Once more unto the breach!

Sorry sorry sorry!

I keep dropping off the blogging world, but... this time I have a good reason if nothing else! 

See, I am finally baking again - my biggest cake ever (it serves 24), and my first go at... stacked cakes OMG!

Nedless to say, I'm frantic, tired and overworked, and dead scared about everything that could (and probably will) go wrong. 

And I'm feeling more elated than I've been in a long time. 

I'm allowing you guys a sneak peek at my WIP...

(Please ignore the clutter...)

See? It's going to be for a Spiderman-themed birthday party, so there will be ol' Spidey climbing down the skyscraper once it's finished.

And I'm going to put silhouette buildings all around the bottom tier, to make it look a bit more like New York. 

BTW this reminds me that I haven't shared my trusty "sturdy chocolate cake recipe" yet.

I'm not even sure I have a right to call it mine, honestly, as it's 99% an average mudcake, with a few very minor tweaks I introduced to make it extra durable. 

It's an awesome base IMHO, for children especially - it's rich and fudgey and extremely chocolatey, so that a single slice will satisfy even the sweetest tooth in the world.

Plus it's dense and sturdy (for carving or stacking), and it keeps for up to three weeks in your refrigerator. For real!

I'll have to convert the recipe in cup measurements before I can post it, so please stay tuned.

For the finished cake too, of course! 

(...Er. You do want to see it, don't you?)

A very Kirby birthday!

It is that time of the year again.  

Time to provide a nerdy birthday cake for my sweetie's kid, that is!

I knew right from the start, alas, that this time around I wouldn't have the time to replicate the feat that was last year's Super Mario Bros. cake.  

The theme was still going to be Nintendo videogames though, since the birthday boy's such a huge fan - thus, Kirby it was! 

Unlike Mario and Luigi, with whom I had a passing acquaintance if nothing else, I knew absolutely nothing about Kirby and his friends. 

All I had to work with was this pic that my sweetie kindly provided...

The Kirby games and all related characters belong to Nintendo and HAL Laboratory

I fully meant to reproduce the four of them - Kirby, King Dedede, Meta Knight and Waddle Dee - hanging up to the star, just like this.
And that was when... dun-da-da-DUN... DISASTER STROKE! 

Between me and you: that's not really true.
The ugly truth is, I've been a complete idiot and didn't check my fondant stash beforehand, so I only discovered at the very last moment that... It. Had. Gone. Bad. 

Luckily I had a bag of marshmallows in my pantry, so I quickly whipped up a batch of homemade fondant. 
The good thing was, I had a chance to flavour it to my heart's content and make it way tastier than storebought sugarpaste. But it was far too soft to model complex shapes out of it, plus - since my marshmallows were of the pink-and-white persuasion - getting a pure white base out of them was out of question, which meant I could only make characters that were pink-hued to begin with...

Even their simple, spherical bodies ended up all squished. 
Blah.

While not my better job by far, this cake tasted delicious if nothing else, as it was based on Alice Medrich's Queen of Sheba - a European-style cake, and possibly the closest you could get to a Sachertorte without receiving worryingly official-looking correspondence by some highly respected legal practice in Wien. 

Ground almonds. Egg Whites. Chocolate-based batter. So NOT a Sachertorte...

The recipe's from her Craftsy class, Decadent Chocolate Cakes. 

If you are a beginner and interested in baking with chocolate, you should definitely buy it! She gives tons of useful tips on how to work with this "difficult" yet yummy ingredient!

I was in such a hurry in the end that I didn't even snap a pic of the finished cake... but my hun took a few during the party! 
Awww... Ain't he such a sweet and considerate guy?  

(The star should have been standing, though. Sigh...)

Imma makin' Super Mario Bros. COOKIES!

Would you believe it? It's that time of the year again! Time to get into crazy baking mode, that is! 

Last year I made a Super Mario Bros. cake for the 8th birthday of my sweetie's child. This time around I'm settling for a less ambitious cake, since unfortunately I lack both the time and the storage space to replicate that feat - but, I can do COOKIES!

Many people see cookies as the easiest form of baking. I disagree with that. 

Personally I find cakes to be much less troublesome; I can't think of more than two instances where I seriously messed up a cake (and both times it was because of a notable mistake on my part), whereas I've had countless cookie misfires, even while following recipes to the letter. 

Meh. 

Not this time, though!

