Chocolate Espresso Mud Cake! Mmmm

Wow,  it has been a while. 
I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year.

Heading back to blog land as I have a recipe I would like to share with you.  I made it for my brother in law's surprise birthday party and had a few requests for the recipe, so I thought you might be interested as well.

I will share the normal recipe which I have made many times and it has never failed me.  I found it in an issue of Good Taste, I can't remember what year - maybe 2008 or 2009? I am playing with a version for the Thermomix which I will post later. 

Chocolate espresso mud cake

530g Caster sugar

250g Dark Chocolate, chopped or broken up          

250g unsalted butter, chopped
185 ml freshly brewed strong espresso coffee
225g self-raising flour
80g cocoa powder
100g almond meal (also nice with hazel meal)
125g sour cream (can use Greek yoghurt)
4 eggs
2tsp vanilla (best you can get)

Preheat oven to 160 C

Prepare a 22cm spring form tin

Place Sugar, Chocolate, Butter & Coffee in a large saucepan over medium low heat, stir with a metal spoon until the chocolate melts and the mixture is smooth, transfer to a large bowl and cool.

Sift flour & cocoa powder into a bowl.  Add almond meal & stir to combine.

In a separate bowl combine sour cream, egg & vanilla.

Gradually stir sour cream mixture & flour mixture into the cooled chocolate mixture until just combined.

Pour the mixture into prepared pan.  Bake in pre heated oven for 80 minutes. Crumbs should cling to cake skewer inserted in the centre.  Cool in pan for 10 minutes then turn out to cool on a rack.

So that is it, I hope you enjoy the recipe. 
There are lots of ways you can serve this as a dessert cake or as a special event cake. Simply dust with Cocoa Powder and serve with whipped cream or split cake and fill with ganache.  Experiment with filling flavours, add more espresso for a mocha flavour, kaluah or baileys would add an adult aspect to the filling, or add hazelnut liquor to ganache when using hazel meal in the cake or Nutella.
Ice with a chocolate glaze, chocolate butter cream or if you are feeling daring a fondant icing for very special occasions.
Decorate with chocolate coated coffee beans or whatever takes your fancy.

Me-I love cooking and enjoy every other type of craft and art, but cake decorating makes me panic, so I go for simple.   The cake in the photo was iced outside at the hotel quickly in the high humidity you get after a big rain, just before the party as we had to travel 329.2 kms with the cake so I didn't want to ice it before we left and have the icing splat all over the car fridge and well you get the idea.

Play with it and share your ideas and photos.

Have a great day

Rachael :-)

 

Butterflys and Birthdays

Hi there,

It has been a little while, I hope everyone had a great March.  We didn't get all the assignments finished, but we made a good dent in them.  I have had a bit of a creative weekend, I also made a card today for a friends 40th and a card for an adult baptism we are having at Church on Sunday.  I thought I might share these with you.

 

 Okay, for whats and how to's:

I took pearlised blue A4 card stock and folded it in half (using a scorer for a neat fold), I then raided my scraps and off cuts and found some lime card and beige patterned card.  I cut them to size and edged each piece with Lapislazuli pigment ink from VersaColor.  Next I used the flower tag image and the birthday sentiment from the Apothecary Art set by Stampin'up .  I coloured it with my watercolour pencils and cut it out.  Edged with the same ink I used to stamp it (Lapislazuli), I then mounted it on the leftover lime card and cut that out as well. I added a Tim Holtz flourish in silver and a Tim Holtz sentiment, ribbon, flower and pearls.

 Inside I used more lime paper and a lighter mottled beige paper.  I used another Tim Holtz sentiment with the Lapizlazuli ink and a Tim Holtz butterfly stamp with the silver ink that I stamped onto a darker blue scrap of card front and back.  I have a Martha Stewart butterfly border punch (I got this for my wedding invites) I used to cut out the top of the lime paper, and another Martha Stewart Butterfly punch (just because I think I have a slight butterfly obsession) I used to cut out the silver butterfly. 

Now for the second card....

I found the picture on pintrest, I had never made an easel card before and had a bit of time.  I clicked on the pin and followed the instuctions. They were easy to follow and also included a free template.  I don't have a printer at the moment, so I drew the butterflies by hand.  I think it turned out as nice as theirs.

