Lime and Coconut Halloween Slime Ghost Cake

Halloween baking is such fun - you can really push the boundaries of how you would normally decorate a cake, and make it as over the top as you like! Obviously subtle black and purple looks very stylish and striking but this Halloween I decided to go for..... green slime!

The theme for Food 'n' Flix this month is Ghostbusters - the 2016 remake which was chosen by host Coffee and Casseroles. I did enjoy the film and didn't think there was anything odd about an all-female cast - the film was funny, it carried on the ethos of the original Ghostbusters film and there were even several nods to the original - which I won't spoil if you haven't seen it, but you will have fun spotting the cameo roles to the extent that I'd worked out who Patty's uncle was (who she refers to a few times) long before he appears on screen!

My heart is loyal to the original Ghostbusters though (the first one anyway, not the sequel - which I don't remember being that bad but is largely panned). It came out when I was five years old so I don't imagine I would have seen it right away, but by the time it was shown on TV (in the days of only four channels, you had to wait a couple of years for new movies to appear on screen!) I would have been about seven or eight and was transfixed. I even used to run around the playground at primary school with a group of friends acting out Ghostbusters stories - though as one of the only girls I was always forced to be Janine. Though it could have been worse, the other girl played Slimer!

In terms of choosing a recipe for Food 'n' Flix, my mind turned straight away to the Stay Puffed Marshmallow man from the first movie... from the remake, one of the over-riding foodie references is to Chinese takeout - there's a standing joke about takeaway food that Abby (Melissa McCarthy) gets from a Chinese restaurant, and their HQ is above a Chinese restaurant.

But as it's Halloween I wanted to make something 'spooky' and not Chinese food. Slimer, the friendly green ghost, features in both the original movie and the remake, so I took him as my inspiration and decided to make a cake oozing with green 'slime' buttercream!

For the cake itself I used this recipe from RTE for Irish chef Rory O'Connell's toasted coconut and lime cake though I did change it a little. I didn't cover it with the toasted coconut and I didn't make the cream cheese filling and instead did a lime flavoured buttercream which I then added green food colouring to.

 

Despite being green the cake looks quite elegant like this... but I wasn't going to stop there!

 

On top of the cake there is more green buttercream, plus some green candy floss I bought in a tub from a shop called Tiger and some marshmallow ghosts and chocolate eyeballs, also from Tiger.

Does it look like Slimer has been at this cake?!

I'm sharing this with Food 'n' Flix and Cook Blog Share.

 



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Restaurant reviews: Gozo, Malta

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Meal Planning Monday 2017 Week 43

Monday
smoked haddock with crème fraiche from this recipe for me, chicken chargrills for him

Tuesday
macaroni cheese with bacon and sausage

Wednesday- chicken pie and mashed potato

Thursday something from the freezer with chips

Friday probably at yoga though haven't booked it yet

Saturday
Lunch bacon sandwich for him, sardines on toast for me
Dinner chicken schnitzel in katsu spices from Waitrose

Sunday
Lunch fresh filled pasta
Dinner pan-fried hake in lemon butter sauce

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Mini Trick or Treat No Bake Lemon Cheesecakes for Halloween Party

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Banoffee Tool Box Birthday Cake

We had a family barbecue for my father-in-law’s birthday in August and I wanted to make a cake that would stand out. I tried to think of things I associated with him – my father-in-law is really handy, at everything from fixing fences to building a child’s ride on car from scratch so I had the idea of a tool box cake.

 

Looking at Google Images I realised there were some incredibly detailed, realistic tool box cakes and figured I wouldn’t have the time or skill to do anything like that. Rather than make something else altogether, I decided to make a simple rectangular red toolbox, with a separate lid, and make some tools separately to pull the whole thing together.

 

 

My father-in-law really likes banoffee pie so I decided that would be a good flavour for the cake and found a recipe in Fiona Cairns’ Birthday Cake book. The recipe in her book is designed to make cakes in the shape of a pair of dice – for someone who likes a game of chance perhaps – but it was easily adapted to a loaf tin shape. You can find the recipe online at Cooked.

