Lemon and cranberry loaf

Now that spring has finally made an appearance, I find myself wanting to use all things citrusy.  I love the freshness that oranges and lemons exude especially when used in desserts.  

This recipe has nothing to it - it is so easy to throw together.  In fact, Lil Miss J came home one day with it from having baked it at the childminders and so I had to ask them how they made it.   So much flavour from such a simple recipe. 

Ingredients

Self-raising flour - 175 g 

Butter - 175 g 

Caster sugar - 175 g 

Eggs - 3

Dried sweetened cranberries - 1 handful 

Juice and zest of two lemons

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celsius. 

2. Sift flour and set aside. 

3. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  You can use an electric beater but we tend to hand beat it as my baking is always done with Lil Miss J who loves 'mixing'. 

4. Add one egg at a time and beat until incorporated.  

5. Lightly fold the flour in.  Add the juice and zest of two lemons and the cranberries. 

6. Pour into a loaf tin and bake at 180 degrees celsius for 40 to 50 minutes.  If the top is browning too quickly, you can cover it with silver foil.  

7.  Remove from oven and let cool in tin before turning it out on to a cooling rack.  When cool, cut into slices and serve. 

Enjoy :)

Orange almond loaf

Sunday afternoons have turned into baking afternoons at the Jacob house.  Its quite becoming a little tradition - baking with Little Miss J!  Today we tried an Orange Almond Loaf...yum yum....even if I say so myself! Very moist and very moreish.

I really do need to get better at photography!!!

Ingredients

190 g plain flour

190 g caster sugar

60 g ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3 eggs

190 g unsalted butter

Rind of two oranges, grated

2 tbsp orange juice (can be reduced as per taste - I like my cakes really orangey!!)

25 g plain yoghurt

Flaked almonds to sprinkle on top

Method

1.  Pre-heat oven to 175 degrees celsius and grease and line a loaf tin. 

2. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and ground almonds.

3. Cream butter, caster sugar and orange zest until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat thoroughly.  

4. Fold in the flour mixture until it is fully incorporated.  Stir in the yoghurt and orange juice. 

5. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin and sprinkle the top with flaked almonds. 

6. Bake in a pre-heated oven for about 60 minutes.  You can check on the cake in about 40 minutes and if you feel the top is getting too brown then cover it with foil.  Check to see if it is done by inserting a skewer into the center.  If it comes out clean, the cake is ready. 

7. Let it cool in the tin and then cool completely before you slice it.  Perfect with a hot cup of tea!

Honey and Walnut Loaf

This is a new recipe Lil Miss J and I tried out when we had some friends over for tea yesterday.  The cake is lovely and moist, not too sweet - just right with a cup of tea :)

Publish Post

Ingredients
190 g unsalted butter at room temperature
190 g plain flour
190 g caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

25 g plain yoghurt

1 tbsp honey

60 g walnuts, lightly toasted and chopped

For syrup

1 tbsp honey

50 ml water

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees celsius.  Line a loaf tin. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.

2. Cream together butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. 

3. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until well incorporated.

4. Fold in the flour mixture lightly.  Add yoghurt, vanilla essence, honey and mix lightly.  Lastly add the chopped walnuts.  (To toast the walnuts, just warm a pan and toss them around.  Be careful as they burn easily).

5. Pour into prepared tin and bake in a hot oven for about 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.   

6. While the cake is cooking, prepare the syrup by placing 1 tbsp honey and 50 ml water in a pan.  Bring it to a boil till it is reduced by half. 

7.  Once cake is cooked, remove from oven and while it is still in the tin, pour the syrup over.  Let the cake cool in tin for a few minutes, then turn out to a rack to cool.  When thoroughly cooled, slice and serve. 

An afternoon of baking - carrot cake

Just sharing a picture of a carrot cake I made recently - okay so its not the neatest icing in the world, but little miss J and I had fun making it and it sure did taste yummy! You can view the complete recipe here.

Chocolate fudge cake

Last week, we threw my friend a baby shower and more often than not, whenever we meet up with our friends, I'm the one to provide the dessert! Since she loves chocolate, I found a recipe for a Chocolate Fudge Cake.

