So I was encouraged to add this even though I feel I’ve done many like it before but Dan said it always worth posting old favourites! I’ve been off the boil, so to speak, lately with general life things getting in the way and attempting to set up a business! I think both Dan and I have been busy with life-changing experiences of late, but he’s probably done more baking that me and been kind not to post too much!

So this is the wonderfully easy;

8oz sf flour (you could add a bit of wholemeal)
6oz sugar (I used some light brown and some caster)
6oz butter
3 eggs
1 tsp bp
Demerara sugar for the top

I added about 80g chopped dates and two bananas mashed.

Cream the butter and sugar together, beat in the eggs then the flour and bp and finally add the dates and bananas. Base line a round cake tin and pour in the ingredients, sprinkle the top with demerara sugar (generously) and bake for about 45 minutes at 180 degrees (fan assisted).

Delicious and lovely and moist – really wonderful if it’s still warm too and even with custard.

I have a thing about peanut butter at the moment, and cookies! This is a standard cookie recipe but with peanut butter and banana, I used some dark muscovado sugar which made them rather rich but lovely. It’s essential that these cookies remain soft in the middle so 10 minutes seems to be the maximum time in the oven but ovens vary. They just need to be golden on the edges.

Ingredients:
125g unsalted butter
100g unrefined granulated sugar
75g dark muscovado sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
150g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
100g crunchy peanut butter
1 ripe banana, mashed
50g rolled oats (approximate)

Melt the butter and pour over the two sugars, beat in the egg and vanilla. Add the other ingredients and beat well. You may want to adjust the amount of peanut butter or the oats depending on the thickness of the mixture. I played it a bit by ear. The banana adds moisture and the oats take it away, so just make sure it’s no too stiff.

Dollop dessert spoonfuls of  the mixture onto baking trays lined with greaseproof paper, well spaced apart. Place in a 190 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Leave to cool on the trays until hardened a little before turning them onto a wire rack. Enjoy with tea, but especially coffee I find.

Inspired by Dan’s biscuits and leftover ganache I made these with Ivy – she helped with the mixing and cutting. The chocolate with orange icing biscuit recipe is from my M&S chocolate box book (which they don’t seem to make anymore) but I added some nutmeg for a change. I had some leftover icing from Lawrence’s heart cake so sandwiched them together with the rest of it.

Biscuits:

90g butter softened
60g caster sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
280g plain flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
ground nutmeg (about a teaspoon)

Blend together the butter and sugar, add the egg then the flour and knead into a dough. Roll out to about 1/4 inch thickness and cut into rounds or stars or whatever you fancy. Place on baking trays lined with greaseproof paper and bake in a 180 over for about 12 minutes. Leave to cool on the trays for a bit before transferring to cooling racks. Allow to cool completely before sandwiching together with the icing. Yum.

I’m used to not receiving anything on Valentine’s Day so thought I’d make something for ‘him’ that we could all enjoy! In a way this cake it kind of sinister with it’s blood-red centre but it certainly has an impact! We’ll not dwell too long on the colouring – I could have used beetroot as I discovered one in the fridge afterwards, oh well – next time.

I’m not sure what I did this time but the cake was lovely and moist, it may be the extra egg I added as I only had a small batch. It’s a good old Victoria sandwich type cake with cocoa and colouring and chocolate butter icing; 8oz sf flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 60z butter, 6oz sugar, 2/3 eggs, 1 tablespoon cocoa, bit of milk perhaps. Divided between two tins and sandwiched together with the icing.

The way to a man’s heart!

It was our nephew Ruben’s 1st birthday party at the weekend, His mum Riette made a huge amount of wonderful cakes and I contributed with some very sugary blondies for the adults and jam muffins (which I’ve made before but with cranberry).

This recipe is from the More from Magnolia cookbook that Riette bought me one Christmas. It’s very American and the ingredients often include things like ‘canned cherry pie filling’ or ‘graham cracker crumbs’?! Some are decipherable however and these blondies were delicious and will have you on a sugar high all day.

Ingredients:
(all converted from American cups)
225g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
130g (aprox or 4.5 oz) butter
225g firmly packed light brown sugar
112g or 4oz granulated sugar
2 large eggs at room temperature (I used 3 small ones)
2 tsps vanilla extract
110g/4oz chopped walnuts
130g/4.5oz coarsely chopped white chocolate
88g/3oz coarsely chopped dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Grease and light flour (I lined the base too) 13 x 9-inch baking pan.

In a small bowl combine the flour, bp and salt, set aside.
In a large bowl cream the butter and sugars until smooth, for about 2 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat well. Add the dry ingredients and mix r. Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chunks and spread even over the pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes the books says but check after 20 – mine cooked very quickly and you want them to be a little gooey in the middle.

I was thinking that I should buy some American cups to make life easier. I like that method of measuring rather than weighing – I wish I could just use my eye – not that skilled yet!

I have to make a huge apology to Dan for being a rubbish fellow cake-offer. I’ve obviously been totally preoccupied by some slightly majorly thing that was going on n my life! I would like to say that the cake was fantastic Dan, the wedding was such a crazy blur in many respects and you don’t feel that you say enough thanks to all the people that make massive contributions to your big day. The cake was obviously very important to us and it was fabulous. I’m really glad that we had some left over in the freezer which means we managed to savour it for a bit longer.

