You're on your way out mister

ew.

When your bananas start to look like beaten up giraffes there is no way you're going to eat them, no matter how many times your mum tells you that they're sweeter like this. Instead of throwing them out it's definitely time to put your apron on and make a really moist and lovely banana cake. This recipe doesn't have any butter in so it's got way less fat than other ones, if you want to make it even better for you then skip on the frosting - it's such a moist cake it doesn't really need it (BUT the frosting is really good so I advise you to just go for it).

St Lucia Banana Cake

• 350g self-raising flour
• 2 teaspoons mixed spice
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon 
• 175g light muscovado sugar/soft light brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 200ml sunflower oil
• 2 large or 3 smaller sad-looking bananas (properly mashed up with a fork)
• 100g crushed pineapple (or chop up some pineapple chunks into teenier bits)
• Zest and juice of 1 orange
• 100g walnuts roughly chopped/bashed around a bit

Pre-heat your oven to 170c (fan oven) and grease up two 20cm cake tins. Sift all your flour, spices and sugar together and then, in a separate bowl, whisk your eggs and oil until they're nicely mixed up. Tip the eggy mixture into your floury mixture and chuck in the rest of your ingredients and stir really really well. Split evenly between the two tins and bake for 45 minutes until they're firm and spring back when your prod them.  Let them cool completely because otherwise the frosting will just slide off.

I make so much mess when I'm baking

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 400g medium fat cream cheese (this is about two normal sized packs, don't use the extra-light stuff because you're frosting will go really liquidy)
• 200g icing sugar
• handful of banana chips (you don't need these but they're delicious and look quite good)

Sieve your icing sugar to avoid lumps then mix it really well with the cream cheese, shove it in the fridge to set a little. Once your cake is completely cool divide the frosting between the two cakes, then put the best looking one on top of the other one and sprinkle with banana chips - done! 

went down a treat with my gorgeous girlies 

Slice of nice

Wee bit well-done on the sides

(Trying out instagram here) These badboys are lemon squares and they're pretty good. I cut little hearts out of paper and placed them on top of the squares before I dusted with icing sugar, then I realised that the icing sugar just dissolves so don't bother! Here's the recipe:

Layer One

• 185g plain flour
• 60g icing sugar
• 180g unsalted butter (chopped into really little chunks)

Pre-heat oven to 150c (fan oven). Mix up all the ingredients and rub with your fingers until you've got bread crumbs, lightly press the crumbs into a greased-up square tin (preferably 20-30cm but you can work with what you've got of course!) and bake for 25 minutes. 

Layer Two

• 6 eggs beaten 
• 460g caster sugar
• 2 teaspoons of grated lemon zest
• 250ml lemon juice (fresh or that bottled stuff, it doesn't really matter)
• 65g plain flour

Whisk the eggs and sugar until pale and thick (this will take like 3-4 minutes if you have an electric whisk, and about a million years if you're old school and are doing it by hand). Whisk in the lemon zest and the juice, then tip in the flour and mix it all up, pour this mixture over layer one then bake in the oven for 25 minutes. After this get some tinfoil and cover the whole thing and bake for another 20 minutes - your kitchen will be smelling so good right now. When it's done let it cool before you get the whole thing out the tin, then you can slice them up and enjoy!

Ganache is good

These are just basic vanilla cupcakes (the recipe is in an earlier post here) but with a silky smooth dark chocolate ganache on top, plus they're in leopard print cases - FAB.

Dark Chocolate Ganache

• 200g dark chocolate broken up into chunks 
• 300ml double cream 

Yep that's it! All you do is heat the milk in a pan until it's boiling - keep mixing because it'll burn on the bottom of the pan. Once the milk has just started to boil tip it over the chocolate (in a separate bowl) and mix until all the chocolate has melted, then stick it in the fridge for a few hours until it's set a little - I usually use the freezer because I am really impatient. Squash into a piping bag and pipe it over your cupcakes, decorate with whatever, I used little white chocolate stars but I think a raspberry stuck on top would look (and taste) really good.

Super complicated honey-almond squares

Not going to lie, these took quite a bit of patience (which I do not have). The three layers have to be done separately but they were SO GOOD that I only got to try one out of the 16 that I made, they do not stay in the biscuit tin for long. Here's the recipe, they are definitely worth the trouble:

Layer One

• 215g plain flour
• 150g butter (chopped into really little chunks)
• 90g icing sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla extract

Pre-heat oven to 170c (fan oven). Add the flour, butter and icing sugar into a bowl and rub the mixture into breadcrumbs (like you're making the topping to a crumble), then add the egg and vanilla to turn it into a dough. Don't over mix it because it will go tough, lightly press the dough evenly over the base of a greased-up square tin (preferably a 20x30cm one but you can just work with the resources you have!). Bake this for around 10-12 mins and let it cool slightly. 

Layer Two

• 125g butter
• 125g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 30g plain flour
• 155g ground almonds 

Mix the butter and the sugar until it's really light (probably best to use an electric mixer but it doesn't really matter), then add the eggs one at a time, keep mixing while you do this. Tip in the flour and the ground almonds and fold it all up, then spread this gooey mixture over layer one. Bake this for a bit longer, 16-18 mins should do it - it will be quite firm when you prod it if it's done.

