Cake twenty-one - Spring Swirl

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A good cake to cheer you up in the morning or any time you need sometihng sweet to make your day a better day! It might seem one of the so many apple cakes, but it is not! Just try!

100 g sugar

100 g butter

200 g flour

50 g cornflour

2 eggs

75 ml water

1 lemon, grated rind and juice

1/2 packet baking powder

3/4 apples 

Beat butter and sugar with electric mixer until smooth and creamy, then add grated rind and water. Beat in the eggs, adding some flour after each egg. Finally stir in the flours and baking powder. 

Line a 24 cm round cake pan with baking paper. Pour mixture into pan. Peel, core quarter and thinly slice apples. Arrange the sliced apples in circles on the mixture and sprinkle with lemon juice. 

Bake for about 50/60 minutes at 180°.

also visit: 
http://time-for-a-cake.blogspot.it/2013/03/cake-twenty-one.html

Cake twenty - The king of cheesecakes

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Cheesecakes can be divided into baked and chilled. This is a baked cheesecake, it means you have to bake it  and let it cool down before refrigerating. It’s not difficut at all to make but you need to be patient, the waiting time is quite long. The result anyway is a sure success!

Brownie base

125 g butter, chopped

150 g dark chocolate, chopped coarsely

1 egg

150 g sugar

110 g flour

35 g self-raising flour

Combine butter and chocolate in small saucepan, stir over low heat until smooth. Cool. In the meantime beat egg and sugar with electric mixer until creamy, add chocolate mixture and flours. 

Line 20cm square cake pan with baking paper, spread mixture into pan and bake for 10 minutes at 180°.

Topping

250 g cream cheese or mascarpone cheese

75 g sugar

1 egg

125 ml cream

Beat cheese, sugar and egg with electric mixer, add cream. Do not overbeat.. 

Pour topping over brownie base. Bake for about 15 minutes. Cool in oven with door ajar. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

Serve topped with chocolate sauce and fresh raspberries or strawberries, if desired. 


also visit:
http://time-for-a-cake.blogspot.it/2013/02/cake-twenty.html

Cake nineteen - Father Xmas's House - Assembling the house

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Step 4: Assembling the house  
This is in my opinion the most difficult and delicate phase. You need not to hasten to assemble the house all at once and wait the necessary time until the icing has stuck the various parts together. 

Doors and windows
You need some glacé icing (white, green and red), fish glue sheets and sugar decorations to your taste. 
Glacé icing 125 g icing sugarfood colours to your taste2 teaspoons water

Mix sugar and water well, then add some drops of colour until you reach the shade you want.

Decorate doors and window shutters with icing and sugar decorations as shown in photos. Wait until icing is well dry. In the meantime place the walls with holes for the windows upside down onto some parchment paper. Pipe some icing at the corners of the windows, put a fish glue sheet (the window glass)

over the hole and press it very well so that the icing can make the ‘glass’ stick to the wall. When icing is dry, place decorated shutters at each side of windows. Don’t forget to hang your Xmas wreath above the door!

House 
You need a big quantity of royal icing (four egg whites)
Royal icing 
1 egg white 
220 g icing sugar

Beat egg white in a bowl with an electric mixer, add icing sugar, a tablespoon at a time. Beat until icing reaches firm peaks. 

Now take the biggest rectlangle and put it onto a big tray, the tray should be of about 1m x 50/60 cm. Use some icing to draw the perimeter of the house in the middle of the rectangle. Pipe some icing along the side walls of the front wall and one side wall. Place side and front wall onto the corresponding side along the perimeter. Press them together and wait until icing is dry. Then do the same with the back and the other side wall. Now position the inside wall in the middle of the house. Always use some icing as glue. 
Wait until icing is well dry. In the meantime put the door in the right place and build the fence. Now cut the rectangle for the roof in two, and position the two parts onto the hosue walls. Always use enough icing as glue. When icing is dry, stick the 20 bricks onto the front and back walls and the chimney onto the roof. Cover the house with snow.

