Bon Voyage!

A few months ago I went to a friend’s birthday where we all had to take some sort of cake as a surprise for her (we ended up with a shed load of cake so it was pretty perfect in my eyes). Her sister made THE MOST AMAZING cupcakes! They were tropical fruit and they had orange icing and pic ‘n’ mix on the top – so delicious!

So when a friend said she was going travelling for 6 months I thought it would be the perfect ‘Bon Voyage’ cake – a tropical fruit cake for a tropical adventure! It’s pretty easy to make, basically mixing everything up in a bowl, putting it in the oven (for what seemed like forever!) and voila! And it lived up to how I remembered it too!

Under da sea, under da sea, down where it's wetter and it is better, take it from me!

I decided to try and decorate it in the travelling theme; half the cake was the sea and the other half the beach so I split the icing into two. The beach was a vanilla cream cheese icing and the sea was the intended orange cream cheese icing with a bit of blue food colouring. I think the orange zest actually added a little something something to the whole look. And I bought some coloured icing, some sour apple laces and desiccated coconut to fashion a towel, some fish, seaweed and the sand and a cocktail umbrella finished it off nicely.

Orange flavoured cream cheese icing for the 'sea' on the left and vanilla cream cheese icing with toasted desiccated coconut for the 'beach' on the right.

Tropical Fruit Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

For the cake:

• 250g plain flour
• 250g caster sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 3 free-range eggs, beaten
• 200ml sunflower oil, plus extra for greasing
• 50g pecan nuts, roughly chopped
• 50g walnuts, roughly chopped
• 2 bananas, mashed
• 1 large mango, peeled, stoned removed, flesh mashed
• 2 passion fruit, pulp only
• 85g tinned pineapple, mashed
• 1 orange, zest only

For the icing:

• 400g full-fat soft cheese
• 100g unsalted butter, softened
• 1 orange, zest only
• 800g icing sugar
• Blue food colouring
• 1tsp of vanilla extract

For the decoration:

• Coloured icing
• Sour apple laces
• Cocktail umbrella
• Desiccated coconut, toasted

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4 and grease and line two 20cm cake tins. I only have one so I had to do one after the other – dedication to the cause!
2. Sift the flour, sugar, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl. Try and do it from a height to get some extra air into the mixture. Then stir in your eggs, sunflower oil, nuts, fruit and orange zest and you’re done!
3. Divide the cake mix into your two prepared cake tins and put in the oven for 45-50 minutes, or until golden.
4. Remove the cakes from the oven and leave them a bit before you take them out of the tins completely. Leave them to cool on a wire rack.
5. For the cream cheese icing (I made this whilst the second cake was in the oven), mix the cream cheese and butter together until creamy with an electric whisk. Sift in the icing sugar and stir until combined. Divide the icing into two different bowls.
6. For the ‘beach’ vanilla icing add 1tsp of vanilla extract.
7. For the ‘sea’ icing add the orange zest and blue food colouring.
8. Put them in the fridge to chill. This will make it easier to decorate the cake later on.
9. Once the cakes are cool spread some of the vanilla icing onto half on one of the cakes and spread some of the blue icing onto the other half. Make sure you leave yourself enough icing to cover the whole cake when it’s assembled. Put the other cake half on top of the iced cake and use the rest of the icing to cover the whole cake, keeping it half vanilla and half orange.
10. Toast the desiccated coconut in a frying pan until lightly golden and cover the vanilla half of the cake. Decorate the rest of the cake using the coloured icing cut into shapes as you wish. Ta da! You have a beautiful tropical style fruit cake - yum!

The finished article :)

Hallelujah for Shortcrust Pastry!

I have always struggled with shortcrust pastry – I know it’s not supposed to be that difficult but mine NEVER works. I went through a stage last year where I was making quiche after quiche, determined to make some pastry where it didn't crumble at the touch or where the mixture didn't seep out the bottom. My Dad and his girlfriend even gave me a food processor in an attempt to cure my pastry blues but I just couldn't do it!

So imagine my delight when I tried making Mary Berry’s Banoffee Pie yesterday and the pastry worked!! Hallelujah! I went against my instincts and let it get a lot wetter than I ever had before but you know what? It helped. Big time. It was so much easier to work – it rolled better, I could pick it up easier. It just didn't fall apart – I was amazed. I still am I think!

