Aptly Named

perth

When showing friends and family the photos from my recent Perth trip, many of them asked why are there so many photos of food? I didn’t find it strange at all, actually its been a habit of mine for years. Looking through old holiday photos it’s not unusual to find pictures of various lunches scattered amongst those of beaches and palm trees.

I’ll leave the detailed restaurant reviews to those who do them best, but I wanted to quickly mention two places at which we dined. An afternoon in Fremantle culminated with the best frites I’ve ever tasted at Little Creatures, a restaurant/brewery with a great buzzy atmosphere. The rest of the menu was awfully appetizing but my poor stomach couldn’t handle it. Much deliberation also took place at Little Caesars Pizzeria, Mundaring in the Perth Hills. We finally decided on the Mexican-inspired Chicken Siesta and the dessert pizza Caramello Sam, which was much acclaimed by past visitors, and rightly so. Pastry cream, bananas, macadamias and caramel sauce – this pizza was lick-your-fingers good.

But we cooked at home for the most part, which I really enjoyed. Holiday cooking need not be complicated, though it was tempting to make it so when you have all day to plan for it. I made my delicious roast chicken, tried pizza dough from scratch for the first time, and was treated to my host’s own specialty – plum chilli chicken nachos. One night we lit candles and ate outside just after sunset. But closest to my own heart was something that had been in the works for well over a year – the aptly named sea disaster cake.

sea disaster cake

I don’t even remember how the idea came about, but somehow a shipwreck and the subsequent bloodshed at the tentacles of a monster on the high seas seemed a good concept for cake decorating. We started with a white chocolate mudcake base, one of my favourites and used a buttercream icing for its versatility and texture. The sinking ship is a piece of chocolate and almond biscotti. The sea monster is a green meringue, although next time I would bake a smaller cupcake in addition to the large cake and use green icing. The sea disaster victims are unfortunate jelly babies. We had so much fun putting this cake together, and we’re already planning the next catastrophe to be rendered in cake form.

White Chocolate Mudcake
Recipe Adapted from Australian Women’s Weekly Cupcakes
Serves 10-12

• 250g butter, chopped coarsely
• 160g white chocolate, chopped coarsely
• 2 cups caster sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon coconut essence
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs

Butter Cream Icing
• 250g butter, softened
• 1 cup icing sugar, sifted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Food Colouring

1. Preheat oven to 170°C, and line a 22cm round cake tin with baking paper
2. Place butter, chocolate, caster sugar and milk in a small saucepan and stir over low heat until smooth. Transfer mixture to a small bowl and cool for about 15 minutes.
3. Whisk in sifted flours, essences and eggs.
4. Transfer to cake tin and bake for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Cool in the tin.
5. To make the butter cream icing, beat butter with an electric mixer until light and creamy. Add icing sugar and vanilla and beat until well combined. Add food colouring as desired.
6. Spread over cooled cake and refrigerate until set.

sea disaster cake

6 Comments on “Aptly Named”

  1. Ooh, looks like a nice recipe for cake. Speaking of apt names, though, I don’t think there’s anything muddy about white chocolate! 🙂

  2. Actually you have a point there! I wonder if mudcake might be more about the technique, because you can make caramel mudcake in addition to white and dark chocolate.

    This cake is a total winner. I often halve the ingredients and make 12 cupcakes with white chocolate and Malibu ganache.

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