• 2 Timtams
• Blueberries
• Strawberries
• Thickened cream (heavy cream/whatever the type of cream you generally eat with cake is called in your country, something with at least 35%+ fat)
• Sprinkles
• Fruitcake (not really needed but I had some spare to use up)

Now I see a lot of people making these fancy looking desserts in fancy looking wine glasses etc. I love how pretty they look but I also hate eating out of them because it’s hard to get the last bits out and the ones we have are small compared to regular glasses so I say screw prettiness, go with the biggest cup you have >:D

Left: Very pretty. Right: Realistic of how much I want to eat chocolate.

So this is the simplest concept ever: layering!

Stick a spoon full of fruitcake in the glass and pour a spoon of cream on it. If you’re not using fruitcake you can substitute with regular sponge cake or more chocolate biscuits.

Add some blueberries and chopped strawberries.

Roughly chop the Timtams and add some.

More cream!

Continue layering deliciousness until you get to the top.

Lastly add the sprinkles and enjoy!

eat while watching crappy movies or playing video games.

Took around 5 min to make and as the cream melts into the Timtams it forms the most delicious mush in the universe. *craving again*

Food Friday is as healthy as ever ;) Next week I’m going to share my budget recipes, money is tight here at the moment so we’ve been cooking frugally. Sometimes the best comfort food recipes are the cheapest! ^_^

You need:

• Chocolate
• Microwave
• Sprinkles/decorations/icing
• Disposable spoons
• Thickened cream

Step one, get chocolate.

Step two, try not to eat chocolate.

Step three, buy more chocolate.

Break the chocolate into small pieces in a bowl.

If you’re really into it you could use a double boiler system to melt the chocolate but like I said, I’m lazy. I used the microwave. Put it in for 15sec at a time until it’s around 2/3rds melted.

Let the hot bowl melt it the rest of the way, this way you won’t burn it.

To turn it to ganache you need thickened cream.

Add a spoon full…

Mix it very thoroughly, it looks pretty gross.

Keep mixing until it gets much darker and really shiny. At this point you’re forgiven if you want to eat a few spoon fulls ;P

Grab yourself some pretty spoons…

And put the ganache in! If you want to be anal about it you could pipe it in but that just dirties something else.

Once they’ve cooled down a bit you can decorate them. I used left overs from the last lot so I added a bunch of sprinkles.

And piped a heart and a V so it’s like saying “Love Violet”.

Let them cool in the fridge and you’ve got some delicious spoons. That’s it! These are great to take to parties or as gifts etc.

So now you just have to give them to your friend… yeah of course… definitely don’t just eat them all. I mean that would mean you have pretty much no self control huh? Oh… right.

Yeah, sorry friends who I said would get these.

• Chocolate block
• Icing powder
• Water
• Peppermint essence
• Sprinkles
• Mini marshmallows
• Food colouring
• Freezer bag

Now you need to cut a piece of chocolate to use as the canvas. If you’re like me you probably cheaped out and bought the home brand chocolate so don’t expect too much quality-wise ;)

Decide how much chocolate you will use based on how much you love the person you’re giving it to. I’m giving mine to James… this much?

Hell no I’m not giving away that much chocolate! Realistic:

I love him but I also love chocolate! Unrepentant!

Pour the icing into a corner of the freezer bag.

Snip a tiny corner off so it becomes a make shift piping bag… or you could just use a real one.

Now pipe on a pretty design :D I wrote “James” and drew a heart… unfortunately I was a little over ambitious with the S so it looks more like “Jimmy”…

…then it melted a bit so it looked more like Jsmnay.

I piped around the outside too as a border.

While the icing is still wet add sprinkles all over it.

And brush off any extras.

He loves little marshmallows so using some more icing like glue I made a border of them.

Taadaa…

And because it already looked pretty hilarious I added some more icing on top. I’m deleting all of the inappropriate comments James keeps trying to add in here about what it really looks like.

So stick it in the fridge to set and add a cute bag!

Present for you!

Taaadaaaa! I love you Jsmnay! Even if sometimes I’m not sure why…

-_-’

So I’m sure if you were better at baking/decorating you would be able to draw something actually cute on there! And hopefully the person you give yours to won’t be silly enough to try and eat the cute bag. Happy Food Friday!

