Chocolate Orange Mousse Cake (gluten & dairy free)

I hosted a gluten and dairy-free afternoon tea on the weekend and had fun trying a couple of new new recipes, which both came out really well. This is the first one - a really rich chocolate orange mousse cake from The gluten, wheat & dairy free cookbook by Nicola Graimes.

I used Nuttelex as my dairy-free butter substitute. It's lighter in colour than butter, but it actually tastes pretty good.

This is the cake base, all ready to bake, and already looking pretty appetising.


I used 70% dark Lindt chocolate to make the mousse. It felt a little wrong melting down such nice quality chocolate, but it's the most reliably dairy free chocolate I could source (that isn't just a gross chocolate substitute).


As I was separating my four eggs I was lamenting the fact that I would probably end up throwing the unused portion away. Then I read the recipe properly and found that I would actually be using both parts. Yay! Also, look how orange those yolks are.


Yet another orange ingredient - the rind of two oranges in fact.


Crazy things happen to eggs when you beat them for long enough. It's like magic. Here's before.


And after. Crazy.


After I'd mixed up the mousse and spread it across the cake base I put it in the fridge to set overnight. It probably didn't need that long, but that's how long it got. Here's the finished product, decorated with a sprinkling of extra orange rind.


The verdict from my husband was that this cake tasted like Jaffas. You wouldn't know it didn't have dairy or gluten in it if nobody told you. Unless you were very, very perceptive. What I mean to say is that it was really good.

Banana Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Icing

I've had a bag of mashed banana in the freezer for at least a couple of months and decided it was finally time to use it, but it still felt pretty extravagant to make banana cake again when banana prices have been so horrendous for so long.

I used a recipe that my friend Jenn gave me at my hen's high tea before I got married. It's super easy and all done in the food processor. It also happens to taste extremely good.

The plain white, large patty pans I've been using to date are an odd size and tend to crinkle up annoyingly. At the supermarket the other day I came to the delightful realisation that coloured cases are exactly the same price per unit AND it turns out that they're actually the right size for my muffin pan :)

It was my intention to decorate these with cream cheese icing in my usual fashion, but I had friends over and they were of the opinion that bright colours would be better.

I provided the cakes and the icing. They did the decorating.

And I was actually quite impressed by the results!

I usually just use one colour of icing because I figure it cuts down on the cleaning up afterwards, but the extra colour is pretty cool, I must say.

The colours reminded us of the food fight scene in Hook (the Peter Pan movie starring Robin Williams). See the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPCzjHPS--U

Here's one by Domestic Cowboy.

Banana cake is just as good as I remembered it being, and this time it was also rather pretty :)

Another birthday - Ferrero Rocher and more Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes

My dad's birthday happens to be the day after my husband's so I almost immediately had another chance to make cupcakes. I still had a half a bag of mini peanut butter cups remaining (see previous post) and also a 3/4 full box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates leftover from a dinner party (thanks Steph!). My decision of what to make was made extremely easy by the fact that I had already been eyeing off Willow Bird Baking's dual recipe for Ferrero Rocher and Reese's Cup Cupcakes. I was also keen to see what the cake base was like, as it's vegan - both egg and dairy free.

I'm not always this organised, but decided to get all my ingredients out and ready on the bench. This caused some unexpected amusement. Everything except the vanilla essence was Homebrand!

The cakes came out looking lovely and glossy, which I assume is down to the use of vegetable oil rather than butter.

When the cakes were cooled I hollowed out a hole in each, then filled half with Nutella (generic chocolate hazelnut spread would be fine too) and half with peanut butter cream (the icing leftover from my previous batch of Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes... but you could also use smooth peanut butter without anything added).

The "Perfectly Chocolate" icing that Julie suggests is beautifully dark and rich. I refrigerated the icing for a couple of hours after making it to give it a chance to firm up, and when I took it out it seemed quite stable... but that didn't last long. Once I started piping it onto the cakes it quickly warmed up from the heat in my hands and got extremely messy!

So let me add to Julie's warning - ice these as quickly as you can, get them straight into the fridge, and keep them in there for at least a couple of hours before serving. I was running low on time so these only had about an hour of cooling time before I transported them. They still tasted great but had a really soft, almost pudding-like consistency. They're much less flimsy if you can refrigerate them longer.

