Halloween mallows and pretzels, not at all scary

Halloween isn't my favourite holiday - simply because I'm a bit of a wuss and don't like scary things.  In case you hadn't realised by now, I'm a hearts and flowers kind of girl, so with all the ghouls and ghosts and spiders around about now, I'm not in my element!  We have a DVD in the house that the girls really enjoy, called ummm, gosh, I can't recall what is called just now, (will add in the name when it comes to me.  Oh, I remember!  It's called Hocus Pocus) and it's about Halloween and that's fun, but hey ho.

So, how does Becca do Halloween in a non-scary way then?  Lucky you, you're about to find out...  I really like the crunchy salty and sweet contrast within chocolate covered pretzels, and had some black candy melts in the house.  Why, you ask?  Why indeed.  I simply couldn't recall what on earth I could have bought them for - I mean, me and black decorations?  It just doesn't make sense.  So anyway, I had these black candy melts just sitting around, plus some orange ones (I know, that doesn't look like a coincidence, but it was - honest!) so got to work.

A little bit of time and a lot of fun later, we had double-dipped marshmallows and pretzels with halloween sprinkles!  These were great fun to make, and so much more fun to eat!

 Mmm, thick chocolate on crunchy salty pretzels...

And how fun are marshmallows?  With chocolate and sprinkles, why yes thank you!

4th of July is red, white and blue fun!

We're not American.  Don't have any specific ties with America - though there is an Uncle living in Tacoma. WA and a good friend living in NYC, and another good friend who used to live here in Dundee but is now back in VA I think.  And I follow a few American bakers, like Bakerella, The Girl who ate Everything,  Created by Diane, Pint Sized Baker, Rose Bakes and so on .  And I am part of an American baking group on Facebook, so see a lot of American style cakes and 4th of July ideas in my Facebook newsfeed and in the emails I receive to my baking/work email address.

So actually, America does seem to feature quite heavily, hmmm.  Anyway, a lot of great red, white and blue ideas have come my way recently, some trickier than others, and I fancied trying my hand at some of them.  These looked fun and easy, and the girls wanted to help with some of it too.  They would have helped with all of it, but it was warm and sunny outside and they were desperate to try out the new Slip 'n Slide that we'd bought last weekend.  

Don't know what this is?  Oh, you're missing out!  My siblings and I had a yellow one when we were growing up and used it loads!  Mind you, we did grow up in Melbourne, Australia, where they know how to do Summer.  Months of daily temperatures from 25-40c and sun - glorious warm, yellow sun!  Ahh, takes me back, ha ha.   Anyway, it's a plastic rectangle mat that goes on the grass and it has a tube through the middle of the mat that is poked with holes.  You attach the garden hose to the mouth of this tube and water sprays over the mat, through the holes and kids run up to it then slide along it on their tummies.  Make sense?  Kids love them!!

So, getting back to the baking.  I decided to go for two things I'd seen on my newsfeed from Facebook...  A variation on this Red, White and Blue Cookie Bark and some patriotic Marshmallow treats.  What fun they were to do, and easy too!  And oh my gosh, I had a sneaky taste of the bark - it is amazing!!!  We decided that adding Oreo's would be too much, and what a tasty decision that was.  The salt and crunch of the pretzels goes really well with the sweetness of the white chocolate.

You lay out the pretzels underneath (and Oreo's, if you're going to use them), then add the melted white chocolate over the top.

Then you carefully, or otherwise, place your selection of red and blue M & M's over the top before the chocolate sets.  I didn't think we'd have enough chocolate M & M's so used the crispy ones too.  Mmm, great idea methinks.

 Here's the finished product, all ready for the fridge.

 And here it is ready to eat, cracked into pieces for ease of nibbling.  Mmmm...

For the marshmallow treats, we even had real American wax paper - oooh!

These were a bit fiddly to do, but easy enough.  Although by the time I got around to them, the girls had had their hair-washed and gone to bed.

So they'll be a lovely surprise for them, and our friends coming to play after lunch, for tomorrow! 

 And here's wee funny for you.  Sadly, it's not that funny for me, ha ha

The Rocky Road melted

We love Rocky Road chez Becca.  It's crisp, crunchy, chocolatey and chewy - as my friend Sheila would say, what's not to love?  Incidentally, Sheila isn't Australian.  Just in case you were wondering.

Normally, you add the marshmallows at the last moment, give them a twirl into the chocolate mixture then pour the whole lot out into the tray to set.  But this time I was using pink and white mini marshmallows and they melted really quickly, whilst I was twirling and swirling them through the mix!  I had no way to rescue them, and thought - what the heck, I may as well go for pretty rather than stylish here...

