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Happy Pancake Day Y’all!

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British Style!

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Today is Shrove Tuesday which is a day observed by some Christians, it’s the day before Ash Wednesday when Lent starts. In some places it is celebrated with Mardi Gras, a carnival celebrating the last indulgence before Lent starts. In little old Britain we celebrate it with Pancake Day! Personally, I love pancakes so I think I prefer our tradition. I believe pancake day came about as a way to use up the eggs and milk you have before you start fasting, at least that’s what I was always told.

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Our pancakes are a little different to US pancakes. Ours are more like crepes I guess, I’m not sure what the difference between crepes and pancakes are, I’ve never made crepes (maybe there is no difference, that’s a google for another time) . The traditional way to eat them is with caster sugar and lemon juice, it also happens to be my favourite way to eat them. American pancakes are a different matter, they are best with lots of syrup and bacon yum yum! I love both types equally. Today I had these pancakes, tomorrow we’ll be going out to the original pancake house for some fluffy American pancakes (maybe without the bacon since it’s Ash Wednesday and meat isn’t allowed).

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You can put pretty much whatever you like on pancakes though, my other favourites include Nutella and ice cream! The pancake batter is just flour, eggs, milk, salt and a little butter, which means you can pair them with anything savoury or sweet making them super versatile.Let me know your favourite type of pancakes and how you like to eat them in the comments!

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When I was younger, pancake day was about stuffing yourself with as many pancakes you could possible cram in, until you couldn’t move for hours. Today, I limited myself to just three like an adult! I only made a little batter since it was only me in the apartment! It’s a really simple batter to make, you just mix flour, eggs, milk, salt and a little butter together until smooth and thin and then you’re ready to go. The secret to making a good pancake is getting your pan really hot and then turning it down to a medium heat just before you pour the batter in. This is much easier to achieve when you have a gas stove (which I don’t here) but you can manage it with electric. My other tip would be to do a test pancake first to see how much batter you need (I find about 3 tbsp is good for a 10″ pan), then use a ladle or something similar to pour the batter in the pan as you want it all in the pan at once so it cooks evenly.

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Have a great day everybody. If you observe lent, let me know what you’re giving up in the comments below!

[recipe title=”Pancakes” servings=”6-8 10inch pancakes”]
Ingredients

  • 110g plain flour, sifted
  • pinch of salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 200ml milk
  • 50g unsalted butter

Method

  • Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl from a height so the flour gets a good airing. Make a well in the centre of the flour and break the eggs into it. Whisk the eggs into the flour.
  • Gradually add the milk and continually whisk. Don’t worry about any lumps, they’re disappear as you go. When all the liquid is added, scrape down the sides to make sure its all incorporated.
  • Melt the butter in your pan and add two tablespoons of it to the batter and whisk in. Pour the rest of the melted butter into a bowl and use it to oil your pan, using paper towel to smear it around the pan before each pancake.
  • Now, get the pan really hot and then turn the heat down to medium. Pour the batter into the pan, as soon as the batter hits the pan tip it from side to side to get the base of the pan all covered. It should only take a minute or so to cook, you can lift the edges up with a fish slice to see if its browning. Flip the pancake over (with your fish slice, or with your mad flipping skills if you have them!) the second side will only take a few seconds. Then just slide it out of the pan onto a plate.
  • Stack the pancakes with sheets of parchment paper in between, with the plate on top of a pan of simmering water to keep them warm while you make the rest
  • Serve immediately with the toppings of your choice.
    [/recipe]

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Yummy breakfast: Easy Cinnamon Rolls

Ferrero Rocher Cupcakes

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The chocolatey, hazelnutty goodness of a Ferrero Rocher, all wrapped up into a yummy cupcake

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Chocolate and Hazelnut are a match made in heaven, it’s true, I read it in the bible; “and on the 6th day, God created chocolate and hazelnut in His own image, to spend eternity together. However some old dudes heard Him wrong and wrote it down as Adam and Eve”. That’s how it goes in my bible anyway!

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And that is why Ferrero Rocher’s are so yummy. And Nutella. And all things Chocolate Hazelnut. The only way to make them better is to put it in a cupcake. Like I said, heaven!

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I promised you guys these cupcakes when I shared my Valentine’s Day cakes, sorry it took me so long I’m the worst, I know! The recipe I used was my fave chocolate cake recipe, in this post I’ll give you the recipe for the chocolate hazelnut swiss meringue buttercream and chocolate hazelnut ganache.

