The Impressionist Cake

No not a Rory Bremner cake but a cake in the style of a Monet.  My dear and increasingly eccentric father has a thing about bridges (well before retiring to play golf he was an engineer) he also held an impressionist themed garden party last summer (more impressionist theme foodstuffs from that to follow...see here). So naturally the choice for his 65^th birthday was the Japanese bridge Monet style

I made the bridge from white chocolate (coloured green) and piped onto acetate.  I made it in three bits, two ‘c’ shaped edges and then tapped a piece of acetate into curve and piped a rectangle onto that to make the tread (with me so far?).  When all bits were solid I them glued them together with chocolate and voila a bridge, perched on blue icing.  And I very nearly didn’t have to explain to people what it was.

In the Night Garden

My two year old nephew was reported to be a fan of "in the night garden" and so I settled down to watch it with him in advance of making his birthday cake. For those of you that haven't seen it, it is wildly psychedelic with odd sequences of changing perspectives and a story line involving characters loosing their trousers on a mystery train tour. It must be one the reasons children can't buy mind altering drugs because they clearly don't need them with entertainment like this.

Anyhow based on the characters I made these cupcakes. The colours of the characters are rather muted which was due to me colouring the sugar paste with liquid food colouring. If there was a next time I'd buy ready-coloured icing to give a good bright colour, that way the figures would match the crazy story-lines.

The Best Ever Chocolate Cake Recipe

My Wedding Cake made from this recipe

This is genuinely the best chocolate cake recipe ever. In the search for a suitable chocolate wedding cake recipe I baked a lot of cakes and this is really chocolately, very moist, it freezes well and can be cut into shapes, making it perfect for shaped birthday cakes. I didn't create it, but found it on an america website and now it doesn't seem available. Here it is translated into english for you.


The instructions are long and I haven't worked out yet how strictly you have to stick to the order. I still haven't tried what happens if you just use self-raising flour - if you find out let me know.

The full recipe makes three  9x2inch or three 8x2inch rounds or 42 cupcakes

Cook at 160 degrees C / 325 degrees F

1.      Melt chocolate and let cool to room temp.

2.      Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Then sift in cocoa powder

3.      Add vanilla extract to milk ( I use vanilla caster sugar)

4.      Beat butter until soft then add sugar beat for 2 min until light yellow and fluffy

5.      Add the eggs one at a time beating in between

6.      ‘temper’ the chocolate by adding a teaspoon of the butter/sugar/egg  to the chocolate a teaspoon at a time until about ½ cup has been added and then add all the chocolate to the butter/sugar/ egg mixture.

7.      Whisking at a low speed add the flour in 3 portions alternating with the milk in 2 equal portions. After adding the last bit of flour mix for 3o sec, don’t over mix

8.      Divide the batter into prepared tins (should be ½ full). The recipe says bake for 25-40min but I’ve always found it needs a bit longer. A skewer should come out with a few moist crumbs on it but not batter, a bit of cracking on the top is normal.

9.      Let the cakes sit for 10-15 mins before unmolding it is quite fragile when warm

If you freeze it then when defrosting make sure that you take the wrapping off before you leave it to thaw.

	American	Metric	(2/3rds)
Flour – plain	3 ½ cups	420g	280g
Cocoa	½ up	60g	40g
Baking powder	2 teaspoons	2 teaspoons	1 1/3 teaspoons
Baking soda	½ teaspoon	½ teaspoon	1/3 teaspoon
Salt	1 teaspoons	I teaspoon	2/3 teaspoon
Milk	2 cups	¾ pint	½ pint
Butter	1 ½ cups	336g	224g
Caster Sugar	2 ¾ cups	550g	360g
Eggs	6 large	6 large	4 large
Plain Chocolate	12 oz	12 oz	8 oz
Vanilla extract	1 tablespoon	1 tablespoons	2 teaspoons