Chocolate party - Alpine village cake

Sophie's 8th birthday party was all about chocolate (see my previous post here). The obvious choice for a cake was an all out choco-tastic creation but no cakes I found online inspired me. I have learnt from previous years that if the cake isn't particularly creative I feel cheated and disassisfied with the end product so I needed to come up with something I could really get my creative teeth in to. Cue Alpine village cake.

I don't know where this idea sprang from and I couldn't find any similar cakes to what was in my head so I had to build it as I went along. First piece of inspiration came from the Lakeland's fairy tale village moulds and I used this to make chocolate houses. Using milk, dark and white chocolate, I poured melted chocolate into each part of the moulds for mix and match houses. Sadly I didn't do a very good job of tempering the chocolate and all but the dark chocolate rooves bloomed, but actually it didn't notice once all the other decorations were on and the chocolate still tasted good!

I had also collected a selection of chocolate sprinkles, hearts, jazzies, pebbles and other bits along the way which all got put to good use. I ended up baking one rectangular sponge and two 9" circular ones (chocolate sponges of course) and layering them for a staggered mountain slope sort of effect.

I knew I wanted to a stream across the cake and that idea developed into a babbling mountain stream ending in a lake. I mixed two colours of blue fondant together, but didn't totally mix them so there was some marbling still. This ended up looking fab and I finished off the stream with some sugar sprinkles I had left over from the Octonauts cake I made earlier this year.

I had the mountain stream coming out of a chocolate pebble and I edged the mountain lake with some more of the chocolate pebbles and some of the small chocolate sprinkles. The finishing touch for the lake was some piping gel (something new for me to play with) which I spread across the lake for a water effect. This worked fantastically and I will definitely be playing with this again another time.

The strange indentations on the picture of the plain green covered cake above were deliberate! They turned into a footpath from the top house, linking it to the house on the mid-levels and I added some orange chocolate Matchmakers to provide some steps for the little chocolate people I added right at the end (sadly no photos of the cake with these little guys on) to get down to the lake and their friends in the bottom house!  

The finishing touch was to add literally a hundred plus fondant flowers in lots of bright colours, Sophie's name and a number eight candle placed behind the silver Happy Birthday.

For the first time Sophie had very definite ideas as to how she wanted the cake but I couldn't really understand or translate some of these into reality. Thankfully, she was very happy with the finished cake so all was good in the Snowballs house.

© 2014 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

It's all about the chocolate ...

We decided on a chocolate theme for Sophie's 8th birthday party this year. Originally I was thinking that the party guests could make lots of chocolate goodies (such as chocolate pizza and chocolate rice krispie cakes) but when Sophie came up with a guest list of 20 children I knew that this wasn't going to be feasible, so Plan B was created.

Plan B swiftly took shape with some help from Pinterest (where else would you go?) and I came up with games involving huge amounts of chocolate to fill the two hour party. As always, I did the planning and pulling the activities together and Mr Snowballs did the amazing job of keeping 18 children entertained and stuffed with chocolate goodies on the day.

I couldn't find any invitations I liked that included chocolate so I came up with a simple one made from chocolate jazzies stuck onto rice paper with a bit of melted chocolate, and the rice paper stuck onto the invitation with the party information printed on the back (the rice paper stopped the oil from the chocolate "glue" seeping through and spoiling the back of the invitation). Sophie drew the ribbons and bow for each balloon. Feedback was that many of the parents didn't get to see the "balloons" as they were consumed pretty swiftly. And a word of advice to anyone thinking to copy this, make sure the pens and glue glueing the rice paper onto the invitation are non-toxic as the rice paper was also peeled off and eaten by quite a few of the children!!

As I mentioned above, the party was full of games that involved chocolate in lots of ways: including chocolate anagrams to start, guess the chocolate bar (you could tell the chocoholics straight away in this game as they were the only ones to get almost all the answers correct!) ...

 ... pass the chocolate orange without using your hands ...

 ... chocolate dress up (where you roll a dice and when you get a six you have to put a coat and gloves and scarf on and cut off squares of chocolate using a knife and fork!) ...

 ... moving smarties from one plate to another using suction power through a straw (they were surprisingly good at this) ...

 ... and my favourite, chocolate kisses, where you place a square of chocolate on the party guests lips while they are lying down and the last person to eat the chocolate wins. A lot harder than it sounds as the chocolate starts melting.

 Mr Snowballs made it harder by adding slices of chocolate orange along the way!

After each game, the winning children (everyone was a winner according to Mr Snowballs) got to visit the Chocolate Shop for a small chocolate prize. By the time it came to sitting and eating the birthday tea, lots of the children were suffering from chocolate overload. Some judicious eating of cool carrot sticks and they were ready to tackle the chocolate fountain, which they had all been waiting patiently for since they spotted it at the start of the party!

Chocolate overload or not, the children had a great time and the party girl enjoyed it more than all the rest. And Mummy enjoyed the mountain of chocolates left over for the next week!!

I am just launching a series of Host Your Own Party guides. These are aimed for those of you who want to host a great party for your child but don’t know where to start? The Host Your Own Chocolate Party pack gives you all the information you need to organise and run a chocolate-tastic party and all for only £4. Send me a mail for more information or if you would like to buy the guide.

 

© 2014 Nicola Noble: Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look.

