Dorie's Dimply Plum Cake with Rosemary

TWD: Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake

This week Dorie taught us how to dress up a simple chocolate loaf cake to turn it into something quite fancy. And we owe it all to Amy of Amy Ruth Bakes as she picked the Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake for this weeks recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie.

This cake was so easy to make. I started by baking the cake and then because I was in a rush I tried to take it out of the tin too early: big mistake!! I accidentally dropped half of it on the floor and unfortunately had to throw it out...

After I finally got over this tragic loss, I continued on to make the cherry syrup by combining the cherry marmalade with some water and cooking it. The cake was then cut into three pieces and each piece got smothered with the cherry syrup before it was topped with another layer of cake.

To frost the cake Dorie had us make a gorgeous chocolate sour cream frosting and I added my own touch by drizzling some miniature chocolate chips on top that I had leftover from last years trip to Canada.

The cake travelled with me to a BBQ with lots of hungry secretaries where it ended up being served up as dessert. They all enjoyed their piece. The cake was quite moist, partly due to the cherry syrup, and very dense: a small piece went a long way! I loved this cake, it reminded me of a Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte I ate years ago in Germany. I will definitely be making this again, in fact I'm thinking of serving it at my birthday party!

Go here to check out the problems and questions that were discussed over at Tuesdays with Dorie. The recipe can be found over at Amy Ruth Bakes and be sure to check out the LYL to see if my fellow TWD-ers loved this cake as much as I did!

P.S. Don't forget to enter one or both of my giveaways:

- to win a surprise foodie package go here to Guess this Food, deadline is Friday 25th, midnight CET.

- to win a $70 CSN gift card go here, deadline is Saturday 26th, midnight CET.

A Hot Pink Butterfly Cake instead of TWD's Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

You probably came here today expecting to find the Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes that were picked by Kristin of I'm Right about Everyhing for Tuesday with Dorie. Sorry, I didn't make them... As some of you know I accidentally lost about 17 pounds since Christmas and in an attempt to keep them off of me I'm limiting myself to one treat per week. Please go here to see how the mini bundt cakes turned out for the TWD-ers who made them. The recipe can be found over at Kristin's blog.

So now on to this weeks treat... It was something my mom and I had been looking forward to since the beginning of November 2009: we had planned to take a Christmas-themed cake decorating workshop at Sweet Things in Utrecht on the 23rd of December 2009. However unfortunately we had a huge snowstorm that day and the workshop was cancelled due to the weather. We were so dissappointed!!

Soon we rescheduled the workshop for the 1st of February 2010. When I woke up that morning I was so excited, but that excitement soon grew to worry when I got in the car and heared the weather report for that day: snow, snow and more snow.... I instantly thought my mom and I were jinxed: this could not be happening: the workshop could not be cancelled twice due to snow!! We hardly ever get snow here in The Netherlands: maybe two or three times per winter, now it seems that it has been snowing everyday since Christmas!!!I contacted Sweet Things as soon as I arrived at work and was very happy to hear that the workshop was still on!

I drove to Utrecht from work in Arnhem and picked up my mom from the trainstation. When we arrived we got to sample a cute cupcake and some coffee or tea as we waited for the other 4 people that would attend the workshop to arrive. Soon the workshop started: the cakelayers and buttercream had already been prepared in advance, so we got to pick a buttercreamflavor (strawberry, chocolate or caramel; both my mom and I picked caramel). We layered together two cakelayers and the buttercream of our choice, then the cake was put in the freezer.

Time to colour the marzipan: I wanted to have a bright, hot pink layer of marzipan to cover my cake with, so I got some gel and kneaded it through the marzipan.

Isn't it that a gorgeous pink colour???



Then we took our cakes out of the freezer and took some regular buttercream to crumbcoat the cake, here's my mom hard at work!



My cake after crumbcoating it. Then the cakes went back into the freezer and we got to pick colours and figures to put on our cakes.



