Simply sinful chocolate tart - Poppy Bakes

This lovely chocolate tart was made by Poppy 11 years old. She chose to garnish it with strawberries from our garden and pink edible glitter

(Note children may need help with this one, as the mixture is very runny when taking in and out of oven)

Ingredients:

500ml cream

450g chocolate (we used a blend of milk chocolate and dark chocolate - anything works really - chop up fine or use chips)

1 egg yolk and 1 egg

2 sweet short pastry sheets pre-rolled (buy at the supermarket)

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C

Line a 12 inch flan, tart or pie pan with the sweet short pastry, lightly prick base, line with either foil or baking paper, and load up with pie weights/beans or uncooked rice and blind bake for 15-20 mins until lightly golden.

In a small saucepan bring cream to a gentle simmer. Remove from heat and whisk in chocolate (the heat from the cream will melt the chocolate). Let sit aprx 5 mins to cool. Whisk in egg until thoroughly mixed.

Place tart pan on a cookie sheet, it will make it easier to place in to oven. Pour chocolate mix in to pastry shell. Bake aprx 20 minutes. When you remove this from the oven, it will be bubbling furiously and still look liquid. However once cooled to room temperature it will set completely.

We served this with a little French vanilla ice cream.

This tart tasted amazing and it was a real surprise just how great, from such simple ingredients.

Animal biscuits for our new pony Gingy

This gorgeous we pony joined our family Christmas eve. Her name is Gingy

One of the first things my daughter Poppy thought to bake over the holidays were pony treats for Gingy. And Gingy gobbled them up, she loved them.

It's a relatively simple recipe, they are very similar to human biscuits, just without the sugar really. The apple & carrot in them means they don't cut well with a cookie cutter, as we found out when we tried.

Ingredients

1 cup grated carrot

1 apple grated (any kind)

2 Tbsp vegetable oil

1/4 cup molasses

1 tsp salt

1 Cup Rolled oats

1 Cup flour

Preheat oven to 180C. Line a baking sheet with baking paper. In a bowl mix all ingredients together. Roll out dough as one large piece on baking sheet and cut in to 3cm squares using a pizza cutting wheel.The pieces may join together slightly during baking, but they can be snapped apart once cooled.

Bake 20 miutes. Cool before storing in an airtight container.

A special first birthday for Antonin - Poppy Bakes

This small cake was made by my daughter Poppy (11 years) for a family friend Antonin who was turning 1. The family is French/NZ and the wee character is Petit Ours Brun (little brown bear, from a french story book). Poppy was the one specifically asked to make his cake. She decided she wanted to make cupcakes as well. As Anotnin loves bananas, she decided to make a banana cake.

The cake was covered with a layer of Bakels white truffle, which I thought would be easier for Poppy than making ganache. I stepped in and leant a small hand to help her achieve a flat-ish finish. It was then covered in Satin Ice fondant. The little figure was modelled from Satin Ice fondant to which tylose had been added.

The cupcakes have small motifs on top that frequently appear in the story lines. The cupcakes are finished with easy frost  using a 1m tip

The little cake sat next to a cupcake stand at the birthday boys home. We used a simple cardboard cupcake stand, the way these cupcake stands fit together allows for a picture to be slotted in easily, it is held in place as a topper.

Both the cupcakes and the birthday cake we well received by Antonin, it was so much fun watching him eat birthday cake.

Poppy cupcake toppers - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Bake for ANZAC day this year and present your delights in these Black Lace cupcake papers. They really set off the center of the poppy.

The topper is formed using this new Poppy silicone mould. To begin, season the mould with a thin smear of Perfect Finish Decorating Cream by rubbing a smear all around. This ensures your topper will unmould with ease. Fill the centre with a tiny circle of black fondant and the leaf cavity with some green fondant as pictured. Lastly push in your red fondant to fill the mould (I used Satin Ice).

Once you have all your materials in front of you it takes no time at all to make these en masse to decorate for an army. As an indication it took me 10 minutes to make 6 poppies.

Order your poppy mould in advance of ANZAC day now!