Guest Post: Linda's Salted Caramel and Vanilla Cheesecake

Today's guest post features Linda, a lover of food but a hater of caterpillars (maybe you can tell us about that another time huh)? Recently welcomed to the blogging world, she is the mind behind You Berra believe it, a blog mainly focussed on reviewing good food in Canberra - of course you say, she is a lover of food! She is absolutely great at talking about the food she has eaten and is even better at getting people to talk about the food she has cooked! As you may have seen from our May Cakeup roundup, her decadent salted caramel cheesecake appeared on the buffet and was literally gone in minutes - it was just divine! Linda has decided to share the recipe with us today - lucky us!

I’m not sure where I got my love of baking from. It certainly wasn’t from my mum. Most of her creations (even sweet ones) originated from her wok. Our family oven lay dormant for many years until I started experimenting with baking myself.

I never had much of sweet tooth as a child (that developed a little later in life) but I became accustomed to baking for other people because the enjoyment of seeing the glee on people’s faces far outweighed the work that went into baking. In fact, to me baking doesn’t equate to any work. I find it rather therapeutic. Some of my old colleagues would always know when I was either stressed or upset. Perhaps the promise of a consistent (and delicious) result was cathartic.

Particularly new to my baking repertoire was cheesecake. I know this sometimes strikes fear into the most experienced bakers but cheesecake is quite simple and easy if not just slightly time consuming. There’s nothing like the sweet and savoury taste and smooth creamy texture of a baked cheesecake.

This recipe for a salted caramel and vanilla cheesecake is easier than it sounds. It was originally a Donna Hay recipe (that I’ve modified) and some of you may remember it from its appearance at the last Canberra cake up.

The important thing to remember about this recipe:

• Do everything in the right order – for a smooth consistency follow the instructions for blending the ingredients into the cheese mixture to a T.
• There is plenty of waiting time between the steps. So while the work maybe only equate to about 20-30 mins worth all up, the waiting time easily extends the cake making process to about half the day.
• Make sure the sea salt flakes are sprinkled on once the caramel has cooled as this ensures the salt crystals stay intact and you will get a nice burst of saltiness!

Salted caramel and vanilla cheesecake

Ingredients:

·         400g plain sweet shortbread biscuits

·         ½ cup (60g) almond meal (ground almonds)

·         110g butter, melted

·         350g ricotta

·         500g cream cheese

·         1 cup (175g) brown sugar

·         4 eggs

·         2 tablespoons golden syrup

·         ¼ teaspoon table salt

·         1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Caramel sauce

·         1 cup (250ml) single (pouring) cream

·         35g butter, chopped

·         1 cup (175g) brown sugar

·         sea salt flakes, for sprinkling

To make the caramel sauce, place the cream, butter and sugar in a saucepan over low heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to high, bring to the boil and cook for 5–7 minutes or until thickened. Set aside and allow to cool. Sprinkle in sea salt flakes and mix into the caramel.

Place the biscuits and almond meal in the bowl of a food processor and process until coarsely chopped. Add the butter and process to combine. Press the biscuit mixture into the base and sides of a lightly greased 22cm springform cake tin lined with non-stick baking paper. Ensure the crust isn’t too thick around the bottom edge. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 160°C (325°F). Place the ricotta and cream cheese in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat for 5–6 minutes or until smooth. Add the sugar and beat for 3–4 minutes or until combined. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the golden syrup, table salt and the teaspoon of vanilla and beat until well combined. Spoon the mixture into the biscuit shell. Bake for 1 hour 30 minutes or until firm to the touch.

Remove cheesecake from the oven and allow to cool in the tin. Refrigerate for 3 hours or until set. Drizzle with the caramel sauce to serve. Serves 8–10.

Guest Post: Amy's Limoncello Cupcakes

Our guest poster of the week is Amy, a now regular at our cakeups! She always brings much colour to, as proved by these colourful Limoncello cupcakes which she brought along to our last cakeup. A baker extraordinaire - we asked her to tell us about her experience of Cake Club and of course to share with all of you lovely readers - the recipe for her cocktailish delights which were enjoyed by all!

A huge thank you to the divine ladies of the Canberra Cake Club for inviting me to guest post and share this recipe!

I have always loved to bake, and some of my very happiest memories are connected to being in the kitchen. I spent a lot of my childhood with my great-grandmother, and it was she who instilled my love of cooking. Many afternoons were spent in her company, wrapped in an oversized apron, baking scones, icing patty cakes, and learning the secrets of her famous banana cake.

