Is it icecream? Is it cake? ...No - IT'S A CAKEPOP!

There's something childlike and charming about making things that look like other things. Ask Heston Blumenthal, who specialises in it. Not that I'm comparing myself to the Great Man - but I did have a lot of fun making these icecreams (which aren't).

The cones are real mini cones, but the icecream is actually a thick layer of pink-tinted chocolate with a lush interior of crumbed orange and almond cake mixed with lemon cream cheese icing.

Huge thanks to Angie Dudley, a.k.a. Bakerella whose awesome book Cake Pops this idea came from.

No childhood fantasy would be complete without its dark side, the ultimate childhood disappointment of a dropped icecream.
I remember the devastation of dropping an icecream on the pavement when I was about four, just as I had walked out of the milkbar. It was the worst moment in my life that far. So making these 'permanently dropped' icecreams was quite cathartic for me.

So these are the start of the icecreams - surprising as that is.
The balls are made from an orange and almond cake (for recipe see here) , crumbed and mixed with a little lemon cream cheese icing.
I must admit I had a bit of trouble crumbling the cake mixture because it was too moist, so it sort of squished rather than crumbled. I guess I shouldn't have added icing to it then, because I knew that would make it even moister, but you know, I did. And ended up with, well, sludge. Nice tasting sludge.

Needless to say, it was a hard job rolling it into balls. A fridge was involved for several hours before rolling, and a freezer was required for several hours thereafter.

Next job was the pink coating. This marvellous substance is Wilton's Candy Melts, a mixture similar in taste to white chocolate but tinted in different colours. It comes in packages from cake decorating stores (in Hobart, try Habitat or Spotlight for a start). For this project I got pastel pink and some dark chocolate melts which were mint flavoured.

They melt well in the microwave if heated gently, on 50% heat, in small bursts of a minute or so.

When the pink melts are smoothly melted, stick a dipping fork, knife, or skewer into a cake ball and lift it gently into the melted mix.

You need to push it right into the mixture and use a knife or spatula to push the mixture right up the sides to cover the whole ball.

Then gently tap the fork on the side of the ball to make any excess mixture drip off and get a smooth texture.

As soon as the ball is dipped, drop it into a waiting cone. If there is any cake ball visible where you've pulled out the fork, use a little more melted mixture to patch the hole. The mixture will dry quickly and stick the ball to the cone.

I also sprinkled a few sprinkles around the edges of the pink topping at this stage, avoiding the centre because that will be covered up later.

So after a few dips and sprinkles you'll end up with some quite realistic little cones.

Usually with cake pops the aim is to get the coating as smooth as possible, but with these, I don't think it matters because any swirls and drips just look like the icecream is melting, and, if anything, makes it more realistic!

If you are going to take macabre delight in creating some dropped icecreams, now is the time. As soon as you dip the balls and put them on the cones, sprinkle liberally with sprinkles and then upend them at an angle on some baking paper.

It looks even more effective if the coating on these ones is liberal so that it spreads out a bit, just like icecream does when it hits the pavement. I have an exact memory of that particular image :-(

By now, the pink coating is probably dry so it's time for the chocolate topping. Because as we all know, an icecream without chocolate topping isn't really an icecream at all.

Melt some dark chocolate melts (I used mint flavoured ones) - you don't need much - and get your sprinkles ready. I also laid out some red and orange mini M&Ms, for the 'cherry' on the top.

Using a teaspoon, drop some chocolate mixture onto the top of the cone.

Shake the cone slightly from side to side, to get the chocolate to spread a bit unevenly, or use the spoon to smooth it down a little, You're aiming for the look of chocolate syrup having been squirted on the top from some big canister at the back of Wendy's Supa Sundaes.

Then top it with a mini M&M.

Then take a pinch of the sprinkles and drop them over the cone.

Return the cone back to its position to dry and repeat with the other cones.

You may ask where I got a stand that happens to accommodate mini icecream cones. It's actually a vintage 1970s 3D tic-tac-toe played with marbles, courtesy of my Dad. The holes are to hold the marbles but they happened to be the perfect dimension to hold mini cones. Serendipity.