The original recipe calls for chocolate buttercream, but since this was a very light cake, I opted to use a ganache made with 175 ml double cream, 200g dark chocolate and 25 g butter. Heat the cream and butter together until the butter is fully melted and mixture just starts to bubble.  Take the pan off the heat and add in the broken pieces of dark chocolate and stir.  The heat from the cream will melt the chocolate and you get a lovely silky smooth ganache.

Now I'm not very good with frosting - but I am trying and although it is not a neat finish, I was pretty happy with how this one turned out! :)

Cake for a baby shower - except its made with nappies!

I saw a nappy cake a few months ago at an arts and crafts fair and thought it looked great.  I did think the £30.00 odd price tag was a bit of a rip off though! I had a friend's baby shower coming up - so thought I'd give it a go.  I found a tutorial on youtube (what would we do without it???).

Turned out its dead easy to do and costs nowhere near that much - it does take a bit of time and patience though but the end results are well worth it! 

I wonder if I should start taking orders! (*pulls a cheeky face*)

Ginger cupcakes

So we're all lounging around watching TV and little Miss J is constantly piping up "Mummy - lets make cake".....I suspect the real reason is that she wants to lick the batter from the bowl at the end - but I can't find fault with that! So off we went, she donned her little apron and with a little help around the kitchen from my mum, we whipped up a batch of these lovely beauties which I'd never made before! And as I expected, just as we were nearing the end and the batter was being spooned into the cases - little Miss J goes "Can I lick the bowl, mummy????"....

These cupcakes are very easy and very yummy - even if I say so myself - they didn't last long in our home!!! Try it without the frosting for a more moderate version!

I find it quite hard to take pictures of the process when I'm baking with little Miss J, so apologies for just the final pics.

Try these out, share them with friends and leave me a comment - I would love to hear from you. Here is the recipe.

Stem Ginger cupcakes – makes 12 cupcakes

120 g plain flour
140 g golden caster sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp mixed spice
A pinch of salt
40 g unsalted butter (room temperature)
120 ml milk (I used semi skimmed)
1 egg
¼ tsp vanilla extract
100 g stem ginger, finely chopped

Glaze
50 ml stem ginger syrup

Frosting
225g cream cheese
4 tsp lemon juice
40 g icing sugar
2 tsp ginger glaze
Grated lemon rind (to decorate)
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius
2. Put the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, cinnamon, mixed spice and butter in a bowl and mix together until you get a breadcrumb consistency. This is best done with your fingers, but you can use an electric mixer if you like.
3. Slowly pour in half the milk a little at a time until it is all incorporated.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the remaining milk, egg and vanilla extract.
5. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and continue beating with a whisk until very well incorporated.
6. Fold in the chopped stem ginger.
7. Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases until 2/3 full and bake in the preheated oven for about 20 – 25 minutes or until the top of the cupcake bounces back when touched.
8. When the cakes are baking, add 50 ml water to the stem ginger syrup in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil. Allow it to reduce to 1/3 the original quantity.
9. When cupcakes are ready, take them out of the oven and pour a small amount of glaze over each one while they are still slightly warm. You will be left with just a couple of teaspoons of glaze which you can use for the frosting.
10. If you are using frosting, beat together all the frosting ingredients (except the lemon rind). You may want to keep this in the refrigerator for some time as the cupcakes cool so that it is easier to spread.
11. Spoon frosting onto the cupcake and decorate with a sprinkling of lemon rind.


This post is being linked up at: -
I love naptime
Cherished Treasures
Flamingo Toes
Making the world cuter
Craft o Maniac

Chocolate Beetroot Loaf

Its not your run of the mill combo, but if you can make carrot cake, why can't you make beetroot cake??? :). I found this recipe on Netmums and tweaked it ever so slightly. You can't really taste the beetroot, but it does give the cake a lovely moist texture.

This has a nice chocolate flavour but is not intensely sweet. If you prefer a sweeter version, I'd increase the caster sugar by an ounce.

I didn't have a skewer to hand so used my knife to test it so the top of my cake looks a bit worse for wear!!!! It had a beautiful intense colour when it came out the oven.



And perfect with a cup of tea or coffee :)



Just a word of warning - you should probably use gloves when handling the beetroot as otherwise you're going to have red everywhere!!!!

I hope you enjoy this delicious recipe. Go ahead, give it a go - you won't be disappointed!

