Flipping Great Flapjacks

They're golden. They're crumbley. They're firey hot. They're my ginger and lemon flapjacks. The best bit? I didn't have to buy a single thing; all the ingredients were in my baking cupboard already. Just what the doctor ordered on a spending free weekend.

Bellini Cuptail

I have been busy imagining and designing and sketching a series of cupcakes inspired by my favourite cocktails. Hence 'cuptail.' I was going to call them 'cockcakes' but this was renownedly met with disapproval. Lord knows why.

The Bellini Cuptail was inspired by my fizz-fuelled jaunt to Venice, well recorded in my blog. I spent the majority of my time in Venice pretty jolly from over-consumption of bellinis. My motto was 'Where there's a bellini, there's a way.'

This is the first in a series of my Cuptails. It has a peach compote middle, light elderflower icing and crackling space dust on the top to create the bubbling prosecco and sweet peach of the magnificent bellini.

cakes...

125g unsalted butter

125g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

125g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

2 tablespoons of elderflower cordial

A can of peach slices blended until smooth

icing...

60g unsalted butter

250g icing super

3-4 tablespoons elderflower cordial

Space dust / popping candy crumbled on the top

• Preheat oven to 180°C and pop muffin cases into cupcake tins

• For the cakes : Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add elderflower cordial, then add the eggs one at a time, being careful not to beat too much or it will curdle. Seive the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt and gently fold into the mixture. Divide into the cupcake cases and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden on the top and a skewer comes out clean. Once cooked, leave to cool completely - stone cold.
• Drain the peaches completely and then blend until smooth. Cut holes into the cakes, quite deeply and remove excess sponge. Fill the holes with peach puree - if you see the peach puree sinking after about 5 minutes, top up.

• To ice : Beat the icing sugar into the butter, then add the elderflower cordial to taste. Should be really thick consistency. Squidge into a piping bag, and pipe however you want onto the top making sure to cover the peach pure middles. Make sure the icing is touch set before crumbling popping candy onto the top as it melts if it gets wet.

Merriment Masterclass

Christmas is the time to be merry but there are many interpretations to the term 'merry.' For me, along with the majority of Britain, merry at Christmas means champagne cocktails and wine drenched lunches until you are positively pickled in the afternoon. But I very rarely experience this kind of merriment as 'merry' in our household doesn't mean ruddy cheeked tipsiness.

The real bringer of merriment in our house - along with King's College Choir's greatest Christmas hits on repeat - is mince pies. And it's lucky my lovely mum has become such an expert. Who needs a hangover when there are trays full of mince pies to keep me going til New Year?

Mum's Mince Pies...

Packet sweet short-crust pastry
A jar of finest, nicest mincemeat
Large glug of port or brandy
Grated apple
Chopped clementines
Flaked almonds
Cubes of marzipan

• Oven to 200°C, get a cupcake or muffin tin out of the cupboard.
• Roll out pastry to a couple of millimetres thickness and cut into rounds big enough for your tin and into stars or holly leaves as toppers. Place the pastry rounds into the tins.
• Empty jar of bought mincemeat into a bowl, grate the apple in, chuck in the chopped clementines, glug in the port or brandy and give it a good mix up. Fill your pastry rounds with the mixture. Bury a square of marzipan into the pie and sprinkle flaked almonds on the top.
• Top the pie with its pastry holly leaf or star and sprinkle demarera or golden caster sugar on top.
• Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes until the pies are golden on the top.
• Serve with brandy butter.

Flourless Chocolate Dream

With 40 minutes before I had to be at someone's house, and tasked with creating a desert suitable for a coeliac yet good enough for the rest of the party, I donned my Heston Blumental goggle glasses on and turned to desperate experimental cooking. This constitutes throwing chocolate and ground almonds into a bowl and heating it up. Turns out random ingredient cake mixture thrown into a bowl makes the best brownies I've ever made. Gooey, stodgy, rich and chocolatey with a marzipan aftertaste. Can you get better? Definitely not.

I only managed to get a photo after the party, what you see there are the limited remains.

cake...

100g salted butter
250g dark chocolate (good quality, at least 70%)
150g icing sugar
150g ground almonds
4 eggs separated

• Preheat the oven to 180°C and line cake tin with greaseproof paper.
• Place the butter and chocolate in saucepan balanced over a pan of simmering water, keep an eye on it otherwise the chocolate will split and become grainy and bitter.
• Whisk egg yolks and icing sugar until thick and considerably paler. Whisk the egg white separately in a really clean bowl until stiff peaks form and it doesn't fall on your head if you
• Pour the melted chocolate and butter into the bowl with the egg yolks and sugar, mix in the ground almonds then immediately fold in the egg whites gently, using a metal spoon.
• Pour the cake mixture into the tin and cook in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes.

