Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas yesterday! Santa gave me a new macro lens and I had way too much fun playing about with bokeh all evening.

The only thing I've eaten today is Terry's Chocolate Orange and I plan to eat trifle next. Gotta love Christmas eating habits :)

Happy holidays everybody!

Festive bakes: round 2

I think I may have finally met my match in terms of baking. I have baked so much in the last week or so that the thought of eating anything sweet almost makes me feel ill! As I am a disorganised blogger I thought I'd cram everything together in another big, festive food post. (My first festive post can be found here.)

First up are these cranberry and white chocolate cookies. I've made these cookies/biscuits before and had forgotten how good they are!

They're crunchy round the edges and slightly chewy in the middle. I love the contrast of tart cranberry and sweet white chocolate. It was difficult stopping everybody from eating these when I was trying to pack them up as gifts.

After the cookies I baked these snickerdoodles, also from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book.

Unfortunately I was really disappointed with these so didn't give them away. I liked the idea of them, sweet and cinnamony, but they came out far too doughy/floury. They were baked as little balls and were meant to flatten during baking but mine stayed fairly ball shaped. Not sure what went wrong there.

After the disappointment of the snickerdoodles I made date and cinnamon shortbread, although I would say it's more of a bar than a shortbread.

I liked the technique of the rubbing together the flour and butter, stirring in the dates and sugar and then dumping the mixture into the tray and pressing it in! This bake scores highly in the no faff ratings. I also sprinkled some of the left over cinnamon sugar from the snickerdoodles on top when it was fresh from the oven which added a lovely touch. My mum and brother really liked these.

I was determined to bake some festive cupcakes this year as I've been dying to use my cute snowman cases. I made some chocolate orange cupcakes, which I have made before, but I decided to use the Hummingbird Bakery's basic chocolate cupcake batter instead with the addition of some grated orange zest.

I love the icing for these cupcakes. I could eat it all day (that could be why I've been feeling ill...) and they look extra pretty with terry's chocolate orange wedges.

I have also baked some basic vanilla cupcakes for the weirdos people who don't like chocolate orange, the sponges for the Christmas trifle and the date traybake for sticky toffee pudding! (We have two puddings for Christmas. Partly out of greediness but mostly because we can't agree on one dessert.)

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas! Hope Santa is good to everybody tomorrow x

5 festive bakes

Not long till Christmas now! I've been busy making Christmas presents for the past month but it really feels like Christmas now that I've started my festive baking. I debated splitting all my festive bakes into separate posts, but decided to make one massive Christmas post instead. Hope you enjoy it!

First up are the funky gingerbread biscuits I baked yesterday to give to my cousins. They're quite crunchy, definitely more of a biscuit than a gingerbread, so they're good for dunking in your tea or coffee.

My mum helped with the decorating. We definitely have more of a childlike than professional quality. But who wouldn't want a stripey or splodgy dinosaur biscuit?! I don't know why I don't make biscuits more often as I love all my cutters, the dinosaurs in particular.

You know it's officially Christmas when you make mincemeat pies. I know many will be disappointed that I used bought mincemeat but I had jars left over from last year and I don't like to waste food. I made my own sweet shortcrust pastry though. It has ground almonds in it which gives the pastry a lovely crumbly texture.

It's also officially Christmas in my household when my Mum makes tablet (fudge/candy). I think we made 5 batches(!) to package up prettily as gifts. Don't even ask how much sugar is involved. It is not healthy!

I have also baked a couple of ginger bundt cakes to give to some aunties and uncles. They look impressive without taking up much of your time and they're perfect for sharing. I think my aunties and uncles will like that it's Granny's sticky ginger cake recipe too.

And lastly, a rarity on my sweet toothed blog, a savoury creation! I found this recipe for caramelised red onion chutney through the Cake Hunter (she's got a fantastic Christmas Countdown Gifts series at the moment which is worth checking out).

Chopping so many onions was a tearful task and certainly left a strong aroma in the house, but it was definitely worth it. This recipe made 3 and a half Bonne Maman jars worth of chutney. I'm glad there's a half jar so I can keep one for myself to eat with cheese. If I'm not eating cake, I'm definitely eating cheese.

How are your festive plans coming along? What are you all baking for Christmas? The amount of sugar and syrup I have gone through this weekend is insane!

Recent utility china finds

When my sister-in-law texted me asking if I wanted some utility china the only natural response to give was "YES!" She found a stash of Johnson Brothers Greydawn and Grindley Peach Petalware at a charity shop for about a fiver and since she's very nice she decided to split it with me.

