Strawberries & Cream Cheesecake

Hello loyal and patient fans...(members of my family and probably some middle aged Asian businessmen that got here accidentally while surfing for Hentai porn). I know I keep leaving it years between posts but it's nice to be dramatic and attention seeking reappearing like that guy in The Prestige.

 Incase anyone cares how my life is going at uni i'll give a brief update. I've finally started acting like a real student and went to two whole seminars. Little did I know prior to this that it was possible to spend 120 minutes learning about walls. I've also cut down on my unhealthy Internet shopping addiction and am enriching my life with more positive things, like cigarettes and Pretty Little Liars.

 The rest of semester 2 so far has really been a blur of drama, vomit, people falling in bushes and lots of questionably tight and slutty clothing...on my friend James Phillips. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that sometimes I like a break from it all to come home and talk to my cookery books. But only a short break, to bring cake back to the troops.

 Today's recipe is really a keeper. Strawberries and cream cheesecake. *sighhhh* it just sounds so perfect as a pairing like honey and lemon, or Kardashian and leopard print, or Milton Karamani and fake tan.

It's honestly the best recipe ever. It tastes how I assume Peter Pan clouds taste. It's a very modest but pretty cake and tastes creamy and light, like a purer version of Haagen Dazs Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream.

I decided to go with this recipe because I neglected to make my best friend Tally a birthday cake. Strawberries and cream is the picky bitches favourite flavour so I've had to go with it. Not that I wasn't a good enough friend on her birthday; coming down to London to wear a bikini in MARCH.

 Boys will probably not understand this, but the Universe gives girls exactly 10 months from the moment they stop wearing bikinis in September to the painstaking time they start again in June to mentally, emotionally and physically prepare for this harrowing task. So when thrown a curveball like this, we suddenly drop our smug late-winter attitude of 'I definitely look fabulous under my onesie, not like a pale doughboy' and jump ship. (but then we realise that requires a bikini and stay on the ship but in great lighting).

 Well if there was ever a cake to destroy the ability to bikini ever again it's this one - and it's fabulous.

 Here's the recipe:
 1. Mash up half a pack of digestives with a rolling pin, then stir in 100g melted butter. Line detachable bottom pan with this base.
 2. Boil 200g chopped strawberries with 80g caster sugar and 30ml water. As the strawbs go soft and the water reduces by half, remove from heat to cool.
3. Whip up 600g cream cheese with 100g caster sugar, then slowly beat in 2 eggs - one at a time. Stir in cooled strawberries.
4. Pour on top of base and wrap pan in foil, then place in a larger pan filled 3/4 top with water. Cook on 160c for half an hour. Whip up double cream to spread on top once cake is out the oven and cooled. Leave to set overnight.

 Xx

Surprisingly non - disgusting Cardamom Loaf

I am fully aware how unpleasant cardamom loaf sounds, but I assure you it is awesome.
I first started my romance with cardamom at Uni when my insane friend Sufi arrived with all her eastern remedies that her mum packed with her. This girl was basically stocked to be the Dalai Lama of A&E for freshers flu. I always picture her floating around her rooms with scarves chanting and grinding up herbs. The reality is she spends more time in my room laughing at her ridiculous boobs while I grind up herbs of my own finding...

So to my point, I always wander into her room whining about a new type of feeling unwell and deciding I'm dying from what can only be described as JHS (Jewish Hypochondriac Syndrome). Sufi's go to move is always her Mum's cardamom tea. At first I spat it out because it wasn't PG Tips and I take issue with change, but then I became so obsessed with it that I started literally stealing it.

It's got an amazing fresh and exotic flavour without tasting too herby. This cake is essentially designed for eating with tea, especially herbal tea. It's totally light and yummy without being sickly and you can just eat it all day. Unfortunately it is for that reason that I couldn't get a picture of it in it's full glory. I decided to have a Bridget Jones moment and eat it straight out the pan at 5am while talking about myself. Kate bore witness to this, as she now thinks she lives at my house. She actually said 'Hi Mum and Dad!' to my parents one of the last times she came over. At this point she had met them twice.

I have been eating this cake all morning watching Pretty Little Liars deciding that I know all the answers in spite of the fact that there's a 90% chance I don't know any of them. Either way I've spent my time stuffing my face and desperately contacting Sacha Feldman to tell her I've put a new piece of the puzzle together. To which she always says 'I know...everyone knows...it became obvious 3 weeks ago.' And then I cry and eat more cake and decide that PLL is going to end however I say so.

Even my mum has eaten it, as I slyly put a note on it saying 'Low-Fat'. I may has well written 'contains no food whatsoever', otherwise she just plain wouldn't have eaten it.

