Tate & Lyle Sugar - Banana Bread

Banana Bread

Ingredients
145g caster sugar
1 egg
100g mashed banana
140g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
70g melted butter

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 170˚C
2. Beat sugar and eggs together
3. Mix in the mashed banana
4. Mix in the dry ingredients, then stir in the butter.
5. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes.

Thanks to Tate & Lyle for the fairtrade sugar used in this recipe. There's lots of recipe ideas for each type of sugar on their website

Polo Shaped Rolo Cake

I love going through my rss reader and coming across a new recipe that makes me want to go make it immediately - this cake was one of them. Scottish food blogger, Jacqueline, of Tinned tomatoes fame posted this recipe for rolo cake topped with gooey snowballs who found it on The Caked Crusader's blog. I knew I had all the ingredients in my kitchen so it seemed to be my destiny to make this one.

I had recently bought a new bundt tin and decided immediately to use it for this one thus resulting in polo shaped rolo cake! Really tasty cake with the occasional surprise of crispy chewy caramel throughout. This is one you should bookmark and try out.



Rolo Cake

Ingredients
Cake:
200g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1⁄3 cup caster sugar
4 large eggs
1 ½ cup self raising flour
2⁄3 cup cocoa powder
100g Rolos, halved
Buttercream:
1 cup icing sugar
100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp cocoa powder

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C
2. Grease a deep 20cm diameter bundt tin.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy, then mix in the eggs one at a time.
4. Gently stir in the flour and cocoa, before stirring in the chopped rolos.
5. Spoon into the prepared cake tin and bake for approximately 30-35 minutes or until a skewer comes out cleanly. The cake will settle on cooling but this is because it’s so rich and squidgy.
6. Leave to cool in the tin, on a wire rack.

Buttercream Frosting
1. When cool make the buttercream by creaming the butter until soft and smooth, then cream in the icing sugar a little at a time.
2. Beat in the vanilla extract and cocoa powder.
3. If the mix is a bit solid, add a dash of milk to soften and slacken.
4. Spread over the cake and decorate as required .


For another fun recipe using rolos check out these caramel filled chocolate cookies

Chocolate Bundt Pudding

We were at friends' house for dinner a few Saturdays ago and it's become a pattern for me to bring dessert to people's houses now when we're having meals... sometimes if we're not having meals! This time I had seen Patsy's blog post on a Choclate Bundt Cake recipe and was keen to try it, especially seeing as it was a "healthier" one. Plus who doesn't love chocolate cake? Well my husband but that's neither here nor there!

I halved the recipe below and used a smaller bundt tin and served it warm with warm chocolate ganache (recipe below too)

Chocolate Bundt Pudding

Ingredients
Non-stick cooking spray with flour
3 ounces dark chocolate, fiinely chopped
3/4 cup Dutch process cocoa
1 teaspoon instant espresso
1 cup boiling water
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups light brown sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C. Spray the inside of you bundt pan with cooking spray in preparation.
2. Mix together the chocolate and boiling water in a bowl and cover. Set to the side for 5 minutes, then whisk until smooth.
3. In separate bowl, mix together the flour, salt and baking soda.
4. Using a mixer, mix the chocolate together with the sugar, oil and vanilla. Then gradually mix in the flour mixture until well combined and smooth.
5. Pour the batter into your oiled bundt tine and bake for 50 minutes, leave to cool a little but not completely.
6. Slice and serve with ganache

Ganache

Ingredients
170g dark chocolate
3/4 cup single cream

Recipe
1. Melt the chocolate in a small saucepan over a medium heat.
2. Stir in the cream until smooth.

Marmalade cake

About a month ago I was away for the weekend with the youth group. Heading out my car was loaded with food, most of which was devoured, but often there's things left over like some biscuits, milk, bread, crisps, cereals and marmalade. We end up dividing the leftovers among the group because there's no way I could use it all up on my own. When it came to sharing it out this time though nobody wanted the marmalade!!!!! What's wrong with marmalade? So I took it and decided to make a marmalade cake for them as well as enjoying it on some lovely golden toast.

I hunted through all my bookmarks and remembered the lovely Rosie blogged on her old blog about Marmalade Cake. (You can catch Rosie over on Baking Cakes Galore now). How could I resist?

I made mine in 2 victoria sandwich tins and put them one on top of the other with about 2-3 tbsp marmalade in between then topped off with the icing (which turned out a little too orange when I added too much red colouring the the yellow).



