Friday quickie

Funny how it feels like the end of a five day working week, although technically I've only been to work for two of those five days. But still, every Friday deserves to be celebrated with good food, enjoyed while chillaxin' on the sofa and watching Gilmore Girls. One of those shows you don't want to watch if you are trying to lose weight, as they just keep on eating. All the time. And still stay looking like stick insects. Of course, analysing it more closely, you actually never see them eating anything, apart from taking a tiny little nibble from that huge pile of pizzas, burgers and chinese takeaway. Then they just leave the rest. Which of course explains the whole stick insect thing...


Well, not that I would ever aspire to being a stick insect anyways, but I did end up doing a salad this Friday. I stumbled across this recipe when I was browsing Pinterest yesterday. Actually, I'm not quite sure how I managed to end up with a salad recipe, as I was browsing baking ideas and cupcakes. Oh yes indeed, now I remember, I ended up following a link to these maple-bacon doughnuts and then looked around this wonderful blog called How Sweet It Is, and stumbled upon the salad recipe. It was perfect, because I had some left over watermelon and left over feta which needed to be used up. And I love quinoa. And I thought I would try to eat something healthy. Of course, I followed it up by eating half my weight in chocolate, so I don't think having a salad made much impact on the healthiness of my diet today. But I loved the salad recipe, as I would never have thought of combining watermelon and feta. I've only made a few minor changes, otherwise it's pretty close to the original I linked to above.


Watermelon and feta salad with quinoa (serves 2):
85g quinoa (dry weight)
1/2 veggie stock cube
400g watermelon
30g basil
100g feta 
1 lemon

The howto:
Cook quinoa with the stock cube according to the instructions on the pack. Let cool. Chop watermelon and basil, combine with cool quinoa and crumble in the feta. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and toss. I served with prawns I fried in a hot pan for a few seconds, as they needed to be used up. Works fine on it's own without the prawns as well.


The verdict:
The salad is very refreshing, really great for summer. Too bad it's raining and miserably cold outside... I could imagine eating this outside in the sunshine. Of course for that, I would have to move somewhere where the sun actually shines. The UK right now feels like one of those places where the sun don't shine, if you catch my drift... Ok, so back to the salad. I love sweet and savoury combinations, so the combination of watermelon and feta was really appealing to me. And I wish there was some way to transfer scents online, the combination of watermelon, basil and lemon is just heavenly, and still lingers in my apartment as I write this. Another recipe I will be sure to return to.

Flu cure

I'm currently tucked in bed, feeling sorry for myself and using up packs of Kleenex. Yes, it's the dreaded summer flu. I have been really healthy for the last nine months or so, ever since I went on a low carb diet. And I don't think it's a coincidence I came down with the flu after being really sloppy with my diet for the last two months. And as soon as I get well, I will get back on track with my eating, as my body is clearly telling me I'm doing the wrong thing. But until then... everyone knows the only cure for the common cold is sugar. White, wonderful refined sugar, enjoyed several times a day, preferably combined with some chocolate as well. I know, I know, I am a spineless human being. I should be stuffing myself with spinach, berries and lean proteins and not all these empty calories. Has anyone seen my self-discipline? It was last seen in early April, I think I lost it in Tesco somewhere between the sugar and chocolate isles. If you see it, could you send it back to me, please?


Well, after this poorly guised rant of self pity and virtual self-flagellation, on to the more important stuff. Daim. If you don't know what it is, you have no idea what you have been missing. Basically it's a almond butterscotch type of candy bar, covered with milk chocolate. It has that great burned sugar crunchy taste and all that crunchyness is surrounded by a silky smooth layer of milk chocolate. The original bar only has a thin layer of chocolate, with the majority of the candy bar being the crunchy almond toffee, but for serious chocoholics, there is a Marabou chocolate bar with crushed Daim. This is a regular chocolate bar, with only small pieces of the crunchy goodness in it. For enjoying as a sweet treat, I prefer the traditional Daim bar to the chocolate, but for baking, the chocolate one works better. I have the chocolate imported from Finland, and actually now that I'm trying to look it up online, I'm a bit confused, as there seems to be a Milka-Daim chocolate, but very few hits for the Marabou bar. The Milka-Daim seems to be on sale in all major UK grocery stores, so I have to go look it up and try it out. Maybe the Marabou one is only for sale in the Nordic countries... Another slightly similar chocolate is Green&Black's Butterscotch Caramel Ecossais, but I don't think the milk chocolate is nearly as good as Marabou. And just because I'm a Finn, I have to add that the Marabou milk chocolate is nowhere as good as Fazer's blue, but I'll leave the finer points of that discussion for some other time.