Park
Make your trees look white with snow. Then put some of them at the back of the house and some in the front. Put reindeer in the front garden. Cover the park with some snow. 

also visit:
http://time-for-a-cake.blogspot.it/2013/01/cake-nineteen.html

Cake nineteen - Father Xmas's House - Making the structure

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Step 3: Making the structure

Honey-based dough, Gingerbread dough, 20 almonds

House

Line an oven tray with paper. Roll out the honey-based dough into long strings which should be about 40 cm long and 1 1/2 cm wide. Place the strings into an oven tray leaving some space in between so that the strings will look like wooden logs in a chalet.

Bake  at 200° for about 20/30 minutes. 

Line two oven trays with paper. Leave some dough aside for the bricks, the doors and the windows. Roll out the rest of the dough into two 1 cm thick rectangles, a smaller one of about 25 x 15 cm which will be used for the roof and a bigger one, the  size of an oven tray, which will be the base of our house. 

Place them onto the oven trays and bake at 200° for about 12/18 minutes.
Use templates to cut out the house walls. Cut an extra front wall which you will use as an inside wall to strengthen the house structure.

Bricks, doors, window shutters, chimey and fence

Roll out some dough to 1/2 cm thick. Firstlly make 20 bricks for the two facades: cut dough into 2 x 1 cm rectangles and put an almond in the middle. Secondly make two doors and six window shutters (see templates for size), then the chimney and fencing. Place them onto an oven tray and bake at 200° for about 12/15 minutes.

Park 

Roll out the gingerbread dough and cut some trees of different sizes and a reindeer. Place them onto an oven tray and bake at 200° for about 12/15 minutes.

also visit:
http://time-for-a-cake.blogspot.it/2013/01/cake-nineteen.html

Cake nineteen - Father Xmas's House

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There are a few things you should consider before making a biscuit house, time, patience and possibly help. You must also change your point of view: you’re not making a cake, you’re building a house! Yes! You’ll be more like an architect in the first phase and then you need the expertize of a bricklayer to make it stand. If you, for example, don’t use the appropriate materials to stick all the parts together your house will  collapse. 

It’s going to be a real project. You’ll have to design the house starting from its size including all details: windows, doors, roof, a chimney, the garden around, with trees and paths; you’ll have to prepare the stencils of each part of your house; you’’ll have to choose the materials, i.e, what kind of biscuit dough to use for the sinlge parts; you’ll have to make and bake the doughs; to cut all the parts, to build your house and surrounding park and finally to decorate it.

It’ll take quite a long time to see it ready but all your efforts will be rewarded! Consider at least four days from project making to decoration.

Step 1: Design 

A very importatnt step| Decide what your house will look like. Prepare the cardboard templates of the house: walls, roof, and door, choose the cookie cutters for the trees and reindeers and decide the choco decorations for doors and windows.

Here are my templates.

Step2: Dough

I usually make two different doughs, one for the house and one for the decorations. when I want my house to look like a wooden mountain chalet. The dough I use for the house is made with a lot of honey which gives the structure the look and strength of real wood while the gingerbread dough is good for the trees and the decorations.

Honey-based dough (for the house)

1 kilo honey

1/4 l water

1,250 g flour

200 g candied orange and citrus 

40 g cinnamon, ginger, muskat nutmeg

30 g baking soda

Combine the honey and water in a saucepan and heat to boiling, stirring continuously. Let cool. Put the flour and the candied fruit on a pastry board, make a hole in the middle, pour the honey mixture and knead well. Add the baking soda and knead until smooth. Cover and let rest at room temparature for one or two days. 

