Cherry Bakewell Cookies

Marks & Spencer picnics used to be a staple of the summer holidays for my friends and I. An indecisive bunch, we’d spend ages at each section: the sandwiches, the fruit and drinks, the crisps, the baked goods. Only once everyone had finally chosen would we move to the next aisle and begin the deliberations all over again there. A staple of the picnics would be a packet of M&S cookies. We took this decision in particular overly seriously (bad biscuit selection can ruin a picnic): games of heads or tails and ip dip doo being employed to gradually narrow down the choice. When I was in a Marks and Spencer recently, I noticed the selection of flavours in this range has more than tripled since we last went – I’m not sure we would have had any time for the actual picnic if this had existed when I was younger. But one flavour in particular caught my eye: the cherry bakewell cookie. I’ve made mini cherry bakewell tarts before but I really liked the idea of changing this classic dessert into cookie form. I was also feeling inspired after watching the first episode of Great British Bake Off (side note – I’m fully obsessed with Norman) where they made a cherry and almond sponge. These biscuits have exactly the same flavours but none of the ‘will the cherries sink’ stress – it’s a win win! The M&S version I saw didn’t have icing but I couldn’t resist. I was really happy with the result considering I’d pretty much made up the recipe – buttery shortbread, decent level of almondy flavour and sweet glace cherries are a dangerously addictive combination. I’ll admit that the cookies did spread a little in the oven so I trimmed off the edges to make them all the same… an unnecessary OCD step probably but then cookie trimmings = chefs perks! You can find the recipe below, I’m off to dream up other cookie versions of classic desserts. Tiramisu cookies anyone?

Cherry Bakewell Cookies
Makes 8 large cookies

• 125g unsalted butter
• 60g caster sugar
• 120g plain flour
• 60g ground almonds
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 50g glace cherries, quartered
• 100g icing sugar, sieved
• 1/2 lemon, juiced

1. Line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the almond extract and mix to combine.

2. Add the flour and ground almonds to the mixture and stir to incorporate. As the dough begins to come together, add the glace cherries and continue to mix until they are evenly distributed throughout the smooth dough.

3. Tip onto a lightly floured surface and roll out to just under 1cm thick. Stamp out with an 8cm cookie cutter and place on the baking sheets. Chill for 20minutes. Preheat the oven to 180’C.

4. Meanwhile, sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Add the lemon juice and stir to a smooth paste.

5. Bake the biscuits for 10-15minutes, until lightly golden. Leave to cool completely on a wire rack, then drizzle over the icing. Enjoy!

Blueberry & Lemon Bundt Cake

I feel like as it is mid-July I should be blogging about ice cream, barbecues and gluts of summer fruit. But it appears the English weather is yet to get the ‘summer sunshine and warmth’ memo so I made a cake instead. My first bundt cake!I’ve wanted to make a bundt cake for so long so when I finally got my hands on a tin last week I knew it wouldn’t be long until one graced my table. I’m now desperate to make another one at the same time as another batch of these and have a bundt cake party…but that’s a whole other day. I used this lemon drizzle cake recipe from olive magazine and just added a few handfuls of blueberries to the mixture and used some more for decoration. Berries tend to sink to the bottom in cakes, but the beauty of the bundt is that you turn it upside down to serve so it looks like all the fruit stayed perfectly at the top. The heavy pan means it did darken slightly alarmingly on the outside, but it actually cooked really well and the ground almonds and berries keep the cake moist for days… if it lasts that long! Enjoy!

 