I know that no one who isn't directly looking for cake really looks at the recipe part of this, but this one is actually very simple and lovely. I think that you should grow some fucking balls and try to make it. You will feel like you've accomplished something this holiday aside from 'revising'. Or what boys straight up call 'masturbating while playing Xbox'. I'm talking to you Gibber. Jokes probably not.

Recipe:
190g caster sugar
190g butter
10 split and crushed cardamom pods
190g flour
3 eggs <3
1 tsp baking powder
25ml sour cream
splash vanilla extract

(LOOK HOW EASY IT IS, FUCKING DO IT)


1. Preheat oven to 170. Cream butter, sugar and crushed cardamom, mush in your 3 eggs.

2. Add flour and baking powder.

3. Add sour cream and vanilla extract.

4. Put in loaf tin, then oven for 50mins.

Do it bitches. It is so easy. Anyone that actually does this, or bothers to do any other recipe I have ever published please send me a picture: olivia.jane.geisler@gmail.com. I will be disgustingly impressed and put the picture in my next post.

Pina Colada Cupcakes

Apologies to my miniscule group of fans, for I have been extremely absent since the summer.

Late October I started studying at Nottingham University.

'Studying' is a loose term, since the most reading I've done has been on the back of paracetemol packets after waking up at 4pm. 

Its been the most amazing first term, so amazing that I haven't been able to stop and pick up a mixing bowl. Especially considering the fact that students are broke as fuck.

 After a certain point, money tends to be represented by tickets, cigarettes and takeaway. This is all organised on an epic trip to One-Stop where rich jewish students escape campus and fear the locals while getting money out. I've decided that the locals are possibly more scared of me, with my bright red hair and embodying Carrie Bradshaw in her misguidedly bad dressed days of the 2nd season of Sex and the City.

I'm quite certain I've eaten more Dominoes in the past 3 months than in my entire life, to the point that Milel (the guy who answers the phone) and I have developed a very promising relationship...that was until he asked me if I was sure I only needed one chocolate melt.

I decided to symbolise the past few months in a recipe, I would go with my first batch of alcoholic cupcakes. 

They represent nights like these:

And mornings like these:

I hosted a 'You Are What You Drink' party for my birthday this year in the brilliant Hoxton Pony in Shoreditch. This meant that everyone dressed up like their favourite cocktail. I was particularly impressed by the girl wearing a lemon on her head. Less so by the girls dressed as White Russian...hookers. 

Anyway, it got me inspired. 

The ultimate cocktail is of course the Pina Colada - and with enough Malibu in my house to sedate an army of Israeli soldiers, I decided to give it a go.

I love this recipe, and how the cupcakes have a glazed look to them. They taste gorgeous, like calorie fuelled shots!

Here's how it's done:

Ingredients

• 55g/2oz unsalted butter, room temperature
• 140g/5oz sugar
• 120ml/4floz coconut milk
• 1 large egg
• 140g/5oz plain flour
• 2tsp baking powder
• 425g/15oz can of pineapple rings, drained and chopped small

For the icing:

• 175g/6oz caster sugar
• 1 egg white
• 2tbsp coconut rum, like Malibu
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4. Line a 12-hole non-stick muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Cream the butter and the sugar together until light and fluffy. Mix the coconut milk and egg together and add to the butter and sugar. don’t worry if it looks a little curdled at this stage.
3. Sift the flour with the baking powder and add to the mixture, followed by the chopped pineapple.
4. Divide the mixture between the muffin cases and bake in the oven for 20 mins until springy to the touch. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
5. Place the icing ingredients in a heatproof bowl and place over a bowl of hot (not boiling) water. Use an electric whisk to beat the mixture until it thickens and forms soft peaks when you lift the whisk. This should take 5-6 mins. Remove the bowl from the heat and spread the icing on the cupcakes, working quickly before the icing sets. Decorate as you please.

Adorable Owl Cupcakes

THEY ARE SO CUTE.
I can't deal with it.
I got this idea from 6bittersweets, who got it from a book that I can't remember the name of.

I happen to be the biggest owl fan ever because I have no life so this was a really great find for me.

I decided to make these this Saturday when some friends came over, although when some turned into around 50 the poor little guys got a little overshadowed.
By which i mean people stubbed out cigarettes on them. I was very close to calling the RSPCA. Joking, I'm not crazy...what...

Saturday was good fun though and probably one of the last of it's kind I'll throw before university. *sob*

It comprised mostly of boys and vodka and I started to get the impression that a good handful of them showed up to see my mum instead of me.

 Even my friend Richard managed to traumatise my sister knocking on the glass of the room she was sitting in demanding to find out when my mum would be arriving home.

I feel like Stacey, sitting in the swimming pool all alone in a tankini while my mum poledances on the kitchen table. Although my mum would never poledance on the kitchen table, it might scuff the surface.

