Another birthday cake

It was our friend Jake's 18th so Ailsa and I decided  to do another joint effort with the birthday cake. We created the 'Toasted Marshmallow, Raspberry and Chocolate Cake'. It was a little bit made-up but I think it worked out quite well in the end!

Toasted Marshmallow, Raspberry and Chocolate Cake

• 125g butter (soften it up abit)
• 125g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 175g self-raising flour
• 2 and a bit heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder 
• A punnet of raspberries 
• Bag of mini marshmallows (save some for the top)

Pre-heat the oven to 170c (fan) and grease up two smallish cake tins. Mix the butter and sugar together until really light and creamy then add the eggs, flour and cocoa powder and mix well. Fold in the marshmallows and raspberries, break up the raspberries a teeny bit with the spoon but don't mash them because you want to keep them in pretty big chunks. Spoon into the two tins (we used quite small ones but if you only have a big one just put all the mixture in one and bake for a bit longer) and pop them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes. They might not look completely firm when they're done but that's only because of all the marshmallows and raspberries, they'll set once they've cooled down.

Chocolate Butter Cream

• 60g butter (soften it up)
• 150g icing sugar 
• Enough cocoa powder to make it a nice chocolaty colour 
• A glug of milk
• Raspberries, marshmallows and malteasers to decorate 

Mix all your ingredients together (adding the milk slowly) until you have a nice creamy consistency. Spread half the butter cream over one cake and place the other one on top and spread the rest over that one. Singe the tops of the mini marshmallows - we put them on skewers and used the flame on the hob which worked quite well, then stick them in the butter cream on top of the cake along with the raspberries and the malteasers. Yummy squidgy chocolate cake. 

Buy a cake stand, and they will come

My Mum brought this beauty home yesterday, so of course I had to christen it with baked goodies of some sort as it looked so lonely on its own. I decided on Easter Nest cupcakes...

I just used my normal cupcake and butter cream recipe (click here) but added cocoa powder and milk to the icing. Spread a little butter cream across the top of the cake then pop the rest into a piping bag and pipe a circle round the edge of the cake for the 'nest'. Sprinkle with chocolate flakes (you can buy these or just grate some chocolate if you want) and pop three mini-eggs in the middle. I really wanted to put those tiny fluffy chicks you can buy in the middle of the nest but I couldn't find any, ahh well. Voila, super cute Easter treats!

                                                                 

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