Cake Friday

One of the children I look after goes to a secondary school where they employ this brilliant idea:

Cake Friday

Each Friday, three children in the tutor group bakes enough cakes for 1 per pupil, so everyone gets 3 cakes.

Last week, it was our turn to bake, but it was a bit of a last minute thing, and tagged on to the end of an afternoon of baking these and these. So this is what we cobbled together:

Chocolate Honeycomb Crunch
Ingredients:
225g / 8oz butter
225g / 8oz caster sugar
200g / 7oz self raising flour
25g / 1oz cocoa
3 eggs

For the Icing:
50g / 2oz hard margerine (comes in 250g block form - I use Stork)
200g / 7oz icing sugar, sifted
25g / 1oz cocoa
2 tbsp milk
1 Crunchie Bar, crushed


1 :: Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas Mark 4
2 :: Place 24 cupcake cases in two 12-hole muffin trays (if you only have one, just bake in two batches)
3 :: In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy
4 :: Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition
5 :: Sift in the flour & cocoa and fold in with a metal spoon. (If you want to be speedy, just carrying on mixing with electric beaters)
6 :: Put 1.5 heaped dessertspoons of the mixture into each cupcase
7 :: Bake in the preheated oven for 15 - 20 mins, then leave to cool on a wire cooling rack.

For the Icing
1 :: Melt the butter in a saucepan
2 :: Remove from heat then add the sifted icing sugar & cocoa, stirring gently with a wooden spoon. At this stage, the icing will not look like a great consistency, but don't worry, the milk changes that.
3 :: Add the milk and beat until a smooth, shiny consistency is reached.
4 :: Using a knife, spread a generous amount of the icing onto each cooled cupcake.
5 :: Sprinkle a little bit of honeycomb-Crunchie goodness onto each cake.


Sidenote: I often find that the fat separates from the sugar - I haven't yet worked out why this is but the solution is to add a little more milk. It works like a dream.

Cake Count :: 558

B&W Pinwheels

A very good friend of mine had a little accident the other week involving her bike, some frost, her chin, the road and some glue.

So it was time to bake some get well soon biscuits.

They were a bit faffy to make in that chilling, rolling & lots of cling film is involved. I don't get on with cling film very well. Aussie's like to call it 'glad wrap'. I'm not quite sure why because it does not make my heart feel glad when I have a run in with sticky biscuit mixture and cling film. But there we go. That was what was required to make these beauties.

And I do think they are quite beautiful, if I may say so.

Cake Count :: 534

Chocolate Chequerboard Cake

There are some old classics in the cake world that never let you down and everybody loves.

The first cake I ever learned to bake is one of these classics. Straight from my Mother's kitchen.
There's nothing fancy about this sponge, but it's perfectly perfect when all you want is a light tea time sponge.

So, when cake was requested by the children I look after, this is what came out of the oven.

I'm afraid this post has stumped me a number of times. Or rather, blogger has failed me on more than one occasion in writing this post. I cannot recall the number of times I've typed out the recipe and then lost all the text, so for now, it's a recipe in photos.

Cake Count :: 502

an unexpected favourite

Well this week has turned out to be another little boost towards my 2010 goal.

It all started on Monday evening. At the job I have that involves me cooking for some lovely people, I had been more productive than usual, so had less cooking to do on Tuesday. I asked the lady who I cook for if there was anything she'd like me to do instead of cooking as I'd have extra time on Tuesday, she said, 'you could bake some cakes for the kids?'

Aaaaah. Music to my ears.

At this, one of the children piped up, 'ooh can we have one of those tall square cakes?'

Interpretation provided by Mum: Battenburg.

I have to say, I do not like this cake, but I understand the beauty of it. So, I suggested a compromise:

Chocolate Chequerboard Cake.

But that is for another blog post.

{You're getting a glimpse into my rambly mind here. You see, I'd uploaded the photos for this blog post with the intention of telling you about my favourite cookie, but I have digressed. Back to the original.}

So anyway, after the mention of Chocolate Chequerboard Cake, one of the other children mentioned that on Thursday her school was having a non-uniform day in aid of Haiti, and she'd quite like to make something to sell at a stall at lunchtime.

{Interpretation: She'd like me to make something to sell at the stall. Fine by me.}

And that's where these cookies come in.

Up until 2007, I had not managed to bake a good cookie. The mixture would always look great, but would then spread and go all crispy in the baking process.

I have since then, discovered a secret ingredient: Condensed milk. What a beautiful ingredient. My cookie companion.

During a cookie conversation with a friend, I mention my lack of a good recipe, and she said, 'My mum has a great recipe for cookies. l've never tried it, but it's supposed to be really good. I'll get it for you.'

Now, I don't know about you, but often when people say they'll pass on a recipe, it doesn't happen. Not for lack of good intention, but because, with a recipe like this, as is so often the case, you need to go and find it / ask someone to pass it on, etc, and so the buck gets passed and dropped.

Thankfully, this friend is the most organised person I have ever met. She does not forget. So, a few days after our conversation, I had the recipe in my hand for what was to become my favourite cookie recipe to date.