Layer Three

• 90g butter (chopped up)
• 80g caster sugar
• 2  tablespoons of honey
• 125g flaked almonds

This is the really fun bit. Shove all the ingredients into a pan and stir them all up over a low heat until everything melts and the sugar has dissolved. Turn up the heat and boil the your sugary-almondy goodness until the mixture starts to go stiffer and come away from the side of the pan (this will take about 3-5 minutes, but you'll know what I mean when you see it). Tip this mixture over the top of layer two and spread it evenly with a palette knife - careful this is really hot and will burn so bad if you touch it. Now bake your creation for a further 10 minutes, leave it to cool then cut it into squares (small ones, they're quite sweet!).

Birthday cake

My girlie Ailsa and I made our little sconehead of a friend Emily a cake for her 18th birthday. It was going to be a pretty average cake but I guess we both got carried away and went a bit mad from all the sugar we were consuming (think we polished off half a pack of marzipan between us). We tried to make a mini Emily but we didn't know that when you add food colouring to marzipan it starts to go really sloppy, so after a while the marzipan Emily started to melt and she looked abit like Jabba the Hut, AHH WELL. (Also, the grass is desiccated coconut and green food colouring, clever huh?)

Ailsa, my little maths geek, loved making her marzipan frogs

Lil fishies and lil froggies

Felt like proud parents 

Feel the burn

These are really fiery ginger biscuits with an even spicier ginger butter cream gluing them together. I lurrrve ginger but if you want them to taste a bit milder just add the ginger teeny bit by teeny bit tasting along the way (sorry if I'm being way too precise). I think these would work really well with cinnamon instead of the ginger, must remember to try them out.

Fiery Ginger Biscuits

• 50g butter 
• 50g soft light brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons of honey or golden syrup  
• 175g self-raising flour
• LOADS AND LOADS OF GINGER ( I can't remember how much, I just chucked it in)

Pre-heat oven to 170c (fan oven). Melt the butter, sugar and honey together until the sugar has dissolved, then mix in the flour and ginger. Stir it up into a dough then roll into balls and pop them on a greased-up baking tray. They don't really spread out so they can be quite close together, squash them down a little bit with a fork or spatula or something and then bake for around 10-12minutes. Let them cool before you add the:

Spicy Ginger Butter Cream

• 50g butter (soften it up)
• 140g icing sugar
• Splash of milk
• A LOAD MORE GINGER

Mix it all up and dollop some on one biscuit (on the side that was face down in the oven) and squash another biscuit on top. Try to resist eating them now and leave them for a bit, they're so much better when they've set and even better with a cup of tea.

Messy cupcakes are well cuter

I love making cupcakes because it means I get to use my 24 nozzle piping kit (ta mum). However, mine NEVER EVER EVER look all perfect and neat so I've stopped trying and just let them be a lil bit wonky. I made these for a friend's birthday (baked goodies make such a good present when you're broke), plus it was my first attempt at brown sugar Italian butter cream which was delish. I made three different types - the pink ones are raspberry, white ones are pink grapefruit and the ones with the chocolate chips are vanilla. I just used my basic cupcake recipe, separated into three bowls and added the different stuff.

Basic Cupcakes

• 175g of butter (soften it up in the microwave a wee bit)
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 eggs (beaten)
• 175g self-raising flour
• 1 pinch of baking powder

Pre-heat your oven to 170c (this is for a fan oven, reduce it by 10-20c for a normal oven). Mix up your butter and sugar until super creamy (this is your trick for light cakes, the longer you whip it the lighter your cakes will be), add in the rest of the ingredients, spoon into paper cases and bake for 15 minutes(ish).

For the raspberry ones I chucked some raspberries into the batter, for the grapefruit ones I squeezed half a pink grapefruit and grated some of the rind into the batter and for the vanilla ones I added a teaspoon of vanilla extract and a handful of chocolate chips (then ate a handful to myself obviously).

Ok, now for the topping. I seem to make butter cream up as I go along but here is the basic outline:

Basic Butter Cream

• 50g butter (again - soften it up)
• 140g icing sugar
• Nice splash of milk

Mix it all up and you're done! For the raspberry and the pink grapefruit butter cream I didn't add any milk, I just added the fruit/fruit juice, you may need some more icing sugar for the raspberry one as it goes quite liquid, also add your raspberries a couple at a time to avoid it turning into sugary pink water! For the brown sugar Italian butter cream I got some help from Martha Stewart here , it's really good and way easier than it looks.

Ta da, all boxed up with a little diagram of the flavours

You're brand new!

I need a way to keep track of all the stuff I seem to be whipping up in the kitchen (I shouldn't really have the time seeing as I'm supposed to be doing my A Levels but I am Queen of Procrastination), so here is my extremely amateur food blog. And just to show you what a hardcore foodie I am, I thought I'd post of picture of what we had for dinner one night when me and a few other girlies went to beautiful Paris...