Happy 2013 !

A simple design of ice blue fondant and sparkly snowflakes.
(Photo does not reflect the true colour or the sparkly effect )

A fun snowball scene

Crikey! How time flies!

Three years ago I started this blog to record my odd ramblings, my son growing up, my baking endeavours and gardening adventures.  Garden hasn't had a lot of exposure on here - probably due to a lack of me being in it! Baking, well - I'm always in my kitchen baking away :p

Here's a look back at our Christmas 2012 seeing as I was too busy baking to stop and blog :(

No icing or marzipan for this one - dried fruit and nut topping

Gold Star Wreath

I made several Christmas Cakes this year to gift to friends and family. Each one has been decorated differently and it was a joy to do!

Home-made mincemeat and home-made gluten-free pastry

I had a pre-Christmas Meet with some of my Mummy friends - we met because we were expecting our little people 2 or so years ago and have stayed firm friends and our little ones play together too!  One of my friends is gluten intolerant and vegetarian so I made these Gluten-Free Mince Pies so she could indulge in the festive season!

The package on right is Gluten-Free Biscotti ~ Apricot and Almond

I do like to bake and share so I have been biscotti crazy again this Christmas concocting different combinations of fruits and nuts into biscotti so I can package and give to friends.  It certainly guarantees a smile on people's faces!

It was fun decorating these trees with my son 

I try not to leave the little people out where I can so I made some Gingerbread Trees and People for a few of my friends - oh and of course, for the little person here too :D  Although I secretly think my son enjoys the  "Smarties" (Chocolate Beans) more than the gingerbread itself! 

My personal project this Christmas was to create a Gingerbread Scene - 3D of course!

My Gingerbread Display I made for my son and niece - we ate the gingerbread after Christmas!

Thank you to you all for reading!

May 2013 bring you much baking / cooking / crafting / gardening adventures!

Cherry, Almond and Apricot Loaf Cake

I wanted cake.  I needed cake.

Supermarket cakes just won't do.  On the occasion when I've wanted a small celebration cake and haven't had chance to bake, the resulting bought cake has not been too my liking.  Too sweet, not moist enough and usually too much sickly sweet butter icing.

Flicking through some of my favourite cake recipes and baking books I thought I'd bake a Cherry and Almond Cake.  I knew there was a tub of glace cherries in the cupboard and I always have a block of butter in the fridge for impromptu baking.

When it came to gathering ingredients, I discovered the glace cherry tub was already opened so I wouldn't have enough.  Hmm...what to do?  I found some dried apricots and so, Cherry, Almond and Apricot Cake was born!
 

Cherry, Almond and Apricot Loaf Cake

200 g butter (softened, but not melted)
175 g caster sugar
75 g ground almonds
Few drops of almond extract (optional if you like a stronger almond flavour, swap for vanilla if you prefer or omit)
3 large eggs
200 g self-raising flour
100 g glacé cherries (quartered)
100 g dried apricots (snipped into quarters or sixths)

Cream the butter and sugar together until the mixture is lighter in colour and fluffy.  (I like to do this by hand in a bowl and a wooden spoon as I find a hand-mixed cake has a lighter texture than if I use my stand-alone mixer.)

Add the ground almonds and the almond extract if using and mix in before adding eggs in one by one and mixing until just combined.  With the last egg, add a tablespoon from your measured flour when you are mixing it in.  It stops mixture from curdling which can result in a dense and heavier cake.

Toss the cut dried fruit with a tablespoon of your measured flour.  This stops the fruit from sinking.

Sift the flour into the cake mix and fold in with a large metal spoon.

Tip in the fruits and the remaining flour if any and fold in.

Spoon mixture into a greased and lined loaf tin (mine is a 2lb loaf size) and bake in a preheated oven at 170 deg C, Gas 3 for 70 minutes.  Cake should be well rise, golden and spring lightly when pressed with a finger.  If the cake wobbles in tin, then it is not ready.  Test cake with skewer ensuring no wet crumbs.

