Free cake please - my Gluten Free Chocolate Cake recipe

I would find it very hard to live a life without cake - it would be a very rare occasion that you would walk into our kitchen and not be able to find a slice of homemade cake or a sweet treat to go with a mid morning or afternoon cuppa (and even then there is probably a secret stash in the freezer!).  But a few of my friends and Brighton Bakery customers aren't able to enjoy regular cakes as most cakes use regular wheat flour, and that's no fun if you're gluten intolerant. 

So I'm particulary sympathetic to those who are are gluten intolerant, especially as a lot of the gluten free treats I've tried on sale in the supermarket are far inferior in taste and texture to their wheat based versions.  I've dallied with a few GF recipes in the past for our market stalls and for various cakes I've made.  An excellent book I use a lot is Harry Eastwood's Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache, where all the recipes can be made with either regular or gluten free flour, and they have the added bonus of being better for you as they use grated vegetables and ground almonds to reduce the fat and sugar content in the cakes. 

So when I was asked to make a gluten free chocolate cake this recipe book was the first one I pulled off the shelf.  The Light Chocolate Cake looked perfect, which uses grated butternut squash in the batter to keep in lovely and moist.    Well how glad am I that I did a trial run of this cake, as it turned out to be a disaster!  The cake took more than twice as long as it should have done to cook and despite the lovely quality ingredients and expensive organic cocoa powder I used it tasted really bland.  Oh dear - having ticked and starred nearly every recipe I've tried in this book, this one got a big fat cross (I've carried on my mum's tradition of marking up her recipes - it's so handy when you try as many things in as many cookery books as I have!). 

I decided that I could do much better by tinkering with my favourite regular chocolate cake recipe instead.  It turned out so well that I thought I would share the recipe with you - next time your gluten intolerant friends are round for tea you can let them eat cake!

Emily's Gluten Free Chocolate Cake Recipe
serves 25 party portions or 10-12 big slices
165g very soft butter
300g golden caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 medium eggs
265g gluten free flour (I use Dove's Farm)
3 level teaspoons gluten free baking powder
1 level teaspoon xanthan gum
1 level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
70g good quality cocoa powder (I like Green & Blacks)
250ml buttermilk
3-4 tablespoons milk

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line an 8" round deep cake tin.
2. In a large bowl, beat together the softened butter, sugar and vanilla with electric beaters or a freestanding mixer until pale and fluffy.
3. Gradually add the eggs to the mixture, one at a time, beating really well after each one (it's important to add them slowly and mix well otherwise the mixture can curdle).
4. Mix together all your dry ingredients really well and pass through a sieve to ensure the baking powder is evenly distributed.
5. Using a big metal spoon, fold about a third of the flour mix into the batter.  Follow this by folding in about a third of the buttermilk, then keep alternating with the dry mix and the buttermilk until it is all incorporated.  Finally add the milk so that you have a happy cake batter consistency (I find that the GF flour absorbs more liquid than regular flour - it's better to have a slightly looser batter than one that's too stiff as it can end up dry).
6. Bake for about 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes - if a skewer dipped in the centre comes out clean then it's done.  Cool in the tin for at least 5 minutes before tipping on to a wire rack to cool completely.
7. Once cool you can cut the cake into layers and fill with your favourite icing - I think the best is a chocolate meringue buttercream but you could use a ganache or any filling you like.   The cake should keep in an airtight container for up to a week.

I got some lovely feedback from the lady I made the cake for - she said the guests at the wedding couldn't tell any difference from a regular cake and the bride was thrilled she could actually eat the cake for once!

In The Pink

This week I was asked to make a wedding cake that was a little bit different from the style of cake I normally make.  The couple had asked for me to incorporate rose flavour and to have fresh fruit on top of a layered sponge cake.  I suggested a vanilla sponge cake, with each layer drizzled with a rose syrup and filled with rose meringue buttercream and fresh raspberries.  Here's how it turned out:

 
To elevate the decoration on top I added some handmade sugar roses and blossoms and some butterflies which I cut from modelling paste and carefully threaded onto wires and left to dry overnight.  I was really pleased with how they looked against the fresh fruit.