So there you have it... faux icecream cake pops, brimming with orange cake, cream cheese icing and chocolate.

Enjoy!

Chocolate whoopie pies with marshmallow chocolate filling

These bite size whoopie pies are my third whoopie pie experiment, and the first one that's actually worked yay!

They are about the same size as macarons, so I guess you could think of them as a kind of cakey macaron.

I made these using a brand new whoopie pie tin (who knew you could get these in Australia?)  - thanks to my shopping professional mum, who can find just about anything if asked. I swear one day I'll ask her to find me some sand from the moon landing and I'll get it for my next birthday.

The relevant things about this tin are a) very flat depressions for the whoopie pies, b) it's very heavy and thick so it distributes heat well and cooks the pies through without burning them; and c) it's nonstick.

I made a chocolate mud cake mixture and filled the whoopie tin holes with a teaspoon.

They looked like tiny pikelets. I was worried that they would rise too much and come right out of their holes and spread across the tin, but they were fine.

I gave them ten minutes in the very bottom of an oven heated to 160C.
This is where I really appreciated the quality of the cake pan- because it was so thick and heavy, it distributed the heat really well so that the little whoopie pies didn't burn even though they were so thin.
Also, the nonstick coating of the pan was top class. Some don't really work that well but this one released the pies with only the smallest encouragement from a spatula.

I put the whoopie pies on a rack to cool and started the filling.

This was possibly the weirdest (but one of the nicest) cake fillings I have ever made. It was like nothing I've ever made before, perhaps because I've never experimented with marshmallow.

Chocolate Marshmallow Filling
(from Claire Ptak's The Whoopie Pie Book)

Ingredients
100g dark chocolate
3 egg whites
150g caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
pinch salt

First you need to melt the chocolate over simmering water, in the top of a double boiler saucepan, or you can build yourself a rickety saucepan plus bowl combo like I've done here (above).

Put the chocolate aside to cool a little. Then put all the other ingredients in another bowl and place this bowl on top of the saucepan of simmering water. Whisk the mixture until it's well combined.

At this point the recipe calls for you to beat it by hand for 10-12 minutes. All I can say is that I tried beating for about 3 minutes and my arm nearly dropped off. So I did the sensible thing, and switched to an electric beater.
I didn't know if this would affect it badly so I tried to do it as 'slowly' as you can do with electric - putting it on the lowest setting, only using one beater instead of two, and turning the beater off every 20 seconds to stir manually for 10 seconds. This worked fine.
The mixture slowly becomes very foamy and hot.

Take it off the heat and turn the beater to high speed, whipping up a storm. The mixture will (bizarrely) go much lighter in colour, from a mid brown to nearly white, and will get thicker and thicker - keep beating until it's almost too firm to beat.

Then, very gently, fold in the melted chocolate with a wooden spoon or spatula. This pic shows the chocolate being folded in super gently.

First time I made this, I had a disaster at this point (which I didn't photograph) - I stupidly assumed I could just beat the chocolate in, using the electric beater, just as I had been beating the mixture to its very firm and pale state. But when I tried, the mixture quickly lost all its firmness and turned into a sloppy mess.

The penny dropped when I saw what I had done - it's basically a cooked meringue mixture, with egg whites being responsible for the consistency. When you add other, heavy ingredients to meringue (like melted chocolate) you have to be careful to fold them in really gently because if you beat them in, you will beat all the air out of the egg whites and the mixture will sink. That's what I did with this mixture. I tried to save it by beating up a couple more egg whites to stiff peak and folding them in to firm the mixture, but it was useless - I had to throw it away and start again.

After the chocolate was DELICATELY folded in to the marshmallow mixture, I loaded it into a piping bag and piped a generous dollop onto half of the whoopie pies, then sandwiching them together.

You could just spoon it out but on balance it seemed easier and less messy to pipe it.

To finish them I melted down a small amount of milk chocolate and dolloped it on top, and stuck crystallised violets to it. I love the violet colour with the dark brown of the cake. You could use any type of decoration though.

