Dedication Cake

Here is my latest attempt at cake decorating, it was for Mr. Colehill's nephew (for whom the New Baby Cake was for in August) who had his dedication last weekend. It was a lovely occasion, with all eyes and attention on the beautiful boy.


This is the first time I've been 'commissioned' to do a cake as it were, as opposed to just deciding to make one, so I was pretty excited to say the least!!

The cakes were layers of chocolate and victoria sponges, with white chocolate buttercream between each layer and between the sponge and the royal icing. The baby in the basket and building blocks were pure icing...not to be given to any children for fear of some extremely hyper-active playing and probably some very tired parents at the end of the day!!


Hope you like it, this could be the beginning of a beautiful business :-)

Borough Market Sea Bass and Chorizo

Last Saturday Mr. Colehill and I took a trip to Borough Market to have a little wander and hopefully stock up on some interesting and delicious morsels for the weekend, and we weren't disappointed. I have to admit that Borough Market really is one of my all time favourite places to spend my time, closely followed by the Wholefoods Market in High Street Kensington. I just love the abundance of weird and wonderful products that surround you as you amble through the winding paths through the market, and the gems that you stumble across when you're not sure what you're there to buy.

This time we knew we wanted some fish - yes, I admit it, we were completely drawn in by the Hugh's Fish Fight and Borough Market seemed the ideal place to pick up something wild and a bit different. The amount of choice was quite astonishing - I'm always impressed with the number of stalls and the amount of variety on each stall when I go there, and after perusing the counters we eventually settled on wild Sea Bass. It's a firm favourite and definitely worth a little extra expense, although having said that, I don't think eleven pounds is too bad for a whole fish.


The next couple of things we bought weren't on our list but they were really worth splashing out on: Soft goat's cheese, a lovely multi-grain loaf of bread and some baked delights - a ginormous and overwhelming chocolate brownie and an equally large and very full apple strudel. The cheese was nearly seven pounds, but my god was it worth it. I can't remember the name now but it was a sort of triangular shape with the point lopped off if you can imagine it, and a grey colour from the charcoal ash that it was covered in. Once you cut into it however you unearth the purest creamy white interior, beautiful against the ash and completely irresistible. We demolished an impressive amount of it with the multi-grain bread that afternoon, before moving on to the brownie and strudel which made me feel like someone out of Gulliver's Travels - they. were. huge. But hey, at least you feel like you're getting your money's worth when they're that size. The brownie was gorgeous but waaaaaay too sweet and rich for one person to eat the whole lot, luckily I had the human bin, aka Mr. Colehill with me, so that wasn't too much of an issue!


After our purchases we picked up some lunch - a beautifully tender pork belly and apple sauce baguette for Mr. Colehill, and a fragrant and creamy Thai Green Curry with chicken and seafood on white rice for me. It really was worth every penny, I got a generous amount of chicken which was thigh meat, full of flavour and juicy tenderness, as well as a giant prawn sitting proudly atop the mound of pale green sauce flecked with white rice, and a couple of rogue mussels waiting to be discovered as I made my way through it. It definitely inspired me to make my own Thai Green Curry next weekend, and I've already got my eye on the prawns I want for it from the Wholefoods Market, which is where we visited next.

Yes, it was a very food oriented shopping day - the best kind! So we made our way to Kensington from Borough Market and bought some Chorizo Picante from the deli counter, as well as a very large sack of sushi rice (a new obsession at Colehill Kitchen) and some other random dried goods in brown bags because we got over excited using the 'pour it yourself' funnels. Yes, we're that childish.

The result of a day's dedication to shopping was, among other things, this fish dish.


I baked the Bass pretty much plain (other than a little seasoning) in foil at 180 degrees for about 18 minutes, and while that was cooking I par boiled some new potatoes then tossed them in with the chorizo, which I had fried for a couple of minutes first until the oils were released a little. They cooked together for about 5 or 6 minutes until the firy red of the chorizo oil had covered and infused the potatoes. When that was done I transferred the potatoes and chorizo into a warm bowl and deglazed the pan with some white wine before adding a splash of cream and some of the juices from the baked fish right at the very end before serving.

Served with vibrant green beans, this was a really simple but special meal. I know that white fish with chorizo isn't exactly a groundbreaking combination, but it's a classic because it's just so damned delicious!! The slightly spicy flavour of the chorizo compliments the softer but still firm flavour of the Bass, which can also stand up to the saltiness in the meat. Alongside the waxy potatoes which give texture and soak up the salty liquor from the chorizo, and the slight crunch of the green beans, this dish was a real winner and I'll definitely make it again!

