chocolate marshmallow rice crispie pizza cake, anyone?

"So now I'm back, from outerspace! You just walked in to find me here with chocolate-marshmallow-rice-crispie-pizza-cake upon my face!! I should have changed that stupid lock I should have made you leave your key, if I had known for just one second..."


Oh, well hello there! My apologies for the break in transmission, can it really have been nearly two months? Yowzers. Well the excuse is I've been a busy bee, but instead of dancing to the beat of my own buzzy tune, I've have been hanging out in another hive of activity. Ok perhaps I should turn the disco music off, and stop speaking in riddles. 


So what the hell's that you say?! Well the above cake-ular monstrosity was made several weeks ago for a just-turned-four-year-old. As her Mum was telling me the menu the nearly-4-year-old had requested for her bday tea ("Lollypops, jelly beans, marshmallows, candy floss..." Eh, nothing savoury Rosie? "Yeh, pizza and pom bears.") I had a little idea... 


The Sweetie Pizza, which I admit sounds disgusting but to my own surprise, was really rather nice. I used the favourite crispie treats recipe for the base which I squished into my Le Creuset clafoutis dish (mine's teal and was a Christmas present) to form the pizza base, topped with Nutella (keeping it continental y'know), scattered with Jelly Belly beans (accept no impostors people), yoghurt dipped banana chips (a mozzarella shaped substitute), glacé cherries (could've gone un-sulphured but compositionally, it required something terrifyingly lurid), desiccated coconut (look, I can spell desiccated!) and for an extra bit of protein (although that's not yet been corroborated by medical evidence) Monty Bojangles White Chocolate Mice (if you have never tried them I can vouch for them as both marvellous and minxy).


Of course in order to maintain the illusion it had to come served in a pizza box, generously donated by the Comiston Fry, and was hidden until pudding time, in the oven of the Birthday Girl's brand new toy kitchen. I don't think she ate any pizza cake on the day but her Mum and I put a hefty dent in it and no, we weren't sick on our party frocks. 

violette

I've been disgraceful absent from these pages however, I've not been idle. Oh no, I've been stuffing my face with violet creams.


I made my fist batch of these for my Granny's 93rd Birthday last month. She is a big fan of the violet cream and when I saw the recipe in Life is Sweet I knew I had to try them. Miss Hope calls for violet syrup and suggests Confiserie Florian which looks lovely but the postage to the UK is trop cher mes amis.


So I went on the hunt for something else. There are several violet liqueurs out there (violet cocktails are tres chic the noo, apparently). I was a little concerned that a liqueur might not be as strongly flavoured as the confectioner's syrup and contacted Miss Hope for her reassuring expert advice before settleing for Lejay Lagoute's Parfait Amour.

The liqueur worked perfectly. I used the recipe for the rose creams (which ups the syrup or liqueur to icing sugar ratio) but  I did need to add a good bit more icing sugar to make the paste knead-able. Apart from that they were ridiculously easy to make. My first batch were ever so pretty and mostly given away but the second lot (for my Birthday) were made on a day too hot for sucessful chocolate en-robement. They were no beauties, but I managed them. I used the same Waitrose Continental dark chocolate as I did in this post and it's slightly bitter edge was a delicious compliment to the suggary, perfumed fondant.
Sweet amour.