Bon Voyage!

A few months ago I went to a friend’s birthday where we all had to take some sort of cake as a surprise for her (we ended up with a shed load of cake so it was pretty perfect in my eyes). Her sister made THE MOST AMAZING cupcakes! They were tropical fruit and they had orange icing and pic ‘n’ mix on the top – so delicious!

So when a friend said she was going travelling for 6 months I thought it would be the perfect ‘Bon Voyage’ cake – a tropical fruit cake for a tropical adventure! It’s pretty easy to make, basically mixing everything up in a bowl, putting it in the oven (for what seemed like forever!) and voila! And it lived up to how I remembered it too!

Under da sea, under da sea, down where it's wetter and it is better, take it from me!

I decided to try and decorate it in the travelling theme; half the cake was the sea and the other half the beach so I split the icing into two. The beach was a vanilla cream cheese icing and the sea was the intended orange cream cheese icing with a bit of blue food colouring. I think the orange zest actually added a little something something to the whole look. And I bought some coloured icing, some sour apple laces and desiccated coconut to fashion a towel, some fish, seaweed and the sand and a cocktail umbrella finished it off nicely.

Orange flavoured cream cheese icing for the 'sea' on the left and vanilla cream cheese icing with toasted desiccated coconut for the 'beach' on the right.

Tropical Fruit Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

For the cake:

• 250g plain flour
• 250g caster sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 3 free-range eggs, beaten
• 200ml sunflower oil, plus extra for greasing
• 50g pecan nuts, roughly chopped
• 50g walnuts, roughly chopped
• 2 bananas, mashed
• 1 large mango, peeled, stoned removed, flesh mashed
• 2 passion fruit, pulp only
• 85g tinned pineapple, mashed
• 1 orange, zest only

For the icing:

• 400g full-fat soft cheese
• 100g unsalted butter, softened
• 1 orange, zest only
• 800g icing sugar
• Blue food colouring
• 1tsp of vanilla extract

For the decoration:

• Coloured icing
• Sour apple laces
• Cocktail umbrella
• Desiccated coconut, toasted

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4 and grease and line two 20cm cake tins. I only have one so I had to do one after the other – dedication to the cause!
2. Sift the flour, sugar, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl. Try and do it from a height to get some extra air into the mixture. Then stir in your eggs, sunflower oil, nuts, fruit and orange zest and you’re done!
3. Divide the cake mix into your two prepared cake tins and put in the oven for 45-50 minutes, or until golden.
4. Remove the cakes from the oven and leave them a bit before you take them out of the tins completely. Leave them to cool on a wire rack.
5. For the cream cheese icing (I made this whilst the second cake was in the oven), mix the cream cheese and butter together until creamy with an electric whisk. Sift in the icing sugar and stir until combined. Divide the icing into two different bowls.
6. For the ‘beach’ vanilla icing add 1tsp of vanilla extract.
7. For the ‘sea’ icing add the orange zest and blue food colouring.
8. Put them in the fridge to chill. This will make it easier to decorate the cake later on.
9. Once the cakes are cool spread some of the vanilla icing onto half on one of the cakes and spread some of the blue icing onto the other half. Make sure you leave yourself enough icing to cover the whole cake when it’s assembled. Put the other cake half on top of the iced cake and use the rest of the icing to cover the whole cake, keeping it half vanilla and half orange.
10. Toast the desiccated coconut in a frying pan until lightly golden and cover the vanilla half of the cake. Decorate the rest of the cake using the coloured icing cut into shapes as you wish. Ta da! You have a beautiful tropical style fruit cake - yum!

The finished article :)

Hallelujah for Shortcrust Pastry!

I have always struggled with shortcrust pastry – I know it’s not supposed to be that difficult but mine NEVER works. I went through a stage last year where I was making quiche after quiche, determined to make some pastry where it didn't crumble at the touch or where the mixture didn't seep out the bottom. My Dad and his girlfriend even gave me a food processor in an attempt to cure my pastry blues but I just couldn't do it!

So imagine my delight when I tried making Mary Berry’s Banoffee Pie yesterday and the pastry worked!! Hallelujah! I went against my instincts and let it get a lot wetter than I ever had before but you know what? It helped. Big time. It was so much easier to work – it rolled better, I could pick it up easier. It just didn't fall apart – I was amazed. I still am I think!