A quick note, I also had trouble melting the milk chocolate smoothly - probably because I wasn't using couverture, just using a good quality eating chocolate. Well, actually it was a pretty basic quality eating chocolate. It melted patchily and lumpily, and you know what? I just thought 'What the hell,' and used it anyway, and hoped that the crystallised violets would cover up the lumps - which they did.

Key lessons from my chocolate whoopie pie experience:

1. A really solid thick cake pan is a good cake pan.
2. What did people do before nonstick surfaces?
3. Marshmallow filling is awesome and relatively easy to make, and I want to use it more.
4. Don't beat heavy ingredients into egg whites at stiff peak and expect them to like it.

How to make rose macarons

Rose macarons are a delicate, fragrant, very feminine version of these treats.

The flavour is similar to turkish delight - I only say that because I don't come across rose flavouring very often and that's the only comparison that comes to mind.

Aside from the normal macaron ingredients, you need rose syrup for the flavouring.
This is difficult to find, and I looked everywhere without success before dropping some massive hints to my parents. They got on the case and I was delighted to unwrap a shiny bottle of Sirop de Monin - Rose from an Express Post parcel on my birthday yay!

You may be wondering why I didn't use rosewater or rose essence. You can get these much more easily. I haven't tried to use either, and they may work as well, but I thought the syrup would be safer as macaron mixture is very bad-tempered in a culinary sense and I didn't want to stress it by adding something watery like rosewater. I am still quite traumatised by my experience when trying to make raspberry macarons, when I added an icy raspberry coulis to the mixture and it turned into the macarons from hell.

So I started off in the normal way with the tant pour tant (for detailed instructions on how to make it, see here)...

... And to the tant pour tant mixture I added the rose syrup. I used two capfuls, but did it gradually, adding one first and then tasting.

Then you need to add a bit of colour because although the syrup has a pink tint it's not deep enough to colour the mixture. This is the gel colour I use. The amount on the very end of the spoon handle is about all you need - again it's really important to add it gradually, and start small, because you can always add more but you can't go backwards.

This is the colour of the mixture after the colouring was added. It was perfect for what I wanted, but....

... By the time I had added the other half of the mixture - the meringue - the colour had become a little too diluted. I wish I'd added just a bit more colour up front.

These are the piping bags I use. They are easy to fill but I always tend to put too much mixture in them.

So by the time I'm piping, there is sticky, gooey mixture absolutely everywhere.

If you can get past the mess, it's good to hold the piping bag vertical and pipe downwards - you get nice even circles that way.

Once they are all piped they need to sit and firm up and form a skin for half an hour - here they are sitting and having a little think about themselves before being baked.
The pink mixture in the bowl is the buttercream - I'll get to that eventually :-)

Because of my shocker of an experience with raspberry macarons (if you feel like reading about it you'll find it here) I was really worried about whether the rose syrup would work. I couldn't wait until they came out of the oven, I had to have a peep while they were still in there. I was so relieved and happy to see them rising up on their little 'feet' like good little macarons should.

So then I started on the buttercream filling. This is variable according to your taste but is about one part unsalted butter to three parts icing sugar, plus an egg yolk. Beat them all together with an electric beater until you have a firm but smooth textured mix.

I added the rose syrup to this, about two capfuls and then dipped a very small amount of pink colouring into the mix...

... Which turned a LURID pink, way brighter than I wanted. Bugger!

The finished product wasn't exactly right in colour terms, although they were still pretty.

I had envisaged the shells being a bit darker and the buttercream being a bit lighter, so there wouldn't be much of a colour difference between the two.

They looked good with other pastel shades. These are pistachio macarons left over from another batch (recipe here). 

A quick tasting note on these macarons, the rose syrup makes them very sweet - that sounds obvious as all macarons are sweet, but some flavours like pistachio and coffee have lots of flavour with less additional sugar. So beware, these are best for true sweet tooths.

Maple sugar candy noms

I have loved maple sugar candy since I was tiny. Although many Canadians could say the same, it's not common in Australia and many people don't even know what it is - maple sugar candy is essentially 100% maple sugar, crystallised by a process of boiling and stirring, then moulded into a variety of shaped sweets, like maple leaves, little people or flowers.

