Poinsettia Cake

Poinsettias are a traditional Christmas flower popular in festive films etc. and the only reason this cake has the name that it does is because it is iced with poinsettia shaped things on top. Well it’s supposed to… mine didn’t really but on to that later.

The sponge itself has no flour and the flour is replaced by ground hazelnuts and almonds. The other ingredients it contains apart from sugar, butter, egg etc. are cinnamon and other spices, which also add to the festive theme of the cake.

During the making of the cake there was a bit of drama as my brother was trying to assist me in the most unhelpful way possible as there was little time so in the end I screamed at him. He had thrown in more ground nuts which turned out to be what the cake needed but I didn’t know how much he had added, or how much we needed, or how much was already in there.

It was nuts (pun intended).                                            

Anyway I then had to make the butter cream which for some bizarre and unknown reason to me contained custard and as hard as I tried it didn’t want to be butter cream consistency. So I tried again. Still no luck. So I filled the cake with apricot jam which I had to cover the cake anyway for the icing to stick to.

Back to the icing. The poinsettias with the aid of my friend ended up looking like sea creatures but I refuse to take full responsibility for that as my friend did contribute a lot to it.  Anyway you can make up your own minds.

Next Recipe:  Saratoga Torte

Lebkuchen

 For Christmas I got these really cool biscuit cutters, yes biscuit cutters can be cool, and they print words into the biscuit.  One of them is square with “eat me” and the other is heart shaped with “homemade”. So I felt that they kind of had to be used.

Lebkuchen are German biscuits which are very similar to gingerbread except the fact that they don’t have ginger in them. The main ingredient is honey and is full of spices like cinnamon and other festive flavours.

Annie Bell makes them for her Christmas tree but thanks to the new biscuit cutters, I decided not to bother with that. I also didn’t ice them as I felt it was unnecessary.

An interesting fact about the biscuits, if you are considering making them, is that they get better if you leave them in an air tight box for a couple of days.  They stay crisp in the box and the flavour gets stronger. Also dip them in milk for extra yumminess.

Next Recipe: Poinsettia Cake

Chocolate Swiss Roll

One word can summarise this recipe: A disaster. I am going to list the many disasters that occurred as I don’t really know what else I can do.

1.       The tray was too thin so the cake burnt and became a little bit like a biscuit

2.       I set fire to an oven glove

3.       There were mountains in the swiss roll so it wasn’t very flat. THERE WERE MOUNTAINS

4.       The chocolate cream in the middle was actually chocolate and cream

5.       The cake cracked as I rolled it up.

6.       The chocolate was solid so quite difficult to eat

But in other ways it was very yummy… Also there is no picture with this because well it looked awful... 

Next Recipe: Lebkuchen