Marmalade Cake

Ingredients
Cake
175g (6 oz) self-raising flour, sifted
175g (6 oz) softened butter
175g (6 oz) soft brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
Grated zest of 1 orange
Juice ½ orange
2 tbsp thin-cut marmalade
Icing
200g (7 oz) icing sugar, sifted
Juice of 1 orange
Orange edible food colouring (optional)
A few sprinkles (optional)

Recipe
1. Grease two victoria sandwich tins. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3. Add a little of the egg at a time until it's all mixed through. Then mix in the marmalade, OJ and zest.
4. Fold in the sifted flour gently folding.
5. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tins and level the surface off.
6. Place into the preheated oven to bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool for 5 – 10 minutes in the tin before removing to cool on a wire rack.
7. To make the icing; add the sifted icing sugar a little edible orange food colour (optional), and enough orange juice to make a spreadable icing for coating the top of the cake. Spread over the top of the cake and add sprinkles if using.

Red Velvet Cake

Red Velvet Cake has been one I've read loads about on various blogs and have been meaning to try making for the longest time, so when Sio at Cake Creations and I decided to meet up to bake some stuff together we ended up making the Daring Baker's flourless chocolate cake and this red velvet cake using a recipe on Equal Opportunity Kitchen. Thank you Sio for coming and making this with me. (You can read Sio's write up on the cake here and see some of the step by step pictures too)

This was fun to make but awkward for trying to keep the red food dye off everything - I unfortunately have a red stain on my nice wood chopping board now. We ended up making 3 layers from the huge amount of batter which worked out ok cos there's a huge amount of cream cheese frosting in this one too, however there was a little problem with the frosting in that we added almost triple the icing sugar to thicken it up (probably because the butter was too soft at the start) and it was still rather runny, which ended up making this a self icing cake:



Red Velvet Cake
Source: Equal Opportunity Dinner who sourced it from More From Magnolia by Allysa Torey

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp white vinegar
3 large eggs
1 (1-ounce) bottle liquid red food colouring (tasteless variety)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk

Recipe
1. Beat butter at medium speed with stand mixer (paddle attachment) or electric mixer until fluffy.
2. Gradually add sugar, vanilla and vinegar, beating well.
3. Add eggs, 1 at a time beating until blended after each addition.
4. Add food colouring, beating until combined.
5. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Add to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed until blended after each addition.
6. Pour into 2 greased and floured 9 inch round cakepans.
7. Bake at 350F for 20 - 22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 5 minutes; remove from pans and cool on wire racks.



Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients
1 (8 oz) package cream cheese at room temperature
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 (16 oz) package powdered sugar (2 cups) but we used almost 6 cups
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract (if you want your icing to stay pure white use clear vanilla extract)
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Recipe
Beat cream cheese and butter until creamy; gradually add sugar and vanilla, beating well.



Layer the cakes and frosting then cover the tops and sides with frosting and decorate.

This is my entry to Bookmarked Recipes for next Monday's round up. Check out this week's round up now!

Daring Bakers 13: Flourless Chocolate Cake

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.



Last February was my first ever Daring Baker challenge - it's been great year and a very challenging year too but it makes me look forward to what's next even more. I was looking forward to making this month's challenge from the moment I first read about it..... I mean who doesn't love chocolate cake????? Well my hubby, but that's not really anything to go by. And ice cream too???? A fantastic challenge.

I've made a similar cake before, Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake, which did have a little flour and some sugar in there too and just tasted incredible so remembering my thoughts of this and my youth group's love for that cake I was excited to make this month's challenge.

I set about making the ice cream first and used Dharm's recipe. So tasty and creamy, I love it.

Dharm's Ice Cream Recipe
Classic Vanilla Ice Cream
Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Recipe comes from the Ice Cream Book by Joanna Farrow and Sara Lewis (tested modifications and notes in parentheses by Dharm)

Ingredients
1 Vanilla Pod (or substitute with vanilla extract)
300ml / ½ pint / 1 ¼ cups Semi Skimmed Milk – in the U.S. this is 2% fat (or use fresh full fat milk that is pasteurised and homogenised {as opposed to canned or powdered}). Dharm used whole milk.
4 large egg yolks
75g / 3oz / 6 tbsp caster sugar {superfine sugar can be achieved in a food processor or use regular granulated sugar}
5ml / 1 tsp corn flour {cornstarch}
300ml / ½ pint / 1 ¼ cups Double Cream (48% butter fat) {in the U.S. heavy cream is 37% fat)
{you can easily increase your cream's fat content by heating 1/4 cup of heavy cream with 3 Tbs of butter until melted - cool to room temperature and add to the heavy cream as soon as whisk marks appear in the cream, in a slow steady stream, with the mixer on low speed. Raise speed and continue whipping the cream) or use heavy cream the difference will be in the creaminess of the ice cream.

