Rasa Pelham Baking, Everyday Life

My 30th birthday dinner party

A dinner table set with a large tray of cooked chicken and sides, including salads and potatoes, with hands serving food.

Yesterday I have celebrated my memorable 30th birthday with a dinner party. So since my blog has had really really long holidays I thought this was a good occasion for it to come back to “work”.
Anyway… for my party success I am giving a big credit to my friends Joana and Lina who were my loyal slaves all day long and a little bit to myself (I did set up this wonderfully harmonious menu after all). I would also like to grant a massive credit to the “BBC Good Food” website (not that they care), but the recipes there are always tested and the food always comes out like they say it would. Really recommend it for anybody.  Here is one recipe for the cake I made. Practically copied it and pasted it as I did not need to change anything (except the deco since fresh cherries were out of season here in Lithuania). Enjoy!

A beautifully decorated Black Forest cake layered with cream, cherries, and fresh berries, topped with green leaves, placed on a white plate.

BLACK FOREST GATEAU

  • 175g salted butter , plus extra for greasing
  • 200g bar dark chocolate
  • 300g plain flour
  • 375g golden caster sugar
  • 25g cocoa
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 2 medium eggs
  • 200g buttermilk or natural yoghurt
  • 425g can pitted cherries, 2 tbsp juice reserved, rest drained
  • 100g morello cherry jam
  • 4 tbsp kirsch(or more juice from a can if you want it to be non-alcoholic)
  • 500ml tub double cream
  • 3 tbsp icing sugar1 small punnet fresh berries (optional)
  1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease and line the base of 3 x 20cm cake tins. Boil the kettle. Put the butter and 75g chocolate broken into chunks in a small pan and gently heat, stirring, until completely melted.
  2. Mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda with a pinch of salt in a mixing bowl. Whisk the eggs and buttermilk or yogurt together. Scrape the melted chocolate mixture and egg mixture into the dry ingredients, add 100ml boiling water and whizz briefly with an electric whisk until the cake batter is lump free.
  3. Divide the mixture between the tins and bake for 25 mins, swapping the tins round after 20 mins if they’re on different shelves. To test they’re done, push in a skewer and check that it comes out clean.
  4. Prick the cakes a few times with a skewer. Mix together the 2 tbsp reserved cherry juice and the kirsch (or more juice) and drizzle over the cakes. Cool the cakes.
  5. Mix together the remaining drained cherries and jam. Tip 200ml of the cream into a small pan and heat until just below simmering point. Chop the remaining chocolate and put in a heatproof bowl, pour over the hot cream and stir until melted. Set aside until spreadable.
  6. When the cakes are cool whisk the remaining cream and the icing sugar together until softly whipped. Spread over two of the cakes, then spoon over the jammy cherries. Stack the cakes together. Spread the chocolate cream over the third cake and sit on top of the other cakes. Pile the fresh berries in and around the cake and serve. I added black current leaves to make it look slightly wild, but this is totally optional!

Enjoy!
Rasa xox

Rasa Pelham Baking

Back to my childhood….

A birthday cake with numerous colorful candles lit on top, placed on a white plate.

It is my birthday today and my mum and my little brother have visited me here  in London. So my mum baked me an apple cake (not a pie) as my birthday cake (well I requested that from her). It is very basic cake and even my brother could have baked it, but it brings back good childhood memories… Well, around twenty years ago, when I think I was 9years old my mum baked it for my personal birthday party where the only guests were me and her (I had a bigger birthday party on the weekend but my actual birthday was on weekday). So I remember I really liked it as it was quite nice to have another birthday “party”!…
Other then the cake, me and my family visited the Legoland in Windsor (I used my little brother, who is aged 9 years as an excuse to visit there…). I think what I liked most is the mini London made out of Lego (never mind the long queues and the fact that we only were able to make to seven rides through all day because of that). Here are the pics…

A detailed miniature model of London made from Lego, featuring iconic buildings, vehicles, and tiny figures, set in a park with visitors in the background.
A miniature model of London's landmarks, including the London Eye, St. Paul's Cathedral, and a bridge over a small body of water with a toy boat.

And back to my birthday cake, here is the recipe…

MY MUM’S APPLE CAKE

  • 5 apples (medium size)
  • 7 eggs
  • 8 tbsp sugar
  • 8 tbsp flour (with the heap)
  • Pinch of cinnamon (optional)
  1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease the baking tin with butter
  2. Cube the apples (remove seeds, but no need to peal the apple peal) and put them into the bottom of the tin
  3. To make the cake mixture whisk eggs with the sugar until pale, then add flour and cinnamon (if wanted).
  4. Pour the mixture over the cubed apples and put into oven. Bake the cake for around an hour until golden brown.

I hope you like it 😉
Rasa xox