Of course, it helped that the recipe is from that veritable cookie lover's Bible that is Decorating Cookies: 60+ Designs for Holidays, Celebrations & Everyday, by Bridget Edwards.

Same of you might remember me raving about her (and her blog, Bake at 350) back when planning my Susan gingerbread cookies - which I made for a party we never had. Drat! - only this time I picked a chocolate dough. Kids adore chocolate cookies and that's a fact!

(Plus, this recipe has Nutella in it. Your argument is invalid.) 

Unlike my previous gingerbread experiment, these cookies baked flat and even and didn't spread at all. OMG I'm so happy about that!
That might be because I've been using cookie cutters, as opposed to cutting manually around a template - which allowed me to work quickly, manhandling the dough as little as possible. 
Also, I allowed the raw cookies a fair 10 minutes in the freezer before they went into the oven. And finally, I splurged on a few extra cookie sheets, so I didn't have to keep using the same one by refrigerating it with water between batches. I really believe it makes a world of difference!

Oh, and speaking about cutters: I got mine from WarpZone, an Etsy shop I am head-over-heels in love with. It's a nerdy baker's paradise!
They 3D-print cutters in every geeky flavour you can dream of - from anime to Game of Thrones, from Dr Who to My Little Pony... You name it, they have it!
And if they don't, they can make one from your own drawing. How awesome is that? 

I got the whole Super Mario Bros. range from them, knowing how huge a fan my hun's kiddo is... but I didn't want to mix up dozens of different icing shades all at once, so I stuck with three subjects: our two hero plumbers, Paper Mario-style... 

...plus the iconic 1-up mushroom. 

Hee hee! Aren't they friggin' adorable? Squee! 

..And here are the freshly iced cookies! 

Since kids are going to eat them, I didn't trust raw egg whites and used Wilton's Meringue Powder instead. 

I have mixed feelings about it, franky - it's super-easy to mix and takes colour well, and it doesn't clog up in the squeeze bottle's nozzle nearly as much as "real" royal icing. It seems to be sturdier, too - less brittle and crunchy, somehow more like candy melts than icing. 

On the other hand, it feels slightly chalky in my mouth, and the flavour, while not at all bad, is just different. 

Still, better safe than sorry!

Fruit is HEALTHY!

How many annoying blog posts about the weather being so hot have you read this week? 

I'm betting the topic is almost as likely to get the "OMG DELETE" treatment as the tired old "How can it be August already? Where has the time gone?"

I mean, it's summer and it's supposed to be hot, duh, no big news here, right?

Still, I will say this: there is such thing as too much heat. I mean, surely some sort of line must be drawn at a point when even I can't bear turning on the oven? 

The only positive aspect of this situation is, I'm eating plenty of fruit. 

Of course, me being - well - me, you can't really expect me to munch on a peach and be done with it. So, I'm going to share with you a bunch of recipes by other bloggers that I have personally tested, and utterly adored. 

Which are, being fruit-based, inherently HEALTHY. Wow, don't you feel righteous already? 

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I'm getting the weirdest one out of the way first - and let me tell you, it took a huge leap of faith for even me to be persuaded to put fruit into my pasta. 

I mean, you know by now I despise food bigots, and will happily mix flavours and influences from all over the world in the same meal - and in the same dish - if so I fancy.

I don't even like pasta that much, so I don't share the reverence some of my fellow countrymen have for its tradition.

Still, I couldn't honestly say that the idea of topping spaghetti with fresh peaches didn't freak me out a little. Which is strange, really, since I've already put fruit in every possible course except main until now, and always loved the result... 

Basically what I'm trying to convey is, I really needed the suggestion to come from someone I trusted. Luckily for me, Makiko of Just Hungry is exactly that, and more!

Her blog is my go-to reference for Japanese recipes mainly, but because she travelled extensively through Asia, America and Europe, she developed a cosmopolitan view of food (among other things) that I immensely respect and admire. 

Another thing I immensely respect and admire is her pic-taking mojo - how do you make a bowl o' marinade (with shredded basil leaves and chunks of peaches in it to boot!) look pretty? 

Get the recipe for Pasta with Peaches and Basil from her directly, and gape at her photos with me - they're so much more appetizing than mine!

(Hey, but I did put it on a purple plate! Serious colour theory going on here, b*tches! Do I get bonus points for that? Do I?)

