Rusks for Rascals

For my Birthday I was lucky enough to receive Miranda Gore Browne's book, 'Biscuit' overall the book is lovely and I was definitely craving biscuits after reading it. It's a shame there wasn't space for photos of more of the biscuits though.

I loved the sound of the Rusks for Rascals, but without a photo I couldn't imagine what they'd look like and Google was no help! So here are my photos In case you're interested in making them but not sure what to expect.

Before cooking begins

After the first spell in the oven, before slicing

Cut up ready for the final bake

The final biscuits, a lovely big tin full of tasty nibbles!

Christmas Cake 2012 - Part 2

After a few weeks soaking in the brandy syrup, it's time to bake the fruit into the cake. The cake is always cooked at half term, giving a good few weeks of feeding before Christmas.

I baked the cake according to the secret family recipe, but left out an ounce of sugar to make up for the syrup, then baked for hours and hours until cooked through.

This is my little girl's third year of making the cake with me and properly joined in this year, although I had to stop her doing her usual trick of eating handfuls of the cake mixture: far too much brandy!

Spiced pumpkin cake

As I explained in my last post, I don't like to scoop the seeds from my pumpkin and throw them away, or carve through an inch thick layer of pumpkin leaving the flesh to be thrown away later.

This year I've used Halloween Pumpkin Cake recipe from BBC GoodFood. I didn't use a cream cheese icing, just a little water icing with orange extract, but they were beautifully moist, and the recipe made about 24 cupcakes. Thankfully they should freeze well.

The cake is incredibly moist, and no one could guess the secret ingredient!

Vanilla pumpkin seeds

As soon as my two year old started seeing pumpkins in the shops, she was desperate to get her hands on one. They are quite exciting for a little person as look like a brightly coloured ball!

So I bought one to carve for Halloween. I hate to waste the inside of the pumpkin and scraped out both the seeds and flesh ready for cooking.

First I roasted the seeds. I have done this quite a few times, but usually use sunflower oil and salt, possibly some spices. I decided sweet vanilla seeds would be a nice change.

Recipe
80g pumpkin seeds, rinsed and drained (a whole pumpkin's worth!)
1 tbsp sunflower oil
25g sugar (or try 20g I you have a really sweet tooth)
1 capful vanilla extract

1) Preheat oven to 200 degrees
2) Mix everything up really well
3) Spread over a baking sheet, preferably one with silicon paper (available from Lakeland) to make sure they don't stick.
4) Roast for around 15mins, stirring a couple of times, until they are just beginning to brown.

Variations:
I think using cinnamon instead of vanilla would work well, as would mixed spice.

I hope this encourages you not to throw away your seeds this year!

Christmas cake 2012 - part 1

Soon after marrying my husband I was presented with the top secret family Christmas cake recipe, and all but one year since (I was in the process of losing a few stone...) I have made my cake around the October half term, to this recipe.
Whenever I use dried fruit in baking I always 'soak' the fruit (microwave with sprinkle of water / something stronger and leave to stand covered for as long as I have) as it improves the moistness and stops raisins burning on the top (I hate that taste!)
However, when I saw a recent blog post from Ruth Clements, I knew I needed to modify the recipe to include a longer soak, as it's such a good idea.

I've used the usual weight of fruit from my family recipe substituting in a few figs (from Ruth's recipe) and using pureed mixed peel, an idea from Jo Wheatley's book. I've soaked in the orange juice sugar syrup and brandy, as Ruth's recipe says, and added a drop each of lemon and orange extract. It smells (and tastes!) fab already!

I'll soak for about 4 weeks, rather than the suggested 6, but I'm already excited to see how this year's cake turns out!

Party food: Teddy Bear Biscuits

Although the Little Charley Bear birthday cake was the main baking I undertook for little one's birthday, I did work on some other little treats for the party guests.

One which will be a definite favourite for years to come has to be Jo Wheatley's Iced Biscuits. The dough is really easy to work with, and the biscuits come out not too sweet: perfect for icing.

I followed the recipe up the the point where you freeze the shaped biscuits for a short time, and open froze on silicon paper (from Lakeland, a must have in my kitchen!) before popping in a freezer bag until the day before.

The best thing about these is my little girl could help cut them out in to bears and put them on the tray, as the dough is really easy to handle.

