The Boss's Birthday

10 September 2010

the boss's autograph

It was Bruce's birthday on Friday. He had commissioned me to cater for the occasion in support of my campaign a month ago but forgot about it and asked me again last week... busy man that one... so I had to remind him that he had already done that and actually wrote it down on a piece of paper with his autograph, luckily I took a photo for evidence.

the line up

Anyway, I had to ensure to cater enough for the whole office which stressed me out a little, unsurprisingly I didn't get much sleep. Originally I planned to bake the opera cake as the "main" cake, except I think I'm a bit over the opera cake having made it twice already... I did a tiramisu cake instead and a couple of cakes I've made previously and had confident they wouldn't fail at 1am in the morning, that would of been a stressful nightmare...

tiramisu cake

So lined up in the board room ready for Friday staff morning tea was the caramel cashew topped brownie cake, everyone's favourite carrot cake with lemon cream cheese (which disappeared real fast), cheesecake with strawberry and mango passionfruit sauce and the pink strawberry lamingtons. I've never made lamingtons from scratch before, but since coming across it on the internet I've been itching to make it and finally got the opportunity to :)))

It was a big turn out at morning tea, we haven't had so many people show up (come down from level 3) for a while now. Good to know, people love their cake!

Unfortunately, Bruce was late for his own birthday being stuck at a meeting, no photos of the birthday boy... He arrived after half of his cakes were gone...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BOSS!

strawberry lamingtons made at 1 in the morning..

heidi nomnom nom nom

a line-up!

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Okay, here it is Sushma, recipe for the brownie cake FINALLY.... sorry for the two month delay...
Recipe adapted from Dorie Greenspan's - Baking
unfortunately the photo is a bit yellow due to the lighting...

gooey caramel ... dangerous!

for the cake
1 cup Plain flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
115g unsalted butter
300g bittersweet chocolate coarsely chopped
3 large eggs
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

for the topping
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2/3 cup thickened cream
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup salted peanuts (or any nuts you like)

preparation
preheat oven 180degrees
butter 8 inch round springform mould (I just used a silicon mould butter and lined)

• whisk flour, baking soda and salt together.
• heat in small saucepan chocolate and butter until just melted, remove from heat
• in a large bowl whisk eggs and sugars together until well blended. whisk in corn syrup, followed by the vanilla.
• whisk in the melted butter and chocolate, still working with the whisk gently stir in dry ingredients mixing only until incorporated. you will have a thick, smooth, shiny batter. pour the batter into the pan and jiggle the pan a bit to even out the batter.
• bake the cake for 40-45minutes until skewer inserted in the centre comes out almost clean (okay to have some moist crumbs clinging to the skewer)
• transfer pan to a rack and cool cake for 15 minutes, then run a blunt knife between the cake and the pan and remove it, cool cake to room temperature.
• to make the topping: put the sugar, water and corn syrup in a medium heavy bottomed saucepan, stir just to combine the ingredients and then put the pan over med-high heat. heat without stirring until the caramel turns deep amber colour, 5 to 10 minutes. Don't be timid about the colour, if it's too pale it won't have much taste. lower the heat a bit the caramel will bubble and spatter, add the cream and butter. when the spatters "calms down" a bit, stir to dissolve any lumps. Stir in the nuts and pour the caramel and nuts onto the cake before serving. You've probably got more caramel than you need, but you want to get all the nuts on the cake. spoon the nuts out of the hot caramel and onto the cake. spoon enough caramel to cover all the nuts.