Snow Topped Spice Cake

This is a really good cake as an alternative to Christmas Cake. It doesn't contain dried fruit, is very soft and light, yet really Christmassy with the spices. I've made it a few times, and each time it has been really successful.

It's a Nigella recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess.

Snow-Topped Spice Cake

4 large eggs, separated, plus 2 extra large egg whites
125ml vegetable oil
125ml water
2 tbsp runny honey
200g dark muscovado sugar
75g ground almonds
150g plain flour
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp all-spice
1/4 tsp ground cloves
zest of 1/2 an orange
100g caster sugar
250g royal icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180c.
Whisk together the yolks and oil, then add the water, honey and dark muscovado sugar. Add the almonds, flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt, spices and zest, folding in gently. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form and then gradually add the caster sugar. Fold the whites into the cake mixture, and pour into a well buttered 25cm Bundt tin. Cook for 45 minutes, or until the cake is springy on top and beginning to shrink away from the edges. Let the cake cool in its tin on a rack for 25 minutes before turning it out.

When the cake is completely cool, make up the icing. You want it to be pretty thick, or it will disappear into the cake. Drizzle the top of the cake with the icing.

Chocolate Peppermint Brownies

I love the combination of chocolate and peppermint, so I decided to give my regular brownies a Christmassy twist today with the addition of peppermint icing. I had recently bought some paste-style food colouring, and I wanted to try it out, so I combined the two.

I used the Chocolate Brownie recipe in Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess which is not on her website, but I imagine any brownie recipe would work. As I don't eat nuts, I leave the walnuts out, and I don't know how well nuts work with peppermint, so I would stick to a plain chocolate brownie.

I then made up plain glace icing, with about 300g icing sugar and 6 tablespoons of hot water. I then added half a capful of peppermint flavouring. I reserved about two tablespoons of the white icing, and spread the rest over the brownies. I then used my red food colouring to dye the leftover icing a candy cane pink, which I piped in stripes across the brownies. To hide my terrible icing, I 'feathered' it using a skewer.

The final combination works really well!

Bread making for date night

Since we've had a baby, we have instigated a regular date night. This is an at-home event; we can't have babysitters every week! However, it is really good fun, and allows us to have a child-free time where we can focus on each other.

My husband has added a twist to date night: each night must be themed alphabetically. So last week, he took 'A', and we ate alphabet spagetti, asparagus, artichokes and amaretti biscuits. This week, I took on 'B.' Our menu included Beer and Beef Pie, beans and broccoli, and Baked Alaska. I'll hopefully post about the dessert later.

Our activity was bread-making - well, bread shaping. I made the dough in the breadmaker, and then we shaped our loaves when my husband came home from work. They proved while we put the baby to bed, and then we baked and ate them with our meal.

I egg-washed mine; my husband's rolls are more rustic!

Cookie Monster Cupcakes

It was my husband's birthday yesterday. Last week, he sent me an email, with a birthday request: Please could I have these for my birthday? He'd found a photo of cookie monster cupcakes on the Internet, and thought they were the coolest cakes ever.

It so happens that his birthday coincided with my half term, so I have had some extra baking time this week. So I spent some of this time making the requested cupcakes.

The recipe starts, confusingly, with the decoration. I melted white chocolate and dropped it onto parchment paper to make the eyes. When these were set, I then melted dark chocolate and dripped it onto the eyes. I then dyed some coconut (approximately 200g at a guess) blue with food colouring. I spread this out onto a tray on greaseproof paper to dry.

For the sponge cupcakes, I used the recipe here: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/470636/lemon-and-poppyseed-cupcakes, which uses natural yoghurt. I'm not sure about the science of it, but they taste really good, although I omitted the poppyseed. I didn't think they would work with the coconut.

When the cakes had cooked and cooled, I used more blue food dye (to make 12 cupcakes, I used 3/4 of a bottle) to dye some buttercream icing.

The comes the tricky bit: the assembly. You spread the icing onto the cupcakes, quite thickly. Then, working quickly, you turn each cupcake over and dip it in a bowl of the blue coconut, so that it sticks to the icing. When I had done this, I put them into the fridge to cool and set a bit. Then you need to cut a mouth out - and I needed to actually remove a chunk of cake. I halved some smallish chocolate chip cookie biscuits, trimming off the edges to get them into the mouths, and stuffed these into the cookie monster mouth. Finally, I placed the eyes on, making sure they were suitably wonky.

Sourdough

I have been planning to make Sourdough bread for a very long time. You read so much about it, about its wonderful, chewy texture, its delicious taste... and you can't buy it anywhere near here. So when Head of Bread announced on 1st January that he was going to tweet instructions for making a starter, I was definitely up for joining in.

