These are vanilla cupcakes with a lemon curd filling topped with toasted meringue. Sold in a box of 6.
Photos courtesy of Holli.
Now sold.
COST PRICE CAKE: Lemon Meringue Cupcakes
March 7th, 2010Left-Over Lemon Mascarpone Cheesecake
March 7th, 2010
Even though I made a lot of macarons, it doesn’t take much to fill them, so I was left with a significant surplus of lemon curd mascarpone. Too much to just sit and eat it from the bowl. So, again taking my cue from not-so-humble, I decided to use it up in a cheesecake. A few years ago my Grandpa went to a “Man in the Kitchen” cookery course and came back with a lot of big ideas and a lovely lemon cheesecake recipe (as well as some cracking chicken kievs). It’s a baked lemon cheesecake and has seen a lot of outings since it entered our family repertoire. My favourite thing about it is the roughly chopped preserved stem ginger in the base. In all the years I’ve used this recipe I have never once augmented it, which is very unusual for me, but its time has come. I loved the smooth, cool texture of the lemon curd mascarpone and really only wanted the cheesecake as something to spread it on top of so I determined to make a lighter feeling version of Grandpa’s recipe and leave out the lemon juice and zest which would normally be in the filling and build up a bigger crunchy base as my pedestal. It turned out rather well, perhaps – sorry Gramps – better than the original recipe!
Macarons
March 7th, 2010
So I’ve been reading a lot about macarons recently, mostly on the amazing http://notsohumblepie.blogspot.com/ and naturally had to have a go myself. The result isn’t exactly pretty, and the photography leaves a lot to be desired, but they were tasty and I have it on good authority that they tasted like macarons, so, win, I guess. I used not-so-humble’s Italian Macaron with Lemon Mascarpone filling recipe, although I made the filling with equal parts lemon curd and mascarpone and nothing else as my left over lemon curd from the RCPM cake was rather zesty anyway. I did use a drop of yellow food colouring in the meringue, but you can’t tell until you bite into one of the shells (oven temperature too high?). I would like to have another go at these when I get a free afternoon to try and smooth out the flaws. I think perhaps I erred on the side of caution and under-mixed the batter as the ‘nipples’ didn’t disappear into the piped discs. Also, I’m not sure whether it was a consequence of the oven temperature, the batter or the fact that I didn’t insulate my trays with a second baking sheet even though not-so-humble specifically mentioned several times what a difference it makes… but my feet weren’t all that impressive. The one thing I did do right, though, was use Lakeland “magic non-stick liner” instead of greaseproof paper. It really is magic. Not a single macaron stuck and the whole sheet easily slid off the baking tray to allow me to start on the next batch while they cooled. Best of all, you can just wipe it clean and re-use it. So, all in all, it was a fun experiment but the finished product needs a lot of work. See you again soon, macarons.
Apple Mini Kit-Kat
March 4th, 2010
Despite looking exactly like a normal, unassuming kit-kat, this tastes and smells very strongly of apples…or an ester with strong appley characteristics. Perhaps the most baffling kit-kat experience yet!
RCPM Cake
February 23rd, 2010But is it true it’s always happy hour here?
And if it is I’d like to stay a while.
Well as cliche as it may sound,
I’d like to raise another round,
And if your bottle’s empty,
Help yourself to mine,
Thank you for your time,
And here’s to life.
This weekend, Edinburgh was lucky enough to host Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers on their UK tour. In celebration of this momentous occasion I made this cake for my family and friends to enjoy over the weekend. It is a lemon curd cake and unfortunately I was a bit rushed for time so the decoration is not as interesting (or a polished) as I would ideally like. Still, I think it gets the point across. If you’ve never heard of the Peacemakers before (which I suspect is likely to be the case), I thoroughly recommend downloading these tracks for free. I can’t properly express how much I enjoyed the gig on Saturday and I can’t thank the band enough for all their efforts.
COST PRICE CAKE: Chinese New Year Cupcakes
February 14th, 2010
Each flavour is available as a box of 6. As usual, cost price cakes are sold on a first come, first served basis.
Vanilla cupcakes with sweet red bean paste filling and vanilla buttercream
Green tea and pomegranate cupcakes with white chocolate frosting
Benjamin the bashful robot
February 13th, 2010
COST PRICE CAKE – Vanilla Sponge Cake with Raspberry Jam and Buttercream filling in ‘Garden’ design with Marzipan bugs
February 8th, 2010
Just a simple Victoria Sponge cake underneath this icing. The idea was to try out the big, bold ‘garden’ design as a home for my marzipan bugs.
Cost price cakes are sold on a first come, first served basis.
THIS CAKE HAS NOW SOLD
American Kit Kats
February 8th, 2010
I’m quite excited to have some American Kit-Kats to try. Up until now I have only had the Japanese imports to write about but the wonderful Laurence picked these up on his travels for inclusion in this little adventure. They are miniature, individually wrapped fingers. Perhaps every so slightly shorter than the British and Japanese varieties, but taller. In fact, they are probably the same height that British Kit- Kats used to be before the great snack shrinkage spread rapidly across all biscuits and confections. You know, when ‘wagon wheels’ were as big as your head and ‘milky ways’ were brown in the middle.
These Kit-Kats come in an assorted pack of dark chocolate, milk chocolate and ‘creme’. While it’s somewhat more mainstream than the Kit-Kats I have been trying up until now, I find the monochrome look of them rather pleasing and think that the mixture gives the whole bag more of a ‘box of chocolates’ feel than ‘bag of biscuits’. The dark and milk varieties were as you would expect, although with a very slight aftertaste which perhaps exposes a slight tailoring to the American taste-bud which has been ruined (as far as chocolate is concerned) by ‘Hershey’s ‘. ‘Creme’, however, is not, as I first though, another word for white chocolate. It is much simpler than that. It appears to mean a creamy taste that is rather mild and undefined. Not bad, and they make a pretty addition to the trio.