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What you wanna do is make up a batch of chocolate cupcakes and let cool.  Make up the ganache, which is double cream, chocolate and Nutella and leave to cool for about 10 minutes, meanwhile cut circles out of the centre of each cupcake, saving the cut outs. Fill the cupcakes with about a teaspoon of the ganache and replace the centres, trimming them where necessary. Make up the swiss meringue buttercream, it takes a while to make but it’s so so worth it. Before you add the Nutella when making it, set about a quarter of it aside to decorate with. There’s a lot of butter in swiss meringue so make sure you’re working in a cool environment when decorating with it. Swirl the Nutella SMBC on top of the cupcakes and drizzle with some of the ganache. Put a swirl of the white vanilla SMBC on top and place half a Ferrero Rocher on top. Yum!

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[recipe title=”Chocolate Hazelnut Ganache”]
Ingredients

  • 115g Nutella (or other chocolate hazelnut butter)
  • 120ml double cream
  • 55g dark, good quality, chocolate, chopped

Method

    • In a medium saucepan, heat cream over medium low heat.
    • Stir in Nutella and stir until smooth and combined
    • Add chocolate and stir until melted
    • Leave to cool

[/recipe]
[recipe title=”Chocolate Hazelnut Swiss Meringue Buttercream”]
Ingredients

  • 5 large egg whites
  • 1.5 cup sugar
  • 2 cups unsalted butter, cut into cubes and softened
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup nutella

Method

  •  Whisk together the egg whites and sugar in your stand mixer bowl and place it over simmering water. Heat to about 160 degrees F (about 7 minutes), whisking occasionally
  • Transfer bowl to stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment and beat on medium high speed until mixture cools, doubles in size and forms stiff peaks. This takes about 10 minutes,
  • Switch to the paddle attachment and add butter one piece at a time, mixing to combine after each addition. The mixture may curdle but keep mixing and it’ll come back together don’t worry.
  • Add salt and vanilla and mix to combine. Set aside quarter of the frosting aside for the vanilla portion (if you want just Nutella SMBC obviously you don’t need to do this)
  • Add Nutella to remaining frosting and beat to combine. Use asap.

[/recipe]

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Favourite Frostings!

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My Favourite Chocolate Cake!

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Happy Valentine’s Day

Cadbury Chocolate Fingers Birthday Cake!

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Cadbury fingers make the best kind of birthday cake!

40th Birthday Cadbury Fingers 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

40th Birthday Cadbury Fingers Cake

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!

40th Birthday Cupcakes

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!

40th Birthday Cupcakes

40th Birthday Cadbury Fingers Cake

40th Birthday Cupcakes

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

Happy Valentine’s Day

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Why have one Valentine’s cake when you can have three!

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I bought some super cute Wilton heart pans, they’re only 4″ across but they make for super adorable little heart cakes which are perfect for valentine’s day. Or, if you prefer, “I love me” day! Plus they were only $10 in Target!

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I made these for my best friend/other half. I have a terrible track record of messing up cakes I make for her (there’s a certain Mondrian birthday cake we do not talk about) but these turned out really great looking and taste just as good!

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All three are the same flavour, I did consider making three different flavours but who has the time for that in one day! They’re chocolate and hazelnut, one of my favourite flavours ever (and also the flavour she chose). Don’t give me access to a jar of nutella and a spoon because the whole thing will be gone in a day! Yum, yum, yummy!

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These are my fave chocolate cake recipe with chocolate hazelnut ganache and chocolate hazelnut swiss meringue buttercream. Seeing as I did all three the same flavour, I got creative with the decorating. The first is the Ferrero Rocher cake, the sides are covered with chocolate hazelnut SMBC and chopped hazelnuts and then topped with chocolate hazelnut ganache. There are also a few ferrero rochers hiding inside the cake too!

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The second is filled with the SMBC and ganache, then covered in SMBC. Then I surrounded it with Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers and topped it with V Day themed M&M’s. I know this design has been done by everybody and their mother, but it’s one of my favourite designs and one I’ll never get tired of (There’s a two tier cake I did last month with chocolate fingers that I’ve not shared with y’all yet and it’s one of my favourites!). Besides, cadbury fingers are like crack, how could you ever get bored of them?!

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The last is my least favourite. It’s filled with the SMBC and ganache and then decorated with the SMBC in kind of roses. The problem I had here was I was using a large open star nozzle to do the roses (I’m currently in Atlanta so don’t have all my decorating supplies to hand) which is doomed to fail considering the cake is only a 4″! Plus it was snowing and icy outside so the heating was nice and high, giving me a very unworkable buttercream, with the amount of butter there is in SMBC working in warm temperatures is never easy!

