Cooking England County by county: Cheshire: Souling Cakes

I rarely have time to blog these days but still like to when and if I can find the time. As it´s been awhile since , I made and blogged anything from the various English counties, I decided to make these Souling Cakes (also known as Soul Cakes) which are typical in Cheshire. 

Before making these ¨cakes¨ which are actually more like biscuits, I´d never heard of them before,much less tried them.Traditionally these cakes were made around Halloween or All Soul´s Day, hence the name of Soul or Souling Cakes. They were given to the poor, who went door to door singing and praying for the souls of the givers and their friends, especially the souls of deceased relatives that were thought to be in Purgatory. 

The biscuits are similar in texture and taste to pastry or shortbread with a hint of spice. I followed this recipe from Cheshire Regional Recipes  OAKDEN more or less to the letter and was pleased with the results. I´d defnitely make them again. Let me know if you try the recipe and whether you liked these biscuits.

Guide to the best cafés and bakeries in Ciudad Real, Castilla La Mancha- Part 1

Long time, no hear but I´m finally back,this time with a guide to the best cafés and bakeries in Ciudad Real. Although Ciudad Real is a fairly small city, it has its fair share of cafes and bakeries. I´m going to give you a tour of some of my favourites.

La Deliciosa,  located in the Plaza Mayor, or main square, is a cafe and cake shop rolled into one and is one of my favourite places to go for breakfast. I am definitely one of the ¨regulars¨ and even know my name and my order. 

I love the doorstep-sized toast here with butter and jam although they also offer a more Spanish style breakfast with baguette- style bread, olive oil and tomato. In my opinion, it´s also one of the few places where you can get a decent cup of tea (although in any cafe you go to in Ciudad Real, always ask for the milk to be separate, otherwise you get milk with tea rather than tea with milk!) They also serve delicious cakes although I often stick to the toast but can´t resist their Tarta de Santiago (almond cake), when they have it, nor their torrijas although these are not always available. 

La Deliciosa has two seating areas, inside the café and outside on the terrace, weather permitting. The only bad point about this cafe, is that it is often busy, especially at certain times, so finding a seat can sometimes be a bit tricky. 

Pasteleria Mas Cuqui is a fairly new bakery that has opened recently in Ciudad Real. It is a cosy, comfortable bakery and cafe ran by Venezuelans with fresh,homemade food, with one of their specialities being Venezuelan arepas with various fillings and other typical savoury Venezuelan treats such as pan de jamon(ham bread) & tequeños (cheese rolls). 

They sell a variety of cakes, both individual cakes or pieces and whole cakes, cupcakes, doughnuts, cinnamon rolls. They have certain cakes that are always on the menu but each day there are different cakes to try.

 Everything I have tried is delicious and is a reasonable price. Service is very friendly. I have tried Papelón con limon (a sweet lemonade drink) with a small Black Forest cherry cake,which was heavenly..I thoroughly recommend you to try this cake, a Nutella cupcake and an Oreo and passionfruit brigadeiros,which are similar to truffles. The passionfruit brigadeiro was to die for!

Cook & Learn About the World: Algeria: Twabaa: Algerian Lemon & Olive Oil Cookies

Since the lockdown started I´ve actually managed to get back my cooking and baking mojo and when I find time blog about it again!! I wanted to get back to my challenges and when I saw these biscuits thought they´d be ideal for the Algeria Cook and Learn about the World. Even better is that they don´t require any special or difficult to buy ingredients, unless you choose to use orange blossom water,which is not hard to find where I live, but as it´s optional you can also choose to leave it out although it might lend a slightly more authentic flavour.

Although they are essentially a biscuit or cookie, Algerian Lemon and Olive Oil Cookies are quite crumbly and more cake-like in texture. They are simple to make, the most difficult part being creating the hole as the dough tended to spring back. I basically followed the recipe from Tara´s Multicultural Table but omitted the orange blossom water. I also used a mild olive oil and next time I make these would try using extra virgin olive oil as I think it would give the biscuits more flavour. We really enjoyed these biscuits and I´d definitely make them again. Unfortunately,we didn´t do much learning about Algeria this time but if i´d love to hear about any activities that you do or find about Algeria.