 

I decided to make the lid separately and as I didn’t want it to be too heavy, I thought rice krispie cakes would be perfect. I’ve seen cakes where all sorts of parts were sculpted from rice krispies – like an animal or person where the limbs were made from rice krispies. I wasn’t sure what consistency to make my rice krispie cake so took the easy way out and (kind of) cheated by using Kelloggs Rice Krispie squares. I sandwiched 6 – a mixture of chocolate flavour and plain – together with melted chocolate, in a block the length of my loaf tin, and put them in the fridge to set.

 

For the cake, I followed the recipe, mixing butter, sugar, mashed banana, eggs, vanilla, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. The mixture baked nicely in my loaf tin – it did create a bit of a dome which had to be sliced off to level the cake. I also cut some corners – because I had a lot of other food to prepare for the barbecue as well – with the frosting. Fiona Cairns gives a recipe for toffee buttercream which sounds really nice, but as I had a tin of Carnation Caramel I decided to make some regular buttercream and add that.

 

 

 

After filling the cake I covered the whole thing plus the rice krispie cake block in red fondant, and made a handle out of fondant for the lid and some black panels for the front of the box. I wasn’t that confident at making tools even if I drew a template and followed it, so I bought some cookie cutters from Amazon and cut out a saw, pair of pliers, hammer and spanner, then did the same again in coloured fondant to make the handles. I think they worked really well, what do you think? These are the ones I used:

 

 

Finally I placed the tools on or around the tool box, secured the lid with a couple of cocktail sticks in an open position and the cake was ready to be presented. The cake itself was moist and delicious – I do recommend checking out Fiona Cairns’ recipe!

 

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Restaurant review: Rocksby's, Portsmouth

My sister and I wanted to take her baby daughter to the Portsmouth Aquarium a few months ago. I’ve realised it’s difficult to make an early start when you have a baby to get ready – by the time we arrived in Portsmouth it was already late morning, and we had decided on a quick trip to the Pyramids Centre soft play centre first.

 

 

My niece seemed to have a great time with the foam shapes and ball pond, but was most interested in some noughts and crosses on the wall which spun around as she touched them. I was quite tempted to get into the ball pond as well but it wasn’t big enough!

Baby had her lunch at the soft play, then my sister and I wanted to find somewhere to get some lunch ourselves. The Pyramids had two small café areas – one is right next to the swimming pool (and open plan) so noisy and steamy and the other was outside the main entrance by the turnstiles, but only had a couple of tables – so we decided to find somewhere else.

 

Walking along the sea front on a fairly dull day we decided not to go too far, as we still wanted time to go to the Aquarium. We found ourselves outside Rocksby’s, a fish and chip restaurant with a fairly broad menu of other dishes as well. I liked the décor, with seaside and fishing paraphernalia strung up from the ceiling and on the walls; the cheap white plastic chairs were comfortable enough and we were offered a high chair as well. They were busy but there was still plenty of room for the buggy.

 

I had mac and cheese, a bargain at £7 for a huge dish (and I mean huge), with an extra £1 for crayfish tails. It was delicious – I couldn’t even finish it! Definitely a dish I would recommend here.

 

 

When we left it had just started raining so we pushed the buggy up to the Aquarium, about a ten minute walk away. We were a bit concerned that we hadn’t left ourselves enough time in the afternoon, with my sister wondering when her daughter would want a nap as she hadn’t had her usual one that morning – only to find that as we arrived at the aquarium, baby was sound asleep. Rather than wake her – or spend money to go around the aquarium ourselves with her oblivious to the fish – we decided to go back to the car and head home. So our day out in Portsmouth consisted of soft play, lunch, and a brief walk along the seafront – but nonetheless a good time was had by all!

 

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Meal Planning Monday 2017 - Week 42

Posting this a day late because I forgot on Monday night!

Monday
pork chop with sweet potato for me, peppered beef steak with mashed potato for him

Tuesday - working from home - have invited my mother in law around for dinner.
Fish in lemon cream sauce from this recipe, with hasselback potatoes

Wednesday
something easy from the freezer as we have a heating engineer coming this evening

Thursday
My husband is out at a work event so I'll have spaghetti Bolognese with Quorn mince

Friday
Out with a friend

Saturday
lunch TBA maybe cheese toasties
dinner - steak and chips at my husband's request

Sunday
lunch bacon sandwich
dinner giant filled Yorkshire puddings we didn't have last week

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