Recipe
1. Using a small knife slit the vanilla pod lengthways. Pour the milk into a heavy based saucepan, add the vanilla pod and bring to the boil. Remove from heat and leave for 15 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse
Lift the vanilla pod up. Holding it over the pan, scrape the black seeds out of the pod with a small knife so that they fall back into the milk. SET the vanilla pod aside and bring the milk back to the boil.
2. Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and corn-flour in a bowl until the mixture is thick and foamy. 3. Gradually pour in the hot milk, whisking constantly. Return the mixture to the pan and cook over a gentle hear, stirring all the time
4. When the custard thickens and is smooth, pour it back into the bowl. Cool it then chill.
5. By Hand: Whip the cream until it has thickened but still falls from a spoon. Fold it into the custard and pour into a plastic tub or similar freeze-proof container. Freeze for 6 hours or until firm enough to scoop, beating it twice (during the freezing process – to get smoother ice cream or else the ice cream will be icy and coarse)
By Using and Ice Cream Maker: Stir the cream into the custard and churn the mixture until thick (follow instructions on your ice cream maker)


Earlier this week I had my good friend Sio from Cake Creations round to the house for a bake-a-thon and we made the cake together.

One of the criteria for this month was that we made this with our favourite chocolate. I used Belgian chocolate (about 50% cocoa), which while it isn't my favourite chocolate for everyday consumption, I prefer a chocolate cake to be that taste of somewhere between milk chocolate (about 30% cocoa) and dark chocolate (about 70% cocoa).

Another of the criteria was the option to make it a true Valentino - heart shaped. Thank you Sio for bringing your heart shaped tin. We had enough batter for making the heart shaped cake and a few little round muffin sized ones.



Flourless Chocolate Cake
Preparation Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

Recipe
1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

Taste and Create: Caramel Filled Chocolate Cookies

It's that time again - Taste and Create time and this month I was paired with Cooking in an Apron. It was really tricky deciding which recipe to make from this blog because as I went through it I had noticed about a dozen that I'd love to try and a few I think I will after this anyways but I decided to make the caramel filled chocolate cookies mainly because I haven't made cookies in forever!

These were so fun to make and incredibly delicious to eat - especially when they're just out of the oven. Check out that just fresh from the oven gooiness.....



Then the final product with some melted white chocolate drizzled on top....



I love these and having bought way too many rolos I'll just have to make them again - or else just scoff them!

Caramel Filled Chocolate Cookies
Source = Cooking in an Apron
Makes 40-48

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup sugar
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup margarine or butter, softened
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 cup chopped pecans (I left these out)
40-48 Rolos, unwrapped (from 13-oz. pkg.)
1 Tbsp sugar(Left this out)
4 oz. vanilla-flavored candy coating, if desired I used melted white chocolate


Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 375˚F/190˚C
2. In medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa and baking soda; mix well.
3. In large bowl, combine 1 cup sugar, brown sugar and margarine; beat until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and eggs; beat well. Add flour mixture; blend well. (Stir in 1/2 cup of the pecans.) If necessary, cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate 30 minutes for easier handling.
4. For each cookie, with floured hands, shape about 1 tablespoon dough around 1 caramel candy, covering completely.
(5. In small bowl, combine remaining 1/2 cup pecans and 1 tablespoon sugar. Press one side of each ball into pecan mixture. Place, nut side up, 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.)
6. Bake for 7 to 10 minutes or until set and slightly cracked. Cool 2 minutes; remove from cookie sheets. Cool on wire rack for 15 minutes or until completely cooled.
7. Melt candy coating in small bowl in microwave, stirring constantly until smooth. Drizzle over cookies.

Daring Bakers 12: Tuilles

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

I'm a little last minute in getting this posted - I completely forgot about it until this morning and have rushed doing it today so they aren't as good as they could be.

Tuilles



Ingredients
65 grams / ¼ cup / 2.3 ounces softened butter (not melted but soft)
60 grams / ½ cup / 2.1 ounces sifted confectioner’s sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar (7 grams or substitute with a dash of vanilla extract)
2 large egg whites (slightly whisked with a fork)
65 grams / 1/2 cup / 2.3 ounces sifted all purpose flour
1 table spoon cocoa powder/or food coloring of choice
Butter/spray to grease baking sheet

Recipe
Oven: 180C / 350F

Using a hand whisk or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle (low speed) and cream butter, sugar and vanilla to a paste. Keep stirring while you gradually add the egg whites. Continue to add the flour in small batches and stir to achieve a homogeneous and smooth batter/paste. Be careful to not overmix.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to firm up. (This batter will keep in the fridge for up to a week, take it out 30 minutes before you plan to use it).

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease with either butter/spray and chill in the fridge for at least 15 minutes. This will help spread the batter more easily if using a stencil/cardboard template such as the butterfly. Press the stencil on the bakingsheet and use an off sided spatula to spread batter. Leave some room in between your shapes. Mix a small part of the batter with the cocoa and a few drops of warm water until evenly colored. Use this colored batter in a paper piping bag and proceed to pipe decorations on the wings and body of the butterfly.

Bake butterflies in a preheated oven (180C/350F) for about 5-10 minutes or until the edges turn golden brown. Immediately release from bakingsheet and proceed to shape/bend the cookies in the desired shape. These cookies have to be shaped when still warm, you might want to bake a small amount at a time or maybe put them in the oven to warm them up again. (Haven’t tried that). Or: place a bakingsheet toward the front of the warm oven, leaving the door half open. The warmth will keep the cookies malleable.

