I heart biscuits!

Last weekend we baked these tasty chocolate iced biscuits that were suggested as a valentine's day recipe in the latest Asda magazine. They were quite quick to bake and the dough was very easy to handle and manage, which is not always the case with biscuit recipes. But most of all, they were soft and contained just the right amount of chocolate to make you want another one and not feel too guilty, as they were quite light. They don't look as pretty as they did in the magazine but they looked good enough and tasted great and were fun to make!

You will need:

150g butter at room temperature

100g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

vanilla extract

200g plain flour

25g cocoa powder (I actually used about 50g!)

300g royal icing sugar

Food colourings

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (gas 4) and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Beat the butter until soft. Add the sugar and beat until well mixed. 

Separate the eggs and add the yolks to the butter mixture along with the vanilla extract.

Sift in the flour and cocoa powder and finish mixing with your fingers. Form a ball with the dough and wrap in clingfilm - chill in the fridge for around 20 minutes.

Lay a sheet of clingfilm on the work surface and place the dough on top. Add a layer of clingfilm on top and roll the dough to the width of a £1 coin in between. Lift off the top sheet and cut out heart shapes (or any shape you want) and place on the baking tray.

Bake the biscuits for 12 minutes and leave to cool afterwards.

Mix the icing as per pack instructions (you want it to be quite thick so it doesn't run off the biscuits, as was happening on some of mine). Separate into small bowls and add the food colourings. Spread over the biscuits. Allow to set and then they're ready to eat. Enjoy!

Scottish delights - shortbread

Part two of my scottish baking bonanza involved the classic favourite, shortbread. I followed Maw Broon's recipe, which this time was much more straightforward, except that there was no suggestion as to how many this would make. I think it made around 12 - check the picture! It turned out well but was a little floury to taste, but nice and light and it did have a good texture that melted on your tongue.

• 200g plain flour
• 100g butter (I ended up using about 115g)
• 50g caster sugar (plus some extra to dust)

Mix the flour and sugar together in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub together with the fingertips at room temperature. Knead well until it forms a dough and roll out on a cutting board with a rolling pin. Cut out rounds or shapes with cookie cutters. Prick with a fork, for the authentic shortbread look, and bake on a lined baking tray for 15 minutes at 175 degrees or gas mark 4. Once baked, dust immediately with sugar and allow to cool before moving them onto a plate - or straight into your mouth!

Scottish delights - Tablet

With Burn's day this week, I decided it was the perfect time to get stuck into the Broon's Cookbook that I got from my parents for Christmas. And what better way to start than with some melt in the mouth tablet and a batch of sugar dusted shortbread?

However, this also highlighted some flaws in the cookbook's design concept. It's all very well being cute and quirky by pretending to be a collection of Maw Broon's notes and newspaper clippings, but not when it's at the expense of important details in the recipe! For the tablet, it missed out a major step, which almost proved fatal to my efforts, and it assumes in a lot of places that you already know roughly how to make these things (e.g instructions such as 'grain the mixture'?). The issue with the tablet was that it said to bring the mixture to the boil at 118 degrees. It didn't say that you had to keep it boiling for 15-20 minutes! My tablet looked pale and refused to set until I cross referenced it by looking up recipes on Google and realised that this needed to be done. After this it turned to a lovely warm, honey colour and became the deliciously soft, melt in the mouth vanilla fudge we know and love!

Helensburgh Toffee (Tablet)

• 500g granulated sugar
• 125ml milk (or water)
• 50g butter
• 1 dessert spoon of golden syrup
• 200ml condensed milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla flavouring

Melt the butter with the milk in a large saucepan. Stir gently and add the golden syrup. When dissolved, add the condensed milk. Stir all the time and when it begins to boil, reduce the heat and allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from the heat and allow to settle and then add the vanilla flavouring.
Beat for around 5-10 minutes until it thickens, but not to the point where it is too difficult to stir (in the recipe it talks about graining, but I'm not sure what that means - perhaps so you can see the sugar crystals?). Pour into a greased tin, 15-20 cm in size.
Leave to set in the fridge for 3 hours and then cut into squares and eat them all up - but these are surely terrible for your teeth so it may be good to share!