I can't believe I've managed to write such a rant about chocolate... Well, thanks if you are still reading, I'll finally shut up and move on to the actual recipe. It's stolen from Kinuskikissa, and has turned out to be one of those recipes that never fail. Flavour it with your favourite ingredients, but the basic recipe is just the best muffin recipe ever. It gives nice, fluffy and moist muffins which rise beautifully in the oven and keep their shape after being taken out.  By the way, I realised when I was almost done with the batter that I don't have any milk at home, so I substituted with yoghurt, and it worked perfectly. I would guess anything along the axis of milk, cream, double cream, soured cream, yoghurt, creme fraiche etc would work. 


Daim muffins (makes 12):
1 bar of Daim chocolate (200 g)
150g butter
133g sugar
2 eggs
225g flour
2tsp baking powder
2.5tbsp cocoa powder
150ml milk


For the icing:
200g Philadelphia cream cheese
397g (1 can) caramel 

The howto:
Preheat oven to 225 degrees C. Finely chop up half of the chocolate bar. Mix flour, baking powder and cocoa powder. Using a handheld mixer, beat butter and sugar until white and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beat until fluffy. Add dry ingredients and chopped chocolate, and mix (I give it a short mix using the electric whisk, but I'm sure gentle folding using a spatula would be more correct). Add in milk and give another gentle mix. 
Put a tablespoon of batter in the muffin moulds, add a piece of chocolate and top up with another tablespoon of batter. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Let cool completely before icing.
Mix cream cheese and caramel, spread or pipe onto the cooled muffins.


Each muffin (including the icing) contains 444 kcal (23g fat, 51g carbs of which 38g sugar, 7g protein).

The verdict:
I have waited sooo long to try these muffins, in fact I have waited so long that I have eaten half of the chocolate bar and had to halve the recipe and only made 6 muffins. And they were definitively worth the wait. These are the most decadently over-sweet muffins I have ever had. For non-carboholics, I think just the muffins without the icing should be enough to satisfy even the most severe sugar craving. 


The icing did not turn out the way I expected it to. I thought it would be stiff enough to be piped, but it wasn't. I think this might be because I used Philly from the freezer, and I think it changed the consistency. I will be trying out the icing another time with fresh cheese, as I have seen a similar icing used in several baking blogs and it has been nicely piped onto cupcakes or muffins. I'm just a bit disappointed as I couldn't get as much of the runny icing onto the cupcakes as I had wanted. But maybe that is a good thing, it is almost too sweet. But just almost, as I actually love to eat the caramel with a spoon straight from the jar. Or, as I did this morning, as brekkie with raspberries. I know, I'm a sick, sick person.

Peppers with stuff

Just to keep up appearances that I actually cook healthy food in between all my baking, I tried to find a recipe to blog about which would not contain sugar, butter or cream. Also, my sugar, cream and butter overloaded derriere actually needs a healthy recipe or two. Actually it needs about two years of healthy recipes. I'll try to make it to next weekend before I do another baking post. Whoops, actually realised there are a few more baking posts coming up soon... I think I have a serious problem.


But I'll try to get down from my sugar high for long enough to finish this post. This is a recipe inspired by my mum's amazing salmon pie, one of the comfort foods of my childhood. And to be honest, she still makes it, and I still thoroughly enjoy it. The pie has a filling of rice, salmon and boiled eggs, and it's all baked in a puff pastry crust. And it's best enjoyed with a generous helping of garlic butter on top. Me and my sister always wanted to go for the pieces right at the end, as you got the biggest amount of puff pastry that way.


While still drooling over the memories of my mum's pie, I tried here to recreate some of the flavours but making it more healthy. I have basically kept the salmon and the eggs (and keep dreaming of the puff pastry and garlic butter...). Instead I've stuffed it all inside peppers. I love both stuffed peppers and stuffed tomatoes, and do them with all kinds of fillings. Minced meat with spinach and onion, tuna with olives, or just go veggie with onions, feta and olives. So this time I did salmon, quinoa and leek as salmon was on sale last time I went grocery shopping, and I think salmon and leek go amazingly well together. The quinoa makes a nice addition of healthy carbs and some extra protein, although with the salmon and eggs, this dish is rather rich on protein already. 