I went with a butterfly-theme, and picked a lighter pink, a burgundy purple, black and white to cut the butterflies out of.

The next step was to roll out our marzipan, put it over the cake, make sure it covered all sides nicely without any air under it and cut the marzipan to size. The roling out part was fun: instead of using flour like I normally do when rolling out a dough, we had to use confectioner's sugar to keep the marzipan from sticking to the counter.

On to the decorating: to remove the white smudges of confectioner's sugar on both the cake and the decorations we used a slightly damp brush and brushed over the cake, then placed the decorations where we wanted them and brushed them with that same brush.
This purple cake is my mom's.

And here's mine: pretty pink, covered with butterflies!

All six of us made very different, but beautiful cakes!
My mom and I had a blast, time flew by and before we knew it it was time to wrap up our cakes and go home. I can't wait to go back to work Thursday and let my colleagues taste this cake!

Mom and I are already planning our second workshop with Sweet Things.
Up next? The Two-Tier workshop!!

TWD: Banana Bundt Cake - Fail!!

Yes, my first TWD-recipe that failed.... But I can't blame the recipe : I fell asleep on the couch while my mini bundt cakes were in the oven and woke up to a smelly kitchen..... :(
This weeks recipe was picked by Mary of The Food Librarian, I can't wait to see what she came up with for her version!!

I'm going to try and see if I can fit in making a new batch tomorrow, but I don't know if I'll be in the mood. I have to take Scott, my Border Collie to the vet. Since June he has lost some weight, he's really skinny now, he's losing lots of hair his fur is thin and and dull. I just wnat to have the vet check him just to be safe....

Go check out if my fellow TWD-bakers tried harder at not burning their cakes here!

P.S. Don't forget to enter my Giveaway or the Gift Exchange:
the deadline for the Blogoversary Giveaway is August 14th,
the deadline for the Gift Exchange is August 30th.

My big 30th Birthday High Tea Party

This was it, Sunday I finally turned 30 and had a wonderfull party outside my apartmentbuilding with lots of my friends and family.

Hours of preparation went into this party searching the Internet for great recipes to make just for this occasion, I even had a give-away back in April to inquire what other bloggers thought I should serve. Some of the suggestions made it and some didn't....

These strawberry cupcakes were made by me earlier this month for Taste & Create, only without the original topping, recipe to be found here. I had run out of butter so I had to come up with my own version, here's what I did:

Creamcheese frosting

200 grams cream cheese at room temperature

2 tablespoons raspberry-flavoured liqueur
1 cup powdered sugar

17 strawberries

Place cream cheese, liqueur in a medium bowl and powdered sugar in a bowl and beat just until blended. Cut thestrawberries in half. Top each cupcake with a dollop of creamcheese frosting and garnish cake with strawberry halves.

The miniature tiramisu cupcakes were such a huge succes at work back in May, that I instantly knew I had to make them again.

Shelby of The Life and Loves of Grumpy's Honeybunch suggested that I make Cucumber Sandwiches. Instead of going for the traditional sandwiches I opted for these cuties, here's what I did:

Open-faced Cucumber Sandwiches

2 packs of party bread (I found these presliced at my supermarket, of course you could use rolls or baguette)

200 grams cream cheese at room temperature

1 clove of garlic, very finely chopped

1 tbsp Rosa Maria Dipper (herb mixture from Oil & Vinegar, also available in U.S.A. and other countries!!)

salt and pepper to taste

1 cucumber

dill, chopped

Mix the cream cheese with the garlic and Rosa Maria Dipper, add salt and pepper to taste. Slice the cucumber into thin slices. Divide the cream cheese mixture over the slices of bread, put one slice of cucumber on each sandwich and sprinkle some dill on top.

Chicken and Salmon wraps, easily made and gone in 60 seconds.

From left to right: Dorie's Cinnamon Squares, Ina's Lemon Cake and Ina's Outreagous Brownies.