Even my own boyfriend apparently prefers to hang out with my mum:

*thats them playing Wii tennis, I wasn't allowed to play...

More embarrassing still was my night tonight. My friend Toni and I decided against all better judgement to pick up off a gentleman named 'Sleazy' who previously sold me a generous amount of grass from the garden for £40.

We considered backing out after a while, but then he gallantly texted me

 'I'm in da cab' 

I couldn't possible refuse his charming rhetoric.

So inevitably the guy turns up in a car that looks like a battered coke can and exchanges me an empty plastic bag in exchange for my money. You have to hand it to him though, he promised not to sell me grass again and he stuck to it. That's growth.

In the end Toni and I had our asian movie night £40 poorer and more retarded than ever. It's ok though. because we wore our hair in high buns and drank wine while failing at racist impressions. All good.

The Cupcakes

1. Make basic chocolate cupcakes. Recipes can be found anywhere, I went for the hummingbirds one.

2. Ice with chocolate butter cream, made with cocoa powder, icing sugar, vanilla and butter. 

3. Split several oreos so that the white filling is a full circle, and stick these on next to eachother for the eyes. You then put minstrels in for the pupils, at whatever angle creates a nice facial expression.
4. Pick out the yellow and orange skittles from a pack and place them thin onto the cupcake to create a beak. 

5. You can use the excess icing to pipe the furry top of their head/eyebrows.
Enjoy!

Boob Cake

I've been told in the past that my style of baking and blogging is somewhat 'innapropriate'.

I decided they were wrong, and that it was time to prove them right.

Enter boob cake.

I decided to make this cake for my lovely friend Martha's leaving party, as she, like the rest of the world is fucking off to Israel. When I told her I was making a cake she suggested this as a joke, but should've known better that I'd DEFINITELY go through with it. Who knows, maybe this will open up a whole world of pornographic baking and I'll re-define the 'spotted dick'.

I've made boob once before, for my friend Richard's birthday. If you read my last post, he's the one involved with 'titty-aura', much to Pedram's protesting that it's 'his thing'. I need to stop using quotations, it makes me feel like Joey when he kept using them at the wrong times...

So yes, as a co-creator of 'titty-aura', Richard is a big fan of boobs. He always tells me how mine are looking if I'm having a rough day, because that's what friendship is all about. I always tell him when his shirts are too tight and make him look like a sailor, because I'm an asshole.

So although making boob cake was very fun, the presentation of it was much to be desired. I brought it with me to a testosterone clad pub and had to stand around pretending to be amused all of the hundred times another guy cleverly said 'nice rack' and then laughed at his own joke.

I then finally found Martha and put my tits on the table, only to discover that her Dad and Stepmum would be joining us. Who I've never met. I didn't think my biggest problem meeting someone's parents would be avoiding them looking at my nipples. It was awkward to say the least. Martha's Dad tried to talk to me about 'The Iliad' while averting his gaze, which would've been fine except for that I haven't read the Iliad, and so gave some unfounded opinions on the tone of the book...based on Troy the movie. (I should've used quotations there but I felt awkward.)

The first time I made boob cake, I made lots of errors so this is an opportunity for me to teach what I've learnt about handling sugarpaste.

So here's some tips on how to construct a boob cake:

1. Using any cake mix, fill two small identical saucepans and cook in the oven for as long as you normally would until a toothpick comes out clean.

2. Leave to cool and sit the two cakes next to eachother, then coat in buttercream.

3. For the boobs, you should get fleshcolour sugarpaste, and a colour for the bra you want your boobs to be wearing. Mine got a corset because they're fancy. You need to roll out the fleshcolour and lay it over the two cakes and smooth down the edges, cutting off the excess. Then layer the bra colour on top and decorate.

Sugarpaste tips:

* knead the sugarpaste for 5min before you roll it, this prevents it cracking

* when rolling out the sugarpaste, use only a little icing sugar on the surface, and don't allow any icing sugar to come into contact with the sugarpaste that will be on show. 

* Make sure to spread the buttercream thin, otherwise it will clump underneath the sugarpaste

Guy Pollack is inferior

Salted Caramel 'Mo Cake

This cake is seriously sexy.
And I'll tell you what isn't - me when I was making it.
I'm not gonna lie, it is a pretty challenging cake. But more so if you're a spacially unaware retard.
I actually got assaulted by a whisk at one point, it literally fell out of nowhere onto my face covered in cream making me look like something off of youporn.
I was very hesitant to make this cake, because last time I tried to make caramel from scratch, this happened:

It actually looks less painful than it was.

I made this cake last night for my cousins who came over for dinner.

I decided to serve it with a side of 'it's ok to be gay' pep talk for the middle child. This backfired massively.

