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.

A different kind of wedding cake

Back in January, my friends Becca and Jon Man got engaged. They decided that they didn't want a traditional wedding cake, mostly because Jon Man could stand the imagery of it. So they decided to do something rather unusual with their cake.

They got together a list of all the different kinds of cake they had enjoyed, together and separately. Next, they asked several of their baker friends if they would mind baking one or two of the cakes. On the day, these cakes were assembled on to vintage cake stands, and a selection was handed to each table, afternoon-tea style, in place of dessert.

Now, I know that afternoon tea is a very on-trend theme for weddings, but I have certainly never been to a wedding where they were served just like this. Becca had even made a little booklet describing each cake and why it was important to her. It was a really lovely touch.

The cakes were:

Chocolate Fudge

Amazing Chocolate Cheesecake

Chocolate Torte

Lemon Drizzle Mash Cake

Apricot Fruit Cake

Carrot Cake

and, of course, scones.

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...

Baked Porridge

A few weeks ago, it was National Breakfast Week. On The Archers, everyone was having breakfast - bacon butties, Full English, porridge, cereal, you name it. The following week, I was on half term. While visiting my parents, and flicking through one of my mum's magazines, I found this recipe for baked porridge.

Porridge is one of those things that you eat because you feel you should. It's true, it does keep you filled up much longer than cereal or toast, but it also takes ages to cook. I'd much rather have those extra 10 minutes in bed than stirring oats in a saucepan only to have to leave half of it because it's too hot to eat. To be honest, my breakfast is more often eaten at my desk in an effort to beat the rush hour traffic.

But when I saw this recipe, I really wanted to give it a go. It's by Bill Granger, that super-healthy Aussie chef, and although it does have some sugar in it, its very little compared to your average breakfast cereal. But the best thing about this baked porridge is the taste. It's so much better than that claggy, grey, sawdusty taste that stays with you all day. This porridge doesn't taste healthy.

My plan, at some point, is to bake this on a Sunday, and then to take it in tupperware to work, where I can eat it at my desk. That hasn't happened yet, but I'm working on it.

Ingredients
135g porrdge oats
75g sultanas
1tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Sea salt
3 tbsp soft brown sugar
750ml milk

Optional: Add 75g roughly chopped hazelnuts or pecans
Optional: Substitute up to 150ml milk with double cream.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 150C/Gas mark 2.
2. Scatter the oats, nuts (if using), fruit, vanilla, cinnamon and a pinch of sea salt into a baking dish.
3. Add 1 tbsp of the sugar and toss it all together.
4. Pour in the milk (and cream if using) and bake for 45 minutes.
5. Sprinkle with the remaining sugar and put back in the oven for another 15 minutes.
Serve with stewed fruit.