I really enjoyed making novelty cakes this past year, my two favourites are the CD mixer cake I made in December and the recent Dogs with a bone birthday cake. I wonder what the coming year will bring in terms of cake commissions? Hopefully I will be set some interesting challenges!

So here’s a montage of my baking photos over the past year. This is when I wish I had learnt more about setting up a gallery page on my blog!

Once again, thank you so much for reading my random baking efforts. I do hope you enjoy my posts and have a go at my recipes.

Well that was last weekends handiwork, and this weekend I wanted to have another go at pastry. This time I made up my own recipe using components from various web recipes, following a Martha Stewart chocolate shortcrust pasty, then I doctored a chocolate frangipane recipe for the filling, using ground hazelnuts instead of almonds. I added pears to the top. It worked out really well, it was really delicious and intensely chocolate.

So I’m not so nervous making pastry now, it really is very straightforward to make, especially if you have a food processor. I also think the trick to rolling it out and getting it into the tins is to chill it well for a good twenty minutes before rolling out. I did try rolling between two sheets of clingfilm for the chocolate pastry and that really helped as well.

Have you had any pastry disasters?

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Well this was my first attempt at making cute doggies out of sugarpaste and it wasn’t too bad really. The cake was really easy as I cheated and used shop bought Swiss roll and muffins for the ends!

I finished it off by hand painting the message on the cake board and adding a sprinkling of glitter!

The girls absolutely LOVED their cake and have kept their doggies on their desks!

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I did enjoy making the flower as it wasn’t too difficult, I think next time I would colour the petals before I put them together as it was quite tricky to dust with colour once assembled!

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One problem I did have was that I had run out of plastic piping bags, so for the grass I had to use a fabric piping bag, which was a very messy experience as the icing was leaking out of the side of the bag! Luckily I stocked up at the cake and bake show yesterday in Manchester so I won’t be having that problem again!

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My Favorite (One Bowl) Chocolate Cake
(Makes two 6-inch layers, adapted from Hershey’s “Perfectly Chocolate” Chocolate Cake)

1 cup milk
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 tablespoon instant espresso
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/4 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two 6-inch cake pans and set aside.

Combine the milk and vinegar in a liquid measuring cup and set aside.
Meanwhile, combine the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, instant espresso, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the egg, oil, vanilla extract, and half of the prepared sour milk. Mix for a minute or two, until all of the dry ingredients are incorporated. Continue to beat on low speed while gradually adding the rest of the sour milk. The batter will be runny, but that’s just right!

I put 370gms batter in each pan, just weigh it on the scale as you pour in the batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake pans, and bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Let the cake layers cool in the pans for 10 minutes. Then, invert the cakes onto wire racks and cool completely before frosting.

For the chocolate ganache, put 200gms of finely chopped dark chocolate in a large glass bowl. Then heat 500ml of double cream in a saucepan until almost boiling. Pour over the chocolate, leave for a minute to let the chocolate melt a bit, then whisk until both ingredients are smoothly combined. Leave it to cool down, you can put it in the fridge to cool it faster if you need to. When it’s cooled down you can whisk it with an electric beater until its fluffy and doubled in volume.

I cut each cake layer in half and brushed caramel syrup on each layer, layering the cake with vanilla buttercream then covering it with ganache. It was very rich and delicious!

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Here they are after their bath in lemon syrup;

And here is the final iced cakes;

So I’m guessing you may want the recipe?

Here it is…

Makes 12 cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 180 centigrade.
Prepare a 12 bun tin with your choice of cupcake cases.

Cake Ingredients

170gm butter
170gm caster sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
3 medium eggs, beaten
170gm self raising flour, sifted
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
4 tablespoons milk

Method

1. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
2. Add the zest and mix in thoroughly.
3. Add the beaten eggs slowly, add a tablespoon of the flour to prevent the mixture curdling.
4. Mix in the flour until just incorporated, do not over mix.
5. Add in the poppy seeds and the milk and give a final mix.
6. Divide among the cupcake cases. I use an ice cream scoop for equal portioning.
7. Bake in the oven for around 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into a cake comes out clean.
8. Leave to cool in the tin, adding the lemon syrup.

While your cakes are baking, make the lemon sugar syrup. Simple mix together in a small saucepan 4 tablespoons of lemon juice and 4 tablespoons of icing sugar. Warm through until you have a clear liquid and the sugar is completely dissolved. When your cakes come out of the oven make a few holes in each cake with the toothpick and then brush the syrup onto the cakes with a pastry brush. If you don’t have a pastry brush just drizzle over with a teaspoon.

Once they are completely cooled you can ice them. To make the icing mix together 125gm of full fat cream cheese ( I used Philadelphia) and 350gm sifted icing sugar. Once mixed add the juice from half a lemon then give it another couple of minutes whipping.

I iced the cakes simply using a small palette knife as the icing is not really firm enough to use a piping bag. I then sprinkled some more poppy seeds on top to finish them.

I hope you have a go at this recipe, they really are very delicious!

Thanks for reading!

Yesterday I made a lovely fruited loaf, loosely based on a recipe from Paul Hollywood’s wonderful book on baking, an adaptation of his apricot and date loaf. I didn’t have any dried apricots but I did have some dried figs which I used instead. It was really lovely although pretty sweet and I made a bacon sandwich with it this morning which was ok, but I think it would be better toasted with jam. I’m going to try making a cheese sandwich with it after today.

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My first loaf was a simple Cobb loaf using a basic white bread recipe from my Paul Hollywood book. It’s such an easy method and recipe I can see myself making these loaves every weekend.

Here’s a picture so you can see the crust and the crumb;

I also had a go at making rye bread with a recipe from the wonderful blog Smitten Kitchen, this is a really fab blog and I have already bookmarked several of her recipes to try out sometime.
This was a more labour intensive process as I had to leave the dough to rise a few times and it wasn’t the most elegant of shapes by the time it went into the oven! I have to say though it tasted wonderful so it didn’t really matter what shape it was! I had a smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwich with this bread tonight and it was really really good.

For something sweet I made two banana breads, well it really should have been one! I followed a new recipe but instead of making it in two 1lb loaf tins I divided the mixture between two 2lb tins! Doh! They were tasty but short in stature! I am going to make this again using the correct size tin and will post the recipe then. In the meantime, here’s a picture of my lowly loaves!

I also made pizzas for Sunday dinner but they were scoffed before I remembered to photograph them!

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It was really delicious and I was really chuffed that I had managed to make it. The only disadvantage to making your own bread is that it is so nice it’s hard not to eat it all at once!

The very next day I wanted to have a go at more bread baking. I decided to try baguettes this time. Again it was easy to make the dough but the only difficulty I had this time was shaping the loaves. They were delicious but not very baguette shaped!

This weekend I tried baking again, this time a simple white tin loaf. It was easy to make and delicious. At this rate I may never buy another supermarket loaf again!

So I hope I can inspire you to have a go at bread baking yourself. It’s fairly straightforward and the results are really good!

Thanks for reading!