My favourite cocktail in a cupcake, what could be better than that?!
Cake
Brown Sugar & Pecan Caramel Bundt Cake
Oh my god you guys, Oh. My. God. It’s is Fiesta Friday #20 and I have brought something really special! This brown sugar & pecan caramel pound cake, it is amazing. You NEED to try it. It’s a pound cake but it’s so, so light and moist, and the brown sugar combined with the toffee and caramel is to die for. I will be making this cake again, several times.
Leah’s mum has been asking me to make her this cake for a while now after she saw a photo of one on Facebook and I finally got around to doing it for her. I wish I hadn’t waited so long, so many missed opportunities to enjoy this cake. Luckily for me I made enough batter for two bundt tins so I got to have one too!
There is a lot of sugar in this cake, mostly brown sugar. And it has chopped pecans nestled inside and lots of yummy heath toffee bits! Then it’s topped with a very generous helping of caramel sauce. So much sweet, caramel flavour in this cake it’s like heaven… and definitely not for the health nuts! But everyone deserves a treat every now and then right?
Father’s day is this weekend too, and if this isn’t a perfect father’s day cake I don’t know what is! Who needs hallmark when you have this much caramel to indulge in!
And the best part? It’s so easy to make! You just beat the butter, cream it with the sugar, beat in the eggs and add the dry ingredients and the milk. Stir in your pecans and toffee and bake! Then the caramel sauce is just as easy to make, just heat the condensed milk with sugar, whisk in the butter and vanilla and you’re done. You want to pour on the caramel sauce while it’s still hot as it does harden a little as it cools.
I’m not sure what else I can say about this cake that isn’t just me gushing about how much I love it! So instead I’ll let you guys try it out for yourselves. It is Fiesta Friday after all, this week’s is co-hosted by Fae and Suzanne so make sure you go check them out! And, of course, a big thanks to Angie for bringing us this wonderful party every week!
I recently updated this recipe with new photos and made it gluten free, make sure you check it out here!
[recipe title=”Brown Sugar & Pecan Caramel Pound Cake”]
Ingredients
For the cake:
- 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
- 2 cups light brown sugar, packed
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 5 large eggs, room temperature
- 3 cups plain flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1 bag heath toffee bits (8oz)
- 1 cup pecans, roughly chopped
For the caramel sauce:
- 1 can sweetened condensed milk (14oz)
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Method
- Preheat oven to 160C/325F. Grease your bundt pan(s) well.
- Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl and set aside
- Beat the butter until pale and creamy. Beat in sugars until fluffy.
- Beat in the eggs one at a time until combined.
- Add the flour mixture and milk alternatively, starting and ending with the flour. Beat until just combined.
- Stir in the toffee bits and pecans.
- Spoon batter into pans and bake for approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes, until skewer comes out clean. After 50 minutes of baking, lightly cover with foil to stop it browning too much at top. Leave to cool in pan for 10 minutes then transfer to wire rack.
- While cake is cooling make the caramel sauce. In a medium saucepan, combined condensed milk and brown sugar and bring to the boil over a medium high heat, whisking often. Reduce heat and simmer for 8 minutes, whisking often. Remove from heat and whisk in butter and vanilla. Leave to cool for 5 minutes
- Pour the caramel sauce over the cooled cake, you want to do this while the sauce is still hot as it hardens slightly as it cools.
- Garnish with more pecan halves, serve
Notes:
- Make sure you grease your pan well as this is a very moist cake and it can be a bit of a pain to coax out without breaking! I use this home made pan release and it’s great.
- This cake is great eaten right after you’ve added the sauce, when it’s all warm and gooey (be careful the sauce isn’t too hot, don’t want any burned tongues!)
- This recipe will make one 12 cup bundt pan cake, or almost two 6 cup bundt pan cakes (I had one slightly smaller one)
- Store in an airtight container for 3-5 days
[/recipe]
Devil’s Food Cake
Happy Mother’s Day everybody!
