Sounds complicated, no?
Well, it WAS!
... but so very worth it!
I was planning on taking "the making of ..." pictures for this, but I hadn't realised the battery in my camera was so low (completely dead), so my camera spent the baking time recharging.Anyway, on with the show!
Coffee flavoured coffee cake
Ingredients
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup instant coffee granules
2 cups SR flour
250 g butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups caster sugar
4 large eggs
Directions
Day 1
I started by creaming the butter, caster sugar and the vanilla together. I probably spent more time doing this than was needed, but I like creaming butter and sugar, I think it's my favourite part of baking. Yes I know, I'm wierd. :-P
Next, the eggs, one at a time, beating the mix all the while. It started looking curdled, but I know from experience that that is normal.
After that, I set the mixer on high for a few minutes and went to heat the milk and coffee. Stirring until the granuals were all gone ... and then I stuck it in the fridge and turned the oven on to preheat to 190C. I stopped the mixer and greased my tins, well, lined my springform cake tin with baking paper and greased my bundt pan with butter (I don't like using that cooking oil in a can, it tastes gross).
To be honest, I should have disolved the coffee in the milk first, but *shrug* cest la vie.
Once the milk mix had cooled, I started the beater once again and added a third of the flour, then half the mix, half the remaining flour, rest of the milk and, finally, the last of the flour. Then I beat it till it was smooth and creamy and coffee-e, poured it all into the cake tins and banged it all in the oven for 45 minutes.
After that, it was a simple matter of cooling the cakes, turning them out onto racks and then shoving them in the fridge for the night ... and taking the frozen raspberries out of the freezer to defrost.
Day 2
Time to put it all together! First though, I made a batch of coffee fudge. Then I smeared the mushy defrosted raspberries all over the base cake (not the bundt) and poured the fudge over the raspberries.
BTW, defrosted raspberries are not to be used for decoration. Ever. Not unless you WANT it to look like guts and gore, then feel free.
Anyway, the bundt cake went on top of the fudge, and then it went back in the fridge to set the fudge.
This is the only time that I will conceede that ivy is not a weed. I went outside to snip a couple of vines of the stuff, then came back inside to wash them and melt the white chocolate.
Dipping the leaves was fun, in a kind of monotonous way. I actually dipped more than I needed for decoration purposes, but this was the first time I'd ever done this, and wasn't sure how easy it would be to peel the chocolate off the leaves ... especially once they were frozen solid.
Decoration!
I stuck the fruit on with melty white chocolate ... and managed to get it all over myself in the process.
Peeling the leaves was really fun. I had to do them one at a time though, else they would have melted all over the place (as I found out three leaves in) but the detail!
BLISS!
I stuck them on with white chocolate too.
I was really happy with the finished product. The rest of the family was awe struck ... right up until I told them that the cake was for looking at, not for eating ;)
