Marble Biscuits

Hey,

I saw this idea on Pinterest and loved it so much that I had to give it a go myself. I am actually really impressed with how they turned out, I think they look so cute! The only thing I’d do next time is make the icing a tiny bit thinner as when I lifted the biscuit out of it, it left quite a thick layer and bits were uneven. They’re fun to make and you could make them to suit any occasion by switching the colours, I’ll definitely be making them again.

Ingredients:

Biscuit:

• Your favourite biscuit recipe (I used my shortbread recipe and made the biscuits slightly thicker so that they were easier to dip in the icing)

Icing:

• 2 tsp. Egg White Powder
• 5 tbsp. Water
• 250g Icing Sugar
• Food Colouring

Method:

1. Bake your biscuits and leave them to cool completely
2. For the icing, start by mixing the egg white powder with 2 tbsp. of water, leave to sit for about 5 minutes
3. Sift your icing sugar into a bowl along with the egg white powder/water mixture
4. (Using an electric mixer with a whisk attachment) Whisk the icing sugar and egg white/ water mixture until it clumps together
5. Add the remaining water bit by bit until you reach a smooth consistency
6. Keep this whisking for about 5 minutes and add a little more water if you feel it needs it (you need to be able to dip your biscuits into it without it all just running straight off again)
7. Add a couple of drops of food colouring into the icing and using a skewer lightly swirl the colour so that I creates a marble effect (try not to be too heavy handed otherwise it’ll just dye all the icing one colour)
8. Then just dip your biscuits into the icing and slightly twist before you bring it back out.
9. Tap the biscuit lightly on the worktop to even out the icing.

Watercolour Cake

Hello!

Today I wanted to do something to reflect this amazing weather so I made this bright watercolour cake. Surprisingly it’s not that hard to get a pretty finish, you just have to be careful about what colours you use so they don’t all mix together. You also have to be quite careful about how much you ‘spread’ the colours, I only went round the side with my palette knife twice. I do like how it turned out, although I always forget how intense my food colourings are (I use Americolour) so next time I would do it with some softer, pastel colours!

Enjoy!

Ingredients
Your favourite layer cake-I did 4 layers of my vanilla sponge which is as follows:

• 350g Margarine
• 350g Caster Sugar
• 4 Eggs
• 350g Self Raising Flour
• 2 tsp. Vanilla Extract

Buttercream:

• 300g Margarine
• 650g Icing Sugar
• Food Colourings of your choice

Method

1. Cream together the margarine and sugar until fluffy
2. Gradually add the eggs/vanilla
3. Fold in the self raising flour
4. Pour mixture into greased tins
5. Bake at 180 degrees for 25 minutes
6. For the buttercream, beat the margarine for about 5 minutes
7. Add the icing sugar in 2 batches, mixing thoroughly in between each
8. Stack the cakes with buttercream in between each

9. Spread the buttercream around the edge of the cake and chill for about 10 minutes (it doesn’t have to be neat, this is just a ‘crumb coat’)

10. Do a second neater coat of buttercream (using palette knife and a turn table helps a lot!)
11. Colour the remaining buttercream in your chosen colours
12. Add blobs of each colour randomly around the cake (don’t be afraid to add a lot, you scrape most of it off anyway)

13. Using a palette knife held vertically spread the colours around the cake, carefully and lightly, add more colour if necessary. After each swipe, make sure you clean your palette knife so the colours don’t mix too much.