Vanilla and chocolate biscuits

I found this simple recipe years ago (courtesy of Sainsbury's) and have made it a couple of times. I whipped up a batch this week when I ran out of after-school snacks for the kiddies: they didn't like the chocolate version which meant I had to eat them - what a shame!!  I made stars but the original recipe suggests hearts, and I thought I'd share as they will make lovely for Valentine's Day gifts.

Vanilla and Chocolate Love Heart Biscuits

Makes about 25 biscuits

Ingredients

110g butter, softened
55g golden caster sugar
few drops of good vanilla extract
175g plain flour
1-2 tbsp milk
2 tbsp cocoa powder

Turn the oven to 180°C, fan 160°C, gas mark 5. Cut two pieces of baking paper to fit two baking trays.

Beat together the softened butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Add the flour with the milk and using your hands or a spoon mix everything together to make a ball of dough.

Sprinkle a little flour onto the table. Split the dough in half and put one half on to the floured table. Add the cocoa powder to the bowl and using your hands knead the dough to mix in the cocoa powder.

Break the vanilla dough in half and roll out one piece until it is about 5mm thick. Using heart cutters, cut out heart biscuits. Using a very small heart cutter and cut small hearts out of the middle of each of the biscuits.

Break the chocolate dough in half, roll out and cut some small hearts to fit inside the big vanilla hearts – you will need to gently press the small heart into the big hearts to make sure that they stick together in the oven (this is really important so that they cook together). Carry on making the biscuits to any design you choose. Carefully use a palette knife or cake slice to help you move the biscuits to the tray.

Bake for 8 minutes until the biscuits are just golden and cooked – the time will vary depending on how big they are. Put the biscuits onto a cooling rack and leave to cool.

© 2013 Nicola Noble: The heart biscuits image courtesy of Sainsbury's. Please observe the rules of copyright and blog etiquette. If you use my ideas or images, please link back to my blog. And do let me know - I'd love to take a look. 

Cookie dough truffles

I have recently become addicted to Pinterest. For those of you who haven't yet discovered it, it is a virtual pinboard where you pin links to things you like/love/aspire to create. There are so many talented people out there with such fantastic ideas and I find myself frequently lost in a daydream of creativity. But I am learning that it is very easy to pin things but not so easy to find the time to actually have a go at creating some of them.

So when I came across a recipe for cookie dough truffles (here), I knew I was on to a winner. Sophie has been bugging me for absolutely ages to make cookie dough "not to cook but to eat". These truffles fitted the bill perfectly.

The cookie dough doesn't include egg so is fine if you are worried about eating raw egg. I made the balls a little too big and they would have been nicer slightly smaller. I also didn't let them chill enough so that when I came to coat them in chocolate they kept falling off my skewer which meant they got a bit messy. I might think about investing in a dipping tool which would help if I come to dip truffles etc again.

I used chocolate coating rather than "real" chocolate as it is easier to melt and also makes very little difference to the taste as the coating is very thin.

Overall the truffles were yummy - albeit a little (!) sickly and Sophie was very pleased that she got to make the cookie dough to eat raw!

Chocolate chip cookie dough truffles

Makes: 30+

Ingredients:

375g plain flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
220g butter or margarine, room temperature
170g granulated sugar
150g brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
75ml milk or soy milk
100g mini chocolate chips
300g chocolate/ chocolate flavour cake covering (for coating)

Method:

Beat the butter and sugars with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy then add the milk and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking soda and salt and mix on a low speed (or by hand) until incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips. Cover and chill dough for 1 hour.

When the dough is firm enough to handle (it may help to lightly flour your hands), form the dough into 1" balls and arrange on a baking sheet lined with waxed paper. Place the sheets in the freezer and let chill for 30 minutes.

Melt chocolate coating in a bain-marie (place a bowl over hot water but make sure it's not touching the water) or in microwave according to package directions. Dip the cookie dough balls into the chocolate to cover, remove any excess coating by lightly tapping, and return to the waxed paper-lined baking sheets. Chill until set. Store, chilled, in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Easter eggs

I decided to make Easter eggs for family this year rather than buy them and found it all quite addictive.

Many, many years ago I collected coupons and sent off for some egg moulds which I rediscovered at the end of last year. I bought a selection of dark, milk and white chocolate and also some mini honeycomb and fudge pieces.

I wasn't technical in the making of the eggs (ie tempering the chocolate etc) as I worked on the principal that the eggs wouldn't be around long enough to "bloom". I melted the chocolate in the microwave and with a bit of practice I figured out how long to "zap" it for - several short bursts to the point where there were still some chocolate pieces that looked solid but with a bit of gentle shaking they collapsed into the melted chocolate.

I made a selection of all dark eggs (for dairy intolerant hubbie) and milk eggs for others. The fun bit was decorating the eggs. I made some mini piping bags from greaseproof paper and melted the white, milk and dark chocolate in the bags in the microwave. I then cut a small hole in the piping end and had fun making flowers, spots and just drizzling randomly across the eggs. When this had hardened I spooned in the contrasting chocolate for the egg and added either fudge or honeycomb pieces, both of which were delicious. When these had set I then melted a little more chocolate and stuck the two halves together to make the complete egg.

I was very pleased with how they came out ...

© 2011 Nicola Noble