Summer, Secrets, and Shiraz

With the first Secret Cake Club of 2014 fast-approaching, I remembered that I hadn’t yet blogged about the last (amazing, spectacular, bigger-than-Ben-Hur) Secret Cake Club of 2013.

The theme was “Summer” which gave endless scope for creativity. When I think of summer, mostly I think of the British summers of my childhood where any day over 20C was considered hot and the high 20s were positively tropical. I think of beach holidays in Cornwall, barbecues in the back garden, long summer evenings, Wimbledon and all the things that went with it – strawberries and cream, gin and tonic, lemon barley water, cucumber sandwiches.

But I’ve lived over half my life in Australia now, so I also associate summer with Christmas and sunburn, pavements too hot to walk on, sunshine too strong to go out in. The barbecues are still there and so is the beach, but I also think bushfires and swimming pools and cold, cold wine.

 

 

In the end I decided to go for the cold, cold wine in dessert form. My go-to drink is sparkling Shiraz which I think of as inherently Australian as I had never seen it or even heard of it before I moved here. The depth and substance of red wine with the fun of champenoise bubbles – how could anyone not love it? Besides, it means that I can continue to drink Shiraz during the summer rather that wait for the cooler months to come around.

 

I used this recipe from Maggie Beer because it is simple yet stunning. It’s perfect to finish a Christmas feast, but doesn’t have to be limited to Christmas - any time in summer will do. Maggie uses raspberries in her recipe so I did too, but you could use any other summer fruit. Maggie burns off the alcohol in her recipe which I didn’t do. I like a decent boozy dessert, but if you are catering for the family, it might be worth making a booze-free batch for the kiddies.
 

 

 

I made my jellies into individual portions for the Cake Club people and prettied them up with edible gold and candied rose-buds. They looked great. They tasted…powerful. The tartness of the raspberries provided a good contrast to the heavy sweetness of the jelly. You could serve this jelly with cream or ice-cream or, as I did, just on its own.

 

It was a show-stopping cake club. Emma, our host at Table Culture in Subiaco, had gone above and beyond to make sure that we were taken care of. There were cool pitchers of iced water with chunks of fruit in them. There was a lavishly decorated table on which were two decadent Christmas cakes. There was champagne and there was barista-brewed coffee. Oh, and I mustn't forget the generous in-store discount that was offered on all products.

 

 Not only did we get the chance to participate in a raffle and win some great prizes, but, to the delight of all the guests, Emma had organised for us each to have a loaf tin to take home, courtesy of her friend, the representative of Le Creuset. There under the Christmas tree were the tins all stacked up. (If it looks a little bare in my picture that's because I was one of the last to leave and all the tins had been taken)

 

As always, Cake Club members provided an intriguing array of food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I came home with my usual box of delights which never lasts quite as long as I think they will.

 

I also now have a very handy dessert recipe for those days when it is too hot to be in the kitchen but where a great dessert is necessary. There might also be some sparkling Shiraz left over. I said 'might'.

 

Buns and roses: Secret Cake Club and heraldic rose cupcakes.

There were no buns. So I lied. What can I say? I do so love a pun.

Puns and roses?
 

I’ll get me coat.
 

The roses began at 6am – fifteen heraldic roses to top fifteen rosewater cupcakes (which I made the day before).

The theme of the latest Secret Cake Club was ‘History’ and I had decided I was going to interpret The Wars of the Roses. You can read the details on Wikipedia of course, but it’s pretty much the way Game of Thrones would be if there were only two families involved: the House of Lancaster, that’s Lancaster NOT Lannister, (symbol, the red rose) and the House of York (symbol, the white rose). Eventually, after many decades of squabbling and bloodshed, a Lancaster prince married a York princess – they combined their family symbols to create the Tudor Rose (his name was Henry Tudor) which is red and white. If Wikipedia history is a bit dull for you, then any of the Philippa Gregory oeuvre will tell you the story in a more engaging, if slightly less factual, way.

The white rose of the House of York is still used this day as the symbol of Yorkshire and since I was born in Yorkshire, I feel I have some connection to it in my personal history. I even wore my white rose pendant (bought at York Minster) to Cake Club that afternoon.

I’ll put the cupcake recipe below, but you could decorate any cake this way, so I’m just going to show you how to make a heraldic rose.

 

First cover your cupcakes with a thin layer of white fondant. I painted the fondant with rosewater and this makes it stick to the cake.

 

For the actual rose symbol, you need to have two cinquefoils, one small and one large. A cinquefoil is a flower-symbol with five leaves or petals which is all well and good unless your flower cookie-cutters have six petals... I ended up having to pinch out one petal and reshape the flower by hand.