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Onwards to the next treat, and once again we're marinating our fruit first thing - this time it's huge, sweet, gorgeous dark cherries into balsamic vinegar!

Here's when your cherries get roasted - which makes them way yummy and jewel-like glossy... 

...and finally they're smothered with Brie Cheese and chocolate (yep, you heard it right!) and turned into the most blissful grilled cheese ever!

The genius behind this lunch/dessert hybrid is Kevin Lynch of Closet Cooking. 
His blog I discovered only recently, but I'm loving it to pieces! First of all, Kevin's a guy and this fact alone makes for a refreshing point of view in a girl-dominated foodie world. 
Also, I kind of have a crush on his rationale for blogging... 

I came to realize that my meals were boring and that I had been eating the same few dishes over and over again for years. It was time for a change! I now spend my free time searching for, creating and trying tasty new recipes in my closet sized kitchen.

Way to go, bro! Seriously, what's not to love in this man?

The recipe for Balsamic Roasted Cherry, Dark Chocolate & Brie Grilled Cheese Sandwich is wonderful as-is, but I found the chocolate flavour to be a tad overpowering, so the second time around I adjusted the cheese-to-chocolate ratio slightly.

Also, since I'm a lazy bum who hates cleaning her oven, I pan-roasted the marinated cherries instead of baking them. I liked this version better, honestly, but it's of course just a matter of personal preference - also, I see lots of possibilities for experimenting with other fruit and types of cheese here!

Which seamlessly leads me to... 

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...this veritable pièce de résistance!

I don't know how well you can see them in the pic above, but there are figs on this pizza. Gorgeous, honey-sweet, HEALTHY figs...

...and then, of course, there's bacon and fontina and sharp gorgonzola. What?

A Fresh Fig, Bacon + Blue Cheese Pizza could only be the brainchild of Jessica of How Sweet It Is. 

Now her blog, it's one of the very first ones I found out and kind of loved - and I say "kind of" here because her recipes tend to be very hit-or-miss with me. I mean, she loves anything cheese, which makes most of them (such as, uh, this one) super extra gorgeous in my book. But she also loves melon and avocado and mascarpone. Ouch. 

Also, you know that friend everybody has, who is invaluable in that she'll recommend her favourite movies and TV shows and whatnot - and you know that you can pretty safely shun them, and watch the ones she didn't care for, and be sure not to be disappointed? 

She's kind of that to me. Honest, it's such a sure hit, it is uncanny. But her blogging voice is so lighthearted and fun and playful that I drink up her opinions as hungrily as her recipes, and of all the foodies I'm following, she's the one that feels like the closest friend to me (even though she doesn't know, LOL!)

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...OK, so I gave you lots of food for thought today (as well as, y'know, food plain and simple.)

How about you start doing something for your health now, and treat yourself to one of these recipes - or all three?

Guinness Black Bottom Mint Cupcakes

"Well, you can bake with Guinness, you know. It makes chocolate taste even more chocolatey."

Honestly, mentioning such a thing to my sweetie in casual conversation? You'd think I should know better by now. 

I had to make it happen in my kitchen. Which is totally fine with me btw, because it gave me an excuse to buy a four-pack o' Guinness. And the recipe only calls for one cup! See what I'm gettin' at here? 

To be honest, Stout is not my top choice beer-wise - I'm kind of more of a Red Ale girl. Give me one of those rich, sligtly caramel-flavoured, amber-hued beauties any day!

For baking, though, no beer ever gave me better results than Guinness - and not for lack of trying, believe me! 

(Hint, hint: a little something might be boiling for the Discworld Personalities series. Stay tuned...)

A Google search for "Guinness chocolate cupcakes" produced a ton of results, most of them St. Patrick's Day-related. Which is shame becaaaause, well, this is an awesome combo and deserves to be enjoyed all year long!

And among them all I easily picked Guinnes Black Bottom Mint Cupcakes, by Tanya of Lemons for Lulu. 

...What? They have mint. Your argument is invalid. 

Now this is the point where I'd usually do a quick introduction of my fellow foodie, but hers is a blog I was totally unfamiliar with. 

Now that I've tried these cupcakes though, I'm definitely going to add it to my feeds - they're beyond awesome! Go grab the recipe NOW!

These cupcakes turned out rich but not overly heavy, and with the perfect degree of moisture as far as I'm concerned (yes, there is such thing as "too moist" - I don't like cakes that are all sticky inside!)