Today is Mother’s Day in the UK and to celebrate I made my mum a yummy devil’s food cake, complete with fresh whipped cream, chocolate ganache and chocolate truffles! If you’re gonna do chocolate, you may as well go all out! This recipe will be for the devil’s food cake, you can pair it with whatever you like of course (white cloud frosting is an excellent pairing)!
I got this recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction, and I can tell you right now I didn’t change a thing! I adore her blog and all of her recipes (her cookbook is on my wish list on amazon too!), you should definitely check her out.
This recipe calls for a cup of strong, hot coffee. Coffee is one of those things that brings out the flavours in chocolate, you add it to your chocolate cake recipe and instantly you’ve intensified your chocolate goodness! This is actually the first time I’ve added coffee to chocolate cake, which is terrible I know, but I have this crazy aversion to coffee I violently hate it. And although I knew in theory that I wouldn’t be able to taste the coffee, I was convinced I would be able to! Of course, I couldn’t taste it at all in this cake and I’m now cursing myself for being such a baby and not doing this sooner. This cake is so rich and fudgy and just delightful, everything a devil’s food cake should be!
I said above that I didn’t change anything in this recipe and there’s good reason for that. Every single ingredient is perfectly matched with what you want this cake to come out like. The oil makes it lovely and moist, butter would only distract from the deep chocolate flavour. You want to use natural unsweetened cocoa for this cake, do not use dutch processed or the bicarb won’t react with the cocoa and you won’t get that gorgeous reddish tint and that distinctive flavour. And if you take away the buttermilk you won’t get such a moist crumb (Sally said to trust her on that and I did!). Then of course without the coffee that chocolate certainly won’t hit you so hard. All that’s left are your sugar, flour and eggs – you of course need the eggs to be room temperate as is true with pretty much any baking. If, like me, you always forget to take your eggs out of the fridge you can bring them to room temperature by letting them sit in warm to hot water for about 5 minutes.
This cake has a nice quick bake on it too, you definitely don’t want to over bake it and take away any of that moistness (count how many times I’ve said “moist” in this post!). Share the batter between two 9″ sandwich tins and bake for about 25 minutes or until your cake tester comes out clean. My cake is actually a 6″ as I made cupcakes out of it too! You can then fill and ice it with whatever you love with chocolate, my pairings definitely made it all that much richer but I think this cake would be great with milk chocolate frosting as Sally had it or even vanilla, yum!
This one’s for you mum, thanks for being the best mum ever! (and she enjoyed it very much!)
[recipe title=”Devil’s Food Cake”]
Ingredients
- 1 and 3/4 cups plain flour
- 1 and 3/4 cups caster sugar
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not dutch processed)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1 tps salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup freshly brewed strong hot coffee
Method
- Preheat oven to 350F/170C. Grease and line two 9″ cake pans
- Sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb and salt and set aside
- Combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla using a stand mixer or hand mixer then gradually add the dry ingredients with the mixer on low. Add the coffee. You will have a very thin, water like batter – don’t worry, it’s supposed to be like that!
- Pour the batter evenly between the tins and bake for approx 25 mins or until your cake tester comes out clean.
- Leave to cool in pan for 5 minutes, then turn out on wire rack and leave to cool completely before filling and frosting
[/recipe]
Happy Birthday to Me!
Yep, today is my birthday. I’m a little upset about creeping closer and closer to the big 3-0, but it’s nothing a little cake can’t fix!
That’s right, I did make my own birthday cupcakes, but that’s okay. Really it’s just an extra treat for me! These are some beautiful fudgy devil’s food cake cupcakes, but the recipe I’ll be sharing with you today is the devilishly sweet frosting on top. It’s called white cloud frosting and it tastes like marshmallow in frosting form! I won’t lie to you, I’m definitely more of a buttercream girl but this is still a yummy one! If you like your sweets teeth achingly sweet, this is definitely the one for you!
The sweetness of the frosting is a great compliment on the deeply chocolatey devil’s food cake too. Don’t worry, I will be posting the cake recipe tomorrow. Two posts in one weekend, I’m going wild I know! But tomorrow is Mother’s Day here in the UK and I will be making my mum a special devil’s food cake with fresh whipped cream for the occasion! So you won’t have to wait long if you want to pair these two beauties together like I did!
