Chocolate Mousse Moose cake

I'm getting more and more ambitious with my baking but it's hard to continue making things for just me and Rob so I'm using friends' birthdays as the perfect excuse to get the in kitchen and have a go a proper cake! Late in January our good friend Gillian celebrated her first birthday in the UK (she's from Canada) and threw a big party, I brought the cake! Using Canada as my inspiration I decided to make a Chocolate Mousse 'Moose' cake!

This is a three layer cake, two layers of chocolate butter cake sandwiching a middle layer of chocolate mousse. It was incredibly rich cake but the mousse was very light so not too filling. I couldn't find a recipe I liked so I found one for the cake but then replaced the mousse recipe with a separate one that i thought would work/taste better. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the cake being made or any of it cut once it was finished.

I've put the recipes below and here is my method. I made the cake in two 22cm spring-form pans. Once they are baked, take one cake out of the pan to cool, let the other cool in the pan.

Once the cake in the pan is cool, pour the chocolate mousse on top and refrigerate overnight or for at least 4 hours, the mousse must be set firm.

Once mousse is set remove the cake from the pan and add the first cake to the top creating a three layer cake. Basically the cake is done now and would be delicious with any topping like whipped cream, chocolate ganache, nuts, etc. make sure to keep the cake cold before serving otherwise the layer will collapse if the mousse gets too warm.

If you want to make this Canadian-inspired cake here is how I decorated. Cover the cake in a thin layer of chocolate buttercream, reserve some for piping the moose on the top. Then cover the cake in a layer of white fondant. Using water as an adhesive you can stick green fondant trees on the side and top, if you like. Using the remaining butter cream, pipe a moose on top, I used chocolate chips for eyes and freehanded a moose from pictures I found on the internet but you can probably find a template or more concrete instructions on Google.

Here is the cake recipe I used (ignore the ganache): http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3092/?utm_expid=13353178-7&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2F

Here is the mousse recipe I used: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/grandmas_chocolate_03490

Here is the chocolate buttercream recipe I used: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate-buttercream-frosting-10000001879934/

Felix and Mickie in Germany

The last weekend in January we spent in Bonn, Germany with Rob's Brother William and his wonderful recently expanded family. We also ended up having an unexpected Carnival night out and then horrid hangover! Here goes... 

Introducing for the second time (see here) Felix Clark! 

Oh and let's not forget the new big sister
Hannah in her very cool London shirt!! 

Rob and his munchkin!

We only spent two days in Germany but crammed a whole lot of fun into it! Felix was huge for being only 4 weeks old, he was almost wearing clothes for a three month old!!! 

Our niece Hannah had grown up a lot since we last saw her! She was so much fun and full of energy. She was talking to us in German and singing to us in German-accented English, but still understood everything we said in English. It's so impressive to watch her learn in two languages! I read her The Tiger Who Came to Tea several times and was glad she enjoyed my choice in literature (I highly recommend this children's book). With family all over the world it means so much to spend time like this with those we do get to see. Luckily Germany is only and hour on a plane away! 

As for the more adult entertainment... on our second night there we went out with William and another couple of very good friends to a Carnival party. Carnival in Bonn is a huge deal, it is the Mardi Gras of Germany and we were there the week before so we managed to catch a few of the festivities. This includs dressing up like anything ridiculous (in our case four eskimos and a hippy), drinking lots of beer and listening to Mickie Krause (a German Robbie Williams type pop star)! Mickie was awesome and has become one of my most played on Spotify! Here are the best shots from the night before I stopped remembering (whoops):

A very normal group of people during Carnival!

I have been to Germany 4 times before and
this is the only photo I have wanted! 

Carnival!

Krause!

It was a fantastic trip and we cannot wait to see the whole Clark clan again soon! 

Gingerbread... good enough to eat!

I mentioned in my Christmas 2012 post that I baked an insane amount of gingerbread for Christmas Jumper Day at Save the Children. I really need to share this recipe because it is one of the best and most consistent recipes I've ever made. The original is here but below is how I adapted it to make these adorable men and Santa hat stars!

Each with their own unique Christmas Jumper! 

Gingerbread Cookies

Makes 25 5inch diameter rounds

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon ground ginger

1 3/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

6 tablespoons unsalted butter

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1 large egg

1/2 cup molasses

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (optional) 

1 batch of buttercream frosting

food colouring

Method
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves until well blended.

In a large bowl (KitchenAid's great for this) beat butter, brown sugar, and egg on medium speed until well blended.

These were my favourite, so cute!

Add molasses, vanilla, and lemon zest and continue to mix until well blended.

Gradually stir in dry ingredients until blended and smooth.

