Let’s talk about fear.

Ok, not actual fear. Specifically, The Fear. If you have ever left a piece of work close to a deadline because you “have time to finish it” but are actually binge-watching as much Always Sunny in Philadelphia as you can manage.  Or like when you’ve drunk a butt load of wine and try and write a blog less than an hour before the cut-off.  This is The Fear.

I am Queen of The Fear.  If I have an assignment to submit on Wednesday and its Saturday night, have I started it? Have I fuck. Am I trying to finish this blog post with only 6% battery on my Macbook? Hells yes.  The Fear is scarier than any ghost or zombie….

Ingredients

Meringue Mushrooms

2 egg whites

100gr caster sugar

¼ tsp white wine vinegar

Green and red food colouring

Chocolate Cake

This is the luxe version of the economical chocolate cake I made for the £1 Chocolate Cake We Should Cocoa’s May challenge

140gr self raising flour

30gr cocoa powder

85gr unsalted butter

85gr sugar

Milk

Method

1, Make the meringue mushrooms first by making  sure that your bowl and whisk/whisk attachment is spotlessly clean.

2, Beat the egg whites until they are foamy and add in the vinegar.

3, Carry on beating the egg whites until they reach soft peaks.

4, Turn the speed up and slowly start adding in the caster sugar.

5, Carry on beating the mixture until you can rub a tiny bit between your fingers and it doesn’t feel grainy.

6, Preheat your oven to 100o/c

7, Line two baking sheets with non-stick or greaseproof paper

8, Spoon half the meringue into a piping bag fitted with a large round nozzle.

9, Pipe stems by holding the piping bag vertically and evenly squeezing the bag and lifting the nozzle.  This will give you a little pillar of meringue.  Use a finger dipped in water to flatten the top of the pillar.

10,  Divide the remaining mixture in half again and dye one half red and one half green. Fill a clean piping bag with the green meringue and pipe caps. To pipe caps, again hold the piping bag vertically to the lined baking tray and squeeze.  Let the meringue form a little disc, keep squeezing and lift the piping bag slowly.  Again, use a damp finger to smooth out any peaks or ripples that may have formed. When you have finished piping all the green meringue out, add the red straight into the same bag and repeat.  This will give you the red and green poison mushrooms.

11, Bake for an hour and then turn off the oven.  Leave the oven to get completely cold. You can make these well in advance and store them in an air tight container.

12, Next make your cake by preheating your oven to 180o/c and line a seven inch cake tin.

13, Sift the flour and cocoa powder together and then stir with a whisk to fully combine

14, Rub in the margarine, much like you would when making pastry, until it it fully combined and there are no lumps.

15, Stir in the sugar and then add in enough milk to give it a soft, cake batter-esque, consistency.

16, Decant into your cake tin and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until it is completely cooked.

17, Turn out onto a cooling rack and leave to cool completely.

18, Assemble the cake by adding a thick green glace or buttercream icing and gently adding the mushrooms.  You can use a bit of the green icing to glue the caps to the stems or alternatively use a little melted chocolate. Sprinkle the cake with a tiny bit of cocoa powder. You will have plenty of meringue mushrooms left over.

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I’m entering my Poison Mushroom Cake into We Should Cocoa, this month hosted by yours truly with the theme of Halloween. You can read all about We Should Cocoa, how to enter and look back at previous challenges by clicking here. You can see the round up of last month’s jam challenge here.