Chocolate Orange Cookies

It's always exciting to try new recipes, and even more so to tweak recipes in your own individual way to make something extra special, but for me, the most exciting thing is to create a recipe that's completely your own. This is the first sweet recipe that I've ever invented myself, and as something from the baking realm it was quite daunting - things can go so easily wrong (and trust me, they did a couple of times) but when it works you get the greatest sense of achievement, well, in my opinion anyway.

So here's my little creation: Chocolate Orange Cookies. They're sort of cracked and glossy on the top and soft and squidgy in the middle - my ideal texture for a cookie. The orange flavour comes through quite strongly which is just my own taste, and the slightly bitter tones of the dark chocolate really set of the sweetness of the orange beautifully.

Chocolate Orange Cookies
300g dark chocolate
50g butter
2 eggs
170g soft light brown sugar
half a teaspoon of baking powder
125g plain flour
Zest of 2 oranges
Juice of half an orange

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees.
Melt the butter with 200g of the chocolate, set aside. Chop the remaining chocolate into chunks.
Beat the eggs, sugar and zest until pale and fluffy, then add the melted chocolate mixture.
Sieve in the flour and baking powder and combine.
Add the orange juice and the remaining dark chocolate chunks, then spoon on to a lined baking tray and bake for 0-5 minutes until they are beginning to crack on the top.
Leave to cool on the baking tray for a few minutes before transferring on to a cooling rack as they'll be very fragile and near impossible to transfer at first.

I gave these to a friend as part of her Christmas present and she seemed to thoroughly enjoy them and told me that the rest of her family were fans too, so I'm thrilled - I hope you try them, and try your own recipes too :-)

Hugh's Fish Fight

No recipes this time I'm afraid, but something far more important in my opinion - the conservation of our fish stocks. As I write I'm watching the second in a three part series by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall called Hugh's Fish Fight, a programme which has quite rightly caused a stir in the media and I can only hope indignation across the country.

As well as the launch of this campaign, I coincidentally got Hugh F-W's River Cottage Meat Book for Christmas and this too has whipped me up in to a frenzy of anger and resentment over bad farming practices and unacceptable treatment of animals before they are killed for meat. Now, I hold my hands up and say that I probably haven't educated myself on this subject as well as I should have done as a food lover, but it's time to change. A New Year's resolution of mine this year was to do just that, to learn as much as I can about the meat and fish industry and to ensure that I only buy meat and fish from ethical farms, and if that isn't available, well I'll just do without and turn temporarily vegetarian until I can buy well sourced meat.

I hope if you're reading this that you too are interested in this topic, as I'm sure you are if you're a bonafide foodie like me and the rest of the food blog writing and reading world. After writing this post I'm going to attempt to add the Fish Fight widget to this blog (ambitious words for my practically computer illiterate self) and hopefully the next website you visit will be the Fish Fight campaign that accompanies the programme currently airing. Do send an email to your MP, do sign the petition, but most importantly, if you're like me, change your own buying and eating habits.

I don't pretend to be perfect, and I'm sure over the coming months I'll have a hiccup or two and forget my resolution by picking up a can of tuna (I gather even Princes are less than perfect in their fishing practices) or grabbing a chicken sandwich on the run, but hey - I'm putting one hundred per cent effort in to trying, and sticking to the principles that really, I think I've always had, I just haven't done the research into before.

Wish me luck, and here's to a happy, healthy and conscientious 2011!

Rocket, Moon and Astronaut Space Themed Cake

This weekend was hectic in the best possible way, lots of family and fun!! It was Mr.Colehill's nephew's fourth birthday party, and I (somewhat bravely) offered to make the cake for the occasion, and here is the finished article!! I'm quite pleased with it since it's only my second go at cake decorating - the first being the baby cake for the birthday boy's new baby brother a few months ago.


I definitely want to take a course at some point to learn the tricks of the trade and improve on the basics and foundations of cake decorating, but for a new hobby and a fairly ambitious idea I'm happy with it. If anyone knows of any good courses that run I'd appreciate some tips!!
Both the moon and the rocket are entirely cake - a vanilla sponge with chocolate buttercream, and the astronaut is modeled out of sugarpaste. hope you like it!!

Nigella's Devil's Food Cake

All hail Nigella, she's done it again. I recently bought her latest book Kitchen without having read any reviews, without flicking through it first, and without umm-ing and ahh-ing over it as I usually do with a hefty new cookbook. Should I have been a little more cautious before racing to the counter? A resounding no. It's a triumph and an absolute gem of a book to read, let alone use any of the recipes. There is a beautifully written introduction and a lengthy section on utensils worth having, and perhaps more importantly, gadgets absolutely not worth having. I hold my hands up to making some of the same purchasing errors as her, but it's so tempting at the time!!

