Baking in heels

Heart-Shaped Fudgey-Caramel Cake: RECIPE

This recipe is one of my own. I decided to bake this cake for my Fiance seen as how he’s super supportive of my baking madness and he shells out a lot of money for kitchen-goods which keep me very happy. So what better way to thank him than to whip up a cake using some of his favourite flavours. I think there is a lot of science to baking obviously certain ingredients won’t work together and so on. But ideally if you have a good base I think it’s always good to experiment with flavours and you’ll find that probably 7.5 times out of 10 it’ll turn out just right. It really is trial and error. I often feel like George from Roald Dahl’s ‘George’s Marvelous Medicine’ when making my own recipe. There’s usually sugar everywhere, flour all over my face, just a mess. I jot down flavours, textures, smells and most importantly how what I’m doing makes me feel. Anyway, less rambling, more recipe! Here goes:

Ingredients:

4 Large Eggs

190g Butter

150g Golden Caster Sugar

40g Brown Sugar

150ml Milk ( or Elmlea double cream)

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

210g Flour

30g Caramel Syrup

30g Cocoa Powder

Sprinkle of cinnamon

Method:

1. Preheat oven at 170 degrees.

2. Line tins with greaseproof paper (I cut out a heart shape for this mould and rubbed a layer of butter around the edges)

3. Cream together syrup, butter, sugars on a high speed until you have a nice fluffy mixture (see pic 1.) On my notes here it says ‘Smells lovely.’ The mixture should smell like a lovely toffee, caramelly sweetness.

4. Sift in flour, baking powder, cocoa powder and cinnamon.

5. Mix on a low speed adding milk/cream until you get a nice smooth mixture.

6. Spoon mixture into lined tins/mould

7. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean and cake is springy to touch.

8. Leave cake to cool down a little then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Let’s crack on with the buttercream!

Ingredients:

140g Buttercream

240g Icing Sugar

15g Cocoa Powder

4 tsp Caramel Syrup

2 tsp Milk

Method:

1. Beat butter until soft. Add half of the icing sugar and beat until smooth.

2. Add remaining sugar, cocoa and milk and beat together.

3. Add in caramel syrup and beat mixture again.

Once the cake has fully cooled down sandwich and spread a generous amount of the buttercream. Don’t go too close to the edges otherwise the buttercream will spill over the edges and the cake will look untidy.

Place on top layer and sift on some icing sugar for decoration.

Voila!

Heart-Shaped Silicone Bakeware, Ikea: REVIEW

I spotted this silicone bakeware whilst I was shopping for beautiful things in Ikea. I’ve never been fond of silicone stuff as I’ve had so many cakes come out undercooked, broken, overcooked, super-stuck to the pan and everything in between, that I vowed never to use anything silicone ever again! However! I this cake ‘tin’ caught my eye, mostly because of the colour and OBVIOUSLY because of shape. Needless to say that even though the cake came out tastier than ever I nearly ended up with a broken heart. LITERALLY! So although we had us a tasty heart I don’t think I’d use this again and will be sticking to standard TIN-tins.