Death By Chocolate Wedding Cake

It was mine and Mr VST's first wedding anniversary this Sunday, 25th September and it's bringing back lots of happy memories. One of my favourite ways of keeping memories alive is by recreating some of the food we ate at the time. We (and all of our guests) were lucky enough to have my Mum make our wedding cake for us. 

This was no ordinary wedding cake. Being chocoholics we requested a chocolate cake but couldn't have possibly imagined the fantastic cake that she made. It is a death by chocolate layer cake and it's the richest, most delicious chocolate cake I have ever tasted. My mother-in-law was addicted to it, I'm sure. After the wedding there was lots left and she couldn't get enough of it! Neither could Mr VST and I. We took some into each of our work places and then took some on holiday with us, to Iceland! 

I decided to embark on Mission: Secret Wedding Anniversary Cake, not quite realising how much of a mission it would be. 

The cake and various fillings are easy to make but there's a lot of cooling and stages to making it. I thought I was going to have two long evenings where Mr VST was going for a long cycle after work on Monday and Thursday last week. Mr VST, not knowing about this, seemed to have subconsciously tried to scupper my plans by coming home earlier than expected or just plain early (he tells me that as I kept asking him what time he would be home he tried to come home early!). 

I finally got some time on Thursday evening and made the 'sponge', when I say made, I mixed it all up and got it into the oven but Mr VST came back before I could take it out of the oven. I had no choice but to turn the oven off before the cake was due to be cooked, leave it in there and hope for the best. I covered the glass by hanging teatowels over the handle and I hoped that he wouldn't go in the oven, which he didn't. It did mean that the sponge was a little drier than I would have like though.

I got up early on Friday morning to carry out the next step which was to slice the cake horizontally into three, which I did by scoring it around the edge with a very sharp, serrated blade and then cutting through. Then I melted 200g of white chocolate (it was meant to be 280g) and spread it over each of the layers. I knew I'd be home before Mr VST so I covered the cake slices and left them to cool.

When I got home, I mixed the filling, chocolate, butter and brandy, and waited for it to cool as much as I could before reconstructing the cake. I put the bottom layer back into the case, poured in half the filling and repeated with the next layer of cake and filling before putting the top layer on. I then hid it in plain sight, well not quite, but one of the cake tins was out on the top under the fruit bowl and so I hid it in there to cool.

Thankfully on Saturday we were in no hurry. I hadn't wound down at all and woke up early without the assistance of an alarm. I got up at about 7.30am and relying on my knowledge that Mr VST loves a good lie in I decided to risk making the chocolate ganache icing. I needn't have worried as he slept until about 10.30am!

You warm up equal amounts of double cream and dark chocolate, pour the warmed cream onto the chocolate, leave it for five minutes and then gently whisk it to create the icing. While I was waiting I removed the cake from the tin and turned it upside down, having first straightened the top by cutting it and then eating the evidence. I hadn't appreciated the 'sponge' fully before, it kind of gets lost in the cake but it is wonderful, full of sweetness and chocolate and it was moist too.

I managed to ice the cake, I seriously need some icing lessons. I also had to do all the washing up, drying up and putting away so that Mr VST didn't suspect anything. I was so worried about leaving chocolate all over the place. On Thursday when we were eating dinner I managed to get chocolate up my arms, which he pointed out to me, thankfully not realising that it was chocolate! For the same reason I was strangely grateful for the kitchen light having blown. We were waiting for new bulbs to come in the post and they hadn't. It made taking photos difficult though!

The cake was iced - just decorating to do now. Now the material symbol for first wedding anniversaries is paper. I had ordered some rice paper leaves from the internet at the last minute and was desperately hoping that they would arrive before we left. As you can see from the first photo we had chocolate leaves on the original version. I retrieved some of the original gold ribbon that had decorated the wedding cake and pinned that around the edge. I tried cutting out paper shapes but they didn't quite look right so I left it with just the ribbon, put it back in the tin and wrapped the tin in tissue paper. 

