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quarta-feira, 29 de fevereiro de 2012
terça-feira, 28 de fevereiro de 2012
#GASTRONOMIA: How to Make a Death Star Cake
25
Feb
This Death Star Cake was such fun to make that you just won’t know when to stop! It is made of Dark Chocolate Mud Cake and filled and covered in Dark Chocolate Ganache then grey Sugar-paste. Use two 8.5″ or 9″ metal kitchen bowls to bake the cakes.
List of Materials
- Dark Chocolate Mud Cake Ingredients to fill two 8.5″ metal bowls 500g unsalted butter 500g dark chocolate 2 tablespoon instant coffee 2-2/3 cups warm water 3 cups self raising flour 2 cup caster sugar 1/2 cup cocoa 4 eggs 2 teaspoon vanilla
- Dark Chocolate Ganache Ingredients 1.2 kg dark chocolate 500ml pure cream
- Sugarpaste 750g in grey to cover Death Star 350g in black to cover board 360g in dark grey for stick on blocks
- Royal Icing to decorate the blocks 250-300g pure icing sugar, sifted 2-4 drops acetic acid (white vinegar) 1 egg white
Line tins with greaseproof paper and add a collar of around 20 cms.
1. Grease and line base and sides of bowls with one thickness of baking paper, bringing paper 5cm above side of pan.
2. Combine chopped butter, chopped chocolate, coffee, and water in a saucepan.
Stir over low heat until chocolate is melted. Cool 15 minutes. Transfer mixture to bowl of mixer.
3. Add caster sugar to mixture and beat well until dissolved. Add sifted flour and cocoa, lightly beaten eggs and vanilla.
4. Pour mixture into prepared bowls.
5. Bake at 150C for 1 to 1-1/2 hours. Test with skewer. Cool cake in bowls.
6. Place cakes on 9″ round thin cake boards.
7. Make sure that the bottom half of the cake has a flat bottom to sit on.
To make the Ganache
Heat the cream until it just starts to bubble, pour over chocolate (which you have blitzed in the food processor to coffee granules size) and let it sit for about a minute to melt. Use a hand whisk to blend it all together then set aside to cool.
Your ganache at this point will be thin. You will have to let it set overnight until it thickens to a slightly thicker peanut butter consistency. Since I don’t have the patience to wait, I just let it cool to room temperature and then pop it in the fridge (don’t cover because you might get condensation). It would usually set in the fridge in about an hour or two. If it sets too hard, just microwave it in 10 second intervals (keep mixing it whenever you take it out).
For more information on ganaching your cake visit my blog page http://cutesweetthings.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/how-to-make-ganache-and-cover-your-cake_24.html
Cover with sugar-paste. If you would like to find out how to colour sugarpaste and use it to cover your cake visit my blog pagehttp://cutesweetthings.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/how-to-make-115-ben-10-dark-chocolate.html
Insert 4 thin plastic dowels as shown and one thick one in the middle which will fit over the small wooden dowel which has been inserted into the base board by first drilling a hole in the middle of the board. These plastic dowels can easily be cut with scissors.
Do not assemble the cakes on the base board until all decoration is fully complete.
Roll out the dark grey sugar-paste as thin as you can and cut out all the shapes that you think you will need. Glue them onto the cakes with edible glue (or a little water).
To make the Royal Icing beat icing sugar, acetic acid and egg white with electric beater on medium-high speed for 4 minutes for ‘soft peak’. Add extra sugar if the icing is too soft.
Achieving the right consistency for Royal Icing can be difficult but practise makes perfect, so if icing is too thick or too thin just empty your piping bag and add more water/vinegar or icing sugar. You will soon work it out.
Add black edible colour until the correct shade of grey is achieved. Fill a pipping bag fitted with a number 1 tip. and pipe with the Royal Icing making up your designs as you go. Use the pictures of the finished Death Star as a guide only.
Roll out the black sugar-paste making a little hole in the centre. Slip the hole over the dowel in the centre and cover the cake board. Lift up the sugar-paste and paint on a little water underneath to help the sugar-paste stick to the board.
Add a little icing or edible glue around the wooden dowel. Slip the bottom half of the Death Star onto the dowel. To attach the top half of the Death Star apply PVA glue to the cake boards or use a knife to spread on some icing. Make sure the concave circle is facing forward and is centralised.
Add lettering to the cake board if you wish. White or pale grey would look nice.
Posted by Smurfesque in Cake Projects
Death toll mounts as Syrian forces pound Homs; evacuation of foreign reporters fails
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Syrians attend a mass funeral for more than a dozen of
people, whom anti-government protesters said were killed during clashes
with Syrian forces in Homs. (Reuters)
Syrian forces killed as many as 138 people on Monday as artillery
pounded rebel-held areas of Homs, continuing an assault that started 3
weeks ago, Al Arabiya reported, citing activists.