Nan had a seemingly endless stream of visitors dropping in to her flat for a cup of tea and chat, and they never went hungry! From her I learned the generosity and joy of feeding your friends and family something homemade and delicious. It’s a tradition I continue with my friends now.

I first learned about the Canberra Cake club through the blog posts of committee members Rachi and Giulia. After seeing the pictures of the January cakeup and reading the premise of cake club I knew this was the club for me!

I couldn’t think of a better opportunity to meet some of my favorite Canberra food bloggers, make some new friends and talk all things baking, cake, and food with other passionate Canberrans.

I gleefully attended the February Cakeup hosted by the delightful ladies of the Essential Ingredient. What a veritable feast of cake! The table was laden with amazing creations and the room was buzzing with chatter about all the “Secret Ingredients”. I spent most of the afternoon in a glorious sugar haze, munching my way through cake and chatting with the other lovely cakeup participants. I was hooked.

What I love about the Cake Club is that it is so friendly, positive and there is no judgment of your creation; everybody is just there because they love cake! The bakers I’ve met at cakeups include novices who confess that they don’t bake much and had to borrow the equipment to bake their creation, to professional bakers who make a livelihood from their baking.

The cakes have been old family recipes, amazing multi-layered creations, rustic cupcakes, MKR contestants impossi-balls masterpieces and even cakes shaped like the Cake Club logo! And every one of them has tasted amazing! Cake Club is fantastic for the people it brings together; it’s so lovely when someone tells you they really enjoyed your cake, or you swap a recipe or get to pick the brains of a really talented baker.

The March Cakeup was another chance to eat some truly delicious cake and chat with some lovely people. Set in the beautiful Mint Garden Bar on a gorgeous warm Autumn day, vintage cake stands and vases full of flowers were a heavenly backdrop for the awesome “cocktail” creations.

For the March cocktail theme I had decided on something simple and citrus; Limoncello Cupcakes. I’m not ashamed to say I adore these cupcakes! They are dense, yet fluffy and moist at the same time and the lemon has a lovely tang without being overpowering. There were none left at the end of the Cakeup so I guess that’s a good sign!

I did have a small frosting disaster the morning of the Cakeup (Note, it’s never a good idea to try an experimental frosting recipe the day of the cakeup without a back-up plan!) so the frosting on my cupcakes, while delicious, was quite thin and wasn’t capable of holding its shape for piping.  If you follow the recipe below though (which I didn’t) you will get a lovely thick cream cheese frosting that you can pipe easily.

Limoncello Cupcakes 
(From Bake it with Booze: http://www.bakeitwithbooze.com/)  

Oven temp: 350
Yield: About 18.

For the cupcakes:

•        2 eggs 

•        115grms  softened butter

•        1 cup yogurt (I used full fat Greek style.)

•        1 cup caster sugar

•        1/4 cup lemon juice

•        1/4 cup limoncello

•        1 tbsp vanilla extract

•        zest from 1.5 lemons

•        1 tsp baking powder

•        1/4 tsp salt

•        1.5 cups flour

•        1 tsp baking soda 

•        1/2 tsp cream of tartar

For the frosting:
**Note: this will make enough frosting for around 24 cupcakes, so there will be some leftover ( I may or may not eat this with a spoon....)

•        250grms  cream cheese

•        100grms  butter

•        zest from the remaining  ½  lemon

•        1 Tbsp limoncello

•        1 tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract

•        3 cups icing sugar

Cupcakes

1. Mix the softened butter on med-high until fluffy, then mix in the yogurt and sugar until light and creamy. Mix in the two eggs.

2. Now, add the vanilla, lemon juice, limoncello, and lemon zest. Mix on med speed. (Don’t panic if your beautiful creamy mixture turns into a curdled mess at this stage, its normal)

3. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the dry ingredients. It's a good idea to stop and scrape the sides of the bowl every now and then so you don't end up with pockets of baking soda.

4. You'll end up with a very thick, but fluffy, batter. Prepare your muffin tin with cupcake liners, and spoon in the batter. I filled mine pretty full, and ended up with enough mixture for around 18 cupcakes.

Bake at  170 degrees for 18-20 minutes, depending on your oven.

For the frosting:

1. The butter and cream cheese should both be at room temperature. Beat them both together until you have a fluffy and homogeneous mixture, with no visible lumps of butter.