Blueberry Cake & Cream Cheese Icing

What you need.

cake...
250g unsalted butter
250g caster sugar
4 eggs
250g self-raising flour
200g blueberries
1 tsp vanilla essence

icing...
500g icing sugar
200g cream cheese
75g unsalted butter
Zest of a lemon

• To make the cakes: Combine the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add the eggs one at a time then fold in flour. 
• If you add frozen blueberries to the mixture, you will really struggle to divide the batter - so fill two/three cake tins with the mixture then sprinkle the frozen blueberries over the top, pressing them into the batter. 
• Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes at 180˚C. Allow to cool on a wire-wrack.
• Cream cheese icing is tricky so make sure all your ingredients are cold before you start and do it as fast as you can. Beat the butter and lemon zest into the icing sugar then fold the cream cheese into the mixture as carefully as you can. If it gets a bit sloppy, put into the fridge until it hardens up again. 
• Spread the bottoms of both cakes with the icing and pop one on top of the other. If they are risen on the top, just slice it off so its even otherwise you'll get an unbalanced cake. My cream cheese icing got too sloppy and it took TWO WHOLE DAYS to ice. Not ideal.
• Don't wait until you get involved and enjoy. Blueberries and cream cheese are such a good combo. 

Lemon and almond cupcakes oh my

After spending 3 days totally vegetablised and debilitated on the sofa from what I though was a pulled muscle and what turned out to be a kidney infection, I decided I had to do something to make me feel normal again. It was no surprise to anyone when I got my electric whisk and muffin cases out and made lemon and almond cupcakes with lemon curd middles. Normal equals baking.

cakes...
225g unsalted butter

225g golden caster sugar
4 eggs
125g ground almonds
100g self-raising flour
Zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tsp almond essence

curd...
200g golden caster sugar
100g unsalted butter
Juice and zest of 4 lemons
3 eggs whisked

icing...
200g icing sugar
Enough lemon juice to make a thick paste

• Make the curd first to allow it to cool down: Put the juice and zest of the lemons, sugar and butter into a saucepan and simmer until the sugar has dissolved. Sieve and allow the mixture to cool down before adding the whisked egg yolks. Use a balloon whisk to keep the curd light and stir until it coats the back of a spoon. It doesn't need to be really thick as it will thicken when cooling. Pour into sterilised hot jam jars, fill to the top, add a disk of greaseproof paper to the top and screw on the lid. Allow to cool before putting in the fridge.
• For the cakes: Combine the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add the eggs one at a time then stir in the lemon zest, juice and almond essence. Fold in the ground almonds and flour. Fill muffin cases three-quarters to the top and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes at 180˚C. Allow to cool on a wire-wrack.
• Now its curd and icing time! Take a sharp knife and gently take a portion of cake out of the middle. Fill the hole with curd then put the portion of cake back in the hole. Mix the icing, it should be super thick and dribble all over the top of the cake so it's smooth. Decorate with whatever you fancy - sugar flowers, crystallised lemon zest, blueberries, raspberries....whatever you want. YUM.

Cookie Dough

The British are very good with food. My all-time favourite eats are classically British: the Sunday Roast; biscuits - bourbon, squashed fly, shortbread and custard creams are incomparable; toad in the hole with onion gravy; bacon sarnie with brown sauce; mini-milks - in particular strawberry; cocktail sausages; cottage or shepherd's pie; traditional cakes - there is no single sponge better than the Victoria, so simple yet so effective. 

However, the one thing the British just can't do are chocolate chip cookies. Americans wear the crown and covet the best recipes, which, luckily for me, they regularly and eagerly share all over the internet.

To be honest, my attempt wasn't as good as I would have hoped. I wanted a bit of chewiness and gooeyness Ben's Cookies style but they ended up pretty crunchy. The actual cookie dough made for better eating, like gourmet Ben and Jerry's.

I guess you can give the girl all the non-British recipes in the world but you can't take the British out of the girl....

....Or something.

chocolate chip cookies...

120g butter, at room temperature

75g light brown sugar

75g caster sugar

½ tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

240g plain flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped

• Beat together the butter and sugars until just combined. Add the vanilla extract, then the egg, and beat in well.
• Sift together the flour and bicarbonate of soda, then use a spoon to add to the mixture, stirring until it just comes together into a dough. Fold in the chocolate pieces, then chill for between 12 up to 72 hours.
• Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper, and divide the mixture into golf-ball sized rounds, spacing them well apart. Bake for about 15 minutes, until golden, but not browned. Leave to cool for a couple of minutes and then scoff immediately.
• Recipe from: Guardian

Pink Cake

Baking, my old friend, it's been a while. But I'm back in the game with a bang. A pink bang. That tastes of summer. Mmmmmmmmmm.

