Following a very greedy weekend in Melbourne, yet more food was on the horizon as we'd missed the Scotsman's birthday so I'd promised a birthday dinner with birthday cake of his choice.
I was in a wintery mood despite the gorgeous weather so I served up slow cooked lamb shanks with mashed potato, roasted pumpkin and steamed broccoli. I cooked the lamb in the slow cooker for 6 hours with a "bourguignon" style sauce - bacon, onions, mushrooms, red wine, stock etc. The lamb turned out great and I was delighted to see everyone sucking the marrow out of their bones at the end! My dad pointed out that he'd seen something called a marrow spoon on the Antiques Roadshow which despite my overflowing cupboards and drawer, I do not own. My husband came up with the idea or using skewers to get the last bits of marrow out instead which did the job perfectly.
The Scotsman (very vaguely) asked for cupcakes for his cake so I went for plain cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese icing. I use the Nigella Domestic Goddess recipe for the cakes although what she says stretches to 12 cakes, I think is more like 9 if you're using larger cases as she prescribes. The chocolate cream cheese icing is my own invention. I created it when I had hardly any butter in the house and couldn't be bothered to go to the shops. It was an instant hit - all the lovely texture and slight savouriness of cream cheese icing with the decadence of chocolate! The following recipe would generously cover 12 cupcakes:
Easy Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing
Ingredients:
150g Full Fat Cream Cheese (eg Philadelphia)
50g Unsalted Butter at room temperature
250g icing sugar
50g Dark Chocolate (min 70% cocoa) - melted
1: Add all the ingredients at once. Whisk together either using a hand held electric whisk or in a mixer for 3-5 mins stopping as soon as its light and fluffy. If you're making by hand mix the butter and sugar together first before the adding the rest of the ingredients
If you want a darker chocolate icing - add another 25-50g of melted chocolate - but you'll need to ice immediately as this will harden up more than the quantities above. The look and taste is better for dark chocolate lovers such as myself but as I'm constantly distracted by the monkey, the softer recipe works for me in case I end up taking a play break halfway through.
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