Passionfruit cream biscuits.

Last week I found this pressed glass pedestal cake stand in the charity shop. With its fluted edge and yellow rose pattern, it was begging for a fresh, sunshine bake. As it is quite a small cake stand, I decided it had to be biscuits.

Some may be horrified that I've never worked with passionfruit before. I've had drinks and eaten cake containing passionfruit, but I've never physically handled one! Clearly I lead a sheltered existence.

I love how all the flavours come through in the biscuit: zingy lemon zest and passionfruit pulp, sweet golden syrup and rich butter. The passionfruit seeds add a bit of crunch too, which I always enjoy in a biscuit. Then there's the passionfruit buttercream which can only be described as sweet sunshine. I may have eaten four of these in one sitting....

Bake these zingy biscuits if you're feeling miserable or fed up with the cold winter weather. They will make you happy :)

Passionfruit cream biscuits

Recipe from Lakeland Cupcakes and Cookies

125g butter, softened

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon rind

75g caster sugar

2 tablespoons golden syrup

150g self-raising flour

100g plain flour

60ml passionfruit pulp

2 tablespoons passionfruit pulp

90g butter, softened

160g icing sugar

Beat the butter, lemon rind and sugar in a bowl with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add golden syrup and beat together. Stir in the flours and passionfruit pulp. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead until smooth. Cut dough in half; roll each portion between sheets of baking parchment to 5mm thickness. Refrigerate 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 160C/140C fan/Gas 3. Grease oven trays and line with baking parchment. Cut 25 4cm fluted rounds from each portion of dough and place about 2.5cm apart on trays. Bake for about 10 minutes in the oven until light golden (mine took about 15 minutes). Cool on the trays.

For the buttercream, strain the passionfruit pulp through a sieve into a small jug and discard the seeds. Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the passionfruit juice. Spoon the buttercream into a piping bag fitted with 5mm fluted nozzle (I used a wilton 1M). Pipe the cream onto half the biscuits and then place the other biscuits on top.

Note: You will need about 6 passionfruits in total.

I think I made 30 in total as opposed to 25 which meant I didn't quite have enough icing so I made an extra quarter of the icing quantity.

Lemon, almond and poppy seed bundt

After the indulgence of Christmas and New Year, I thought I'd bake my cousin a fresh, citrussy bake for her birthday. It also meant I got to try out the pretty bundt tin and a recipe from the Peggy Porschen book I received for Christmas.

The cake came out the tin beautifully although I almost spoiled the sculptural shape with my icing which was on the thick side. I'm going to blame the fact I've never melted fondant icing before and wasn't entirely sure about the consistency. However most of it smoothed over with a palette knife dipped in boiled water. While everybody marvelled at the fanciness of the cake's shape I admired my aunty's blue and white china.

The poppy seeds looked really pretty inside the cake and added a bit of texture. I also liked the super sweetness of the fondant glaze against the almondy, lemon flavour of the cake. Something a bit different to the traditional lemon drizzle.

Despite my lumpy icing, this was a relatively straightforward cake to make. The most effort involved was thoroughly greasing and flouring the bundt tin. I googled to see if anyone else had baked this cake to save me typing out the recipe (lazy? Most definitely!) and someone has! Here's the link.

I almost want to cry with envy at the baking, styling and photography in Peggy's book Boutique Baking. It's just so beautifully laid out. Even if I never baked from it, it's a beautiful book to own.

Did anyone else get any good baking books for Christmas? I got four in total and I'm still decided which recipe to try next. Possibly some biscuits....

Wall-e birthday cake

It was my eldest nephew's 5th birthday last Sunday and his mum and I decided to make a Wall-e cake to celebrate.

Not just any old Wall-e cake...... but one with a massive rainbow inside!

This cake was massive and took some strategic planning. 11 eggs were used in total and over 1kg of fondant icing! It's the largest cake I've ever created.