If you don’t want to do stencil shapes, you might want to transfer the batter into a piping bag fitted with a small plain tip. Pipe the desired shapes and bake. Shape immediately after baking using for instance a rolling pin, a broom handle, cups, cones…


Check out how the rest of the DBers did via the blogroll.

In other news I found my camera that I had lost with the photos of last month's daring baker's challenge so here it is....

Birthday Cake from Dunfanaghy Market

As part of my pledge to make at least 3 of the recipes I bookmark in magazines each month I have now made my third recipe, again from Easy Food Magazine.

This month's magazine featured the winners of Easy Food's Country Market Awards with a great recipe for Birthday Cake by Dunfanaghy Market. I couldn't help but try out this birthday cake and last week was Stewie, my wee pup's, birthday so I had a birthday to celebrate anyways!

I'm glad I made this a real easy cake and beautifully delicious. I'm sure though it would be more delicious with the butter icing but I had to leave it out seeing as hubby and doggy aren't keen on it.



Birthday Cake from Dunfanaghy Market

Ingredients
175g butter or margarine
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
250g self raising flour
little milk (optional)

Butter Icing
75g butter or margarine
225 g icing sugar, sieved
2 tbsp milk
food colouring (optional)
sweets/hundreds and thousands to decorate (optional)

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C and grease two 17cm cake tins
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy.
3. Mix in eggs one at a time, then fold in the flour. If the mixture seems dry add a little milk.
4. Bake for 25 minutes until form to touch and golden.
5. To prepare the icing, beat all the ingredients together until fluffy and light.
6. Leave the cake to cool on a wire rack, then ice and decorate.


PS Don't forget to check out bookmarked recipes on the new blog.

Lemon Cake with Passionfruit Syrup

I made this cake a while ago and forgot to blog about it until someone asked me could I give them the recipe because they wanted to make it for Christmas day instead of Christmas Cake or Christmas Pudding. A good idea I thought because it would complement the Christmas dinner well and be a nice and tasty treat for finishing off the meal.

From what I remember it was a beautifully moist and soft cake, the lemon and passionfruit working well together.



Lemon Cake with Passionfruit Syrup
Recipe from Donna Hay's Simply Essentials: Fruit

Ingredients
125g softened butter
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tbsp grated lemon rind
2.5 cups self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

passionfruit syrup
2/3 cup passionfruit pulp (about 4 passionfruit)
2/3 cup caster sugar
1 cup water

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C. Grease and line a 9" cake tin.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together.
3. Add the eggs and beat.
4. Mix in the sour cream, lemon juice, rind, flour and baking powder. Pour into the cake tin.
5. Bake for 40 mins or until cooked
6. Leave to cool for 5 minutes, before removing to a rack over a plate.
7. To make the syrup, place all the ingredients in a saucepan.
8. Cook over a low heat, stirring, until all the sugar is dissolved.
9. Increase the heat and boil for 4-5 minutes or until it thickens a little.
10. Pour half the syrup over the top of the cake and save the rest for serving with the cake.

Crash Hot Potatoes

On last week's bookmarked recipe round up Teresa from I'm running to eat submitted crash hot potatoes which I couldn't help but make straight away.

They were simple and delicious. Great texture to them too. I'll be making these again.

I added a sprinkling of paprika to my verison but pretty much stayed with the Pioneer Woman's original recipe



Crash Hot Potatoes

Ingredients
Baby potatoes
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Paprika
Thyme

Recipe
1. Boil the potatoes for about 15-20 mins
2. Oil an oven tray and spread potatoes on top.
3. Crush each potato slightly with a masher.
4. Drizzle a little more oil over the top of the tatties.
5. Sprinkle on salt, pepper, paprika and thyme
6. Roast in the oven at about 180˚C for 25-30 mins.

Strawberry Banana Bread/Muffins

There was a fab food event last month called the Banana Bread Bakeoff hosted by Not Quite Nigella that I ran out of time to join in with, however Pixie over at You say Tomato, I say Tomato made a beautiful banana bread with strawberries for it. She had explained in the post that she thought it was rather dry and needed some butter spread on a slice for eating, but I was still keen to give this a go. I decided to add an extra banana and a 2 extra strawberries to the mix and left out the walnuts, then using the little scoop I bought for the Daring Baker Cheesecake Pop challenge I placed 2 scoops of the batter into muffin cases and made yummy muffins out of this. They only needed about 35 minutes baking instead of the hour for the loaf and they turned out beautifully full of flavour, and were in no way dry for me!!!!






I've used this as my entry for my Bookmarked Recipes food blog event for this week.








