Party season means cocktails-a-plenty (for grown-ups at least). This year we thought we’d put together a recipe for our famous Eyeball Socket Bellini teamed with our favourite prosecco by Bottega Gold. We’re so excited to be collaborating with them for the holiday season. We’re not big drinkers, but Bottega Gold is fruity, fresh and fabulous! Perfect for a fun Halloween cocktail recipe!
Anyway this drink ended up being a little fail/win situation when we first ever created it. The raspberries were supposed to float on top with the juice dripping down inside the prosecco to look like blood. Instead they were too pulp-like (not enough juice), BUT looked utterly gruesome! We improvised with a few eyeball candies and they looked like mushy eye sockets. Perfect! Every Halloween we re-create this terror-ific drink and it never fails to impress… or scare.
Halloween cocktail recipe with Bottega Gold prosecco!
Mashed raspberries (do this via a fork not a food processor or blender) - 300g
Clementine juice - 1/2 litre
Crushed ice - approx 4 to 8 handfuls
Step 01:
Add a large handful of crushed ice per glass. It’s hard to really provide a recipe for a drink as it does depend on what glassware is being used. Our champagne coupes are fairly large so we added nearly 2 handfuls of crush ice per glass. Just keep in mind sizing and if it looks like it needs more or less just adjust it!
Step 02:
Now add in your Bottega Gold prosecco to each glass. Make sure they’re around 2/3 full!
Note: If you’re not a drinker or you want to make this kid-friendly then add ice cold lemonade or limeade instead!
Step 03:
Now pour in a little clementine juice. The amount depends on how much fruity flavour you’d like. As a guide we’d say around 80ml per glass, which is what we added.
Step 04:
Now add around 3-4 tablespoons of your mashed up raspberries to the centre of each glass.
Note: The reason these need to be mashed via hand using a fork or even potato masher is because blending or using a food processor will make them more watery. Then they’ll mix in with the drink and have less of a pulverised flesh look.
Step 05:
Now add your jelly eyeball into the centre of your drink!
Note: Jelly candy is the best type to use as it will resist disintegrating into the drink. Keep this in mind when candy shopping! You can add some extra gore with jelly worms too.
Now you’re ready to enjoy a terror-ific Halloween! The spooky cocktails are perfect for any gruesome party. Remember you can swap the prosecco for lemonade or limeade for a non-alcoholic version. Cherryade would even be a cool and bloody idea too. Another great idea would be to add strawberry laces tangled up on top before adding the eyeballs. They’d look like veins!
Happy Halloween everyone! Remember kids… drink sensibly and have fun!
When Royal Albert contacted us to say our cakes and treats were a perfect fit for their gorgeous range of tableware designed by Miranda Kerr obviously we were beyond flattered! The range manages to be luxurious yet fun and definitely on-trend (those pink peonies are a fashion favourite). Definitely something we aim to be with every sweet we create! With this in mind and to really make the most of those last few days of summer we’ve put together one super pretty cake you can re-create too! Cherries are available in late summer, but they always remind us both of Autumn too (hello fruity cherry conserves and cinnamon cherry strudels!). Adding in a good Madagascan vanilla along with a creamy white Belgian chocolate helps give this cake a wonderfully comforting feeling! To whip up this cake at home keep reading!
Love the stylish Royal Albert and Miranda Kerr ‘Gratitude’ cake stand and ‘Friendship’ tea plates we used to help show off our Royal Albert inspired cake? Follow the links to shop them! They’re so vibrant and beautiful. We’re huge fans of the large peonies, gold accents and pretty colour palette.
Cherry and white chocolate cake recipe!
Ingredients needed for the cake: (this recipe makes approx. 3 x 8″ circle cakes)
Pre-heat your oven to gas mark 3 / 140C (fan) / 160C (non-fan) / 325F. Butter and line your cake pans.
Step 02:
Cream together the butter and sugar in a good stand-up mixer. Don’t over mix as this adds air into your batter which can lead to a sunken mess.
Step 03:
Add in your flour and roughly mix this into the creamed butter and sugar. Again don’t over mix! Mixing too much once your flour has been added overstimulates the gluten which can make a rather dense and chewy textured cake. Not nice.
Step 04:
Now add in your eggs and Madagascan vanilla. Mix until incorporated. Then pour evenly between three 8″ cake pans! Bake each layer/pan for approximately 30 mins. Test your cake with a clean knife or cake tester. If it comes out clean your cake is ready! If not and batter sticks to the blade or tester bake for another 15 minutes checking again at the halfway mark!
If you want to bake all three layers at once place in your oven and bake for approximately 40-50 minutes. Remember to test your cakes. If they’re not ready bake for another 10-15 minutes and test each 5-7 minutes into your extra baking time!