Great British Bake Off Technical Challenges: Cherry Cake

 Lately, I haven´t had time for blogging nor for baking and cooking, as I´ve been really busy with other projects.

It´s also been a long time since the Bakers&Friends met up so after nearly one and a half years we finally got round to getting together to catch up over lunch and as is the norm, we all brought savoury and also some sweet snacks. I had some glace cherries that needed using, as I didn´t get round to making a Christmas cake last year, so decided to do a Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge and make  Mary Berry´s cherry cake. which I wanted to try. Also it was the first time I used my Bundt mould too!!

The bake is not a difficult one to do if you follow the recipe closely despite it being a technical challenge although without the recipe I´d probably be lost. I didn´t alter anything and the result is a lovely spongy cake. Although glace cherries are not my favourite, I really liked this cake and it was a hit with my Spanish Bakers & Friends so I´ll definitely be making it again although it can be quite hard to find glace cherries in Spanish supermarkets!!

Mad Hatter´s Teashop & Patisserie

Another of the foodie places on my bucket list of places to visit while on my recent trip to the UK was Mad Hatter´s Teashop & Patisserie, a lovely café & teashop which I discovered on Facebook.
I booked a table ahead to avoid disappointment,which was lucky as it is a fairly small café and is pretty popular.

Mad Hatter´s is known for it´s afternoon teas and cakes but they also do hot lunches...I think hotpot was on the menu when we went! They also specialise in baby showers and are even expanding and taking over the shop next door in order to be able to cater better for special events, such as baby showers. The cafe is tastefully decorated in soft,pink pastel shades with their yummy cakes displayed on the counters, which you can´t help but drool over!!

 We ordered a savoury and a sweet afternoon tea and there was also the choice of a Christmas afternoon tea. The savoury  afternoon tea consisted of sandwiches with various fillings, soup of the day...which that day was leek & potato, pork pie and quiche and a giant scone with fresh cream & jam. The sweet afternoon tea came with sandwiches with a variety of fillings...cheese & Branston pickle, ham & piccalilli, tuna mayonnaise & Coronation chicken. As I am a bit fussy and don´t like tuna, they didn´t have any problems with changing the tuna mayo sandwiches for extra coronation chicken ones. We also got a vanilla slice,a coffee renoir...I changed my coffee renoir for carrot cake,brownies and  giant scone. The afternoon teas are for a minimum of two people but I think there is enough for 4 people...we couldn´t manage all of it as we were too full so they packed what we couldn´t eat into boxes for us to take with us. Although a little on the expensive side, it was well worth it as everything was delicious and you get your money´s worth...as I said we couldn´t eat it all!! The service was also good and they were very friendly. It definitely didn´t disappoint and I totally reccommend it as a special treat. I´d love to go back again sometime.

Cooking England County by County: Buckinghamshire:Buckinghamshire Cherry Bumpers

I love anything with cherries or cherry flavoured from yoghurt to Cherry Coke and especially cherry desserts so when I came across this recipe I knew I had to make it! Even though cherries aren´t in season at the moment I had a big jar of pitted cherries just begging to be used!

Apparently these cherry bumpers are traditional at the end of the cherry picking season in August and are made "bumper" sized for the pickers!!Here is my version of Buckinghamshire Cherry Bumpers based on this version from the blog AllKitchenRecipes. I only made 3 due to their size!!They are delicious served warm with some cream or ice cream!!

Ingredients:
100g plain flour
1/8 tsp salt
50g butter
4- 4 1/2 tsp cold water
125-135g fresh cherries(pitted) or cherry pie filling
1/4-1/2 tsp brown sugar(depending on how sweet you like it)
To glaze: milk & caster sugar

Method:

1. Prepare shortcrust pastry by rubbing butter into flour and salt until it ressembles breadcrumbs, add cold water and mix till it all comes together in a dough.
2. Roll out the pastry till it is 5mm/1/4inch thick and cut rounds using a medium sized saucer.
3. Place cherries in one half of the round leaving a 1cm border and sprinkle brown sugar over the cherries.
4.Damp the border with water and fold over the rest of the pastry to form a pasty shape and then press a fork around the edges, then put a cross at the top of the bumper. Don´t overfill the cherry bumpers or the filling will ooze out.
5. Brush with milk and sprinkle caster sugar on top of the cherry bumper and place on a baking tray covered with baking parchement.
6. Bake in preheated oven at 180ºC for around 20minutes until golden brown.