Strawberry & Banana Bread

Ingredients
200g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
1/4 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
75g unsalted butter
100g light brown sugar
1 beaten egg
75g milk chocolate, finely chopped
6 cut up strawberries
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1 tbsp Golden syrup


Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C, and separate out muffin cases on a baking tray.
2. Sift the flour, salt and soda together into a bowl.
3. Add all the other ingredients, except the golden syrup, and beat well together. If the mixture is too dry add a couple of Tbsp of milk.
4. Spoon into the muffin cases until about 3/4 filled. Bake in the center of the oven for about 30-35 minutes or until firm in the middle.
5. Brush the top of the loaf with the golden syrup while it's still warm, to give it a lovely glaze.


Thanks for this Pixie!!!!

Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake

This week my bookmarked recipe was somewhat decided for me, because this week I had to make a "wedding" cake. I say "wedding" because it's not a real wedding - my photographer friend Mark Goody needed a group to pretend to be at a wedding to try out some wedding photography and my young people got really excited about the idea, so it's part of our end of year bash for the group. They're all getting dressed up, our "bride" and "groom" are writing funny "vows" and I got to make a cake!!!!! Last week I took a vote amongst them to see what kind of cake they wanted, some wanted Victoria sponge and some wanted chocolate cake, so I'm making both!

For the Victoria sponge I added some extra vanilla and instead of using jam as a filling I mashed up a dozen raspberries and mixed them with 5 tablespoons of Dorie Greenspan's buttercream recipe from the Perfect Party Cake recipe and a tablespoon of caster sugar.

I know I've made a basic chocolate cake before but I wanted to try a different recipe. I have about 4 different chocolate cake recipes bookmarked in various places, but as soon as it was decided to make a chocolate cake I kept seeing other recipes that were quite tempting! Then I came across a book that was given to me when I was little - Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes with recipes by Roald's wife, Felicity and based on food that features in Roald's novels, stories and poems . I remember looking through this book a lot over the years and saying I'll make that one day.... well today was the day for Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake. It only seemed right that I make this chocolate cake seeing as I've had it bookmarked for so long!!! I remember the image I had in my head when I was reading about Bruce eating the chocolate cake in Matilda so I was very excited to be making this. However I didn't complete the whole recipe and left out making the coating for the cake so I could coat and decorate both cake with icing, but I'm sure I'll be making it again sometime because it looks delicious with the coating.

The photo from the book


And my cake.... excuse the mess around it please!!!


Bruce Bogtrotter's Chocolate Cake

Serves 10-12

Ingredients
For the cake
8oz/225g plain chocolate
6oz/175g unsalted butter, softened
8oz/225g caster sugar
4tbsp/60ml/quarter cup plain flour
6 eggs, separated
For the coating
8oz/225g plain chocolate
8oz/225g double cream

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C. Grease and line an 8" cake tin (I used a 9.5" cake tin which worked great) with greaseproof paper.
2. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or on low heat in a microwave. Once melted mix in the butter and stir until melted. Remove from the double boiler.
3. Mix in the sugar, flour and lightly beaten egg yolks.
4. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until white and stiff.
5. Gently fold half of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Then fold in the rest.
6. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 35 minutes. There will be a thin crust on the outside and when tested using a skewer, it most likely won't come out clean as the inside will still seem uncooked, however the cake gets more firm when it has cooled.
7. Allow to cool for a while until the tin can be handled and the cake removed safely. Remove the greaseproof paper. The cake will most likely sink slightly, mine deflated from a large dome to a level top.
8. Set up a new double boiler and melt the chocolate and cream together until well blended. Leave to cool for a little while then spread smoothly over the top and sides of the cake.

The finished "wedding" cake topped with the mini Ruth and Rob bride and groom from our wedding - I decided to make this cake more fun looking than 'weddingy'

Taste and Create: Orange Chocolate Meringues

I enjoyed taking part in Taste and Create so much last month that I just had to sign up again. This month I got partnered with Erin from The Skinny Gourmet which was really exciting because this girl has some fabulous recipes!!! However with a husband like mine I become somewhat limited in what I can make. I did find a great recipe that I knew that both of us would love - orange chocolate meringues.

I picked this recipe for several reasons -
1. Like I said I knew both of us would love this - especially Rob seeing as he likes to eat meringues like apples.
2. I needed some practice making meringues, seeing as it's something I've not been very good at in the past.
3. I was very fortunate to receive some Amano Chocolate from a Blakemakes.com giveaway and needed a fab recipe to use some of it in.


4. I remember talking to a meringue producer at Enjoy the Taste of Scotland who said they had tried to make meringue with chocolate through it but couldn't figure it out, which really surprised me because I've seen all sorts of meringue recipes with chocolate in it.

So with so many reasons and motives to make this what was I waiting for!?!?!?! Well some spare time to make them I suppose, which happened to be today!

I made a mistake on my first go at this recipe and only added half the sugar so the meringues ended up being quite soft - but still really yummy. I ended up baking it for much longer than the second batch hoping that they may have crisped up which is part of why they're a bit darker looking than the second batch.



