Coffee and almond crunch cake

I promised one of my lovely workmates I would bring a cake into work today as two of my friends there had birthdays during the week (in the two days following my youngest son's birthday :) ). Of course I didn't remember until last night, so I hadn't shopped for ingredients. I thought about making pecan and coffee cake, and had all the ingredients except an orange, but I was slow to get going this morning, and then decided even if I went and purchased the requisite orange, the cake might not cool down sufficiently to ice it before leaving. So I instead settled on another coffee cake which I have made once before - this recipe is from Gordon Ramsay's 'Cooking with Friends'. I first made it when the recipe appeared in Australian Delicious magazine when his book was released, and loved the cake so much I bought the book on the strength of this one recipe. It had two advantages for me today - firstly that I had all the ingredients needed on hand, and secondly, that there was no need to ice it as it has a streusel topping, so it wouldn't matter if it was a little warm still at the time I needed to leave. I could just dust it with icing sugar when I got to work just before serving.

The one thing I hadn't considered was that some people don't like really almondy food, and this cake is quite almondy with both almond meal and almond essence. Luckily everyone at work last night were almond fans, and the cake was well received! I'll have to make this again soon...

Streusel topping

• 60g plain flour
• 40g demerara sugar or brown sugar (I used demerara because I think it gives more of a crunch factor)
• 40g butter

Cake batter

• 170g unsalted butter, softened
• 170g caster sugar
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• ½ tsp almond essence
• 100g almond meal
• 60ml espresso or strong coffee, cooled
• 100g self-raising flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
• icing sugar, for serving

Preheat oven to 150C. Line the base and sides of a 20cm springform tin.

Topping: Stir together the flour and sugar. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Put aside.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg a bit at a time, mixing until well combined. (The mixture will probably look curdled at this point. If you want to, stir in a spoonful of the flour which will amalgamate the mixture evenly again.) Stir though the almond essence. Add half of the cooled espresso and stir. Then sift in the flour and baking powder and fold through. Add the remaining espresso.

Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan. Sprinkle over the topping mixture. Bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes, or until the top is golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Cool slightly on a rack before removing from the pan. When completely cool, sift over icing sugar and cut into pieces to serve.

streusel topping

cake batter in pan

streusel topping sprinkled over batter

cooling

Cherry Cheesecake

There were some leftover digestive biscuits and cream from the baked mango cheesecake I made for my 2yo's birthday party, so I decided to take advantage and make another cheesecake, but this time a chilled cheesecake. I adore chilled cheesecakes, and probably even prefer them to baked cheesecakes. A really good baked cheesecake is a lovely thing, rich from the eggs and creamy, but I have eaten some shocking examples that were overcooked, grainy, dense, dry, etc., whereas chilled (uncooked) cheesecakes are always silkily smooth and light. I have grown up on chilled cheesecakes, which is the type my mum always makes. She claims to prefer baked, but I have never known her to make a baked cheesecake.

This recipe is super easy - as chilled cheesecakes generally are - just beating of the ingredients and then leaving them to set. This one requires no gelatine which is always a bonus in my book. I did have one unfortunate experience where I wasn't careful enough to have the gelatine solution and cheesecake mixture close in temperature, and I ended up with streaks of gelatine through the cheesecake - yuck! I have made this recipe before (from Nigella Express), and decided to alter the quantities this time. The original recipe calls for 300g of cream cheese, and makes a fairly low cheesecake. In Australia, Philadelphia cream cheese comes in 250g packets, so this time I altered the quantities to use 500g of cream cheese, so that I could just use 2 packets with no leftovers, and to yield a higher cake. For the original recipe and pics of how it turns out if using 300g of cream cheese, see the recipe here at Nigella's website. The quantities below are my revised quantities.

Cherry Cheesecake

Serves 6-8

• 125g of digestive biscuits
• 75g of soft butter
• 500g cream cheese, softened
• 100g icing sugar, sifted
• 1½ tsp vanilla extract
• 1½ tsp lemon juice (this should have been ¾ tsp, but I accidentally added the amount of lemon juice I meant to add for vanilla extract, and it turned out fine - didn't affect setting of the cheesecake and I like a bit of extra tang with cheesecakes)
• 415ml cream, lightly whipped
• 1 x 284g St Dalfour black cherry conserve

Crush the biscuits in a food processor until they are reduced to crumbs, then add the butter and whiz again until the mixture starts to clump. Press into the base of a 20cm springform tin (see below for how I prepare tins for cheesecake) and a little up the sides to form a ridge. Place in the fridge to chill while you get on with the filling.