It has been noted that I quite regularly promise baked goods on the weekend, and very rarely deliver. The guilt eventually got to me and I spent the whole of Saturday afternoon in the kitchen, making and eating cake and biscuit mixture. Ridiculously nauseous come Saturday tea time. Bouncing off the walls from a huge sugar high come Saturday evening.

strawberry and elderflower cake...

210g self-raising flour
25g corn flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
225g unsalted butter
200g caster sugar
4 eggs
200g strawberries
2 tbls elderflower cordial

to decorate ...

50g unsalted soft butter
250g icing sugar
2 tbls juice from strawberries
1tbls elderflower cordial
Pink food colouring

Strawberry jam
Fresh strawberries

• Preheat oven to 180°C and line two 20cm cake tins

• Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add elderflower cordial, then add the eggs one at a time, being careful not to beat too much or it will curdle. Mush the strawberries until sort of broken down but not too much then pass through a seive (keep the juices, they come in handy later) and stir them in carefully. Seive the flours, bicarbonate of soda and salt and gently fold into the mixture. Divide into the two cake tins and bake for 35 minutes, or until golden on the top and a skewer comes out clean. Once cooked, leave to cool completely - stone cold.

• To ice : Beat the icing sugar into the butter, then add the strawberry juice and the elderflower cordial. You don't want to make it too sloppy - if it gets sloppy, pop it in the fridge for half an hour before you use it.

• To assemble: Dollop the icing on the top of both cakes, spreading evenly around to the edges. On one of the iced cakes, spread jam on top of the icing then add sliced strawberries on top of that. Put the other iced cake on top ..... and serve. If you find it's a bit dribbly, keep it in the fridge until the icing is set. Corrrrr.

Egg-cellent

So, I baked cakes in eggshells. I'm not even joking.

It all started one rainy day. I think I probably had a fever from a horrendous infection in my face - throat, nose and ears all badly affected. I definitely wasn't well in the head. I was off work, splayed miserably on the sofa and fiddling around on my laptop when I came across an article describing a cake baked in an eggshell. My germ-addled brain took to the idea like a horse to water and determined to try it out as soon as I possibly could.

Eggshell cakes...

125g unsalted butter
125g caster sugar
12 eggs (3 for the mixture)
125g self-raising flour
Vanilla essence

• Preheat oven to 180˚C and line the holes of a muffin tray with bits of tin foil to keep the eggs secure 
• Gently pierce the bottom of each egg with a nail and then peel away a hole about the size of a 5p piece. Shake out the contents - either very carefully so you can split it into whites and yolks, or all in one bowl - then submerge the egg shells into warm salty water. Make sure they are really well cleaned inside and then rinse the salty water off. 

• To make the batter, cream the sugar and butter together with the vanilla essence, beat in the eggs then fold in the flour gently until you have a thick, fluffy mixture. Place the egg shells into the tin-foil lined muffin tray and spoon the mixture into a piping bag. Carefully pipe the mixture into the egg shells to about three-quarters full. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. 

• When you take the cakes out of the oven they will have over-spilled out of the egg shells. DON'T PANIC!!! Let the cakes cool down before you takle the spillage. Try and pick as much off as you can with your fingers, then take a small knife and gently scrape off the rest.

• To eat, bash them on the table and peel like a boiled egg. 

Yum yum yum.

Bananarama

banana cake...

400g self-raising flour
250g unsalted softened butter
200ml greek yoghurt

250g golden caster sugar
500g mashed riper-the-better bananas (5 biggish bananas)
4 large eggs
Zest of one lemon
1tbls vanilla essence

1. Preheat oven to 180˚C and line a round cake tin or a couple of loaf tins (or halve the mixture for one loaf tin) 
2. Cream butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. In a separate bowl, mix the mashed bananas, greek yoghurt, lemon zest and vanilla essence until well combined, then beat in the eggs one at a time. Slowly combine the banana mixture to the butter and sugar, then fold in the self-raising flour. 
3. Divide between the cake tins, depending on how much mixture you've made, and bake in the centre of the oven for around 45 minutes or until browned on the top and a skewer comes out clean. Especially delicious served hot straight out of the oven. If you want it iced, do a cream-cheese icing with lemon zest. YUM. 

Welcome Back. To Misery.

