milo nutella cream cheese swiss roll cakes.

Hi all! Have you noticed the new christmas themed blog title that's smaller than it should be because I don't know how to adjust it? You have? Yay! (I really tried my best with the background image but codes are just not my thing.) I even tried adding a widget that would make snowflakes fall but they stopped a third of the way down and that didn't seem quite right so I erased it. I also considered inserting a christmas jingle but I was limited by my non-existent computer skills. You would think that after 5 years of blogging I should have picked up a trick or two but nope. nada. zilch. Oh wait but hey I managed to insert the pinterest function - gigantic achievement there.

In case you're wondering why it sounds like christmas came early for me it's because my exams have finally ended! *fireworks* Having to endure constant studying over a duration of 2 months is absolutely no fun at all. And I wouldn't have to take another test for another 9 months or so so that's pretty awesome.

Now that I've all the time in the world to bake, I made something that's a bit more elaborate than the quick cookies and scones I had to content myself with until recently. Basically what we have here is a milo sponge encasing a nutella and cream cheese filling (I added a few walnuts in the middle to fatten up the roll). I then decorated the slices with soil made up of finely crushed oreo pieces and a tree stump shaped biscuit before finishing with a dusting of icing sugar to mimic freshly fallen snow. There's also a mushroom version of the biscuit which I initially wanted to use but the it was out of stock at the supermarket. This cake is one of my many christmas themed bakes I have lined up for the next few weeks, or at least I think it is - it doesn't really scream christmas, does it? My original idea was to have the cake as a tree stump and little mushroom biscuits grow out of it but since I couldn't find the mushroom ones and used little tree stumps instead... I don't think it worked out quite well. (Well in the first place having fungi grow out of tree stumps wasn't that fantastic an idea either.) Anyhoo, it was fun decorating it all the same!

As much as I like the appearance, I don't find the sponge particularly fantastic I'm afraid. The milo taste was weak and the outermost layer of the sponge itself (the part with a darker shade of brown) was slightly chewy probably because I didn't mix the milo powder in properly, although I must admit I quite like the colour of it because it mildly resembles the bark of a tree. I was initially planning on mimicking a tree stump by covering the outsides of the cake with ganache but what the cake turned out conveniently not needing any extra chocolate make up. If you would like to attempt this creation, I suggest you use a chocolate sponge recipe of your own or if you insist on giving this a shot anyway, I referred to the recipe here sans the decoration bit. The nutella cream cheese filling was great albeit minimalist - it's just a 50-50 ratio of nutella to cream cheese.

I guess that's it from me today since the only thing that needs a recipe is the cake which I don't feel quite comfortable recommending. I hope the next one would be a better success!