I made some mini cupcakes which I filled and iced, but didn't top with candy. You can see one below that I did top with a mini peanut butter cup (to help identify which mini cakes were peanut butter-filled, as opposed to Nutella-filled) - but I think it's a bit overkill, considering that there's almost as much candy as cake.

I think these are fantastic for a special occasion - a bit fancy - but they would also be delicious (+ more economical & fewer calories) without the chocolate toppers.

It was difficult to get a decent photo because we ate these before they were properly set, but you can at least see that they were lovely and moist - a very chocolatey little creation.

Peanut butter-filled mini cupcake.

These were the surviving cupcakes which went into the fridge and proved how much better the originals would have set, given the proper cooling time. Nevertheless they were a good batch indeed, and I'd be very happy to use the vegan cake base again.

Peanut Butter Cup Birthday Cupcakes

For my husband's birthday I wanted to make something a bit special. He's a peanut butter cup fan so I had a bit of a search around and found a recipe from Something Shiny for "Dangerously Decadent Cupcakes" (<-- link here) - a rich chocolate cake with creamy peanut butter icing and a mini peanut butter cup baked into the centre. I knew what I had to do!

Armed with my special ingredients (sour cream, heavy cream and a large packet of Reese's mini peanut butter cups!) I embarked on my somewhat messy adventure.

I was surprised that the batter looked so fluffy and light considering the fact that it was all hand-mixed, but I guess that's mostly the influence of the sour cream. I thought these were very cute with the chocolate pressed into the top, all ready for the oven.

Peanut butter cups successfully baked into the centres. I froze the chocolates before use (as suggested in most recipes like this one) but to be honest I don't know if it makes much difference to the end result. You'd have to try using them un-frozen to find out. (Go on, I dare you.)

Time to make the icing, and my bench mixer finally came out. The initial mix of peanut butter, unsalted butter and icing sugar was pretty crumbly, but it became much more icing-like once the cream went in.

With the creamy, peanut buttery icing complete, I set my trusty Wilton 1M star tip to work.

You may notice that I've omitted the chocolate coating that Something Shiny used in the original recipe - I decided that the cupcakes were sufficiently decadent just like this!

I iced these the night before they were to be consumed and was a little concerned about how the cream in the icing would fare, so kept them in the fridge overnight, then took them out a couple of hours before they were to be eaten. They were still slightly cool, which made them nice and firm to bite into.

My only regret was that I didn't make more!

Lemon Diva Cupcakes

My mother-in-law very kindly gave me a copy of Julie Goodwin's "Our Family Table." Julie was the winner of the 1st Australian Masterchef series, and the book is put together really nicely.

I tried out her Lemon Diva Cupcake Recipe (<-- link here), but only had 2 lemons on hand so that's all I used (rather than the suggested 3).

I was making these for church supper so I opted for mini-cupcakes and ended up with about 26.

I added some extra lemon juice to the icing to try and make up for less lemon in the batter, but not sure it made much difference except making the icing less firm.

These weren't my favourite cupcakes, but they still disappeared quickly. If I bake them again I'll make sure I have enough lemons first.

Peach cobbler cupcakes

Have I mentioned how much I love Willow Bird Baking? Julie, who writes it, encourages fun and creativity in the kitchen and has a fantastic recipe index going!

This time around I decided to try Peach Cobbler Cupcakes (<-- link here). I have a soft spot for fruit and also enjoy streusel (ie. crumbly topping) so these sounded pretty good indeed. The batter started out looking a bit gross - buttermilk and peach syrup just don't look pretty when you mix them together!

But, as expected, things soon improved.

I put about 5 chunks of peach into each cake but next time I think I'd try using enough to cover the whole middle layer of streusel and make a bigger deal of the peach.

The fruit is covered over with another layer of batter and streusel. (They're not the quickest cakes to assemble, but it's a tasty combination.)

And then baked.

I just made a quarter batch of cream cheese icing (see previous posts for recipe adapted from Bakerella) to put a small swirl on each cupcake.

But even a quarter batch was too much. I got a bit carried away and over-iced a few - proving, once again, that less really is more.

These were lovely and moist, and the splashes of peach syrup in the batter and icing were a nice touch.