Here is the link: Paper Vine 

It is an excellent tutorial

  I added bible verses around the edges, a Tim Holtz flourish stamp in silver ink on the big butterfly and pearls.  The papers were from my stash (given to me by my Mum in law!).  I love this card so much, I am now going to have to make one for myself :-)

Bible verses:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; what is old has passed away, a new life has begun! 2 Corinthians 5:17
"See I am making all things new!"  Revelation 21:5
We do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day!  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  2 Corinthians 4: 16 - 18 

I hope you have a great week

Thanks for stopping by.

Please excuse me

Hi to you all out in blog land,

I am just letting you know I am taking a break this month as I have a heap of things to sort out.  Biggest one at the moment is study... My hubby and I took on a certificate in Youth Work last year and this year have started a Certificate in Ministry as well as a traineeship.   With children, work, pets and a house to look after as well something had to give.   I look forward to being back with you, hopefully in April.  I will let you know how we went with the Youth Work certificate!

 Exciting path before us

Have a great March!
Rachael :-)

Colour Me Happy

Hi to you all out there in Blog land!

I hope you have all had a great week.  Mine has been pretty great.  You know when you start saying yes to things an all of a sudden you have no time to do anything, and you start getting panicky and find it hard to breath... Well that was the start of my week, but thanks to God and amazing friends, it all came together and I am at least organised with the Church music for all of March!

My husband and I are Youth Group leaders and we did the Winter Olympics (in a Roxby summer too!)  It was such a blast and the youth joined in the crazyness of Winter Olympic charades and snowball competitions (marshmallows), Snowball competitions escalated into a full on snowball fight at the end... MAN marshmallows can hurt!  They did settle down in the middle of the night for discussion.  I loved every bit of it!

I did even get a project done (on Sunday night)!  And not a card this week!  I love my water colour pencils but the box was a bit daggy, so I jazzed it up a bit.

I was quite excited once I had made my mind up not to do a card!  I can use this and my craft supplies will start to look a bit groovy.

Ok, the whats and hows.

I took some purple cardstock out of the DCWV Jewel Colored Cardstock Stack, cut it down to fit the pencil box, measured and scored the fold lines (with a freebee scoring board and tool from Papercraft Inspirations Magazine) and then stuck it to the box with tape. I cut out the DP from DCWV Blossoms and Butterflies stack using a template from another magazine (had them for a while now, I can't remember which one), inked around that using Tim Holtz distress ink in Pickled Raspberry and stuck it on the box.  After colouring in Color Me Janette using the water colour pencils from the box, I cut her out by hand, then stuck her to more purple card and cut that out too.  The blossoms were from my stash and I made the sentiment in word, cut it out and inked around it with the same ink. I think that is it!

The beautiful image comes from our sponsor Kenny K

 

Digi and rubber stamps from KennyK are a fun and edgy way to add the perfect dose of attitude and style to all of your creations! 

The creator, the artist, the man: KennyK is a NYC-born professional illustrator who has brought his funky-but-slick, urban-influenced look to the cardmaking and papercrafts world.  His signature style can be seen throughout his various collections of sexy pinup babes, sweet 'n sassy girls, cool rockin' dudes, kid’s stuff, retro characters and more at KennyKDownloads.com.

So don't forget to link your work up at Make it Monday  and leave lots of love for the other linkies to be in with a chance.

Oops, I missed the deadline for image submission, so now linked through the Linky tool with  Make it Monday.

Also I linked up with
Milk Coffee Challenge - Girly Challenge
 

Again this week, SOOOOOOO many great creations, you are all making it hard to pick a POTW!

I did pick one in the end, Kathie from Kathie'z Kards  has an amazing card for the first day of school.  Stop by and check it out.

I think the white frame inside would be perfect for a photo of the first day of school.  What a great keepsake!

Well that's it for me,

I hope you have a great week

Rachael :-)

It is Raining!!!!!!

Hi there,  I hope you had a lovely week.

I have had a lovely (and bussy) weekend and Friday as is has been WET in Roxby!  After three or four weeks over 40c we had a beautiful overcast day on Saturday, the rain stopped for the market and then every now and then gave us a little light mist after every one packed up and went home.

I would like to share my next card for the Make It Monday design team.  I am starting to experiment a bit more with brighter colours and busier layouts.  I love this Image, it reminds me of when I used to have time to kick back and craft with friends.

