Spiced Apple No-bake Marshmallow Slice

 I used to make a version of this slice with a chocolate base and vanilla marshmallow top when I was about 12. It was the first recipe I ever learned without my mum's help, but I only vaguely remember how that recipe went.

For a more grown-up Halloween treat, I decided to do a bit of a twist on this family favourite.

You'll need 

One 250g packet of spice cookies, I used gluten-free gingernuts, you could alternatively use plain vanilla biscuits and some of your favourite spices

25g Butter substitute

25g Coconut oil

2 Egg whites

180g White sugar

20g Brown sugar

1/2 Cup Apple juice, split in half

1 Tbsp gelatine

Cinnamon sugar (made with powdered sugar)

1/4 tsp Vanilla bean paste

To start off with, whip up a quick no-bake base.

Crush the cookies and melt the coconut oil and butter substitute

Pour the butter into the crushed cookies and mix well, the mixture should form a ball when compressed.

Pour the mixture into a square baking tin lined with baking paper and press down firmly with the back of a spoon to compress

Place the base in the fridge to chill while you make the marshmallow

Mix the gelatin and the first half of the apple juice together and leave to sit at room temperature, it will become fairly firm while you wait

Place the sugars, the other half of the apple juice and the vanilla into a saucepan with a candy thermometer clipped to the side (if you don't have a candy thermometer you are looking for the sugar syrup to reach soft ball stage, when dropped in some ice water, a small amount of the mixture should form a soft ball within a moment)

Slowly heat the mixture until the sugar has completely dissolved, then, bring to the boil until the mixture reaches 120C or the soft ball stage.

Once the sugar has dissolved, start whipping the egg whites, you want them to be at soft peaks by the time your sugar syrup is ready.

Slowly drizzle the sugar syrup into the egg white, still beating the mixture as you go

Microwave the gelatin mixture from earlier for 15 seconds or until it has melted and add that too.

If you're wanting the slimy Halloween look, add a little bit of leaf green food colouring at this stage as well.

Continue beating on a medium speed until the mixture has cooled significantly but is still warm to the touch. Pour the marshmallow onto the prepared base and chill for 2-3 hours or until completely set.

Once the marshmallow has set, remove from the pan and cut with a sharp, lightly oiled knife into 12-16 slices. You could then either sprinkle over the cinnamon/powdered sugar mixture or to get these creepy spiders, I simply used a stencil, oiled lightly on the back to stop it sticking and sprinkled the sugar through that.

Enjoy :)

Wedding Cake Tasting - Day Three: Decorating

If you haven't seen the first to posts in this series, read them first. Day One here and Day Two here

So prepare for the photo loaded post, just a reminder, these are the photos the bride took on her cell phone because I lost all mine, so apologies for the weird framing (these were reference pics to help her decide on the design she wanted), under each design, I'll give a quick description of how I did each one.

Wedding Cake Tasting - Day Two: Fillings, Ganache and Dairy Free White Modelling Chocolate

If you haven't read part one, check that out here first

The fillings for the cakes were just Dairy-Free Swiss Meringue Buttercream with amped-up flavours. At the end of this post I will let you know which flavours the bride ended up choosing.

The bride really likes my Swiss-Meringue buttercream and originally wanted cupcakes topped with it, however, those of you who have transported this recipe will know, it doesn't handle the heat of the inside of the car on a hot summer afternoon. With the wedding being in late January (right in the middle of summer here in NZ) I can't risk showing up with a plate of melted mess.

The best compromise we could come up with was mini cakes with the buttercream as a filling instead of a topping, that way it wouldn't get direct sunlight and be ruined.

The cakes were filled with a swiss-meringue filling, dammed with chocolate ganache and covered in dairy-free modelling chocolate or royal icing

Wedding Cake Tasting - Day One: The Cakes

Why hello again, it's been a while, and for that I am profoundly sorry.