Ingredients

8 oz self raising flour

2 eggs

1 oz cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

2 oz caster sugar

2 oz golden caster sugar

3 oz melted dark chocolate (70% cocoa)

3 oz butter, melted

4 oz raw beetroot , grated

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius/gas mark 4/ 350 degrees Fahrenheit

2. Grease & line a loaf tin

3. Sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder in a bowl.

4. Stir in the sugar. Then stir in the raw beetroot and gradually add the melted chocolate, melted butter and eggs. The mixture does get quite stiff but just keep at it until it all comes together.

5. Spoon the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and bake for around an hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

6. Allow to cool in tin before turning out on to a wire rack to cool completely.

Bananas and walnut - a great combo!

The weather was horrible yesterday, we had gale force winds and it was too crazy to get out to do anything. This usually translates to little Miss J getting all whiny on me as she is at her best when she is kept busy!

I also had four overripe bananas staring at me in the kitchen, urging me to utilise them before they were completely done for.

So I decided to tackle both and baked a banana bread (with walnuts) with little Miss J who thoroughly enjoys being my little helper in the kitchen.

And the result was this :). A lovely moist loaf with oodles of flavour and a very easy recipe to boot. Perfect with a steaming hot cup of tea or coffee! Hope you enjoy this!

Banana Loaf – makes 8 to 10 slices

Ingredients

270 g soft light brown sugar

2 eggs

200 g peeled bananas, mashed

280g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

140 g unsalted butter, melted

80 - 100 g walnuts

A 23x13 cm loaf tin, greased and dusted with flour – or lined with greaseproof paper

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius

2. Beat the sugar and eggs until well incorporated. Beat in the mashed bananas.

3. Add the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and ginger to the egg and sugar mixture. Mix it thoroughly until all the dry ingredients have been incorporated into the wet mixture.

4. Pour in the melted butter and beat until all ingredient are well mixed.

5. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and smooth over with a palette knife.

6. Bake in the preheated oven for about an hour or until firm to touch.

7. Leave cake to cool slightly in the tin before turning it on to a wire rack to cool completely.

Gluten free you say?

A friend of a friend asked for an almond meal cake recipe and here is my favourite - Nigella's clementine cake. Sorry I don't have a picture to post, but its a super easy cake and you can't go wrong. To top it off it is gluten free and fat free (the good fat from the almonds does not count!!!) - so if you're going to have cake, this is as indulgent as you can get without the guilt!

I wouldn't call it a cake you make on a budget as it uses 6 eggs and ground almonds which aren't the cheapest ingredient on the block, but it is a rich moist cake that you can make a day ahead and tastes absolutely gorgeous. :)

Ingredients

4 -5 clementines (about 375 g total weight)
6 eggs
225 g sugar
250 g ground almonds
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder

Method

1. Put the clementines in a pan with some cold water, bring to the boil and cook for one and a half to two hours. Drain and when cool, cut each in half and remove the pips. Put the clementines in a blender/food processor, skin, pith, fruit and all and give them a quick blitz.

2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5/190 degrees celsius and grease and line a 21cm round cake tin.

3. You can then add all the remaining ingredients to your blender/food processor and blitz or you can beat the eggs by hand, add the sugar, ground almonds and baking powder and mix well and finally add the pulped blitzed clementines.

4. Pour the cake mixture (it is a pouring consistency) into the prepared cake tin and bake for approximately an hour or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. You may have to cover the tin with foil after 40 minutes to prevent the top of the cake from burning.

5. Remove when done and leave to cool on a wire rack but in the tin. When the cake is completely cool, take it out of the tin. This cake tastes even better the day after it is made and is incredibly moist.

Give me some sunshine!

We've been very lucky - we've managed to see this golden yellow sphere in the sky for a week now - no mean feat if you live in South West England! This coupled with the fact that it was a four day weekend was just the icing on the cake - no pun intended.

It was also the weekend of my birthday and I got given a cupcake decorating book by the boss. Now I'm not usually a frosting and decorating person myself - I prefer to pack a punch in the flavour, but there were such adorable ideas in the book that I couldn't resist trying to transfer a burst of sunshine into my cupcakes.

So I baked some vanilla cupcakes. I have added the recipe for these at the bottom of the post.

I then made some vanilla frosting (recipe included at the bottom of the post). I divided the frosting into two and tinted one half green with some food colouring. I tinted the other half of the frosting yellow. Then I further divided the yellow frosting into two and tinted half with orange.

