Apple and sultana cake

This is from a Mary Berry recipe for Australian apple and raisin cake, but I replaced the raisins with sultanas. It fairly easy to make and contains no eggs, so good for those with allergies to them. I think it could also be easily adapted to be vegan if you replace the butter with a vegan friendly margarine spread.

Ingredients
1 large cooking apple
100g butter/margarine
100g light muscovado sugar
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
175g self raising flour
1 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
75g sultanas
Icing sugar for the top

Method
- Preheat the oven to 160 °C. Line the bottom of a loose bottomed 7" cake tin with baking sheet. Peel and core the apple before chopping it into chunks. Place in a pan with a little water and gently heat until the apple becomes tender. Break up the apple with a spoon, leaving some lumps and leave to cool.
- In a separate bowl mix the butter and the sugar together. Mix the bicarbonate of soda into the cooled apple before stirring into the butter and sugar mixture.
- Weight out the flour cocoa powder, nutmeg and cinnamon. Fold these dry ingredients and the sultanas into the wet mix. Pour into the cake tin and level the top. Place in the oven for 50-60 minutes.
-Allow to cool in the tin for 10-15 minutes before turning out and leaving to cool completely. Sprinkle the top with icing sugar.

This is a nice light cake. Next time I would add a little more cinnamon. The photo of the cake in the book looks much darker than mine so I wondered if their was an error and the cocoa powder should have been a tablespoon. I may try that if I make it again.

Thanks for reading x

30th birthday cake

It was my sisters 30th birthday last year and for this milestone I thought a cute toddler photo on a cake would be ideal. There are a few different online stores doing these edible photos. I went with eatyourphoto.co.uk. The transaction was smooth with no problems, it came with instructions and the photo looked great. 

I was having major sweats over getting the edible photo off of the backing paper. The instructions that came with it suggested placing the picture briefly in the freezer if you have trouble. This made it so much easier and I wish I would have done this straight away it would have saved my initial stressing. 

The cake was a 10 inch madeira cake which I detailed how to make here. 

To make the fondant 30 I brought a set called 'Funky Alphabet & Number Tappits Upper Case' from amazon. I found it quite difficult to get the icing out intact which is why I decided to do just the numbers this time around. I had intended to write happy birthday. I am going to need a bit more practice with this set.

The chocolate champagne bottles were from "a quarter of" online sweetshop. The sparkly 30 is from hobby craft.

Thanks for reading x

Birthday Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes last year for my youngest nieces first birthday and thought I would share. 

Firstly I made the vanilla cupcakes

Ingredients (12 cupcakes)
175g self raising flour
125g softened butter
175g caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbs milk

Method
-Preheat the oven to 170 °C and place cupcake cases on a baking tray.
-Use an electric mixer to beat together the butter and the sugar until it is pale, light and fluffy.
- Gradually add the eggs a little at a time followed by the vanilla.
-Sift the flour into a bowl and gradually add to the mixture folding in gently with a metal spoon. Add a little of the milk after each addition of flour.
-Using a spoon or ice-cream scoop divide the mix between the 12 cupcake cases. Place in the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden on top and a skewer placed into the middle of the cupcake comes out clean. Let them cool completely on a wire rack or plate before decorating.

So here are the decorated cakes:

I should have made the white icing sugar mix a bit thicker as you can see the cake through the icing, but apart from that I really like how these came out. For Peppa pig and the flowers I used ready made Renshaw icings from hobby craft in pale blue, pink, red and white.

I went a bit crazy with the little flowers as I brought a new set from hobby craft called flower blossom plunger cutters to make them. Simply roll the icing out, press in the cutter to make the shape and press out the flower by pressing the plunger. You can make these flowers in advance as they are easier to handle once they dry a little and get harder. You can then add a ball of icing to the middle if you want, to make the centre of the flower.

The Peppa pigs were fairly simple to make but time consuming. I simply traced the shapes I wanted onto baking paper and then used them as templates to cut them out in the icing. I placed them on the cake using a small amount of water as "glue". Be careful not to use too much water. I used a pink decorating gel by wilton to outline Peppa and draw on her mouth, nose and cheek. I used a jet black food pen to do the eyes.

I also did some other simpler cupcakes. This was my first time swirling icing, I think I need some practise.

Thanks for reading x

Giant cupcake tutorial

I am not sure about calling this a tutorial as this my first attempt at a giant cupcake, but I thought I would share this anyway. I got a lot of inspiration and advice from the mycupcakeaddiction channel on youtube so please check them out here.

Firstly I made a chocolate cupcake mix for 24 cupcakes, I won't detail it here unless anyone wants to request it. Any cupcake recipe will work for this cake. I brought my giant silicone cupcake mould from hobbycraft. I think you can also buy similar moulds on ebay or many other sites. You can also buy giant cupcake tins where the bottom and top are connected together. I prefer the separate containers as I found the bottom mould required a good 10 minutes extra cooking time.

Preheat your oven to 175 °C. Spray your cupcake moulds with cooking spray or grease with butter. Take your mix and fill each mould about 2/3 of the way up. Pop in the oven for 40-50 minutes. I removed the top mould after 40 minutes and removed the bottom mould 10 minutes later. Check the cake is cooked all the way through by placing a skewer into the middle of the cake and making sure it comes out clean. I left them to cool for 30 minutes before carefully removing them from the moulds and placing them on a wire rack to finish cooling.