Apparently step one of doing a wedding cake tasting is take a bunch of pictures of the cakes you made and then, while you transfer said pictures to your computer your cat jumps up on to the keyboard and presses something, I don't know what, and deletes EVERYTHING. E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

Luckily, the bride had some trouble making up her mind about the decorations she wanted so there will be photos! (Thank goodness)

Individual Vegan Chocolate and Custard Tarts

I was experimenting the other day with condensed milk substitutes for making creamy caramel, this one certainly doesn't make caramel, it thickens far too quickly however once it had cooled it had the exact same flavour and texture that I remember from custard squares.

I don't know about other people but in our house a single custard square was always accompanied by a single sally lunn and a couple of chocolate eclairs all cut up into little pieces and shared between family after a couple of sausage rolls and a pizza bread also cut up into little pieces on sunny Sunday afternoons.

Gluten and Dairy Free Ice-cream Sundae Cups

Summer is coming!
I almost can't believe it, the sun made me want to go to the beach instead of to work. So in honour of more sunny days to come try this quick and easy homemade ice-cream sundae in an edible chocolate cup

Pause? Maybe

Hi guys.

Just a quick update this week letting you know my regular Sunday posting schedule might be a little bit erratic over the next 3 or 4 weeks as I am performing in "Curtains" the musical while having a full time job and also studying so yeah. Come see it if you're in the area

Thanks :)

Dairy and Gluten Free Movie Snacks

A friend and I went to see the new Pixar Movie today, you might have heard of it? It's exploded all over the internet and for good reason.

It's been a while since I had the 'traditional' movie snacks at the theatre: ice cream, popcorn and fizzy drinks so this time I decided to make my own.

The movie theatre ice creams here in NZ are called choc tops, I think they call them drumsticks in America?
Anyway they're pretty much just ice cream in a cone dipped in chocolate

Dairy Free Caramel Sauce in the Microwave

I needed a super quick and easy caramel sauce recipe for tomorrow's post and found this one from gal on a mission. It seemed so easy I figured I could swap out the dairy ingredients for non-dairy and voila, exactly what I needed.

Bride and Groom Themed Engagement/Wedding Cake

Hi Guys!

I based this cake design off the invites my friend used for her engagement party, it would also probably work well as a wedding cake.
The invites were hand made but the design came from the interwebs

Cute right?

Hot Chocolate Cupcakes

I love winter, curling up by the fire, snuggling into blankets and drinking hot chocolate. These cupcakes are the best little celebration of winter in a cup. With a decadent dark chocolate cake and swiss meringue "cream" topped with marshmallows and grated chocolate these beauties remind me of the Sunday morning hot chocolates my mum used to make us.

The Facebook Page is Live!!!!!

Hi guys

My facebook page has been live for little while now so for news, musings and sneak peeks head on over and give it some love  https://www.facebook.com/itsacakeykindoflove

Toasty Warm Vegan Gluten Free Peach Crumble

Winter has certainly made itself at home here in NZ. So what's better than curling up by the fire with a nice warm fruit crumble.

Gluten and Dairy Free Lasagne

I had a weirdly specific craving today for lasagne. I wonder if it's because it has been so cold lately? Anyways I still had some leftover mozzarella that needed using up so I thought why not?

Gluten and Dairy Free White Sauce

This sauce is great as a substitute for cheese sauce in mac and cheese or lasagna or as a base for carbonara and other typically cream based sauces plus a bunch of other uses. It's pretty much the most versatile sauce and it's always good to have it in your arsenal.

This main base of this sauce is milk. Make sure the milk substitute that you use is one you like. You know if you don't like almond milk this is probably not the recipe to use up your leftover almond milk before it goes bad.

You will need

Gluten and Dairy Free Mozarella Balls

I. Miss. Cheese.
Ever since I went dairy free I haven't been able to find a decent cheese substitute and to be honest i kinda just accepted that I just wouldn't eat it ever again.
Angel Foods has a vegan mozzarella that is the best. It melts and everything.
These Mozzarella balls would be great as a starter or as finger food served with a variety of dipping sauces..

Dairy Free Chocolate Ganache

The hardest part of making large cakes Gluten and Dairy free is that the icing tends to be either super sweet or super soft. Chocolate ganache is the go to for all those dairy eaters out there, the cocoa butter helps with stability ( so no need to add a heap of icing sugar to compensate) and the cream gives it a lovely texture.
There it is, cream.