Use a palette knife to spread the green frosting over the cupcakes when cooled. Then place an oreo cookie, pressing it into the frosting so that it holds. Now I learnt a really nifty trick the other day. If you don't have piping bags, don't despair. Grab yourself a ziplock bag and spoon your frosting in it. Press out the air and seal the bag. Tape some scotch tape around the end you are going to pipe from to reinforce it and then cut a tip and pipe away!


Anyways, back to the point, spoon some yellow frosting and some orange frosting side by side in a ziplock bag or you could use two separate bags. Cut a 'V' shape into the front of the bag and pipe out some petals pulling away so that you have tips.

Pipe one layer of petals around the edge of the oreo cookie and then pipe a second layer overlapping the first.

Mine weren't perfect - some flowers came out better than others - but at least I had fun doing it when I wasn't screaming at my piping bag!!!

The final result was this. I took them in to work for my birthday and everyone loved them!

Here's the recipe I used.

Vanilla Cupcakes – makes 10 to 12 cupcakes
120 g plain flour
125 g caster sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
A pinch of salt
40 g unsalted butter (room temperature)
120 ml semi skimmed milk
1 egg
¼ tsp vanilla extract
12 hole cupcake tray lined with paper or silicone cases

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius
2. Using a beater combine together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. If you prefer you can use your fingertips for this process (just like when you make pastry).
3. Gradually add in half the milk (60 ml), a little at a time and beat until the milk is incorporated.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, vanilla extract and remaining milk for a few seconds. Pour into the flour mixture a little at a time and beat continuously until all the liquid is incorporated. Do not overmix the batter.
5. Spoon mixture into the cupcake cases until two thirds full and bake in a preheated oven for about 20 – 25 minutes. When done they will turn light golden and a skewer inserted in to the centre should come out clean.
6. Remove from oven and let cool for a little while in the tray before turning out to a wire rack to cool completely.


Vanilla Frosting – for frosting 12 cupcakes
225 g icing sugar
80 g unsalted butter at room temperature
25 ml semi skimmed milk
A couple of drops vanilla essence
Method
1. Beat icing sugar and butter until the mixture comes together.
2. Reduce speed. Combine milk and vanilla extract.
3. Gradually add milk mixture to the butter mixture, couple of teaspoons at a time.
4. Once all the milk has been incorporate, turn up the speed and beat for a few minutes.
5. The longer you beat the frosting, the fluffier and smoother it gets.

Wake up and smell the coffee!

Mocha Cake

I offered hubby a choice between lemon drizzle and coffee cake (I don't know why I bothered - I knew he'd pick coffee!!!) Since I'm not that big a coffee cake fan, but wanted to try the recipe, I tweaked the original Hummingbird recipe to include a teeny tiny chocolate angle which gave it its mocha flavour.

I took some in for the work colleagues who said it was lovely and light and then promptly got told off for not having frosted it.....as you can see it doesn't look that great minus frosting but it did taste good :)

So for all those of you with a sweet tooth out there - I have included the recipe for the frosting, but if like me you're trying to keep sugar levels low - then you can make it without too and you won't be disappointed.

Mocha Cake

Serving: 12 – 16 slices

Ingredients

1 tbsp instant coffee granules

225 g unsalted butter at room temperature

225 g caster sugar

225 g plain flour

4 eggs

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp cocoa powder

30 g dark chocolate – melted (this can be done in a microwave)

23 cm round cake tin, greased and lined

Method

1. Make a coffee essence by putting the instant coffee granules in 80 ml water in a small saucepan and boil till it is reduced by half. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.

2. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

3. In a bowl, mix together the butter, sugar and coffee essence and cream together until light and fluffy.

4. Add the eggs one at a time making sure to beat well.

5. Add the melted chocolate.

6. Sift together the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder. Add this to the above mixture folding lightly, until the mixture is light and fluffy.

7. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin.

8. Bake in the preheated oven for roughly 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Frosting

250 g icing sugar, sifted

80 g unsalted butter at room temperature

25 ml whole milk

Couple of drops of vanilla extract

1 tsp coffee essence (as made above)

Beat the icing sugar and butter together with an electric mixer. Combine milk and vanilla extract in a separate bowl and add to the butter and sugar mixture, one spoon at a time. Continue to beat until light and fluffy. Add the coffee essence.

Decorate with chocolate shavings and coffee beans.