I am now the proud owner of tureens, cereal bowls and a gravy boat. I've also got more large (soup?) bowls and those odd but useful in between sized plates.

I actually found the yellow Grindley tureen separately a few weeks ago but decided to lump it in with this post. I'm not sure if the lid goes with the bowl as it doesn't fit very well and I'm convinced it's a different shade of yellow, but it only cost about £1.50 with another tureen bowl so I'm not complaining.

The Johnson Brothers Greydawn tureen might just be the cutest tureen in the world. I love the handle on the lid.
 

Is it sad that I feel so refined now that I own a gravy boat?

I think I have finally ticked off most things I want in terms having a fully functioning, mismatced utility china dinner service. I'd like to find a few more dinner plates, preferably Woodsware, as I'm very fond of my Jasmine Woodsware dinner plate. Not sure where I'm storing my new pieces though as my box of utility china delights is full, but I'm happy admiring them at the moment.

Has anybody else found any nice china recently? If you fancy seeing more utility china I'd recommend visiting Vintage Sheet Addict and The Vintage Knitter as they have found some lovely pieces.

Banana loaf with chocolate fudgy icing

Banana and chocolate bake number two! I hadn't tried Mary Berry's banana loaf from her Baking Bible so I gave it a go. It's another chuck-everything-in-the-bowl-and-mix recipe which always gets a massive thumbs up from me. 

I have a really strong urge to add cinnamon to everything at the moment but I resisted with this recipe. I'm actually glad I did because it left the banana flavour to shine. However I did cave in to my urge to cover the cake in chocolate. I went for my Granny's cooked chocolate icing as I wanted a slightly fudgy flavour. My icing could have been a bit thicker, but it still tasted good. I fully recommend banana and fudgy chocolate as a flavour combination. My only complaint is that my cake didn't rise very much but perhaps that was just down to my mixing.

I was struggling to find something to photograph my loaf on as I am fed up with always using a boring choppingboard (honestly, check "loaf cake" in the archives) when Mum reminded me about my big oval plates. The Johnson Brothers Cloud plate was perfect so I decided to be matchy-matchy and use the coordinating cup, saucer and cake plate. 

I also halved the loaf recipe to make a tray of buns/fairy cakes and iced them with a fudgy frosting from my Primrose Bakery book. Unfortunately I forgot to take photographs of these but they were cute and tasty and involved more star and butterfly cake sprinkles.

Banana loaf

Recipe from Mary Berry's Baking Bible

100g (4oz) softened butter
175g (6oz) caster sugar
2 large eggs
2 ripe bananas, mashed
225g (8oz) self-raising flour
1 level teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160C/Gas 4. Grease a 900g/2lbs loaf tin and line with baking parchment. Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl for about 2 minutes and spoon the mixture into the loaf tin. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 1 hour until well risen, golden and firm to touch (a skewer inserted in the centre should come out clean). Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Granny's chocolate topping
Heat two tablespoons of milk, 1.5oz (about 40g) of margarine and 1 tablespoon of cocoa, nearly to boiling and then add 4oz (about 100g) icing sugar and beat together until shiny and thick. Use a whisk if you can't get the lumps of icing sugar to disappear. Add to the top of the cold cake and then decorate in a childish fashion with butterfly sprinkles.

Banana and chocolate cupcakes

I went on a banana baking rampage last week as there were a few browning bananas in the fruit bowl. Either nobody felt like eating bananas or they were leaving them in hope that I would eventually bake with them, which I did!

I decided on these banana and chocolate cupcakes from the first Hummingbird Bakery cookbook (first blogged here). I've also decided that I don't care if it's November; my photographs are going to be bright and summery.

Pretty star sprinkles! I may have got over excited about the new display of cake sprinkles in the baking aisle of a supermarket last week. Naturally I had to stock up.

I've used this recipe a few times but find it can be frustrating. The cupcakes either turn out deliciously moist and light or stodgy and wrinkly. The recipe worked fine this time (hurray!) but I wish I knew how to make it more consistent. Does the ripeness of the bananas affect it? I've considered reducing the amount of baking powder as the recipe calls for one tablespoonful, which seems like a lot, and I often find that the cupcakes deflate slightly either towards the end of baking or within 5 minutes of taking them out the oven, despite being fully cooked. The cupcakes don't taste like there's too much baking powder, but I wonder whether this may be the problem. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

I've got another banana bake to write up over the next couple of days so I hope you all like bananas!
 

5 good things

Last week was a very bad week so I thought it would be good to join in with the "5 good things" posts I've seen on Helen and Victoria's blogs.

1. My new polka dot bedding. I love the pattern, I love that it's reversible, I love the shade of dusky pink, but mostly I love that it's brushed cotton. It's really soft and cosy and looks so inviting with my bedspread.