Treats from Moomin Valley

After something of a break from baking anything new or interesting, the perfect solution to my baker's block arrived through the door yesterday morning - The Moomins Cook Book! It's filled with 150 savoury and sweet recipes and is billed as 'an introduction to Finnish cuisine', which it certainly seems to be, as it covers breakfast, lunch, evening meals, summer meals, garden party foods, picnic foods, autumn and winter meals, and birthday treats. So, expect some updates over the coming months, particularly as it includes many seasonal recipes such as 'Cold Comfort' to warm you up when suffering from winter chills, and plenty of winter soups and spiced treats that will be perfect for the Christmas period. But, what makes this book stand out from other cook books is that it is peppered with wonderful illustrations by Tove Jansson showing the Moomins and their friends enjoying various feasts, campfires, picnics and baking activities. There are also selected quotes from Moomin books that show where the inspiration for the recipes have come from and highlight just how important fresh foods and baking are to Moomin culture. As one quote suggests, "everything fun is good for the stomach" - I think that should be my new motto!

Happy birthday to me!

Sorry about the delay in updating but I've been super busy having just made the meteoric move to London (!) and it's been my birthday so I've been celebrating. So far I love London, there is so much to explore that I'll never be bored and I haven't even been inside any of the attractions on my list yet, like the Tate, the Victoria and Albert and the hundreds of hidden gems and off the beaten track spaces yet to be discovered! eeeeek!

So, my birthday was on Monday and we baked this Key Lime Cake because I wanted something a bit different than the usual birthday cake that was still a simple, yummy cake. It was really good, especially when left overnight in a tupperware. It was lovely and moist with a bitter-sweet taste due to the lime drizzle over the top. Yum!

For now, here's a photo. I'll put up the recipe later. I start work next week so things may get more hectic but I'll do my best to keep baking and cookie capering!

Happy Birthday, Sam!

Yesteday was Sam's birthday so Chris and I got out our mixing bowl and cake tins and a bunch of other cooking equipment and ingredients and got to baking a birthday cake. We went with the same Victoria sponge as we used for our Norway Day cake, but tried out a new buttercream vanilla icing. As it was Sam's cake we also decorated it with the Stoke City badge using writing icing. It was a bit tricky but I think it looks good enough and no one had any trouble working out what it was. I think it had an amateurish charm to it and it tasted super yummy! It got sliced up during his party and lots of people commented on how much they liked it, so I'd say it was a hit!

The recipe is this cake as before.

The decoration was Dr Oetker writing icing, which you can buy in any supermarket.

This is how to make the icing:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 cups (around 350g) icing sugar
4 tablespoons evaporated milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Cream the butter. Add the icing sugar, evaporated milk and vanilla and mix until smooth. Smooth over the cake and leave for around five or ten minutes before decorating with the writing icing. Then put it in the fridge for at least 20 minutes before gobbling it all up!

Lostalgia

So, Lost, the show that so many millions of people all over the world were hooked on for 5 and a half years ended this week. What better way to celebrate everything we love about the show, and mark the finale, than to hold a lostalgic party - dress up as characters from the show, and of course eat some themed snacks. Andy came as Oceanic 815, Margaret was Sayid and I was Ben in teacher mode from the 16th episode of season 6. And to accompany it all I made these yummy biscuits decorated like the dharma fish biscuits from season 3 and the dharma logo. The recipe is a simple biscuit recipe from Asda.com:

Lost Biscuits

Ingredients

• 175g butter, softened
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 medium egg yolk
• 250g plain flour
• 1 pack writing icing

Method

1 Preheat the oven to 180C/ 160C Fan/Gas 4. Line 2 baking trays with baking paper. Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in the egg yolk and add the flour and mix to a smooth dough. Gather together with your hands, wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes.
2 Roll out the dough between two sheets of clingfilm to the thickness of a £2 coin. Be quick with the cutting or get someone to help as the dough becomes a bit unworkable as it heats up in your hands (pop it back in the fridge for a while, without clingfilm, if this happens). Cut out shapes with a dharma or fish template (I made my own on card and cut round it on the dough) and put in the oven for 15 mins. Allow to cool completely before decorating. Yum.