I'm so proud!

Anyway, the Banoffee Pie was for my sister’s house warming party – she’s a Banoffee fan, as am I, but my normal method (which is a family favourite) is with a biscuit base. And I normally cheat and use ready-made caramel from a tin but we’ll keep that between us. After the Great British Bake Off a couple of weeks ago I decided to make one recipe from each episode and as soon as I saw that one day the technical challenge was a Banoffee Pie I knew that was the one for me! It was made with a shortcrust pastry base and they made their own toffee – it looked a bit scary if I’m honest and I had horrible visions of how mine was going to turn out (I won’t keep you in suspense – it was good. Even if I do say so myself. People were fighting over the last slice so it must be true!).

Happy New Home Banoffee Pie Special

As ever I started with the wrong sized flan tin (I never seem to have the right equipment). And it wasn't a flan tin either, it was a ceramic flan dish but it worked fine so I’ll just brush past that! This recipe is for a 20cm/8in flan tin as Mary Berry intended but to be honest it’s just the pastry measures I changed, everything else still seemed to fit in the pie perfectly. Enjoy!

Banoffee Pie with Decorative Writing

For the pastry:

• 175g plain flour
• 75g chilled butter cut into cubes

For the filling:

• 100g butter
• 100g light muscovado sugar
• 2 x 397g tins condensed milk

For the toppings:

• 300ml double cream
• 1 large banana
• Lemon juice (optional)
• 100g dark chocolate

Instructions:

1. To make the (ever so tricky) shortcrust pastry, you first need to put the flour and cubed butter into a bowl and rub with your fingertips. I find this bit of the process quite therapeutic. Do this until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.
2. Add 2-3 tablespoons of cold water in gradually and mix until you have a soft dough. I had to make a bit more pastry thanks to my over-sized dish so I used the full three tablespoons. When I first added the last tablespoon I was a bit worried because it was quite wet and a bit sticky but after a minute or so of mixing it came together and made for a nice dough to work with.
3. Lightly flour a surface (you don’t want to use too much because this can dry out your dough mixture) and start rolling out the dough. Line your tin/dish with the pastry, cover with cling film and put into the fridge for about half an hour. I find using the middle of my index finger good for pressing the pastry into shape, the end doesn't work so well when you have nails!
4. Preheat your oven to 200°C/Gas Mark 6. Line your pastry tin with foil and fill it with ceramic baking beans and blind bake in the oven for 15 minutes. I was quite disappointed that even with all that weight I still managed to get quite a bit of a bubble – how?!
5. Remove the beans in the foil – be careful, they’re SO hot. Put the pastry bake in the oven for another 5 – 10 minutes to dry out the base and give it a bit of colour. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
6. Whilst the pastry is cooling you can make your toffee filling. Put the sugar and butter into a non-stick pan and heat gently until the butter is melted and the sugar is dissolved. Add the two tins of condensed milk to the pan and stir continuously for about 5 minutes. I think I was a bit over cautious so this ended up taking me half an hour! I think I can safely say that a medium heat will do it - unlike my very low heat that I tried to stick to. Mine started to boil a little and then it thickened up and turned the golden toffee colour I was after. Try dabbing a bit on a plate and if it starts to set reasonably quickly then you should have a good toffee.
7. At this point I took my pastry case out of the dish but if you have a tin with a removable base then you're OK to leave it in until you've finished everything. Put the toffee into the pastry case, level it off and then leave to cool completely.
8. Whip the double cream in a large bowl until it just holds its shape, it should still look silky smooth at this point. I slightly over whipped mine so it doesn't have quite the same effect. For my pie, I cut up the banana and put it on top of the toffee and then added the cream. However, you can spread the cream directly onto the toffee and put the banana slices on top. If you dip the banana slices into lemon juice beforehand then that should prevent discolouration.
9. To make the writing I melted the chocolate in a small bowl (I just did it in the microwave) and made a make-do piping bag with some baking paper. Fold a piece of baking paper in half and then in half again. The corner that would be the middle of the paper if you opened it out again will be your piping hole. Get another piece of baking paper and lay it flat on the surface. Spoon your melted chocolate into the piping bag and snip the corner. Now you can start piping your writing. Once finished lay the paper flat in the fridge and leave to cool until set. The chocolate should peel off easily but be careful it’ll melt quickly!