Divide dough in half and wrap each half in plastic and let stand at room temperature for at least 2 hours or up to 8 hours.

Preheat oven to 375°. Grease cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Place 1 portion of the dough on a lightly floured surface.Sprinkle flour over dough and rolling pin.

Roll dough to a scant 1/4-inch thick.Use additional flour to avoid sticking.

Cut out cookies with desired cutter.

Space cookies on the sheet 1 1/2-inches apart.

Bake 1 sheet at a time for 7-10 minutes (the lower time will give you softer cookies).

Remove cookie sheet from oven and allow the cookies to stand until the cookies are firm enough to move to a wire rack.

After the cookies are cool you may decorate them any way you like. I made up a batched of buttercream frosting and coloured it red, green and white. Then piped the gingerbread men's sweaters free hand anyway I felt. For the stars I filled in one point with thin red frosting then with a thicker nozzle piped the white trim and pompom on top. 

Christmas Season 2012

Rob and I had our first wedding on 2 December 2006 and we seem to begin our Christmas celebrations every year with our Anniversary, which makes for a very long but very merry Christmas season. It's probably lazy, but instead of writing individual posts for all the interesting events that went on over Christmas and the New Year, I've decided to simply combine them all into one post. So here goes...

We celebrated our Anniversary by decorating the house for Christmas and getting our Christmas cards written. Part of this decoration including our Anniversary gift to ourselves, a new TV stand! It's amazing how much more space we have in the room and how much more STORAGE we have! We've only add three small drawers and shelves with this unit but it has made such a difference to the amount of storage we have for entertainment!

Our living room all dolled up for
Christmas and our new TV stand! 

The weekend after our anniversary we thought we should get some good use out of the new living room and decided to host a Christmas Movie night. This was really only in part to show off the new TV stand, my friend Gillian and I had actually planned it well before we even looked at TV stands as a day where we could watch our favorite Christmas movies without having our cynical husbands roll their eyes the whole time. However, we failed and the day ended up including our cynical husbands and also our friend Bex who had, up until that day, avoided pretty much all Christmas movies!

We made egg nog (or something like it) and hot chocolate, baked and decorated gingerbread and ate a lot of chocolate and popcorn while we watched Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, A Christmas Story and Nativity!. It was a fun and relaxing day which really kicked off our Christmas nicely!

Our gingerbread guests!

Bex, Gillian and me with our gingerbread creations!

Rob with his cookies!

My 'pinterest' like cookies!

I ended up creating another much larger batch of gingerbread for Save the Chidren's (my work) Christmas Jumper Day the following week. You can see pictures on my recipe for Gingerbread post. I made over 50 gingerbread men and stars for my team which were decorated with Christmas jumpers and Santa hats. It was a great way to buy friends my first week at a new job! 

After all the excitement of starting a new job and Christmas related events, I was really looking forward to our low-key Christmas with Rob's mother, step-father and cousins in East Grinstead. There were six of us, no children and we spent five days around Christmas doing nothing but eating, drinking and playing games. On Christmas Day we spoke with family all over the world and at one point had a Skype chat with people in the UK, Germany, Australia and Thailand! I was given a beautiful painting of hyacinths from Rob's mother and a Kermit the frog hat from my mum (which, if you know my love of the Muppets is the perfect gift). Rob received a huge stainless steel pot which we desperately needed to make soups and large batches of pasta! All-in-all it was a fantastic Christmas but very glutinous and I've been trying to work off all the weight ever since! 

The cute English fireplace I sat next
to for five days of Christmas fun! 

Our Christmas eve meal of Salmon in puff pastry
and other assorted salad and seafood! 

Everyone enjoying Christmas Eve!
Amy, Lee, Will, Sue and Rob 

Too much Christmas! Me with my Kermit Hat
and shirt trying to digest all the lovely food! 

We had a very calm few days between Christmas and new year, where we went to dinner with friends from my old work and watched lots of TV. On 29 December, bang on schedule, we welcomed our new nephew Felix Clark into the family. He smashed the previous birth weight record held by Rob entering the world at nearly 10lbs! I've written more about when we visited them late in January but this was our first photo of him and it really rounded off the already amazing 2012 year nicely. 

Felix Clark, our nephew! 

I would love to tell you about our New Year's but unfortunately Rob and I acted much younger than we are and drank far to much to remember anything... as such I will just say that we started 2013 off with a clean slate and nothing but fond memories for 2012 :) 

Happy New Year everyone!

Thanksgiving

This is yet another back-dated post...

As is tradition Rob and I hosted 15 people for Thanksgiving Dinner in our tiny flat on the final Saturday in November. With 15 people this year we struggled for space and cutlery so we ended up renting tables, chairs and cutlery... it worked perfectly and everyone fit in happily.