Step 05:
When ready remove from the oven. Quickly and carefully turn out onto a clean surface to cool. We use chocolatier marble slabs to help our cakes cool down a little quicker.
Ingredients needed for the vanilla and white chocolate buttercream:
500g softened butter
250g sifted icing sugar (powdered or confectioner’s sugar in the US)
Cream the butter in a stand mixer. Scrape the butter back down to the bottom of the bowl using your spatula. Try not to mix the butter too much or this can lead to pesky air bubbles and an odd textured buttercream! It’s so tempting to just leave the mixer going while you prep other things, but don’t!
Step 02:
Add in your sifted icing sugar (also known as powdered sugar or confectioner’s sugar in the US) and mix until incorporated. Remember not to over mix though!
Step 03:
Now add in your Madagascan vanilla bean paste along with your 100g of melted white chocolate and a little pink food colour. Mix together.
Tip! When it comes to adding in colour do this a little at a time. It’s so much easier to add more colour if needed then remove any once mixed in!
Ingredients and materials needed to fill and decorate your cherry and white chocolate cake:
Macarons, candy, homemade marshmallows or meringue kisses to decorate
Cream puffs (if you’re feeling adventurous) - We have a Strawberry Milkshake cream puff recipe here. Just omit the strawberry essence from the whipped cream filling and add a tablespoon of blitzed cherry conserve into the double cream when whipping!
Your go-to ganache drip recipe - we added our signature gold sequin drip to our cherry and white chocolate cake. To simplify this cake you can leave the drip out!
Step 01:
When cool your layers are ready to work with! You never want to sandwich with warm cake as it will begin to melt your fillings. Sloppy, warm buttercream or ganache is not a good look. With a large serrated knife level each layer. You can definitely use a cake leveller for this tip if you like. We make so many cakes that we’ve developed a knack for levelling cakes by eye!
Step 02:
Now it’s time to fill and sandwich your layers! Add a ring of your pink vanilla and white chocolate buttercream leave a circle in the centre for your cherry conserve. When ready spoon in your fruity filling. Carefully add your layer on top and repeat this entire step for the next layer. Once all three cakes have been sandwiched you can add your pretty pink buttercream!
Step 03:
For an on-trend semi-naked look smooth or pipe your pink buttercream around the sides and top randomly. Scrape and remove any excess using a good icing scraper. Place in your fridge to chill.
Step 04:
Yay! Now for the fun part! If you’re braving a ganache drip then now it the time to add it! Drips work best on a nice chilled cake. The coldness of the cake helps the chocolate to set quicker giving you much more control over it. You don’t want every drip to pool at the bottom of your cake board or stand. We added a white chocolate drip to ours studded with edible sequins and painted gold. That’s an entire tutorial altogether though!
Step 05:
For cute pink dipped cherries add approx. 100g pink candy melts to a microwave safe bowl and melt down. We heated ours set at 2 minutes and checked every 30 seconds until done. Add in around half a tablespoon of your vegetable shortening until a smooth molten texture. Now dip in your cherries and leave to set on some parchment paper!
Step 06:
To decorate add in your pretty pink roses first. These are your focal decorative items and your largest so it helps to map out your design with these. Our roses have been washed, cut down, then inserted into posy picks before added to our cake.
Step 07:
Then you can add whatever other sweets and treats you have to your cake! We added pink candy melt dipped cherries, cherry cream puffs, and pretty macarons to ours!
Yep, it’s still unicorn month on our blog which means lots of rainbow and sparkle themed recipes and tutorials. This week we decided to a make something a little fancy for the unicorns who enjoy the finer things in life. Introducing our Strawberry Milkshake Cream Puffs recipe! Don’t worry though… it’s still fun and great for all ages.
Strawberry milkshake cream puffs recipe!
Makes approximately 18 cream puffs
Ingredients needed for the choux pastry:
100g diced butter
300ml water
150g plain flour
4 medium eggs lightly beaten
Ingredients needed for the strawberry cream filling:
284ml double cream (aka heavy cream or whipping cream)
To start this Strawberry Milkshake Cream Puffs recipe pre-heat your oven to 200C/180C fan/400F/Gas mark 6. In a saucepan add your diced up butter along with the 300ml of water and heat until the butter has melted. Once melted turn the heat up so that the ingredients come to a boil.
Step 02:
As soon as the butter and water mix boils (you really don’t need to leave it too long) add in your plain flour and mix until a ball of somewhat shiny dough forms. Nothing should stick to the sides of your saucepan at this point.
Step 03:
This step takes a bit of energy and a lot of arm work! Slowly add in your beaten egg whilst mixing the dough vigorously. Your dough should get slightly stiffer and glossier as you add the eggs!
Note: You don’t want your eggs to cook separately and end up with lumps of scrambled egg in your pastry. To help stop this when you add and mix in the egg take your saucepan off the heat. Once the egg has incorporated into the mixture add the heat then repeat until all of the lightly beaten egg has been added in. Make sure that you are constantly and vigorously stirring too!