Stuffed peppers (serves 4-6):
6-8 large sweet peppers
85g quinoa (uncooked weight)
1/3 veggie stock cube
250g salmon
3 eggs
2 leeks
1 onion
100g spinach
30g dill
200g cherry tomato
black pepper
garlic pepper


If making 6 peppers, each contains 250 kcal (10g fat, 25g carbs of which 10g sugar and 17g protein).


The howto:
Boil the eggs, and cook the quinoa with the stock cube according to the instructions on the pack. Season the salmon with pepper and garlic pepper and cook in the oven until medium (don't over cook). Fry onions and leeks for a few minutes, and add spinach and keep on stirring in the pan until the spinach has wilted. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. In a big bowl, mix the quinoa, the salmon (torn into small pieces), finely chopped or mashed eggs, the leek-onion-spinach mix and finely chopped dill. Season generously with the garlic pepper. Cut the tops off the peppers and remove seeds. If the peppers won't stand up, trim the bottom of the pepper flat. Put a cherry tomato in each pepper, add stuffing until half full, add a few more cherry tomatoes, and fill with stuffing. Bake for 30-35 minutes.

The verdict:
I'm the first one to admit this might not be the most exciting food in the world. However, I love the combo of salmon, leek and dill. And to be quite honest, I'm a big fan of eggs as well, although for some reason I always feel slightly odd admitting that. There are so many variations you could do with this dish. If you feel decadent, add some grated cheese on top. If you want to do a low carb variation, leave out the quinoa. If you don't have quinoa, but don't mind the carbs, substitute with couscous or rice. It's low in calories, high in nutrients, and if you use different coloured peppers it's really pretty too.

Strawberry daiquiri festival cake

My friend has made a tradition of throwing a start-of-summer BBQ party, which this year coincided perfectly with the Jubilee weekend. The theme for the party is essentially to celebrate the summer by ingesting way too many strawberry daiquiris, to me the Queen of all drinks. This year, I wanted to make a dessert that would go with the theme, and ended up with this strawberry daiquiri cheesecake.


This is partially inspired by several different recipes I have browsed online (including this one from Kinuskikissa), but essentially is something I threw together myself. The recipe contains strawberry vinegar, as I bought a bottle of it from a lovely little shop in York called The Hairy Fig. If you don't have any, just leave it out. I think it brings a nice little tangy addition to the recipe, but I'm sure it won't change the flavour too much if you leave it out.


Strawberry daiquiri cheese cake (serves about 8-12):
150g (about 10) Digestive biscuits
50g butter

300ml double cream
250g mascarpone
150g white chocolate
2tsp vanilla paste
3tbsp strawberry vinegar

400g strawberries
Juice from 1 lime
White rum to taste
2tbsp strawberry vinegar
3 tbsp icing sugar
26g (2 sachets) gelatin

The howto:
Crush the biscuits (I used a food processor), melt the butter and mix. Press the mixture onto the bottom of a 24cm circular cake tin. Put in the fridge to set while making the filling.
Whip cream until soft and fluffy, melt chocolate. Mix all ingredients, and spoon on top of the crust. Use a spoon or a spatula to smooth the top and make it as even as possible. Let set for several hours or over night.

To make the strawberry daiquiri topping, use a handheld mixer to puree the strawberries. Add lime juice, strawberry vinegar, icing sugar, mix. Add rum to taste (I added quite a few tablespoons, I wanted the rum taste to come through to go with the drinks we would be having). In a saucepan, mix about 100ml of water with a few tbsps of the strawberry mix, heat until boiling, take off the stove, and mix in gelatin. Mix until all of the gelatin has melted, add to the rest of the strawberry daiquiri mix. Cool the strawberry mix in a cold water bath until it starts to get thick, then pour onto the top of the cake and let set for several hours in the fridge (or in an emergency, about an hour in the freezer).

The verdict:
When you create your own recipes, you often have a very clear picture in your head what they are supposed to taste like. To me, this didn't quite go as planned, the flavours were just a bit too mild. The good thing was that the cake was definitely not too sweet, and it got good feedback from others eating it, so I guess it didn't turn out too bad. I would probably change it a bit next time, throw in more chocolate, and maybe switch from mascarpone to Philadelphia. However, the cheese layer was now very light (in texture if not calorie content) thanks to the mascarpone and whipped cream, with Philly it would probably be a bit more like "traditional cheesecake". The reason I wanted to use mascarpone here was that the previous cheese cakes I experimented with (and should finish the post so that I can get it online) were made from Philadelphia and turned out a bit too rich for me. Thinking about it, a mix of Philly and mascarpone might be the best option. Also, the nice thing of this cake is that the white chocolate in the cheese cake layer makes it firm up nicely, so you don't need to add gelatin to set the cheese cake layer.