In the second photo I am trying to show how I layered their legs and knitting to give the image a bit more dimension.

The card I used is from the Christina Re* Paris Chic Collection, it is a green flocked design over a shimmery cream card, I got the pack as a pressie from my Mum in Law :-) The pink card was also in a gift pack as were the makings for the flower (I am a very lucky girl!) Um... the punch for the sentiment is a Stampin' Up punch and also from my wonderful Mum in law.  (I live in the middle of nowhere so I get a few care packages every now and then - Thanks Mum xx)

The cut out for the image is traced around a Spellbinders Nestabilities die cut shape (the actual shape was too small for the image so traced around it and cut out by hand) - This one was from my stash as were the ribbons!

I have entered this in
Scribble and Scrap - Anything Goes

Now to the wonderful image and sentiment set, Close Knit Friends..... From our lovely sponsor for the week

http://www.bugaboostamps.com/

They have such cute designs!

Now for my POTW,  with all this lovely weather I couldn't go past Dance in the Rain by Laura Nehring at The Crafty Sister.  Check her out!

How beautiful is this?!

Don't forget to link up your creations at Make It Monday and leave lots of love for others that do too and you could win some awesome images to play with.

Have a great week

Rachael :-)

Hi there,

Time for yet again another design team post.  Is it just me or do the weeks seem to be speeding up?!

I think the time I spent with Mum last week helped get my creativity flowing again and I am pleased with how my card turned out this week.

The image is from our sponsor of the week Scrapper's Delights  and is called Winter Elf.
She is coloured using Micador Colourush pencils and then Kindy Glitz for some sparkle.  The red card is from Stampin' up and the shimmery purple card and blue ribbon was from a discount store (love them for craft supplies!) I cut out the purple card by hand and wrote on the ribbon with a fine line permanent marker.  The scrap book paper was a freebee with a magazine. I thought I would turn it into a Valentines card, but I guess it could really be used for anything.


I have even entered my first challenges!
A Gem of a challenge - All you need is love
MilkCoffee Challenge  - Valentine's/Love challenge
Open-Minded Crafting Fun Challenges - Show Some Love

.

http://www.scrappersdelights.com/store/

Janice is generously offering our winner 3 images of their choice.

Remember, to be in the running to win the prize from our sponsor this week just leave a 

comment for another entry. Be sure to mention you saw them on Make It Monday. The 

more entries you comment on the more chances you have of winning!

So head over to Make It Monday and check it out.   

Now for my POTW.  I love this one, it is a bit edgy and I really want to have a go at the embossing paste technique.  The image also makes me think of Dr Who! Awesome work Pia.  Check her out at Pias Papir og Perler .

Above is a photo I took from our hotel in Adelaide last week.  A beautiful time of night looking over the city.  I was so happy with the way it turned out, I just wanted to share it with you.

Have a great week

Rachael :-)

Many a splendid thing

Hi there!

I hope you have had a great week.  Mine has been busy and we ended it with a trip down to Adelaide.  While here I got to spend some time with my Mum (in Law) Shirley and had some help and encouragement with my next card for the design team.  I even got to play with her Copics!!!

I got to play with Tiffany playing violin.  She is exquisite.  I came up with so many ideas and one I really wanted to do, but with work and study I ran out of time.  I was so happy to get to do this with Mum.  It made it extra special - we don't get down to Adelaide very much, it is a 6 hour drive each way.

The green and brown cards are from Stamin up and I used Copic markers to colour Tiffany. 

The little pearls and the music paper are from Mum's stash!

The shimmery card Tiffany is printed on is the back of a Christmas card I recycled.

We thank our sponsor this week

Milk Coffee

and are so thrilled to have the opportunity to work with their adorable images.

 

They are generously offering our winner

3 Digis

of their winners choice

Remember, to be in the running to win the prize from our sponsor this week just leave a comment for another entry. Be sure to mention you saw them on Make It Monday. The more entries you comment on the more chances you have of winning!

On to my POTWs, yes there are two again.  We are getting so many good links on our Make it Monday Linky party, it is getting even harder to narrow it down.

This lovely tag is by Wendy at Wendy's Card Craft.   I love the colours and the  Tim Holtz stamps.  Check out her blog!

Next is a fun card at Nicole at Nicole's Craft Nook.  I love the shape, colours and the fun theme.

Have a great week

Rachael :-)