So I added on pink Smarties, covered the whole lot in the last of our Colourburst Candy Melts and gave it all a good dose of pink fairy dust, oops, I mean edible glitter.  Et viola, treats for us at Becca Towers.  Mmmm...

Mr Becca's birthday treat, Millionaire's Shortbread

Mr Becca is not mad-keen on dessert, as a menu option.  He prefers savoury food, and will almost invariably have a starter and then not always be hungry for a dessert after his main course.  He likes them super-sweet so doesn't like dark chocolate with anything, because it's too bitter.  Every once in a while I make something that by chance he loves, but that I can't eat because it's too sweet.

I remember once,  long ago, we went out for a meal on my work (I won the meal as a reward for getting a customer satisfaction survery score of 100%) and he wasn't hungry enough for a dessert so we ordered two anyway.  For me.

Anyway, this year for his birthday I didn't want to make a cake ( like last year's butterscotch one, or the butterscotch one of the year before) a) because I wasn't confident I could find yet another butterscotch cake recipe that he'd like and b) because, quite honestly, he simply wouldn't eat a whole cake and thus make it worthwhile.  But then I remembered how much he likes Millionaire's Shortbread, and that I'd never made it successfully.  For those of you who don't know, or who know it by a different name, it's a 3 layer traybake of shortbread on the base, caramel in the middle and chocolate on the top.  I had made this once before, years ago, and not lined the tin.  I maintain that the recipe never told me to, but who knows now?  Suffice it to say, I definitely lined the tray this time.  

Knowing how much he didn't like dark chocolate, I only used milk.  Then for the marble effect, I used some Wilton Candy Melts in white colourburst brights - which have coloured sprinkles throughout them.

I was really pleased with the marbling effect, but felt it needed a little something extra.  So I marbled in a heart, using some red candy melts and matching sparkle.  Now just to hope it dried up exactly like that...

Phew, it did!!! 

I'm very happy to report that he loved it - the way it looked and the fact that I'd made it for him instead of a cake.  And the taste?

Well, it was rich and caramelly and crumbly and chocolatey.  How do you think that would taste?!  It was absolutely delicious!  But for future reference, he felt the chocolate layer was too thick, and I felt the base layer was too crumbly.  So I'll try it again at some stage, but with a different recipe.  Happy Birthday Darling!

A strangely busy afternoon - the sweet side

We've had a little run of ill health at Becca Towers for some reason.  I had a very sore stomach for no real reason all day Sunday so lay on the couch or took a nap or two during the day.  The rest of the Team were fine, so they went off ice-skating without me.  Then whilst there, Mr Becca fell over and twisted his ankle.  And had to take a day off work, and nearly made us visit A&E (Casualty) but felt it was more likely to be sprained than fractured.  Then last night the girls had trouble sleeping due to head colds, with Mini-1 also waking up crying with ear pain.  I kept them both off school today and got an early morning doctor's appointment for her, and she was duly prescribed banana-tasting (but horrible regardless) anti-biotics for the suspected infection.  Nice, not.  So a sofa, dressing gowns and dvd's day for them.

Preferring to a) keep out of their way so I didn't get ill and b) having housework to get on with, I spent some alone time in the Kitchen.  And instead of making mini cupcakes for their end-of-term class parties, I opted for chocolate dipped pretzels (again).  Though this time, I went for sticks rather than twirls, and a variation on the colouring so it looked less Italian.

The Jackson Pollock-esqe throwing about of melted candy melts was fun.  Do you think these ones look a bit more Christmas-sy??

I had more of the red and green chocolate leftover, so whipped up a quick batch of peppermint bark, in milk chocolate this time.  More Jackson Pollock type manoeuvres, then the girls loved eating the little bit of leftover vanilla-flavoured coloured chocolate at the end.

This time I not only included the crushed candy canes, but also some red sanding sugar and some red and green little cupcake sprinkles.

Chocolate-covered pretzels? Sounds great

I had seen chocolate covered pretzels in my American cake group (online), and loved the idea of salty and sweet mixed together.  In fact, I think I may well have eaten some - perhaps bought in a small bag for a high price from somewhere like Marks & Spencer or the like...

Anyway, I was really keen to try them out, and bought some red and green Wilton Candy Melts especially, from my local Hobbycraft store, as they have the best price.  And lots of white chocolate too.  Can you see where I'm going with this?  Red, green, white... yep, Christmas was the look I was going for.  We even had red sanding sugar and white sanding sugar to give a little bit of sparkle to the edges.  I knew this would be an easy one to do with the girls, and had lovely images in my mind of a new Christmas tradition at Becca Towers.  They were really keen to get started too...