Squeezed in! 

We had the normal food: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green beans and rolls. However there were a few lovely additions this year. I made a vegetable turkey out of Crudités following on from the success of last year's fruit turkey. While, Rob added profiteroles to the dessert cart alongside the usual apple and pumpkin pies. Following another Scott-Clark Thanksgiving tradition, Rob wrote and mastered a pub quiz after the meal where everyone provided amusing answers while one very competitive team, who will remain nameless, stormed through as very convincing winners!

It was a treat to have everyone join us and it's something we look forward to every year. Days like this really make you feel fortunate, who knew we had so many friends! Here are some photos of the day:

Preparation... this is blow-torching the infamous
marshmallow sweet potato casserole.

More prep... our turkey was so big it
took two full grown men to lift!

Sue, Will, Lizzie and Bex, post meal stupor!

Thanks for the amazing Turkey visors, Mom!
Gillian looks amazing in it. 

Bex's meal and a mutilated bird behind!
Once again we forgot to photograph the bird! 

Rob was clearly saying something important, being a very good host!

Gearing up for the pub quiz, Rob the quiz master! 

Who wants dessert!!! 

The  'veggie' turkey. 

It turned our really well! 

Rob's delicious profiteroles! 

The nut wellington for the vegetarians,
with it's own pastry turkey on top! 

A big switch-a-roo

Anyway... since I've last written a lot has gone on but mainly I have got a new fantastic less-stressful job! For any of you who have hung out with me in person of the past three years you will know that I was pretty fed up with my last job for at least a year! However, once I got over the tremendous mental barrier of actually applying for new jobs I found one very quickly!

I'm now working for Save the Children as a production coordinator. The position is a project manager for publications and printed materials across all sections of the charity  It is extremely interesting and a huge change for me. I went from working at a charity with 12 people employed in total to working in a team of nearly 20 people in a charity that employees nearly 500 people! It took a bit of time to get used to and I'm still trying to work out what it's like to work a normal 9-5 day and not be expected to be on call 24 hrs a day!

Though much happier now, I really do miss a lot about my last job, mainly my fantastic colleagues. As a leaving present they bought me a bottle of gin (huge grin), a bookstore gift certificate and a baking course to learn how to make macaroons!!! The generous and thoughtful way they sent me off is testament to how much more than colleagues they were to me, and the fact that I stay in touch with most of them now shows just what great friendships I built there!

My last week was emotional but fill with fun memories, including a charity gala (The Big Give) at Fortnum Masons where I was showered with free champagne, macaroons and luxury food!!! Here's a few photos from that night!

Mini ice creams and champagne!
A very appropriate dinner.

Just some normal pastry treats you would expect at Fortnums

Oh yeah, there was a free oyster bar... 

and amazing smoked salmon, too! 

Election Party 2012... Rombot versus Bronco Obama

This post is nearly 2 months late, but let's look back on a very exciting night... the US election!

So, I've been feeling less and less American as I spend more time in the UK. However, there are certain things that I will always cling onto and enjoy. One of them is the Presidential Election.

I don't know why I get so excited about the elections, maybe it's the fact that it's the only elections I get to vote in, or maybe because it's something that I get to do here that most people I'm friends with don't get to do, sort of a ritual I get to participate in when most of the time it's me left out of these democratic processes... or maybe it's just because I get to have another excuse to throw a party. Who knows?


So, we threw an election party at our home which was mainly a standing dinner and beer pong tournament (never really seen or played by a lot of Brits). The beer pong teams were the Bronco Obamas vs the Rombots and like the election, the Bronco Obamas won! We had a good time... until nearly 4am! Once Ohio declared that Obama has won I finally fell asleep.

As per usual we kept everyone well fed. Rob made traditional Boston Baked Beans and baby-back ribs. We also made some slider burgers and drank Coors Light. It was all very VERY American. I also baked some red and blue cupcakes for the red and blue states! I used my normal chocolate cupcake recipe with the vanilla frosting. Then finally, the creme-de-la-creme of the desserts... Pecan Pie!

I spent nearly a day looking for Pecans, there was a shortage in all our local shops so when I finally found some I made a Pecan Pie chucked full of nuts! I was delicious. I used the BBC recipe here. Then I melted butter and brown sugar together until it was a syrup and poured it over the top. I also used my own homemade pastry instead of store-bought! The pie was so sweet but absolutely amazing with ice cream or custard.

It was a great evening and so much fun to share a bit of unusual americana with my friends. We have Thanksgiving every year but an election only comes every four years and no matter the occasion a party is alway appropriate!