Beat together the cream cheese, icing sugar, vanilla extract and lemon juice until smooth. Fold through the lightly whipped cream. Pour / scrape onto the biscuit base and use a spatula to smooth the top. Place in the fridge to set for a minimum of 3 hours, preferably overnight.

When ready to serve, unclip the sides, and spread the cherry conserve over. I didn't use the entire bottle, probably about 2/3. I found the conserve is quite thick when it comes out of the bottle. It help to give it a good stir to loosen it up before spreading it onto the cheesecake.

Preparing the pan

Call me paranoid, but I always line the base of the pan when making cheesecake because I worry otherwise that the base will get stuck in the springform base. It is an option to just unclip the sides and serve the cheesecake still on its base, but that would mean cutting onto the pan's base, and all my pans are nonstick, so I don't want to risk damaging the surface with a knife. In addition to the precaution of lining the base, I also use the paper leftover from the square of baking paper I have cut off from which to cut the circle of the base, to form 'handles' to aid removal of the cheesecake from the base.


This is the cut out circle for the base, and the remaining paper that I will use to make the handles. To see an easy way of cutting a circle to the right size, see this previous blog post.

I tear the leftover paper in half, to make 2 strangely shaped pieces of paper. You could cut off two rectangles, but this is quick, easy, and saves any wastage. I then unclip the sides from the pan's base, and place the paper at right angles to each other.


Replace the sides, and before you clip the sides closed completely, use the pieces of paper that are sticking out to tighten the paper and make it flat across the bottom of the pan. Clip the sides.


Place the circle of paper over the handles. If you want the base circle to shift less to make things easier when you are pressing the biscuit base in, then lightly spray the base and handles and then stick the base circle in. I don't usually bother with spraying first.

Removing the cheesecake from the pan

Once the the cheesecake has chilled and set, slide a spatula around the edge of the pan to help release the sides of the cheesecake from the tin. Carefully unclip the sides of the pan and remove. Now use the handles to help lift one side of the cheesecake up. Slip your hand under the cake, remove the base paper if you can, and place the cake carefully onto a plate.

My little boy turns 2!

My little boy turned 2yo today! My sister-in-law and her partner were visiting from the other side of the country, and were here in time for his birthday, so I decided to have a little family party for him at home.

Here is the menu I settled on... (mostly a repeat of the menu I did in December for visiting friends with a few extras).

Starters

• Turkish bread
• red kidney bean dip
• fried halloumi with lemon juice and pepper
• cucumber and pomegranate salad
• herbed bulgar wheat and nut salad
• olives

Main

• lamb and apricot tagine
• couscous
• steamed green beans
• roasted beetroot (courtesy of my brother)
  
• carrots (again, courtesy of my brother) - they had some yummy dressing on them
• potato bake (courtesy of my mother, who seems to think potato bakes goes with any menu)

Dessert

• cupcakes
  
• butterfly cakes with lemon curd (made by my mum)
• birthday cake (white chocolate mud cake)
• baked mango cheesecake

It may seem a strange menu for a 2yo's birthday, but he was the only little kid there, and he eats most of that stuff anyway :)

Fried halloumi dressed with lemon juice and black pepper - I love this stuff!


Red kidney bean dip - I was debating making hummus, but this is more yummy in my opinion. People could spread it on their Turkish bread. Recipe below.


Herbed bulgar wheat and nut salad - this turned out nicer than last time, so I had to get a new photo. Recipe is here (along with the recipe for cucumber and pomegranate salad).


The carrot and beetroot dishes provided by my brother :)

Red kidney bean dip

This recipe is from Nigella's Feast, which along with the herbed bulgar wheat and nut salad and cucumber and pomegranate salad form part of the 'mezze feast' menu. Nigella says to think of it as a 'terracotta, sweet and grainy version of hummus' - as much as I love hummus, it is quite bland compared to this. I love the spices in it. I've made this dip a few times before, and each time think I will put less garlic in next time, but I always forget and as I have a thing about not writing in books, so I don't make a note of it - argh!).