My housemate has been sunning herself in Goa for the last two weeks - lucky cow - while me and my other housemate have been braving the arctic temperatures of London. The childish delight I got when it started snowing lasted an evening (I was very cosy at home watching Titanic). As soon as I had to walk anywhere, tempers got a bit frayed. Probably an understatement.

You know it's too cold when you get brain freeze from breathing.

In order to make sure the return to England wasn't too traumatic, Raspberry and Coconut cupcakes were made. They taste just like coconut ice. Goooooooood.

cakes...

225g caster sugar
225g softened unsalted butter
4 eggs
210g self raising flour
25g cornflour
1tsp baking powder
150g crushed fresh raspberries

icing...

500g icing sugar
150g softened unsalted butter
60g coconut milk
75g desiccated coconut
1tsp vanilla essence
Raspberries to decorate

1. Preheat oven to 180°C and fill two cupcake trays with cases
2. Beat caster sugar and butter together until pale and fluffy, then add eggs, self raising flour, cornflour and baking powder. Finally swirl the crushed raspberries into the mix with a marbling effect.
3. Bake in the centre of the oven for about 20 minutes or until raised, and a metal skewer comes out clean.
4. For the icing, beat the icing sugar and butter together. Add the coconut milk and vanilla essence, then fold in the desiccated coconut. Either top the cakes with a palette knife or a piping bag and top with a raspberry.

Happy Birthday Me!

My little pointless blog is ONE YEAR OLD TODAY!!!!

Thank you to everyone who has been reading (i.e. my Mum and Dad). Here's to another year!

Photo taken from here

Hyacinths and Muffins

Some lovely things that we have in our flat at the moment to pull us out of the January blues...Blueberry and banana muffins courtesy of me. I've used this recipe before, but this time remembered to put all the ingredients in.

Christmas lens practice

Photos of Christmas time with my new 50mm lens. Very happy lady.

I made Macaroons.

I really did! Actual french macaroons! I've never made macaroons before and they are notoriously difficult to make but I think they came out quite well in the end. After every stage I successfully completed, I did an extensive victory dance around the kitchen in the style of David Brent. It was a lengthy and stressful process.

These are the Christmas presents I'm giving my friends and family because I am a poor church mouse and cannot afford real presents. But actually, in my humble opinion, these make better presents than bought presents.

jaffa cake and strawberry milkshake macaroons...

350g icing sugar

350g ground almonds

10 free-range egg whites

350g caster sugar

6 tbsp cold water

For Jaffa cake macaroons add 1 tbsp cocoa powder

For strawberry milkshake macaroons add pink food colouring

1. Line baking trays with greaseproof paper. Preheat the oven to 170°C.
2. To make the macaroon shells, place the icing sugar and ground almonds in a food processor and pulse to make a fine powder.
3. Weigh the egg whites - there should be about 300g. Stir half the egg whites into the icing sugar and almond mixture to make a smooth paste. Whisk the remaining egg whites in the mixer until they form soft peaks.
4. Heat caster sugar and water gently until the sugar has dissolved then turn the heat up until the syrup reaches 115°C (use a sugar thermometer to check this). Continue whisking the egg whites on a low speed, pouring in the sugar syrup in a steady stream. Increase to a medium speed for a couple minutes then turn it down again and continue whisking for five minutes, until stiff peaks form when the whisk is removed and the mix has cooled down.
5. Gently fold the almond mixture into the whisked egg whites. Split the macaroon mixture into two clean bowls and add the sieved cocoa to one half and the pink food colouring to the other.
6. Spoon the mixture into a large piping bag fitted with a 5mm nozzle. Pipe 4cm circles onto the baking trays. Burst any air bubbles with a toothpick and leave to stand for at least 30 minutes before going into the oven - it needs to form a skin to hold it's shape.
7. Bake the shells for 12 minutes-ish. You will definitely do this in batches, but the macaroons can rest for a few hours while you are batching. If the shells crack (like all of mine did), turn the heat down slightly. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

icing...

200g icing sugar

100g unsalted butter

2 tbls smooth strawberry jam

Dribble of milk

1 tsp of vanilla essence

Just mix all that together until it is a smooth thick paste, pop into an icing bag, pipe a swirl on one shell and stick another shell on top.

35g unsalted butter

80g best quality dark chocolate

1/2 tablespoon golden syrup

50ml cream

150g icing sugar

Pinch of salt (to make the chocolate really tasty)

1 tsp orange essence

Melt butter and chocolate together slowly, leave to cool slightly then add golden syrup, salt, cream. Beat the icing sugar into the mixture until thick and smooth then assemble macaroons as before!

Et voila - vous avez les macarons! C'est manifique, mais non?!