SHF: Glitter

Sun 16 Nov 2008

This month's Sugar High Friday, hosted by the Well Seasoned Cook, is Glitter. Susan offered a few ideas to get participants started but I always knew where I was going.

When I was little, we used to have a tube of silver cachous in the cupboard. They were used, unsurprisingly, for decorating cakes. At one point, I also decided that they represented an important part of my diet and eating one (several times a day, obviously) probably granted me some kind of exciting, superhuman quality.

It was clear that, for SHF, I should revisit the cachou.

Now, thanks to the interent, it seems that 'cachou' is the Australian (and Kiwi) word for 'silver balls'. I prefer 'cachou' - 'silver balls', while descriptive, is just ridiculous.

Because I knew my cake decorating was likely to be a bit lame, I made up my own recipe for little chocolate studded cupcakes.

Take 50g of dark chocolate and either process or cut into small pieces. You could always use 50g of very small chocolate chips.

Cream 175g of unsalted butter with 130g of caster sugar. Add 150g of self raising flour, 1 tsp of baking powder and 2 (medium) eggs. Finish with 1 tbsp of rum. Finish by mixing through your chipped chocolate.

Spoon into your baking receptacle: I used my silicone muffin tray, without papers, and bake at 160°C (fan) for 20 minutes. A skewer should come out clean.

When the cakes were cool I made a basic vanilla icing. I used about 25g unsalted butter, which I melted. I then added icing sugar and hot water until I had about enough and it was the right consistency (this was around 6-8 tbsp of icing sugar), and finished with 1 tsp of vanilla essence.

I finished my iced cakes with writing icing (surprisingly difficult to use) and the cachous. I discovered that very long fingernails are utterly impractical for positioning tiny silver balls in soft icing.

In the end I was a little short on icing, so I had 10 iced cupcakes, and one plain (one had already been eaten for quality control purposes). My favourites are the circus-tent style cakes: this was the easiest decoration to do and it looks the best. Things like love hearts and lettering are clearly beyond me!

The cake itself has been rated highly: because I chipped my chocolate in a food processor it's very fine, so you don't end up biting into a big chunk. In addition, it's remained distributed throughout the cake batter. The rum flavour is there, but it's not overpowering and the cakes are nice and moist.

Cake - yes, we'll definitely visit the cake again. The cachous? I'm thinking it might be time for some superhuman qualities ...

tagged with: shf, sugar high friday, cake, baking, chocolate

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