Strawberry Milkshake Easter Cake

Having guests over Easter is always a good excuse for baking and I find cakes easier than desserts to make in advance. So I made this after work in the evening and decorated it first thing in the morning, in  time for my sister and niece to arrive.

The cake is a strawberry milkshake cake, so called because of the secret ingredient - Nesquik! (For those not familiar with this childhood staple, Nesquik is a powdered flavouring to add to milk, which comes in strawberry or banana flavour. It has been around since I was a child in the 80s, if not even longer!).

I recently made an Oreo cake for my husband’s birthday which I haven’t blogged about yet - it was the most delicious moist chocolate cake, and I decided to create a cake along similar lines. That cake used cocoa powder - and boiling water, to which I attribute the moistness - so for this one, as I wanted a fruity spring flavour but with an ingredient of a similar texture to cocoa powder and suddenly remembered Nesquik!

 This is the recipe I adapted, using Nesquik in place of cocoa powder, though I only used the recipe for the sponge and not the buttercream or chocolate ganache.

For the buttercream I made a standard butter and icing sugar combination, adding in some strawberry syrup for flavour and colour. I filled the three layer cake and then piped some swirls on the top, before colouring some more buttercream purple and green, to pipe more flowers and little bits of green (foliage, I guess) in between. 

I then decorated the top with Easter marshmallows (you could also use mini eggs if young children aren’t going to eat it) and a little pink glimmer sugar. The ‘hoppy Easter’ cake topper is a plastic sign that my husband printed for me with his new 3D printer, which I love!

Restaurant Review: The Faraday, Epsom

Often when we go to the cinema we have dinner beforehand at a restaurant nearby; over the past few years we've eaten at most restaurants on Epsom High Street! One place we'd never been to is the Faraday (actually on Church St, on the corner of the High St) - a pub that we'd always walked past thinking it was too busy and probably more the sort of place you go to drink than eat.

Perhaps later in the night that is the case (judging by TripAdvisor reviews of bouncers on the doors and deals that appeal to the student crowd) but when we went it was actually fairly quiet - by the time we left it was nicely busy.

I like a pub that goes that one step further and I noticed xbox controllers and screens as well as board games which I thought was a really cool idea; they let you choose your own music to play (presumably for the whole pub to hear); the menu even mentioned that you could ask at the bar if you needed a phone charger - and a printing service, which says they can't print your whole thesis but are good for a few pages if you can't get to your printer. That seems one for the students!

The range and originality of the menu is impressive; as well as all the usual burgers they offer a chicken katsu burger which I've never come across before (though I love chicken katsu curry), a crawfish roll (not seen on menus often enough in my opinion) and some quite unusual vegetarian and vegan dishes like a Lebanese style aubergine crumble. I was really tempted by the desserts as well - specifically the cookie cup, which is a biscuit base filled with chocolate brownie, marshmallow pieces and chocolate honeycomb, served with vanilla ice cream - but in the end we didn't get as far as dessert (though our drinks pretty much counted as dessert!).

 

At that point I hadn't had a burger in ages so I decided to have the chicken melt burger - good value at £8.25 with a chicken breast topped with bacon, melted cheese and the BBQ sauce (the sauce really made it) and it came of course with fries.

I'd spotted something while perusing the drinks menu that I really wanted to try but knew the calorie count would be off the chart, so tried to persuade my husband to share one for dessert - but he wanted one all to himself! So we ended up ordering two 'freakshakes' - thick chocolate milkshakes with streaks of chocolate sauce down the inside of the glass, topped with a giant cookie balanced on top of the glass, with a swirl of whipped cream on top. There was a straw going through the cream and the centre of the cookie down into the glass, and threaded onto the straw were two mini chocolate profiteroles!

It was amazing though I could have done without the extra cream on top - and I only drank half of it as it was just too much. I was about to comment to my husband that we should have shared one after all, only to find he had already polished his off!

 

Review: Haagen Daz Mango and Raspberry Ice Cream

I love fruit-flavoured ice cream, but not flavours like strawberry - I like more unusual, zingy flavours like apple. When I lived in Germany in the late 90s there was an amazing ice cream parlour in my town that did apple ice cream. Quite often flavours like that come in a sorbet but they are much nicer as a creamy ice cream, so I was looking forward to trying Haagen Dazs' mango and raspberry ice cream when they sent me some vouchers.

The delicious mango ice cream has a swirl of raspberry running through it which gives a sharp contrast. The flavour is only available in Tesco at the moment (£4 for 500ml) and is a lovely summery treat.

I decided to try serving it two ways, firstly Eton Mess style with broken up pieces of meringue; this would be really nice topped with some fresh mango chunks and raspberries.

Then I decided to be a bit more decadent and make an ice cream milk shake. Place a few scoops of ice cream in a blender and top up with milk - how much depends on how thick you like your milkshake. Add some chunks of mango and blend; serve in a tall glass with a straw.

A great accompaniment to a summer barbecue!