  

And pink seems to be a bit of a theme at the moment.  Here's an 18th birthday cake I made for a girl who has a passion for handbags and loves pink.  Her mum suggested the tree design and so I found the perfect sugarpaste cutting tool which makes 6 different handbags and I ordered it as soon as I'd confirmed the booking.  Unfortunately it didn't arrive in time and I had to cut all the shapes by hand.  Just as I finished adding the final handbag the post arrived with the cutter in it - typical!

 

And for some homemade treats, I've been experimenting with pink grapefruit recipes after picking up some lovely pink grapefruits when I saw them on special offer.  With them I made two batches of marmalade - one three fruit marmalade which paired the grapefruit with orange and lemon, and one of pure pink grapefruit which was my favourite - it's got a jewel-like garnet pink colour and a beautiful flavour.  

There was one last grapefruit left in the bowl this morning and I decided to try making a grapefruit curd with some leftover egg yolks I had in the fridge.  I was hoping for a lovely pale pink colour to the curd but the orange of the egg yolks seems to have taken centre stage. 

If you really wanted to you could add a couple of drops of pink food colouring, but the flavour is what really counts and it's lovely and delicate and makes a pleasant change from lemon curd.  Now all I have to do is make some scones to go with it!

Who says Easter is over??

Ever since I was little I've always managed to squirrel away my Easter eggs to keep me in a steady supply of chocolate long after the Easter bunny had disappeared.  Maybe I had taken a cue from my dad who always to prolong the Easter celebrations by eating hot cross buns for breakfast from January to May.  He starts eating mince pies in early November too, I like to think that he's keeping the holiday spirit alive, and that I get to do that too by making celebration cakes every week of the year with the Brighton Bakery.

So with that in mind, I thought I would share with you my slightly-after-the-event recipe for hot cross bun pudding.  It's my take on a bread and butter pudding - I made one for Melissa and me the other night with some leftover buns we had stashed away in the freezer and it was such a treat, a real old school comforting pud.  Yum.

Hot Cross Bun Pudding

3 hot cross buns*
About 2 tablespoons butter
30g dried apricots, roughly chopped (optional)
2 eggs, beaten
2 level tablespoons caster sugar
125ml milk
100 ml single cream
zest of about 1/4 orange
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

*This really works best with stale buns (as they absorb the custard much better) so if they are fresh, split them and leave them out for a couple of hours first. 

Method
1. Preheat your oven to 180C.
2. Split your hot cross buns down the middle and spread each side with butter.  Cut each in half along the diagonal and arrange the triangles pointy-end up in a small-medium pudding dish.  Sprinkle over the apricots.
3. Whisk together the eggs and sugar, then add the milk, cream orange zest and vanilla extract and whisk again until combined.  Pour over the hot cross buns ensuring they are all doused in the custard and leave to absorb for about 10 minutes.  If you like you can add a light dusting of freshly grated nutmeg on the top.
4. Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes until puffed up and golden brown on top.
Serve warm with extra cream.  Mmmm.

This is such an easy pudding you won't regret making it.  If you fancy a chocolate version you could substitute the apricots for chocolate drops or even chopped up leftover Easter eggs.

So from a spot of home baking back to my home baking business, here's a picture of a lovely Springtime and Easter inspired wedding cake I made.

Well, it was definitely Spring-like on the outside, but the inside was a rather Christmassy Chocolate Orange Cake with Chocolate Orange Buttercream.  The bride said that at first she was laughed at for picking that flavour but all her guests agreed that it was a great choice and they all loved eating it.  Well I think she must also have taken a leaf out of my dad's book, and I always salute anyone that takes the unconventional option. 

Congratulations Radka, I hope you and your new husband have a very happy life together.

Until next time, happy baking x

Karaoke Cake - Happy 30th Birthday Jon!

