You need:

• Chocolate cake mix
• Eggs
• Milk
• Raspberry flavour
• White chocolate
• Cream cheese icing
• Raspberries
• Whipped cream/cream to whip

So I’m cheating for a lot of this cake by using pre-made ingredients because it’s more about the decoration than the cake making part >_>

Mix up your cake mix and pour a little bit into the cake pan, just enough to cover the base.

Sprinkle raspberries evenly into the cake base and then pour in the rest of the cake mix.

Bake the cake and then repeat with a second layer.

Put the cakes aside until they have completely cooled.

Now we need some whipped cream for the middle. Pour the cream into the mixer and start whipping, start adding a little sugar at a time until it puffs up into delicious fluffy peaks. Make sure to taste it along the way to make sure it’s not too sweet… yeah that’s the reason to taste test it >_>

Place the first cake on to the cake tray and pipe a line of cream cheese icing around the edge, this will prevent the whipped cream from seeping out the sides. Then spread whipped cream all over the top.

Place the second cake on top of it and chill so it’s nice and firm.

Now ice the entire thing with pre-made cream cheese icing. Be nice and generous with the icing and make sure there are no gaps.

With the cake setting in the fridge grate up a bunch of white chocolate into tiny pieces to cover it with later.

Now is a good time to make the other decorations too. I decided to use my new Daiso chocolate tray and I made some chocolates filled with raspberry filling. Basically I made each half by melting chocolate in the trays and chilling. I then mixed icing sugar with some crushed raspberries and sandwiched them together.

This next part is a little tricky. Take the cake out of the fridge and cover the entire outside with the chocolate shavings. To get it on the sides I used a spoon and kind of just threw it on. At the end I dusted the extra off the cake stand so it looked cleaner.

Now it’s time to decorate. I put the rest of the cream cheese icing into a piping bag and went around the bottom edge to hide it. I also did a ring around the top and then extra swirls on top. I added in the filled chocolates, some extra raspberries and the rest of the raspberry filling on top.

And that’s it, it seems very simple when it’s all written down but it looks really impressive!

I only have one cake pan so I had to cook each half separately, if I could do them both at once this really wouldn’t have taken that long to bake. And it looks freaking awesome!

Having things turn out so cutely makes me really happy!

Now for the second most important part… The eating!

It’s certainly not even close to being a traditional Black Forest cake but soooo yummy. I love raspberries and I love white chocolate so this for me is much better!

Let me know if you try it out!

To do this easily you will need the correct piping tip, it should look like a thin tear drop.

You will also need royal icing or butter cream (this will be squishier in end result though) and a “flower tack”. A flower tack is a round piece of metal with a nail in the bottom, this is what you pipe the rose on to. I tried making my own or just using the bottom of a cup to pipe onto but it really is a pain in the butt so I would really suggest just spending the $4 and buying one or else you’ll probably have frustrating results like I did XD

Rose on the tack:

You hold the nail and spin it as you work making it easier to control the end result.

Ok so let’s get started. You want stiff royal icing but no so stiff it can’t be piped easily. Place a small square of baking paper on the flower tack. You can hold it in place with a little bit a of icing.

Pipe a big round lump onto the middle of the baking paper. This will determine the shape and height of the rose so make it fairly tall and big. You can see my icing was a little too dry for the middle section below so it showed cracks.

Holding the piping bag with the thin part of the tip upwards pipe a little circle on the top of the middle lump. This will form the bud of the rose. It’s much easier if you rotate the tack rather than trying to rotate the piping bag.

Ok let’s start making some petals. Make the first petal over the join in the middle bud. To make the petal, pipe with the thin side of the icing tip upwards in a large upside down U shape. The thin part of the tip will make the tip of the petal look feathered and more like a real petal so you shouldn’t have to do much work at all.

Add the next petal in the same way overlapping the end of the last petal.

You can see from the side that these petals are really quite high up on the middle ball. This is good because it leaves room for lots of petals.

Continue making petals around the outside in this same way, overlapping the previous one.

The more petals you make the more it will look like a rose. If you find that it’s melting a bit then you need to use thicker icing next time.

Looking good!

Keep going with the petals until the thick bottom of each petal is touching the baking paper. You can keep going to make it huge but this is a nice size.

Once you’re done, remove the baking paper from the tack and leave the roses to dry.

And that’s it! It sounds really complicated but once you understand the basic motion of making a petal you can do these really quickly. After some practice, a rose like this takes me around 1-2 minutes.

Cuuuute! Learning how to do these yourself is great because you can match the colours to whatever you’re making perfectly as well as saving money from buying them pre-made.

Super happy that I can do these now! Let me know if you give it a try!

This recipe is a combination of this recipe and our own experiences.

We used:

• 1 cup of white sugar
• 3 eggs
• Juice of 2.5 lemons (around 1 cup)
• Lemon zest
• 125g of butter, melted in the microwave

Firstly squeeze the lemons into a cup. It works better if you have one of those fancy lemon juicing cone things, but failing that use a strong hubby.

Put the eggs and sugar into a bowl and mix well. Add the lemon juice, zest, butter and mix again.

Mix thoroughly for a few minutes. Microwave for 1 minute at a time, every minute mix it so anything that’s stuck to the bottom is distributed evenly. We ended up microwaving for a total of 4 minutes on our crappy old microwave but I get the feeling it would only take around 3 minutes in our new powerful one. The mixture will thicken up every time you put it in, James wanted something runny that could go on toast and cheesecake, but you might want it more solid.

Push the mixture through a sieve to get rid of the zest and any lumps then put it into a really cute sterile container to cool.

Alternatively, spread on something and just eat it warm. Just don’t burn yourself!

I enjoyed it spread on waffles in the morning, James enjoyed it on everything… especially a spoon ^_^

They come in bulk, I think this packet had around 100 in it.

I started off with this delicious herbal tea I bought in Germany.

All you need to do is open up the bag, and pop in the correct amount of tea for one cup.

Then flip the top of the bag inside out. There are two little folds at the top which prevent the tea from coming out.

Best idea ever. I went through and did all of my loose leaf tea in one go.

Then when you fancy a cup you just make it as with any other tea bag!

And that’s how you make Violet’s crazy obsessive side extremely happy!

What is your favorite tea at the moment? I’m super into peppermint right now!

And in the right corner we have James’ Epic Berry Trifle!

Who will win!?!?

To make your own you need:

• Jelly mix
• Cake mix and the relevant ingredients
• Custard (doublethick is the best!)
• Strawberries or other berries

I picked strawberry to go with the theme.

Put it in the fridge to set.

Make your cake according to the instructions and bake it.

Wait for everything to be set and cooked. The cake should be cool to the touch before you begin putting it together.

Chop up some strawberries as decoration and put your own spin on it.

To decorate like James’ monstrosity awesome creation start with a layer of jelly then a circle of cake then custard. Keep doing this until you get to the top. Finish with custard and add berries with a strawberry topper.

Delicious, I guess… if you like that kind of thing…

Now if you want to make Violet’s Super McAwesome version start with strawberry slices around the edge of the cup.

Fill the middle with custard.

Cut up some cake and add that then some jelly cubes. Continue layering the ingredients.

Finish the top with some pink sprinkles, jelly cubes and a strawberry heart.

Taadaaaaa!

Enjoy your delicious creation and try not to spend the rest of the night arguing over who’s is better. Realistically there’s no argument because clearly the winner is James Violet James Violet.

Which would you make? The Epic cup or the Cute Heart?

Now get creative and show me your version!