Afternoon, again I apologise for not posting yesterday. I was at my friend’s wedding and had a lovely day. Everything was absolutely beautiful and it was lovely to spend the day with my friend’s on their special day. It was also good to catch up with some other friend’s I haven’t seen in a while.
Although I love living with my boyfriend, I now live a long way away from all my old school friends so it’s really lovely when I get to spend a good amount of time with them 🙂
Here’s a picture of the lovely bride and groom 🙂
It’s also Father’s Day today, so I hope all the Dads out there are having a lovely day. That’s another thing about living far away, I don’t get to spend Father’s days or birthdays with my family, I did see my Dad yesterday though and we are going out for dinner next weekend for his birthday 🙂 So I decided to make some chocolate star cakes with Raspberry frosting for my Dad as he loves both!
You will need:
> Small star shaped cake tins or any other small shaped tins you like 🙂
> Ice cream scoop
> Piping bag
> Large star nozzle
Chocolate cake recipe adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days
Makes 8 star cakes
Ingredients:
> 80g marg + extra for greasing
> 280g caster sugar
> 200g plain flour
> 40g cocoa powder
> 1tbsp baking powder
> 240ml milk – I used skimmed as I can’t have full fat
> 2 eggs
Ingredients for the Raspberry Buttercream:
> 400g icing sugar
> 150g unsalted butter, left at room temp for about 10 minutes
> 125g packet of fresh raspberries
Method:
> Preheat oven to 190 degrees C and grease the cake tins well! You do not want your cakes to stick and break when you’re getting them out!
> Place the butter, sugar, flour, cocoa and baking powder in a large bowl and beat together until it looks like breadcrumbs.
> Measure out the milk in a jug and place the eggs into the jug. Whisk together with a fork.
> Place the milk into the dry mixture and mix on a low speed until the mixture is incorporated. Then turn the mixer up to a medium speed and continue beating until you have a glossy, smooth mixture.
> Using an ice cream scoop place 2 scoops of batter into each star tin. This makes 8 and I only have 4 star cake tins so I cooked one batch and left the remaining mixture in the bowl covered with cling film.
> Place in the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes, until risen and a skewer comes out clean.
> Leave to cool for 10 minutes before taking out of the cake tins. Leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
> Wash and re-grease the tins. Mix the remaining batter briefly and then repeat the above steps. Leave to cool completely before frosting.
> I decided to pipe “Dad” in chocolate as a decoration for my cakes, but you don’t have to. I just melted down some milk chocolate then left it to cool for about 15 minutes before piping onto greaseproof paper. Make sure you let them set completely before trying to lift them off!
> Of course you can make any frosting you want, but I decided to make a fresh raspberry one. To make the frosting, place the butter and sugar in a large bowl and beat together until light and fluffy.
> Add in the raspberries and mix on a medium speed until light and fluffy, the raspberries will be puréed, but this is good as it means you can pipe it easily.
> Place the frosting in the piping bag and pipe around the edges of the star, keep going in until you have covered the cake. You could also just pipe a swirl in the middle of the cakes 🙂
> Place the garnish on top, standing up for a nice 3D effect 🙂
> Will keep in the fridge for up to 3 days.
Enjoy 🙂
