Having a Christmas cake in my house is a yearly tradition and nowadays I volunteer to make and decorate it myself. This year I decided to keep it quite simple by covering it with marzipan and sugarpaste and then making a wreath pattern from some florist paste ivy leaves I made. The good thing about this cake is the fact that it lasts such a long time, being a fruit cake this means that it keeps much better than most others.
You can also make mini fruit cake cupcakes which I now do regularly for my brother as his wife doesn't like fruit cake but he loves it, meaning that he wouldn't go through a whole cake making cupcakes a perfect gift.
Hope you all have a lovely Christmas and over-eat and indulge just like i'll be doing!
Thanks for reading,
Naomi ♥
After finishing the mound of assignments which I've had in recently I can eventually relax and start to engage in some mandatory Christmas activities such as of course baking mince pies. This time however I decided I wanted to make the mince pies slightly differently and when I found this recipe in my Jamie Magazine I had to give it a go. I love mince pies, however sometimes I find that the traditional ones have a bit too much mince meat in for my liking and these ones eliminate that problem perfectly.
The pies are made out of two types of pastry, a soft puff pastry filling encased in crunchy filo pastry and not only do they taste good they are ridiculously easy to make as well, you can find the recipe here. Basically you spread the mince meat onto a sheet of rolled out puff pastry and add whatever flavours you want, I added lemon and orange zest, brandy and some dried cranberries, you then roll it up into a giant swiss roll and refrigerate it for half an hour. When you take it out the fridge you cut them into discs and place them into a filo pastry lined muffin dish and bake for 25 minutes. They might not be the prettiest looking mince pies however they taste amazing and are definitely a different take on the same old mince pie.
Thanks for reading,
Naomi ♥
A while ago Olivia and I paid a visit to the Lola's Cupcakes bakery in Topshop Oxford Street, I have their book so have been wanting to check out their cakes myself for a while now. We both loved the fact that there were so many different flavours available, from peanut butter to fresh mango, the range of cakes really reflected their cookbook. The fact that the bakery is in the middle of one of Oxford Street busiest fashion shops does make the visit that little bit less personal as you can only take the cakes away really, which in a way puts even more pressure on the cakes themselves as they do not have anything to fall back on.
Another thing that Olivia and I liked about the selection is that you can get either a standard sized cupcake or a mini one, allowing yourself to try various flavours without feeling like a pig. We got a mini coconut cupcake as well as a mini peanut butter one. The coconut cupcake is shown below.
We enjoyed both the cakes however for different reasons, we found that the coconut cake lacked flavour however the texture was really good, and in reverse, the peanut butter cupcake tasted great but was a little bit dry, if you put both these benefits together then they would have a perfect cake.
Olivia and I would definitely go back to Lola's Cupcakes again as there are just so many exciting flavours we want to try, and maybe next time we will receive both a light and flavorsome cupcake, we'll let you know!
Thanks for reading,
Naomi ♥
Sorry about the lack of posts recently, assignments have been getting in the way of blogging and baking but now everything is handed in, we can get back to baking.
Around Bonfire night it was Naomi's house mates birthday so we thought we would combine the two events and make S'moreanne cupcakes, which we had both wanted to make for a while anyway.
S'moreanne Cupcakes are a chocolate sponge, sprinkled with crushed digestive biscuits and topped with meringue, so we thought that with all the different textures and flavours, these would be a good choice.
We attempted Italian meringue for the topping, however, we don't think we let the water and sugar get hot enough as the meringue didn't hold it's shape. When that went wrong we decided to resort to French meringue and have decided that we will practice Italian meringue a bit more in the future, which will hopefully work next time!
The cakes themselves were quite interesting as there was a lot of different textures, however, we both found the sponge slightly dry. They looked quite nice and our housemates liked them though, so that's the main thing but if we were to make these again we might change the sponge recipe to see if we could improve it a bit.
Recipe
(Cake Days - The Hummingbird Bakery)
Makes 12-16 cupcakes
For the sponge:
30g (1oz) dark chocolate
5 digestive biscuits
80g (3oz) unsalted butter, softened
280g (10oz) caster sugar
200g (7oz) plain flour
40g (1.5oz) cocoa powder
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
240ml (8.5fl oz) whole milk
2 large eggs
For the topping:
200g (7oz) caster sugar
4 egg whites
100g (3.5oz) dark chocolate, broken into squares
one or two 12-hole deep muffin tins
cooks blow torch (optional)
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 170C (325F), Gas Mark 3, and line a muffin tin with muffin cases. Use the finest blade on a cheese grater to grate the chocolate and then set aside. Crush the biscuits in a food processor using the blade attachment or in a plastic bag using a rolling pin.
- Using a hand-held electric whisk or a freestanding electric mixer with the paddle attachment, beat together the butter, sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt on a low speed until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Mix the eggs and milk by hand in a jug, then pour three-quarters of this into the dry ingredients and mix on a low speed to combine. Increase the speed to medium and mix until smooth and thick. Scrape the sides of the bowl, add the remaining milk mixture and keep mixing until all the ingredients are incorporated and the mixture is smooth.
- Spoon the batter into the paper cases, filling them by two-thirds. Any remaining batter can be spooned into more cases in another tin. Sprinkle the chocolate shavings and three-quarters of the crushed biscuits on top of the cupcakes, reserving the rest of the biscuit crumbs for later.
- Bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes or until well risen and springy to the touch, then leave to cool completely.
- Put the sugar in a small saucepan with 150ml (5.5 floz) of water and bring to the boil. Meanwhile, using the electric whisk or freestanding mixer with paddle attachment, whisk the egg whites until foamy.
- When the sugar has boiled for 5-10 minutes and reached the soft ball stage, pour on to the beaten eggs while mixing on a medium speed. Once added, adjust the speed to and whisk until the underside of the bowl feels lukewarm. At this stage the meringue should have increased in size and become white, smooth and quite shiny.
- Smooth the meringue onto the cooled cupcakes, then swirl or mould into decorative spikes or waves using a palette knife. With a cooks blowtorch, lightly brown the meringue to give it a baked appearance. Alternatively - pop the cakes under a hot grill - but only for a few seconds as the meringue will brown quickly and you don't want it to burn. Decorate the cupcakes with biscuit crumbs and squares of chocolate.
Thanks for reading,
Olivia x x