The outside world has proved powerless to halt the killing in Syria, where repression of initially peaceful protests has spawned an armed insurrection by army deserters and others.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent did manage to enter the besieged Baba Amro district of Homs and evacuate three people on Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. Foreign reporters trapped in the area were not evacuated and the bodies of two journalists killed there had not been recovered, it said, according to Reuters.
President Bashar al-Assad’s government announced that voters had overwhelmingly approved a new constitution in a referendum derided as a sham by his critics at home and abroad.
Our team, composed of some 20 volunteers, extremely
courageous with four ambulances and a hearse, entered Baba Amro and
remained there for nearly three hours while representatives of the
International Committee of the Red Cross waited outside
I very much hope the United States and other
countries ... do not try to set a military scenario in motion in Syria
without sanction from the U.N. Security Council
The outside world has proved powerless to halt the killing in Syria, where repression of initially peaceful protests has spawned an armed insurrection by army deserters and others.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent did manage to enter the besieged Baba Amro district of Homs and evacuate three people on Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. Foreign reporters trapped in the area were not evacuated and the bodies of two journalists killed there had not been recovered, it said, according to Reuters.
President Bashar al-Assad’s government announced that voters had overwhelmingly approved a new constitution in a referendum derided as a sham by his critics at home and abroad.
While foreign powers argued over
whether to arm the rebels, the Syrian Interior Ministry on Monday said
the reformed constitution, which could keep Assad in power until 2028,
had received 89.4 percent approval from more than 8 million voters.
Syrian dissidents and Western leaders dismissed as a farce Sunday’s vote, conducted in the midst of the country’s bloodiest turmoil in decades, although Assad says the new constitution will lead to multi-party elections within three months.
Syrian dissidents and Western leaders dismissed as a farce Sunday’s vote, conducted in the midst of the country’s bloodiest turmoil in decades, although Assad says the new constitution will lead to multi-party elections within three months.
Voting turnout
Officials put national voter
turnout at close to 60 percent, but diplomats who toured polling
stations in Damascus saw only a handful of voters at each location.
Assad says he is fighting foreign-backed “armed terrorist groups” and his main allies -- Russia, China and Iran -- fiercely oppose any outside intervention intended to add him to the list of Arab autocrats unseated by popular revolts in the past year.
But Qatar joined Saudi Arabia in advocating arming the Syrian rebels, given that Russia and China have twice used their vetoes to block any action by the U.N. Security Council.
“I think we should do whatever is necessary to help them, including giving them weapons to defend themselves,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said in Oslo.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe criticized the U.N. Security Council’s “impotence” on Syria, shown by the Russian and Chinese vetoes, and accused the Syrian authorities of “massacres” and “odious crimes.”
In a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Juppe said the time was ripe for referring Syria to the International Criminal Court and warned Assad he would be brought to justice.
“The day will come when the Syrian civilian and military authorities, first among them President Assad himself, must respond before justice for their acts. In the face of such crimes, there can be no impunity,” Juppe told the 47-member Geneva forum, which will hold an emergency debate on Syria on Tuesday.
Shells and rockets crashed into districts of Homs that have already endured weeks of bombardment as Assad’s forces try to stamp out an almost year-long revolt against his 11-year rule.
Assad says he is fighting foreign-backed “armed terrorist groups” and his main allies -- Russia, China and Iran -- fiercely oppose any outside intervention intended to add him to the list of Arab autocrats unseated by popular revolts in the past year.
But Qatar joined Saudi Arabia in advocating arming the Syrian rebels, given that Russia and China have twice used their vetoes to block any action by the U.N. Security Council.
“I think we should do whatever is necessary to help them, including giving them weapons to defend themselves,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said in Oslo.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe criticized the U.N. Security Council’s “impotence” on Syria, shown by the Russian and Chinese vetoes, and accused the Syrian authorities of “massacres” and “odious crimes.”
In a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Juppe said the time was ripe for referring Syria to the International Criminal Court and warned Assad he would be brought to justice.
“The day will come when the Syrian civilian and military authorities, first among them President Assad himself, must respond before justice for their acts. In the face of such crimes, there can be no impunity,” Juppe told the 47-member Geneva forum, which will hold an emergency debate on Syria on Tuesday.
Shells and rockets crashed into districts of Homs that have already endured weeks of bombardment as Assad’s forces try to stamp out an almost year-long revolt against his 11-year rule.
Failure to evacuate foreign journalists
Our team, composed of some 20 volunteers, extremely
courageous with four ambulances and a hearse, entered Baba Amro and
remained there for nearly three hours while representatives of the
International Committee of the Red Cross waited outside
Abdul Rahman Attar, Arab-Syrian Red Crescent
The ICRC has been pursuing talks with the
Syrian authorities and opposition forces for days to secure access to
besieged neighborhoods such as Baba Amro, where local activists say
hundreds of wounded need treatment and thousands of civilians are short
of water, food and medical supplies.
