How to decorate your New Year's Eve cake

I'm not sure where I got the idea to turn a normal chocolate mud cake into something more boozy with the edition of mulled wine, but it has been floating around in my head for a while now! So I decided to give it a whirl for New Year's Eve and, even if  I to say so myself, it is a triumph, the wine isn't too overpowering and the boozy sultanas are deliciously squidgy. 

Mulled wine chocolate mud cake

Ingredients

Mulled wine:

• 600ml red wine
• 100g sugar
• 60g sultanas
• 6 cardamon pods
• 6 cloves
• 1 stick cinnamon
• freshly squeezed juice of an orange

Cake:

• 230g good quality dark chocolate
• 150g unsalted butter
• 400 ml mulled wine
• 2 large eggs
• 160g sugar
• 260g self raising flour

Ganache:

• 200ml mulled wine
• 400g good quality dark chocolate

Method:

• Add all the mulled wine ingredients into a saucepan and gently simmer for 30 mins. Strain the wine keeping the sultanas but discarding the cloves, cardamons and cinnamon.
• Grease and line a 7" cake tin.
• Preheat the oven to 170C/325F
• Place 400ml of the mulled wine, the chocolate and the butter into a saucepan and gently heat until the chocolate and butter have melted. Leave to cool slightly.
• In a bowl lightly beat the eggs, slowly add the melted chocolate mixture beating well.
• Beat in the flour and sugar.
• Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 40-45 mins until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin.
• Melt the chocolate and beat it as you slowly pour in the wine, (which should also be hot.) Beat until they are combined.
• Take half the ganache and stir in the sultanas.
• Cut the cake in half and pour over the ganache with the sultanas. Put it into the fridge to harden.
• Place the other half of the cake on top (I turn the cake upside down so the top becomes the bottom as you may find it cracks a little) and pour over the rest of the ganache.
• Decorate by splashing the cake with edible gold paint.

I wanted to decorate the cake in quite a simple manner, as you want to be able to spend most of the day primping and preening yourself and not a cake. Fortunately I always have some spare cookie dough in the freezer, so I decided to use that rather than messing about with fondant. You will need to use a fairly stiff dough so that it keeps it shape, of course you could spell out the new date rather than a countdown, or even make a Valentine's Day version with your initials.

Decorating

I hope you have a lovely celebration tonight and that there is a wonderful, cake filled year to come for you.

You can download a pdf of the recipe here.

xxx

Homemade Irish Cream recipe

Well Christmas has come and gone, and, as I look back on the Holiday season I see myself not so much as a celebrant, but more of a nurse! So I am hoping that the New Year's bash holds promise of more fun and that I don't succumb to the virus that has rampaged through the rest of my family. Please don't worry about me though, I am successfully staving it off with a mixture of echinacea and advocaat!

If , like us, you are going to a New Year's Eve party, you may be thinking about taking a hostess gift with you, and I have the perfect one for you here. This recipe for Irish cream was given to me about 25 years ago by a vicar, and has been made nearly every year since. It always goes down a storm and, even if you are not a fan of the commercial stuff, I promise, you will love this. It is so easy to make, taste like heaven, and you must keep the biggest bottle for yourself.

You can use any alcohol you prefer but it must have a rich flavour, so scotch, brandy or rum are really the best.

(It will last up to two months if you keep refrigerated.)

You can download the recipe here.

Have a really lovely New Year's Eve Party (or a snugly night in if that's your preference).

xxx

Happy Christmas

To all you amazing followers.  A very merry Christmas with more chocolate than sprouts!  

Xxx

Twelve days of mocktails

I was asked by the super people at Innocent Drinks to create a special seasonal mocktail. There are twelve bloggers involved and each one had to create a drink to represent one of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

I was given 'Ten Lords A Leaping'...mmm...that's an easy one to convert into a drink, or not! I needed help. So I asked for some ideas from Miss Cakehead who is a creative genius. she immediately suggested frogs as a theme as they definitely love leaping, and they are so Christmassy. I myself into creating a mocktail to suggest a groggy swamp. I muddled up some mint leaves to make it extra swampy. Of course there had to be some glitter as they are frog lords and a spoonful of popping candy actually makes it sound as if the frogs are croaking. I tried a good few versions and fortunately the kidlets were delighted to be my taste-testers.

This is the final version.

 

10 Froggy Lords A-Leaping in Their Swamp

(or Snap, Crackle and Hop)

 Ingredients

• 1 lime
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 3 sprigs of mint
• 75ml Innocent kiwis, apples and lime smoothie
• 50 ml of Innocent apple juice
• soda water
• edible glitter (preferably green)
• 1/2 a teaspoon of popping candy
• ice
• a straw

Method

• Squeeze the juice of the lime and put in a cocktail shaker. Add the sugar and mint and macerate with a muddler. Add the smoothie and the apple juice. Shake
• Fill a long glass with ice and pour in the drink.
• Top up the glass with soda water
• Add a sprinkle of glitter
• Add the popping candy and stir with a straw so it sinks to the bottom
• Drink to the sound of the froggy lords croaking!

It's quite a fun drink and my kids love it!

Then Innocent took my recipe and turned it into this fabulous card which you can download here.

When the twelve days are over I will add a link to the recipe booklet for all of the drinks.
You can now find all the fabulous recipes here.

xxx

(I haven't been paid for this but I did receive an inspiration box and some vouchers to buy ingredients)