BAKING: The Great Purple Alpha-Bake | E for Eton Mess Cheesecake

It has been months, pretty close to 6 since i've added to my alpha bake. I've been so very manically busy, that I haven't had time except the odd Brownie here and there, which I have to say have been delicious. Lorraine Pascal's Oreo brownies are AMAZING!! I also tried out my own recipe and added some Rose flavouring to a batch, which I LOVED!! Although it is an acquired taste.

Last weekend I had ladies night at a friends house volunteered my dessert services and made an Eton Mess Cheesecake - my own recipe and Caramel Shortbread, like we used to have at school.

Mini-me couldn't believe her luck when I let her loose with a rolling pin and pack of digestive biscuits, which formed the base of both my desserts once added to butter and left to cool.

The Caramel Shortcake was simple enough, condensed milk, butter and dark brown sugar brought to the boil and then poured over the chilled biscuit crumb. Put in the fridge and bish, bash, bosh, back to Primary school we went... Didn't get a chance to photograph them :-(

The Cheesecake, although the brain child of my overflowing brain was suprisingly just as simple. I used the basic unbaked Cheesecake recipe of whipped double cream with mascarpone cheese and icing sugar, to which I beated in broken up meringue and raspberries, I then folded in some more, spooned the biscuit into champagne glasses, spooned the cheesecake mixture on top and garnished with more broken meringue and raspberries. Sounds even more ridiculously easy now that i've written it down, but it was also ridiculously delicious.

It is testament to my absolute love of dessert that I am mastering this baking malarchy and taking the time to make things, although these recipes weren't exactly baking....

Maybe I should challenge myself to making actual food...? Hmmmmm....

The Great Purple Alpha-Bake | D for Dark Chocolate Fondant

So I was really nervous about this, as a Masterchef fan i’ve seen many a fondant relegated into the realms of over cooked chocolate cake type thing. Being the (scatty-at-best) novice that I am, I figured if they couldn’t do it then what chance did I really have. Nonetheless I rolled my sleeves up, dug out the recipe that made it sound the simplest (courtesy of Donna Hay) and went into battle.

Melt chocolate into butter, okay seriously even amateur fools couldn’t mess this up, but I stood over it like a Hawk watching prey, stirring occasionally waiting for the inevitable, which in my case would’ve been the chocolate ‘seizing’ and creating that stiff grainy paste you get when you over heat it. But the Hawk-like stance i’d adopted in front of the cooker kept the ‘seizing’ at bay.

Whisk eggs, egg yolks and sugar until pale… Electric whisk, bish, bash, bosh… The bosh took a little longer to arrive then I expected and I was pretty certain I missed something out as the paleness was a long time coming, but we got there eventually.

Fold chocolate mixture into egg mixture adding flour… Panic set in as the flour formed small lumps which I convinced myself were the eggs scrambling from the heat of the chocolate, I was pretty close to binning the whole mixture and claiming defeat, when like a fairy liquid bubble one of them burst and the flour poofed out like fairy dust. Whey hey!! Back to folding; over, round, through, over, round, through…. Gently so as not to remove air or some such nonsense, and no stirring – not sure why, but i’m sure i’d heard it somewhere. I spooned the mixture into 4 (out of the hundreds that clutter my cupboard) gü ramekins and packed them up to bake later while at my cousin’s house for dinner.

I also made Chocolate Cheesecake Brownies for the kids (also courtesy of Donna Hay) as I figured they wouldn’t appreciate the fine dining experience that my Dark Chocolate Fondants were sure to be *ahem*. Brownies, with a cream cheese mixture swirled through it, sounded like Hummingbirds Black Bottom cupcakes to me, so I was game. It all went to plan and was pretty straight forward until it came to the ‘swirling’. Brownie mixture was thick and cheesecake mixture was runny, so ended up sitting on top, creating more of a ‘topping’ than a ‘swirl’. Although they didn’t look as pretty as the cookbook picture they tasted pretty darned good!!

When the Fondants, left at the hands of the oven timings, came out we initially thought they were over cooked, but closer inspection (a knife to the heart – lol) produced oozing melted chocolate… Result!!! Masterchef contestants eat your hearts out!!