South Africa's Best Chocolate Cake

I think it's about time I share with you all the recipe for South Africa's Best Chocolate Cake. I know I've been bragging about this a little (I do deserve to though), and I've been promising the recipe for a while now. A wise person once said, no good story starts with a salad, and I couldn't agree more!

This story starts with my Gran. She found the Best Chocolate Cake Competition in the Sunday Times and insisted I enter, she even drove out to drop the article off at my house so I could get all the details. I literally left it to the last minute, after contemplating entering and thinking up ideas for my cake (the cakes had to be original), I entered in the last couple of days. Shortly after entering I got a phone call from Hillary Biller, food editor for Sunday Times, she called to tell me that out of hundreds of applicants I had been shortlisted to the final 6. We were to compete in a bake off at Sandton City Shopping Centre on 14 September 2013. I could hardly believe it!

So on the 13th of September the finalists met up with a few of the judges, we had drinks, followed by a wonderful dinner at The Walnut Grove in Sandton City, we spent the evening making new friends and chatting about baking and food in general, it was clear to see that everyone at the table had a passion for good food! After dinner we set off to take a sneak peek at our bake stations for the next day.

Then it was off to bed, we spent the night at the Sandton Sun in complete luxury, but with hearts racing and tummies full of butterflies it wasn't easy to fall asleep.

On the morning of the 14th we were up bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready for the day ahead. After a scrumptious breakfast we headed down to the bake stations and so it began, checking that all our ingredients were there, sending people to get what was missing, preparing our stations, setting our ovens, measuring out ingredients, prepping our pans and doing interviews with the press, there were soooo many cameras!!

At 11 we were told to start, this was some serious Masterchef stuff going on! Everyone was hurrying around popping cakes in the ovens, the area filling with a strong sweet smell of chocolate, it was incredible. About 15 minutes after I put my cake in the oven I realised I had forgotten to set the timer, I was panicked but kept my cool and decided to just wait and see what happened. In the mean while I prepped the decorations and chatted to the TV people.

After a few hours we had all finished our cakes and had them on display, photo ready! Not one cake was similar to the next, brandy, granadilla, orange and strawberries had all found their way into the mix! After a miniature photo shoot the judges got a bit of each cake and had to judge them one by one, this was nerve wrecking, waiting to hear the outcome. Eventually the winners were announced and much to my delight and surprise I came out on top! It was the most amazing feeling!

Ok! I think I've kept you long enough, so here it is, the recipe for South Africa's Best Chocolate Cake:

Cake Ingredients:
2 cups flour
¾ cups cocoa powder
1 ½ tsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 cups sugar
½ cup oil
1 cup boiling water
2 eggs

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease two 23cm round cake pans well using spray and cook.
2. In a large bowl, sift the dry ingredients together.
3. Add the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla essence and beat with an electric mixer for about two minutes. Add the boiling water and mix until combined. The batter will be quite runny, this makes the cake nice and moist.
4. Pour the batter evenly into the prepared pans and bake for 30-40 minutes.
5. To test if the cake is ready, insert a toothpick into the middle of the pan. If it comes out clean, the cake is ready. Slide a knife around the edge of each cake to loosen it from the pan, turn the pan over onto a metal rack to cool.
6. Let the cake cool completely before icing.

Chocolate Ganache Icing Ingredients:
200g of chocolate (dark or milk or a combination)
200ml double cream

Method:
1. Heat the chocolate and cream in a saucepan over low heat on the stove until the chocolate melts.
2. Remove the pan from the stove and whisk the mixture until smooth glossy and thickened..
3. Put aside to cool and until the icing is thick enough to spread over the cake.

Decorations:
+/- 40 flake chocolates cut to size Fresh strawberries (washed) for decorating
150ml cream
1.5m Pretty ribbon of choice

Method:
1. Beat the cream until thick and spread in between the 2 layers of the cake. You can add a pinch of sugar to help thicken the cream.
2. Ice the entire cake with chocolate ganache icing.
3. Thinly slice the strawberries and arrange them in fans ontop of the cake. They should be placed along the edge of the cake, leaving the centre of the cake open for decoration/candles, etc or for more strawberries.
4. Stick the flake fingers to the icing around the sides of the cake ensuring the entire cake is “surrounded” by flake fingers.
5. Once the entire cake is covered tie the ribbon around the cake.