Pinch out five small pieces of green fondant and roll them between your finger and thumb until thin and pointed at one end – these will be your leaves.

Stick these under your larger cinquefoil so that part of the leaf shows in the spaces between the petal.

Stick the small cinquefoil on top of the large one. Add a small bobble of fondant to the middle – this will be your rose’s stamen.

 

Starting with the small cinquefoil, curl the petals over at the edge. Repeat with the large cinquefoil. Using edible gold food paint, colour the stamen. Then stick the whole rose to the top of the cupcake. I was using rosewater to do all my sticking but otherwise plain water or even milk will do the trick.

 

I made seven Lancaster roses in gold cupcake cases, seven Yorkshire roses in silver cupcake cases, and one Tudor rose which was slightly larger than the others.

I was very proud of my Tudor rose.

 

They created a really pretty effect when put all together.

 

Cake Club was held at The Ingredient Tree in Wembley and I am glad to say that my cupcakes survived the bus journey. There was an abundance of cake with most people interpreting the ‘History’ theme as ‘heritage’. There were pandan cakes from South East Asia, Ashkenazi Jewish ‘rugelach’. Korean crispies, and Irish-whiskey studded namelaka tarts.

My favourites of the day were Viv’s mini-pizzas which were a welcome oasis of savoury in the midst of all the sweetness. There was a surprise underneath the mozzarella – a fierce and concentrated Italian hit of anchovy which I loved.  I also really liked the sticky rice cakes with the slightly toasted topping made by Terry and Alex.

 

 

So much cake, so little time. The pictures are below and I have tried to keep the descriptions in shot where possible.

 

 

So, as you can see, lots and lots of cakes and slices and tarts.

But no buns. Just roses.

I beg your pardon and offer a cupcake recipe in recompense.

 

Rosewater Cupcakes

Ingredients

1 cup golden caster sugar

1 cup butter, melted

1 vanilla bean

2 tssp organic vanilla extract

4 large eggs, beaten

2 tbsp rosewater

1 tssp sea-salt

2 cups SR flour

2 tssp baking powder

Decoration

White, red, and green fondant

Edible gold paint

Oven: 180C

Method

In a food processor, whiz sugar and melted butter until pale. Scrape in the vanilla bean and add the vanilla extract. Process again.

On a low speed, add beaten eggs gradually until all combined. When all eggs are in, add the rosewater.

Sieve salt, SR flour, and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Pour in contents of food processor and stir with a wooden spoon until just combined.

Spoon mixture into cupcake cases until about 2/3 full.

Bake in oven until golden – about 25 minutes, depending on your oven.

Leave to cool.

Decorate with fondant or buttercream icing.

 

Only Negroni - Cocktail Cake Club & Negroni Cheesecake

The very thought of mixing gin with cream cheese made my stomach curdle and, had I actually gone ahead and done it, would probably have made the cream cheese curdle too.

It was time for another Secret Cake Club, the theme being “Cocktails, mocktails, and your favourite tipple”. My favourite tipple of the moment has to be a classic Negroni cocktail. My problem was how to re-interpret this in cake form.

The classic Negroni  (and I am sure that some purists will disagree with my definition – it’s the kind of drink that brings out strong opinion as to what constitutes ‘classic’) mixes equal parts of gin, bitters (usually Campari) and red vermouth over ice and tops it with a twist of orange zest. It’s a serious cocktail, a grown-up cocktail, to be consumed in a bar and definitely not beside the pool. You can keep your sunshine and tiny umbrellas and sweet blue creamy drinks – give me my underground bar in the wintertime, put a Negroni in my hand and I will be quite content.

But a Negroni cake? I honestly couldn’t see a Victoria sponge with bitter and vermouth cream-filling, or a trifle with gin-soaked sponge. My favourite dessert is cheesecake and that’s when I imagined (momentarily) throwing a block of Philadelphia and a cup of gin into a blender but there are some places a baker just shouldn’t go and I think this was one of them.

But I really, really wanted to make a cheesecake.

That’s when the idea of ‘flipping’ the cocktail came to me. I work in Education and the concept of ‘flipping’ classrooms, processes etc. is very modish right now. The basic concept is that you reverse the focus to achieve better results. So, rather than start with the Negroni and garnish with orange, start with the orange and garnish with Negroni. Baked orange cheesecake is wonderful. What could make it more wonderful? A bittersweet Negroni jelly! So that’s what I did. I made the cheesecake over the course of a day. It’s actually quite a user-friendly recipe and allows you to do other things during the chilling and baking times. I had taken a trip to my lovely friends at Gangemi’s Fine Wines and stocked up on the wherewithal for Negroni (West Winds Sabre Gin, classic Campari and Dolin Vermouth). For the rest, the local supermarket did the trick.