Another thing I love about these babies, is thay they need no frosting, which makes them super easy to handle and carry around... although if you were to soak them with peppermint ale and spoon a nice big dollop of After Eight ice cream on one of them, no one would complain for sure! 

They are delicious warm, room temperature and chilled, and freeze quite well.  

You know what they say about happiness not being for sale? Well, Guinness is! 

And with Guinness, you can treat yourself to a batch of these cupcakes. Which is the same thing, or pretty darn close!

Shit happens!

Did you know that this by-now proverbial piece of wisdom originated from the Forrest Gump movie?

I certainly didn't - and I've watched it a few times, too!

...Well, anyway.

My friends and roleplaying buddies have started a new campaign, set in the Marvel universe. 

Now much as I love everything comics, superheroes have never been my cuppa - there's just something about the genre's whole concept that irks me beyond measure. 

There has been a time when I was so desperate for my weekly RPG fix that I'd have ended up playing nevertheless, and hating every single minute spent at the gaming table. It happened before, that's how I know. 

Yet luckily, we're having another game going on at the same time, and I love that one so much, I don't mind skipping the superz game.  

So, since I'm getting free Friday evenings for a while, I thought I could put them to good use and test a few interesting-looking recipes I found on Pinterest. 

Why, I told myself, I'll bake some outrageously good cupcakes and see if I can come up with a superheroes theme for them, because sooner or later I will be requested to decorate a cake for some nerdery I don't really care for, and I can use the challenge. And, should it turn up I can't, I'll still have my perfect cupcakes!

I knew right from the start I'd have to make chocolate cupcakes because Flavio, my uber-picky BFF, won't eat baked anything unless it's truly chocolate-heavy. 

No problem there, as I was itching to try Kevin & Amanda's Brownie Batter Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes anyway!

It is actually a doctored-up cake mix recipe, which should have rung a bell in the first place as one of my hugest baking débâcles, dating back to a time before this blog, featured cake mix as one of the ingredients. 

I don't know, I just find mixes to be unpleasantly unpredictable... plus, it makes little sense for me to use them, because the American products most recipes call for aren't readily available in Italy and when I can find them at all, they cost me an arm and a leg - so making my batter from scratch is both easier and less expensive as far as I'm concerned. 

But, this recipe sounded SO GOOD! I mean... Brownie Batter Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes, right? So I hunted down Betty Crocker's Devil's Food mix and set out to baking, only halving my measures as I managed to get hold of just one box. 

The brownie balls had to be prepared in advance and frozen, which was a bummer - still, the dough tasted incredible. Things were definitely going as planned.

But when I baked the cupcakes proper... well, THIS is what happened. 

Fail! Fail! OMG EPIC FAIL!

My cupcakes imploded; there's no nicer way to put it - unless I claim they were hit by meteor fragments, which would be bordering on bad taste seeing what happened in Russia earlier today.

Of course I could camouflage the wreckage by slathering them with frosting - whopsie, make that Outrageously Rich Chocolate Indulgence Frosting, s'il vous plaît - but this is just not The Way I Do Things. 

I guess I'll simply take it like a brave soldier and keep them all to myself! 

Now these cupcakes, they may not display a cute, gentle dome and soft brownie heart, but they're good as hell!

Even the "outer shells" I'm left with are definitely more brownie than cupcake, and I suspect they'll get even more brownie-like as they age (meaning: they're going to crust, not dry out.) 

I think I'll crumble one into my granola and try it with milk, or yogurt maybe - also, I want to see what happens if I pour hot coffee into the crater. Oooh, and I could play around with ice cream, too!
WOOT! SCIENCE!

So, here's the moral of the story for you: shit happens, and that's a given. Then again: when life throws a cupcake fiasco at you, YOU GET TO EAT THE REMAINS! MWAHAHAHAHA!

...Right?

PS - Yes, I did have my superz decorations all done, but I'm not going to show them now - I'm saving them for another occasion, when I'll bake a new batch sticking to a tested, well-trusted recipe. I still have no idea what went wrong with this one - I made no weird substitutions for once! - but there are times when safe's better than sorry!