I seem to be riding a wave of 30th birthdays at the moment -  they started to creep up slowly over the last year or so, my own 30th was just six weeks ago, and they still keep coming.  Last weekend was Jon's turn, who is the lovely and supertalented boyfriend of my very good friend Karrie (you can see the cake I made for her 30th here).

Jon chose to celebrate his birthday with a karaoke party so the obvious choice was for me to make him a karaoke themed cake.  I found out from Karrie that they have a very distinctive pink karaoke machine so I  looked up some pictures online and immediately saw it would make a great eyecatching cake.

This was actually quite a straightforward cake to make, but I think its simplicity and boldness makes it a really effective design.  I started off with a square cake in my new favourite flavour - courgette and cinnamon with lemon curd buttercream (and I know I'm tooting my own trumpet here but it's really good!).  I then cut it into a rectangle and covered it with white sugarpaste to make the box.  I made the basic shape for the microphone from marzipan and left it to firm up overnight.  In hindsight I probably should have given the marzipan a couple of days as it was still a little soft but it worked ok.

The next morning I made the dials for the top of the box, by cutting a fat sausage of white sugarpaste into equal slices and then re-shaping a little by hand to make them neat and even like fat extra strong mints:

Easy peasy.  To fix them to the cake I used a short length of dry spaghetti and some edible glue.  The spaghetti probably wasn't 100% neccessary here but as the cake had to make the long trip up to North London on public transport I wanted to make sure that nothing was going to fall off.  A few details with my knife and edible pen and the cake was already starting to take shape:

Next up was the microphone, which was a very fetching tone of pink which needed plenty of colouring paste adding to beef up the colour.  I got to a point where it wouldn't go any more pink so I couldn't quite get it the fluorescent colour of the actual microphone (and to be honest too much colouring might start making you feel fluorescent if you ate too much).  I started by covering the top of the mic, which I did in two halves.  First I painted the top half with edible glue and shaped the pink over the top:

Then I cut round the middle, turned it over and did the same again for the bottom:

Then I added a strip around the middle to cover the join.  I created the textured effect by pressing dimples into the paste with a round ended tool while it was still soft.

I covered the main part of the microphone with the pink sugarpaste and attached it to the top with a piece of dry spaghetti and some more edible glue.  I then rolled a long sausage of black sugarpaste to create the cable and fixed it all together with the same method (who would have thought dry spaghetti would be so useful in cake decorating??)  The cable needed a bit of support while it dried so I propped it up with a small pot to stop it from coming out of the cake.  And with that the cake was finished:

The cake went down really well at the party and it all disappeared within about 10 minutes which is about as big a compliment as I can get.  Happy Birthday Jon, thanks for inviting us to your party - your version of One Week was worth the trip up to London alone :o)

I'll have a pint of cake please

I get a few unusual requests for cakes sometimes, which actually suits me down to the ground as I love flexing my creative muscles to make a cake that is a bit out of the ordinary.  Over the last week I have made two cakes on a tipsy theme - a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and a packet of Marlboro Lights for a 40th birthday cake, and a giant pint of Guinness cake which I made for Melissa to celebrate St Patrick's Day on Saturday.

  

 
As I'm writing this post I'm getting hungry again and might just have to cut myself another slice of the Guinness cake before I tell you how I made the cakes....
 
I've made the vodka bottle cake before, so it was quite handy that I already had the label prepared.  Usually I can find a suitable picture on Google Images but in this case I had to make it up from scratch which took more than 2 1/2 hours that I hadn't budgeted for - oops.  Luckily after some good searching I was able to find the Marlboro images I needed, and with a bit of photoshopping I sent the pictures off to be printed into edible images at a local company in Newhaven.  I got some slightly strange looks when I picked them up and had to assure them it wasn't a cigarette flavoured cake!
 
