Pope Cheesecake: Chocolate Pecan Toffee Cheesecake with Raspberry Sauce

This is a continuation of the Customised Bake Trial that I am sincerely glad I did as I now know the extent of inaccuracy that recipes can have or knowledge level they expect.

This time, I made my own caramel butterscotch sauce with a method that seemed to work, added the pecans in afterwards, then poured it on the base, and placed it in the fridge to cool. Mistake. The lovely oozy caramel hardened into a near impenetrable toffee. I really must research this caramel umbrella practically to fully understand this.

Pecan Caramel

Anyway, in a desperate bid to save my springform from hacking machetes, I baked the base with the toffee layer for 20 minutes to soften it before the cheesecake mix went in.

One of the comments from the client was that it was dense. Although a very kind offer was extended for me to stay and join my colleague client, I opted out, thinking I would come home and snoozeafter not sleeping all night. That didn't happen. It seems I can survive on a half-hour disco nap.

Chocolate Cheesecake Mixture

Back to the matter in hand... the denseness. This may have been due having 100g less of cream cheese than what was required. I may amend that sentence... in my crazed sleep-deprived brain it seems wrong. I adjusted the mixture on the fly, reducing the sugar, chocolate, and egg content, to compensate, but that may well have been the reason. I have tweaked my method, so I got a much better finish on the cream cheese mixture than on the first attempt.

Pre-bake

I was able to procure frozen raspberries easier than I thought I would, and the sauce was delicious. I was tempted to syphon some off for private usage, but decided I would make another batch as I still had more sauce.

Sauce

Overall, I believe the review was good, and I was pleased with the cake... just a shame I didn't have enough cream cheese.

In honour of the client who designed this cheesecake, I will call this a Pope Cheesecake.

Finito

Pope Cheesecake and Berry Fruit Sauce available at Samara's Baked Goods

Butterscotch Layer Cake: Attempt 2

Recipe based on Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess.

Big news! I've finally set up an online store for local deliveries and collection (Stockholm only).
I am just as surprised as everyone, as I have no real inclination to make a profit from baking, or indeed a living from it either. A friend directed to me a lovely site called Tictail.com, which gives you free online store space to set up a shop and sell items that you advertise.

The close up

Not one to blow my own trumpet, but in my category, my shop looks pretty polished, even though there are many things to improve.

Twins!

Anyhoo, as of 08/11/15, I have received two orders. One was for a chocolate layer cake that I will wax lyrical about in another post, and the other order was for a bumper 6 items!

One of the items in this order is... you guessed it, the Butterscotch Layer Cake that this post is named for!

Lovely smooth batter

This was the second time I'm making it, however I was fairly confident, although some doubt lay in the oven in the flat I am currently renting, and am still yet to get used to. It's a hasty oven, so I have been extra vigilant after 2/3 of the baking time has passed as I have been burnt before. As were two of my cakes.

So grateful for my stackable cooling racks

The cake is intended to be a naked one, so unlike my first attempt, I decided to present it that way, and instead of being governed by the quantity of icing and caramel I had made, I was governed instead by the aesthetic. Kinda. You know me, not one for frou frou. They looked better than the first attempt anyway. In a manufactured sort of way.

Homemade caramel

Butterscotch Cream Cheese Frosting

Anyhoo, they* turned out well, I was pleased, I will hopefully update with pictures of The Cut later.

Nice Slice

*They were twins! Otherwise known as two cakes made at the same time!

Available at Samara's Baked Goods

Red Velvet Layer Cake

Based on recipe from Hummingbird Bakery.

For those who saw my awful attempt at a multi-coloured cake, may wonder why I go back to this. I am one of those people who wonders too.

Anyhoo, I am getting a bit more interested in cakes of a more interesting format, e.g. ring, bundt, and stumbled across a Red Velvet Bundt recipe through one of those 'you may be interested in...' links.

Having tried the Hummingbird Bakery recipe for cupcakes, and the unfortunate multi-coloured cake, I was wary of trying a new set of ratios, so figured I'd use the 'old faithful' instructions, and stick the batter in a bundt.

I chickened out, as I have had a bad experience when making a spontaneous bundt, and opted for a layer cake instead.

I made a spare cupcake to crumble over the top, which was inspired by the bundt recipe.

The result was a very even light cake. I could probably have levelled the layers, and used more icing inbetween them, however I feel that is a waste of cake, and I wasn't sure how much I'd have left to ice the rest of the cake.

There She Is!

Overall I was pleased, however I need to learn to be more generous with icing.

There is something in red food dye that irritates my mouth, so I couldn't really have the cake.

A Slice of Life

Available at Samara's Baked Goods

Butterscotch Layer Cake

Recipe base from Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess.

I would like to say I followed the instructions exactly but right off the bat, I added too much water to the sugar for my caramel. First time excuse still valid??

Caramel

I managed to rescue it somewhat, and the cake was a success. Moist, and not overly sweet. Obviously no oil painting, but it was gone in 15 minutes from the staff room, which I was pleased with.

Finished Article

The cut! The top was missing a piece as it stuck to the tin

Read about my second attempt here

Available at Samara's Baked Goods

Dark Chocolate Cream Cheese Brownies

Based on the recipe from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess.

The brownies came out perfectly, despite my misgivings that 125g of cream cheese was far too much.