Our verdict: Delicious!! Like I said I love anything cherry flavoured or with cherries.

My kids verdict: My daughter wouldn´t even try them unfortunately and my son who usually eats everything didn´t seem too keen either!

The Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge: Bakewell Tart

OMG, I started doing this blog post about 2 months ago at least and didn´t get any further with it!! Things have been really hectic what with birthday parties, ballet shows, parent´s visits etc, not to mention a 10 mnth old screaming baby that is spending more and more time awake and is not happy to be sat anywhere and is constantly disgruntled....hence making it difficult to do anything, let alone blog or even bake and/or cook!!! By the time, I finally get the kids off to bed I´m not so far behind myself as I am constantly knackered!!!

So going to keep this blog post really short but sweet...kind of like me,really....hehehe!!!As I love both Cherry Bakewells and Almond Slices, both of which you can find the recipes on my blog if you click on the links, and as I´ve never actually made a Bakewell Tart before, I decided to make it for this "month´s" Great British Bakeoff Technical Challenge. I wasn´t worried about this bake as I´ve already mentioned I´ve made both Cherry Bakewell tarts and Almond slices which are very similiar and in my opinion fairly easy bakes. I can imagine that they could be more difficult if you didn´t have a recipe to follow though. The hardest part is the shortcrust pastry as it got very sticky and broke quite a lot...I think the best tip I can give you here is to roll it out on top of clingfilm and then place another layer of clingfilm on top of the pastry so it´s between the rolling pin. However, this Mary Berry recipe(click on the link for the recipe) does not disappoint and it is worth the effort as it´s delicious...I´ll definitely be making this again!!As I made it quite awhile ago, I don´t remember if there were any other issues or difficulties in making this bake.

Cooking Spain Region by Region: Aragon: Rejanes:(Almond Sponge Cake)

 I´m finally back! It´s been awhile,   I´ve been meaning to make this cake for awhile now but I´ve been busy cooking and baking other things,plus I haven´t had much time for blogging. Another reason for my lack of blogging recently is that I have something baking...yes, that´s right...I´ve got my own little bun in the oven!!

I decided to make this cake as I like all the ingredients, although it doesn´t appear to be very well-known. I´ve adapted the recipe from a book from the library about " La cocina de Aragon" although I don´t remember the title very well. Although quite a plain sponge cake, it´s lovely, light and very spongy....I think it´s ideal to have at breakfast and dipping it in your Caola Cao or other chocolate drink..or failing that, to have with a nice cup of tea. It was a big hit with my husband & daughter too!The recipe was a little incomplete as it didn´t give the amount of flour needed, the size of tin needed nor the temperature of the oven so a little bit of guesswork was used but all in all I was quite pleased with how it turned out!

Ingredients:
150g  unsalted butter,at room temperature
150g sugar
8 eggs
150g ground almonds
2 tbsp baking powder
around 70g plain flour(this was where the guesswork came in)

Method:
1. Grease and flour a loaf tin (I think my loaf tin was a little small as it rose quite a bit out of the tin)
2.Separate the yolks and the whites of three eggs, then beat the egg whites till they have stiff peaks and put the yolks to  one side.
3. Mix the ground almonds,sugar and butter(chopped into small pieces) until well combined.
4.Add the 5 eggs and the 3 yolks and mix well, then add the sieved baking powder and flour to the mixture and stir until well combined.
5. Add the egg whites"meringue" and fold gently into the mixture and then pour into the loaf tin.
6. Place the cake in a preheated oven at 160º C(a little guesswork was required here too,I think I started off with the temperature at 170ºC and then lowered it to 160ºC...it got a little golden brown on the outside so I also ended up covering it with tinfoil) and bake for 30 minutes or until a cocktail stick comes out clean when inserted.
7. Leave to cool for 5-10 minutes before removing from cake tin and then leave to cool on a cake rack.

The Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge: Scones

Ready, get set.....BAKE! Yes, I´m back with another Great British Bake Off technical challenge! I have also recently seen that GBBO will be back soon for anothe Great British Comic Relief Bake Off and also that it won an award for Best Skills Challenge Award at the National Television Awards so it couldn´t be a more appropriate time for another technical challenge. As you can see, I am not baking the technical challenges in any kind of order but rather by what takes my fancy. Now, it´s high time to bake one of the steely-eyed judge´s challenges...yes, it could only be Paul Hollywood´s scones!