ICRC spokesman Hisham Hassan said a team from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent team had entered Baba Amro. “They have been able to evacuate three persons, including an aged woman, and a pregnant woman and her husband,” he said.
The trio were believed to be Syrian and did not include four Western journalists trapped in Baba Amro, two of them wounded. A U.S. reporter and a French photographer were killed there on Feb. 22.
The head of the Arab-Syrian Red Crescent, Abdul Rahman Attar, also confirmed Monday that the negotiations and preparations under way Monday failed to lead to the evacuation of the journalists.
“Our team, composed of some 20 volunteers, extremely courageous with four ambulances and a hearse, entered Baba Amro and remained there for nearly three hours while representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) waited outside,” he said, according to AFP.
He said his team was told by an intermediary in Baba Amro that French reporter Edith Bouvier refused to leave if the conditions she insisted on were not met.
“We do not know her conditions and we do not know if she really refused because we were not able to have direct contact with her,” he added.
ICRC spokesman Hisham Hassan said a team from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent team had entered Baba Amro. “They have been able to evacuate three persons, including an aged woman, and a pregnant woman and her husband,” he said.
The trio were believed to be Syrian and did not include four Western journalists trapped in Baba Amro, two of them wounded. A U.S. reporter and a French photographer were killed there on Feb. 22.
The head of the Arab-Syrian Red Crescent, Abdul Rahman Attar, also confirmed Monday that the negotiations and preparations under way Monday failed to lead to the evacuation of the journalists.
“Our team, composed of some 20 volunteers, extremely courageous with four ambulances and a hearse, entered Baba Amro and remained there for nearly three hours while representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) waited outside,” he said, according to AFP.
He said his team was told by an intermediary in Baba Amro that French reporter Edith Bouvier refused to leave if the conditions she insisted on were not met.
“We do not know her conditions and we do not know if she really refused because we were not able to have direct contact with her,” he added.
International pressure
I very much hope the United States and other
countries ... do not try to set a military scenario in motion in Syria
without sanction from the U.N. Security Council
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
International consternation has grown over
the turmoil in Syria, but there is little appetite in the West for
military action akin to the U.N.-backed NATO campaign in Libya.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Western powers hoped diplomacy could change minds: “We are putting pressure on the Russians first and the Chinese afterwards so that they lift their veto.”
The European Union agreed more sanctions, targeting Syria’s central bank and several cabinet ministers, curbing gold trading with state entities and banning cargo flights from the country.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reiterated Moscow’s opposition to any military intervention in Syria.
“I very much hope the United States and other countries ... do not try to set a military scenario in motion in Syria without sanction from the U.N. Security Council,” said Putin.
The new constitution drops a clause making Assad’s Baath party the leader of state and society, allows political pluralism and limits a president to two seven-year terms.
But this restriction is not retrospective, implying that Assad, 46 and already in power since 2000, could serve two further terms after his current one expires in 2014.
The opposition dismisses the reforms on offer, saying that Assad, and his father who ruled for 30 years before him, have long paid only lip service to existing legal obligations.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, now the new U.N.-Arab League envoy on Syria, was holding separate talks in Geneva with Juppe and Iran’s foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi on the sidelines of a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting.
Iran is Assad’s closest ally. The main Shiite Muslim power, it has religious ties to Assad’s Alawites and is confronting the Sunnis who dominate the Arab League -- both the Sunni Islamists who have done well out of the past year's democratic changes and autocratic, Western-backed leaders in the Gulf and elsewhere.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Western powers hoped diplomacy could change minds: “We are putting pressure on the Russians first and the Chinese afterwards so that they lift their veto.”
The European Union agreed more sanctions, targeting Syria’s central bank and several cabinet ministers, curbing gold trading with state entities and banning cargo flights from the country.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reiterated Moscow’s opposition to any military intervention in Syria.
“I very much hope the United States and other countries ... do not try to set a military scenario in motion in Syria without sanction from the U.N. Security Council,” said Putin.
The new constitution drops a clause making Assad’s Baath party the leader of state and society, allows political pluralism and limits a president to two seven-year terms.
But this restriction is not retrospective, implying that Assad, 46 and already in power since 2000, could serve two further terms after his current one expires in 2014.
The opposition dismisses the reforms on offer, saying that Assad, and his father who ruled for 30 years before him, have long paid only lip service to existing legal obligations.
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, now the new U.N.-Arab League envoy on Syria, was holding separate talks in Geneva with Juppe and Iran’s foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi on the sidelines of a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting.
Iran is Assad’s closest ally. The main Shiite Muslim power, it has religious ties to Assad’s Alawites and is confronting the Sunnis who dominate the Arab League -- both the Sunni Islamists who have done well out of the past year's democratic changes and autocratic, Western-backed leaders in the Gulf and elsewhere.
segunda-feira, 27 de fevereiro de 2012
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