• 1 large onion
• 3 fat cloves of garlic (I actually think half this amount would be plenty - I keep forgetting to cut the amount down. It does pack a garlicky punch with this quantity!)
• 45 ml of olive oil
• 410g can of red kidney beans, liquid reserved
• 15ml tomato paste
• ½ tsp ground cumin
• ½ ground coriander
• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon (I upped this to ½ tsp)
• juice and zest of 1 lime

Peel the onion and garlic and process them until finely chopped. Heat the oil and cook the onion and garlic until soft and golden. Add the kidney beans plus their 'gloop' (liquid) and stir in the tomato paste and spices and cook for a few minutes.

Zest the lime and reserve in a bowl for later, then juice the lime, adding it to the kidney bean mixture. Take the pan off the heat, and when it has cooled somewhat, process until it forms a bumpy puree. When it is cool, serve in bowls, sprinkled with lime zest.

Dessert is served... From front to back: butterfly cakes with lemon curd made by my mum, cupcakes, white chocolate mudcake (birthday cake - tractor has been removed), and baked mango cheesecake. (You can see the new tagine I used for serving the lamb and apricot tagine in the background - it is made by Emile Henry and the colour is fig).

Cupcakes

These were made using the same Nigella recipe as in this post. It comes from How To Be A Domestic Goddess and it is my favourite cupcake recipe - really simple, tastes beautiful, and will keep well in the fridge for several days if needed.

I cheated with the icing and bought Cake Mate icing - the pressurised stuff in a can that comes with different nozzles, already coloured blue. It just saved worrying about how buttercream would hold up on a hot day, no worries about ending up with aqua not blue icing because of the butter, and coped better with heat than the Betty Crocker icing I sometimes use (which colours well but gets very soft in the heat, and if you want to pipe it, you need to add a lot of icing sugar to the mixture first to get it stiff enough).

Fresh cuppies


Cupcakes iced using CakeMate frosting in a can using the star tip provided



The cupcakes with their 'little star' collars (from Robert Gordon)

Mango cheesecake

I love this recipe. The mango puree gives it a more mousse-like texture, and baking it in a water bath helps to keep the texture silky. It is a Nigella recipe which appeared in Australian Delicious magazine (Dec 2004 / Jan 2005 issue).

Base

• 250g digestive biscuits
• 110g unsalted butter, softened
• 40g soft dark brown sugar

Filling

• 4 small mangoes (to make about 2 cups of puree), plus extra thinly sliced mango flesh to garnish
• 680g full-fat cream cheese
• 1 cup (220g) caster sugar
• 6 eggs
• juice of half a lime

Preheat oven to 170C.

Blitz the bicuits in a food processor until they are almost fine crumbs, then cut the butter into pieces and add with the brown sugar. Process again until the mixture starts to clump together. Press the mixture into the base of a 24cm springform tin (I don't own this size, so I use a 22cm tin). Refrigerate.

Peel and cut the flesh from the mangoes (over the processor bowl to catch the juices), then puree until smooth. Add the cream cheese and blend. Add the caster sugar, and with the motor running, break the eggs one at a time down the tube of the processor. Lastly, add the lime juice and blitz again until smooth.

Wrap the pan in a double-layered piece of extra-wide foil; sit in a roasting pan. Spread the filling over the base and smooth. Pour boiling water to come halfway up the sides of the pan.

Bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes, or until filling is set with only a msall amount of wobble in the centre (it will keep cooking as it cools). Remove from bath and foil and cool on a wire rack. When cool, cover loosely and refrigerate overnight.

Garnish with the extra sliced mango to serve.

The birthday cake
For my little one's 1st birthday, I baked two white chocolate cakes and layered them on top of each other to get extra height (see pics of that cake in this post). This year I just did a single layer, again using the white chocolate mud cake recipe from Exclusively Food. Rather than ice it with buttercream again as I did last year, this year I decided to follow the recipe for white chocolate and sour cream ganache. When I tried to ice the sides with the ganache, I found it a little too translucent for my liking, though it probably would have become more opaque as it set. I wasn't feeling very creative this year, so I'd opted for a toy tractor to decorate the cake, and wanted to create a ploughed field. So as I wanted a brown colour for the top for the soil, I added one square of 70% cocoa Lindt chocolate to the ganache, and iced the top and sides. Unfortunately it took on a slightly marbled appearance where there had already been some white chocolate ganache (not in a good way). I let the chocolate start to set, then ran one edge of my Wilton decorating triangle over most of the surface to get the ploughed look. I then coloured some coconut green for grass and sprinkled that at the side of the field, and when it was completely set, I added the tractor. I also iced my son's name on the cake using Queen white chocolate fudge icing (comes in a tube with a fine nozzle for writing).

Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the candles alight, but I used 'Angel Flames' candles - the flame is the same colour as the candle.

• 
  

Christmas leftovers

As usual, I cooked way more turkey on Christmas Day than we needed, because I love having leftovers. Most of this has been eaten on sandwiches with a generous amount of my homemade cranberry sauce. With the last bit left over, I thought it was best to serve it hot as it was by then a few days old, so I chose the recipe below from Nigella Christmas. 'Twas good.

I changed the quantities of egg, sour cream and stock. I made up 1/4 cup of chicken stock, with the intention of measuring out 30ml, but got distracted and poured the lot in, so ended up adding an extra egg and a bit more sour cream. Those quantities worked quite well though, I thought.

Ed Victor's Turkey Hash
Serves 2 as a main, or 4 with green salad and a baked potato

• 50g flaked almonds, toasted
  
• 30ml olive oil
• 15g butter
  
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 capsicum, deseeded and chopped into pieces approx. 1 x 2cm
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 250g turkey breast, shredded
  
• 75g pitted black olives
• 30ml sour cream (I added about 45ml)
  
• 30ml leftover turkey stock (I used 1/4 cup chicken stock)
  
• 1 egg (I used 2 eggs)
  
• few dashes of Tabasco sauce, or to taste (I omitted this)
  
• 75g flaked Parmesan
• chopped flat-leaf parsley, to garnish (optional)

Heat the butter and in a pan and add the onions and capsicum. Stir over a medium to low heat for about 10 minutes. Stir in the garlic, then stir through the turkey and cook until piping hot. Add the almonds and olives and stir through.

Whisk together the egg, sour cream, and stock. Pour into the pan and give a quick to stir to combine along with the Tobasco sauce. Add the Parmesan and stir until starting to melt. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

Christmas 2009

Our family's Christmas celebrations were again divided into two this year - a simple dinner on Christmas Eve with my mother and grandmother followed by mass, and then lunch on Christmas day with hubby's parents. For the Christmas Eve dinner, my mum had roasted a turkey and brought that over along with bread rolls, and all I did was provide some salads (coleslaw and potato salad) and make some cranberry sauce. We didn't bother with dessert.

I made this cranberry sauce last year and it is very simple and really nice. The recipe is from Nigella's book 'Feast' - 'redder than red cranberry sauce'. Fresh cranberries are not available in Australia, so I use the frozen ones and it turns out fine. The packet I can get (Creative Gourmet brand) is 300g, so here are my amended quantities (the recipe calls for 340g cranberries).

Nigella's redder than red cranberry sauce

• 300g packet frozen cranberries
• 175g caster sugar
• 40ml cherry brandy
• 65ml water

Combine all of the ingredients in a saucepan.

Bring to the boil and let it bubble for about 10-15 minutes, until the berries have burst. Remove a small spoonful and taste to see whether it needs more sugar or some lemon juice to counteract the sweetness if too sweet. Cranberries naturally have lots of pectin so this sauce will set nicely into a jam as it cools, so take it off the heat while still liquidy.

Our Christmas Day lunch menu

• roast turkey
• marsala gravy
• Nigella's redder than red cranberry sauce
• Nigella's perfect roast potatoes
• roast pumpkin
• Jamie's 'carrots in a bag'
• steamed green beans and baby peas
• dinner rolls
• Dessert: provided by my parents-in-law - steamed Christmas pudding, custard and ice cream

On the big day itself, we roasted a turkey buffe (breast on bone piece), and roasted pumpkin and cooked 'carrots in a bag' during the last hour while the turkey was cooking. Then while the turkey was resting under a tent of foil, we cooked Nigella's perfect roast potatoes and reheated the marsala gravy. The green beans and baby peas were cooked in the electric steamer towards the end. The oven was then turned back down slightly to reheat the dinner rolls. This is pretty much identical to our menu from last year, expect that last year I also made bread sauce to go with the turkey.