I am in a baking group and we often take turns to meet in one another´s houses and bring our bakes to share while we have a chat and this month it was my turn to host it. The perfect opportunity to try out this challenge and introduce them to another typical British delicacy! Perfect! What I didn´t realise before I made the scones is that they don´t keep very well and only last around 2 days (I kept mine in an airtight tin and covered them with clingfilm) as I made them the day before my vistors were due. However, I´d advise freezing them before cooking and then taking them out of the freezer to defrost as and when required.

I didn´t find the scone recipe to be so problematic as I followed the recipe to a tee. I mixed the ingredients together very gently as indicated in the recipe and tried to handle the dough as little as possible. One of my doubts was whether I needed to add all the milk as the recipe says you might not need all of it but I think the best thing to do is follow your instinct which is what I did, so because I thought the dough seemed wet enough I didn´t add all of the milk. Another doubt I had was about the cooking time as all ovens vary and I put the fan on, and I hardly ever use the fan when baking. The recipe says to bake for 15 mins but as I had the fan on I wasn´t sure if this meant it would take less time,which it did...it only seemed to take around 10 mins. However, when I opened a trial scone, when I pressed down on it,it seemed a bit doughy so back in the oven they all went for a few extra minutes.The worst thing was I couldn´t cut into anymore to check if they were done!

I was very pleased with how my first scones ever turned out with this recipe....they were light and fluffy....and very moreish! I served them with plenty of butter, raspberry jam and whipped cream and they went down a treat with my baking group! They would have been even better with clotted cream!!!

The Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge: Sachertorte

It´s been awhile since I did a Great British Bake Off technical challenge so it was about high time I did do one and with my husband´s Saint´s day and my birthday looming up, it was the perfect excuse to make this Sachertorte, particularly as my husband is somewhat of a chocoholic!

I have made a Sachertorte once before to a German recipe I´ve got so I wasn´t too fazed with this particular technical challenge as it is much easier than it actually appears. The thing I dreaded the most was piping the word Sacher across the cake as my piping skills are somewhat lacking to say the least!

Mary Berry´s Sachertorte recipe is easy to follow and results in a delicious and professional looking cake,which is lovely and moist.The cake is fairly straightforward to make. Things you have to watch out for is overmixing the flour,I think I did this but I´m not sure how as when I cut into the cake it had various air bubbles in the sponge which has never happened to me before with any cake.Also,the recipe tells you to whisk the egg whites till stiff but not dry so I was a little uncertain as to what this meant and whether I whipped the egg whites to the correct stiffness!

I practiced piping the word "Sacher" a couple of times onto greaseproof baking paper but a plastic wallet would be ideal too before finally piping it onto the cake when I was happy with it. As you can see, it´s not 100% perfect but I was quite pleased with the end result as it´s ain´t half bad for an amateur baker like myself!

Cooking Spain Region By Region: Aragon: Malenas: Aragon-style Magdelenas

"Rain, Rain,go away, Come again another day" as the children´s nursery rhyme goes but to tell you the truth I don´t actually mind the rain....too much! This weekend has been pretty overcast and rainy and it appears as if summer is coming to an end and autumn is approaching. However, I for one am glad that the summer heat is over. I like rainy days,spent indoors with your family,cuddling up together and watching TV with a blanket round you and drinking hot chocolate and tea. It also is much more appealing to bake especially if it´s raining...perfect baking weather!

 I wasn´t convinced as to whether I´d like this particular Aragon delicacy, Malenas or Aragon-style Magdelenas, as I´m not a big fan of two of the main ingredients, honey and orange blossom water but I decided to give them a go, only to be pleasantly surprised. They are very distinct-tasting buns with an exotic but tasty flavour and have a lovely, spongy texture.As they don´t contain sugar but are sweetened naturally through the honey, they are not oversweet and are probably a bit healthier too! They are also very simple and quick to make,however I have made them twice nice and have failed to achieve the peak that magdelenas usually have...not really sure as to why but peak or no peak they still taste good!