 

 

Millionaire Cupcakes

Hey,

Uni has been (and still is) a bit crazy at the minute with assignments and exams to revise for but I wanted to take some time to do a new recipe. I had some left over shortbread dough and didn’t want to waste it so I thought I’d add it into a cupcake again (similar to my cornflake tart cupcakes). This time though I thought I’d be a bit fancy and add chocolate and caramel to replicate a millionaire shortbread and they turned out v tasty. I went a bit over the top with the decoration but I couldn’t not add the little bronze sprinkles because they fit the ‘millionaire’ theme so well! (They look and taste just as good without them though)

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• Shortbread dough (first recipe on my blog)

Cupcakes:

• 125g Caste Sugar
• 125g Margarine
• 3 Eggs (beaten)
• 125g Self Raising Flour
• 25g Cocoa Powder

Caramel Buttecream:

• 150g Margarine
• 350g Icing Sugar
• 150g Caramel (I used the ready made, canned type)

Method:

1. Roll out your shortbread and cut out 12 little circles, place them in the cupcake cases
2. Cream together your margarine and sugar until fluffy
3. Slowly add your eggs bit by bit (don’t worry if it looks like it’s curdled, it’ll be fine once you add the flour)
4. Stir in the flour/ cocoa powder
5. Put about 2 tbsp of the mixture in each cupcake case
6. Bake for 20 minutes at 180 degrees
7. For the buttercream, cream the margarine for about 3 minutes until soft
8. Stir in the icing sugar and beat for a further 3 minutes
9. Add in the caramel, mix to combine
10. Spread the buttercream on top and decorate however you fancy (I made some little shortbread biscuits to crumble on top)

Unicorn Meringues

Hello!

Since the hockey is over for another season, me,  my friends and family are already feeling a bit bored (and sad). I wanted to make something bright and colourful for a bit of fun. I’ve only ever made meringue kisses once and that was a while ago so I wasn’t really sure how these would turn out, but I’m actually quite pleased! These aren’t flavoured in any way. but still taste pretty good and I think, are quite easy to make. Admittedly, they aren’t the pastel, ‘Easter’ themed colour I was going for, but I’m not too fussed because I think they’re still cute!

Ingredients:

• 150g Caster Sugar
• 75g Egg Whites
• Food Colouring

Method:

• Start by heating up the sugar in a preheated oven (200 degrees) for about 5 minutes (when its heated turn the oven down to 100 degrees)
• Whilst the sugar is heating up, start whisking your egg whites until they reach the thick, peaked consistency
• Add your hot sugar to the egg whites slowly (spoon by spoon)
• On the highest speed, continue to whisk the egg whites/sugar for a further 5 minutes. (If after 5 minutes you can feel some grains of sugar, keep mixing)
• Turn a piping bag inside out and paint lines of food colouring up the sides (go cray)
• Spoon the meringue mixture into the piping bag and pipe your kisses. Mine were quite tiny, so do whatever size you want.
• Bake the meringues at 100 degrees for about 30-40 minutes depending on the size, mine took 30 minutes.

 

Lemon Curd Doughnuts

I wanted to try something a bit different today and something I’ve never made before is doughnuts. I’m not a huge lover of  doughnuts if I’m honest but I do enjoy a jam one every now and then. I thought I’d mix it up a bit and change the filling, mainly just because I love lemon curd. My family loves me making it (lemon curd), but for these I wanted a thick, easy to pipe filling, so I just used a fail proof, shop brought one.

It’s quite a long process because of the proving, but its surprisingly pretty easy, the ingredients are easy to find and you don’t need a deep fat fryer, just a big saucepan and some oil. Overall, I was really surprised at how non-complicated the process was, I’ll definitely be making more of these with different fillings (I’d like to say more exotic ones, but it’ll probably just be nutella).

Ingredients:

• 200g Strong White Flour
• 50g Butter
• 7g Yeast
• 1 tbsp. Sugar (plus extra for coating)
• 1 Egg
• 100ml Warm Milk
• Sunflower Oil
• Lemon Curd

Method:

• Cube the butter and rub into the flour (in a large bowl)
• Stir in the yeast and sugar
• Make a well in the centre, add egg and milk and stir to combine
• Either on a work surface or electric mixer, knead the dough for about 5 minutes
• Cover with cling film and leave in warm place until the dough has doubled in size (about an hour)
• Split the dough into even portions (I did 8)
• Cover with oiled cling film and leave in a warm place for about 45 minutes
• In a large, deep saucepan heat the oil to 190 degrees
• Fry the dough for about 30 seconds- 1 minute either side (do this in batched of 2 or 3 depending on how big the saucepan is)
• Place on a tray with kitchen roll to drain the excess oil
• Make a small hole in the doughnuts with a knife and pipe in your filling
• Whilst still warm, roll the doughnuts in caster sugar
• Either eat warm or leave to cool!