2.  Add the vanilla bean paste, limoncello, and lemon zest. Beat again until fully incorporated. Then, with the mixer on low speed, gradually add the sifted icing sugar. Scrape the sides of the bowl, then mix on med-high for about 30 seconds.

Once the cupcakes are completely cooled, cover generously with your frosting.

Guest Post: Essential Ingredient (A Venue's Point of View)

Another week and another guest post. This week we have a special guest post, something different which we hope you will appreciate. We asked the lovely ladies at Essential Ingredient to write for us, describing their experience of hosting a cakeup. 

Yep, that's right - you may have been expecting to read the recipe for one of the delicious cocktail creations we had at our March Cakeup but we decided to surprise you! After all, the venues where we host our cakeups play such an essential part in Canberra Cake Club so we thought it would be nice to let them have a word!  So, whilst you are reading cast your minds back to February and all those secret ingredients and for those of you who couldn't make it- admire all the deliciousness here! 

It was such a treat for us to host the Canberra Cake Clubs February Cakeup!

When Giulia asked if we would be interested to host the decision was very easy. We would meet lots of people who love food, cooking and eating as much as we do and taste lots of beautiful cakes…Bliss. If someone asked if they could bring 15 cakes to your home and share them, you would say “Yes Please” and offer them champagne which is exactly what we did!

We know many of the Cake Club’s members as our customers or because we follow their blogs. This was a great opportunity to put faces to names and learn more about people’s particular food passions.

The idea for secret ingredient came as natural extension of our store. We regularly find our customers willing to share tips and secrets on how they make their favourite dish.  For the Cake Up, we decided to up the stakes of the ‘secret ingredient’ theme to include a guessing game.  

The range of secret ingredients was fascinating. There were a number of chocolate cakes, does that mean that it is easier to hide things in chocolate or that inventive people have some natural affinity with chocolate? We were certainly struck by the beautiful styling and presentation of all the cakes. However the best part of the game, was in fact not knowing the secret ingredient, and having to go back for a second slice of cake! 

We would love to meet any keen bakers who want to come in to our store. We are more than happy to help with ingredients or hardware. If there is something in particular you need that we don’t have we will source it for you if we can.

The only condition we had to make for Cake Up was that by the time the guests left all the cake had to be gone, eaten or packed up and taken home. Otherwise we might still have been here at midnight feasting and talking.

Guest Post: Andrew from Sweet to the Bone

With only a couple of days to go to our March Cakeup, we hope you are all as excited as we are and ready to be cocktailed out! For those who didn't manage to register in time keep an eye out on Twitter and Facebook for any last minute spots that may become available. If you were lucky to get a spot (be it baker or guest) then we will see you on Saturday 22 March at 3pm at Mint Bar. 

Our guest poster of the week is Andrew - one of the two men who attended our February Cake Up at the Essential Ingredient in Kingston. There may of only been two men, but boy did they impress! Andrew delighted us with some very colourful macarons and had lollies as his secret ingredient! Over to him to tell us a bit more about himself and hand us over the recipe!

So I was asked to be a guest a blogger for this week for the cake club so thanks guys for the opportunity. So, where do I start? 

Ok let's start with me. I've only been baking for about 4yrs and my first attempt at making chocolate chip cookies was a dismal  effort and resulted in a puddle of inedible mess. But I didn't let that stop me and I tried again and I got them right the second time. I then tried my hand at cupcakes and cakes and found that I could bake things that people were actually happy to eat as they tasted good! 

So this lead to me baking and taking things to work for people to eat and there was never a shortage of people willing to taste test my baking.  Morning teas were an excuse for me to bake and take sugary goodness to work. I guess the thing about me baking that still makes me laugh is that some people find it hard to believe that I bake and can make delicate sweet treats that look and taste good.  I think it's a because of a few factors. One I'm a guy that bakes and two I am heavily tattooed and I guess that people just don't expect baking from me. But I do like surprising people! 

I get asked by people that don't know me 'who made that' when delivering cakes and the answer is of course me, to which I normally get 'what you made these yourself? No one else' and yep the answer is I made them all myself with my own two hands. I really have no idea where or how I learnt to bake but my grandad on my mums' side baked, I never met him but maybe it's passed down. I've recently started a side business after friends telling me I should make a business out if this so that's just what I have done. I've launched Sweet to the Bone, making cupcakes, custom birthday cakes and biscuits. I love making birthday cakes to order, recently I made a Tardis cake which was fun.