Malenas (Aragon-style magdelenas) Makes about 12
Ingredients:
150g plain flour
150g honey
75g unsalted butter
2 eggs
1 tbsp orange blossom water

Method:
1.Preheat the oven to around 180ºC and line a cupcake mould with paper cases.
2. Separate the egg whites from the egg yolks, then mix the egg yolks with the honey.
3. Add the butter and orange blossom water and mix till combined.
4. Add the flour gradually, mixing after each addition till all the lumps have gone and the batter is smooth.
5.Whisk the egg whites till they reach the stiff peak stage and then carefully fold it into the batter taking care not to knock the air out, till it looks spongy.
6.Spoon the batter into the cases filling them till they are just over the half full mark, lower the temperature to around 170-160ºC (I made these twice,first time I baked them around 160ºC and I think they turned out to be more spongy,the second time I tried baking them at a slightly higher temperature to try and get more of a peak but I think it overbaked them slightly as they seemed a little drier...the original recipe doesn´t give a temperature but says to bake them at a medium temperature)
7. I only baked them for between 15-20 minutes as I thought they were ready despite the fact that the recipe said 35 minutes...they should be a golden brown and a toothpick should come out clean when inserted.

One thing I have to warn you about is that they don´t stay spongy for very long and soon start to dry out so either eat them all the day you bake them or freeze half a batch to eat another day.

Super Simple & Quick Crunchies

 This recipe is great if you don´t have much in the cupboard or have unexpected guests and need to whip something up very quickly as it is so simple and quick to make. It is also ideal to make with older kids because it´s so easy to do. I don´t know the origin of Crunchies so I´m not sure if they are British or from elsewhere...however this particular recipe comes from Delia Smith´s book The Complete Cookery Course and what´s more it only has 3 main ingredients so is pretty economical too! You could always adapt the recipe too and add dried fruits, nuts or coconut...anything you want really.

Ingredients (makes about 12)
110 g porridge oats (or 50g whole or jumbo oats(very difficult to find!) and 60g porridge oats)
75g brown sugar (preferably demerara)
110g butter or margarine

Method
1. Preheat oven to 190ºC(375ºF), Gas Mark 5.
2. Grease a shallow square tin of roughly 28 x 18cm (I´m not sure my tin measures this but it did the job anyway!)I´d also reccommend that you use some baking paper as despite greasing the tin with baking spray, it did stick a little.
3.Place oats and sugar in a bowl and combine.
4.Melt the butter over a low heat so it doesn´t brown, then add to oats and sugar and combine well.
5. Tip mixture into baking tin and press it out evenly using your hands, the back of a spoon or a knife.
6. Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until a pale golden colour and remove from the oven.
7. Cut into 12 equally sized bars while still warm and then leave to cool and crisp.

Simple and Quick Garden Insect Cake

 I offered to make my friend´s daughter a birthday cake but didn´t want to make a cake that would take too long or be too complicated to make, especially the decorating part,seeing as I have relatively little time to bake.Also the lack of fondant etc played a fundamental part in my idea for this cake.

I chose to make Delia Smith´s All-in-One Sponge (this is more or less the recipe I used minus the butter icing), which I flavoured with lemon rind and juice and then filled the cake with raspberry jam and fresh whipped cream. I then made a Lime Velvet Frosting and had a slight disaster,which I managed to rectify and coloured it a mint green colour to represent the grass. I iced the cake with a spatula and tried to get it as smooth as possible. I blasted about 5 Oreo cookies in a food processor for a couple of seconds till they were crushed and looked like "soil". I then sprinkled the "soil" over half the cake,then placed some worm sweets in the soil and some chocolate ladybirds on the grass and there you have it,a very simple and quick birthday cake that looks pretty.

(Exceedingly good)Cherry Bakewell Tarts (just like Mr Kipling´s!)

Cherry Bakewell Tarts have always been one of my favourite childhood treats....we always used to buy Mr Kipling´s although my Gran made a mean Almond Slice,which was just as good. In fact, there is hardly any difference  between Almond Slices and Cherry Bakewell Tarts, only that one has icing and a glace cherry on the top and the other has flaked almonds. Ever since I made the Almond Slices, I´ve been dying to have a go at Cherry Bakewell Tarts and recapture my memories of lost childhood tastes.