Eurochocolate report - part 3

(Part 1 - Part 2)

Being the hometown of Perugina - arguably the best-known chocolate manufacturing company in Italy thanks to the ubiquitous Baci (the iconic Valentine's Day chocolates as far as we are concerned: hazelnut-filled pralines wrapped in a silver foil studded with tiny blue stars, with a romantic quote printed inside. They've been around for 90 years!) - Perugia is, alongside with Torino, a chocolate lover's paradise even in normal circumstances...

...but over the Eurochocolate's 10-days tour de force, it turns into something so totally over-the-top as to be impossible to describe. You might think of it as a chocoholic's wet dream come true. (Can you feel the mental image burning itself into your retina? Yes? You're wecome.) 

The town's main streets and central square are lined with stalls as far as the eye can see...

...selling both "novelty" items like the chocolate tools... 

...and more traditional treats in the shape of truffles, pralines, cremini, and Krispie chunks. 

Cremini are the proverbial feather in Italy's confectionary hat - little squares of milk and hazelnut chocolate, so incredibly smooth and creamy (this is what the name means, by the way!) as to literally melt in your mouth.
In its classical form, a cremino is teeny-tiny, but some vendors had huge ingot-like bars of it,  to be cut into big cubes of yummyness... 

...and a few had come up with the ChocoKebab idea: a tall truncated cone of cremino, mounted shish kebab-like on a vertical skewer contraption...

...to be shaved into a sheet of sponge cake and topped ad libitum with caramel, chocolate or strawberry sauce. 
Of course I had to try it! And it was so delicious, I actually ate it twice during my stay in Perugia... 

...and I also got another favourite of mine, candy apples. The chocolate-covered ones are OK too, I guess, but the lacquered, bright red ones... 

Lovely. Just lovely. 

My sweetie, who isn't fond of either cremini or apples (yes, I know - ALIEN!), got chocolate-covered bananas instead, and a generous serving of this white chocolate with cranberries.

Neddless to say, both of us bought tons of stuff for our friends and colleagues as well, both of the chocolatey persuasion and otherwise. Because this part of Italy is renown for other delicacies too - such as black truffles, and awesome salami... 

...and sweets. Apart from all the chocolate, I mean. 

Such as the delicious panforte and buccellato (fruit cake-like confections, both of them)...

...or meringues as big as your head, if that's how you roll. 

Squee!

Can you say I'm so sorry that I'm going back home tomorrow? 

Eurochocolate report - part 2

(Read part 1 here)

Yesterday I dropped on you a hint about this awesome chocolate-themed hotel in Perugia, the Etruscan Chocohotel. The photos on the official site do it a lot more justice than the ones I snapped, nevertheless I'll post a selection, so you can see for yourself how incredible this place is!

As soon as you drive into the parking outside, you are greeted by a mock radar trap...

...but as soon as you walk inside, chocolate is everywhere. 

The hall is strewn with chocolate sculptures - there is even an old-style ceramic bathing tub   filled with huge chunks of the heavenly stuff! - and accommodates a Chocostore where you can buy souvenirs and - you guessed it - chocolate!

Tantalizing chocolate dribbles are stenciled inside the elevator... 

The three floors, by the way, are marked as fondente ("dark"), al latte ("milk"), and gianduia ("hazelnut"). 

The door frames look like chocolate bars, and each room is marked by a plaque with a chocolate wrapper in it. They're all different, too! 

My sweetie and me were on the milk floor, and we got Cadbury's. Yummy!

The room itself was like... I dunno, a bit of fairyland dropped in this boring world. 

Just look at it, will you?

The writing on the bedspread, in case you're wondering, says "chocolate" in lots of different languages. 

Needless to say - big language nerd that I am - I immediately set to identifying as many as I could!

There is a cute little table filled with neatly lined-up hot chocolate cups...

...and a stepper in the far corner, just so that no one can possibly accuse the hotel of irresponsibly boosting weight gain. 

It is all shiny and, as far as I can tell, brand new. 

Because, come on - what kind of people would pick a place like this to exercise?  Not us for sure!

We will, of course, remember the immoderate calorie intake later on, as we'll go back to our dreary routines, and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth... 

...but for the time being, we're quite happy with gorging ourselves on this heavenly chocolatey buffet!

See? Even the fearsome gryphon forswore his stoic countenance to have a go at it!

There's no point in trying to resist, really. 

Thus away we scurry to one of the tables, each of them topped with a cocoa bean... 

...and we enjoy our breakfast. Cheers!