My "ganache" tastes just as good and works well as a stable cupcake topping, sandwich cookie filling flood barrier for torte cakes and crumb coat for under fondant or modelling chocolate

Gluten Free Food and Allergy Show

This weekend a friend and I headed off to the Gluten free food and allergy show at the north shore events centre in Auckland. It's a yearly event and everything there is gluten free! They have these handy little colour coded labels on the stuff that has eggs, dairy and nuts in, so it's super easy to figure out what you can safely try.
A pretty big chunk of the stalls were selling food that is made here in NZ and is organic and/or vegan or vegetarian so there's something there for everyone even if you can eat gluten and other allergens.

The Best Gluten and Dairy Free Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

With a soft, chewy centre and a light and crispy edge these cookies are the perfect pick me up for a chilly Sunday afternoon.

Gluten and Dairy Free Vanilla Cupcakes

It's hard to make gluten free vanilla cake taste nice, vanilla is such a delicate flavour that it can't really overpower the flavour of the flour, so a Rice flour cake will taste like rice pudding and a cornmeal cake will taste like cornbread.

So this cake recipe has a few more ingredients than I would normally use but this is necessary to get just the right texture and flavour for a tasty cake.

Dairy Free Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Swiss Meringue Butter cream is the ultimate in buttercreams. Made of egg white, sugar and butter, it's smooth and easily pipeable and not too sweet.
The problem with all the recipes I've found is that they are for HUGE quantities using 10 or so egg whites (easily enough to pipe a swirl on about 30-40 cupcakes) so I spent some time figuring out the ratios and experimenting with butter alternatives.

The first experiment was with Margarine (I used Olivani) and it went really yellow and a bit too salty, the second was with Vegetable shortening (I used Kremelta) and it left a weird film of fat over my mouth.
The third and final test (and the recipe I will be sharing today) used half vegetable shotening and half margarine



You will need:

3 Egg whites

Approx 100g-120g Sugar (white or brown depending on the flavour you want)

150g Vegetable shortening

150g Margarine   ( you can of course use 300g butter if you don't need it to be DF)

A bit of lemon juice on a paper towel

About 1TBSP Extract of your choice - here I have used vanilla

Flower Pot Cupcakes for Mother's Day

I found these adorable plastic pots online and have been wanting to use them for something for a wee while. Mother's day is coming up on the 10 May, less than two weeks!
Because these pots are not oven safe I couldn't follow any of the online tutorials for flower pot cupcakes so I decided to do it my own way.

Mango and Coconut Muesli Bars - Gluten and Dairy Free of course!

Pretty quick and easy snack recipe today. I use these for both breakfast on the run and quick snacks on my breaks at work.
You can vary the ingredients in this recipe to follow pretty much any combination of nut, seeds, cereals and fruit.

The basic recipe is:

11 cups dry ingredients 

200g fat (I used Olivani)

2c sugar syrup 

(Honey, Golden syrup, Agave, Glucose Syrup or Homemade simple syrup all work well)

It's Been a While

BAD BLOGGER!!

I know I have been putting off posting more on this site, mostly because it adds more time to my baking process with all the taking photos etc..

I solemnly swear I will post at least once a fortnight for the next year.

Alrighty, now that's over with time to let everyone know what's to come:

• I have been asked to do the cake for a friend's wedding so how to's for different bits of that will come
• I have been experimenting with more frosting recipes and have found one that is both delicious, not too sweet and dairy free so recipe to come
• I have also been experimenting with a few different cake recipes that stand up better to being in a large cake so again, recipes to come

Talk again next week  :)

Cupcake Papers

I mostly use the plain chocolate, white or silver foil cupcake papers when I just want to whip up a quick batch, mostly because they don't have any kind of pattern that might "cook out" but sometimes I see a pack of adorable or funky cases and just can't resist. I start having decorating ideas for how I could match frosting and topping to the papers and before I know it, I own 4 entire jars. It's a disease, I am aware.
The thing about the cute designs on the cases is that they tend to kind of dissolve into the cupcake batter while it's cooking. To stop this from happening there are 3, yes 3 solutions.