The first stage is to mix together flour (I used wholemeal throughout) and water, and he suggests adding in three raisins to kick-start fermentation. I did this, and left it on the worktop overnight. The following day, I added more flour and water, and there were definite bubbles. I repeated this process for two weeks, mostly adding flour and water (known as feeding) every day, although sometimes every other day.

Then we were told to put our starters into the fridge.

"The fridge?" We all cried (tweeted). Yes, we were told, for the fridge would not kill our starters, only slow them down.

Well, I was not quite ready for baking, so my starter went into the fridge.

The following week, I had to "wake up" my starter, by feeding it and leaving it out of the fridge overnight before I baked with it. It was showing all the signs of fermenting, and on Saturday, I followed the baking instructions. This included kneading for 20 minutes. As a novice kneader, I struggled with this, but eventually achieved the required texture. I left it to prove, knocked it back, proved and shaped over the next 12 hours. Then I went to bed.

The loaves were cooked the next morning, following tips from Dan Stevens - oven on its highest setting, tray of boiling water at the bottom to create steam - and the loaves did bake. They tasted delicious - slightly tangy, and definitely tasty. But the texture was just too dense. I don't know if it was the proving, the kneading, or the 100% wholemeal flour, but it wasn't the best bread.

The starter is still alive and bubbling, although it is back in the fridge. Next weekend I'll have another go, and see if white flour is the way forward. The picture is not mine, but is very close to how mine looked.

Blueberry Muffins

I don't make muffins that often, but I think I should. Mostly because they're so easy. They're a good gift, and I was visiting a friend who has a new born baby this afternoon, so I took her half the batch of muffins. I don't think muffins keep well, so it helps if you give half away - otherwise I feel obliged to eat them all.

Making muffins is unlike any other kind of baking I've really done. The butter (75g) is melted, left to cool a little, and then mixed with yoghurt, milk (100 ml of each) and an egg. In a separate bowl, you mix 200g plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda, a tsp of salt and 75g caster sugar. Then you mix the two mixtures - wet and dry - together, before stirring through 200g blueberries.

I know they'll never be as dome-topped as the ones you get at Starbucks, but they're delicious.



I have to confess this picture isn't mine - my camera battery has died today - so it's from womentribe.com.

Lemon Passion Meringue Cake

I made this cake for Easter, just before I start a well-needed diet. It certainly has the calories, but is a really lovely cake, and makes an amazing dessert. We had lovely weather here over the Easter weekend, and it complemented the trout we ate on Easter Monday after my husband's fishing trip.

As suggested by Nigella, Queen of Cakes, I added the pulp of two passion fruit to the lemon curd in the centre of the cake, and it was delicious. As you can see, it did make the lemon curd a bit too runny (or maybe I was just too generous with it) and it wasn't the prettiest cake, but I will definitely make it again.

The link to the recipe is here: http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/lemon-meringue-cake-109

Wedding Cupcakes

This year is definitely turning out to be a Year of Weddings. We had one wedding last weekend, another one today and we have six more to fit in between now and the end of August.

So when my friends Clare and Adam asked me to make some cupcakes to serve at the end of the their wedding service, it seemed fitting that I should turn to Samantha Blears' Love Bakery: Cupcakes from the Heart. This is an extremely pretty book, with loads of cupcake ideas.

As with all cupcakes, the icing really is the main event, and the prettier the better. I am definitely not the world's best with a piping bag, so I was pleased to read Samantha Blears' advice that the best thing to do is to 'Add the love' as she puts it, with flowers, sprinkles and other embellishments. These are designed to cover up the mistakes, but actually end up making the cakes look even more special.

With a good quantity of cakes to make, I invested in some flower and butterfly cutters as well as some pink royal icing from Hobbycraft. I had not discovered their cake-decorating aisle before, but I may well be hooked! Pink glitter sprinkles also helped to hide where my swirls had become more splodge.

The cakes are rose flavoured - to regular sponge cake batter, add a teaspoon of rose extract, and with rose buttercream icing (again, just add a teaspoon or two of rose extract to the icing). Now I'm off to find a large star-shaped icing nozzle...

Cranberry and Orange Muffins

I had these on my 'to-bake' list over Christmas, but after spending most of Christmas Eve in the kitchen, I couldn't face doing them. The snow has kept me off work today and yesterday, so I had a chance to make them.

I made them with 150g fresh cranberries, which was delicious, mostly because I had the packet in the fridge. The muffins themselves were really light and not too sweet. I had run out of muffin cases so I buttered the inside of the muffin tin. It seemed to work and at least you don't get the rubbish!