When I was little, my mum, who is a world class shopper, somehow found and used to buy imported maple sugar figures. I often used to get them in my Christmas stocking and I adored the crisp sugary outer shell and the meltingly smooth, sweet maple-y centre. At some point in my childhood these wonderful sweets became unavailable, and as an adult I searched high and low for them without success.

My search for maple sugar candy became a kind of dismal epic - once, in a cruel twist of fate, I took a day off work just as a co-worker came back from a holiday in Canada. When I was back at work I discovered he had brought some maple sugar candies back with him but by the time I realised, they were all gone and only the empty box remained to taunt me.

It never occurred to me to try to make them - they seemed so exotic and, well, Canadian, and such a mythical product of my childhood that I couldn't imagine them being born in my pedestrian kitchen. HOWEVER, when playing on the interwebs recently I found a RECIPE for maple candy.

The recipe was a fairly simple affair which required some maple syrup, a saucepan, a sugar thermometer and some moulds. My last sugar thermometer died a while ago so on impulse today I decided to fly blind and boil up some syrup and see what happened.

I boiled the syrup for a few minutes and began testing for soft ball stage manually - in the absence of a sugar thermometer you can do it the old fashioned way, drop a small amount of mixture in iced water and see if it has enough firmness to form a soft 'ball' in the water. On the third test the mixture seemed to ball, and I was relieved because it was smelling a bit like burnt caramel and I wondered if I had stuffed it up. Then I began to stir it, to crystallise the sugar. It's supposed to start to grain and lose its gloss, but it didn't. I stirred and stirred, then I put the pan in a sink of cold water (in case the mixture needed to be cooler to grain up) and stirred some more, then I put it back on the heat (in case I'd cooled it too much) and stirred more violently. Nothing worked.

I was starting to feel very glum. I had an admittedly thick syrup, but it was still a syrup and I didn't see how it could possibly set in the moulds. FAILURE. Muttering grumpy things, I set the maple syrup bottle on the bench and carefully poured the thick syrup back in. I thought maybe I could use it as a maple caramel sauce on icecream or something.

About this time Mr Cupcake (who was also grumpy because the DVD he was watching kept freezing) came in to the kitchen and I started complaining about my failure. I got his attention by unwisely mentioning that the wasted bottle of maple syrup had cost upwards of ten bucks. I think Mr Cupcake may have felt that was rather extravagant - anyway, as a demonstration of how frugal I was in having 'transformed' the failure into a sauce for icecream, I tipped the bottle sideways to show him the consistency. And the syrup had GONE HARD.

Confusion then struck as I wondered how the hell to get it out of the glass bottle again. Mr Cupcake came to the rescue by pointing out that it may be microwaveable to a liquid again. I microwaved and poured the now- liquid syrup into the moulds, wondering if by some bizarre chance I had actually made maple candy without realising it. It took 5 minutes before I knew I had. They turned out perfectly. I'm overcome.

Recipe:
One bottle of pure maple syrup (don't use maple-flavour syrup - you need the real stuff)
Yep - that's it for the ingredients :-)

Pour the maple syrup into a heavy bottomed saucepan much larger than you think you need - this is because the syrup will boil up very high (you've been warned).
Boil the syrup to 'soft ball' stage - check by using a sugar thermometer or by the method described above. Once the syrup is at soft ball, take it off the heat and leave it to cool for 2-3 minutes, then begin stirring it with a wooden spoon.
You are looking for the texture to change and for some crystallisation to become apparent - but in my experience this was really subtle! See if the syrup being thrown up around the edges of the saucepan is hardening or crystallising. That's a good clue.
Hopefully after a few minutes you will see some evidence of crystallisation - at this point when the syrup is still a pourable liquid.
Pour the syrup into moulds if you have them, or onto some greaseproof paper in a cake tin if you don't. I used silicone chocolate moulds and they worked well.

Leave for 10 minutes or so and turn out of the moulds (or cut into squares). They will still be damp but set. Leave to dry in the open air for a few hours so that the outer layer becomes a bit lighter in colour.
They last for up to a month in an airtight container.