Sunday Baking: Smores Pies and Chocolate Lime Cake

Mmmm....



I like this Sprinkle Bakes blog a lot. Heather makes cakes which are both beautiful and delicious, and photographs them in a way that makes me want to roll around in them whilst stuffing my face, a la Lisa Simpson in that episode where she jumps in the cake (no YouTube clip, sadly). Heather also has some very cute pets; I found this blog around about the time of this post and I may have stolen this picture and used it in my lesson slides that week, captioned "What learning do you want to be celebrating by the end of the lesson?"

Here is the recipe for her Spiked Smores Pies. I don't want to take credit for her work by writing out the whole recipe here, so go there and get it! My mods were

• I didn't put any sugar in the crust - just digestives and melted butter. Digestives are a little sweeter than graham crackers, if memory serves.
• I used cherry brandy instead of Bourbon
• I kind of mixed up the quantities a little - I did the same amount of crust as in her recipe (I like a lot of crust), but with half the amount of ganache and about two thirds of the marshmallow topping (I was not about to go to the length of halving three egg whites)
• I toasted them under the grill because I don't have a blowtorch
• The most obvious - I made them in individual muffin tins. The one in the picture was made in a big Yorkshire pudding tin; I did four like that (they are a LITTLE too much in one go) and a dozen in a regular shallow muffin tin

I'm sure there will be more recipes from this blog in the future. Heather has me considering buying a kilo of black sesame paste so I can make these (can't find it here in smaller quantities...) and wondering where I can get my hands on some maple extract for this fudgey delight, and whether peanut butter would sub for peanut butter chips?

Anyway. It hasn't all been about Sprinkle Bakes today, though it could be. I also made some chocolate cake with some chocolate treacle icing, both from Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet book. I have made this chocolate cake recipe before but sent it away to a friend; I knew there would be enough mixture for the loaf tin, plus leftovers for my friend at work who does not believe cake should be messed with in any way. So, a single chocolate cupcake for her, with a dab of icing; and a layered loaf cake with lime curd and the rest of the frosting for the rest of us.



I have learned a couple of things.
Firstly, lime curd is not very sticky. In fact, it made the layers slide off like a greased child down one of those garden water slides - hence the toothpicks.
Secondly, the frosting recipe makes a LOT. Like, twice this much. I poured it on liberally hoping to lazily coat the sides which unfortunately hasn't worked as intended but there are usually some gannets left at work to scrape up the leftovers so I will leave it for them.
Thirdly, the icing is pretty dark in flavour. It has black treacle in it which is quite a prevalent flavour. I think it could do with white sugar instead of Muscovado, or half and half milk and dark chocolate instead of all dark. A bit of lime rind might have freshened it up for this recipe, but I only just thought of it. Bit late now. It is beautifully glossy, at least.

But anyway - treats at work a-go-go.