Party Rings

Hello and welcome to 2014 on Teen Baker! I feel it’s appropriate to start the year with something healthy, like a colourful salad, as so many people go on a New Years diet. Or something that uses up the Christmas and New Years party leftover bits and bobs that are currently cluttering up people’s cupboards everywhere. But… well… all in good time. Party rings are just so much more fun!Party rings have been on my baking agenda since I started doing the homemade classics challenge but for one reason or another they kept falling to the bottom of the list. I don’t know if party rings are available outside the UK but (as the name suggests) they are a kids birthday party staple here with their pastel colours and pretty swirly pattern. Essentially they are just a vanilla ring biscuit with glace icing topping, but there is something addictive about them!I thought party rings would be a bit of a kerfuffle to make and certainly previous recipes I’d seen for them had been more fiddly, involving piping, icing borders, intricate patterns and other things I’m not very good at. However when I saw this recipe from the Oh Comely magazine blog I knew it wouldn’t be long until party rings graced my kitchen counter! Turns out party rings are super easy – dipping each biscuit in bowls of icing creates the base layer, and a quick drizzle of icing off the end of a teaspoon creates the signature swirly pattern. My tips would be to make your icing a bolder colour than you think – the beauty of party rings is their pretty pastels but you need them to show up and not look watery on the biscuit. Also after doing all the base layers, thicken your icing slightly for the drizzle – I thought thinner would be easier to drizzle but thicker icing holds the pattern better. See you next week for that healthy new years dish…or maybe some more baking. We’ll see!

Lemon Drizzle Traybake

The picture below is only roughly half of this traybake. Sometimes you just need a hefty dose of cake. This lemon drizzle marks the third and final (for now!) podcast in the Lucy’s Recipes series, which you can listen to here. I think lemon drizzle cakes are one of those bakes that are always popular – they’re seen in tearooms and cafes across the country. They’re also easy to adapt to your own likes and needs – I’ve made loaf cakes, mini cakes, covered the whole top with icing, used a crunchy sugar syrup instead of icing, and used oranges or limes instead of lemon. The possibilities are endless! The recipe I used is below, adapted from a Donal Skehan recipe – enjoy!Lemon Drizzle Traybake
225g caster sugar
225g butter
4 eggs
250g self raising flour
1tsp baking powder
3tbsps milk
zest of 3 lemons
150g icing sugar
juice of one lemon
1. Preheat the oven to 160’C. Cream the butter and sugar until really light and fluffy.
2. Gradually add in the eggs, mixing well in between each addition.
3. Grate in the lemon zest, then sift in the baking powder and flour.
4. Add the milk and fold gently until everything is evenly combined.
5. Pour the cake mixture into a lined rectangular baking tin (30x23cm) and cook for 30mins until golden and springy. Place on a wire rack to cool.
6. Combine the icing sugar and lemon juice into a smooth paste. Drizzle off the end of a spoon over the cooled cake in a large zig zag pattern. Enjoy!

Cappuccino Eclairs

When you bake a lot it can be easy to get stuck in a flavour rut. Chocolate, it probably goes without saying is a flavour I return to again and again. It is never a very long period of time that passes in between my chocolate bakes. I think every blogger or baker also has certain fruit they always have in their house and therefore bake with – for me it is probably lemons and apples. However, particularly when it comes to summer and there is lots of seasonal fresh fruit to use, I love expanding my repertoire and using new flavours. Whilst there are sadly still a few months until summer gets into its stride I have still recently been enjoying other opportunities to bake with underused flavours in my kitchen.Of course coffee isn’t an unknown or unused ingredient – it is estimated that in the UK we drink 70 million cups a day, pretty remarkable for a country with a population of 62 million! Nevertheless, it is definitely one I forget to use in baking, probably because it is such a standby I forget it can shine on its own. I was thrilled when Whittard sent me a package of this Brazilian roast coffee, giving me a chance to experiment. This was shortly followed by shock when I realised I’ve only done 5 coffee recipes on here in nearly 5 years of blogging and not one of my 300 To Bake recipes had coffee in! This time I really wanted the coffee to shine and be the star of the show, something which surprisingly I found quite difficult to do. So many recipes combined coffee with something else – normally chocolate, making mocha dishes, but I also saw it paired with flavours as diverse as lime or coconut. I must have seen hundreds of coffee cake recipes and whilst they are delicious I wanted to try something a bit different. Coffee éclairs were my first thought and after looking at lots of different things I couldn’t get these out of my mind. I really enjoy making choux pastry and making éclairs gave me a chance to practice my dreaded piping skills. As you can see from the photo, I ended up with quite a motley crew of shapes but they still all tasted good! I chose this recipe by Simon Rimmer from the TV show Something for the Weekend (now Sunday Brunch, which I love) because it has a double hit – the coffee whipped cream filling and coffee fudge icing. My only note about this recipe is that I managed about 15 eclairs instead of the 6-8 the recipe suggests and some of mine were already pretty big! I found the whole process strangely therapeutic and I was really pleased with the strong coffee flavour that came through in the end. Often éclairs can be very sweet with lots of chocolate or rich vanilla pastry cream so I think the bitterness of coffee really helps balance this. I am definitely looking forward to adding to my coffee recipe collection here in the future – I’ve seen a very tempting cappuccino pavlova by Nigella and espresso granita by Jacob Kennedy I’d like to try. Until then, enjoy the éclairs! :)