As I regularly make blondies, with a recipe that requires self-raising flour, I found these rather flat and disappointing, although I knew that was exactly what they were meant to look like.

I commited the cardinal sin - mainly out of laziness - of melting my butter and chocolate directly in the pan over a low heat. I would never do this if I was melting chocolate alone, but I felt the fatty buffer of the butter(!) would protect the chocolate adequately.

The brownies tasted good, I managed to make 30 tiny bite sized pieces out of them, even despite surrendering what I felt would have made at least half of my bites to the baking paper. Perhaps I shouldn't also grease the baking paper.

I probably wouldn't bother making this again; to be honest, I only did them to use the cream cheese left over from the Multi-Coloured Velvet Cake debacle (see earlier post), as dear friends who know me, also know that I don't like to waste anything! 

Multi-Coloured Velvet Cake

Based on the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery book.

I decided to make a multi-coloured velvet cake to represent my school's house system by doing a layer of green, red, and blue, sandwiched and covered in yellow cream cheese icing.

That was the idea. I had grand visions of a tall cake covered in smooth yellow, with the awaiting surprise of the multi-colours within when sliced.

This cake hardly measured up.

I knew it wouldn't work out as soon as I failed to find sandwich tins (20 cm or otherwise) in my local shops (in Stockholm). After asking a few Swedes, it seems that the concept of layer cake is a bit foreign to them, at least baking the layers separately. Instead on the rare occasion that they would make a layered cake, they would make a regular/large cake, and cut it into the layers they wanted, and then reassemble. This would never do for me.
I compromised by buying disposable foil tins (23 cm diameter), and resolving to make batches as advised to produce 12 cupcakes, dye them accordingly, and then make cupcakes from the rest.

Disaster. First of all, I only added half as much red dye as needed, and only clocked that I had done so when they came out. A considerable amount of the red cake stuck to the bottom of the tin (yes, I did grease and flour it!). Then the green batter developed an unpleasant brown layer on its top and sides (as did the cupcakes). The blue was alright, but looked far more teal than the navy I was after.

Then the Lack of Cooling Racks Tragedy struck. Only having one, which was actually the removable grill part of the pan covered with baking paper, meant that the cakes didn't get the opportunity to cool properly as they were coming out of the oven - my oven is not a fan one, so I baked one cake at a time, followed by the 'residual cupcakes', and so on.

At this point, I was too far gone to even consider starting again, so tried to make the best of a bad job by cutting the discolouration off the cooled yet sweaty cakes. It wasn't so bad at this point.

Let's make the cream cheese frosting. Oh no! The ridiculously expensive weighing scales I bought merely because of the proximity of the shop and my need for them decided to give me a static electric shock, and refuse to work. I decided to freestyle with the measurements, and came out with some fairly decent icing, despite the yellow not making as much of a difference as I wanted it to.

Underwhelmed. 

Icing the cake. Literally, this was the icing on the cake. Trying to ice this cake with its exposed and crumby sides was a nightmare; the multi-coloured specks kept 'tainting' the icing, so I was unable to get the clean finish I was after.

The end result was a small, squat, sugary mess, that looked like I'd dropped it on the floor. I couldn't even bear to take a picture, I was so ashamed.

The cupcakes (and cake) tasted good, however looked extremely unappetising.

Blart

To improve (should I ever recover enough to return to the scene of the crime), I reckon I should make this as a pound cake, perhaps with a marbled or tiger effect. Although I have a feeling it will still not be what I want. To ice the cake, I will probably use royal icing (the stiffer one used for wedding cakes, I think) despite my aversion to icing - using and eating!

Spiced Pound Cake

Based on Hummingbird Bakery Book Recipe

I couldn't find any lemon extract, so used 1/4 teaspoon of lemon essence, and 1/4 teaspoon of 'citrus powder' mixed in with the flour.

I've started a not-so-revolutionary tactic of leaving my butter out permanently (must buy a butter dish) so that it is nice and soft which works for most of my recipes.

I am happy with the way the cake turned out, the batter was lovely, velvety and smooth, and despite my cake tin being slightly bigger than recommended (26cm ring tin vs the advised 25cm), the batter filled it properly, and rose to fill the tin too.

I felt the cake was getting a bit too 'done' at 50 minutes, so put some foil over the top to prevent it from burning, and returned it to the oven for another 10 minutes.

Total cooking time: 60 minutes.

I topped it with some left over cream cheese frosting and chocolate frosting (yes, I combined them!). Not sure how this will work with the cake, however I wanted to get rid of the icing, so heigh ho!

Icing Mash Up!

Update: the second picture does not do this cake justice. The texture was perfect - baked completely, fluffy, and even.

Unflattering picture... it was truly spectacular

I have made and developed this recipe several times since, and it is definitely a go-to cake for me. I love its buttery-ness, along with its complex spices. Perfect with tea! I need to develop a single serve microwave version of this...

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

Based on Hummingbird Bakery book recipe.

Cakes came out rather moist, a bit too moist for my liking, although they were fully cooked.

I used vaniljpulver rather than the recommended vanilla extract due to availability, however I now have my bottle from the UK, so will use next time!

I only made 12, will definitely make more next time

Note to self:

TWO bottles of Dr Oetker's Red Food Colouring

Vanilla Paste from UK

Rating #1: 9/10