My workmate finished working with us a few weeks back. Normally in the office I’d take a cake in to say goodbye, but we’ve all been working from home thanks to the pandemic. Thankfully, he lives quite local so I dropped a cake to him in person to say goodbye and good luck.
He had told me he liked cheesecake. I don’t like making the crust though so I decided he could have the baked cheesecake layers sandwiched between red velvet cake layers:
a shot of the sliced cake to show the layers inside
I had stacked the layers with a cream cheese frosting, which was also used to ice the outside of the cake.
beginning to stack the cheesecake and cake layers. The cheesecake looked a lot browner on the outsidesstacked cake before it was coated with cream cheese frosting
To finish the cake, I shaved some white chocolate shards to coat the outside, and topped it off with red velvet crumbs:
coated in cream cheese frosting, white chocolate shards, and a red velvet crumb.
The weather so far this month has been awful! High winds, multiple storms, and what feels like non-stop rain. It’s been sad to see people’s homes and businesses impacted yet again by the weather. Sadly, some of my old roller derby friends were impacted by flooding again, so I wanted to do a little something to cheer them up a tiny bit.
I made some PB&J blondies and boxed them up to post to them anonymously (unless they read this blog, in which case – oops!)
I used this recipe that I found online for the blondies. I then added a small bag of chocolate chips to the mix, and topped with white chocolate ganache.
Once they had cooled down, I cut them in to squares and put into cellophane bags. I posted them and thankfully I knew that they had arrived as my friend put a post on Instagram asking who the sender was (I still haven’t owned up).
Next up, I need to think about what to bake & give away in March!
My brother and I were never sporty when we were children. As a teen I started to do more cardio at the gym, and when I was 25 I discovered Roller Derby which I played for 6 years. It was great to feel a part of a team and it really helped build my confidence. As a child I was fatter and never did well at sport. As an adult, I was actually good at roller derby and it was a great feeling.
I imagine my brother was in a similar situation, and he discovered all-inclsuive rugby in recent years. He’s really blossomed in the sport and he’s doing amazing – I am very proud of him!
I like an excuse to bake, and as this month is Pride celebrations all over the place i decided to try make something to celebrate Pride and send them to him (secretly) in the post. I just really hope they have shipped OK…
Rainbow “Pride” Blondies
I used this recipe from All Recipes to make the blondies, and then topped them with a white chocolate ganache. I used a 3:1 chocolate to cream ratio and coloured some of this with gel colouring.
To begin with I covered the full tray of blondies with white chocolate ganache, then I added rainbow stripes which I then feathered:
cooling in the trayfresh out of the tray, just before cutting.Small squares of blondiesYummy dense blondies, with a rainbow ganache topping
I posted these to his work without him knowing, so hoping they get there in one piece. Time will tell!
I’m late to the bandwagon for these, but I finally got around to trying to make some cakesicles this weekend.
I bought the mould a week ago and decided to put chocolate in the moulds, cake mix in there, then seal with chocolate before taking out of the mould. I found that some of the cakesicles were too delicate and cracked as I tried to remove them. Next time I’m going to use the moulds to form the cake, then dip them in chocolate instead.
Still in the moulds
As well as dark chocolate coated salted caramel, I made some white chocolate coated strawberry vanilla ones too.
White chocolate – strawberry & vanilla
For a first attempt I’m quite happy with how they went. I intend to make some to go with my mum’s 60th birthday cake next month, so watch this space for more!