Serve and enjoy!!

If you give my cake a try please do let me know what you think! I hope you enjoy baking it as much as I do, and I'm sure you're going to love it!

**Photo's taken by myself, Mariaan De Klerk and The Sunday Times

What makes you happy?...#Blogtober14 Day 19

Baking. I love it, I pretty much spent my weekend in the kitchen.

I baked a Nutella Torte Cake for my Brother's 21st and a Malva Pudding, also for my Brother's 21st, teacup cakes for my Mom-in-Law's birthday, a Thomas the train cake for Ewan's 2nd birthday (Riaan's nephew).

It was such a busy weekend.

Next weekend I'm baking a wedding cake for friends of mine's wedding. So exciting!!!

Also, music makes me happy.
Living a healthy life, being active and working out.
Spending quality time with family.
Arya drinking water out of anything but her water bowl.

And of course...this face makes me happier than anything in the whole world!

 

Things I'm an expert at...#Blogtober14 Day 17

I have a thing about people that like to blow their own horn, it annoys me because they usually come across as self-important and pompous. I would never claim to be an expert at anything unless I know absolutely 100% about said topic... Having said that, I have come to the conclusion that I'm not really an expert at much, so here goes:

I am an expert at being me! Nobody else can do Simone quite like I can and I wouldn't want to be any different from the way I am. I have an outgoing personality which I love and I have some darn good talents.

I'm really good at being optimistic, I always try see the positive side of a situation and there's always a smile on my face!!

I'm an expert at being on holiday, I nail that 100% EVERY TIME!

I'm an expert at letting plants die, I cannot keep them alive. Last year September I got the perfect plant for me, it's called an Impala Lilly, they grow in the Kruger National Park, that's where I bought it, they only need water like once a month, it's perfect for me!

I'm an expert at eating vegetables, seriously I would eat vegetables everyday if possible, the one time I even got a bit (maybe more than a bit) upset because we hadn't had vegetables for like a week. It was holidays and who cooks vegetables over holidays, it was more like burgers and hotdogs etc all the time. So I got so upset that I started crying and made Riaan take me to Woolies so I could get a huge microwavable bowl of spinach and butternut! I love all the vegetables, except brussle sprouts, they are Satan's spawn!!!

I am really good at remembering song lyrics, and at correcting Riaan when he's singing the wrong lyrics!!

I'm really good at baking, I love it, one day I might tell you about the time I won the Sunday Times Best Chocolate Cake competition. I'm also quite good at cooking.

I'm an expert at brushing my teeth anywhere BUT in the bathroom. I dunno, I just really like to wander around the house while I brush my teeth. I even do it when we sleep over at friends.

I'm an expert at loving animals, especially giraffes and fluffy animals! Excuse the high quality of the picture!

So that's just a few of the more interesting things I'm an expert at. I'm also an expert at being clumsy, just FYI!

Chocolate Fondant with a South African Twist

Firstly I'd like to say "Bonjour!" to my newly acquired French readers! It's so exciting to see that my blog is reaching all corners of the globe!!

So, ever since my first trip to Mozambique in February 2013, I cannot get enough of chocolate fondant.
We went to a restaurant called Zambi and we had the most amazing prawns for dinner, followed by an even more delightful dessert...Chocolate Fondant.

Alot of people confuse chocolate fondant with your normal fondant that is used for decorating cakes. There's a major difference though, Chocolate Fondant is easily 1000 times more tasty than fondant icing, and blatantly put - it's your diet's worst nightmare!!

When I got back to Jo'burg I searched high and low for a restaurant that sold chocolate fondant that was as unashamedly chocolatey and downright delicious, as the one I had had in Mozambique, but NONE came close.