We did the white chocolate dip first, laying  them out on a tray covered in baking paper.  They weren't hardening quickly enough for the girls, so I popped the tray in the freezer to speed up the process.

We then went on to the coloured chocolate dipping.  You'll notice at this point how much the girls were involved.  I mean, obviously if it had just been me dipping the pretzels, the chocolate wouldn't have clumped so much in areas.  It would have had a much cleaner, neater appearance.  Yeah, right.  ;)

Before the final colour of chocolate dried, many were dipped in the sprinkles.  That was probably the girls' favourite part - apart from eating them of course!  Now, do you think they look Christmassy?  Or Italian?  

 I may need to source some red, white and green hundreds and thousands for next time...

Cake pops - discuss...

Do you love or hate cake pops?  I'm asking you as both a baker and an eater...  I love the way they look, and do like eating them, but what a nuisance they are to make!  I have a lovely customer, who has been very kind and ordered from me quite a few times (thank you S) and likes cake pops.  And is very kind to like mine.  No, honestly!  I don't have a cake pop machine, so they aren't perfectly round.  And unlike my friend Katie, of Dainty Katie Cakes (aren't they just the most gorgeous things you have ever seen??!), I don't make cake pops often enough to become good at them.

Now, before you suggest the inevitable and tell me to make them more often, I don't have the desire to do so.  I know, that may sound lazy, but despite having both my gorgeous Mini's at school fulltime now, I do find that I can fill my days adequately without resorting to baking them just for practice.  Because, let's face it, Becca Towers does not need more calories! ha ha

Anyway, I digress.  The customer in question, S, wanted to give her colleagues a treat on her last day on placement with them, and felt cake pops were the way to go.

So, they're not bad to start with.  But after setting, and dunking in Candy Melts they don't look quite so round.  Still bright, colourful, tasty and fun - but not round.

 

Or covered particularly smoothly for that matter.  But the customer loved them, and that's what counts.  She even got a couple extra as a loyalty bonus (though they were ones that I deemed not good enough for sale).  Oh, and both Mini-1 and Mini-2 were impressed...

So took these messy monsters in to school the next day to share - anyone for cake balls?!  haha

 

Marshmallow Top Hats are just the cutest thing.

Marshmallow top hats are what it's called when you get a lovely fat marshmallow, dip it in chocolate then sprinkle it with edible coloured shapes.  They're a kids thing, as they're so easy to make that kids can make them by themselves, or with a bit of adult supervision.  Plus kids love to eat them!

Mini-2 is nearing the end of her pre-school nursery (kindergarten) year and they wanted to hold a Cake and Candy stall to help raise money to buy in some live chicks so the kids could watch them turn into bigger chickens and then hens.  But they took too long to get organised and there were a couple of animal regulations that wouldn't be fulfilled, so the idea was to raise the money to get an animal handler to visit both morning and afternoon nursery sessions, with a selection of larger insects and animals,  instead.  We were busy at Becca Towers, what with the anniversary cake, the birthday cakes, and customer orders that we didn't have much time spare to bake.  Then I rememberd top hats from other children's parties and knew we'd have time for them...

We had some green Candy Melts that we'd been waiting to use for some time, and I thought this would be a fun way to do so.  We followed the pack instructions and dropped a little into each petit four case. 

Then we had to quickly dip the marshmallow into position before the melted chocolate started to harden. We popped them in the fridge to firm up and slowly worked our way through 6 dozen marshmallows, eek!  We ran out of green coloured chocolate part-way through, so changed to white chocolate...

We chose a selection of all our lovely edible sprinkle shapes and colours and did a little bowlful at a time.  We chose to put chocolate on the top then dip them upside down into the bowl, rather than drizzle sprinkles from the bowl onto the marshmallow (much more dexterity needed, thus more potential for mess, for the latter method).  So some of them are a little smeared looking (those were Mini-2's ones, honest!), but they would all taste great.

And here's a selection of the finished products - so much fun, to look at, to make and to eat!  Enjoy.

Candy melts aren't always a good idea...

One of the companies here makes flavoured and coloured candy melts (Silver Spoon, but I couldn't find the product on their website?), so the pink ones are strawberry.  When I bought them, I had thought this was a good idea.  Not so much now.

We had Maltesers to use up, so I made Malteser Slice.  And thought it would be fun to use the pink chocolate on top, rather than the usual white chocolate.  Please, don't try this at home.  Apart from the melts not actually melting as well as normal chocolate does in a bain-marie, it really didn't taste right having strawberry flavoured chocolate on your Malteser Slice.  Looked good, but did not taste good.  Ah well, that's what experimenting is all about really, isn't it?