I found out about the cake club via Twitter and everyone at the first meeting I went to were all really nice. There was only myself and another guy that baked so least I wasn't alone. the meetings theme was 'a secret ingredient' and I was struggling with an idea and while Googling I found a recipe for red skin ganache which I thought would work great as a macaron filing and I used it for musk, freckles and banana to make my lolly bag macarons I took with me.  Everyone said they looked and tasted great and they were all gone! I guess that's a good sign. 

Lolly Bag Macaron Recipe

Ingredients

110 egg whites at room temperature 

100g almond meal

200g pure icing sugar

4tbsp caste sugar

Directions

Combine the icing sugar and almond meal in a bowl and set aside

Beat egg whites until fluffy the slowly add the caster sugar one tablespoon at a time

Beat to a stiff peak 

Now with a spatular gently fold in the sugar/almond meal and add any colours now - this is where I added the red for redskins, pink for musk, brown for freckles and yellow for the bananas. 

Keep folding until you get a ribbon stage, a test is to get a teaspoon of mixture and drop it on some baking paper and it should flatten after about 10 secs

Piping

Fill a piping bag with the mixture and fit with a small round tip, I was told a Wilton #10 is the right size

Now you can use a temple or freehand pipe the mixture into little rounds of mixture on baking paper ( I googled macaron template)

Leave the macarons to set for about 45-60 mins to form a skin, this makes them puff up and gives that nice shiny top :)

Cooking

Preheat the oven at 150 degrees 

Bake one tray at a time for 10-13 mins, you should be able to lift off the macaron without leaving any batter

Once cooled pair up sizes and fill with filling, I made one mixture per colour and flavour and made about 30-40 each depending on the size you pipe.

Now the filling:

Redskin Ganache

100g cream

9 Redskin lollies

100g white chocolate

Heat cream and redskin lollies in a pan until lollies are melted and you have a runny pink liquid. Pour over the white chocolate and allow to stand until melted then mix until smooth. Allow to cool.

Freckle Ganache

100g cream

150g milk chocolate

hundreds and thousands (I just kept adding them until I was happy with the density)

Heat cream, pour over chocolate and allow to stand. Mix until smooth and add hundreds and thousands. Allow to cool.

Banana Ganache

100g cream

80g white chocolate

20 banana lollies

Heat cream and banana lollies until you have a runny yellow liquid. Pour over white chocolate and allow to stand. Mix until smooth and allow to cool.

Musk Ganache

100g cream

100g white chocolate

12 musk sticks (lollies)

Heat cream with musk sticks until melted. Pour over white chocolate and allow to stand. Mix until smooth and allow to cool.

Canberra Cake Club on 666 ABC Radio

Good afternoon cake lovers,

This morning we were extremely excited - and I'm sure the entire web knew about it... but we couldn't help it! We were being interviewed By Lish Fejer on 666 ABC radio! Who wouldn't be excited right?

Do we look like pros?

Lish runs a weekly show on Sunday called Sunday Brunch, and her program today was centered around 'the little things'. Lish talks to several guests throughout her show and the kind nature that she is - she likes to treat them to some cake. Today Lish prepared some delicious salted caramel chocolates in line with her theme and the recipe can be found here.

Lish's salted caramel chocolates

We were just a tiny bit nervous before going on the show - it was the first time for both of us, but both Lish and her assistant Hannah were so delightful they really made us feel at ease.

Lish Fejer in the 666 ABC studio

The interview went well, (although we did giggle quite a bit) - and we are really grateful to ABC for hosting us on the show!

For those that missed it - here is a recording (thanks brother in law!)...

Thanks to Lish, Hannah, 666 ABC and all those that showed us support on social media!

We look forward to seeing you all at our next cake up. Registrations will open soon!

Cake and Love!

Announcing a February Virtual Cakeup

Since our inaugural Cakeup in January, we have had lots of people commenting that they wish they could participate, except for the fact they are on the other side of the country. Well, if that was you, we have some exciting news. 

Canberra Cake Club is going virtual! 

This month, we will be hosting a blog linkup for anyone who wishes to participate. The only rules are:

- you have to post between Monday 24 February and Friday 7 March.

- you have to let us know you have posted either via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or here on the blog. 

This month's theme is A Secret Ingredient.

What are you waiting for? Get baking! 

And yes, if you are attending the Cakeup this month you can participate in the Virtual Cakeup too - just let us know you've posted and link back to Canberra Cake Club.