One thing I definitely had problems with was getting the strawberry layer to set. Well, actually the problem was just my timing. I recommend you make the cake one day ahead, making the crust and cheesecake layer in the morning, letting it cool all day, then making the strawberry layer in the evening and letting it set all night. I made the cheesecake layer the night before, and only had a few hours to let the strawberry layer to set and had to take the cake over to a friend's house to let it set in the freezer (my own freezer is not big enough to fit a cake...). But all is well that ends well, the cake set just in time.

 

Long live The Queen!!

All of the UK is draped in Union Jacks this weekend (yes, to me it's still the weekend, and happily will be for another day). While the rest of the world is toiling away at the salt mines, the Brits (and all us immigrants) are enjoying a four day weekend to celebrate our beloved Queen and her 60-year reign. And nothing says celebration like muffins for breakfast. I'm sure Her Majesty would approve.

I have this pet peeve of people throwing away food which is still edible. I guess it all has it's roots with my grandma. She keeps collecting everything, bits of chord, pieces of cloth (that she used to make quilts), plastic food containers... everything gets washed and re-used. This is probably a result of living through a war and knowing what's it's like to have a chronic shortage of everyday items. Although it might seem a bit silly at first glance, it actually makes perfect sense. We produce such an enormous amount of waste, and everybody should look into their habits more carefully, and try to reduce the waste they are producing. At least for me, planning my meals ahead has helped me reduce the amount of food I throw away. I always make a shopping list and only buy what I know I will be using. And there is the added challenge of making up the most bizarre meals at the end of the week to use up those odd bits and pieces which are left over. What to make of two pieces of bacon, some aubergine, a lime, some celery and wilted leaves of basil... Well, the point of this rant was that a while ago I ended up having a few bananas sitting on my counter, which were clearly past their prime. I didn't want to throw them away, so I mashed them up and froze, to give me a perfect excuse to try bananan bread at a later point (I later read that a lot of people freeze their over-ripened bananas whole, so no need for the mashing part). I decided banana bread muffins would be the perfect Jubilee holiday breakfast treat. 

I'm actually not a big fan of baking with bananas. I like them as a snack, or in a smoothie, but usually cakes with banana just don't do it for me. However, I decided to give the banana a chance, and hit the internet looking for the perfect banana bread recipe. I stumbled upon this blog called Quest for Delish, and simply because the writer claimed this is the best banana bread recipe she has ever found, I had to try it out. Also, the fact that it was the first google hit for 'banana bread muffins' might have something to do with it... I halved the recipe, although I used a bit more banana than the original recipe, as my frozen batch contained 1.5 bananas. I'm pretty sure using just one will work fine. Also, I threw in a bit of chopped pecans, as I think banana bread should have a bit of nuts in it as well. 

Banana bread muffins (makes 12):

125g flour

0.5tsp baking soda

0.5tsp salt

55g butter

100g caster sugar

1 egg

1.5 bananas

125ml soured cream

1tsp vanilla paste

a handful of pecans

The howto:

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Mix flour with baking soda and salt. In another bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy with an electric whisk. Add egg and keep whisking until fluffy. Mix in banana, vanilla paste, soured cream and pecans. Gently fold in the flour. Divide into 12 muffin moulds, and bake for about 20 minutes. The original recipe says these can also be made into a loaf, but I'm a bit skeptical, as they turned out very soft and crumbly, I think it might be really hard to cut the loaf. But I might be wrong. Maybe the texture is a bit less crumbly with 1 banana (as in the original recipe) compared to my 1.5. Also, the bananas seemed quite damp coming out of the freezer, maybe using fresh bananas will change the consistency of the batter somewhat.

Each muffin contains 150 kcal (7g fat, 20g carbs of which 11g sugars and 2g protein).

The verdict:

Is this the best banana bread recipe ever? I honestly don't know as I have never made banana bread before. However, I do know that they are really good. As in really, really good. I think it might be a combination of using seriously over-ripe bananas (and lots and lots of banana), with the excessive amount of sugar in the recipe (yes, they are very sweet) and a perfect baking time which left them moist but still perfectly cooked. I could have eaten the whole batch in one go. No, I'm not kidding you. The tops had a nice crunch to them and the insides were sweet and moist and crumbly and yummy. The only modification I will do next time I make them is add more pecans, as I love the crunchy chewy bits. I tried the muffins with strawberry jam and whipped cream as well as with butter. Despite my current deep infatuation with whipped cream (that's one of the thing the Brits have down perfectly, I think British cream is better than Finnish), I think the combo of butter and banana bread worked better. Now I'm off for a run in a desperate hope to keep all those muffins, butter and cream from setting on my already rather wobbly bits. 