I had no choice but to find a recipe!! So I went digging through our recipe books at home, and as usual Mr Ramsay never disappoints!

If you're a chocolate lover like me, then you are highly likely to fall in love with this quick and easy recipe, if you're not then I think you need to pay a visit to your doctor because there's obviously something wrong with you!

Unfortunately we can't live off of these decadent little desserts, well, technically we could, but it isn't recommended! So, just as it goes with all the finer things in life, when trying to stay healthy, moderation is key!

This recipe yields 4 servings and is best served straight out the oven, otherwise your gooey chocolate centre disappears!

What you'll need:

4 7.5cm ramekins (you can also use muffin pans)
50g unsalted butter, plus extra, softened, to grease the ramekins
2 tsp cocoa powder, to dust
50g good-quality dark, bitter chocolate(minimum 70% cocoa solids), broken up in pieces - I use Lindt
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
60g caster sugar
2 tbsp Amarula - this is a delicious South African liqueur (Any other liqueur such as Tia Maria/Frangelico will work)
50g plain flour, sifted
Vanilla ice cream or crème fraiche to serve

How you'll do it:

1. Heat the oven to 160°C/325°F/gas mark 3. Butter your ramekins and dust liberally with cocoa powder. Make sure you cover all the nooks and crannies so your fondants don't get stuck!Place in the fridge while you prepare the fondant mixture.

2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a small bowl set over a pan of hot water, or in the microwave. Take it off the heat and stir until smooth.
3. Using an electric whisk, beat the whole egg, the egg yolk and the sugar together in a separate bowl, until pale and thick, then fold in the chocolate mixture. Fold in the liqueur, followed by the flour.

4. Divide the chocolate mixture evenly among the ramekins and bake in the oven for 12 minutes.

5. Run a knife around the edge of the dishes and turn the chocolate fondants out onto warm plates. Alternatively you can leave them in the ramekins. (But then your amazing chocolate river will not ooze out the middle when you break it open for the first bite!)
6. Serve immediately, with a dollop of crème fraîche or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

And ENJOY your tiny taste of heaven!!

Red Velvet Romany Cream Cupcakes

I don't know if they have Romany Creams anywhere other than South Africa...is it like Peppermint Crisp, that you can only find it here?
Surely there's an alternative out there somewhere!! There has to be in order to make these delicious little monsters!!

For those of you that don't know what a Romany Cream is....it's like one of my most favouritest cookies EVER!! There are a few other cookies that I like more, but they are all home-made. I will be sure to share the recipes...EVENTUALLY!

Romany Creams are the most delightful chocolate coconut cookies that are sandwiched together with a milk chocolate filling. If you dunk them in your tea for a second or two, the chocolate filling melts a little and it tastes like heaven!!

 

I have tried to make my own Romany Creams but nothing comes close to the real deal! Only the bakers man can!! 

This recipe yields 30 delicious cupcakes all in less than 2 hours!

So this is how it goes:

What you'll need:

Cupcakes
2 1/2 Cups of Flour
30 ml Cocoa
1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda (Baking soda)
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Cup Butter (Unsalted, Softened)
1/3 Cup Cooking Oil
2 Cups of Sugar
4 Large Eggs
1 Cup Sour Cream
1/2 Cup Milk
30 ml Red Food Colouring
2 tsp Vanilla Essence
+/-15  Romany Cream Cookies

Cream Cheese Vanilla Frosting
250 grams Plain Cream Cheese
1/4 Cup Butter/White Margarine
2 tbsp Sour Cream
+/- 600 grams Icing Sugar (Sifted)
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
+/-7 Romany Cream Cookies (Depending on how sweet you like your icing!)
15 Cookies for decorating

How you'll do it:

Cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 180° C. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a medium sized bowl, set aside.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time. Mix in the sour cream, milk, oil, food colouring and vanilla essence until well blended.
3. Gradually beat in the flour mixture on a low speed until just blended. Do not over blend.
4. Crush the cookies until quite fine and stir them into the cupcake batter.
5. Line your cupcake pans with paper cupcake cups, and spoon the batter into the cups filling each one 2/3rds full.
6. Bake the cupcakes for 20 minutes/until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool before icing.