Me: Listen, if you're a homo, that's fine.
12 year old: I'm not a homo

Me: Yes but you don't know that yet, you're young, you are a 'mo

12 year old: Right...
Me: And it's ok that you're gay. It's ok to want buttsex.
12 year old: The only buttsex I'm going to be having is if my cock is in a woman's ass.

Me:

Back to cake:

Here's your recipe for some salted caramel 'mo cake:

Sponge:

300g butter

140g brown sugar

3 eggs

100g cocoa powder

160ml buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla

330g flour

2 tsp baking powder

1tsp bicarb

1 tsp salt

Salty Caramel:

200g caster sugar

2 tbsp golden syrup

180ml double cream

1 tsp sea salt

Frosting:

200g caster sugar

2 tbsp golden syrup

360ml double cream

450g dark chocolate

450g unsalted butter

1. Make the salty caramel first by boiling the sugar and syrup for 10 mins, then in a seperate pan dissolove salt into double cream. Pour this into the caramel mix and whisk. Set aside.

2. Make frosting following the same steps, but follow by stirring in the dark chocolate and then the butter. Set aside.

3. Sponge. Preheat oven to 170C. Cream butter and both sugars, then add eggs.

4. In a jug stir cocoa buttermilk and vanilla, and sift all dry ingreds. In 3 batches mix in the wet and dry, ending with the dry. 

5. Divide into 2 pans and cook for 25mins.

6. Once cool, sandwich the layers with caramel and frosting, swirling the remaining caramel on top. 

Hummingbird's Malted Chocolate Cupcakes

Hello my loyal and obsessive fans. (I am of course addressing myself and my boyfriend who occassionally checks for a genuine mention on here)

My grandma looked once too for my cheesecake recipe, jammy slut.

So since I got back from Tel Aviv I've done relatively fuck all. But it's been a nice fuck all. I've basically sat around watching The Runaway Bride over and over again crying and smoking. 
In fact it got to the point where Toni left my house while we were halfway through the movie, and the next day when she asked what I was doing I had to tell her I was still watching it.

She does look like a bell when she moves :')

So I've utilized my free house well.

Also had my self a little partA last night, which is basically what comprises of a large group of people spending the evening with me staring at them whispering 'eat my cake'. Good times.

It was a very nice night though, I was reunited with Tally and it felt so good. I also learnt about Titty-aura from Richard and Pedram.

I learnt that it is the effect of being surrounded by great pairs of boobs that creates a calming and happy atmosphere. I suspect it derives from memories of breastfeeding. Poor messed up boys.
Either way, with Tash Biber in the room, the titty-aura was apparently on form.

 Phwoar. Feeling calm yet?

My childhood stalker Alex came and brought his two friends that happened to be all kinds of weird.
They kind of tanked when we invited them to play 'I've Never.'
I thought it would be nice to get them involved, until they opened with 'Er, I've never fucked a girl, realised she's bleeding and carried on.'
...no neither mate.

Maura, Ilana, Jess and Tash all requested a mention.
Tash has already had hers.
Here's the deal on them:
Maura is a slut and her boyfriend has run off with mine out of despair.
Ilana likes feet.
Jess is an ugly ginger.
There, mentioned.

So the night slowed down a little, Alex stayed for a while and I made his friends help tidy up in exchange for me waxing Alex's chest.

 You thought I was joking...

I then got into bed with a cup of tea and went on chatroulette telling people to sort their lives out.

So how does all of this relate to cupcakes?
It doesn't.
Except these cupcakes were eaten last night and I just enjoy talking about myself.
So the cupcakes.
There's this place in St. Albans called The Waffle House. It makes the most amazing malted chocolate milkshake that I've been craving ever since I first had it at age 10. When I discovered this recipe I had to do it, because that malty taste is just the yummiest thing in the world.
Here goes:

Ingredients

Sponge:

150ml sunflower oil

75ml milk

75ml buttermilk

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

240g flour 

25g cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt 

330g caster sugar

150ml boiling water

Frosting:

200g dark chocolate

240ml double cream

115ml malt powder

50g cream cheese

35g caster sugar

Malteasers to decorate

1. Preheat oven to 190C. Whisk the blue ingredients and sift the red in a seperate bowl.
2. Alternate the dry ingredients with the boiling water in 3 shifts mixing into the initial mixture.
3. Divide into paper cases and cook for 18-20mins.
4. Meanwhile melt the dark chocolate in a pan slowly and set aside to cool. Whisk the double cream with the malt powder to create stiff peaks.
5. In a seperate bowl, whisk the cream cheese and sugar, then mix in the melted chocolate and add this to the double cream malt.
6. Use a palette knife to swirl onto cooled cupcakes.