Step 04:
Lightly spritz your silpat / silicone baking mat with a little bit of water (an unused spray bottle really helps). You could just flick water on using your fingers or a clean pastry brush too.
Step 05:
Scoop the choux pastry into a piping bag fitted with a large plain round tip and pipe equal sized balls of dough onto your baking trays.
Step 06:
Now place in your pre-heated oven and bake for 30-40 minutes!
How do you know your cream puffs are ready? Well, you’re going to have to remove one from the oven and slice it open. They tend to weigh or feel a lot heavier than they look. The inside of your eclair should also feature a lovely hollow middle and should feel a little dried out – perfect for fillings!
Step 07:
Create your pink strawberry cream filling by adding your double (heavy or whipping) cream to the bowl of a stand-up mixer. Add in the vanilla bean paste and strawberry essence too! We also included a drop of pink food colouring before whipping as this helps minimise the risk of over whipping the cream.
Note: If you do over whip your cream and end up with a clumpy looking filling it’s easy to fix! Yay! Just add a tablespoon or two of unwhipped double cream (though you can also use full fat milk) and whisk for a few seconds before checking.
Step 08:
To fill your cream puffs add the whipped cream to a piping bag fitted with a bismark / filling piping tip (we used a 230 by Wilton). Insert the tip into the base and slowly pipe your strawberry whipped cream into the choux pastry puff! You should see the level base of the puff begin to fill a little. Remove the tip and bag and you should see a little cream poking out!
Step 09:
To coat melt some Belgian white chocolate and add in your food colouring. Remember that not all food colours can work with chocolate. This is the brand and colour we used, which worked really well with our melted down white chocolate. Some brands can separate, go a murky colour or even seize up. If you’re unsure of how your colour will work you can keep your chocolate coating plain and instead add instant colour with lots of sprinkles!
Step 10:
Take each cream puff and dip into the chocolate. Tap each whilst upside-down to help any excess chocolate from dripping down the sides. Leave to the side to set! If you want to add sprinkles, dried pieces of strawberry etc then you should add these whilst the chocolate coating is still melted. To add splattered effects wait until set!
Now you can enjoy your (grown-up unicorn inspired of course) Strawberry Milkshake Cream Puffs! We pilled ours into our new gold rimmed champagne coupes / saucers from Sainsbury’s! Why not try these cream puffs teamed with strawberry gelato, extract whipped cream and fresh berries.
We finished ours with a liberal splattering of edible gold paint for a touch of luxe, but you can party up yours with sprinkles! Try freeze dried chopped strawberries or white chocolate sprinkles for a little extra flavour. Or for an afternoon tea or a bridal shower get-together you can even add edible petals and flowers to decorate.
We love unicorns. We love them soooo much that we thought we’d have a super-duper-special-magical-fantastical unicorn themed April! Yes indeed. If you’re looking to whip up a frenzy of enchanted rainbow sprinkled treats then look no further. This week to kick start our unicorn collection of sweets we’re sharing our Unicorn Poop Meringues recipe!
Magical unicorn poop meringues recipe!
Serves / makes approx. 10 to 18 - depending on how large you pipe your kisses poop
01: Firstly, pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees C (fan) / 180 degrees C (non-fan) / 325 degrees F / gas mark 4.
02: Next you need to heat up your caster sugar. Sounds weird, but it helps the sugar to dissolve quicker into the whipped egg whites which leads to silky smooth and non-grainy meringues! Yay! Pour the sugar onto a baking tray and place in your pre-heated oven for 5 minutes.
03: Add the egg whites to your stand-up mixer (you can use a bowl and hand held mixer, but it’s a little harder to control and manage) and mix on high with the whisk attachment until they start to look lovely and frothy. When ready add in the cream of tartar and mix until combined.
Tip! Any left over grease from previous use could effect your egg whites and stop them from whipping up nicely. To stop this you’ll need to use lemon juice to wipe your mixing bowl with. Leave to dry or wipe the juice away!
04: Whilst on medium speed spoon in your heated sugar mix. Your meringue should look glossy and it should also begin to stiffen up. At this stage you can add in any flavour or even colour you like. For this unicorn poop meringue recipe we added in a few drops of cotton candy flavouring. Mix until stiff.
NOTE: Our method calls for 3 separate batches of fully tinted meringue. Each one is made individually and then added down the sides of the piping bag to create the rainbow colours! Now this might seem a little too much work, but it’s the way we’ve created our rainbow unicorn poop.
We’ve found that if you make one big batch of meringue, separate it and then colour by hand you risk vastly over-mixing which leads to badly cracked meringues (one or two small cracks are normal).