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I also made some cupcakes to go with them because why not! There’s a lot of cake in this apartment right now (such a horrid problem to have, I know!). I’m gonna do a full post on the cupcakes with the recipe (which I used for all three cakes and the cupcakes) next week. For now here’s a taster:

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I hope you all have a lovely Valentine’s Day! If you’re not celebrating it or hate it, then I hope you have a happy Friday with lots of love and happiness! If you’re single today, please don’t be sad about it, go out and buy yourself something nice because you are fab and you deserve it! And whether or not you’re in a relationship, treat somebody you love to something nice, even if it’s just some nice words or some novelty chocolate, while I agree you should love and appreciate those you care about all year round today is a great day to spoil them a little extra 🙂 Have a great day my lovelies, I’ll see you next week!

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More chocolately goodness on Giraffes Can Bake that you might like:

2014-01-11 23.15.022013-09-11 14.56.02   2013-07-16 15.40.34

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Rolls

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A perfect excuse to have peanut butter and chocolate for breakfast!

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After I made the super easy cinnamon rolls I was itching to make them again, they were so good and so quick to bash out they had to be done again. This time I decided to mix things up and fill them with peanut butter and chocolate instead of cinnamon. Sweet and salty perfection!

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Now, I’m not the biggest fan of chocolate with peanut butter which is blasphemy to some of you I’m sure. I overdosed on peanut butter m&ms once when I was teenager and I just haven’t enjoyed it the same since. So who knows what made me decide to make these but I’m glad I did. They were super yummy without the peanut butter filling being too overwhelming.

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I used the same dough recipe I did on the cinnamon rolls, it’s wonderfully fluffy and rises beautifully with only one proving time needed. What more do you want from a sweet roll dough? I’ll include the recipe for the dough in this post so you don’t have to flip between recipes, I don’t want to delay your sweet roll gratification even a millisecond! Just pop the filled and cut rolls in a warm place (I heat an oven to 150C, turn it off and put the rolls in) for 60 minutes and you’re good to go!

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Look at that rise after just 60 minutes!

They’re filled with a yummy mixture of creamy peanut butter and brown sugar, which is a much more satisfying filling that peanut butter fillings made with icing sugar. Then sprinkled with semi-sweet chocolate chips, you can use milk chocolate if you wish but personally I think peanut butter goes best with a more bittersweet chocolate. Roll it up and cut it into even slices and place in your dish! Once you’ve let them rise (see above), they just need baking for 25 minutes.

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It’s not quite time to gobble them all up yet, you have to glaze them first. I used a simple chocolate glaze which is lovely and satiny, just chocolate, corn syrup (boo, hiss I know but what you gonna do) and butter made in a double boiler. I’ve seen some people use cream cheese frosting for it, which sounds a bit odd to me but whatever floats your boat. Drizzle it on while the rolls are still hot!

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How awesome is this copper double boiler I got for christmas?! Love it!

Now you can dig in and eat as many as you can handle! Feel free to share if you’re feeling nice and if you can’t eat them all at once, just cover them with cling film and stick in the microwave for 30 seconds before eating one!

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[recipe title=”Peanut Butter & Chocolate Rolls” time=”2hr 30mins”]
For the rolls:

  • 345g all-purpose flour
  • 3 tbsp white sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 package instant yeast (1 packet = 7g)
  • 120ml water
  • 60ml milk
  • 40g unsalted butter
  • 1 large egg

For the filling:

  • 150g brown sugar
  • 250g creamy peanut butter
  • 175g semi-sweet chocolate chips

For the glaze:

  • 80g semi-sweet chocolate ships
  • 1/2 tbsp corn syrup
  • 25g unsalted butter

Make the dough

  • Set aside 75g of the flour. Then toss the remaining flour, sugar, salt and yeast together in a big bowl. Set aside
  • Put the water, milk and butter in a bowl and microwave until the butter is melted and mixture is hot, about 45 degrees C. Stir the butter mixture into the flour mixture until combined. Stir in the egg and enough of the reserved flour to make a soft, smooth dough. The dough is ready when it comes away from the side of the bowl and is elastic in consistency.
  • Lightly flour your worktop and knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Place in a lightly greased bowl and leave it to rest for about 10 minutes.
  • Roll the dough into a 14 x 8 inch rectangle

Make the filling and bake

  • Stir together the brown sugar and peanut butter and spread evenly over the dough, going right up to the edges
  • Sprinkle on the chocolate chips
  • Roll up length ways and cut into even slices
  • Place in light greased 9×9 dish, cover loosely with foil and place in a warm, draught free place for 60-90 minutes
  • Remove risen rolls from the oven (if proving in there) and preheat the oven to 190C/375F and bake for 25 minutes or until they have gone a light golden colour

Make the glaze and eat!

  • Put the chocolate, corn syrup and butter in double and stir until melted.
  • Drizzle over the still hot rolls
  • Serve warm and enjoy!

[/recipe]
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