Bacon and brie quichegg

I might have written a word or two about my love of weekend brunches in the past. During the week, my breakfast is either a yoghurt and berry smoothie, omelette or effins. But in the weekend, I want to spoil myself a little (well, usually I spoil myself way too much). I work out  on Saturday mornings, and when I get home after that, I want to cook something really delicious and sit down, relax and enjoy my brunch while browsing the latest entries of my favourite food blogs. For these brunches I often allow myself cheats I don't have in the week, like sugar, wheat or cheese. This is one of my recent favourites, and while it's not exactly low calorie, it has everything you could ask from a perfect Saturday brunch. It's quick and easy to make, bakes while I'm having a shower, it has bacon, eggs and cheese and it tastes heavenly. The leftovers make a great lunch during the week if served with a fresh green salad. It also freezes well, and can be quickly re-heated another weekend for brunch. I have stumbled upon this recipe in several blogs, but I'm linking to recipegirl as that is where I first saw it.


As a short postscript, the recipe calls for Canadian bacon. I have absolutely no idea what that is, but let me assure you, it works well with regular (in this case British) bacon. Also, another point is that technically I object to the use of the word quiche in the name of this dish (in the original recipe), as in my humble opinion, quiche refers to something with a crust. And apparently, so does wikipedia. If you look up quiche, the first sentence begins "Quiche is a savoury, open-faced pastry crust dish...". So I decided to rename this quichegg instead. But to be honest, a quiche by any other name is still a pretty awesome breakfast, no matter what Mr Shakespeare thinks about the subject. Although when I think about it, Mr Shakespeare might not have mentioned quiches in his work. Well, shame on him for that.


Bacon and brie quichegg (serves 4-6):
8-10 rashers of bacon
8 eggs
120 ml mayonnaise
120 ml grated parmesan
125 g brie
pepper
1 tbsp Italian herb seasoning (which I didn't have so I threw in a bit of oregano and a bit of garlic and pepper mix)


The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Line a pie tin with bacon (this will form the "crust" of the quichegg). Cut the brie into small cubes. Beat eggs lightly with a fork, mix in the mayo, parmesan, spices and the brie. Pour into the tin, and bake for about 30 minutes. The original recipe says to cover your quichegg with foil after 15 minutes, which I could not be bothered to do, and it turned out very well anyways. But if you feel your quichegg is turning too dark, then by all means, cover it up, I'm sure it can't hurt.

The verdict:
As I said before, this is the perfect brunch or lunch. Particularly after a night out, when you need something really decadent to get you going again. The combination of bacon and eggs is just one of those things which can never fail. Adding brie to that will make it more heavenly still. A word of warning, this is not a light food, but you could cheat yourself to think it's kind of healthy as it is low in carbs. Not low in fat or salt though... But if you are prepared to clog up those arteries, the taste of this will leave you happy the whole day. Maybe serve with some greens on the side to lighten it up a bit, it can be a bit rich on its own. I'm sure you could try different variations by swapping the cheese, maybe replacing the brie with mozzarella, a mild cheddar or maybe soft goats cheese. The bacon has such a strong flavour it might even be able to take a mild blue cheese, it would be a bit of a gamble, but it just might work if you are into blue cheeses.

Visible pink unicorn cake

Sometimes things in the kitchen just don't turn out the way you expect. I've had one of those weekends... Absolutely everything I tried to make has turned out more or less like a disaster. However, in some cases you can just cover it all up prettily, and people will eat it anyways. This is a story of exactly such a cake.


For this cake, I had this brilliant idea of trying to make fudge cake icing. I originally got the idea from this fudge muffin recipe (it's in Finnish). While in the UK I have totally fallen in love with fudge. The best place for fudge, in my opinion, is Fudge Kitchen, which is a chain of fudge stores selling traditional, hand-made fudge. The fudge is different from most fudge I ever had, and turns out it's made with sugar and cream instead of butter which is more commonly used. The fudge is very creamy and soft and absolutely delicious, although it's really sweet, so non-carboholics sometimes aren't as excited as I am. Anyways, the point was that I was going to make a really cool and delicious cake icing by just rolling out the fudge and topping my cake with it. Well, the Fudge Kitchen fudge turned out to be way too soft and gooey to be rolled out, even when I added copious amounts of icing sugar. This is what you get for trying a new thing without making a prototype... Good thing I had bought some back-up sugar paste. Just in case. 