Nutella Bites

Hey,

As sad as it sounds, something I enjoy a bit too much is watching those facebook recipe videos. I was watching one the other day where they made Nutella Blondies and they looked incredible so I had to try something similar.

I thought it would be a good idea to bake these in muffin trays so that they were little individual ‘bites’ and I think they turned out really cute. I found a ‘blondie’ recipe online but decided that they’d taste better without the white chocolate so I guess I can’t really call them blondies..  I also altered it slightly (obviously by adding nutella) but by adding both light brown and caster sugar, this was mainly for the colour, I wanted an obvious contrast between the ‘blondie’ and the nutella. I love marble cake, so marbling the nutella seemed like a good plan, what I would say is slightly warming up your nutella helps a lot (pls remember to take off all of the foil lid before microwaving).

Overall they were a success but next time I wouldn’t bake them for as long as I did, as they turned out quite cakey- still tasty but not the gooey texture you’d expect!

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 170g Butter/Margarine (melted)
• 150g Soft Brown Sugar
• 150g Caster Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 180g Plain Flour
• 1 tsp. Baking Powder
• 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
• Nutella

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
• Mix together your butter and both sugars until combined (its easier if you have an electric/ stand mixer but by hand it fine)
• Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well in between
• In a separate bowl mix together your flour and baking powder
• Sift the flour into the butter/sugar/egg mix and fold in gently
• Add 3 tbsp. of mixture into greased (I just used some of the melted butter) muffin tin holes (or 1 tbsp. into mini muffin tin holes)
• Add about 1 tsp. of Nutella on top of the mixture and use a knife to marble it- don’t be too heavy handed otherwise the Nutella will just mix in and you wont get the desired effect.
  
• I baked the larger blondies for 20 minutes and the smaller for 10 minutes, if you want a more gooey texture bake for less (just until the top is crispy).
• Leave to cool completely in the tray before you try taking them out (this bit is quite fiddly!)

Cookie Dough Rocky Road

Hello!

Today is a nice and easy (but delicious) recipe on my Cookie Dough Rocky Road. I was looking through old photos and found one of some cookie dough brownie bars I made for my best friends birthday, and it reminded me how good eggless cookie dough is. So, I thought why not add it to one of my favourite sweet things, Rocky Road. It still has all the goodness of the marshmallows and digestive biscuits but I wanted to make it even better. Of course you can add whatever you want to yours, cherries, raisins etc.- but try the cookie dough because its pretty special.

Enjoy!

Ingredients

Cookie Dough:

• 50g Butter
• 90g Soft Brown Sugar
• 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
• 70g Plain Flour
• 1 tbsp. Milk
• 50g Chocolate Chips

Rocky Road:

• 125g Butter
• 200g Dark Chocolate
• 100g Milk Chocolate (if you prefer a more intense flavour, use 300g Dark Chocolate)
• 3 tbsp. Golden Syrup
• 100g Digestive Biscuits
• 100g Mini Marshmallows

Method:

1. Start by making the cookie dough- cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy, then mix in your vanilla and flour, stir in your chocolate chips an add the milk until all is combined
2. Shape the dough into small balls and put in the fridge
3. For the rocky road start by melting the chocolate, butter and golden syrup in a pan
4. Crush your digestives (not so much that they’re like breadcrumbs though)
5. Add your extras (digestives, marshmallows and cookie dough) to the mix and stir
6. Pour into a greased tray and refrigerate for a good few hours (preferably over night).
7. Slice your rocky up into pieces (probably the bit I find the hardest!)
8. Dust with icing sugar to finish!

 

 

Cornflake Tart Cupcakes

Hey!