Sticky Toffee Loaf Cake

Normally, the cake should be the star of the show – not the icing. A cupcake piled overwhelmingly high with decadent swirl upon swirl of icing can err on the wrong side of rich. However, I think in the case of this cake it is ok that the icing almost outshines the dark cake beneath. In fact, I think it is the best icing I have ever made, it was that good. It is very sweet, rich and full of butterscotch flavour. I’ve made a similar variation before – a penuche icing to top apple cupcakes – but this version managed to be even better and more caramelly than that. Plus, the cake it topped was pretty good too! I like making cake or cookie versions of traditional dessert recipes and working out how the flavours can be carried across different baking mediums. It means that instead of having a bake best served immediately, after a meal, the cake can last several days and be enjoyed at any time. Win. This Delia recipe uses all the classic sticky toffee pudding elements and also adds pecans. Personally I’m not a fan of nuts (other than almonds) in cakes but they seemed to go down well with the family, adding a contrast in texture to the dense squishyness of the cake and icing.You can find the recipe here and I didn’t make any changes other than decreasing the amount of pecans. The icing only uses 4tbsp of evaporated milk, meaning that the majority of the tin is left behind – it’s taking a lot of resistance and willpower not to make another batch!

Spiced Apple Buns

These buns are the recipe I mentioned I was forced to put on hold due to the combination of a lack of ingredients + heavy snow = me not going outside. Normally I’d have just forgotten about the recipe and moved on to one of the many other tempting bakes in my cookbooks or recipe files, but something made me keep thinking about these. Then I was looking back through my archives and noticed that in January 2011 I posted these Stollen Swirls and in January 2010 I made Glazed Fruit Rolls – I clearly have a thing for yeasted rolls in January! It must be a combination of wanting to start the new year by challenging myself in baking including doing more work with yeast, and the more simple desire of something warm, doughy and carby to eat in the cold! Either way it was a clear sign and as soon as the pesky snow melted I was out making sure my cupboards were prepared for these.The recipe was an interesting twist from standard Cinnamon Rolls and I thought the combination of tart apple and super sweet marzipan alongside the rich bread dough would go down a treat. I was not proved wrong! When I was layering up the fillings onto my rolled out dough there seemed to be a heck of a lot of apple, marzipan and sultanas if I was planning to roll these up neatly. I decided just to add one large apple instead of two and whilst the buns were definitely quite full I think they would have benefited from the extra apple for more tartness as the apple chunks reduced in the oven quite drastically. Note to self: stick to the recipe! Having said that, I added a simple glace icing which I think added a good extra element.These are nicest warm out the oven, but even after a couple of days a few seconds in the microwave will easily restore them to this goodness. You can find the recipe here – enjoy!

Coffee Break Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes for the people in my office on my last day of my internship at the start of August, as I had wanted to make something a little bit more special than muffins for my last bake. I had found these on the always perfect blog, raspberri cupcakes, a few weeks before and bookmarked them on the off chance I would find a situation where they would be suitable. With a few adaptations they became the perfect treat.Originally, I stayed pretty faithful to the recipe on raspberri cupcakes. I made both the condensed milk icing and the cookie dough…and used neither. The condensed milk icing was gorgeous, but insanely sweet. Properly sweet. I don’t normally find things too sweet, but even I could only manage a miniscule spoonful. It was probably as close to eating pure butter as you can get! It still tasted good, but I thought it would be pretty over powerful to pile it on top of a chocolate chip cupcake. Bearing this extreme sweetness in mind, I also chose not to stuff the middle with cookie dough and baked this into cookies another day instead. So in the end I had: coffee cupcakes with dark and milk chocolate chips, coffee buttercream, mini HobNobs and milk bottles. I couldn’t find mini chocolate chip cookies, and the HobNobs seemed appropriate after an embarrassing day at the office when the the rest of the team noticed how I ate a ridiculously large amount in one day… These are fun to personalise too: I swapped in cola bottle sweets on one cake for my boss with the Diet Coke habit, and added an extra shot of coffee to the cake of the boss who drank copious amounts of black coffee throughout the day. They went down a treat at the office – I hope you like them too :)

