My Top 3 books of 2011...so far

 

1. Eating for England by Nigel Slater - He describes food in a way no other can and eloquently takes you back to the first time you damaged the roof of your mouth with a piece of toblerone or the warm feeling you get when you sink your spoon into a treacle sponge.

This is how he describes cake, I think I want this on my grave...

"British cakes have a certain wobbly charm to them, and what might be missing in terms of finesse is there in lick-your-fingers stickiness...they are something you tuck into with the enthusiasm of a labrador at a water bowl."

 

2. Cakes & Bakes, From my Mother's Kitchen by Linda Collister -  The cakes in this book are both special and comfortingly familiar. I made the pistachio and carrot cake for the other half for his birthday as it's shards of green pistachio make it look celebratory enough to give as a gift.

 

3. Weekend Baking by Sarah Randell - Fabulously easy recipes but massive crowd pleasers. I  recently adapted the chocolate and raspberry bars to sell at a fair and they were gone in under an hour! 

If life hands you lemons...make cupcakes!

When the sun comes out and you start to fill up with the joys of being able to go out of the house without a scarf or a precautionary brolly, this is generally when I get 'lemon fever' and I also eat a lot of salads. These are two of my favourite lemon cupcakes.

The first is a Chop's Cakes classic the lemon and raspberry jam filled cupcake if I tell you the recipe I will have to kill you and i'm too young to go to prison. These were actually for an order I had for an Easter Summer Party, I much prefer topping my cupcakes with fruit as I don't think you can get anything prettier.

I recently bought a lemon drizzle cake from Marks and Spencer and devoured it with a bottle of Chardonnay, I don't know whether it was the wine but it was so good I had to make them in cupcake form.

Lemon Drizzle Cupcakes

Ingredients
125g butter, softened
200g caster sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
Zest of 2 lemons
200g Self Raising Flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
100ml whole milk

• Preheat the oven to 180°C, Gas mark 4 and line a cupcake tin with 12 cases.

• Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy and then stir in the lemon zest.

• If using an electric mixer whck it up to a high speed and gradually add the eggs in splish by splash (I usually beat my eggs up ini a measuring jug so they are easier to pour into the batter).

• Alternate sifting the flour and baking soda with a drop of milk until all is incorporated.

• Spoon into cupcake tray (use an ice cream scoop for accuracy to ensure you dont have some cakes smaller than others) bake for 18-20 minutes until golden brown.

Lemon Drizzle
100g caster sugar
Juice of 2 lemons

• While the cakes are baking mix together the sugar and lemon juice.

• It is important that you spoon on the drizzle while the cakes are warm or the cakes will not absorb enough drizzle to make them moist.

• Leave to cool, I like to mix up a little icing sugar with the left over lemon juice and drizzle it on the top aswell.

Chocolate Sophistication

I got an order from a work friend, Francine who wanted some chocolate cupcakes with a giant chocolate cupcake for her son's 21st birthday party. As he was turning 21 I didn't think it was appropriate to create anything too flashy or childish (even though I had a Disney Princess tea party for my 21st). So I went with a cream cheese icing with a rich dark chocolate sponge, the giant cupcake also has a chocolate genache filling topped with chocolate flakes.

 

A little tip on how to make the chocolate flakes, take your slab of chocolate and turn it upside down so you have the smooth side facing you, then taking a large sharp knife drag the knife with even pressure towards yourself along the chocolates surface and you will quickly and easily create paper thin flakes!

The cakes turned out intense and heavenly devilish!

Rainbow Cakes

These are possibly the most pleasurable cakes to make. I made these with my friend Lauren years ago, after she had seen the recipe in a book and knew I would want to try them out. I hadn't made them since but decided to get nostalgic for her birthday and recreate the wonderous rainbow cake!