I'm so proud!

Anyway, the Banoffee Pie was for my sister’s house warming party – she’s a Banoffee fan, as am I, but my normal method (which is a family favourite) is with a biscuit base. And I normally cheat and use ready-made caramel from a tin but we’ll keep that between us. After the Great British Bake Off a couple of weeks ago I decided to make one recipe from each episode and as soon as I saw that one day the technical challenge was a Banoffee Pie I knew that was the one for me! It was made with a shortcrust pastry base and they made their own toffee – it looked a bit scary if I’m honest and I had horrible visions of how mine was going to turn out (I won’t keep you in suspense – it was good. Even if I do say so myself. People were fighting over the last slice so it must be true!).

Happy New Home Banoffee Pie Special

As ever I started with the wrong sized flan tin (I never seem to have the right equipment). And it wasn't a flan tin either, it was a ceramic flan dish but it worked fine so I’ll just brush past that! This recipe is for a 20cm/8in flan tin as Mary Berry intended but to be honest it’s just the pastry measures I changed, everything else still seemed to fit in the pie perfectly. Enjoy!

Banoffee Pie with Decorative Writing

For the pastry:

• 175g plain flour
• 75g chilled butter cut into cubes

For the filling:

• 100g butter
• 100g light muscovado sugar
• 2 x 397g tins condensed milk

For the toppings:

• 300ml double cream
• 1 large banana
• Lemon juice (optional)
• 100g dark chocolate

Instructions:

1. To make the (ever so tricky) shortcrust pastry, you first need to put the flour and cubed butter into a bowl and rub with your fingertips. I find this bit of the process quite therapeutic. Do this until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.
2. Add 2-3 tablespoons of cold water in gradually and mix until you have a soft dough. I had to make a bit more pastry thanks to my over-sized dish so I used the full three tablespoons. When I first added the last tablespoon I was a bit worried because it was quite wet and a bit sticky but after a minute or so of mixing it came together and made for a nice dough to work with.
3. Lightly flour a surface (you don’t want to use too much because this can dry out your dough mixture) and start rolling out the dough. Line your tin/dish with the pastry, cover with cling film and put into the fridge for about half an hour. I find using the middle of my index finger good for pressing the pastry into shape, the end doesn't work so well when you have nails!
4. Preheat your oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6. Line your pastry tin with foil and fill it with ceramic baking beans and blind bake in the oven for 15 minutes. I was quite disappointed that even with all that weight I still managed to get quite a bit of a bubble – how?!
5. Remove the beans in the foil – be careful, they’re SO hot. Put the pastry bake in the oven for another 5 – 10 minutes to dry out the base and give it a bit of colour. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
6. Whilst the pastry is cooling you can make your toffee filling. Put the sugar and butter into a non-stick pan and heat gently until the butter is melted and the sugar is dissolved. Add the two tins of condensed milk to the pan and stir continuously for about 5 minutes. I think I was a bit over cautious so this ended up taking me half an hour! I think I can safely say that a medium heat will do it - unlike my very low heat that I tried to stick to. Mine started to boil a little and then it thickened up and turned the golden toffee colour I was after. Try dabbing a bit on a plate and if it starts to set reasonably quickly then you should have a good toffee.
7. At this point I took my pastry case out of the dish but if you have a tin with a removable base then you're OK to leave it in until you've finished everything. Put the toffee into the pastry case, level it off and then leave to cool completely.
8. Whip the double cream in a large bowl until it just holds its shape, it should still look silky smooth at this point. I slightly over whipped mine so it doesn't have quite the same effect. For my pie, I cut up the banana and put it on top of the toffee and then added the cream. However, you can spread the cream directly onto the toffee and put the banana slices on top. If you dip the banana slices into lemon juice beforehand then that should prevent discolouration.
9. To make the writing I melted the chocolate in a small bowl (I just did it in the microwave) and made a make-do piping bag with some baking paper. Fold a piece of baking paper in half and then in half again. The corner that would be the middle of the paper if you opened it out again will be your piping hole. Get another piece of baking paper and lay it flat on the surface. Spoon your melted chocolate into the piping bag and snip the corner. Now you can start piping your writing. Once finished lay the paper flat in the fridge and leave to cool until set. The chocolate should peel off easily but be careful it’ll melt quickly!

A really nice easy touch to make to home made baking :)