I got it right the second time round and was even more impressed. The meringue came out perfectly - beautifully crispy inside and out and filled with fabulous orange and chocolate flavour that makes them so yummy on their own that you wouldn't want to eat them with anything else, but I'm sure they would still be delicious with other things like a little cream and mandarin segments... oh and now that I'm daydreaming throw on some chocolate sauce too!!!!



I'm sure I'll be using this recipe again even just the basic meringue part of it, because it worked so well.

Orange Chocolate Meringues

Erin was able to make 10 servings but I made 6 bigger portions.

Ingredients
2 large egg whites @ room temperature
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp pure orange extract
1/2 tsp pure almond extract
1/2 cup Ghirardelli 60% cocoa chips, finely chopped. I used 70% Amano Chocolate

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 350˚F (170˚C)
2. Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff white peaks form.
3. Beat in the sugar adding it very gradually. Midway through adding sugar add the extracts (DON'T add more that 1 tsp worth of extract).
4. Fold the chopped chocolate into the meringue.
5. Drop required portion size onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper.
6. Bake at 350˚F (170˚C) until crisp (mine took about 30-40 minutes). Cool on a wire rack and store in an air tight container.

See Erin's post for more details and edits that can be made.



As for the Amano Chocolate, I had to taste a piece of each before doing anything else with it. This was some really tasty chocolate, really smooth, with great flavours that wasn't as bitter as other dark chocolates (of 70%) I've had before. I could have easily ate my way through these bars of chocolate as they were. Thanks Amano Chocolate and thanks Blakemakes.com for the free chocolate! I loved it!

Mum's Victoria Sponge

It's been a while since I've made something from my Mum's cook book and on Saturday I really wanted to bake something. So I got Mum's book out and opened at the recipe for victoria sandwich, had all the ingredients to hand and it looked like a quick cake to put together so I had to make it, right?

I made a few changes to Mum's recipe and added vanilla to the mix seeing as I have lots of vanilla pods to use up! And also baked the batter in one tin instead of 2, then sliced it in half, spread raspberry jam in the middle and sandwiched it together again. I also found halfway through baking that I needed to turn the temperature down in the oven as the outside was a lovely golden brown while the middle was still gooey. The resulting cake was quite dark on the top but nothing a little icing sugar won't hide ;-)

I took the cake to my youth group for testing and they loved it..... mind you they love pretty much anything edible!



Anyways enough of my ramblings, here's the recipe:

Mum's Victoria Sandwich

Serves 8

Ingredients
6 oz softened margarine
6 oz caster sugar
6 oz self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
Seeds from 1 vanilla pod (my addition to the recipe)
3 large eggs
2-3 tbsp raspberry jam
Icing sugar

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to 190˚C (I had to reduce this to 165˚C to prevent the cake from being burnt). Grease a 6-7" cake tin and line the base with baking paper.
2. Combine the margarine, sugar, flour, baking powder and vanilla seeds and mix well with a hand mixer.
3. Mix in the eggs one at a time.
4. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes.
5. Remove cake from oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes.
6. Remove cake from tin and leave to cool for 5 minutes.
7. Slice the cake across the middle to create 2 layers. Spread the jam on the bottom layer of the cake then replace the top of the cake. Dust with icing sugar then serve.



Nilmandra from Soy and Pepper tagged me a while ago for the 6-word meme which I had forgotten about until now! (Sorry Nilmandra) I've done this meme twice already here and here, but I'll give it another go, but I'll not nominate people for it.

Smart
Resourceful
Sensitive
Musical
Positive
Friendly

I've also been awarded a "You make my day" award from Dell of Cooking and the City which totally made my day. Last time I received this award I passed it on to 12 people and this time I'm awarding it to everyone to comes along to visit my little corner of the web because you really do make my day and make writing this blog even more worthwhile! Thank you!
Finally lovely sweet Maria of The Goddess's Kitchen has given me an "I love you this much" award. Thank you Maria! You made me blush!
So now I get the honour of passing it on to a few people too! I really truly love all the blog that I read but I wanted to mention a couple of people.

1. Sio at Cake Creations
2. Priscilla at Priscilla bakes
3. Pixie at You say tomahto I say tomayto
4. Miss.Sarah at Geeky pants

Great British Pudding Challenge: Queen of Puddings

I know I'm a few days late but I really wanted to do the April Great British Pudding Challenge that Rosie from Rosie bakes a 'Peace' of cake hosts. I loved the sound of this pudding with the sponge, jam and meringue and it was a tasty pudding.

I halved the recipe seeing as there's only 2 of us in our house.





Here's the recipe as Rosie typed it:

Queen of Puddings

Serves 4

Ingredients
75g (3 oz) fresh breadcrumbs, made for day old bread
25g (1 oz) butter
Grated rind of half a lemon
100g (4 oz) caster sugar
2 large eggs
275ml (½ pint) of whole milk
3 tbsp raspberry jam – heated through

You will need a well buttered 1.2 litre (2 pint) pie-dish.