The cake itself is a vanilla madeira cake made from two 5" round cakes that I filled and cut in half to create the main bottle shape:
  

 
Then it just needed a small amount of shaping with a sharp knife to create the domed top and to make sure the sides were smooth and even.  Once carved, the cake was then covered in a thin layer of buttercream:
 

The neck of the bottle was made from a sausage of marzipan, then I covered the whole thing in grey sugarpaste and trimmed neatly:
 

 
The cigarette packed was made from a rectangle of cake cut to just smaller than the image and covered in white sugarpaste.  I've learned the hard way to always use plenty of icing sugar underneath so that when you come to move it to the board the sugarpaste doesn't stick to the surface.
 

 
The surface of the sugarpaste is dampened with a little water before fixing the edible image (see my Monkey Street Art post for top tips on using edible images):
 

 
The bottle label is added to the cake in the same way and the cigarette packet is secured to the board with a little icing.
 

A few finishing touches and a happy birthday message in royal icing and the cake is finished:
 

I think making this cake gave me the inspiration for the Guinness cake, and I instinctively knew that the recipe I had to use was Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake.  I'm not a huge fan of chocolate cakes, but this one is a little bit different - moist and dark, with a hint of bitterness coming from the Guinness and then lashings of cream cheese icing really makes it a special cake.  Nigella's recipe is for a 9" round cake, which I split between a 5" and a 6" tin to give the basis of the famous pint glass shape.

 
This is quite a damp cake and not really suitable for carving, but I had my heart set on making this cake work and just took shaping the cake very slowly, glueing crumbs back on with a little more icing to fill in any holes.  Usually you can freeze cakes before carving to make it easier, but I didn't want to risk the cream cheese icing in the freezer.   I also stuffed cake crumbs on top of the layers of icing to make as stable a surface as possible for the sugarpaste as the icing isn't as firm or stable as buttercream (so also not really suitable for a carved cake like this!).  Before I started carving I placed strips of greaseproof paper just under the edges of the cake which protect the board from crumbs and smears of icing.  It doesn't look very pretty at this stage, but it's now got just about the right shape:

Then for a thin layer of icing so that the sugarpaste will stick and once that's smooth you can carefully remove the greaseproof paper and you will have a nice clean board underneath:

And then time for the sugarpaste - I like to use Renshaw Chocolate Sugarpaste which has a lovely chocolate flavour.  I covered this up to nearly the top, then covered the top part with white sugarpaste for the head of the pint.  I then cut through both layers of paste and removed the excess to give a nice clean line:

All that was left was to add the logo using some edible gold paint and some superwhite mixed with a dash of water to create the white for the writing.

And it just so happens that this is excellent timing as I am celebrating my blogiversary this week - one year of writing the Brighton Bakery blog.  Thanks to everyone for reading, and I hope you all have a pint of cake to celebrate with me!

Wedding fever

Now that spring is here, there must be the smell of romance in the air as we've been getting lots enquiries for wedding cakes.  It's one of the few occasions where people get the chance to go all out for a fantastic cake, and I love working with couples to help come up with a design that fits in perfectly with their day.
 
A few weeks ago, Melissa and I attended our first wedding fayre in Burgess Hill, which went really well, although we did learn a few good lessons from the day:
1. Don't stay out late the night before - wedding fayres and hangovers are not a good combination;
2. People love free cake, but not as much as you might think - I made two 10" square cakes for tasters, thinking 100 portions each of two flavours would be about right for about 250 brides (plus their fiances, bridesmaids, mothers, kids...).  We brought back over half of each cake and even I can't make my way through that much cake before it goes off.  Luckily we knew a few people that could help us out...
3. Invest in a screen to put up behind the table - we thought these were provided so felt a bit foolish when we had nothing to hang our sign on!
 
Still, you only learn by experience, and we had a great day, generating lots of interest in our cakes.  Here's a photo of yours truly waiting for the crowd of brides to arrive:
  

 
I was really pleased with how the show cakes turned out -  I think they reflect our quirky style and also show a range of designs to appeal to different tastes:

 

And thanks to the success of the day and our recent marketing efforts with Your Sussex Wedding Magazine orders are now starting to fill up for later on in the year, which is great.
 