I used the recipe from the blog The Caked Crusader (click on link for recipe) and would definitely reccommend it. As I have limited baking time (I made these while my daughter was sleeping!) I took a shortcut and bought frozen shortcrust pastry and although still delicious,I think these tarts would be even more exquisite with homemade pastry. I also used raspberry jam instead of strawberry and I think you could probably use any jam you fancy or have in your cupboards/fridge...I´d particularly like to use cherry jam to make them taste even more of cherry.I didn´t blind bake the pastry, only pricked it with a fork and there were no soggy bottoms!!! One thing I advise you is not to overfill the pastry case with jam as when they are baking, it causes it to just ooze out which as you can see has happened to one of my tarts in the photo in the top left hand corner (but at least you can more or less hide this with the glace icing!!!)

My third Christmas Cake

 Life with a toddler is certainly hectic-I hardly have time to cook or bake,let alone blog. I think I may be starting to sound like a broken record though!! I had to make this year´s Christmas Cake while my mum was visiting so she could look after Chloe while I got on with the cake. I decided to try out this Delia Smith Christmas Cake recipe this year, modifying it slightly as I couldn´t get any currants so added more of the other dried fruits plus apricots.


I thought I had dried the cake out a little but over the next couple of weeks until Christmas, it got a liberal soaking in brandy. I didn´t get round to decorating it until Christmas Eve,when we were at my parents´house and my mum could once again take care of Chloe, so I could finish off the cake! The day before Christmas Eve I marzipanned the cake using Dr. Oekter´s ready-to-roll marzipan-no time to make it from scratch just at the moment!- and apricot jam to stick it on.

                                                   
 After leaving it to dry overnight,the following day I made the royal icing and iced the cake, as smoothly as possible! I then cut out some fondant stars with the leftover fondant from my cupcake course and some biscuit cutters and stuck them on the top with a little bit of water.I then decorated the stars and the cake with silver balls. I also stuck a pretty Christmassy ribbon around the cake (I think I added the ribbon directly after icing the cake before adding the stars and silver balls). I think it´s my prettiest Christmas Cake yet and am pleased with the result. i just wish I had more time to practice and make more elaborately decorated cakes!
                                                     
As for the taste of the cake itself, it was a little dry at the ends (my fault or that of my oven!) but lovely and moist in the middle, fruity but not too heavy! I have to say that I think I enjoyed last year´s cake more so I´ll be sticking to that recipe in the future.

Best Ever Carrot Cake

Since starting back at work after the summer hols, I´ve hardly had time to cook,let alone bake or blog, particularly since Chloe is going through a rather clingy phase and it´s hard to get anything done. I made this carrot cake the week before I went back to work and haven´t got round to blogging it until now or baking much since!! So, without further ado and because time is of the essence, here is the recipe I used. It´s adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book and if I remember correctly I used half of the recipe to make a smaller cake(which is the recipe I´ll be giving you!) I had a lot to live up to as both my mum´s and my aunt´s carrot cake are delicious and they use different recipes to me....but this recipe was just as good as theirs!!!

Ingredients:
2 eggs,beaten
1 cup of plain flour
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 1/2 cups of finely grated carrot
1/3 cup of sunflower oil

For the cream cheese icing:
125g Philadelphia cream cheese or similar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup of butter at room temperature(softened)
2 1/2 -3 cups of icing sugar

Method:
1.Grease and flour a round cake tin of about 20cm and line with greaseproof paper.
2.Preheat oven to 180ºC.
3. Mix flour,sugar,baking powder,cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda together.
4. Mix eggs,carrots and oil together and then add to dry ingredients.
5.Pour cake batter into cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 mins or until a cocktail stick comes out clean.
6.While baking prepare the cream cheese icing. Beat cream cheese, butter and vanilla until light and fluffy. Then add icing sugar gradually mixing well after each addition until icing has spreadable consistency.
7. Leave the cake to cool for 10 mins.
8.When cool ice the top with the cream cheese icing as smoothly as possible.

There are various ways in which you could decorate this cake. You could sprinkle chopped up or whole pecans or walnuts on the top, grate some carrot on the top or even make some fondant or buttercream carrots(I´m going to have a go at this in the future!). I chose to do a simple circular line pattern using a fork as you can see in the top photo!