Chocolate Owl Cake

My Mum is really good at birthday cakes. When I was little I had an ice cream cake, treasure chest cake, my name written in Smarties, a teddy bear, a princess cake and more over the years. So for her birthday this year, it was time to return the favour! She requested this owl cake, purely for its cuteness, and my sister and I obliged.It took us a couple of read-through’s of the recipe to fully understand how the cake gets carved up into the adorable owl shape, and I may or may not have cut it wrong initially but that’s nothing a bit of chocolate buttercream gluing couldn’t save! It’s actually not too complicated to make, with a round sponge making the main body of the owl and then a square cake carved up for the rest.

It was really fun to do something different and it felt pretty indulgent – chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream, marzipan, white chocolate buttons, milk chocolate buttons, Cadbury Flake’s and chocolate fingers all together, but hey, when better to indulge then a birthday? Especially when the result is this adorable. I don’t have any pictures of the inside of the cake as it felt a little morbid and also we didn’t use the original recipe. The suggested cake was made with melted chocolate and we wanted it to be a little bit lighter so used the chocolate version of this. The cake was huge when finished, and lasted a good few days, but happily it stayed moist even after being cut into lots of pieces. The link for the original instructions (with helpful step by step photos of the cake carving) is here – enjoy!!

Mini Bakewell Tarts

I made these tarts a few weekends ago when I had the day spare and kitchen free. When I initially read the recipe properly, I was worried about the pastry because it contains no sugar. When I ate my first finished tart, that completely made sense. Sweet strawberry jam, fluffy almond sponge, smooth lemon icing and a sticky glace cherry – if the pastry had been sweet as well these could easily go into overload and become sickly. As it is, I was more than happy with them. I saw these on Jo’s lovely What do you make of my cake? blog, and was severely tempted straight away. I can’t believe I managed to wait so long before making them myself! They look so dainty and cute and very much reminded me of a bake suitable for Red Nose Day or Comic Relief with their bright red cherry. I love bakewell tarts, having made a whole one before, and also tried the Mr Kipling ones but I knew these would be so much better. As I’ve shown previously, shop bought baked goods often contain all sorts of crazy ingredients and the Mr Kipling Mini Bakewell Tarts (which look pretty much identical to mine) are no different, with over 30 ingredients…
 
Really, these Mini Bakewell Tarts are not that hard to make and you can be safe in the knowledge that all ingredients are pronounceable. Also, seeing as you’ve gone to the trouble of making them yourself you definitely deserve more than one :) You can find Jo’s original post with the recipe here – definitely give them a try. Even though they aren’t tiny and are quite sweet, I still found these quite addictive – enjoy!

Orange and Passion fruit Cake

Today I planned my summer holiday. It made me dream of a beach – scorching sand that gets everywhere, paddling and swimming in the sea. I imagined exploring a new city with my friends – shopping, eating, seeing, sampling. It reminded me of sunny days – when its warm and you wear flip flops instead of boots, T-shirts without coats. This tropical cake properly transported me and made me feel like I was already there. Only three months to wait!This loaf cake is from Edd Kimber’s (Great British Bake Off series 1 winner) new book, The Boy Who Bakes. The sponge is like a pound cake, dense and full of orange citrus flavour. The cake is also soaked with an orange sugar syrup which helps keep it really moist and heightens the flavours. My favourite part of the cake, however, was the passion fruit icing. Ahhh. I’ve spoken before about my love of passion fruit and this icing was just pure passion fruit flavour – bright and tropical and summery and zingy and aromatic: I could go on! For me, it completely made the cake and took it to a whole new level.If you are sick of the grey weather, and are loving the start of March and the gradual arrival of spring then this is the cake for you. Just don’t be like me and be impatient, causing you to put the icing on whilst the cake is still faintly warm – melting the icing a tad and causing a cake-stand covered in icing instead of the actual cake… Cut yourself a generous slice, close your eyes and dream of the Caribbean!