Meanwhile, here's a cake I delivered back in February, which I was really pleased with.  It was for a lovely Brighton couple, Julia and Chris, who had their wedding at the stunning Newick Park near Lewes.  They chose a chocolate cake with chocolate Italian meringue buttercream filling and with Grand Prix red roses cascading down the side - the scent of the roses was stunning.

Congratulations Julia and Chris, I'm so pleased to have been a part of your day, and thrilled that you loved the cake.

If you like the look of any of these cakes and would like me to make a cake for your upcoming wedding or special event, please email brightonbakery@hotmail.co.uk - I love to create bespoke designs so feel free to send me any ideas and we will come up with a fantastic and unique cake to be the centrepiece for your day.

I'm back... although unfortunately this time it's on the wrong side of 30

Hello again dear readers, sorry for the radio silence over the last couple of weeks!  Thanks to my lovely wife Melissa, I seem to have been able to drag out my big 3-0 birthday celebrations for way longer than I deserve - the highlights of which were an amazing trip of a lifetime to San Francisco and an 80's theme birthday party last Saturday. 
There was much debate on my part, and speculation on the part of others, as to what type of cake I should make for my 30th birthday.  I had some grand plans for a topsy turvy 3 tiered Alice in Wonderland cake, but with only 25 people coming to the party there would have been way too many leftovers for my waistline to handle (and if there is cake in the house, I can't help but eat it).  We also had a few friends coming down to stay with their little ones and I didn't want to spend all my time decorating, so I scaled my ideas back to something simple, but iconic, that would fit in with my 80's party theme.
 
I had the idea of incorporating an 80's computer game, and really wanted to do the NewZealand Story which was my brother's and my favourite game growing up, but I decided that was a bit too obscure and instead went for the classic 80's arcade favourite that everyone would know, Pacman.
 

 
Of course this wasn't just any plain old cake, I wanted to try something a bit different and have a more unusual flavour that maybe people hadn't tried before.  I adapted one of my favourite loaf cake recipes for cinnamon and courgette Cake into an 8" square tin.  Scaling up recipes can be a little tricky, and I was a bit worried how it would turn out as sometimes it doesn't work quite how you expect it to.  Luckily, it baked into a lovely moist cake, although it was a little bit too dome-shaped so I had to trim a lot off the top to make it level.  Next time I'll use less baking powder and either line the outside of the tin (like you would for a Christmas cake) or else I might invest in some of those bake even strips.  Needless to say that the leftover cake trimmings didn't go to waste....
 
I decided to fill the cake with my favourite icing - Italian meringue buttercream laced with lemon curd.  The 45 minutes it takes to make it is SO worth it, I can't get enough of the stuff, and it was the perfect combination with the cinnamon and courgette cake which has lemon zest running through it. 

I covered the cake with a light grey sugarpaste, followed by a very thin square of black sugarpaste and a grey button to make it look like an 80's computer monitor:
 

 
Next I rolled very thin sausages of blue sugarpaste to make the lines.  I know that to be 100% authentic, these should have been double lines, but sometimes it's better to capture the essence of what you are recreating rather than an exact copy.  Well that's my reasoning anyway!
 

 
 Next up was my favourite bit, the monsters!  I cut these freehand and added tiny circles of white sugarpaste for the eyes, finished off with edible black pen for the pupils.  I love how they look in the direction they are moving:

 
Then to finish the cake off, I needed to add the dots.  I had originally planned to use royal icing, but I find it really annoying to make and I had also uncovered some silver dragees in my decorating box and thought they would be perfect.  And very reminiscent of 80's party cakes.
 

 
I have to say that the cake went down really well at the party (although maybe that's due to the amount of homebrew people had consumed...), in any case, the birthday girl was very pleased with it, and I've saved the final piece for my 11 o'clock treat tomorrow.
 

 
I'm also very happy that although I may have turned 30 and should officially have grown up by now, I can still have a big kid's birthday cake :o)