I can see this recipe coming out for a different themed party every year, as well as when I have Jo's cookbook put on my lap with the order to: "Mummy Cook!"

Party food: Cheesy Feet!

I had these cheese biscuits at a friend's house for her 2 year old's party about 6 months ago. A few weeks ago my Mother in Law gave me some foot cutters so I knew I had to make these for the party.

I was surprised (I don't know why) that they were from a Nigella recipe.

They are really easy to make, even for a hot-handed pastry killer like myself, as they are all done in the magimix. I even grated the cheese with it first, then used the mixer to bring it together.

The first batch I made were fantastic, and really reminded me of mini cheddars. The 2nd batch puffed up a but too much, but this was probably me measuring the baking powder wrong, or the fact the dough sat in the fridge for a few days.

Do leave a comment if you have any ideas why they puffed up!

Little Charley Bear Cake

As my little girl stated approaching two (ok, as soon as she passed one ;)) I started thinking of what sort of cake we could do for birthday number 2.

A couple of months before she was obsessed with Little Charley Bear from cbeebies, so I started researching how I could do a Charley cake. Almost straight away I found the Wilton 3D teddy bear cake pan, but wasn't willing to buy it, an wa pleasantly surprised I could hire it for just £2 from my local cake supplies shop, Munchkins Cakes!

So with this booked I started looking at recipes for the cake itself. The instructions are American, and so say to use a packet of sponge mix and a packet of pound cake mix! After a little research it seemed that I needed to make quite a dense cake to hold the weight, so a pound or Madeira cake. I chose this recipe,and decided to make a double batch. This was barely enough to fill the outside, let alone the inner core, so if you attempt it with this recipe try tripling it!

After collecting the tin, I got to work. After applying cake release and attaching the pieces of the tin together with the clips, I used foil around the joins to prevent leakage. Not a bit of mixture got out!

I filled the tin with 6 cups of mixture as suggested, but felt it wasn't enough so put another one in (the rest of the mixture) and left the core empty. This just about filled it when cooked, but a little more would have been perfect.

I followed the instructions exactly when it came out of the oven, and it was almost perfect. Just a small part of the face stuck, and this was easily eased out and stuck on afterwards.

Once cool I stuffed him with a foil core and painted him with apricot jam to seal and hopefully help the buttercream stick.

I used a grass tip (like a wilton 233) to pipe buttercream fur, in a Little charley bear pattern, and fondant for the eyes and nose. It took a couple of rest breaks as the piping is quite hard going, and the nozzle kept getting blocked, or air trapped, and jamming.

I was pleased with the result and it cut well. I cut his back off first to keep his cute face intact for as long as possible! The cake tasted good, and wasn't too dry.

Good luck if you decide to attempt him, it isn't too hard to do!

Blog launch!

This is my 'official' first blog post, all the posts prior to this are back dated pictures and details. I decided I needed somewhere to note down the details of the cakes I've been making and decorating, and place to add any tips. This was mostly brought on by the fact I couldn't see any UK instructions for making the Wilton 3d bear cake, so thought I should 'put' this somewhere once I'd finished him!

Birthday cake #1

I'm making a special cake for my little ones party at the weekend, but couldn't let the day itself go by without a cake! She's a little chocoholic so it had to be a good time to try Jo Wheatley's chocolate birthday cake recipe from 'A Passion for Baking'.
And had a little practice of teddy bear fur ready for the main cake too.

The cake is really tasty but a little crumbly, but I did freeze it and this is really only noticeable when the little one eats it!

Wrapped present cake

Another Ruth Clemens inspired cake, for my mum this time. I found the marbling didn't work as well as I hoped, but it looked good once done.
The main thing I should have done is make sure I had plenty of fondant, as when you roll it too thin it's a nightmare to work with!

Daddy's Birthday cake

This cake was for my lovely husband's birthday while we were on holiday, so had to be 'manly' but also travel well! The cake itself was a fruit cake I made months earlier from a Delia kit which was reduced after Christmas, which turned out well despite my over cooking it (forgot all about it and went out!)

The design was from the book by Ruth Clemens "The Busy Girl's Guide to Cake Decorating", and worked out well.

Sugar free carrot and date cakes

I try to make some of my baking 'no added sugar' and this recipe for Carrot and Date cake is so good that I will definitely be using it again!