Cream Cheese Vanilla Frosting
Beat the cream cheese, butter, sour cream and vanilla in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the sifted icing sugar until smooth. Split the 7 cookies and remove the milk chocolate from both sides of each cookie. Pulse the cookies in a blender/food processor until its a really fine crumby consistency. It is important that there are no large chunks of cookie because they will clog the piping tip. Stir the cookie crumbs into the icing. Use a Wilton 1M tip to pipe the icing onto the cupcakes. Cut the remaining cookies in half and place a half cookie on top of each cupcake and Voila! You're done! 30 delicious little monsters waiting to sabotage your diet!! But hey it's all about moderation!

I really hope you enjoy the cupcakes as much as I do!

Cream Cheese Craziness

I love cream cheese!
I love it on crackers with sweet chilli sauce, I love it in my sushi, I love it on toast with smoked salmon, I love raw carrots dipped in it (especially if it's the smoked salmon flavoured cream cheese), but mostly I love cream cheese in frosting on cake!

This week was my boss's birthday and since I'm the resident baker in our office I was happily recruited to bake the cakes! Yip CAKES, not one, but two delicious cakes with cream cheese frosting! (Seems to me that we have more than just crunching numbers in common!)

The choices were Red Velvet and Carrot Cake - both tried and tested favourites! :)

So there I am on Thursday night, in my element, baking away!

Red velvet cake in the making.

A couple hours and quite a few dirty dishes later I was done...Happy with my nights work, and off to bed with the house smelling like a bakery!

Delicious Red Velvet Cake

Mouthwatering Carrot Cake

Don't mind if I do!

For some unknown reason, my first batch of delicious cream cheese frosting came out a little lumpy, I think my butter wasn't soft enough, so I whipped up some more for the cakes and popped the "flop" into the fridge. I plan on finding a new recipe to try that needs cream cheese frosting this weekend because the lumps seem to have sorted themselves out!

If I had to choose a favourite it would be...the carrot cake! I love it, the nuts and cinnamon combine so well with the frosting, I'm sure that it is one of the few things that heaven might taste like!

I find it quite crazy to think that before Riaan and I met I had never eaten carrot cake, the thought of vegetables in cake grossed me out completely, I mean who does that?? I can't remember who baked this cake the first time I ate it, it's a family recipe from my mom-in-law's family, but they convinced me to try it nonetheless and I was blown away! Who knew vegetables could be so...."un-diet-friendly" and tasty??

Now I am always sceptical to order/try carrot cake, I'm always like "Will it be as good as ours?"
I must say though that I DID find another great carrot cake, recently my Aunt Mandy came to visit us all the way from Scotland and she made a delicious carrot cake for our family get together. Her blog Mandys Oven Lovin has been quite quiet lately but if you are looking for recipes she has a few goodies up on there!

If you have any interesting recipes that involve cream cheese and licking the bowl once you're done, please send them my way!!

Blue Velvet Oreo Cupcakes

A new twist on red velvet cupcakes? Not really, it's really just a different food colourant!
Having said that, I decided that my first batch of blue velvet cupcakes needed to be unique, I mean a blue velvet cupcake is really just a different colour red velvet cupcake (which I have baked a dozen times before!)...My blue velvet cupcakes had to have a real twist to them!! Oreos!! The original twist, lick, dunk cookie!! :)

As promised in my previous post, here it is, the recipe for my blue velvet cake/cupcakes.
This is the exact recipe that I use when making my red velvet cakes and cupcakes, the only difference being the colour of the food colourant. This recipe makes 30 cupcakes or 2 22cm cake layers! When I made the cookie monster cake and these cupcakes I got 24 cupcakes and the 20cm cake, I'm quite sure that the yield was so high because the cookies took up quite a bit of the batters place!

What I love about these cupcakes is that they are moist and not too sweet, perfect with a cup of tea or coffee if you're into that - I am more of a cuppa tea kinda girl!! I didn't tell everyone that there was an Oreo at the bottom of the cupcake. SURPRISE!!! Much to everyone's delight!!