Cool in tin for 10 minutes before turning onto a cooling rack to finish cooling.


*     *     *

Cake was wonderfully moist from the ground almonds as well as being rich and creamy from the butter.  I think next time I might reduce butter to 175 g as some fruit still sank in my cake :p  I wonder if that's because when you are spooning mix in, the fruits tend to go in first and when I scrape bowl clean with spatula, its plain cake mix that tops the cake off?

My son loves this cake - although he won't eat the fruit.  :p  This cake disappeared in 2 days so I tried to make a similar cake with vanilla, white choc chips and fudge bits.  It didn't work.  The choc and fudge bits sank to the bottom and resulted in a chewy and sweet bottom layer :p  Son still ate it but hubbs (Mr Leaf) didn't take extra helpings.  The cake took longer to disappear too :p

Chocolate Refrigerator Cake

Can't believe how quickly time passes!  My last Blog Entry was almost 6 months ago?!?!  Naughty me!

I will have to learn to write short posts and I dunno, edit photos so they are a collage of pictures in one post?  I hate waiting for the upload time :p

Chunks of moreish Refrigerator Cake :)

OK, this chocolate confection goes by many names: No-Cook Cake, Chocolate Tiffin, Chocolate Biscuit Cake (Prince William's favourite apparently), Rocky Road and of course, Chocolate Refrigerator Cake.  Needless to say, many names means many recipes.  I was inspired to make this after seeing a Facebook post from this lady, Jo Wheatley, winner of Great British Bake Off 2.  She has a Facebook page which I have been following.  Her picture of these decadent goodies made me want to make this...

When I make something, I now have an annoying habit of googling the name of the item and reading different variations of the recipe before I make my mind up which to follow.  If it's measured in grams opposed to cups, then I'm more likely to try it - just because I put my bowl on the digital scales and throw things in as I need to. 

I used this Annabel Karmel recipe as my base and used Jo's ideas to create my refrigerator cake.  It is delicious with crunchy and gooey textures and quite rich!

The chocolate mix turned out into my swiss-roll tin ready for chilling

Chocolate Refrigerator Cake

Ingredients:

150g/5oz milk chocolate

150g/5oz dark chocolate

100g/3½oz unsalted butter

150g/5oz golden syrup

small bag of Malteasers (honeycombe balls covered in chocolate 37g bag)
small bag of Minstrels (chocolate buttons encased in a candy shell 42g)
small bag of White Chocolate Buttons (70g)
8 biscuits (rich tea, ginger snaps, digestives, oat biscuits ~ any would work)
50g rice pop cereal
10 marshmallow lumps - quartered (could use mini-marshmallows too)

I made this cake with one bowl, one spoon.  Minimal washing up!  I put my bowl (microwaveable) on my digital scales and added things as I went along - it saved getting separate bowls messy and having lots to wash up :)

Break chocolate into pieces into a microwaveable bowl.
Add the cubed butter and the golden syrup to the bowl.  

Microwave at 100%  (mine is 800watt) for 30 seconds.  Take out and stir the contents.  If there are any remaining lumps of chocolate, microwave again for 15 seconds.  The mixture does not need to be hot, just warm enough to melt the chocolate.  Stirring continuously will help.
When the mix has all turned to liquid, tip in your Malteasers, Buttons, Minstrels, rice cereal, marshmallows and snap the biscuits up as you add them in too.  You can put these in a bowl and bash lightly with the end of a rolling pin if you like - but do not turn it into crumbs - lumpy is fine.
When everything is thoroughly coated in chocolate, tip out onto a shallow tray (I used 20cm x 30cm) lined with cling film (make sure there is excess cling film off the edges to wrap the cake).