2. I've started my Christmas crochet projects. There's something therapeutic about crocheting. It has been a nice activity for my brain to zone out to when I'm struggling to sleep. Want to know who watches Big Bang Theory re-runs on E4 at 1am? That's me and my crochet hook.

3. I was alone in the house for a couple of hours on Saturday so I played the piano for the first time in ages. Even though I am incredibly out of practice I really enjoyed it. It's a great brain cleanser. I concentrate so hard on what I'm playing that it blots out everything else, leaving me strangely refreshed yet exhausted.

4. The ultimate comfort: a cup of tea and a pair of cosy slippers. One can never wear too many Fair Isle patterns.

5. Last week I discovered the online fabric shop, Frumble. There are so many exciting patterns! Even though I'm trying to only spend money on Christmas gifts, I think I may need to purchase some fabric.

What are your 5 good things at the moment?

Hot lemon pudding

There was a time when I didn't like lemon. It's hard to believe considering it's now one of my favourite cake flavours. This is the pudding which changed my mind and I've never looked back.

One of my flatmates in my first year of university made this pudding as part of our "Communal Meals Saturday" and although I had grown up thinking I wasn't that fussed with lemon I thought I'd give it a go.

I loved this pudding. A soft spongey crust with a warm, zesty lemon curd oozing underneath. What's not to like? (A flatmate's drunk friend "visiting" later on that night and dipping her fingers through our pudding. We weren't best pleased.) It's comforting yet fresh and light so you can have seconds without feeling stodgy later on. Always a good thing.

If you're a fellow lemon lover then I would recommend adding this to your baking repertoire. Rachel Allen's recipe can be found here. I'll definitely be making it again now that I have been reunited with the recipe. It also gives me an excuse to use my polka dot heart shaped dish.

Syrupy ginger bundt

Although it's fun to flick through the glossy pages of new cookbooks, sometimes it's good to return to an old family favourite. My aunty recently gave me my Granny's handwritten gingerbread recipe. She used to make it in a large roasting tin but I thought I'd try it in my 10 inch cake ring/bundt tin.

Winter light got the better of me with these photographs. Just as I took my camera out a big rain shower came past and made the room dark. I took a few photographs and got on with eating the cake. Cake is to be eaten and enjoyed after all.

This cake is so sticky and syrupy. It's gorgeous. Not surprising since it contains 3/4lb golden syrup! Shhh, don't tell your dentist. You can always pretend the warm spices make it healthy.

I think this cake would taste incredible with custard, although a cup of tea is just as comforting and involves less effort. After the faffy tarte tatin I was all about laziness this week!

Sticky syrupy gingerbread

Recipe from my Granny. I converted her measurements to metric to be helpful.

450g (1 lb) flour

1 level tbsp ground ginger (or adapt to suit. I used 2tsp ginger and 1tsp cinnamon and I'm a cinnamon freak)

1 level tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 level tsp bakind powder

1 level tsp salt

225g (8oz) brown sugar ( I used light brown muscovado)

175g (6oz) margarine (I used Stork)

350g (3/4lb) golden syrup

300ml (10 fl oz or 1/2pt) milk

1 large egg

Preheat the oven to 160C/Fan 140C/Gas 3. Sieve all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Warm the sugar, margarine and syrup together, not letting it get too hot. Warm the milk separately. Add all the liquids to the dry ingredients along with a beaten egg and mix thoroughly. Bake in the centre of the oven for 1hr 15-30 minutes, or until firm to touch. Leave to cool in the tin on a wire rack. (I took it out when it was still slightly warm and a layer stuck to the base of the tin. I didn't mind though, I just scraped it off and ate it!)

Tarte tatin

Tarte tatin and I almost didn't become friends.

I initially tried making the caramel for the base the way Mary Berry did on the Bake Off Masterclass on tv a couple of weeks ago, by boiling sugar and water. It burnt. Never try to make caramel as you're trying to make and serve your dinner. In frustration I dumped the hot pot in the sink.

Shards of caramel went EVERYWHERE.

I reverted back to the recipe in Mary Berry's Baking Bible but got confused making the caramel (again) as the demerara sugar wouldn't melt, but chucked it in the tin anyway. After chopping apples for what seemed like hours, I arranged them on top of the caramel (although I did my centre pattern the wrong way up, doh!)  and added the pastry before flinging it in the oven.

The pastry looked light golden after 20 minutes, as the recipe stated, so I turned it out.

Undercooked.

By this point I no longer cared and turned the tart back into the tin (potentially dangerous move) and baked it for another 20 minutes. Surprisingly, it turned out absolutely fine.