• Jug
• Caster sugar (I use about half a cup for this size jug because James likes it really sweet)
• Kettle
• Loose leaf tea
• Tea strainer-dunking-thingy-that-I-can’t-remember-the-name-of
• Tongs

Fill up your kettle and boil it.

Make sure to store tea in an air tight container so it lasts longer.

For the size jug I’m using I needed two of the tea dunking things with around 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of tea in each.

You shouldn’t fill them too full otherwise the tea won’t have room to move around and you won’t get a full flavour.

Once the kettle boils add the plungers and the water to the jug.

You should be able to see the colour change very soon, use your tongs to give everything a stir.

Now herein lies a very important lesson… when you go to refill your glass jug with new tea after it’s been in the fridge for days don’t pour boiling water straight into it! Glass (especially crappy glass from a $2 store) can’t take sudden temperature changes and will crack. Then you will have super hot water all over your bench which is very irritating to clean up and also then you have to have an internal debate on whether it’s worth it to catch a tram all the way to the junk store and replace the jug to continue with the tutorial… it’s not pretty, it looks something like this in fact!

So after deciding you are too lazy to go buy a replacement jug and digging around under your bench to find a smaller one and remaking it all up to this point… leave everything to cool for around 10 minutes.

Then it’s time to add in your sugar. We like a huge amount of sugar (like probably 1/4 of a cup for the big glass jug above or 1/8th of a cup for the small pyrex one below) but the first time you make this I would suggest measuring and adding a bit at a time until you’ve got a flavour you like. Ours tastes kind of like un-set jelly XD

Now stir it all together so the sugar dissolves and remove the tea strainers. Leave it out on the bench for a couple of hours until it’s room temperature then pop in the fridge over night. The next day you will have some pretty delicious tea ready and waiting to go :D

Do you guys have a favorite flavour of tea? I love strawberries and cream for the ice tea and at the moment my favorite hot tea is good old English Breakfast :D

• 4 apples
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• Lemon juice
• 1/3 cup plain flour
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• Puff Pastry (I’m using store bought because I’m lazy but I’m sure it would taste much better with home made!)

What you need, utilities:

• Mixing bowl
• Spoon for mixing
• Measuring cups
• 4x heart shaped silicon cake tins (obviously you can do it in something else XD)

First thing will be to wash and cut up your apples, remove all the skin and chop them into fairly small pieces. Set them to the side. Preheat your oven to around 190 Degrees Celsius.

In a mixing bowl put a couple of squirts of lemon juice.

Add in the white sugar…

And the brown sugar…

And the flour ^_^

Now add the Cinnamon, I use a lot (like maybe 2 teaspoons) because James loves it. I personally can’t stand cinnamon but there are so many other flavours in this that it’s tolerable ^_^

Next add a couple of shakes of Nutmeg, maybe 1/2 as much as the Cinnamon you put in.

Mix it all together!

Add in the apple pieces and mix it again. The apples should be coated in the sugary substance. It looks dry now but once the apples sit while you make the pastry cups it will go all liquidy and sticky from the apple’s juices.

Clean your pie moulds and if you’re making pastry from scratch do that now and roll it out.

If you’re using the frozen pastry then make sure it’s thawed.

Drape it over the mould and press in to place. Pleat the sides so you can cover the base properly:

You should have something like this:

Cut off the extra leaving around 1cm around the edges and pop in the filling!

I decided to be fancy and make lattice tops. This is achieved by weaving strips of pastry together. If you’re doing this then cut a bunch of 1cm strips of pastry and start by making an X with 2.

Build it slowly by adding 2 more in each direction, this way you can weave them all very easily without disturbing too much.

Continue until the whole thing is covered…

You should get something like this:

Cut off the extra and pinch around the edges to seal it…

Taaadaa!

Repeat with the rest of them!

Ok one more pie-cam-whoring photo because I spent so damn long making them XD

Now put them into the oven! After 20 minutes check on them and make sure nothing is on fire then leave for another 20 minutes.

When you’re already hungry this seems like hours though -_-’

Once you can see liquid boiling through the tops and the pastry is golden they are ready! Woo!

Take them out and leave them to cool for a bit. I like to cool them on the bottom too so they don’t get soggy as I don’t have a cooling rack.