10,000 Cupcakes

No, don’t worry, I haven’t been on a huge baking spree. 10,000 Cupcakes is the name of a brand new baking book by Susanna Tee that I was recently sent by Ivy Press.
The book is a flip book, with the pages split into three separate sections – a cupcake recipe, an icing recipe and an idea for how to decorate the cupcake. These pages are interchangeable so you can mix and match different flavours and eventually choose a page from each different section that you most like. There’s 23 ideas in each section ranging from the classic to a bit different. For the cupcakes it ranges from Lemon to Doughnut cupcakes, for the icing from Vanilla to Pineapple butter flavours. I chose to make the Apple and Almond Cupcakes with Penuche Frosting, decorated with Sprinkles.I chose to halve the recipe which I later half regretted as the results were so delicious we could have easily eaten a full batch very quickly! The recipes were easy to follow and created very moreish results. The cupcake was very soft and tender, almost muffin like with the involvement of the fruit. The Penuche icing was not a flavour I’d heard of before which was why I wanted to try it. I learnt that penuche is a type of fudge, so this icing just involved melting together butter and brown sugar and then beating in icing sugar. It was thick and very sweet and I thought worked nicely with the apple base – the finished products were like toffee apple flavours in cake form! I chose simple sprinkles for decoration but there were lots of ideas in the book, from lavender sprigs to crushed cookies to crystallized rose petals.I think this book would be a great gift because it is fun and light hearted but the recipes are still interesting and actually work. I also think it’s good for inspiration, mixing new flavours or ideas and creating something unique. I think the book would benefit from real pictures of the food as there’s only one at the very start, but the cartoons are still fun. Plus, as the title suggests, there are 10,000 ways to combine all the different ideas so it’ll keep you busy for a while! Ivy Press have kindly agreed to give away another copy of this lovely little book – all you have to do is comment on this post by the 7th October saying you’d like a copy and I'll pick a winner with a random number generator! Good Luck everybody!
Book credits:
10,000 Cupcakes
Susanna Tee
ISBN: 978-1-907332-85-2
Price: £9.99
The Ivy Press
www.ivypress.co.uk
Also, do go and ‘like’ the Ivy Press Facebook page here for information and fun videos on the books they publish.

Disclaimer: Ivy Press sent me this book for free but all opinions and words are my own.

Apple, Vanilla and Olive Oil Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Icing

Doesn’t the title say it all? Apples. Cream cheese. Maple syrup. Vanilla. Gorgeous. The flavours may sound quite autumnal, and I do have more summery dishes coming up, but I still highly recommend you give this a try (especially with London’s weather acting like it is October). My Mum and I bought a slice of this cake from the fabulous London bakery, Ottolenghi and once we tasted it knew that we had to have more of it – and soon! Luckily we have the Ottolenghi book at home and, double luckily, the recipe was featured in it. The cake is stodged full of big apple chunks, juicy sultanas and the sponge is deep with cinnamon and luxurious vanilla: already very good. But fill and top it with the rich, honey coloured, maple cream cheese icing – delicious! When I tried the raw cake mixture I was nervous as it had a really strong after taste of pure olive oil, not quite what you’re looking for in a decadent cake. But, once cooked, that harsh and obvious flavour is baked away and you wouldn’t even know it was there (in a good way! It adds depth of flavour rather than being a totally in your face savoury taste). This was my first time cutting a cake in half to make a layer cake, hence the smaller bottom half, but hey, it was stable. It was also my first time using a vanilla pod rather than extract or paste. Pods have a stronger flavour than extract and I think are more impressive in creamy vanilla desserts because you can see all the vanilla flecks. The book said to cook this cake for an hour and a half but I only did it for one hour and it was perfect, maybe even a little bit too done. So I would say start around that level and see how you go because obviously all ovens are different. Overall – enjoy this fabulous treat of a cake!

