring for the Red Layer, but it proved much too light, so added some more drops.

This looked much better but I still added a little more. However, when the cake is cooked the colour will be more vibrant

Put the mix into a cake tin. It will appear to be very thin, but just try to make the mix as even as possible.

After the cake layers are cooked let them cool for about 30 seconds. They'll look a little brown on the top and sides

Use a palette knife to loosen the sides so you can easily tip the cake out.

Layer up the cakes with greaeproof paper inbetween. I couldn't find any for the moment, so I used the kitchen roll I had to hand, but when I found the paper, I swapped it later on

Here are the yellow and green. As I said before, make the colours as bright as possible.

Here are the blue and Lavender layers. The Lavender was deliberately pale so the two purples look very different, so add a few drops less colouring to this mix

Here are the yellow and pale green layers. They look similar but after the sides have been shaved off they will look more different

Layer up the cakes one after the other

Here are the two Blue and Lavender mixes ready to be cooked

Continue to layer up the cakes, roughly lining them up.

Now open the tub of vanillery awsomeness, notice the finger swipe, just to taste it of course

Cover the layer with buttercream making sure to get the cream all the way up to the edge

Do the same with the other layers

Start to build up the cake layer by layer

Eventually you should have all the layers. Don't put buttercream on top, as you'll be flipping the cake over

You're cake should look pretty awesome right now. So now we have to tidy the sides up a bit.

Hold the knife like this, and cut away the brown edges but be careful to keep the cake round as not to make it look odd or mishaped.

As usual, nom nom nom nom. Those crumbs are awesome. The cake should look much brighter and more dazzling that before. At this time, I have flipped the cake over.