The cake was a bit wonky and my fondant icing technique leaves a lot to be desired, but Wall-e is meant to look a bit battered so I got away with my rustic approach! It was also late by the time I painted on the decoration (using liquid food colouring) so it could have been a lot neater, but the main thing is that the cake had character and charm. And it tasted GOOD!

Rainbow cake

x2 7" square sandwich tins
x3 Victoria sponge mixtures (equal weight margarine, caster sugar, self-raising flour and eggs) I used 3 large eggs per batch. 
6 food gel colours (good quality)
Double batch vanilla buttercream
strawberry jam
1kg fondant icing

Bake one batch of victoria sponge at a time, gently stirring in the gel colouring before pouring the batter into the tins. I would recommend buying good quality gel colours as I bought own brand supermarket ones which weren't vibrant enough and I had to add extra liquid food colouring. Bake each batch for approx. 25 minutes in a preheated oven at 180C/Gas 4. 

If making a Wall-e, make an extra single sponge to cut in half and stack for his eyes.

Once all the sponges are baked and cooled, trim each layer level. Sandwich together and stack with a double batch of Hummingbird Bakery vanilla buttercream and strawberry jam. I had just enough buttercream to cover the outside as a crumb coat too.

For the icing, roll out a long strip of fondant icing the depth of the cake to stick round the sides and then cut out a square to stick on top. Annoyingly I had to open an extra block of icing to cover Wall-e's eyes so definitely buy two blocks of fondant if you're making a Wall-e.

Things I've made

I know Christmas has passed and I shouldn't mention it again until at least November this year, but I wanted to share a few of the non baked gifts I made for Christmas last year.

Fleecy hot water bottle covers are cosy and easy gifts to sew and can be jazzed up with a bit of applique, embroidery or fancy trims. For my friend Sarah I went with a bit of simple embroidery. Yay for embroidered dinosaurs!

After all my crocheting I managed to make 5 festive garlands! I'll have to make one for myself this year as I was so pleased with them. Both patterns came from the Royal Sisters blog.

Impressively and pathetically I managed to injure myself due to all my festive crocheting. After 3 weeks of really stiff finger joints and a shooting pain up my arm I went to the doctors to be told I have golfer's arm. Careful children, crocheting is dangerous.

Beware of the crochet Christmas trees.

I also made quilts for my nephews but I don't have any photos. I bought fleece blankets of Peppa Pig and Wall-e and quilted plain fleece blankets on to the back with wadding in between. They worked a treat.

Did anyone else make any Christmas presents last year? I'm not going to ask whether anyone else injured themselves crocheting, I must be the only idiot who managed that!

The forgotten cakes of 2012

It's not often that bakes slip through the net as I like my blog to run relatively on time. I know it's not life threatening if I post something late and it slides into another month, but for some reason it irks me.

My first forgotten bake is a chocolate cake I made as a test run for my sister-in-law's birthday cake.

As it was a tester I halved the recipe and baked the mixture in two 18cm round tins. I think I also used two medium eggs instead of 1.5 large eggs. If you like the Primrose Bakery recipe but don't fancy such a massive cake then this worked really well.

Also almost forgotten is a lemon and blueberry drizzle cake which I took to my brother's. Shoddy picture quality courtesy of my mobile phone.

 

I can't remember which recipe I used, but I remember feeling disappointed that all the blueberries sank to the bottom.

Lastly, not a cake, but a pie! If I don't post this lemon meringue pie from New Year's Eve dinner then it may get forgotten.

I love the contrast of sharp lemon and sweet meringue. It's a wonder I haven't made a lemon meringue pie before (probably because I have an inexplicable fear of making meringues!) The only complaint I had with this Delia recipe was that there was a lot of juice sitting in the bottom of the dish which turned the pastry a bit soggy after a while.

So how's 2013 treating everybody so far? To be honest I'm glad to see the back of 2012. I'm not a resolution maker but have decided to set a few projects in motion to make 2013 more interesting. What are your resolutions for this year, if any?