 A couple of things to note:

I bought blood oranges because I love how they look and taste, but regular oranges are fine.

 

The orange extract is optional – I wanted to make sure that the cheesecake had an intense orange flavour. If you like yours more subtle, you can omit it. Want a really alcoholic cake? Cointreau is your friend…

Clever tip from a friend, use a can of condensed milk instead of using sugar and cream – it saves you one extra step and a lot of extra beating.

 

There is no need to have sugar in the Negroni jelly if you want to have it more authentically bitter. My thinking was that the sugar would just tone down the intensity a little and keep things safe for the Cake Club members.

To make orange twists keep their shape (and not untwist!), wrap around a skewer or a chopstick and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours.

 

The thing is, it was an experiment and I had no idea if it was going to work or not. I was delighted with the beautiful smooth appearance of the cheesecake when it emerged (without a single crack!) from the oven, but a little less certain when it came time to pour the jelly on. I settled for doing this last thing at night and then went to bed, not knowing what I would wake up to in the morning. The hot jelly mixture made the whole house smell like a distillery. My clothes and hair were lightly misted with gin. It would not have been a good idea to go near any naked flames.

In the morning, releasing the cheesecake from the spring-form tin was a tense moment, but there it was. Dense cheesecake with the Negroni jelly glowing sunset-orange in a perfect layer over the top. I trimmed a little to try and was very pleased with the flavour combination as well as the texture. The cake was sweet and creamy and so very, very orangey. The biscuit base added crunch and the jelly –oh, the jelly! It had all the Negroni characteristics that I was after – herbal, floral, bitter, cold and refreshing with a little added sweetness to remind everyone that this was dessert! All that remained was to place the orange twists on top and I was ready to go.

A few air-bubbles in the jelly. Oh, well...

The venue for Cake Club this month was Frisk Small Bar in Northbridge. They specialise in gin. They have 4 pages just for gin in their drinks menu. My cheesecake, with some West Winds Sabre in the mix, was in good company.

And talking of good company, we had another huge turn-out for Cake Club and so many creative and intriguing interpretations of the “Cocktail, mocktail, tipple” theme. There were tarts with tequila, beef pies with red wine, mojito macarons, beer bread with Beersine beer cheese, mousse with whisky, and so much more.

 

 

 

 

 

It says a lot about the size and enthusiasm of the Cake Club that we managed to drink an espresso bar out of coffee. It’s true – they ran out. I saw a lot of coffee being bought, and even more espresso martinis. As for me, I had a classic cocktail – I had, wait for it… a Martinez. (Vermouth, gin, maraschino, and bitters)

 

Not a Negroni.

Shame on you for thinking I was that predictable!

(I made a Negroni when I got home...)
 

'Flipped' Negroni Cheesecake

For the base:

1 packet plain biscuits (I used Arnott’s Milk Arrowroot)

200g melted butter

For the cheesecake:

2 x 250g packets Philadelphia cream cheese

1 x 395g can condensed milk

The zest from 4 oranges

The juice of 3 oranges

1 tssp orange extract (optional)

 3 eggs

For the jelly topping:

1 cup water

1/3 cup caster sugar

3 leaves Titanium strength gelatine (soaked in cold water to soften) or 2 sachets of good gelatine crystals

1/3 cup gin

1/3 cup Campari

1/3 cup red Vermouth

Garnish:

Twists of orange zest

Crush the biscuits into crumbs in a food processor (or pop in a plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin). Mix with melted butter until combined. Press into the base of a springform tin and put in the fridge to chill.

Blend cream cheese, condensed milk and orange zest until smooth. Slowly add the orange juice and orange extract. When this mixture is completely blended, add the eggs and mix until just combined. (Don’t over mix or your cheesecake will have cracks in it!). Pour the mixture on top of the chilled base and bake in a 160C oven for 45 minutes until just set. Leave to cool and then place in the fridge to chill.

In a pan, over a low heat, gently warm the cup of water. Add the sugar and softened gelatine and stir until completely dissolved. Remove water from heat and add gin, Campari and Vermouth. Allow to cool for about 20 minutes then pour over cheesecake and return to the fridge to allow to set for a couple of hours (or overnight).

Remove the cheesecake from the spring-form tin and garnish with twists of orange zest.