The process is sublimely simple, just split your cake batter into equal portions (4-5 small bowls) then add a generous amount of natural food colouring, I prefer Dr Oetker as they are cheap and not full of E numbers so are safe for the little ones. Then layer in teaspoon quantities into your paper cases. The best thing is that you can apply this process to most cake batters from vanilla to lemon, obviously not chocolate. It is a bit fiddly but I'm sure you will agree the results are wonderful, perfect for kids parties or the young at heart!

Candy Store Cupcakes

My good friend Helen of Minnie Bats Designs was collaborating with jewellery designer Sarah Hallowes for a candy shop themed exhibition/store. Helen asked me to create some cupcakes for their private view, she didn't ask for any particular type of cupcake so I was able to create anything I wanted. I went with the candy theme, bright colours topped with paste coloured dolly mixture sweets and glitter with poppy paper cases. I really liked the final cupcake design I went more on looks than an ellaborate recipe so plumped for the standard Chop's Cakes vanilla cupcake recipe taken from an old fairy cake recipe with vanilla butter cream icing.

The Candy Shop Exhibition

Minnie Bats designs (My fav is the ice-cream with kitsch leopard print cone!)

Sarah Hallowes Jewellery, cute smartie-like stud earrings

Left: The cupcakes were to be found by the green dribbling monster...obviously!
Right: Cheeky polka dot Mrs Robot in some very sexy hot pink pants created by Helen

Check out http://minniebats.com/ and http://sarahhallowes.co.uk/

Jamie's Monster Bake Sale

 I'm generally not a massive fan of Mr.Oliver I find him irritating with his mockney accent and stunted adjectives "pukka" and "gorgeous".
However, this is a little book I bought today from Tesco, it's only £3 and £2.50 of that goes straight to Comic Relief and half of the £2.50 goes to the Jamie Oliver Foundation which has innovative projects such as the 'Kitchen Garden Project' which is being implimented in Primary Schools over the UK, promoting food education. The real plus is that there are "a baker's dozen" (which is 13) dessert/cake recipes inside from all of Jamie's recipe books including a fudge recipe that I will definitely be trying out.

It's a great little book for a wonderful cause.

www.rednoseday.com
www.jamieoliver.com/foundation

Happy World Nutella Day!

To celebrate this joyous day of the year I have made a Nutella cake. Oh yes indeed! This is a Nigella recipe that I have tweaked. It's incredibly moist, dense and very rich but devilishly good. The cake is flourless therefore making it gluten free.





Ingredients
6 large eggs, separated
Pinch of salt
125g soft unsalted butter
400g Nutella (1 large jar)
1 tablespoon Frangelico, rum or water
100g ground hazelnuts (grind them yourself in a blender, add a little water to make a paste this makes the cake a lot more moist then adding the powdery ready ground stuff)
100g dark chocolate, melted
23cm Springform tin, greased and line

Genache Topping:
100g hazelnuts
125ml double cream
1 tablespoon Frangelico, rum or water
125g dark chocolate

• Preheat the oven to 180ºC, gas mark 4. In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites and salt until stiff. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and Nutella together, and then add the Frangelico (or whatever you're using), egg yolks and ground hazelnuts.

• Fold in the cooled, melted chocolate, then lighten the mixture with a large dollop of egg white, which you can beat in as roughly as you want, before gently folding the rest of them in a third at a time.

• Pour into the prepared tin and cook for 40 minutes or until the cake's beginning to come away at the sides, then let cool on a rack.

• Toast the hazelnuts in a dry frying pan until the aroma wafts upwards and the nuts are golden-brown in parts. Transfer to a plate and let cool. This is imperative: if they go on the ganache while hot, it'll turn oily.

• In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, add the cream, liqueur or water and chopped chocolate, and heat gently. Once the chocolate's melted, take the pan off the heat and whisk until it reaches the right consistency to ice the top of the cake. Unmould the cooled cake carefully.

• Ice the top with the chocolate icing, and sprinkle with the whole, toasted hazelnuts. If you have used Frangelico, put shot glasses on the table and serve it with the cake.

 For more info on World Nutella Day and Nutella recipes visit Ms Adventures in Italy, Bleeding Espresso, and World Nutella Day...