Hannah's Christmas Chocolate Bark

This Christmas myself, my mum and sister had decided to give homemade gifts to our family as presents and this was one of them. I was inspired after watching Lorraine Pascale's 'Last Minute Christmas' to try out this chocolate bark.

The way of making this is very simple, but I think that the end product looks quite impressive and there's nothing better than homemade treats: You are simply mixing up different chocolates and adding fruits, nuts or anything else that you can think of.

To start with I made one for my Dad by melting 300g dark chocolate and 100g milk chocolate in separate bowls over hot water (being careful that the bottom of the bowl didn't touch the water). I had lined a baking tray with greaseproof paper and firstly poured the dark chocolate in and then poured the milk chocolate down the middle of the tray. Then I used a skewer to make some swirls and sprinkled with brazil and pistachio nuts.

The tray was then left to cool, and once cool was broken in to pieces and placed in a sealed jar.

The second one I did for James was very similar, but I also used white chocolate.

I couldn't go to all that effort without making one for me to munch, so I used the left over chocolate and added some marshmallows!

Sarah's attempt at macaroons!

Well - these were a bit of a disaster!

For this month's challenge bake, I decided to use Lorraine Pascale's recipe for macaroons which I found on the BBC food website - see link here http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/macaroons_04669.

I used raspberries to flavour them, but I added a bit of red food colouring to make the colour more intense without making the mixture too sloppy. Overall the recipe was easy to follow and quite simple, but I was struggling without the use of an electric whisk for the egg whites. As a result, I don't think the mixture was stiff enough, and piping these babies out on greaseproof paper was a nightmare. I rested them before baking but after an hour I still didn't have a skin on the top - perhaps this is why they aren't nice and shiny. 

Although you wouldn't think it from the photos I did attempt to use a template to keep my macaroons the same size! For the filling I used fresh cream flavoured with rose water. 

Not sure that I'd get many points from Paul Hollywood for consistency...! They were nice though and I would have another go once I get an electric whisk (don't worry, it's on my Christmas present list!)

Malteaser Cake

Cakes are great at any time of the year, but no more so than on a birthday. I wanted to make a bit of a showstopper cake for one of my best friends and fellow Queen of Tarts blogger, Katherine. We are both keen watchers of Lorraine Pascale's cookery programmes and we were both drooling at the thought of this cake as soon as we saw it. Not only is it a chocolate cake, but it is covered in Malteasers, what is there not to like? After buying what felt like hundreds of Malteasers I was ready to give it a go ...

The recipe for the cake is pretty easy to follow and I was excited to use my newly returned KMix electric whisk (a Christmas present from last year that I have only just had fixed and returned to me). The mixer made quick work of the ingredients and I poured the mixture in to 2 round sandwich tins and put them in the oven.

Once the cakes had cooked, I left them to cool completely and put them to one side whilst I made the chocolate buttercream frosting. The frosting was basically softened butter, melted chocolate and icing sugar. The most difficult thing about making the frosting was that it only needed 100g of melted chocolate and that the Bourneville bar i had bought was 200g, but it is encouraged that you should try your recipe along the way ...

I used about 1/3 of the frosting to sandwich the 2 cakes together and then used the remaining frosting to cover the cake completely, with the assistance of a palette knife to try and keep it neat. It was important to keep a reasonably thick layer of frosting around the cake to allow the malteasers to stick.

      

Next came the most tricky part of the cake, placing all of the malteasers on. Lorraine suggests going up the side of the cake, over the top and then back down the other side, so this was how I started off. I was tempted at one point to throw the whole cake on the floor in frustration, but I had to admit defeat on getting perfectly straight lines. It does take a lot of patience and time to cover the cake, but I think the end result is worth the effort.

Katherine had organised an afternoon tea for her birthday and so I took the cake along as a surprise bake. Although slightly bashed in the 2 hour car journey, the cake had stayed pretty much in one piece and it had the desired effect of being a slightly over the top, but 'show off' cake!

I would definitely recommend for people to make this and it really does look impressive when finished and tastes just as good.