The people shaped ones are Boone, Hurley in 1970s jumpsuit, and Jacob.

Happy Norway Day!

Monday 17th May was Norway's National Day when the country celebrates the adoption of its constitution in 1814. For more information on how its celebrated and what it's all about click here: http://www.norway.org/ARCHIVE/culture/heritage/nationalday/

To celebrate the national day of our favourite holiday destination we held our own celebrations yesterday. This included eating a breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs and chocolate spread covered bread (what we had for breakfast in our Oslo hotel in January), a dinner of hot dogs (what we ate for lunch in Oslo) and watching Norwegian clips and listening to some Norwegian music (a once a year experience, I think!). But, the centrepiece of our celebrations was our Norway Day cake. It was a basic Victoria sandwich, covered with cream cheese icing and strawberries and blueberries in the shape of the Norwegian flag (sort of). The cake is a sainsbury's recipe and the icing is from All Cakes Considered (p43).

Ingredients:
175g margarine
175g caster sugar
3 medium eggs, beaten
175g self raising flour
strawberry jam

55g  butter
112g cream cheese
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
225-250g icing sugar

For the cake:
Preheat oven to 180°C, fan 160°C, gas 4. Grease and line two 20.5cm sandwich tins.


Place the margarine and sugar in a mixing bowl and cream together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon of flour with the second egg. Add the remaining flour and beat well.Divide the mixture equally between the prepared sandwich tins. 


Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes until the cake has risen and springs back to the touch. Cool on a wire rack. Sandwich together with strawberry jam.


For the icing:


Cream together unsalted butter (at room temperature) and cream cheese. Add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. 


Gradually add the icing sugar and beat until smooth. If your icing isn't stiff enough you can add more icing sugar, or if it's too stiff add some more butter. 


Spread the icing over the whole cake and place in the fridge for ten minutes.


Bring out of the fridge and decorate with chopped strawberries and whole blueberries. Put back in the fridge for 30 minutes before eating.


Due to the fresh fruit and the dairy content this cake can only keep for a couple of days so make sure you have plenty of friends on hand to help you consume it!

Easter Spice Cake

Yum, yum, yum. The Araby Spice Cake, which I'm currently referring to as the Easter Spice Cake, has been successfully produced and cosumed. The oven problem was not resolved (and who knows when it will be) but we were able to make it in Chris's kitchen with the help of a few ingredients and utensils from my place. It was quite an easy cake to make, and it looked perfect, like an experienced baker might make. I'm not sure how many cakes we have to make before we can describe ourselves as experienced bakers though? Perhaps when we can bake without a book and can make any cake whatever the difficulty if we want to.

Thanks to 'All Cakes Considered' for this one!

Although it isn't a heavy cake, it will have you buzzing around on a sugar high if you eat a big slice as it contains quite a few cupfulls, particularly in the icing (3 cups of icing sugar). But who cares? Cakes are supposed to be sweet and make you feel happy and high. The cake is a delicious blend of sugar and spice with a sticky sweet topping contrasting nicely with the hints of nutmeg and cinammon in the base. We upped the sweet stakes even further by throwing a few Cadbury's mini eggs on top to make it more easter like, but it would be just as good without. A top tip is to leave the cake for a few hours in the fridge before you dig in, although it will require will power not to get munching straight away.

Here are some pictures of the loveley cake. I'll put up the recipe too:

Happy St Patrick's Day!

In honour of Ireland's patron saint and all things green and lucky, here is a link to some Irish recipes in BBC's Good Food Magazine. BBC Good Food St Paddy's Day Recipes

Roald Dahl's Completely Revolting Recipes

The most influential book of all time, for me, has to be Roald Dahl's Completely Revolting Recipes, which I got Chris for Christmas. Ok, that's an exaggeration of epic proportions (there's another one). But it has taught me that cooking can be fun, easy, messy and yummy all at once.
A collection of recipes inspired by Roald Dahls books and poems from the chocolate cake in Matilda, and cider in Fantastic Mr Fox, to worm spaghetti in The Twits, there is something for Roald Dahl enthusiasts of every age and taste. Yum!
buy the book on Amazon.co.uk

Coolest cake of ALL time!

This has to be the coolest cupcake of all time!