Christmas pudding cakepops

It’s December so I can legitimately start pushing Christmas recipes at you. Here’s one that was featured in last week's Journal. If you’d like to read my life story and enjoy some photos that reduced my friends to tears of laughter, go to page 53 of this.   

Thanks to Iain Buist at Propix Photography for this image

To make 12 Christmas pudding cakepops you will need:

300g chocolate cake crumbs

about 60g chocolate buttercream (make this by beating together 20g butter, 40g icing sugar and 10g melted dark chocolate)

Chocolate for dipping e.g. Wilton candy melts, Silver Spoon chocolate buttons or Callebaut callets. If you’re using a normal off-the-shelf chocolate bar, grate it finely to help it melt. For Christmas puddings you will need about 150g of milk chocolate and 25g white chocolate.

Green and red florist paste and PME holly leaf cutter OR some ready made holly sprinkles

Cake board or other flat non-stick surface

Lollipop sticks

Start by making 24 little holly leaves and berries. Roll out the green florist paste finely and cut out a little leaf. Push the plunger to add veins on the leaf and leave this to dry. The PME holly leaf cutter is ideal and is sold in cake decorating shops. I got mine at Stangers Cookshop in Jesmond.

Roll the red florist paste into tiny little balls and leave these to dry. If you don’t have florist paste you can use marzipan or ready to roll icing and use food dye to colour it.

The other thing Stangers sell is ready-made holly sprinkles which are perfect and will save you the bother of the previous two paragraphs.

Now start making the cake pops. Mix the cake crumbs and the buttercream until the mixture forms a solid ball like pastry. Add the cake crumbs and buttercream together bit by bit so you can stop the mix from being too dry or too wet. 

Weigh out a 30g piece of the mix and roll it into a smooth ball, placing it onto the cake board. Repeat until all the mixture is used and you have a dozen little balls.

With a lollipop stick, make a hole no more than halfway into the ball. Don't push the stick right through the ball or you have hugely increased its chances of sliding off the stick.

Melt 20g of the milk chocolate. Dip the sticks into this and insert into the holes. This will help the cakepop to stay on the stick. Put the balls into the freezer for 20 minutes until firm but not frozen.

When the 20 minutes are nearly up, start melting the rest of the chocolate very gently in a small deep plastic bowl in the microwave (30% power for 30 secs at a time, stirring each time). Once the chocolate is all melted, it should be barely warm to the touch and pour in a sheet.

Remove the cakepops from the freezer. Take one and dip it into the chocolate. Turn it slowly, so that the chocolate covers a centimetre onto the stick, sealing the cake completely. The butter in the cake will fight to get out; by trapping it in completely, you will have it defeated. Tap the stick gently against the bowl so excess chocolate runs off, then leave to dry. 

Stand the cakepops to dry in a polystyrene block and don't allow them to touch each other. I find it helps to shout "NO KISSING"" at them. Try not to touch the chocolate or you'll get a big fat fingerprint on it. Instead, use a cocktail stick to burst any bubbles or cover a missed bit.

Once the milk chocolate has set, melt the white chocolate and dip the top of the cakepop into it. While the white chocolate is still tacky, carefully place two holly leaves and berries on it.

Hey, why not wrap yourself in Christmas ribbon and pose with your cakepops? Comedy gold.

Number-shaped cake mould

This week I used a Lekue silicon mould  to make a cake in the shape of a number 3. These are available from Stangers Cookshop in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, for hire or purchase and are a treat to use.  The cake slides out of the mould like a greased-up seal.

There is a recipe on the back of the packaging that will make a fairly shallow cake (ignore the references to yeast, it’s a just mistranslation of baking powder). A recipe for an 8 inch sponge works well in the mould – use the whole amount you would split between two sandwich tins. Jess used Lorraine Pascale’s Malteser cake recipe to make this beautiful 9-shaped cake. 

You could of course turn the cake upside down and make a number 6. Sorry if this is blatantly obvious, but I once spent half an hour fuming that my number cookie cutter set was missing a 9….

I used a chocolate Madeira recipe for this number 3, slicing it in half to fill it with buttercream. This would be a quick way of making a cake if someone was 33, like Will Young or Jesus Christ. 

Instead I sandwiched the two halves back into “on its own, number three”, crumb-coated the whole cake and covered it with sugar paste. And that’s it – far easier than cutting out a number shape with a template. Highly recommended.

Mia

Six years ago I adopted a grey and white kitten, called her Mia and loved her with all my heart.

A semi-feral hard lass from Elswick, Mia was quick to establish herself as top cat in the house. She ruled by the tenet of "spare the rod and spoil the kitten" when William and Isobel joined the family. 

Mia was also a big softie, never happier than when she was curled up on my lap. If another cat had got there first, she'd simply boot them off and take their place. Mia loved tuna, curling up with her best friend Maddie, and making eyes at young men almost to the point of embarrassment.

She also liked running across the road without looking both ways and last weekend her luck finally ran out. She was hit by a car and killed instantly. 

I am grateful for the six years we had together and heartbroken that we don't have more. 

Night night baby girl x

Catherine Wheel Cookies

Ingredients:

350g butter, at room temperature

300g caster sugar

2 eggs

550g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

2 heaped teaspoons ground ginger

100g cocoa powder

red food colouring

200g milk chocolate (optional)

Makes about 30

Method:

Mix together half of the ingredients: cream 175g butter and 150g sugar until light and creamy. Beat in one egg and a few drops of red food colouring. Sift the ground ginger in with 300g flour then add to the batter, giving you a soft dough.

Repeat the process with the rest of the ingredients: cream together the remaining 175g butter and 150g sugar until light and creamy. Beat in one egg. Sift the cocoa in with 250g flour, then add to the batter, giving you a soft dough.

Shape the two balls of dough into flat rectangles and wrap in cling film. Chill these in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Roll each piece of dough on a floured surface to about half a centimetre thickness, keeping the rectangle shape and both the same size. You might need to trim the edges – keep the offcuts to one side to make other cookies. I had fun with a star-shaped cutter.

Sit one rolled out rectangle of dough on top of the other. Roll up lengthways like a long swiss roll and wrap in cling film. Chill this in the fridge for 30 minutes or longer.

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/160ºC fan oven/gas 4. Slice the dough into approximately 1 cm thick pieces and sit each biscuit on baking parchment on baking sheets. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes then cool on a wire rack.

If you want to go the whole hog, and let’s face it you probably do, gently melt the 200g milk chocolate then dip each biscuit into it. Leave the biscuits bottom-up while the chocolate sets, then enjoy them with a cup of tea or other hot beverage of your choice.