Apple & Pecan Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Glace Icing

I made this cake for my husband´s birthday even though it´s not a very birthdayish looking cake but he doesn´t really like buttercream or fondant and in this way, I can also practice my cake decorating skills with chocolate!

This cake is moist and not overly sweet so is great for those who haven´t got much of a sweet tooth. The recipe is taken from the book: Best Ever Chocolate Cakes & Slices by Konemann....however it´s not very 100 Mile!!Here´s the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup self-raising flour, sifted
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder,sifted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup oil (I used sunflower oil)
2 green apples, peeled and grated
1/3 cup of pecans,chopped

Method:
1.Preheat oven to 180ºC. Grease and line a 21x14x7cm loaf tin with baking parchment.
2. Mix flour, cocoa and sugar together, then add the combined eggs and oil and beat until ingredients are well mixed and there are no lumps and mixture has increased in volume.
3. Fold in pecans and grated apple.
4. Spoon into tin and bake for 45 mins or until toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

When cool, you can decorate the cake as desired. Instead of the decoration suggested in the recipe, I made a simple chocolate glace icing, using icing sugar, cocoa and water,which I made by guesstimation and iced the top of the cake with, then I decorated the cake with pecan nuts and Dr. Oetker´s Chocolate Hearts, which can be found in LeClerc.

Ladybird cake for my daughter´s first birthday & Annabel Karmel´s white and dark chocolate cupcakes

 I can´t believe my daughter has finally turned one!! The year has flown by and it´s been a busy but enriching one full of joy and happiness. My little baby is no longer a baby,now she´s a little girl! They grow up far too quickly in my opinion.

I was busy preparing her first birthday party,preparing and decorating the Annabel Karmel White & Dark Chocolate cupcakes and making and decorating her first birthday cake, a ladybird cake plus preparing two salads and other party food. Luckily, I had my parents´,my inlaws and my husband´s help but parties are definitely hard work....maybe next year we´ll have the party in a ball pool place so all I have to do is stick to making the cake!!!It also means that I´d actually get to spend more time with my daughter on her actual birthday!

I made the cupcakes on the Friday two days before the party and froze them,then took them out to defrost early on the morning of the party. I made the white chocolate buttercream and decorated them with red heart sprinkles and yellow and white star sprinkles.

The ladybird cake was a Hot Milk Sponge cake made the day before the party. I found this link about a ladybird cake, which helped me a lot. I covered the cake with red and black fondant and cut black fondant circles out for the ladybird´s spots using a bottletop (a great tip from the link I found)! Who says you need fancy equipment to decorate cakes? The leftover white fondant I had was rock hard but as I had a bit of white chocolate buttercream left I used that for the whites of the ladybird´s eyes but unfortunately it wasn´t quite as neat and round as I´d have liked and two more black fondant circles for the pupils. I was going to use pipe cleaners for the antennae but couldn´t find any so used the bendy part of two straws instead. I covered them in black fondant and then made two small balls for the feelers of the antennae. I was pretty pleased with the end result!

Lemon Curd Butterfly Cakes

I made these butterfly cakes a couple of weeks ago using my Quick & Easy Lemon Curd but have only just got round to blogging about them now. These are light and fluffy sponge cakes filled with tangy lemon curd, taken from Delia Smith´s Complete Cookery Course...Here´s a recipe for Delia´s butterfly cakes similar to the one I used, only the lemon curd is replaced with orange curd and just substitute the orange rind and orange juice in the recipe link for lemon rind & juice.

Butterfly cakes take me back to my childhood. I loved them and my Gran used to make them frequently but filled them the traditional way with jam and cream. Hmmmmmhhhh, delicious! They are so delicate and pretty too- they definitely suit their name!

Easter Biscuits 1

Blogging these days is having to take a bit of a back seat as I don´t seem to find the time to do it, much less visit other blogs! Take these Easter biscuits for instance, I made them about a week before Easter but I´m only just getting round to blogging about them now!! They were a recipe again taken from Hannah Miles' Big Book of Cakes & Cookies and contain sultanas and marzipan. As I didn´t have enough icing sugar to make royal icing, I coloured some fondant yellow and decorated the biscuits with that and some silver balls. As you can see, this is only a quick post...I´m hoping to blog about some butterfly cakes I made recently asap!!!