Next up I made a chocolate cupcake case for my cake, I got this idea from a mycupcakeaddiction video. I placed one melted 200g bar of bournville chocolate into my cleaned bottom mould and then used a spatula to coat the entire surface before placing the mould in the fridge. You can repeat the process again with more chocolate to make your chocolate case stronger and thicker but I found one layer was enough. I then carefully removed the case by slowly peeling the silicone mould downwards so you eventually turn it inside out. Once out you can sit it back in the mould while you assemble the cake and decorate, (it's easier to remove the second time).

Prepare some butter icing.

Butter icing ingredients

125g butter
400g icing sugar
3 tbs milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the butter up with an electric mixer until it became pale and smooth then add the milk and vanilla before gradually adding the icing sugar while continuing to mix.

Once the cakes are completely cooled I used a bread knife to level the tops of the two sections so they are flat and the top of the giant cake can sit flat on the bottom section. I also removed approximately 1/2 cm all around the sides of the bottom cake. This allows the cake to fit into your chocolate cupcake case. I then cut the bottom cupcake into two in order to place a filling in the middle. I used a spatula to fill the chocolate cupcake case with butter icing and placed my first piece of cake into the case. I then used the spatula to add a thin layer of buttercream followed by some raspberries. I think cherries or strawberries would also work well with this cake. I then added the next piece of cake followed by the top piece of the cupcake. Then added a thin, even layer of butter cream all over the top of the cake.

The only thing left now is to decorate. I thought I would go with a simple swirly decoration using butter icing. I used a wilton 1M decorating tip.




After adding the buttercream I carefully removed the mould and viola one giant cupcake.

I thought it looked nice as it was but I tried adding some blue sprinkles and a wafer daisy which is pictured below.




For a first attempt at a giant cupcake I don't think it's too bad, the icing is a little messy but overall I am pleased. I hope my description made some sense! Do you like baking? What are your favourites?

Thanks for reading x

Bakewell tart

One of my favourite sweet treats is a bakewell tart, especially the little Mr Kiplings ones. I thought it would be fun to give my own a try. 

This actually didn't turn out how I wanted it too, but I still thought it was worth sharing. I followed a Mary Berry recipe which can be found here. 

A think the main problem was that I used a slightly bigger tart tin than specified, a lesson to always carefully read and follow the recipe! Because I used a bigger tin I over cooked the pastry and it became a bit hard. 

I think another mistake was being a bit too over generous with the jam. Sometimes less is more. 

A positive I can take from this recipe was the almond filling. It was absolutely lovely. 

As you can see the jam split through the middle a little.

The final iced bake well tart. 

Thanks for reading x

Christmas cake

I made this fruit cake last year for christmas. I took as my basis a classic Mary Berry recipe found here, but made a few small changes. You can make this a couple of months in advance of christmas and then add alcohol like brandy (or orange juice if you want to avoid alcohol) to the cake weekly until you are ready to decorate it.

Ingredients

200g Glace cherries
300g Raisins
350g Sultanas
150g Currants
70g dried mixed berries
200ml brandy
Zest of 2 oranges
250g Butter
250g Light muscovado sugar
4 eggs
1 tbs treacle
100g chopped almonds
75g self raising flour
175g plain flour
100g ground almonds
2 tsp mixed spice

Method

1. Place the dried fruit in a bowl with the orange zest and pour over the brandy. Cover and leave to soak for up to 3 days stirring each day. 
2. Preheat the oven to 140ºC/Fan 120ºC/Gas Mark 1.
3. Grease and double line a 23cm (9in) round cake tin. Cover the outside of the tin with brown paper to prevent the outside from burning.* 
4. Weigh out the butter, sugar, eggs, treacle and almonds into a bowl and beat with a hand mixer (or by hand). Mix in the flour, ground almonds and mixed spice followed by the pre-soaked fruit. Pour the mix into the prepared tin.
5. Bake in the middle of the preheated oven for 3½-4 hours. Check your cake after 2 hours and if it's already well browned cover with foil. The cake should feel firm and be browned on top.  The cake is ready when a skewer or knife placed into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool.
6. Once the cake can be handled, remove it from the tin and make holes all over the cake with a skewer. Pour brandy all over the cake (approx. 3-4 tablespoons). Wrap well and store in an airtight tin. 
7. Add extra brandy approx. 2-3 tablespoons each week until you are ready to decorate. 

*I didn't do this and the outside of cake got a little over done. There is a helpful tutorial on protecting your cake in Delia Smith's christmas cake recipe here. 

Now on to my favourite part which is decorating the cake. First up I needed to add the marzipan layer. In order to get a flat top to the cake I used a method demonstrated by Dan Lepard on the BBC website which can be found here. Instead of just placing the marzipan over the cake like you would icing, he does the top first followed by the edge. There are detailed instructions in the link and it will probably make more sense to watch Dan Lepard's video but to briefly summarise:

• Roll out the marzipan to approx. 1cm thick and larger than your cake. Brush the top of the cake with some melted jam. Place the cake upside down on the marzipan and gently push down. 
• Cut the excess marzipan leaving a 2cm border around the cake and use a palette knife to press the marzipan into the edge of the cake. It should look like the first photo below
• Brush the edge of the cake with melted jam. Add a strip of marzipan around the cake.

After I was happy with the marzipan I added the fondant icing.

Once I had completed the icing I began my favourite part which is creating the fondant decorations for the top. I used snowflake plunger cutters, which you can get on eBay or similar sites. I made the penguins with the left over white icing and Renshaw ready coloured icings in black, red and yellow. To secure the decorations to the cake I used a very small amount of water as 'glue'. Once dry the decorations should be stuck securely.

The final completed cake. 

Thanks for reading x

Lemon meringue pie

Here's my first try at a lemon meringue pie. We had some lemon curd that needed to be used up so this seemed ideal.

Thanks for reading x