The reduced juices from the tart made a ridiculously tasty syrup to pour over the top. That alone would have tasted amazing with ice-cream.

The tart was sweet and sticky with a lovely tang of lemon running through it balancing the sweetness. I was relieved it tasted good although I was almost in too much of a huff to enjoy it. Does that happen to anyone else?

I actually think the flavours tasted better the following day (possibly because I was less angry?) The tart also sliced much cleaner cold.

Tarte Tatin
Recipe from Mary Berry's Baking Bible

For the pastry:
100g (4oz) self-raising flour
50g (2oz) diced butter
1 level tablespoon icing sugar
1 large egg yolk
scant tablespoon cold water

Measure the flour, butter and icing sugar into a bowl and rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and enough water to bring the mixture together to a firm but not sticky dough. Knead lightly, wrap in clingfilm and chill for about 30 minutes.

For the topping:
900g (2lb) dessert apples. (I used Pink Lady)
finely grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
75g (3oz) butter
75g (3oz) demerara sugar

Preheat the oven to 200C/Fan 180C?Gas 6. Peel (I didn't bother!), core and slice the apples and sprinkle with the lemon juice and rind (it stops the apples from browning). Measure the butter and sugar into a small pan and heat gently until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Pour into the base of a 23cm/9 in sandwich tin. Arrange a singer layer of the best apple slices in a circular pattern over the mixture. Cover with the remaining apple slices. Roll out the chilled dough onto a lightly floured surface and use to cover the apples (make it slightly bigger than your tin and tuck the edges down the sides). Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes (mine actually took 40 minutes) until the pastry is crisp and golden brown.

Tip the juices from the tin into a small pan. Turn the tart out onto a plate, with the pastry on the bottom. Boil the juices to reduce to a syrupy caramel and pour over the apples.If there is very little juice (depending on your apples) add 2 tbsp demerara sugar, dissolved in the pan with the juices and cook until syrupy. Serve warm with cream, creme fraiche, yoghurt, ice-cream, or custard.
 

Spooky blackberry and white chocolate cupcakes

There was some left over white chocolate icing from my birthday cake in the freezer so I thought I'd use it for a Hallowe'en bake: white chocolate buttercream ghosties on a sponge with a gory blackberry centre.

 

I love the little ghostie faces, they were fun to paint on. I'm always slightly apprehensive about using the circular nozzle for piping icing on cupcakes because, well, they can look a bit like *whisper* poo, but I hope the ghost faces stop anyone else from thinking that.

 

 

Although not bad, I wasn't 100% happy with my sponge. I think they could have been fluffier. I used my usual recipe but decided to add 4 mashed blackberries to the batter (as well as a whole blackberry inside each cupcake) but the batter looked too wet so I added a little extra flour. Perhaps I ended up over mixing, or maybe it was the addition of the pureed blackberries, but they didn't turn out the way they usually do. Strangely they tasted much better the second day.

 

This is my favourite photograph. "Oh no don't eat me!"
 

I've also decided to enter my cupcakes into this month's Hallowe'en themed Calendar Cakes hosted by Dollybakes. Calendar Cakes is a baking challenge alternately hosted by Rachel from Dollybakes and Laura from Lauralovescake with a different theme set at the start of each month. I've never taken part in any of the baking challenges, I'm not really sure why, but I'm doing it this month! The closing date is on Wednesday so there's still time to enter if you fancy joining in with the fun.

 

Blackberry and white chocolate cupcakes

I used the equal weight method. My three eggs weighed 6oz (about 170g, sorry but my brain is naturally programmed to Imperial measurements) so this is what I used:
 

6oz caster sugar

6oz Stork margarine

6oz eggs, lightly beaten

6oz self-raising flour

a packet of blackberries
 

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and line a muffin tin with cases. Cream the fat and sugar for about five minutes until light and fluffy. Add the eggs along with a little of the flour to prevent curdling then add the rest of the flour in one go along with 4 mashed blackberries and mix until just incorporated. (At this point I added a little extra flour as the mixture looked a bit too wet.) Put a good teaspoon full of the batter into each case and plop a blackberry on top. Fill the cases until 3/4 full with the remaining batter, covering the blackberry. Pop the tray in the centre of the oven for 20-25 minutes until lightly golden and firm to touch. Cool in the tin for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling. I found my mixture made 13 large cupcakes (yes, annoyingly I needed an extra tin for one cupcake) but it depends what size you want them.