This frosting doesn’t contain any butter or icing sugar, it’s sweetened with syrup and of course the meringue like texture comes from whipped egg whites. Most recipes you find online will call for corn syrup, that’s not something we have much of in the UK so I used golden syrup. You could also use maple syrup or liquid glucose. I used liquid glucose in my first batch, which failed miserably because I have a really terrible stand mixer (if anybody wants to donate me a kitchenaid or other decent stand mixer, please feel free!!) I used up all my glucose in the first lot, so the second batch I used golden syrup. I was worried I would lose the bright white colour you want with this frosting, but while it was slightly golden at first it went white once it was finished!
It’s nice and quick to whip up too, especially compared to my fave – swiss meringue buttercream. You beat egg whites until foamy and then slowly add a little caster sugar, beating until soft peaks form. Then you boil the syrup and pour into the egg whites and beat until stiff peaks form. The heat of the syrup will cook the egg whites enough so you don’t have to worry about raw eggs in your frosting! Then just stir in vanilla and you’re done! This recipe makes enough to frost about 12 cupcakes, it doesn’t keep very well so you want to use it all up! Don’t be shy with that frosting!
Today I don’t think I’ll do much else but eat cake and drink some wine. I think I’ll cook up some black bean and kale burgers too! I’m getting boring in my old age, I know!
[recipe title=”White Cloud Frosting”]
Ingredients
- 2 egg whites, at room temperature
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 3/4 cup golden syrup
- 1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
Method
- In a clean, dry bowl beat the egg whites and salt on a high speed until foamy. You’ll want to use a stand mixer if possible, but I used a hand mixer with my second batch and it works just fine (you just might get a bit of arm ache!)
- While the mixer is running, slowly add the sugar. Beat until it forms soft peaks.
- Put the syrup in a small saucepan and bring to the boil over a medium heat. Once its come to boil, remove from heat. While the mixer is running on high, slowly pour the syrup into the egg mixture (be careful, the last thing you want is boiling syrup on your skin – trust me!). Beat the mixture until stiff peaks form, this will take about 5 minutes.
- Add the vanilla and stir to combine.
- Use the frosting right away. Add sprinkles asap as a thin layer will form and your sprinkles won’t stick (and what’s a birthday cake without sprinkles?)
[/recipe]
Have a great day, I’ll see you all tomorrow!
Cadbury Chocolate Fingers Birthday Cake!
Cadbury fingers make the best kind of birthday cake!
A friend asked me to make a cake for her friend’s 40th birthday and after some discussion we decided on a cake covered with cadbury fingers. Naturally I was super excited to make it because I LOVE cadbury fingers. She also asked for it to be elegant, and what’s more elegant than roses am I right?! So with the party’s colour scheme in mind I set about creating this cake! It was actually a lot of fun to make and I’m really pleased with how it turned out
That cake itself is vanilla, filled with fresh whipped cream and strawberry jam. It’s then covered with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream, surrounded by the all important cadbury fingers and decorated with fondant roses and flowers! I am sure you’ve seen similar designs many times before, it’s still one of my favourite ways to decorate a cake though! As soon as I can get my hands on a marble slab somehow, I will definitely make a similar cake with chocolate cigarellos. Cigarellos are no match to cadbury fingers in taste, but they definitely have a more dainty, elegant look!
I also made 60 cupcakes to match, Nasa obviously has a lot more friends than I do! They were all vanilla cake with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream, then decorated to match the colour theme of course. The cupcake toppers were definitely a labour of lover, but they were fun to make and they turned out pretty much how I wanted them too which is always a bonus!
As you may have noticed, this is another post without a recipe attached. I am sorry, I will get up the recipe for the ferrero rocher cupcakes soon, I just wanted to share this cake with you while I don’t have time to write up a recipe or do any baking (“don’t have time” in Michelle language normally translates to “don’t have the energy/am too sick”). I do have plans to bake some chocolate pudding cookies and macarons so maybe I’ll get those up soon too! In the meantime I do hope you enjoy these cakes even if the photos aren’t great!
Have a fab week y’all