Fudge Cake Take Two

The Evaluation

4.5/5 stars: Taste. (Sarah suggested 5 but I'm docking it .5 for being a tiny bit dry.)
5/5 stars: Ease of recipe.
4/5 stars: Presentation. Basic but yummy looking.
3/5 stars: Time. Had to put foil on it in the oven as it went over the estimated cook time and I didn't want it to burn. But. Not too lengthy I suppose.
4.5/5 stars: Overall success. Much better than the last one!

 Recipe: 

 Ing.

225g self raising flour
225g butter
225g caster sugar
4 medium eggs
4 tablespoons cocoa powder (used green and blacks, same as with the truffles and would strongly recommend it!)
2 tablespoons boiling water (or more depending on consistency of cocoa powder. See method)

Cake Covering

150g chocolate
50g butter
1 tablespoon milk
Cute elephant shapes!

Method

1. Mix cocoa powder and boiling water together. Should result in a thick liquid.
2. This is one of those recipes where you can pour everything else in. But keep the eggs and flour back until the end, then add them in alternating doses and whisk well!
3. Bake at gas mark 4 for 25- 30 mins. But if it's not cooked after that, cover the top with foil and put it in for a further 10-15 mins.
4. Melt the chocolate for the cake covering and mix with the butter and milk. Decorate!
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Remember the tardis fudge cake that did not go well? Okay so apparently I was harsh when marking its taste because my little sister says it was only the large amount of icing that was at fault. And when I asked what type of cake she wanted for her birthday, she said fudge. So here's take two, dad and Sarah's birthday cake. It turned out pretty well :)

Chocolate Truffles

The Evaluation

5/5 stars: Taste.
5/5 stars: Ease of recipe.
4.5/5 stars: Presentation.They were a little tricky to roll after a while as your hands got all sticky, but then we realised we just needed to re-wash our hands every now and then.
4/5 stars: Time. The prep. time isn't lengthy at all but you do have to leave the mixture in the frigde to solidify and then again, the truffles taste way better if they've been in the fridge for another hour after decoration.
5/5 stars: Overall success. Will defineately make these again!

Original Recipe: 
http://www.joyofbaking.com/ChocolateTruffles.html
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The recipe is great, there's even a video you can watch to see how it's done and everything is so easy. Many thanks to my younger sister Sarah and best friend Hannah for helping decorate (and eat) these! We rolled them in white chocolate, cocoa powder and milk chocolate, sometimes just the one per truffle, other times all three for a fun mix of flavours. Try them!

Assorted Cookies

The Evaluation

4.5/5 stars: Taste. The smartie cookies were probably my least favourite and the oatmeal and raisin my best but different people liked different ones and everyone agreed that they were all great so yay!
5/5 stars: Ease of recipe.
5/5 stars: Presentation.
5/5 stars: Time.
5/5 stars: Really quick and easy to make and very tasty.

Original Recipe: A basic cookie recipe from one of my books and then I tinkered for each type of cookie. For the cherry and white chocolate ones, I just chopped up some of each and threw it in. For the oatmeal and raisin, I replaced some of the flour with oatmeal and added a handful of raisins. For the triple chocolate chip I used cocoa powder instead of some of the flour and added three types of chopped chocolate. Then I also did a couple of normal chocolate chip as well.
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This was at the beginning of August and I made them for my work crew as it was the last week working at the factory. If you want the basic cookie recipe I used, just ask and I'll type it up but it's also easy enough to find around the web. Yes, I know I'm being a bit lazy but shhh. I'll start typing out the recipes again next week :)

The Birthday Cakes

Cake One: Mum's Cake

The Evaluation

3.5/5 stars: Taste.A little sickly - too much butter-cream.
5/5 stars: Ease of recipe.
3/5 stars: Presentation.Not the best photo but not the best presentation either.
4/5 stars: Time. Not too lengthy.
3.5/5 stars: Overall success. It was good cake but could have been better.

Original Recipe: I just used a simple chocolate sponge base and then chocolate buttercream and sprinkles to decorate.

Cake Two: Claire's Cake

Credit goes to Claire Warren for the decoration! If you scroll down you'll see a photo of her placing the buttons. Also, you should check out her blog! http://modelingandtexturingprogress.blogspot.com/

The Evaluation

4/5 stars: Taste.The vanilla sugar was a little too strong, ordinary caster would have been better.
5/5 stars: Ease of recipe.
5/5 stars: Presentation.
5/5 stars: Time.
4.5/5 stars: Overall success. A pretty tasty cake and thanks to my sister it looks very nice as well :D

Original Recipe: I used a simple sponge and replaced half the caster sugar with vanilla sugar, then giant buttons and vanilla icing to decorate.

Cake Three: Mark's Cake

 

It's upside down but you get the idea. 

The Evaluation

2.5/5 stars: Taste.This may be biased as I don't really like fudge cake, but I think it was quite poor even by normal standard.
2/5 stars: Ease of recipe.The original recipe was easy enough to follow but it produced a crumbly fudge cake which made the decorating really difficult!
2.5/5 stars: Presentation. Better luck next time xD
2.5/5 stars: Time. It took longer than I'd have liked.
2.5/5 stars: Overall success.

Original Recipe: http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/chocolate-fudge-cake-168
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 Alright so it's been far too long since I posted on here! These were baked at the end of June and I've not really much more to say. It was a bit crazy making three at once and there were varied levels of success. The tardis cake obviously being quite a fail but never mind! The vanilla cake was the easy favourite, though the chocolate one did get some support and it was lovely in small doses!