A really nice easy touch to make to home made baking :)

A Sport Relief Swimmer

Before I start I should say I fully intended to post at least once a week so I am quite ashamed that two weeks later I’m only just getting round to doing my second post – I’m sorry!

So anyway I LOVED the Great British Bake Off for Sport Relief, I think my favourite bit being Johnny Vaughan realising he’d been grilling everything!  I’m a big supporter of raising money and every year I do something for Comic Relief/Sport Relief. Last year I baked for Comic Relief and raised money by having my friends and family give me baking requests which I then fulfilled. I’m not going to lie some of them didn’t go too well (people ask for weird things!) but it definitely meant I got some practise in!

Some of my creations last year for Comic Relief. Left to right: maple and pecan cake, coffee and walnut cake, chocolate brownies, 8 plait loaf, blueberry muffins, bakewell tart, lemon kisses, Easter cupcakes (strawberry, blackcurrant and lemon)

This year I am (stupidly) doing a 2.5km swimathon but I don’t want to lose all sight of my baking efforts so, inspired by GBBO I have made my very own Show Stopper! Now before you think I’m copying Doon Mackichans tiered cake from one of the episodes - I had this idea after the Mondays show I swear!! As this is an attempt to raise money for my swimathon I have made a 3D novelty cake in the shape of a swimming pool (well I have attempted to). In my mind there was going to be little people swimming in it wearing red swimming hats but I’m afraid that plan went rather wrong. It’s what it tastes like though right?! And it got very good reviews when I took it into work – so much so that someone has actually asked me to bake a cake for their wife! Result!

The finished article (minus my swimmers!)

Blueberry Cake with Lemon Butter Icing

For the cake:

·         250g butter, at room temperature – it’s just easier that way!

·         100g caster sugar

·         ½ tsp salt

·         2 tsp vanilla extract

·         4 egg yolks

·         400g plain flour

·         2 tsp baking powder

·         160ml milk

·         4 egg whites

·         8 tbsp caster sugar

·         225g blueberries

·         1 tbsp flour

·         2 tbsp caster sugar

For the lemon butter icing:

·         500g icing sugar

·         125g butter, at room temperature

·         Zest of one lemon

·         Juice of one lemon

·         Milk (amount completely up to you)

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4. Grease and line two rectangle cake tins (mine were 18cm by 29cm or you could halve the quantities above and use one 20cm square tin instead, baking for 20 minutes longer).
2. Cream the butter together with the sugar until it becomes light and fluffy and then add the salt and vanilla extract (my new favourite is Dr. Oetker Madagascan Vanilla – I have a bit of a sweet tooth and it hits the spot nicely!).
3. Add your egg yolks to the mix and beat until creamy. If your mixture starts to curdle (I hate that!) - add some of the flour and that should fix it.
4. In a separate bowl combine the flour and baking powder. Add some of this to your mix and combine using a slotted metal spoon, followed by some milk. Continue until it’s all in there. If you sieve the flour mixture in from a height this can help get some air into the mix and give you a light cake.
5. Coat your blueberries with 1 tbsp of flour and then stir them into the mixture, trying to get an even distribution.
6. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until you have soft peaks (I take this to mean still a little bit floppy – I wouldn’t trust tipping it upside down yet!). Add one tablespoon of sugar at a time and continue to beat in between each spoonful. Beat until stiff peaks form (you can tip it upside down over your head now!). Fold these egg whites into the cake mixture and then pour into the tins prepared earlier.
7. Bake for 20 – 30 minutes until the cake has a golden brown top and is cooked through. Leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
8. In the meantime, cream together the icing sugar and the butter. I like to do this with a wooden spoon to start with because if I go straight in there with the electric whisk my kitchen gets covered! Add in the zest and the juice and then start beating the mixture. Add milk when you think appropriate, adding a tablespoon at a time until you get it to the right consistency. Cover the cake. I used the lemon icing for around the sides and then made a vanilla icing with blue food colouring for the swimming pool aspect but I must say the lemon icing is very yummy!!