Can you have too much chocolate?

I have a couple of 7th birthday cakes planned for the latter part of this week, but today while Mini-2 and I were out doing top-up shopping at the supermarket (we shop weekly, and somtimes need top-up bits elsewhere and we have a killer tactic to blitz it. She bleeps, I bag at the self-service checkouts) we came across a superb bargain.  Very low priced short-dated Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bars, mmm.  Mini-2 is learning my money-saving ways, so wanted to buy 'lots and lots, maybe 5' bars, but I reasonably figured we would use a few less than that in the time we had available, simply because if we made lots of dark chocolate treats - we'd need to eat them all!  And that's definitely not in line with the Scottish Government Healthy Eating Initiative  ;) 

Thinking quickly, I figured we could happily use 200-odd grams so we bought a few and headed home.  Mini-2 took some time out with the 'one-eyed babysitter' (television, ha ha) and I went to check my brain and books for inspiration.  I landed upon one my good friend C gave me as a birthday gift, by the Australian equivalent of Nigella Lawson I believe, Donna Hay.  There were lots and lots of great recipes in there, but I chose the Chocolate Mud Cake for use of chocolate and ease of preparation.

This was very solid, and oddly not that rich to me.  And I felt it needed more than just the simple cocoa powder dusting recommended in the book.   Perhaps a choc ganache, or buttercream would have been better.  Knowing there was far too much for us girls to eat, I offered some of it to some friends, and one tried hers hot.  So I did too, with a drizzle of single cream.  Mmmm, yummy.

Also tonight I wanted to try moulding chocolate, or rather candy melts. I'd seen a YouTube video or one on Wilton (sorry, no link just now as I simply can't recal which one I saw) and had had some success with the last lot of candy melts.  However, I didn't have any moulds, only the best bits of a Christmas Advent calendar. 

As you can see from the photo above, they weren't all nicely shaped, but they were quick and easy to do - simply gently microwave the melts (agan with a bit of vegetable shortening), pour into the mould then refridgerate for 20 minutes or more.  Et voila! 

 

Happy birthday Mini-1

Our darling Mini-1 was born 7 years ago today, and - as is our wont at Becca Bakes - we intended to make a fuss.  She had some specific cake requests though - it had to be vanilla, and have vanilla icing, be green and perhaps also yellow, turquoise, red and pink.  Oh, and she wanted one in a number 7 shape and one round, and some mini-Smarties on the shaped cake.  And something to do with Moshi Monsters too please Mum?!  I duly noted all this down, and got my thinking cap on.

Was it to be covered in fondant, or buttercream?  Was I going to make my life easier and mark out the number 7 in the actual Smarties themselves on a cake, or actually try to shape one?  Was I going to layer the cake and thus try to get in some more colours?  Was I going to buy a Moshi Monster cake topper and just pop it on top?  And so on and so forth.  In the end, I decided to go for two differently coloured layers, with red jam in the middle, green buttercream icing all around and cut the cake into a number 7.  I know that you can buy shaped tins, and some places actually hire them out (though no idea where those places are) but I had a book that I received for my last birthday that gave hints on how to bake and cut.

I knew I would need time for the cakes to cool before I could assemble and decorate them, so had to start baking in the afternoon.  Luckily, Mini-1 wasn't too interested to see what I was doing (unlike Mini-2, who loves to help) so she didn't really notice the first yellow or the second green cakes cooling near the oven later on.  Phew!

I know they're not pretty, but keep reading...  Next up, after slicing off the rounded tops to make them flat for layering, was to mix up the buttercream to get it all green.  As you can see, it's also not pretty, but I'm getting there, promise!

Then on to the task of separating out the mini Smarties.  Honestly, the things we do for our kids - they really won't know how much we love them, until they have kids of their own!

And finally to the finished product, ta da!

The little figurine at the bottom of the cake is a Moshi Monster that she likes, called Cali.  I bought it off eBay because none of the images we found for cake toppers were attractive.

Here we see Mini-1 herself with her eyes covered so that I could get the cake onto the plate, place in the figurine and candle, and bring out the cake pops.  The silly girl had pressed too hard when covering her eyes, and couldn't see straight when she first took her hands away.  She absolutely loved the cake and pops though  :)

Here are the cake pops.  As with last time, they're not fabulously round, or even particularly spherical.  But they taste better this time because I used some cream cheese to help mould them, rather than all icing.  And the girls couldn't eat them fast enough, result.