Christmas Morning Muffins



200g plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
75g demerara sugar
good grating fresh nutmeg
1 clementine or small orange
approximately 50ml milk
60g unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg
150g dried cranberries

12-bun muffin tin

for the topping:

2 teaspoons demerara sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Method:
Preheat the oven to 200ºC/gas mark 6.

1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, bicarb and sugar, and grate over a generous amount of fresh nutmeg.

2. Squeeze the orange or clementine juice into a measuring jug, then pour in milk on top till it comes up to the 150ml mark. Add the melted butter and the egg, and beat to combine.

3. Pour the jug of liquid ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir till the ingredients are more or less combined, remembering that a lumpy batter makes light muffins.

4. Last of all, lightly fold in the cranberries and fill the muffin cups. The amount of cranberries specified here makes for heavily fruited muffins; if you want them sparser, use half the amount.

5. Mix together the demerara sugar and ground cinnamon and sprinkle over the tops of the muffins.

6. Stick them in the oven and bake for 20 minutes

Stollen

I'd never made Stollen before, and this was my first Fresh from the Oven challenge.

I'm definitely not an experienced bread-maker away from the bread machine, but it seemed close enough to a cake and it was a good first challenge. Stollen is a traditional German cake, usually eaten during the Christmas season, when it is called Weihnachtsstollen or Christstollen. There is a roll of marzipan running through it which is supposed to represent the baby Jesus in the manger. It's amazing how these tenuous connections were formed.

The dough was incredibly sticky - I wondered if the egg should be added before the second kneading. Also, our temperamental oven started playing tricks, and the outside was slightly scorched, but inside it tasted really good. I have to admit I substituted ground almonds for the flaked almonds as I'm not very keen on things with a nutty texture, but I was glad I had a go.

Stollen


based on a Simon Rimmer recipe

100ml/3½fl oz warm milk
6g (1 sachet) fast action yeast or 2 tsp dried yeast or 20g fresh yeast
pinch salt
1 tsp caster sugar
225g/8oz plain flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tsp ground mixed spice
200g/7oz mixed dried fruit (including glacé cherries)
25g/1oz flaked almonds
50g/2oz unsalted butter
1 free-range egg, beaten
250g/9oz marzipan


To finish
rum
25g/1oz butter, melted
50g/2oz icing sugar

Method

1. Place the milk and yeast into a bowl and mix well. Leave to sit for 5-6 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, sift the salt, sugar, flour and mixed spice into a large bowl. Add the dried fruit, almonds and butter and mix well then stir in the yeasty milk and mix well.

3. Add the egg and stir to form a dough. Knead the dough for 5-6 minutes, then cover and leave to prove for 20 minutes. Uncover the dough and turn out onto a clean, floured work surface. Knock the dough back to reduce the volume, then knead the dough for 3-4 minutes.

4. Push the dough out by hand into a flat oval shape about 23cm x 18cm/9in x 7in. Roll the marzipan into a sausage shape about 6cm/2in shorter than the dough. Place the marzipan into the centre of the dough, then fold over the sides of the dough to seal in the marzipan. Then fold in the ends of the dough to contain the marzipan and help give the dough shape. Place the stollen seal-side down onto a greased baking tray. Cover and place somewhere warm to prove for one hour.

5. Preheat the oven to 180C/365F/Gas 4. Place the stollen on the baking tray into the oven to bake for 40 minutes, or until golden-brown and cooked through.

6. To finish, remove the stollen from the oven, brush with the rum then melted butter and dust liberally with icing sugar immediately. Allow the stollen to cool, then serve in slices.
 
 

Christmas Cakes

This is a whole new experience for me: I've made a fruit cake before but never a Christmas Cake, and I've never marzipanned and iced a Christmas Cake before.

The cake is a boiled fruit cake, Nigella's Easy-Action Christmas Cake. I made the actual cake about three weeks ago, and it has been sitting in the tin waiting for me to ice it. It was incredibly easy to make, as you just chuck all the fruit in a big saucepan with the butter, sugar, chestnut puree, rum, orange and lemon zest and juice. It all melts down, and then you add the eggs, flour and spices. At this point the kitchen smelt incredible. That mixture of citrus and spice. I absolutely love the smell of cloves and oranges, and usually adorn an orange or five with cloves. I might even do that this afternoon.

The marzipanning and icing was easier than anticipated, because I found a wonderful product: ready rolled icing and marzipan! And then I cut out the stars from the left-over icing. What I did find tricky was cutting the icing around the bottom of the cake - it seemed to go all raggedy, and next time I will have to find some thicker ribbon to cover it with! The stars are covered in glitter for a bit of festive sparkle.

