Caramel Apple Crumble Cake

Bake Number Three for EHH’s birthday! Having been given a carrier bag full of Bramley apples, I’ve been searching out cake recipes using cooking apples. I found this recipe on the Waitrose website and, seeing that EHH loves anything caramelly and we still had loads of apples, it seemed like the perfect thing to bake for his birthday.

I made a few adaptations to the recipe. Firstly, my deep 20cm cake tin was already in use for my carrot cake, so I decided to split the recipe between two sandwich tins and then sandwich the cakes together with a filling. As you can see from the photo, I went rather OTT with the fillings and used pureed apple (that I already had in the fridge), cinnamon buttercream and the remaining Carnation caramel – layering the buttercream, then the apple and then the caramel. This was way too much and it oozed out everywhere! I would recommend that you use one of the fillings, or alternatively, make less of each and put the apple in the middle with a ring of buttercream around the edge!

I also added the crumble topping. The original recipe was simply topped with a tablespoon of Demerara sugar, but I just love crumble cakes and so decided to add this to my version.

As I sent the complete cake into EHH’s work, I didn’t get a taste! However, the comments that came back were very enthusiastic, so I hope that it was nice! Will definitely be giving this one another go soon – possibly with a caramelised nut topping that I have seen in another recipe…

Caramel Apple Crumble Cake

Ingredients:

1. 125g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for buttering
2. 397g can Carnation Caramel
3. 2 medium eggs
4. 225g self-raising flour, sifted
5. 2 tsp baking powder
6. 2 tsp ground cinnamon
7. 300g Bramley apples, peeled, cored and diced
8. 2 tbsp semi-skimmed milk

For the crumble topping

1. 75g plain flour
2. 50g butter
3. 40g chopped nuts (optional)
4. 25g demerara sugar
5. 25g butterscotch pieces

To fill

1. Cinnamon buttercream:
2. 55g butter, at room temperature
3. 30ml semi-skimmed milk, at room temperature
4. ½ tsp vanilla extract
5. 2 tsp cinnamon
6. 250g icing sugar, sifted

Or

1. 100g Bramley apples (peeled and chopped)
2. 20g soft brown sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 160C.
2. Lightly grease and base-line two 20cm sandwich tins.
3. Firstly prepare the crumble topping: Sift the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter. Stir through the sugar and nuts and set aside.
4. Place the butter with 225g of the caramel in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until well combined.
5. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
6. Sift over the flour, baking powder and cinnamon and fold together.
7. Gently stir in the apple and the milk.
8. Spoon the cake mix into your cake tins and smooth the top.
9. Sprinkle the crumble mixture over the top of one of the cakes.
10. Bake for 40 minutes - 1 hour, or until risen and springy. You will probably find that the crumble-topped cake will need slightly longer in the oven.
11. Allow to cool slightly and then remove the cake from the tins and cool on a wire rack.

While the cakes are cooling, make up the filling. Either make cinnamon buttercream:

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, milk, cinnamon, vanilla extract and half of the icing sugar until smooth.
2. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.

Or:

1. Place the apples in a saucepan with a tablespoon of water.
2. Cook gently over a gentle heat until the apples are mushy.
3. Remove from the heat and taste.
4. Add the soft brown sugar to sweeten as desired.

   12. Spread the cake without the crumble with your chosen filling.
   13. Drizzle over the remaining caramel.
   14. Sandwich with the crumble-topped cake. 
   15. Sprinkle the top of the cake with the butterscotch pieces. 

Superman Chocolate Birthday Cake

So, third chocolate cake in three weeks! Not bad for someone who doesn’t make chocolate cakes! This week’s cake was for one of my good friend’s son’s 4^th birthday – his requirements were that it had to be chocolate and had to have Superman on it! 

I did consider buying a Superman – maybe a Lego Superman – to pop on top of the cake, but somehow I let EHH convince me that it would be a challenge to make a Superman figure out of icing and that I would enjoy it. Hmmm – enjoy isn’t quite the word that I’d have used on Thursday night as I wrestled with red and blue icing, trying to convince it to come together into the muscled physique of an action hero. The ripped torso was actually fairly easy – it was the sticking on of limbs and the creation of the head that were the tricky bits. However, after a bit of swearing and the help of a few cocktail sticks, it all came together. His nose ended up a bit squashed and his red pants looked a little like a nappy, but he was clearly recognisable (red pants over the top of a blue superhero suit and a big Superman sign on his front always help with this!) and that would have to do! I left doing the red cape until he was actually on the cake to help with positioning.