So this is how it goes:

What you're gonna need:

Cupcakes
2 1/2 Cups of Flour
30 ml Cocoa
1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda (Baking soda)
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Cup Butter (Unsalted, Softened)
1/3 Cup Cooking Oil
2 Cups of Sugar
4 Large Eggs
1 Cup Sour Cream
1/2 Cup Milk
30 ml Red Food Colouring (for blue you could use less, my cupcakes came out really dark when I used 30mls)
2 tsp Vanilla Essence

Cream Cheese Vanilla Frosting
250 grams Plain Cream Cheese
1/4 Cup Butter/White Margarine
2 tbsp Sour Cream
+/- 600 grams Icing Sugar (Sifted)
1 tsp Vanilla Essence

How you're gonna do it:

Cupcakes/Cake

1. Preheat the oven to 180° C. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a medium sized bowl, set aside.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs 1 at a time. Mix in the sour cream, milk, oil, food colouring and vanilla essence until well blended.
3. Gradually beat in the flour mixture on a low speed until just blended. Do not over blend.
4. Line your cupcake pans with paper cupcake cups, place one oreo cookie in each cup, spoon the batter into the cups filling each one 2/3rds full. If you're baking a cake, spray your cake pans generously with spray and cook before splitting the batter between the two pans.
5. Bake the cupcakes for 20 minutes/until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. If you're baking a cake, bake for 30 - 40 minutes. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool before icing.

Cream Cheese Vanilla Frosting
Beat the cream cheese, butter, sour cream and vanilla in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the sifted icing sugar until smooth. Decorate cupcakes/cake as desired. I used a Wilton 1M tip to pipe my icing onto the cupcakes.

So that's that! It's almost as easy as it is delicious!! I'd love to hear what you think so please feel free to give me your thoughts and feedback on this recipe!

So, I can't bake this weekend...

Hi Everyone!!

Deciding what my first post would be about was quite a process, I couldn't decide whether to tell you whats going on in my life right now or to start at the beginning.
I then decided that since I gave a bit of an insight in our about us page that present beats past, and I will tell our story as we go along!

As you have probably read . . . or know, I love baking, I like to try out new recipes every now and again, or to challenge myself to a new cake decorating session. This weekend's request, put in by my dear mom-in-law (Mama Vos), was "Chewy rolo cookies", from a recipe she found in a food magazine. I was so excited to try them, they looked divine!! But mother nature had other plans for me this weekend...Bed rest!

After a week of fighting what I thought was the flu, I visited my Doctor on Friday (thank goodness I'm not a Doctor because my diagnosis was WAY off!)... Bronchitis, so it was either a course of antibiotics AND two injections on Friday AND ANOTHER two on Saturday or off to hospital. I opted for the painful but much preferred injections and bed rest in the comfort of my own home!

Hopefully I'll hit the ground running again on Monday morning, but for now I will share last weekend's request from my little brother-in-law (Hanroux), A cookie monster cake!

This cake really was a pleasure to bake, and was easily one of the easiest decorations I have done!
I made a blue velvet sponge cake in a 20 cm round cake pan. (I promise to share the recipes ASAP!!)
I then went on to make the perfect frosting for a velvet cake - Cream Cheese Vanilla Frosting!YUM!!
I got Riaan to roll out some white fondant and some black fondant and cut out the eyes and mouth while I started to pipe the frosting onto the cake - Shame I really do ALWAYS manage to rope him in on the decorating front!
We placed the mouth first and cut a slit for the cookie, I then piped the entire cake using a Wilton 233 Grass/Hair Piping Nozzle, squeezing and releasing on the piping bag for each tuft of hair, we then positioned his eyes, I piped a few final tufts of hair, we broke the perfect cookie and stuffed it into his mouth and VOILA! A really cool cookie monster cake - All in less than an hour and a half!!

So that's it from me for now, as promised I will be posting this recipe as soon as possible the recipe is up ;) and I hope you enjoyed the post!