Today was an experimental one. I came up with this idea after reminiscing over school meals and how great the puddings were. My two favourites were cornflake and butterscotch tart, I remember being SO excited when we had either of them. Thinking about them made me crave them, but you just cant buy butterscotch tart like they made it at school, so I went for a cornflake tart (and it was incred). It made me think about my blog and how I could incorporate it without just making a classic tart.

One of my favourite things to bake is cupcakes, so I thought why not try and combine the two, I wasn’t sure at all how it would turn out, but I think its been pretty successful! (At least, I think they taste great). The tart I had recently had a really hick crumbly base, more like biscuit which gave me the idea of using shortbread as the base. The jam would add colour and the cornflake would make a 10/10 topping as well as looking pretty. I love that even though its not a classic cornflake tart, it still has a traditional British feel to it and reminds me of the days back in primary school.

They do take a bit of time (because of making the shortbread as well) but its a gooden because it uses things normally found in a lot of peoples cupboards.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Cake:

• 12 Shortbread Biscuits (recipe can be found on my last blog post)
• 110g Margarine
• 110g Caster Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 110g Self Raising Flour

Buttercream:

• 150g Margarine/Butter
• 330g Icing Sugar
• 2 tbsp. Milk

Topping:

• 25g Golden Syrup
• 25g Margarine/Butter
• 25g Caster Sugar
• 50g Cornflakes

You’ll also need some strawberry Jam.

Method:

1. Start by creaming together your margarine and caster sugar
2. Slowly add in your eggs (beaten), if it starts to separate add a bit of the flour
3. Fold in the flour (sieved)
4. Put a shortbread biscuit at the bottom of each cupcake case then spoon the mixture on top
5. Bake for 20 minutes in a preheated oven of 180 degrees.
6. While the cakes are cooking make the topping so it has time to cool down, just melt the butter, golden syrup and sugar gently on the hob, take off the heat and stir in the cornflakes.
7. As the cakes cool make the buttercream by creaming the butter for a few minutes then adding the icing sugar in two batches beating thoroughly in between each addition. Stir in the milk.
8. Once cooled cut a small hole in each cupcake and pipe some jam in the middle
9. Either pipe or spoon the buttercream on top, then place about tablespoon of the cornflake mixture on top.
10. Drizzle some more jam on top (it helps to warm up the jam slightly)

 

Shortbread Biscuits

Hello!

Thank you for taking the time to have a look at my first blog post, it’s only short but I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I have I enjoyed making it. 

I wanted to start this blog after finding a bit of time between studying at University (Nottingham Trent doing Food Science and Technology) and my little job at a local gymnastics club.

My main passion is baking (as well as watching ice hockey, an interesting mix I know), my grandma was the one who got me into it when I was young. The love of baking with her has now turned into me doing a degree in Food and the ambition of owning my own bakery one day.

I thought I’d start with one of my favourite recipes, they’re pretty easy to make but they taste so good, it’s my Grandmas recipe for Shortbread biscuits. I don’t know what it is about these but I never get sick of them, they’re one of those biscuits where you can’t just have one without going back for more.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 8oz (about 225g) Margarine (I use stork)
• 4oz (about 110g) Caster Sugar- and a little bit more for dusting.
• 8oz (about 225g) Plain Flour
• 4oz (about 110g) Corn Flour
• 2oz (about 55g) Chocolate (optional)

Method:

1. Cream together the margarine and sugar
2. Stir in both flours until combined (don’t over mix otherwise the biscuits won’t be as crisp)
3. Roll the dough out (its quite a soft dough, make sure there’s a decent amount of flour on the work surface). I like these a bit thicker than normal biscuits so I don’t roll it out too thin, I also find it easier to roll the dough out in two batches.
4. Cut out whatever shape you fancy, they hold their shape pretty well
5. Bake for 20 minutes at a preheated oven of 180 degrees, once they’re out (and still hot) sprinkle with caster sugar
6. You could leave them as they are, but I like to drizzle some chocolate on top because why not!