Mississippi Mud Pie

My latest endeavour was a recipe that I have had my eye for a while. This called for an ingredient that I have never used before: chocolate extract. I had never come across it before in my baking so far, so I was intrigued at a recipe that included it. I found the recipe in the Rosie's Pantry Baking book and it seemed like an easy enough task to make this pie.


First task was getting all the ingredients together:

Pastry -

• 225g/8oz plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• 2 tbsp coca powder
• 150g/51/2oz unsalted butter
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 1-2 tbsp cold water

Filling -

• 175g/6oz unsalted butter
• 350g/12oz brown sugar
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 4 tbsp cocoa powder
• 150g/51/2oz plain chocolate
• 300ml/10 fl oz single cream
• 1 tsp chocolate extract

To decorate -

• 450ml/15 fl oz double cream, whipped
• Chocolate flakes and curls

Lots of lovely ingredients.

First I made up the pastry. I started by sifting together the flour and the cocoa powder.

Flour and cocoa powder.

Then I rubbed in the butter until the mixture looked like fine breadcrumbs.

Butter.

Then the sugar was stirred in, followed by the cold water.

Pastry nearly there.

This was all mixed together to create a soft dough, which was wrapped in clingfilm and left to chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.

Mmmm, chocolate pastry.

The dough was then rolled out on a flour- and cocoa powder-covered board, before being pressed into a 23cm/9 inch tart tin.

Pre-blind-bake.

The pastry was first blind-baked (lined with baking paper and filled with baking beans) at 190°C  for 15 minutes with the baking beans, and then for 10 minutes uncovered. Once the pastry case was out of the oven, the oven temperature was reduced to 160°C.

Baked pastry.

As the pastry was cooling, I made a start on the filling. This was made by beating the brown sugar and the butter together.

Sugar and butter.

Then the eggs and the cocoa powder were gradually beaten into the mixture.

Adding the eggs and cocoa powder.

Whilst the eggs and cocoa powder were being beaten in, I was melting the plain chocolate, which was also then added in to the filling mixture.

Adding the melted chocolate.

After the melted chocolate was added, the single cream and the chocolate extract were beaten in, and this was then poured into the pastry case.

Ready for the oven.

The pie was then baked in the oven for 45 minutes at 160°C, until the filling was just set.

Nicely baked.

One thing I will mention is that the recipe I used made double the amount of filling that was necessary. Unwilling to waste/throw out such a lovely filling, I poured half the mixture into the large pastry case, and saved the other half. Whilst the first pie was baking, I quickly made another batch of pastry, which I used to line a ceramic pie dish and two tartlet cases. The remaining filling was then divided up between the three pastry cases.

Mississippi Mud Tartlets.

Once the filling had cooled down completely, the whipped cream was added on top of the pie.

Adding the whipped cream.

The whipped cream was then decorated with plain chocolate flakes and curls. The decoration was the same for both of the large pies, but the small pies had only a small tablespoon's worth of whipped cream on top, and no extra chocolate.

Garnished with chocolate.

Pie for Miss Sarah and family.

I took the first pie into work, where it went down a storm with everyone. One of my colleagues even claimed that it was her favourite of my baking projects yet! I was very pleased indeed with the feedback.

The second pie was taken to Miss Sarah's house, and was much appreciated by Miss Sarah and her parents.

Ready to eat!

Messy but good.

Nice cross-section slice.

The pie was absolutely lovely. It was nowhere near as sweet as I thought it would be; I think the use of brown sugar rather than caster sugar meant that the sweetness was limited somewhat. The whipped cream was also unsweetend, which meant that there wasn't a total overload of sugar. The pastry was also not too sugary or sweet.

I can definitely recommend this recipe. It was relatively easy to make, and the results were excellent, and very much appreciated by my colleagues and friends.

Beckie.

Stripy Cake

Apologies for the long delay between posts. I have been dealing with various PhD things that have rather taken up my time recently. I did, however, have a chance to try out another cake that I have been wanting to try for a while. This involved another baking session with Miss Sarah (a most excellent baking companion, I might add), and was a fairly ambitious project in some respects, for we had decided to make a stripy cake.  For this cake, we chose the relatively straight-forward method of baking four separate cake layers of different colours. This was not so much difficult as time-consuming and a little complicated.

Miss Sarah and I decided that a simple vanilla sponge cake would be the best cake style to use for this project. We made the mix to the equivalent of two sponge cakes.

Ingredients:
Sponge - 

• 350g butter, at room temperature
• 350g caster sugar
• 6 eggs
• 350g self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt

 Buttercream (double required for the filling and the covering) - 

• 140g/5oz butter, softened
• 280g/10oz icing sugar
• 1-2 tbsp milk
• few drops vanilla extract

First we set up four 9-inch springform cake tins, greasing them with cake release spray, and then lining the bases with baking paper. The oven was then preheated to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4.


Next the butter and sugar were beaten together with a hand-held electric mixer.

Ah, that heavenly mix of butter and sugar.

Then each egg was added one at a time, and beaten in to the mixture.

Adding the eggs one at a time.

Once all the eggs were beaten in, the vanilla was mixed in, and then the flour and salt were sifted together, and gently folded into the cake mixture.

Miss Sarah folding in the flour oh-so-carefully.

This mixture was then divided between four bowls, and each had a different food colouring (green, red, yellow, and blue) added to it.  Each bowlful was then poured into a cake tin, and these were then baked in the oven for twenty minutes each until they were fully baked.

Soooooo pretty!

Each layer was set aside to be cooled (the blue layer a source of some amusement, as we were both convinced that the swirls from the food colouring presented the image of a dinosaur skull).

First layers ready.

T-Rex skull maybe?

Once cooled, the layers were ready to be put together. For this, a simple vanilla buttercream was made by mixing together the butter and icing sugar, and then mixing in the milk and vanilla.

Mmmmm, buttercream.

Each layer of the cake was topped with some of the buttercream, before the next layer was carefully placed on top.

On goes the first round of buttercream.

Carefully placed blue layer.

Red and green layers.

Messy but fun.

The completed cake tower was quite a sight, although the outside of each layer masked the true colours inside rather well, making the cake appear to have layers of various shades of brown.

Not looking too pretty at the moment, but a whole load of buttercream will deal with that.

Then it was time to cover the cake, which required another batch of the buttercream. Once the cake was completely covered, dots of food colouring were added to the top.

Colourful dots.

The food colouring was then blended together to make a vague approximation of decoration.

'Interesting' decoration...

The first cut was the most nerve-wracking, for until we cut into it we could not be entirely sure that the various layers had worked well.

It worked! Phew!

I am pleased to report that we had a success on our hands. The different layers and colours were very clearly defined, and worked very well together.

Beautiful!

Nice layers.

Stripy cake and a cup of tea - lovely!

When I tried out the recipe again, I made some small alterations. Two of the layers (the blue and green) were the vanilla sponge, but the other two (the red and yellow) were honey-flavoured sponges. I also decorated the top of the cake with small chocolate dots instead of food colouring. It did make for a very pretty cake.

Improving on the original design with chocolate dots.

Very cute, I think.

The only quibble I had with this version was that the layers were not uniform in size, but that is merely a cosmetic issue. The cake tasted beautiful, with the honey and vanilla flavours combining well. It was certainly popular with my work colleagues.

Proving popular at work.

The stripy cake was definitely a success, and a recipe that I shall be experimenting with a great deal in the future. The aim is to at some stage make a full rainbow cake, all seven layers of it.

Beckie.