Jamie's carrots in a bag

This recipe is from Jamie Oliver's 'Ministry of Food'. I love it and make it quite often when we are having a roast dinner. The chopped carrots along with the other ingredients get packaged up into a foil parcel, and then just go into the oven with the roast for the last 50-60 mins of cooking time. If I am making gravy from the roast dripping, then I might put it in 30 minutes before the roast will be ready to come out of the oven, that way the roast can rest under a foil tent before carving, and the carrots can keep cooking while I am making the gravy. If I am just making a normal dinner for us at home, then I will put the parcel of carrots on one side of a baking tray, and do roast potatoes on the other half. For special occasions like Christmas though, we like to do Nigella's perfect roast potatoes, and these need a hot oven so get cooked after the roast and carrots have come out. So on Christmas Day, I roasted pumpkin on the same tray as the carrots.

Jamie's recipe includes chopped bacon, which is nice, but I usually leave it out. This keeps the dish vegetarian if you have any vegetarians to cater for.

• 800g carrots, peeled, trimmed and chopped into large pieces (leave whole if they are small carrots)
• 1 rasher of bacon, finely sliced (optional)
  
• 1 garlic clove, finely sliced
• 2 sprigs of rosemary, leaves picked and finely chopped
  
• zest of half an orange
• 1 tsp marmalade
• 2 knobs of butter
• salt and pepper to season
• juice of whole orange

Take a large piece of foil, about 60cm long, and fold it in half then open it out. Place the carrots on one side of the centre fold. Sprinkle over the bacon (if using), garlic, rosemary and orange zest. Dot the top with the butter and marmalade. Sprinkle over some salt and freshly ground pepper. Lift the sides of the foil to create a bowl and then pour over the orange juice. Fold the other half of the foil over the carrots and seal the edges to create a parcel. Bake for around 50 minutes in a 200C oven. Serve the carrots along with their juices.

Nigella's perfect roast potatoes

My family absolutely adore these roast potatoes. The yummiest roast potatoes are crunchy on the outside and soft like mash on the inside. This recipe achieves both of these qualities. Parboiling the potatoes, draining the water away, and then shaking the pan to rough up the outside of the potatoes is one way of increasing the crunchiness when they are roasted, but this recipe goes one further by coating the potatoes with a small amount of semolina which further enhances the crunch factor.

I deviate from Nigella's recipe though, which uses goose fat as the roasting medium. I have heard this is quite delicious, plus has the advantage of a high smoking point. Goose fat is not readily obtainable here in Aus, and even though it is Christmas, I would find it hard to ignore the saturated fat content. I have experimented with different oils, and have settled on sunflower as it has a high smoking point and is used for frying chips, but I think rice bran oil would probably work as well.

• 2.5kg medium potatoes
• 30ml semolina
• 2 x 320g jars of goose fat or sunflower oil (enough to fill the baking dish to about 1.5cm deep)

1. Peel the potatoes and cut each into 3 pieces at an angle (cutting a triangular shaped piece out of the middle).
2. Put the potatoes into a saucepan of cold salted water, and bring to the boil and cook for 4 minutes. Drain the potatoes, then return them to the empty saucepan. Sprinkle over the semolina, clamp the lid on, and then shake the pan to fuzz up the edges of the potatoes. The potatoes can then be left at this stage for a few hours.
3. Empty the goose fat or oil into a roasting tin and heat in the oven to 250C. Carefully remove the pan of hot fat from the oven, add the potatoes to the pan, and return to the hot oven. Roast for 25 minutes on one side, turn the potatoes over, then roast on the other side for a further 25 minutes.
4. Remove the potatoes from the fat using tongs, letting it drain off, then serve.
   

Salads

These salads were part of the same dinner as the pomegranate ice-cream and chocolate-pistachio cake that we recently had with friends of ours (for the whole menu, see the pomegranate ice-cream post). These recipes are from the 'mezze feast' in Feast by Nigella Lawson. We had these as starters along with Turkish bread and grilled halloumi dressed with lemon juice and black pepper. The 22 month old went nuts for the pomegranate arils, picking them out of his own salad to eat and then poaching everyone else's as well! The cucumber and pomegranate salad is really nice and fresh. The bulgar wheat salad was very popular with everyone; the dressing is delicious.