 

 

Unfortunately I don't have a recipe for the icing as it was my mum that originally made it and she just mixed to taste. It's basically a bog standard butter icing mixed with a block of melted white chocolate. If you make too much (like she did) you can always freeze left overs. It defrosted and whisked up beautifully.

Hummingbird birthday cake

It was my Dad's birthday last Wednesday so I thought I'd try the Hummingbird Bakery's Hummingbird cake from their first book. I think this wins the award for fastest disappearing cake as there was none left to snack on the following day!

I loved the flavour of this cake: warm and fruity. Banana, cinnamon, pecan and pineapple make brilliant cake making buddies. It's similar to a carrot cake in terms of texture and spice, but the bananas and pineapple make it extra juicy.

 

And everybody loves a bit of cream cheese icing, you just can't go wrong with it. I must say that Bee whipped up a very smooth batch. She did an excellent job with her first triple layer cake.

 

We decided to really go for it and put 54 candles on the cake (no need to guess Dad's age!) It was an impressive blaze. Thankfully we didn't need to call the fire brigade.

 

This was a really nice sized triple layer cake and easy to cut. Triple layered without being ginormous! With previous layered cakes I've found that they can be unstable to cut and difficult to eat if they're really deep and high. I worried that these sponges hadn't risen enough but on cutting and tasting they were absolutely fine. It's definitely a recipe I'd be happy to use again. I wonder if it would work as a bundt...

 

I'm feeling too lazy to type out the recipe, but you can find it here through Ros, The More Than Occasional Baker. She also has a nut chopper!

Sticky gingerbread

Last week I had an urge to make gingerbread. I don't know why, as ginger isn't my spice of choice, but I couldn't shake off the thought of a wintery spiced gingerbread.

 

The batter for this loaf tasted so good, it's a wonder any of it reached the tin. It seems I like ginger more than I thought.

The recipe did state to leave the cake a day before eating but I have no willpower. The smell from the oven was too much for me and I had to have a piece there and then. The cake texture was very smooth and it tasted more of treacle than ginger which worried me. However all was ok the next day. The flavours were much more balanced, the cake developed more of a crumb texture and the crust started to feel sticky. It didn't have much of a chance to get stickier as we ate all the cake. Moral of the story: leave your gingerbread till the next day to eat.

 

Sticky gingerbread

Recipe from The Great British Book of Baking, p.238

 

225g self-raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tbsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground mixed spice

115g unsalted butter, chilled and diced

115g black treacle

115g golden syrup

115g dark brown muscovado sugar

275ml milk (it says not to use skimmed, but I only had semi-skimmed milk)

1 medium free range egg, beaten

 

Heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin, about 26 x 13 x 7cm. Sift together the flour, bicarb. soda, ginger, cinnamon and mixed spice into a large bowl. Add the diced butter and rub into the flour mix using your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Gently warm the treacle and syrup in a pan until melted and runny but not hot. Set aside until lukewarm. Put the sugar and milk into another pan and heat gently, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Leave to cool until lukewarm, then whisk the milk into the flour mixture, quickly followed by the treacle mixture and the egg, to make a smooth thick batter, the consistency of double cream.

 

Put the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the loaf comes out clean. Leave the loaf to cool completely on a wire rack before turning out. Wrap the loaf in foil and leave for at least a day before cutting; it will get stickier the longer it is kept. Store in an air-tight container.

Bundt-alicious!

My baking is too bundt-alicious for ya babe! I'm sure that's what Beyonce wanted to sing about, rather than her curvacious behind.

 

As well as Mary Bee, I received a bundt tin for my birthday. I was very excited about using it and decided to try this apple bundt cake recipe from Dollybakes, who is unquestionably Queen of the bundts.

 

If you own a bundt tin I urge you to try this recipe. It is like a hug in cake form, packed full of warming winter spices and a deliciously sweet, sticky, maple glaze. It reminds me of a sticky gingerbread but with a lovely addition of apples. I'm tempted to use this cake for a sticky toffee pudding at Christmas this year instead of my usual date traybake. I think it would make a heavenly dessert served with a thick toffee sauce.

 

It's safe to say I'm a full blown bundt convert, I can easily see myself making more. There is something very appealing about its shape and size. It makes a statement without having to faff about with icing and decoration.  This bundt also cut beautifully which made it great for sharing.

I also baked two apple and blackberry mini loaves using my new loaf cases. They completely spilled over during baking as I don't own smaller loaf tins and put them on a flat tray unsupported. Bad idea.

Please don't be put off by their unappealing appearance as they tasted lovely, especially fresh from the oven as the crumble topping was extra crunchy, although it went a bit soggy after a day. I really liked the addition of orange zest too. The recipe can be found on BBC Good Food.