Anyway, I couldn't wait to get started and have a go at some of her recipes, and yes I know this is utterly predictable, but I went straight to the desserts chapter and landed satisfyingly on her Devil's Food Cake. If you are on a diet, this is not for you. However if you enjoy a hefty dose of chocolate and cake, then do not hesitate to make this little (or rather large) beauty.

Devil's Food Cake
50g cocoa powder, sifted
100g dark muscovado sugar
250ml boiling water
125g soft unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
225g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarb
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

Frosting
125ml water
30g dark muscovado sugar
175g unsalted butter, cubed
300g dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line 2 sandwich tins.
Put the cocoa and muscovado sugar into a bowl and add the boiling water, set aside.
Cream the butter and caster sugar until pale and fluffy.
Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb in another bowl, set aside.
Add the vanilla extract to the butter mixture, still mixing, then the eggs one at a time.
Keep mixing then add the flour mixture, then fold in the cocoa mixture.
Divide between the two tins and bake for about 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

For the frosting put the water, muscovado sugar and butter in a pan and melt over a low heat.
When it begins to bubble take off the heat and add the chopped chocolate, leave for a minute to melt before whisking till smooth and glossy.
Leave for about one hour, giving it a whisk every now and then.
When the cakes have cooled and the frosting is ready, put some frosting between the cakes, then cover with the rest.

Although Nigella suggests an hour is long enough to set the frosting, mine wasn't ready at this point and I needed to speed up the process so I put it in the freezer for 5 minutes. I did the trick, however I sacrificed the glossiness that the frosting should have had for speed. I would suggest making the icing before you make the cake and give it plenty of time to firm up at room temperature.

Utterly delicious and dangerously moreish, I highly recommend this cake. This was demolished within 48 hours, leaving only some rather snug waistbands and a smattering of crumbs on the plate!

Rachel Allen's Chocolate and Vanilla Semifreddo

As you may know if you've happened to skim over the 'About Me' part of this blog, I've worked as a pastry chef, and I have to say that the thing I miss most and really struggle to make outside of the confines of a professional kitchen is ice cream. In the restaurant, I had a massive industrial type ice cream churner, and made freshly churned ice creams and sorbets every day, which were beyond delicious. We had chocolate, vanilla, tonka bean, pistachio, coconut, raspberry, pear, passion fruit, coffee...the list is endless, and each one was smooth and soft, set but yielding, and utterly irresistable.

After I left, I really missed freshly made ice cream so I bought a do-it-yourself-at-home gadget for churning ice cream. It's a fairly teeny little device that holds a litre of ice cream, and churns while in the freezer, working off a battery. Sounds great huh? Well, take my advice - don't bother wasting your money on one. Seriously. It made patchy uneven ice cream, some parts frozen, some still liquid, with ice crystals all the way through it. Not delicious.

So what's a girl with an ice cream craving to do? Good old Rachel Allen to the rescue again, I found a recipe for semifreddo in her book Home Cooking, a resident life saver in my kitchen, and it was a real success.

Semifreddo

3 eggs, separated

150g caster sugar

500ml double cream

200g dark chcolate, finely chopped

Line a loaf tin with 2 layers of cling film, with plenty extra over the sides so that you can fold it over to cover the semifredo when freezing.

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl until pale and fluffy.

In a separate bowl, whisk the cream until you have soft peaks.

In yet another bowl, whisk the egg whites until they form firm peaks.

Gently fold the cream into the yolks and sugar, then fold the egg whites into the mixture, being careful not to knock out the air you've whisked in.

Sprinkle a third of the chopped chocolate into the bottom of the loaf tin, then pour on half of the semifreddo mix. Then sprinkle a second third of the chocolate on top of this, then the remaining semifreddo mix, anf finally the last of the chocolate.

Fold the cling film over the top so that it's all covered, then freeze for at least 6 hours.

To go along with this, Rachel suggests a hot chocolate sauce, a pretty fine suggestion if you ask me!

Hot Chocolate Sauce

75g dark chocolate, chopped

100ml double cream

Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over simmering water, then whisk in the cream to give a smooth sauce.

The trick is here to have the cream and chocolate as close in temperature as possible before combining them, so let the chocolate cool, a bit after melting, and don't have the cream fridge cold.

This is a really delicious alternative to ice cream, and it softens so beautifully when it's been out of the freezer a few minutes. It doesn't melt exactly, but becomes the semifreddo it's meant to be - half frozen. It has a firm texture, but the smooth creaminess really comes through and is utterly beautiful...and dangerously moreish! Perfect for a dessert after a fairly heavy meal as portions are flexible and the whipping keeps it fairly light, and is a great standby to have in the freezer if you have people over at short notice and need a delicious pudding!!