Gingerbread dough (for the decorations)

100 g butter

250 g honey 

250 g sugar

1 tsp ginger

1tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp pepper

1 tsp cocoa powder

500 g flour 

1/2 packet baking powder

one pinch of salt

2 eggs

Combine the butter, honey, sugar, spices and cocoa in a saucepan, and heat to boiling, stirring continuously.. Let cool. Add the flour mixed with the baking powder,, the salt and the eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon at first then pour the mixture onto a floured surface and knead well. Wrap in aluminium foil and let rest overnight. 

also visit: 
http://time-for-a-cake.blogspot.it/2013/01/cake-nineteen.html

Cake eighteen - Gingerbread decorations

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I’m sure you’ll find more than one recipe for gingerbread cookies, but all in all they’re more or less the same: some use golden syrup, others honey or treacle. Most of them must be prepared a day ahead and rest for the night. I’ve also found one recipe though which can be made in one day. Anyway, this is my favourite one and it’s the German recipe for "Lebkuchen" - Gingerbread cookies in German. 

200 g butter

500 g honey

250 sugar 

2 teaspoons spices (ginger, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon)

15 g cocoa powder

1200 g flour 

1 packet baking powder

a pinch of salt

2 eggs

Combine butter, honey, sugar, spices and cocoa powder in a saucepan and heat to boiling. Let cool. Add flour, baking powder

and eggs to the honey mixture. Mix well using a wooden spoon and then turn the dough into a foloured surface and kenad well. Shape the dough into a ball, wrap it tightly in aluminum foil and cover it with a bowl. Let rest at room temperature overnight.

Turn dough onto floured surface. Knead until smooth. Roll the dough into a thin sheet and cut out different shapes with cookie cutters. Place then on parchment paper-lined baking sheets and bake for around 8 min. 

Let cool on the baking sheets. 

Simple icing 

125 g icing sugar

food colours to your taste

 2 teaspoons water

Mix sugar and water well, then add some drops of colour until you reach the shade you want.

Have fun!
Also visit:
http://time-for-a-cake.blogspot.it/2013/01/cake-eighteen.html

Cake seventeen - Christmas Fruit Cake

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This is undoubtedly my favourite cake! It’s good, easy to make and can take any shape you want. I usually make three or more of them for Christmas: a square one decorated as a gift, a star, a Christmas tree and smaller ones in the shape of trees, stars or snow flakes.You can make it one month ahead, you only have to wrap it up well in aluminum foil and then decorate it the day you need it. The longer you keep it wrapped, the better all the ingredients blend together.                         

In my family, we love to have the smaller Fruit Cakes at breakfast during the whole Christmas holidays. 

I also make some smaller ones with margarine as my daughter is intolerant to lactose and they taste delicious anyway!

250 g butter

250 g sugar

5 eggs

juice and rind of 1 lemon

2 cl rhum or vermouth

250 g flour

1/2 teaspoon cinnamom

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

150 g cherry candies

400 g raisins

100 g.  finely cut candied oranges

100 g. finely cut candied cedar

100 g chocolate chips

(if you don’t like candied fruit you can put more chocolate)

Beat butter and sugar in a bowl with electrtic mixer until creamy, and white. Add eggs one at a time and don’t forget some flour after each addition. Beat in rest of flour cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins, cherry candies, candied oranges and cedar and chocolate chips. 

Pour mixture into lightly greased mould. Bake at 180° for 1 hour or more depending on the size of mould. 

Decoration

You can decorate the cake as you like or simply leave it without any decoration, as it looks nice too. It all depends the day you’re making it for. 

For Xmas Day I like it all white (glacé or royal icing- at your choice) or all black (ganache).

Glacé icing

320 g icing sugar

1 teaspoon butter

2 tablespoons hot water, approximately

Sift icing sugar into small heatproof bowl, Stir in butter and enough of the hot water to make it a thick paste. Place bowl over small saucepan of simmering water. Stir until icing is spreadable

Royal icing

240 g icing sugar

1 egg white

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Lightly beat egg white in small bowl with electric mixe, add icing sugar a tablespoon at a time. When icing reaches frim peaks, beat inn juice.

Dark Chocolate Ganache

200 g dark chocolate, chopped coarsely

125 ml cream

Bring cream to the boil in a small saucepan, remove from heat. When bubbles subside, add chocolate. Stir until smooth.

also visit: http://time-for-a-cake.blogspot.it/2012/12/cake-seventeen.html