These Cranberry Scones were amazing, my mom actually made them after the recipe suggested by Steph from Obsessed with Baking. They were quite easily put together, we left out the orange glaze and served them with orange marmalade, strawberry jam and Clotted Cream from Devonshire. Delicious!!

I also served two fruit salads: one with red fruits and one with green/yellow fruits, but I forgot to take pictures!!!
As the following pictures show we had a lovely afternoon with great weather!

I hope all my birthdays to come will be equally wonderful!!

CEiMB: Thai Style Chicken with Coconut Curry Broth, Barefoot Bloggers: Ina's Lemon Cake

This week is the first time I'm actually writing two recipes in one post. So I'm going to start with CEiMB for today's main course and end with the Barefoot Bloggers for today's dessert....

CEiMB: Thai Style Halibut Coconut Curry Broth

This weeks recipe for Craving Ellie in My Belly was picked by The Not So Skinny Kitchen, she decided on Thai Style Halibut Coconut Curry Broth. I'm not a huge fan of fish and I wanted to empty my freezer for my upcoming vacation, so I decided to use two chicken breasts. I also used red onion instead of shallots 'cause I was totallly out of shallots!

I cooked the chicken for about 20 minutes, just to make sure it was cooked all the way. I halved the recipe, but used the entire two teaspoons of red curry paste. I left one chicken breast whole and cut the other one into small pieces. Boy, this dish sure ticked all my boxes: curry, cilantro, lime and chicken: absolutely delicious!!!

One serving of this lovely dish works out to only 6 WW points!To my humble opinion this was a great pick, check our what my fellow Ellie-istas thought here.

Barefoot Bloggers: Ina's Lemon Cakes

McKenzie of Kenzie's Kitchen got to pick this months Bonus Recipe for Barefoot Bloggers, her pick was Ina's Lemon Cake. Oh my, this tastes amazing: like heaven. I didn't think it would be possible with not even the tiniest bit of chocolate in sight, but it's really good!!

In this recipe Ina combines the perfect pound cake with a lovely tart lemon syrup and a delicious lemon glaze. The cake is nice and moist, sweet but also sour. To sum it up: the perfect summer cake!

The recipe actually makes two cakes, but since I'm planning on doing a lot of baking the next couple of days I halved the recipe and ended up with one perfect lemon cake.

My one lemon cake made 14 slices, that works out to 5 WW Points per slice.

Go check out what the other Barefoot Bloggers thought of Ina's Lemon Cake here!

Flower Pot Cake

A couple of weeks ago one of my coworkers got remarried. As a present to her and her new husband the whole department gave her a 'moneytree': a tree with money tied into it. Both my colleague and her new husband have 2 kids, so together they have 4: three boys and a girl.

I thought it would be great to give a little something to the kids as well and I knew just what to give. A while ago I saw some dirt cakes baked in flowerpots on a couple of blogs and they looked like so much fun!!! I halved the cake recipe to end up with 4 flower pots: three with a yellow flower for the boys and one with a pink flower for the girl. These were a big hit!!

Flower Pot Cakes

4 small flower pots

4 fake flowers

1 1/3 cups ground Oreo cookies

gummi worms

Cake

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted

1 3/4 cup milk

Frosting

100 gram semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

1/3 cup double cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Cut 4 small pieces of baking parchement to cover the small holes in the flower pots. Butter the flower pots.

Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl. In a large mixing bowl beat together the butter and eggs until creamy for about 1-2 minutes. Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined, beat in melted chocolate until well combined and smooth for about 2-3 minutes. Divide the batter evenly into the prepared flower pots.

Bake for 25 minutes, the cake is done when it's well risen, pulls away from the edges and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let the cakes cool completely.

Pop the chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Bring the double cream to a boil. Pour the boiled cream over the chopped chocolate and let sit for a minute. Stir the chocolate until it's completely melted into the cream. Divide evenly over the cakes and start decorating immediately.

Pop a fake flower in the middle of each flower pot. Press the end of the worms into the frosting and cover the post with the ground Oreo cookies.