Meringue Gelato Cake with Chocolate Cream Sauce

With Bank Holiday just gone, and my Mother's birthday falling quite nicely on the Monday - I hosted a celebratory buffet at my house. So, this could only mean a bit of baking needed to occur.
I made the bakewell tart (using the recipe I posted previously) and as an extra, I decided to try my hand at Nigella's Meringue Gelato Cake from Nigella Lawson's Nigellissima Book.
A friend of mine had made this and given me a few pointers - the chocolate sauce makes a LOT - so one can half the recipe at least, and that it was a rather easy but amazing recipe to do.
(when a recipe is described as 'easy' it worries me - so I got to work with trepidation!!!!)

Ingredients:

300ml Double Cream
1 tbsp Coffee Liquer/Rum*
8 Merringue Nests (crumbled)
30g 70% min Dark Chocolate Solids - fine splinters

Sauce:
250ml Double Cream
2 tbsp Coffee Liqueur/Rum
125g 70% min Dark Chocolate Solids - fine splinters
250g Raspberries

Method:

Firstly I lined a 450g Loaf Tin with clingfilm, ensuring that there was plenty hanging over the sides (As recommended).

I poured the cream into my kitchen aid and whipped on a low setting until lightly whipped. Once whipped, I added the fine splinters of dark chocolate, and as I'm not a coffee fan, and I didn't have any rum in, I used amaretto and added 1 tbsp of amaretto to the cream and combine with a wooden spoon. Once mixed, I crumbled in fine crumbs of meringue into the mixture and folded it into the mixture. Once all folded, I started to pack it into the loaf tin - spreading out using a pallette knife to ensure the mixture was level.
I used the 'excess' hanging of clingfilm to cover the tin, and wrapped the entire tin in another coating of clingfilm, and popped it in the freezer over night.

On serving the next day, the sauce has to be done just before serving, so I warmed the cream up on a low heat, stirring all the time, and adding the chocolate - watching the mixture thicken, but ensuring it doesn't boil as it will effect the sauce. I removed from the heat and allowed to cool slightly, but constantly stirring the mixture. At this point the recipe states that you should add the liquer/rum, however I didn't feel it necessary so omitted this.
I removed the gelato cake from the freezer - in which it had expanded and was easy to remove due to the use of the clingfilm.
I garnished with the raspberries, and drizzled the chocolate sauce over the gelato cake - only a light drizzle, allowing the guests to add more if they wanted.

I have to say, this recipe was easy, but you wouldn't have guessed it as it was absolutely amazing, and my guests loved it. Think it could become a dinner party favourite.

Hannah's Christmas Chocolate Bark

This Christmas myself, my mum and sister had decided to give homemade gifts to our family as presents and this was one of them. I was inspired after watching Lorraine Pascale's 'Last Minute Christmas' to try out this chocolate bark.

The way of making this is very simple, but I think that the end product looks quite impressive and there's nothing better than homemade treats: You are simply mixing up different chocolates and adding fruits, nuts or anything else that you can think of.

To start with I made one for my Dad by melting 300g dark chocolate and 100g milk chocolate in separate bowls over hot water (being careful that the bottom of the bowl didn't touch the water). I had lined a baking tray with greaseproof paper and firstly poured the dark chocolate in and then poured the milk chocolate down the middle of the tray. Then I used a skewer to make some swirls and sprinkled with brazil and pistachio nuts.

The tray was then left to cool, and once cool was broken in to pieces and placed in a sealed jar.

The second one I did for James was very similar, but I also used white chocolate.

I couldn't go to all that effort without making one for me to munch, so I used the left over chocolate and added some marshmallows!

Hannah's Tennis Themed Cupcakes

For my sister's boyfriend's 30th birthday, I thought I would make a contribution in the form of cupcakes. Andy plays a lot of tennis and so I therefore had the perfect theme to 'play' on. The cupcake mixture was a simple vanilla recipe, so that the cupcakes weren't overly sweet when combined with the chocolate frosting on top. I piped the frosting on to the cupcakes and then decorated each one with a rice paper style tennis ball, personalised with 'Happy Birthday Andy'.

These went down really well and I think they looked smart and tasted pretty good.

Malteaser Cake

Cakes are great at any time of the year, but no more so than on a birthday. I wanted to make a bit of a showstopper cake for one of my best friends and fellow Queen of Tarts blogger, Katherine. We are both keen watchers of Lorraine Pascale's cookery programmes and we were both drooling at the thought of this cake as soon as we saw it. Not only is it a chocolate cake, but it is covered in Malteasers, what is there not to like? After buying what felt like hundreds of Malteasers I was ready to give it a go ...

The recipe for the cake is pretty easy to follow and I was excited to use my newly returned KMix electric whisk (a Christmas present from last year that I have only just had fixed and returned to me). The mixer made quick work of the ingredients and I poured the mixture in to 2 round sandwich tins and put them in the oven.

Once the cakes had cooked, I left them to cool completely and put them to one side whilst I made the chocolate buttercream frosting. The frosting was basically softened butter, melted chocolate and icing sugar. The most difficult thing about making the frosting was that it only needed 100g of melted chocolate and that the Bourneville bar i had bought was 200g, but it is encouraged that you should try your recipe along the way ...

I used about 1/3 of the frosting to sandwich the 2 cakes together and then used the remaining frosting to cover the cake completely, with the assistance of a palette knife to try and keep it neat. It was important to keep a reasonably thick layer of frosting around the cake to allow the malteasers to stick.

      

Next came the most tricky part of the cake, placing all of the malteasers on. Lorraine suggests going up the side of the cake, over the top and then back down the other side, so this was how I started off. I was tempted at one point to throw the whole cake on the floor in frustration, but I had to admit defeat on getting perfectly straight lines. It does take a lot of patience and time to cover the cake, but I think the end result is worth the effort.

Katherine had organised an afternoon tea for her birthday and so I took the cake along as a surprise bake. Although slightly bashed in the 2 hour car journey, the cake had stayed pretty much in one piece and it had the desired effect of being a slightly over the top, but 'show off' cake!

I would definitely recommend for people to make this and it really does look impressive when finished and tastes just as good.