Apple and Olive Oil Cake With Maple Cream Cheese Icing, from Ottolenghi

Ingredients for cake:

• 280g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 120ml olive oil
• 160g caster sugar
• 2tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 3 Bramley apples, peeled cored and chopped into 1cm dice
• grated zest of 1 lemon
• 2 egg whites

Icing:

• 100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 100g light muscavado sugar
• 85ml maple syrup
• 220g cream cheese, at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 170C. Sift the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl. Meanwhile, whisk the olive oil, vanilla and sugar  together until voluminous and smooth. Next whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the apples and lemon zest and then the flour. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold carefully into the cake batter. Grease and line two sandwich tins and bake for 45 mins until a cake batter comes out clean. Once cooked, allow the cakes to cool completely before icing.

To make the icing, beat together the butter and maple syrup and sugar until light and airy. Next add in the cream cheese and beat until it’s totally smooth. Use half of  the icing to the sandwich the cakes together, and smooth the remaining frosting over the top.

Mini Orange Drizzle Cakes

Its currently that time of year when the weather can’t really make its mind up – should it let the sun shine or should it be gloomy and grey? Should it be getting dark at 4pm or 5pm? It’s also the time of year that inspires the spring clean. In my house the bedrooms are being reorganised, paperwork from all corners of the house is being filed, clothes are being sorted, drawers are being emptied and their contents examined. The last drawer to have the spring clean treatment was the kitchen drawer containing baking bits and bobs. Piping bags, cookie cutters, baking parchment, the heavy rolling pin – everything covered the table. Including a set of tiny loaf tins hidden at the back, bought excitedly but never used. Today that changed! Today was one of those gloomy, rainy days but I ignored it, put on an orange jumper and started baking zingy, fresh orange drizzle cakes. I whipped these up in about half an hour but their scent lingered happily in the kitchen: making it smell fresh, delicious and drawing me constantly back to the baking. Also, because they’re mini they only take 10-15minutes to cook so there’s not too long to wait before you can be enjoying these! The cake edges are crisp and golden, giving way to the soft and moist centre. The crème fraiche in the recipe ensures these stay soft whilst giving them a bit of extra tang which complements the tang of the orange. The orange glace icing on the top adds an extra burst of sweet and rounds everything off simply. I liked these because it’s more interesting than one large cake but makes a refreshing change to cupcakes. I hope you give these a try and that they brighten up a gloomy day in another kitchen. Enjoy :) Mini Orange Drizzle Cakes (makes 8) Ingredients: 100g caster sugar
115g softened butter
2 large eggs
115g self raising flour
2tbsp crème fraiche
2 large oranges – the zest and juice
100g icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180’C/350’F/Gas Mark 4 and line the cake tins.
2. Beat the butter and caster sugar until light, creamy and well combined. Add the eggs one by one, beating after each addition. Add the juice of one orange, and zest of both.
3. Add the flour and crème fraiche and fold the mixture gently until fully combined. Divide the mixture between the cake cases – filling them about 3/4 full.
4. Bake for 10-15 minutes until the cakes spring back and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Let cool in their tins.
5. Mix the icing sugar and remaining orange juice until smooth and fairly thin so that it is easy to drizzle. If there is any orange juice left over, use the cake skewer to poke small holes in the cakes and pour over the juice.
6. Once the cakes are fully cooled, remove from the tins and paper and drizzle over the icing. Enjoy!