Method

Put the breadcrumbs into a large basin and leave aside. Place into a saucepan the milk, half of the sugar, butter and lemon rind and bring to the boil. Pour this over the breadcrumbs and leave to soak for 20 minutes. Separate the eggs and add the egg yolks to the crumb mixture and beat through. Place the whites of the eggs into a clean grease-free bowl for later use.

Place into the centre of a preheated oven 180°C/350°F/Gas mark 4 for 20 minutes or until set. Leave to cool for 5 minutes then spread the warmed jam over the top gently, (ensuring not to break the skin that has formed on top.) Beat the egg whites until stiff then gently add the sugar folding in. Pile the meringue on top of the jam and sprinkle with the extra tablespoon of sugar over the meringue top. Place back into the oven for approximately 20 minutes or until the meringue is set and lightly browned.

Serve with cream, custard, ice cream or on its own the choice is yours.

Lemon Madeira Birthday Cake

This week for my Bookmarked Recipes entry I decided to make a madeira cake, but not just for the fun of making a cake but because tomorrow is my birthday!!!!!!! I decided about a week ago to make a madeira for my birthday and I had a recipe bookmarked in Easy Food Magazine (I promise I'll use a different source soon!), but made a few changes to it and used lemon extract instead of vanilla extract and instead of using the buttercream on the top of the cake I used some premade icing (yeah it's cheating but it's my birthday tomorrow so who cares!) so I only made half the volume of the buttercream but ended up using about two thirds of that, but in making the buttercream added a little more icing sugar to the mix as well.

Well here it is - my lemon madeira birthday cake! It may not be very creatively or beautifully decorated but I'm looking forward to tasting it.

And happy birthday to Sio at Cake Creations for tomorrow too!!!



The recipe below is my slightly edited version:

Lemon Madeira Cake

Ingredients

Cake
150g margarine
150g sugar
4 eggs
drop of lemon extract
150g self raising flour

Buttercream
75g margarine
100g icing sugar
drop of lemon extract

3-4 tbsp strawberry jam
premade pre rolled icing

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C and grease an 8" cake tin.
2. In a large mixing bowl cream the margarine and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then beat in the lemon extract.
4. Fold in the flour until the batter is light and creamy.
5. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until a skewer can be withdrawn cleanly.
6. Leave the cake to cool for 5-10 minutes before removing from the tin, then leave to cool on a wire rack.
7. In a mixing bowl, cream together the sugar, margarine and lemon extract until smooth.
8. Using a sharp knife carefully cut the cake into 2 sandwich cakes. Spread the jam on one of the sliced sandwiches then spread the buttercream on the other then replace the top.
9. Follow the directions of the premade icing pack to cover the cake and decorate as desired.

Cook yourself thin brownies

Elly at Elly says opa! has set up a new blog event called "Eat to the Beat" where you create a meal or drink that relates to a song, album, band etc. I got thinking and initially drew a blank, creativity went on holiday for a little while, so I spent some time looking through my itunes music trying to be inspired and nothing really clicked, until i was listening to the radio a few days ago. Leona Lewis was doing a cover of Snow Patrol's song "Run", which in turn made me think of another track of theirs called Chocolate! It all sounded perfect, basing my dish on a song called chocolate by a band from my own country! I had little novel ideas of a chocolate and ice cream dish to combine the idea of the song title and the cold snow idea from the band name. However I was reminded ofan episode of Cook yourself thin that I had seen ages ago where they had made some really yummy looking chocolate brownies, so I decided to give it a go. And topped it off with a litt

The original recipe called for pumpkin, however the only time of year that you would get some here is Halloween, seeing as it's now February I'd be waiting a while to try these so I substituted with 1/2 swede and 1/2 carrot mix of same weight.


Cook Yourself Thin Chocolate Brownies

Makes 9 brownies

Ingredients
100g raw, prepared swede, peeled and cut into smallish chunks
100g raw, prepared carrot, peeled and cut into smallish chunks
75g organic dark cooking chocolate (at least 70 per cent cocoa)
1/2 heaped tsp cinnamon
100g ground almonds
25g organic cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
4 tbsp clear runny honey (equals roughly 160g)
1.5 tbsp medium maple syrup (equals roughly 50g)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 medium organic free range eggs

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 160˚C. Grease tin (About 7"x7") lightly with vegetable oil.
2. Place the carrot and swede in a microwavable bowl with a small pool of water. Cover with cling film and heat in the microwave for 8 minutes on medium high.
3. Remove from the microwave, drain the liquid and re-cling before microwaving again for 3 minutes on high.
4. Mix your cinnamon, ground almonds, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.
5. Bash up the chocolate inside its packet so that it is left in biggish chunks.
6. In another bowl, whisk up the eggs, honey, maple syrup and vanilla extract until pale and full of surface bubbles.
7. When the pumpkin is out of the microwave, drain all the water again and whisk until the chunks have turned to a puree. Add the broken chocolate and leave to melt.
8. Once mostly melted, add the egg mixture to the pumpkin and chocolate and beat until fully mixed before adding the almond and cocoa powder mixture. Mix thoroughly.
9. Pour into the prepared tin and place in the middle of the oven for 35 mins exactly. Allow to cool in the tin before serving.