Do, I have been baking in between but not as much as usual. My resolution is to do more and experiment more in 2011. We had people for dinner the other week and I fancied making something indulgent so what better that Mississippi Mud Pie? I usually shy away from things that involve a lot of whipped cream but  really loved this, everyone had seconds.

Ingredients
Pastry:
175g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
115g butter
2-3 tbsp iced water

Filling:
75g plain chocolate broken into pieces
50g butter
3 tbsp golden syrup
3 eggs, beaten
150g soft light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence

To decorate:
115g plain chocolate bar
300ml whipping cream

Preheat oven to 220 degrees. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Sprinkle in the water gradually and toss lightly with your fingers or a until until a dough forms.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface and line a 23cm flan tin, easing in the pastry and being careful not to stretch it (a mistake I made – it shrank down the sides when baking). Prick the base with a fork and bake for 10-15 minutes or unil brown, cool in the pan.

Make the filling – in a heatproof bowl over simmering water melt the chocolate, butter and the golden syrup. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence.

Lower the oven temperature to 180 degrees and pour the mixture into the pastry case. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the filling is set. Cool completely in the pan.

Before serving whip the cream until it forms soft peaks and spread over the pie. Decorate with shavings of dark chocolate (use a potatoe peeler to scrape curls of chilled chocolate. )

Serve! Dead easy.
Recipe from my well used Chocolate book

(Photo courtesy of Lawrence and that addictive app.)

I’ve been very slack lately – wedding preparations have superseded baking. Of course I had to make a cake for Lawrence’s birthday though. It’s become a bit of a tradition to make some kind of lemon affair – this one isn’t very imaginative, the picture (courtesy or Lawrence’s ‘special’ phone) makes it look a lot more exciting!

The sponge is basically 6oz of sf flour, 6 oz of butter and 6 oz sugar, 3 eggs and add a bit of lemon juice, or cocoa, or orange – what ever you have! Baked in two sandwich tins and filled and topped with lemon butter icing.  Simple but lovely.

I will aim to  bake a lot more in the year and start experimenting a bit more!

I made a curry the other night and had some coconut milk to use up. As a rule I hate coconut in cakes but that usually means dessicated coconut, I think it’s the texture I dislike more than anything but the milk get around that obviously . Coconut milk also adds a certain amount of sweetness to cakes so I decided to make this a moderately child-friendly batch for Ivy and her friends. They are based on an ordinary muffin mix, I just added bits here and there. They were rather sticky, stodgy perhaps but moist and sweet enough to keep the kids happy.

Ingredients:
225ml coconut milk
300g Plain flour
2 1/2 tsp Baking powder
50g butter, melted
50g unrefined sugar (you could leave this out perhaps)
100g raisins
50ml soy milk (the mixture was a little sticky)
1 tablespoon honey
2 eggs

Put the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir in the eggs, butter, milk and honey. Beat well then stir in the raisins. Spoon into 12 muffin cases and bake at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes, check to see if they are cooked with a a skewer.

So the big weekend came for Kate and Kerim where I had the pleasure of spending the day in her Mum and Dad’s lovely kitchen in glorious France. The top cake for cutting was a larger version of the Pear, Ginger and Chocolate ganache cupcakes, it survived until the next day so I was able to take a much  better, less intoxicated photograph. I had many compliments, particularly of the pear and ginger cakes, I think the lavender were most popular with the children. (I heard that some ‘grown-ups’ had four!)

So as the recipes for these cakes are already up I’ve littered this post with images – the cupcakes looked beautiful on their homemade (by Kate and her mum) tiered cake stands. I’m still waiting to reap my reward (I’ve bagged the one with a teacup on top).

I’d quite happily travel the world making cupcakes at weddings – what a great job!

Trying to maintain the illusion that summer is still with us I decided to make these seasonal cupcakes to celebrate Ivy’s Uncle’s birthday. Another bonkers recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook - suggesting that you cover yourself and anyone in the near vicinity with flour. They were very tasty and moist and the fresh strawberries were lovely. I halved the icing and the crumbled digestives on top – how on earth they thought you actually fit 200g biscuit crumbs on top of these is beyond me, 100g was too much (and according to some could be omitted altogether). I did like the upside down cheesecake idea though.

Ingredients:
120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsps baking powder
pinch of salt
40g unsalted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
12 large strawberries, chopped into pieces
200g (yeah, right! Try 80g -100 g) digestive biscuits

Cream cheese frosting:
300g icing sugar sifted
50g unsalted butter and room temperature
125g cold cream cheese
(But I halved all these ingredients)

Oven at 170 degrees.
Put the flour, bp , salt and butter in a bowl and beat with a handheld electric whisk – then take a  shower. Alternatively, put the ingresdeitns in a bowl and rub the butter into the dry mixture with your fingers until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Pour in the milk and vanilla extract and beta until combined. Add the egg and beat well for a few minutes.

Divide the chopped strawberries between 12 paper cakes and spoon the mixture evenly on top. I think I’d rather mix the strawberries into the mixture first though as I did with the pear and ginger cupcakes. I’m not so keen on the fruit being at the bottom, I prefer the fruit within the cake. Bake for about 20-25 minutes (I didn’t use the fan).

Leave to cool then make the icing; combine the icing sugar and butter and beat well then add the cream cheese and beat again but not for too long – it can become runny. Spoon on to the cupcakes and top with the crushed digestive biscuits.