Making the cake was the simple bit – having made two others in the last two weeks! I followed the same recipe for the cake as the KitKat cake but replaced the booze with water and added a tablespoon of vanilla extract. Rather than filling with jam and fresh cream, I simply filled and topped the cake with chocolate buttercream. As the cake was for children rather than adults, I made a milk chocolate buttercream (recipe below) rather than the richer dark chocolate buttercream.

Once the cake was made and filled and topped with buttercream, I left it to set in the fridge for about an hour. This allows the icing to firm and makes covering it in rolled fondant much easier. I covered first with a fairly thin layer of plain white rolled fondant, followed by a thin layer of navy rolled fondant. You could tint the fondant yourself but I always find tinting a big batch of dark coloured fondant very messy and time consuming, and it also requires a lot of food colour – even when using the decent paste food colours – so I always buy pre-coloured fondant for dark / bright colours. When rolling the fondant out, I suggest rolling it onto parchment paper that has been lightly dusted with icing sugar – you can then simply lift the parchment paper up and turn over onto the cake.

Once the cake was covered in navy fondant, I rolled out some black fondant and cut out various geometric, building-like shapes and stuck them onto the cake with a little water. I then added some white to the black fondant, rolled it and cut out more shapes that I stuck on top of the black cut-outs. I then repeated this – adding more white to create a lighter grey fondant and creating more shapes to create a third layer of buildings. I then used yellow writing icing to add some windows and, along with some red writing icing, to set one of the buildings “alight”! Popped Superman on top and rolled out some red fondant to make his cape, sticking it on carefully with a little water.

Finally (at about 1.30 at night!) the cake was complete! It took quite a lot of time and effort but I was fairly happy with the end result!

  

Milk chocolate buttercream icing

Ingredients

1. 175 grams milk chocolate
2. 250 grams unsalted butter (softened)
3. 275 grams icing sugar (sifted)
4. 1 tblsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Melt the chocolate in a glass bowl sitting over a pan of simmering water, and set aside to cool slightly.
2. In another bowl, beat the butter until it's soft and creamy.
3. Add the sieved icing sugar and vanilla extract.
4. Beat again until light and fluffy.
5. Add the chocolate and mix together until everything is glossy and smooth. 

Chocolate and raspberry Kitkat gateau – again!

Having had a practise bake last weekend (!), this weekend was actually my friend’s hen do and so time to make my second chocolate and raspberry Kitkat gateau. Making it for the second time was definitely easier – having made a few mistakes last week, I followed my own instructions and tips this time and it was actually a fairly easy and simple cake to bake.

I did make a couple of changes this time – I didn’t have much raspberry liqueur left and so I had a search through our alcohol cupboard and found a bottle of plum brandy and decided to use that in the cake instead. You can’t really taste the alcohol in the cake but it does add an extra depth and slight fruitiness to the cake and so I figured changing the type of alcohol shouldn’t affect the flavour too much. I’m not sure if adding the alcohol rather than just water affects the texture at all – will test this out next week when I have to make another chocolate cake – this time for a four-year-old’s birthday so no alcohol in this one!

Last week, I wasn’t that keen on the chocolate icing so I decided to make a few changes. This time, I added a tablespoon of cocoa, to increase the chocolate flavour and reduce the sweetness. Instead of the raspberry liqueur, I added a tablespoon of very strong coffee (1 tsp instant coffee granules dissolved in 1 tblsp hot water) and also 1 tsp salt. You can’t taste the coffee but adding it helps to reduce the sweetness and intensify the chocolate flavour; the salt similarly helps to bring out the chocolate flavour. For me, these changes definitely helped to improve the icing – adapted recipe below.     

The only other change was to use three different types of Kitkat on the outside – dark, milk and Cookies and Cream (topped with white chocolate) – just for a slightly different look.

Chocolate icing:

Ingredients

1. 175 grams dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids)
2. 250 grams unsalted butter (softened)
3. 275 grams icing sugar (sifted)
4. 1 tblsp cocoa (sifted)
5. 1 tbsp strong coffee (1 tsp instant coffee granules dissolved in 1 tblsp hot water)
6. 1 tsp salt

Method

1. Melt the chocolate in a glass bowl sitting over a pan of simmering water, and set aside to cool slightly.
2. In another bowl, beat the butter until it's soft and creamy.
3. Add the sieved icing sugar, cocoa, salt and coffee.
4. Beat again until light and fluffy.
5. Add the chocolate and mix together until everything is glossy and smooth.