Category: In the kitchen

The first time I tasted lemon meringue cheesecake was on a romantic weekend away with my husband (not then) to kingfisher island resort on fraser island. We also got to taste crocodile, emu and kangaroo that night too. The cheesecake part is a nice twist on lemon meringue pie.

As I had many egg whites left over from the icecream and buttercream, I figured it was time to replicate this delicious creation. A quick google search gave me a simple recipe. I used more meringue then the recipe asked for. I think less butter would also be good idea in future too.

For the first time last night, I made icecream! And I can’t communicate how absolutely amazing it is.

I used the vanilla recipe and instructions from David Lebovitz on making icecream without an icecream maker. To this I added cherries and mini marshmellows.

The basic theory is to make a custard, then add this to cream and chill in an icebath. Then put it in the freezer for 45min, take it out and beat. Continue every 30min till frozen. It took 6 hours in our freezer. The reason for the beating is that water freezes before fat, so you have to break that so it freezes evenly and with lots of air.

I’m really proud to report that it worked out perfectly. Far smoother than most supermarket brands and matches the smoothness of nice icecream! It took a lot of patience to let it set. If I wasn’t hoping to photograph it and also understand how hard it would get, it would have been consumed at the stage where you add the cream to the custard. I will admit to really enjoying licking the beaters every 30 min 😉

I used a stainless steel bowl for the icebath and freezing stage. This meant that it was really easy to take out of the freezer and beat with my hand mixer. I never mixed for long and just made sure I got everything that was setting around the edges mixed through. I think the other reason for my success was the quality of the ingredients. I used double pure cream so there was no artificial thickners.

I’ve now updated the baking category of the blog to ‘in the kitchen’ as there isn’t any part of icecream making that could be called baking and I’m definately going to be doing this again and again. The next one I really want to try is the salted caramel icecream.

Today was the last day of our senior designer. While sad, we wish him the best wishes for his new opportunities. The common office joke is to tell the designers to go play with their crayons… so what better parting gift than a crayon cake.

Due to band commitments, I made the fondant on wednesday night and then starting at 10:30pm on Thursday baked, iced and assembled the cakes. I finished at 1:00pm! While I hate feeling rushed, I’m still happy with the final result and even better Aaron and the rest of the office loved it too.

Warning: There is absolutely nothing healthy and heaps and heaps of nasty stuff in this cake. If you are interested read on

The base cake is the sponge cake from the dorbos torta recipe. I’m proud to report that I got it perfect this time!
I then rolled it with the chocolate buttercream from the same recipe (again perfect). The tips are icecream cones filled with the remaining sponge and attached with toothpicks. Long wooden skewers or paddle pop stick would be better, but I couldn’t find any. The construction idea is from the wilton website.

I’m not a big fan of fondant (especially the premade stuff), however it was needed for this project so I thought I would try marshmellow fondant. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any butter essence/extract which I think would help smooth out the overwhelming sugar taste.  I shrunk the recipe into more manageable and easy to colour segments. The following makes about 370g of fondant.

• 125g marshmellows
• 1/2 tbs water
• 1/4 tbsp glycerine (not 100% necessary)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 250g of icing sugar plus some spare.
• Copha

1. Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl
2. In a microwave safe container (I used a blue large tupperware one) add the marshmellows, water, glycerine and vanilla. THIS IS A LOT OF FUN!
3. Mix gently
4. Microwave 1 min – watch the marshmellows – they expand! Also be careful
5. Add food colouring and mix through
6. Add the marshmellow mix to the icing sugar and mix with a wooden spoon
7. Coat your hands and a surface (that won’t stain) with copha
8. Kneed the marshmellow mix into a playdough consistency
9. Coat the mashmellow thinly in copha and wrap in cling wrap.

When you are ready to use, microwave for 15seconds. Coat your working surface in copha and roll and manipulate as needed

If I was to do it again, I would probably go for a chocolate sponge and a cream filling to try to counter the sugar taste of the fondant.

Made to take to riverfire. They were a bit rushed as we weren’t sure how long it would take us to get there with the trains

They are just the simple hersheys chocolate cake recipe, however I love it as it is one of those yummy hassle free recipes. The icing is a chocolate fudge icing recipe – perfect addition to the lovely moist fudgy cake!

Today I realised that this baking ban isn’t going to happen, the addiction to baking something every weekend is too strong. So I decided to embrace it and actually plan and learn to bake some interesting things. I applied to join daring bakers, but unfortunately missed the cutoff day and will have to wait till Oct to start on the challenges. Their August challenge was Dobos Torta. The concept seemed simple enough, but I’m not happy with my execution. It could have to do with the fact that I started at 9pm, I need a bigger fridge or a cooler kitchen, but I think this time it was my lack of experience and the rush to get it finished.

My final torta…

I’m sitting here at 1:34am having a small slice. The texture isn’t perfect but the taste is delicious!

[added the morning after]
Things I learnt:
1. Starting cleaning the kitchen at 9pm is not a good start to baking. I had been planning to make this mid morning, but once the house duties, shopping, dinner etc had been done, it was suddenly 9pm.

2. 200 deg C is too hot on my oven for this cake. The edges of my sponges we browning and burning before the inner part was cooked. This also could have been because I was using a baking tray not baking sheets.

3. Make sure you are really even with your sponge and that it cooks nice and evenly. Spots where the sponge is too thin or not cooked properly will be prone to ripping when pulling back the paper. This is really hard in my oven as the back of my oven is hotter than the front and it is small so the tray can’t be rotated easily. I’m thinking that I might have more luck making a mini version of the cake on a smaller tray.

4. Room temperature is a lot hotter than normal when the oven has been on and the stove. I did let my buttercream cool to room temp before adding the butter but I think this was still too warm. Next time I will chill it in the fridge. Also note to self, make sure there is room in the fridge, which is very hard after just doing the food shopping for the week. My butter was probably a little too soft due to the warmness of the room too. I’ll just have to note to leave it in another place of the house till ready. This made kind of more of a ganache than a buttercream.

5. Leave the caramel longer. I’ve made caramel toffee successfully before, but I was scared of over doing it last night as the recipe said amber. It looked amber in the pot but was not ready and far too runny.

I understand the concepts and errors a little more now and will have to try again once I find some people to consume this one.