Tropical Cupcakes

There is always a lot of citrus baking happening in January and February. There’s not a lot of fresh local fruit and vegetables around at this time of year, and after the excess of Christmas it’s time to turn away from chocolate (unless you’re making this, in which case I am rather envious). Also, when the weather is grey and cold the zing of citrus acts as a great pick-me-up. And when combined with rich buttercream and soft cupcake, citrus baking sounds pretty good to me.Depending on where you live, the flavours might not be tropical at all but pineapple, lime and cherries aren’t grown round London! I’ve only baked with pineapple once before but I loved the results here. The pineapple chunks are sweet and juicy and add fresh bursts of flavour as the cupcake is eaten. Lime is also not an ingredient I have regularly used but it’s sharpness stops the buttercream becoming sickly. This recipe was extremely easy to make – oil takes the place of butter in the cake so there is no creaming done and everything is simply stirred together in one bowl. The cake is also delicious without the buttercream, becoming more like a muffin and far less rich. I wanted these cupcakes to be bright and colourful so I used spotty cases and decorated them with Dr Oetker jelly beans and sprinkles, which made for a cheery kitchen! This vibrancy combined with the lime tang and juicy pineapple made these cupcakes a winner for me. Enjoy!Tropical Cupcakes
Makes 12-15, depending on your cupcake case size
Ingredients: 200g self raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g caster sugar
50g dried tropical fruit
3 medium eggs
100ml sunflower oil
75ml buttermilk (or 75ml milk and 1/2tsp white wine vinegar)
1 x 227g tin pineapple slices, chopped finely and fully drained
Buttercream: 200g icing sugar
100g butter
1 lime, the zest and juice
1. Preheat the oven to 190’C (170’C fan oven). Line a 12-hole muffin tin with cases, although you may need a few more if your cases are small like mine.
2. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, caster sugar and dried fruit into a large bowl.
3. Put the eggs, oil and buttermilk into a jug and whisk until all combined.
4. Pour the egg mixture into the flour, and add the pineapple pieces. Stir everything together until combined and divide between the cupcakes cases – you can fill the cases quite high as the cakes do not rise hugely.
5. Bake for 15-20minutes until golden and risen slightly. Leave to cool completely on a wire rack.
6. For the buttercream: Whisk all the ingredients together until smooth and fully mixed. Either pipe or spoon the icing over the cupcakes, and decorate how you wish. :)

Stollen Swirls

I made these before Christmas, and the post I’d written about them was pre-Christmas themed. That post never got posted and so new words had to be written. Except, why not keep it simple? It is New Year, a period when everybody is meant to be eating healthy salads and vegetables in order to get over festive excess (although who really does?). So, my main stollen point is: the swirls  were good, but I think could be a easily improved to make them so much better.  I’ve never attempted making the classic stollen before so I was eager to give it a go this year. This recipe was a little bit different and as I can never resist anything involving marzipan the baking began. The end result was tasty, they made the house smell gorgeous and the recipe worked perfectly. My key adaptation would be instead of forming a marzpian log down the centre of the swirls, roll it out into a thin layer on top of the dough and then add the fruit. This way, just like here, the marzipan would melt and go toffee-ish and impart its flavour across the whole swirl. Yum. I’d also up the fruit levels, and cut the rolls thinner so its less plain doughy. Failing that, I’d flavour the dough with spices like cinnamon to give this extra punch. Double Yum. You can find the recipe here, enjoy :)

Nutmeg Custard Creams

When I began my Biscuit Challenge here on the blog, a long time ago, I constantly refrained from attempting the infamous custard cream. Bourbons, digestives, snickerdoodles and most recently ricciarelli, amongst others, have all been made as part of the Biscuit Challenge and have all been tasty. They haven’t been exact replicas of the shop bought original, but when baked with regular ingredients and care – plus with delicious results – does this really matter? When I finally attempted custard creams, I decided to step a little bit further away from the original.Marcus Wareing, a Gordon Ramsay trained and Michelin-starred top chef, is renowned for his nutmeg custard tart, which has been served to the Queen. Taking this success and running with it, he’s adapted his recipe to create what he calls Nutmeg Custard Cream Yo-yo’s. The biscuits were easy to make, and the final product was ultra rewarding. The nutmeg makes the final cookies spicier and warmer than your standard custard cream and when I make these next (which I definitely shall do) I think I’ll add even more. The biscuit itself had the best texture – sandy yet crisp and very moreish.  When I made bourbons I missed the firm square of chocolate cream filling – which I think now you can only properly get with shop bought biscuits which can use preservatives and E-numbers – but with these the soft and creamy custard filling was delicious and perfectly flavoured. Mmm. Just right to fill that 4pm biscuit craving :) The only change I made to the recipe was that instead of forming a log of cookie dough and slicing it up, I found the dough much easier to roll out and cut with a cookie cutter. I also added more custard powder to the biscuit dough, as I wanted to be sure the flavour would clearly some through which, happily, it did. You can find the recipe here, and I hope you do attempt the British biscuit tin favourite – and enjoy!