A lot of people like to paint the inside of their piping bags with food colouring to get the rainbow effect. This is so that as the meringue gets piped out the colour streaks down the outer sides of the kisses. We prefer to colour the entire meringue for two reasons. Firstly, we’re super control freaks so leaving something to chance is our idea of a nightmare. Secondly, (OK, so it’s another control issue) you can all to easily paint too little colour or even too much!
Making three separate batches of meringue in different colours sounds l-o-n-g, but trust us it’ll take even longer if your meringues crack or pipe out the wrong colours!
05: Now it’s time to prep your piping bag! Fit your piping bag with a large round tip and then place in a tall glass. Cuff the excess end of the bag over. The glass will act as a stand which is going to be ridiculously handy when adding your meringue!
06: Add your meringue mixtures to a disposable piping bag fitted with a large plain round piping tip and on a lined baking tray pipe rows of meringue drops. Make sure to space these out at around 2cm as they’ll expand in the oven!
07: Sprinkle time!
08: Place your meringue kisses in the oven and bake for around 25 – 35 minutes. We use a convection oven (which is basically a fan assisted oven) so it took only 25 minutes for our meringues.
09: When ready remove the tray from the oven and set them aside to cool down.
Yay! Now you can arrange them onto cute cake stands, add them to favour boxes or even nestle them on top of buttercream cakes! They’re the perfect dessert table accompaniment or as little thank you sweets.
Easter is around the corner and that also means cute treats, fun flavours and sprinkles here there and everywhere! To get into the celebratory spirit we thought we’d share our Lemon Funfetti marshmallows recipe! Yay! This sweet is a great alternative for anyone who isn’t into chocolate too. Check out our recipe below to re-create these marshmallows at home.
Lemon Funfetti marshmallows recipe!
Serves approximately 12 - 20 depending on how generous (or not) you slice these babies.
To start you need to thinly coat your cake pan with vegetable oil before dusting with a sieved mixture of icing sugar and cornstarch. Cover the corners and inner edges well to stop your marshmallow from sticking!
02:
This Lemon Funfetti marshmallows recipe uses gelatine sheets instead of powder. Take 9 sheets of gelatine and leave them to soak in a large shallow dish full of 140ml of warm to hot water. They should begin to soften and turn into jellied sheets that disintegrate in around 7 minutes. When ready pour the entire contents (gelatine and water) into the bowl of a stand-up mixer.
03:
Add the granulated sugar, water and tablespoon of corn syrup together in a medium saucepan. Boil until 115 degrees Celsius (or 238 degrees Fahrenheit) on high heat. This took approximately 10 minutes for us. You’ll need your candy thermometer for this step… a lot of people are put off of working with these as it feels like an extra step (and extra cleaning), but it’s pretty easy! All you need to do is place it in the pan with your ingredients and keep an eye on the temperature! Make sure that you use a candy or jam thermometer though!
04:
Once your hot sugar syrup is ready switch on your stand-up mixer to a slow speed. Carefully (it’s hot) pour the syrup into the bowl. After a minute switch up the speed to medium (don’t turn up your mixer too high as the ingredients will be very hot which may splash around and out of the bowl on a higher speed), add in your lemon extract, yellow food colouring and rainbow sprinkles (as many as you like). Mix for around 12 minutes until you’re left with soft clouds of marshmallow!
Note: Once you switch off your mixer the marshmallow mixture begins to set so keep this in mind!
05:
Pour the marshmallow mixture into your coated and oiled square cake pan. Smooth over with an angled palette knife. You can lightly oil the spatula or palette knife as this can help stop the marshmallow mix sticking to it.
Note: For some extra rainbow try layering your marshmallow mix. Smooth a shallow layer into your cake pan and add rainbow sprinkles then repeat until you think it’s ready!
06:
Sprinkle the top of your marshmallow with rainbow sprinkles.
06:
Leave the marshmallow mix to set for around 3 hours whilst uncovered. We left ours in a cool and dark room undisturbed.
07:
After 3 hours the marshmallow mixture should be perfect and ready. Test it by lightly poking it with a clean finger. The marshmallow should spring back into shape and feel bouncy and a little fluffy too.
08:
With a sharp knife cut your set marshmallow block into squares before tossing them in the sieved mix of cornstarch (cornflour in the UK) and icing sugar. Tap any excess off before either bagging them into gift packs or storing them away into airtight containers. This super soft Lemon Funfetti marshmallows recipe should last several weeks if stored well (cool, dark and dry places and in airtight containers) so you’ll get to enjoy them for some time after making them (unless everyone else eats them)!
Yay! Now sit back and enjoy your homemade marshmallows! Cut them up into small squares or use cookie cutters (remember to dust them with the cornstarch / cornflour and icing sugar mix) for cool shapes and add on top of milkshakes. You can even top freshly iced cupcakes with them. Or you could individually bag up your marshmallow squares to make sweet Easter gifts!