One thing that did make it easier was that we were given a Wedding Present of a rotating board - I think you're supposed to put chutneys and things on it and spin it round so that everyone can reach, but I sat the cake on it and it worked pretty well!

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

The new husband was having a cake sale to raise money for BBC Children in Need, and asked me to help hime provide cakes for it. Nigella recommends her Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes, saying that hers sold a pound a piece, but I'm sure there was the Nigella factor there - I would definitely pay a pound for s cupcake made by Nigella! But the husband liked the idea, so I said I would make them for him.

The cakes were quite expensive to make, and if I were to do it again I would put milk chocolate, not dark, into the icing as personally I found it a bit too bitter, but they looked very dramatic. Nigella said that hers made 12 but I made them a bit smaller and came out with about 40. I had a bit of drama as I put the batter into the cases, and had just put them in the oven when I realised I had forgotten to add the eggs! They were sitting, ready beaten, in their jug! I had to scrape the batter back into the pan and start again.

The husband did actually ice the cakes, I can't take any credit for that, but I did at least prepare the icing! Reports are that they sold well. We went away for the weekend so he left early and hadn't found out how much they had raised. I'll post an update when we know.

We went to Dublin for the weekend. Brilliant city, brilliant fun, lovely food. But we have eaten a little too much meat, so I'll be looking for some lighter veggie recipes that will still keep us warm. Any veggie foodie blogs out there?

Bread!

One of our most exciting wedding presents was the Panasonic Breadmaker. Yesterday I set it up so that we could have fresh-baked bread first thing in the morning.

I'd not made bread since I was a child, and had never had a breadmaker. To be honest, I was expecting a dense bready lump to come out. I was incredibly surprised by the resulting loaf: a crunchy crust, a light, even textured crumb and a delicious taste.

We ate the first slice hot with jam.

Wholemeal bread:

3/4 tsp dried yeast
400g wholemeal strong flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
280ml water
15g butter

Put all ingredients (yeast first, then flour, then liquid) into breadmaker. Programme. Wait.

Delicious!

Cloud Cake

So my first post really did have to be about Chocolate Cake. And this was no ordinary chocolate cake. This was Nigella's Cloud Cake.

I had heard about this mythical cake first from my (now) Sister-in-law, Suzie. Then I read about it in the Newspaper. A light, airy yet decadent cake. But it wasn't in the Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame.

So, in a bid to reverse the downward trend of cake-baking brought about by the prospect of the Wedding Day, and much commented on by new husband (it was the topic of his Groom's Speech), I spent Sunday afternoon whisking this cake together.

The reason the cake is so light and heavenly (like clouds), is because of the eggs. The eggs are separated, the whites whisked and then the chocolate, egg yolks and butter are folded into the mixture. There is no flour in this recipe which means that it is suitable for those who need wheat-free.

I didn't do the whipped cream topping as I wanted the cake to keep for a couple of days, so I served the whipped cream on the side, which I preferred. Its a luxury cake, but it is heavenly, and deserves the accolades!

INGREDIENTS


250g dark chocolate, minimum 70% cocoa solids
125g unsalted butter, softened
6 eggs: 2 whole, 4 separated
175g caster sugar
2 tablespoons Cointreau (optional)
grated zest of 1 orange (optional)
23cm springform cake tin
for the cream topping:
500ml double cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon Cointreau (optional)
1/2 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder for sprinkling for the cream topping

METHOD


1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.

2. Line the bottom of the cake tin with baking parchment.

3. Melt the chocolate either in a double boiler or a microwave, and then let the butter melt in the warm chocolate.

4. Beat the 2 whole eggs and 4 egg yolks with 75g of the caster sugar, then gently add the chocolate mixture, the Cointreau and orange zest.

5. In another bowl, whisk the 4 egg whites until foamy, then gradually add the 100g of sugar and whisk until the whites are holding their shape but not too stiff.

6. Lighten the chocolate mixture with a dollop of egg whites, and then fold in the rest of the whites. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 35–40 minutes or until the cake is risen and cracked and the centre is no longer wobbly. Cool the cake in its tin on a wire rack; the middle will sink as it cools.

7. When you are ready to eat, place the still tin-bound cake on a cake stand or plate for serving and carefully remove the cake from its tin. Don’t worry about cracks or rough edges: it’s the crater look we’re going for here. Whip the cream until it’s soft and then add the vanilla and Cointreau and continue whisking until the cream is firm but not stiff.

8. Fill the crater of the cake with the whipped cream, easing it out gently towards the edges of the cake, and dust the top lightly with cocoa powder pushed through a tea-strainer.