"Indian style" Cottage Pie

People often think our routine is rather odd, and it is because our work hours are odd. I mean I work a lot of random hours, mostly afternoons, evenings and weekends, and Rob works til 9 every week night. The result of this is that we don't usually sit down to eat dinner until about 10pm.

However, Tuesday nights are the most awkward night of the week for getting dinner sorted recently seeing as I've been at the local radio station - Shine FM - until 10pm then I'm running some of the teenagers home after that so I'm not home until 10.30/11pm really. Starting to cook at this time of night is just not good, so I've been trying to make things that morning or afternoon that Rob can heat up for us to eat by the time I get home. We had cottage pie a couple of weeks ago, and last week I left out some bolognese to defrost which just needed heating. This week I went back to the cottage pie but decided to give it an Indian twist seeing as we love Indian food. It turned out real nice, and I loved that this was a dish we had recently only very different too.

I had taken photos of this but this has really not been my week: not only could I not use my computer for a few days, my iphone also decided to quit on me needing to be restarted thus loosing my photos.... grrrrrr. So you'll have to take my word for it on how yummy this looks too.

"Indian Style" cottage pie

Serves 2-3

Ingredients
6 or 7 medium sized potatoes, peeled
1/2 cup milk
1 tbsp butter

Oil
1 small onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and grated
500g minced beef
1 medium-hot red chili, deseeded and finely sliced
1 tsp tumeric
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp tomato puree
200ml chopped tomatoes/passata
Handful of fresh coriander leaves.

Recipe
1. Boil the potatoes for 20-25 minutes. In the meantime prepare the mince:
2. Heat a little oil in a pot. Add the onion, garlic and ginger and fry over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes.
3. Add the mince, chilli, tumeric, coriander and cumin. Stir occasionally and cook until the meat is browned.
4. Stir in the tomato puree, chopped tomatoes/passata and coriander leaves and cook for 3-4 minutes.
5. Pour the mince into an oven dish and set to the side.
6. Drain the potatoes and mash. Stir in the butter and milk to make them creamy, then spread over the mince in the oven dish.
7. Heat the oven to 180˚C and bake the pie in the oven for 25-30 mins until golden brown on top.


Also the lovely Rosie gave me a Red Rose today for Valentines

Thank Rosie!

Classic North Indian Chicken Curry Recipe

I was given "Indian Food Made Easy" By Anjum Anand for Christmas and tonight have been rather busy with it having made the classic northern chicken curry and tried the Naan bread recipe which didn't turn out too well and I'm not even going to blog about it. However the curry turned out great with about medium- hot spiciness to it.

I reduced the quantities of the ingredients because the original recipe served 6-8 which just sounded like too much for just the two of us.

I'm giving this a 3/5 difficulty rating, mainly because you need to pay very close attention when cooking this. Otherwise it's not very difficult at all. One warning though is to prepare your ingredients as much as possible before you even think of turning the heat on for the pan! The ingredients are listed here in order of when they are needed and grouped together for when they are needed.

Classic North Indian Chicken Curry Recipe

Serves 2-3

Ingredients
2 tbsp vegetable oil

3 or 4 cloves
3 x 1" cinnamon sticks
3 or 4 cardamom pods

1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped

1.5 tbsp finely chopped fresh ginger (or 1/4 tsp ground ginger)
4 cloves of garlic, chopped and finely peeled

salt to season
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp red chili powder
1 tbsp ground coriander

2 medium cooking tomatoes, pureed (or finely chopped)

3 chicken breasts, sliced in half to make then thin and flat

350ml water, or more if needed

1/2 tsp garam masala
handful of fresh coriander leaves (aka cilantro)

Recipe
1. Chop your onion, garlic, ginger, tomatoes and slice your chicken breasts in half. Measure out your spices and group together as they are grouped in the ingredient list.
2. Heat the oil in a large non stick pan. Add the cloves, cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods and fry for about 20 seconds until aromatic.
3. Add the onion and cook for 8-10 minutes over a moderate heat until a rich golden brown, stirring often.
4. Stir in garlic and ginger, cook for 40 seconds then add the salt and powdered spices. Stir for 10 seconds then add the tomatoes and cook over a moderate heat for 10 minutes until the liquid has dried off.

5. Add the chicken and brown for 3-4 minutes. Add the water, add extra if needed to almost cover the chicken and reduce the heat slightly and simmer for 15-20 minutes.
6. Stir in the garam masala and coriander leaves just before serving.