Cucumber and pomegranate salad

• 4 spring onions
• 1 heaped tbs finely chopped mint
• 1 cucumber
• 1 pomegranate
• 2 tsp lime juice
• Maldon salt

Finely slice the spring onions and place into a bowl with the chopped mint. Peel the cucumer and halve it lengthwise. Quarter each half lengthwise and slice off the seedy edge. Dice crosswise. Add the cucumber to the bowl. Halve the pomegranate and bash out the seeds into the bowl using a wooden spoon. Dress with the lime juice and a spinkle of salt, and toss everything together.

Herbed bulgar wheat and nut salad

If the dried barberries are unavailable, Nigella suggests using dried cherries, chopped a little and added to the salad at the end when you are combining everything. I substituted craisins (dried cranberries).

• 150g bulgar wheat
• 25g dried barberries
• 750ml boiling water
• 15ml pomegranate molasses
• juice of half a lemon
• 45ml olive oil
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp Maldon salt (or 1/4 tsp table salt)
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 50g shelled pistachios
• 50g natural (unblanched) almonds
• 1.5 tbs chopped parsley

Put the bulgar wheat and barberries into a bowl and pour over the boiling water; cover with plastic wrap and leave for 20 minutes. Drain in a sieve, and squeeze out excess water. Put the pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, olive oil, allspice, cumin seeds, salt and cinnamon into a bowl and whisk together to make the dressing. Roughly chop the pistachios and almonds and add them to the drained bulgar wheat along with the dressing and chopped parsley. Fork everything through to combine. Tip into a serving bowl and sprinkle over some extra chopped parsley, if desired.

Chocolate malteser cake

This is the cake I chose to bake for my hubby's birthday. I have made it before a few years ago, and remember thinking it was a little dry/ rubbery, but thought perhaps I had done something wrong and should give it another go. Unfortunately, I still wasn't happy with it. The flavour is great, but it does seem rubbery and not finely textured. On looking at the recipe again, I think it is because the cake doesn't have much fat added to it in the form of butter or oil, which I guess is great from a dietary point of view, but from a pure enjoyment viewpoint, it lets the side down a little. Still, the flavour is so good I am determined to try it again soon, but rework the quantities of ingredients to something closer to a Victoria sponge cake. If you like Maltesers, then you'll love the buttercream icing. Making a normal chocolate sponge cake and icing it with the choc-malt buttercream icing would be a delicious alternative to making the sponges as they are in this recipe.

I actually found it a little better the next day - whether this was because I had had time to get over my disappointment, or whether the texture did indeed improve overnight, I am not quite sure. My hubby and the boys loved it anyway, and it is a very presentable cake.

For the cake:

• 150g soft light brown sugar
• 100g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 175ml milk
• 15g butter (yes, that is correct)
• 30ml Horlicks
• 175g plain flour
• 25g cocoa, sieved
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarb soda

Preheat the oven to 170C. Grease and line two 20cm loose-bottomed sandwich tins.

Whisk the sugars and eggs until light and frothy. Assuming you have a free standing mixer, while this is happening, heat the milk, butter and Horlicks in a saucepan until the butter is melted and the mixture is hot, but not boiling. Beat the Horlicks mixture into the eggs and sugar, then fold through the remaining dry ingredients. Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and bake for around 25 minutes, or until the cakes spring back when lightly pressed. Cool on a rack for 5-10 minutes before turning the cakes out of their tins.

For the icing:

• 250g icing sugar
• 1tsp cocoa
• 45g Horlicks
• 125g soft unsalted butter
• 30ml boiling water
  
• 75g Maltesers

Put the icing suagr, cocoa and Horlicks into a food processor bowl and blitz to remove any lumps (saves sifting - yay!!!). Add the butter and process again. Pour the boiling water into the funnel with the motor running until a smooth buttercream has formed.

When the cakes are cold, ice one cake with half the icing, sandwich the other cake on top and spread with the remaining icing. Decorate with the Maltesers.

Source: Feast, Nigella Lawson.

I had to include this pic as I love my Nigella loose-bottomed sandwich tins! I love that they have the dimensions printed on the side. I wish all cake tins had this.


ready to bake; freshly baked