Chocolate Croquembouche

Mini profiteroles are one of my favourite recipes to make as they are really quick and easy and don't involve much effort, besides filling them with cream and dipping them in chocolate. The choux pastries I'm quite used to now and I can whip them up in around 10-20 minutes without creating lots of mess. The good thing about them is that they are also easy to cart around as I took them to a school function once and I didn't have to worry about icing designs smudging and so on, although they did melt in the sun unfortunately. In the past I've tried to change the recipe by dipping them in white chocolate and filling them with raspberry cream, but I wanted to make them look prettier than they have in the past. Croquembouche's have been something I've been mkeaning to try although I still haven't gotten down to it, as you need to have enough people to consume the tower on the day as they don't keep long and are hard to store. The profiterole tower was quite small in comparasion, and I had to do it freehand as I don't have a foam template and it was an in the moment decision. Instead of toffee I stuck the profiteroles together with dark chocolate and white chocolate and put a few flowers from the garden in between.

Choc Custard Melting Moments

I'm not much of a biscuit person really, and at one point I refused to make them! However now I'm more keen on the idea so I tend to make them more often than I used to, and the good thing about them is that they are a lot less effort to make than a cake and definately less cleaning up involved. This is just a normal melting moments recipe with custard flavours added to it to make it more interesting. I also managed to finally make rose shape biscuits which I was quite proud of. The biscuits are sadwiched with chocolate icing, like the traditional biscuits as well.

Coconut, Kiwi and Berry Smoothie Bowl

Just a healthy little treat with some of faves. Filled with secret little health boosters blended in the smoothie to make it even better for you!

Checkerboard Cake with Macarons

The moment I found out about checkerboard cakes I decided I had to try it out, they looked too rad not to. I don't have a checkerboard pan so I had to cut all the layers myself but it didn't matter anyway. I thought the cake looked too plain just with a chocolate ganache covering it, so I stuck to the purple and green colour scheme and produced some macs for cake toppers. The inside is just a vanilla butter cake but to hold the layers together I used a white chocolate ganache which added extra chocolate flavour. What I love about the inside of a cake being so exciting is that people may thing its just an ordinary cake.

Could just be a chocolate cake with macarons

Voila!

 

Chilli Choc Mud Cupcakes with Mocha Lava

 Okay so I didn't exactly think about piping a brown coloured buttercream in that shape until after I took the picture and all the cupcakes were gone so I can't really control the uncanny resemblence because they looked fine in real life. But anyway this was based on the azteca spanish hot chocolate I tried at San Churros, which consists of chocolate and chilli. Back in the day I also got my hands on a limited edition pack of choc chilli Tim Tams which I adored however my family didn't so much, however they did like these babies. You take the first bit and it just tastes like a chocolate mud cake until after you swallow and get the chilli kick. Burn Baby Burn. The mocha lava counteracts the burning of the cake and the buttercream, which also has a hint of chilli. Topped with dried chilli flakes for extra fire and red papercups for effect.

Vegan Apple Tea Cake

So this is probably the healthiest sweet treat I've made as it has 3 ingredients if you don't count the crumble on top. Apple, wholegrain flour and a hint of lemon. I tend to make a lot of apple things as my house tends to always be stocked with them, and they are actually really nice fruit as my younger self would've disagreed, though they do tend get boring after a while. I'm not sure as to why I put a crumble on top, I think it was more for the pictures as it all fell of when you were eating the cake anyway. 

Blue Ombre Sponge

Okay I know my photography isn't up to scatch as i don't find it as exciting as baking cakes although I believe I've definately improved since I first started off where I wouldn't care much for the background and surroundings as I never thought of posting them anywhere as I only really got into baking at the end of last year come this year, where now I bake at least once a week, and my house is almost always stocked with something I've made. This was one of those bad photography moments and if I could go back in time I would have taken a proper picture of this cake taking in the lighting and what not. But back to the cake, it's a blue because that's my favourite colour and it has roses on them because I like roses. I wasn't actually planning to make an ombre cake but the idea came to me as the cake was mixing so I just decided to go with it. It's definately not as dull as it would've been had a just made a plain Victoria Sponge!