Level out as best you can with the back of a spoon. 
Fold the excess cling film over the cake and place in fridge to set (1-2 hours).  Cut into small pieces.  It is quite rich so you do not need a big piece :)

I decorated the top of my cake with drizzles of white and dark chocolate before cutting it up :)
Melt one bar of white chocolate (100g).
Melt remaining dark chocolate left over from making refrigerator cake (50g) - left over milk chocolate is for stress-related emergencies >.<
Drizzle, squiggle, splodge the melted chocolate over the cake as your creative talents allow :)  Replce in fridge for a few mins to harden before chopping into as large/small pieces as you like :)

The beauty of this cake is you can adjust the ingredients as you like.  Add chopped dried fruit (raisins, apricots, dates, stem ginger, sour cherries, cranberries, list is endless...) and nuts (hazlenut, brazil, pistachio) if you prefer.  Or soak the dried fruit in alcohol for 24 hrs prior to making this if you want it to be an adult-only treat!

See the soft, gooey marshmallow, crisp, crunchy Malteaser?

Bagged and ready as a birthday gift to my neighbour :)

Macaron Madness!

Bite-sized tea-time treats

I'm obsessed with the baker's arch enemy - The Macaron!  Notice the spelling - one 'o'.  The single 'o' spelling of macaron is normally used to describe the french confection of two meringue and almond discs sandwiched together with buttercream, ganache or jam.  Macaroon, however is known in England as a coconut or almond small baked confection.

You do get more than that in each pack, I've just eaten half the pack!

It appears that these dainty and colourful creations (french macarons like Lauduree or Pierre Hermes) are popular in blogosphere at the moment as well as being a hit outside in major cities all around the world.  They are made from sugar, icing sugar, ground almonds and egg whites and are exceedingly difficult to get right.  I've gone through a craze of sitting up late at night reading blog after blog about macarons, the best recipes, different fillings, flavours, what went wrong......  Now I've never even eaten one of these pretty pastel coloured confections but I must make some!  I tried.  I failed.

I heard Waitrose were stocking these in packs of twelve to buy (where I heard that I forget now, too many blogs, too many sites!), so off I popped to the shops yesterday (it was wet and drizzly too) in search of these little treasures.  Nope.  My local didn't have these on offer but I did find the English equivalents, both the Coconut and Almond Macaroon. 

Soft chewy centre full of almond flavour

Moist sweet coconut - for the exceptionally sweet-toothed!

My fave has to be the Almond Macaroon.  Looking like a crunchy cookie it's deceptive as you bite into that crisp exterior that gives way to a soft chewy centre with a flavour reminiscent of marzipan but less dense.  It's usually has a thin edible rice paper sheet lining it.  The coconut cousin however, is a much, much sweeter affair.  A rough, rocky lump of lightly browned coconut which is very slightly moist in the middle, like eating a Bounty Chocolate bar without the thick chocolate covering.  I now recall making these coconut delights when younger.  My mum said I was never to make them again as they were far too sweet.  Afterall, it consisted of mixing egg white, sugar and desiccated coconut together before dropping rough heaps on a tray to bake.

Dense chocolatey gooeyness

So, what went wrong with my macarons?  Well, I saw a chocolate macaron recipe and thought the bitter chocolate would take away the sweetness of egg whites and sugar.  I anticipated a fail and so split the recipe in thirds.  On mixing the meringue with almonds, cocoa and sugar I knew something was wrong.  The mixture was far too dry.  So I quickly whisked up another egg white to combine with the mixture.  Maybe I got my sums wrong when scaling down the recipe?  I checked if I was being a scatter brain.  Nope.  I guess it may be down to the eggs being on the small side (they're from our own hens) or me getting the method wrong.  The mixture still seemed thick and it didn't make me think of flowing magma like other blogs described.  I won't use the words I thought the lumpy brown mix looked like, never-the-less, I dropped blobs on a baking sheet to bake anyway and wished for a miracle to happen.  Hmmm....well, they kinda cooked.  They aren't right at all.  It's deep dark and chocolaty but not crisp and chewy.  Just moist and gooey.  Actually, I think I've invented chocolate flavoured marzipan as that what it reminds me of.  Ho-hum.  Back to the drawing board and I will summon up the courage to try making these elusive babies another time.