However, turns out the icing on the cake was just... well the icing on the cake. There were other problems as well. The plan was to make a cake with three layers (so two layers of filling). The filling was supposed to be lemon curd in one layer and rhubarb preserve in the other, with a whipped cream - mascarpone - white chocolate mix in both layers. I decided to make the sponge using a somewhat different recipe from my usual one, as this was supposed to result in a more fluffy cake and to be certain to succeed every time. In this recipe, you first make a soft whipped white cream from sugar and eggs, then you add boiling water and keep on whipping, and this is supposed to make the batter expand in volume. Then you add the flour, and bake. I was starting to get slightly worried when I added the water and the volume of the batter stayed pretty much the same. Then, in the oven, the cake didn't rise very much. So there was no way I would be able to cut the cake into three parts, and had to settle for one layer of filling. Also, I had planned to add some grated lemon zest to the cake for added flavour, but when the cake was in the oven, I realised I had totally forgotten about the zest. 


I will still give the sponge cake recipe another try at some other time, as it had so many positive comments. I'm sure something just went wrong when I prepared my cake. Maybe the air was too humid, the moon was in the wrong phase, or I was wearing the wrong coloured socks (ok, to be honest, I wasn't wearing any socks at all, as all clothing have been kept to the bare minimum which is required for decency during the heat wave we have been experiencing). Check out the original recipe as it has very good pictures describing the steps during preparation.


For the sponge cake (recipes for 24(26)28 cm cake tins):

3(3.75)4.5 dl wheat flour (corresponds to approximately 195(244)293 grams)

1-2(2)2-3 tsp baking powder
4(5)6 eggs at room temperature
2(2.5)3 dl sugar (corresponds to approximately 170(213)255 grams)
100(125)150 ml boiling water

For the filling:

200g lemon curd

200g mascarpone

250ml double cream

200g white chocolate

250 ml milk

2 tbsp Whittard lemon meringue hot chocolate

1tsp lemon extract

The howto:

For the cake, line a baking tin with butter and breadcrumbs and pre-heat oven to 200 degrees C. Boil water. Mix flour and baking powder. In a large bowl, beat eggs and sugar until white and fluffy. Add the boiling water about a tablespoon at a time, while whipping. The volume of the batter will expand during this phase, so make sure you have a big enough bowl. Fold in the flour and baking powder mix, pour into the prepared tin, and bake in 200 degrees for 30 minutes. If the cake turns too dark, cover with tin foil. After baking, let the cake cool on a wire rack.

For the filling, start by melting the white chocolate. Whip cream until soft and fluffy, and mix with mascarpone and melted chocolate.

Cut your cake into two or three layers. Mix milk, hot chocolate and lemon extract, and using a spoon or brush, moisten the cake, particularly around the edges. Add lemon curd onto each layer, and then the cream - mascarpone - white chocolate mix, but leave about 1/3 of the mix. Use the remaining mix to cover the cake. This is ideally done already a day in advance, so you can leave your cake to moisten in the fridge over night. 

The next day, roll out the icing and cover the cake. 

One serving contains so many calories that if you are counting, you should probably skip the cake altogether...

The verdict:

Like I said before, this cake went from disaster to disaster. However, my guests very graciously ate it, and some even went back for seconds. I have to say, I'm a bit worried about myself, as I usually don't find a cake worth the effort unless it has chocolate in it, but I really liked this one. Well, to be fair, it did have white chocolate. I love the combination of cream, mascarpone and white choc, the choc gives the mix a nice structure and it makes the mix a bit more solid. The lemon curd felt nice and refreshing, but I was really regretting that I forgot the lemon zest from the sponge cake, as I'm sure it would have added some nice freshness to the cake. But sum total is, as long as you put some flowers on your cake, people will be impressed and eat it without complaining. I should have learned my lesson never to try a new idea without making a trial run, but to be honest, I will be baking some untested cakes for my friend's party next weekend, so I predict next Sunday there will be a blog post describing many things that can go wrong with cheesecake. In between, I'll try to summarise my experiences with macarons. I don't want to give away too much, but expect some major troubleshooting...