royal wedding miracle cake

Ingredients: chocolate, biscuits, butter, egg, mascarpone, sugar

No-bake cake as requested by prince william for his groom cake. The recipe calls for mcvities rich tea biscuits, which are hard to find outside of england. I used arnott's marie biscuits, which created a small royal wedding miracle when a crown appeared on the finished cake, prior to being covered with ganache icing.

click here to see the recipe from the royal horse's mouth

                This is a delicious cake, whose beauty lies in its simplicity. There is lot of talk on the internets that mcvities digestives would be a better choice of biscuit. I disagree. Plain biscuits are what makes the chocolate stand out. I added some mascarpone to the chocolate mix and reduced the amount of icing. There is some debate whether the icing is necessary at all. It was a pity to cover up the beautiful crown shapes on the top of the cake, that's for sure.

apricot custard tart

Ingredients: apricots, eggs, almonds, vanilla essence, almond essence, sugar, butter, flour, salt

Simple custard tart with lots of apricots. It helps to macerate the apricots in caster sugar overnight.

                                      

pink cupcakes

Ingredients: mascarpone, icing sugar, red colouring, eggs, cake flour, caster sugar, natural vanilla essence, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar, salt

Is there anything simpler and more delectable than a freshly made cupcake with pink icing? Especially good bite size. Small is beautiful... 

gugelhupf

Ingredients: butter, eggs, milk, yeast, flour, raisins, kirsch, sugar, salt

This is the third in the xmas trio of cakes, Traditional fare which needs its own baking container, but is well worth the trouble, especially if the raisins are allowed to seep in kirsch overnight.

redcurrant chocolate cake

Ingredients: redcurrants, chocolate, butter, cocoa powder, eggs, sour cream, flour, ground hazelnuts, baking powder, sugar, salt

This cake was created around xmas, hence the holly motif. Baking powder is made prior to baking with 1 part cream of tartar to 2 parts baking soda.

strawberry tart

Ingredients: strawberries, cream, mascarpone, vanilla, puff pastry, sugar

This a tart I made for my 2nd son's 1st birthday. I macerated the strawberries in sugar for a couple of days and used the resulting strawberry juice to spruce up the whipped cream/mascarpone mixture. The puff pastry is baked blind, and sprinkled with sugar to aid colour and flavour.

12 apostles tart

Ingredients: blueberries, quark, creme fraiche, eggs, flour, butter, natural vanilla essence, sugar, salt

This was a tart made for christmas, thus the name. The 12 apostles are represented by the 12 fresh blueberries, rising above the frozen blueberry jam. The custard has quark and creme fraiche in it, making it somewhat cheesecakey. The base is basic short crumb.