If anyone fancies sponsoring my mad activity then please follow this link:

Sophie's Swimathon

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The Great British Bake Off Quest

So my first blog! How exciting! My first baking attempt for blog purposes hasn't exactly gone to plan – my cupcakes look more like mega muffins; a meal in itself! I may have an issue with portion size by the look of these beasts. But they taste pretty good and that’s all that matters for the time being.

So the first recipe I've tried is Crunchy Coffee Cupcakes. The recipe has been ever so slightly adapted from that of a cake in the Great British Bake Off Everyday book. I am a massive fan of The Great British Bake Off; in fact my mission is to be on it in 2015 so I’m going to be using the blog to learn the basics and when it’s back on the TV I’ll be trying all of their challenges in preparation for my application :)

The recipe makes 12 cupcakes (but then mine are mahoosive so actually it probably makes more) and I've made two different buttercream icings to top them off. One is a coffee buttercream icing to further the coffee taste and the other is cinnamon to bring out the flavour from the streusel which creates the middle layer of the cupcake – that gives them their crunch!

Fresh from the oven - yummy!

Iced and ready to be devoured - the two icings look pretty similar but the ever so slightly darker one is the coffee one.

Crunchy Coffee Cupcakes

For the streusel:

• ·         100g light brown muscovado sugar
• ·         50g plain flour
• ·         25g porridge oats
• ·         1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ·         50g unsalted butter
• ·         50g pecan pieces (or walnut)

For the coffee cake:

• ·         2 tbsp instant coffee granules or powder
• ·         2 tbsp boiling water
• ·         120g unsalted butter
• ·         200g caster sugar
• ·         2 medium eggs
• ·         200ml buttermilk, at room temperature
• ·         250g plain flour
• ·         Pinch of salt
• ·         ½ tsp baking powder
• ·         ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the buttercream icing:

• ·         210g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• ·         420g icing sugar, sifted
• ·         1 tbsp milk
• ·         ½ tsp cinnamon
• ·         1 tsp instant coffee granules or powder

Instructions:

1. ·         Heat your oven to 180°C/350°C/gas 4. Prepare a muffin tin with cupcake cases.
2. ·         First you need to make the streusel – mix the sugar, flour, oats and cinnamon with your fingers. Add in the butter and mix with your fingers until it looks like coarse crumbs. Stir in the nuts and leave to one side.
3. ·         Stir the coffee into the boiling water until dissolved and leave to cool completely.
4. ·         For the cake, using an electric whisk beat the butter until creamy. Add the sugar and beat until you have a fluffy mixture.
5. ·         Put the eggs in a small bowl and whisk with a fork. Gradually add to the butter mixture, beating well after each addition. You need to be careful here to make sure that the mixture doesn't curdle.
6. ·         Gradually add the buttermilk to the mixture using a metal spoon to stir. Add in the coffee.
7. ·         Sift in the flour, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into the mixture and fold until combined thoroughly.
8. ·         Spoon half of the mixture into the cupcake cases. Scatter half of the streusel mixture into the cupcake cases and press down on to the cake mixture. Spoon the rest of the cake mixture into the cupcakes on top of the streusel. Scatter the remaining streusel mixture on top of the cupcakes. (If you want your cupcakes to look a normal size try not to overfill as they do rise quite a bit!)
9. ·         Put in the oven and bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Around the 20 minute mark check that the cupcakes aren't browning too quickly. You can cover them with foil to prevent them becoming too dark.
10. ·         Place the cupcakes on a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
11. ·         Meanwhile make your buttercream icing. Mix the icing sugar, butter and milk in a bowl. If you’re making the two flavours then once it resembles a plain buttercream icing, split the mixture into two.
12. ·         For the coffee icing: put the coffee in just enough boiling water to dissolve it. Gradually add the coffee to one of the buttercreams, making sure the consistency is still strong enough to pipe.
13. ·         For the cinnamon icing: follow the instructions for the coffee icing using cinnamon instead.
14. ·         Pipe the different buttercreams onto the cooled cupcakes and ta-dah!