Lego Cake

Lego cake!! I'm only going to detail the decoration here as you can in reality use any cakes, either homemade or shop bought, to make the cakes within. If you make your own, each mix should fill 2 shallow cake tins so you have four cakes in total :)
You could also use just two cake layers and slice in half, but only if they are large enough to do so and you trust your cake-slicing skills to be even...

Lego cake
Serves: 24
Prep time: At least 3 hours
Cooking temp: Depends on cake (ditto for time)

Ingredients
2 different coloured cakes of two layers each (we made red velvet and vanilla cake) Preferably with leveled tops
Cream cheese frosting and vanilla icing (again it can be made or bought. If you make it, use:

• 450g cream cheese, softened

• 125g butter, softened

• 250g sieved icing sugar

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

and literally just mix together in a bowl. You can use this on the inside too, or use vanilla butter cream (I tend o make this up as I go along, adding butter/icing sugar/vanilla extract to a good consistency - like thick double cream)

Packet (1kg) of royal icing
Red and green modelling icing
Lego figures

Method

1. Use a round cookie cutter to cut out the centre of each cake and remove. The cakes should be completely cold and on a hard surface. Then, cut out a slightly larger ring concentrically around this - we used a bowl for a guide and cut out with a knife. Small dinner plates should work too.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Each layer of cake should now be composed of two rings and a circle from the middle. Construct the bottom layer: take the outer ring of the vanilla cake, for example, and place the smaller red velvet inside. Finally fill the middle hole with the circle of the vanilla cake to form a target-like pattern.

   

   Yes, I know this is the opposite way around..

3. Cover the top with the vanilla icing
4. Construct the next layer on top in the same fashion, but in the alternate colours - i,e, with the red velvet as the larger ring. You may want to make all these rings before placing on the cake and simply lifting on top with a large palette knife and one other person to help. Again, icing on top and repeat with the last two layers (don't put any icing on the very top, yet).
   
5. Leave this tower of cake to set. Roll out the red and green icing on grease-proof paper to about a 1mm thick. Use a sharp knife to cut away the rough edges to form a rectangle. Using a lego brick for scale, cut out the sides of the bricks (we used a 2x4 brick and scaled it up by factor two to give a width of 2cm and a length of about 6cm).
6. Using a palette knife, ice about a quarter of the side of the cake using cream cheese icing. Ensure it is smooth.
7. Arrange alternate green and red "bricks" up the side of the cake, sticking against the icing.We used a half brick at the start of every other row to give the overlap of a wall effect.
8. Re-roll the excess icing and repeat the scaling up for the top of the brick (the part with the studs) (ours was 3 by 6 cm) ice the top quarter in a wedge like shape, to link up to the bricks down the side. Cover with the icing rectangles again.
   
9. Ice the rest of the cake (don't get it on the green and red). Roll out your white royal icing until it is about 3-5mm thick and roughly rectangular. Cover the cake (easier said than done, we had to do it in three parts and smooth over the intersection with water; but by all means try in one piece). 
   
10. Use a sharp knife to cut away where your green and red icing is, just up to the edge but not so you can see the cake below. Smooth down the rest and cut off any excess around the base.
11. Use the left over red and green (yes, you will still have some left) to make the studs of the lego bricks on top of the cake. use a bit of tap water to make them stick to the icing.
12. Roll out the white icing again to a steep sided triangle (cut away the edges with a knife to give sharp edges). Starting at the base, roll the triangle up to form a croissant-like shape. Place behind the triangle of red and green bricks on the top of the cake, as if it is the 'snow' which has been rolled back from this wedge of lego!
    
13. You can arrange christmassy lego figures around as if they were working on clearing away the 'snow' and doing generally christmassy things like putting up a tree. We made fondant shapes in alternate colours using the red and green icing and used this to ring around the cake, and little presents to go on top of the snow pile! (wash the lego well first...)
    
    
    
14. Enjoy the fabulous creation which gets even better when you cut into it... It's got checks!!
    

    

    Featuring Alice's hand as she cuts the cake just as I take every photo...

Mini millionaires' shortbread - (quick version)

A much easier and quicker way of making these but also very nice. There is a lot of left over caramel for more deserts. If you are really lazy you could use tinned caramel (although it doesn't take long to make) such as Carnation's caramel.

Millionaires' shortbread
Serves: 4, but easily increased - just add 1 more biscuit per person and a bit more butter (leave the chocolate and caramel amounts, as they are likely to be in excess anyway)
Prep time: About 20 minutes or less of actually doing anything, a few more minutes for sitting in the fridge


Ingredients
4 biscuits (shortbread/ ginger/digestive)
About two heaped teaspoons of butter
150g butter
150g dark muscavado sugar
397g can of condensed milk
2x 100g chocolate, in dark and white/milk
Gold lusture spray
Also need ramekins- we used the glass ones that those supermarket Gu puds come in

Method

1. Put the biscuits in a freezer bag and mash to crumbs with a rolling pin. Melt tsps of  butter in a small bowl, then mix in the biscuit crumbs and combine until it holds together fairly well (if not add a bit more melted butter).
   
2. Press into 4 ramekins and put in the fridge to set. Meanwhile-
3. Melt the butter and sugar together over a medium heat until dissolved. Stir in the condensed milk and mix continuously for about a minute until thickened.
4. Pout about 2/3 tsps of the caramel over each ramekins(or more...) - the rest is extra
   
5. Fridge again. (10 mins or so, until set)
6. Break up the chocolate into separate bowls and melt in the microwave in ten second bursts, mixing between each. Stop when about half is melted and mix until completely liquid.
7. Distribute the dark chocolate between the ramekins (or you can do half/half with the milk or white chocolate) then chill until solid.