And that’s it! Enjoy and eat! James likes to add icecream but I don’t really like icecream so I eat them plain.

Super yummy :D

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and do let me know if you give it a try! Would you guys like me to post other flavour variations I make too? Like with the different fruits?

Now it’s time to make the cake mix :D Depending on your cake mix the ingredients might be different but this is how I do it… Packet mix in the bowl!

This cake requires 3 different layers, 2 of plain butter cake and 1 of my version of red velvet cake. We’ll make the red velvet version first.

Add an egg! Eggs look so gross XD

Add in the butter milk, you should use however much milk the packet mix says to, mine said 3/4 of a cup. For the other layers you should use plain milk.

Mix it all together

And then beat it to death! It should be nice and fluffy ^_^

Once it’s fluffy add 3 table spoons of Milo and beat it in.

Now add some red food colouring, this is why it’s called red velvet cake and it makes for a really pretty effect when it’s finished.

Pour it out into your cake tin, I use a silicone one because it’s easy to get the cake out of.

Put it in the oven until it’s cooked all through :D

Turn it out onto a rack to cool and make the other 2 layers.

The other two layers should not have milo, food colouring or butter milk in them. They should just be plain old butter cake following the directions.

If your cake breaks when you turn it out, just use some icing and glue it back together :)

Once your 3 layers have all cooled down it’s time to cut the tops off them. The reason you cut the top off is so you can get a nice flat cake and it doesn’t look like a gigantic lump on top ^_^ It’s much easier to ice a flat cake! So get a knife and poke it in the side towards the middle and start working your way around. Keep going until you’ve done the full circle. Use the knife to lift the top off (and eat it because by now you’ve spent forever staring at cakes bloody baking and you’re probably hungry).

Once you have 3 flat layers get some icing (I’m using Betty Crocker) and cover the top of the red layer/

Once it’s covered use the plate you had it on to flip it onto one of the plain layers.

Cover the top of the red one again and flip the last layer on to it. This is what you should end up with!

Cover the entire thing with icing ^_^

One for the cake, one for the cook!

Now get your fondant icing and roll it on the bench top. If it’s too hard pop it in the microwave for 10 seconds, if it’s too sticky dust it with icing sugar. Once you’ve rolled it out, drape it over the whole cake. It should end up something like this… You can see that I’ve repaired a crack by putting water on my finger and rubbing it. It’s going to be covered in icing so no one will ever notice!

Now it’s time to decorate! Make some royal icing in the colour of your choice, mine is pink! Put it into a piping bag and start decorating! Ok mine isn’t very even but this was my first time using a piping bag so it’s ok!

I tried to make it very decorative, there is a big heart on top, scalloping on the outside and lots of little bumpy bits. Whatever you do as long as you put effort in everyone will enjoy it!

Now put it in the fridge to cool and it’s time to learn how to make icing roses :D Grab some fondant icing and colour it pink with food dye. You do this by putting a tiny amount on and kneading it until it’s pink. Make sure to do this on a surface that you can clean easily, food dye will stick to EVERYTHING. Maybe wear gloves, look at my hands, they’re all red XD

So let’s start making a rose! Pinch off a little bit of icing and roll it in a ball.

With your finger squish one side of the ball…

Pick it up and roll the squished end in on itself like the photo below. You should make a bunch more squished balls, these are the petals.

Roll the second petal onto the first but on the opposite side like below:

Keep making petals and placing them around the part you’ve already made. You should over lap the next petal slightly with the one you’ve just done.

As you go you should use your finger to push the petals out a bit.

Once you think you have enough petals roll the bottom of the rose together with your fingers so it’s a bit rounded.

Make a bunch of them :D This is what you should end up with!

Now bring out your cake from the fridge. Mix up a bit of royal icing and colour it green.

I put a bunch of green icing in the middle of the heart and placed the flowers on top.

I make a lot of flowers in different sizes so….

…I can shape them into a heart too!

Yay! Finished :D

NOM NOM NOM!

Delicious cake…

I think the flowers really make the cake… and they are delicious too ^_^

And the best bit… When you cut it open it looks even prettier!

How pretty is it? And the red velvet is delicious!

Now serve with thickened cream…

And enjoy!

So there you have it, it’s delicious! What do you guys think? What’s your favorite type of cake? Let me know if you make your own epic cake!