As I did this, having taken some 'secret squirrel' time in the bedroom, I called out to Mr VST who informed me that the post had arrived and of course in amongst the envelopes were my rice paper leaves. I unwrapped the tin, took the cake out and arranged the leaves in a '1' shape on the top, pinning them in place as the icing had set and I knew they wouldn't stay in place without help on our journey North.

I managed to safely convey the cake, in the tin, wrapped in tissue paper, wrapped in a plastic bag, in a 'bag for life', wedged behind my chair in the car to North Devon and not only that but it was a surprise! Mr VST didn't suspect a thing. He even asked when I had managed to make it. I told him that I would make it again, every anniversary if I can, but that it won't be a secret next time!

Death by Chocolate Wedding Cake recipe to follow......

Superjack

The weekend plan was for the boys to go mountain biking which they did. Mr VST needed to keep his energy up and so I made some superjack to keep him going. 

 I made plenty in fact so that the girls would have some to eat too.

I used demerara sugar this time as my original recipe suggests. I didn't manage to dissolve it all properly as there were crunchy sugary bits in the flapjack. 

I chopped up some dark chocolate and mixed it in at the last minute before popping it all in the oven.

Great energy food this and very tasty indeed.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares

Before you read the rest of this blog I must warn you that these are dangerous in two ways. They are extremely easy to make and extremely easy to eat!

I got the recipe from The Kitchenarian blog. It was the Summer Solstice post and I liked the look of them at first I thought that they were a bit like the peanut butter fudge I made at Christmas and I guess they are. I didn't use the pretzels like the original recipe suggests and used dark instead of milk chocolate too. 

I don't think that there are many uses for smooth peanut butter but this is definitely one of them. Although I was tempted to use the crunchy version but the peanuts in the peanut butter fudge went soft and weren't very nice so I stuck with the recipe. 

Melting smooth peanut butter, butter and soft brown sugar together....

Mixing in the icing sugar and vanilla essence to form a dough

Smooth out into a pan, harder than it looks!

...and pour melted chocolate over the top.

The hardest part is waiting for the chocolate to set!

I used half the ingredients and made 16 small squares but really that's all you need. They are incredibly sweet.

So to make 16 small squares here are the ingredients in metric:

55g butter

45g light brown sugar

260g smooth peanut butter

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

180g icing sugar

100g dark chocolate (the original recipe says 170g)

Fudge-tastic!

So the only Christmas goodies that I have made but not yet blogged about are the batches of white chocolate and Bailey's fudge and dark chocolate, orange and Morgan's Spiced Rum fudge.

I may have mentioned before that I discovered the white chocolate fudge last Christmas and it went down a treat! I then made it for my wedding guests as favours. Me, my Mum and little sister made 110 bags of it (about 5 batches) over the bank holiday weekend.

I decided to make some more this year as Christmas gifts.

I thought that I'd experiment and make some different flavours so I used dark chocolate and Morgan's spiced rum and orange juice. It went down well but it wasn't as creamy as the white chocolate and Bailey's.

Delia's dark chocolate and orange biscuits

Last weekend I started making and baking for Christmas. I decided to make some goody bags for my Grandparents and Aunties and Uncles. Into the goody bag went a combination of peanut butter fudge, dark chocolate and Morgan's spiced fudge, Bailey's and white chocolate fudge and Delia's dark chocolate and orange biscuits.

I'm sure I've mentioned it before but I'm more of a Jamie than a Delia in the kitchen. The biscuits are one of Delia's recipes from her Christmas book I believe. I made them about 5 years ago one Christmas with my little sister and they were the essence of Christmas in a biscuit! They are a bit fiddly though. The orange flavour comes from the grated rind of two oranges and the juice of about one of them. You cream together fat (in my vegetarian case cookeen, vegetable fat, butter, and caster sugar and then add an egg and flour you then mix in the orange rind and dark chocolate chopped into little pieces and mix in the freshly squeezed orange juice to make it all stick together.

They seemed to make forever to make (it probably didn't help that I was making a million other things at the same time!) and my oranges weren't very flavoursome, on top of that I forgot to put the chocolate in so I melted it and dipped the biscuits in it instead. The end result wasn't as good as I remember to be honest.