   

   The fourth one will not be shown here as Alice messed up the decoration ;)

8. Use a teaspoon to drizzle over the melted white/milk chocolate and spray on a bit of edible
   gold to finish.
   
   
   
   
9. Store any leftover chocolate and caramel and to make these little banoffee pies:
   
   These took under 10 minutes to make because the caramel was already sitting in my fridge and just needed heating a little, and all it required was a few more crumbled biscuits and chopped banana. Grate over some chocolate and serve with cream...
   

Ginger and Orange biscuits

Yep, I'm still on a baking roll.
The inspiration for this was The Great British Bake Off (love it). In the last episode (patisserie week) they did a bit on macaroons. Now, I can't eat macaroons because of the almonds but they looked so delicious I suddenly wanted to try something similar (i.e. a filled biscuit). This is what I came up with.

N.B: I guess these are really cookies actually because I didn't bake them twice

Makes: ~ 35 (I ate a few that, sadly, broke)
Easily halved
Time:

Ingredients:

For the biscuits: (I'm really sorry for the ounces, this is what it was on the recipe I used)
- 12 oz (340g) self-raising flour
- 8 oz (227g) soft brown sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 4 oz (113g) butter
- 2 heaped tsp ground ginger
- 2 rounded tsp golden syrup
- 2 eggs

For the buttercream filling:
- 250g icing sugar
- 125g butter
- 1/2 tsp orange extract
- 1/2 tsp orange zest
- 1 tbsp of milk

 1. Mix all the dry ingredients for the biscuits in a bowl.

2. Add the butter and combine until you get a breadcrumb texture. Then add the golden syrup

I love golden syrup. Possibly too much.

3. Beat the eggs and add slowly to form a dough.

4. Here, I used our beautiful contraption: (cookie press that doubles up as an icing-machine)

But otherwise, roll the dough into walnut-sized pieces and space out on a baking tray.

Fine, so there are some deformed ones. Don't hold it against them.

You may need a few trays...
5. Bake for 15 minutes as gas mark 4, 180 degrees C, or until firm (but not burnt)

6. Leave to cool.
(Actually, at this point I had a bit of trouble getting them off the tray. The ones I left to fully cool went hard and stuck to the tray. But when they're soft, there's always the danger they'll break apart. I still found it easier to move them when they were warm, personally).

7. Make the icing: beat the butter, orange extract and zest until fluffy. Then add the icing sugar.

8. Put a blob onto one biscuit and then squash a similar-sized one on top.

9. Viola!

Pizza Cake!

This is a bit like a lasagna... but with pizza layers instead of pasta sheets and pizza topping instead of meat/vegetables and white sauce.

I'm not advocating this as a regular meal, but it is delicious.

Serves: 6, with a salad.
Time to make: 2 hours

For the dough:
- 600g white bread flour
- 2 tsp yeast
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp oil
- 400ml water

^ These quantities actually depend on the size of your cake tin. Mine was 23 cm in diameter and the pizza cake filled it to the top.

For the sauce:
- 1 medium onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 3 carrots
- 1 tin tomatoes
- some sundried tomatoes (5/6)
- some whole tomatoes (~4 large ones)
- basil

For the filling:
- mozzarella cheese
- salami slices
- anything else you like the sound of, e.g. olives
(nothing too wet or it will make the dough soggy)

Preheat oven to gas mark 6, 200C (I find people know how long their ovens take to warm up so I'm putting this at the beginning so you know in advance)

1. Chop the onions, garlic and carrots into smallish pieces.
2. Make the sauce. Fry the onion, carrots and garlic until soft. Add the tin of tomatoes and some basil and other seasonings. Leave to simmer. (I do this to make sure it is thick and not watery).

The image on the left is before I added the tomatoes, which is why it doesn't look much like tomato sauce...

3. Meanwhile, make the dough. Put the flour in a large bowl and add the yeast and salt. Make a well in the middle and add the water and oil. Mix with a spoon until it starts to come together, then get in with your hands and roll it into a ball. No need to leave to prove, etc. as it's pizza dough

4. Divide the ball into two. Take the first ball and divide into three. Roll each ball into a circle the same diameter as your cake tin. I used the removable base as a guide but you could probably trace round the outside of the cake tin as the dough does shrink inwards a little, I found.

5. Blind bake these three bases for 15 minutes at 200C, gas mark 6.

6. Hopefully your sauce is thickening up by now. Cut up the whole tomatoes and sundried tomatoes and add them. Cook for 5 mins then blend to smooth.

7. Roll out the other half of the dough and use it to fill the sides of the cake tin. My dough came out strangely wet and I ended up smearing it around the sides. So when it came to removing it from the tin it was a bit tricky (it was stuck to the sides), but mine still worked which shows you can go a bit wrong without messing up 100%

8. Place the first base in the bottom. I used the largest so it sealed the gap nicely and no sauce could leak out.

9. Cover the base with the sauce and toppings.

You can see a mistake I made in this photo, by not putting the side-dough up to the top. This is because I thought it wouldn't reach that far. It did. 

Look how beautiful these colours are!!

10. Then repeat with the other two bases, leaving some cheese and salami to melt on top. Yuuuum

11. Cook for 25-35 minutes at gas mark 6, 200C, depending on size of final pizza. (With these quantities I'd go for 35 minutes).

I'm really happy with how this came out because I have to admit I had my doubts about whether it would actually work, and it did!