So, dear friends, here is the recipe, being passed on, just as it should be. I love that my growing recipe collection isn't made up simply of beautiful books stuffed full of recipes written by somebody else, but consists of recipes from here, there and everywhere. From family and friends, and family of friends, and websites lovingly created by people who love to bake. Even as I write this, I am getting excited about the prospect of all the recipes that are to be found.

Enough of my jibber-jabbing, and onto the recipe...

Double Chocolate Cookies :: Makes about 22 {depending on how big /small you make them}

Ingredients
200g / 7oz dark chocolate
60g / 2oz unsalted butter
60g / 2oz white chocolate chips
225g / 8oz self raising flour
397g / 14oz tin condensed milk

1 :: Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 / 180C / 350F

2 :: Break up the dark chocolate and melt, along with the butter, in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water.

3 :: Once melted, remove from the heat and stir in the entire can of condensed milk. Set aside for 10-15 mins to cool slightly.

4 :: Stir in the flour gradually (no need to sieve).

5 :: Stir in the white chocolate chips. On this occasion I cut up a bar of white chocolate as it was cheaper to buy it in this form than in ready-made chips, but roll with whatever you feel like. Personally, I think that little chips look better than cut up chocolate, but there we go.

6 :: Leave the dough to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
This was the first recipe that made me see that cookie dough really is, and should be, dough-like, just as the term suggests. It feels brilliantly springy to touch - not that you would ever catch me doing such a thing...

8 :: Spoon heaped teaspoons of the mixture onto a greased baking tray, leaving plenty of space in between to allow for spreading. If you want the cookies to have a smooth-ish appearance, it might be worth rolling the ball of dough in your hands before placing on the tray, but I quite like the rough-rocky-like apppearance they have from just scooping and pushing onto the tray.

9 :: Bake in the preheated oven for 10 - 12 minutes.
The cookies are ready when they're just starting to go crisp on top but are still very soft.
Remember that cookies always harden as they cool, so you do not want to bake them until they're hard, unless you want to bite into a brown rock!

Cake Count :: 501

Blue.Berries.

After baking up a storm for my Church event, I had a few left over ingredients.

The possibilities of what to do with them were endless, but I settled with Blueberry Cake.

I didn't have the right tin for baking in so I compromised which meant a massively increased baking time, but I'm pretty sure it tasted the same as it would have, had I had a beautiful bundt tin, as specified.

The end result was a cake about 10cm tall with lots of sunken blueberries...

Blueberry Cake :: adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery

Ingredients
350g unsalted butter, at room temperature
350g caster sugar
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract 450g plain flour
2 tbsp + 2 tsp baking powder (yep, you read that right)
280ml creme fraiche
250g blueberries

1 :: Preheat the oven to 170C / Gas mark 3 / 325F. Grease and line a 9 " round tin, or a
10" / 25cm bundt tin

2 :: In a large mixing bowl (or freestanding mixture if you are blessed with one of these beauties), beat the butter and sugar until creamy, light & fluffy

3 :: Add the eggs, 1 at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl when necessary.

4 :: Beat in the vanilla extract, flour and baking powder until it's all mixed together.

5 :: Stir in the creme fraiche by hand until combined.

6 :: Gently stir in the blueberries by hand (so they don't get crushed) until they've spread evenly througout the mixture.

7 :: Scrape the mixture into your prepared tin and bake for 1hr 40mins if using a 9" round tin.
If using a bundt tin, bake for 40 mins.

Tip: If using a 9" round tin, cover the cake with greaseproof paper after 40 mins to prevent the top from browning too much.

8 :: Remove the cake from the oven once it's baked, and leave to cool slightly before removing it from the tin. Turn out onto a wire cooling rack and leave until completely cooled before icing.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients
300g icing sugar, sifted
50g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125g cream cheese at room temperature

It's very important to have the butter and cream cheese at room temperature if you want to avoid lumpy frosting / icing.

It takes roughly an hour for them to come up to room temperature.

Alternatively, if you haven't got an hour, you can put them in the microwave on a low power setting and blast for a few seconds.

1 :: Beat the icing sugar into the butter, adding a little sugar at a time to avoid create a huge sugar cloud and covering yourself in the sweet dust.

2 :: Beat in the cream cheese until everything's combined. Keep beating for another 5 mins to make it light and fluffy.

3 :: Cover your cake in the frosting / icing, adding little flicks here and there if you so which to add a bit of character.

4 :: Eat Cake.

Side note
Frosting or Icing?
Well, the thing is, I've grown up calling the sweet stuff on top of cakes 'icing'. However, a lot of recipes call it 'frosting.' I like the sound of frosting more than icing - it suggests something a little bit more. With this recipe, the creators of it call it frosting, so I wouldn't want to take that away from them, but thought I should include the word 'icing' too, to save confusion, and to pacify my wonderful boyfriend who's slightly concerned about me using Americanisms, what with me being British, and all.

Cake Count :: 455

Baking in miniature {revisited}

As it happens, my plans to bake 2010 cakes managed to take a hurtle forward towards looking slighttly more achieveable than when the idea was first conceived, when I got a call from a friend asking me to bake for an event our church was holding.

It also happens that I have done a fair bit of baking since then, so to save repeating myself, and to try and get up to speed on this little blog before I do any more baking, I'm afraid I'm going to cheat and give you a link back to my initial post over on my other blog to give you a bit more of a review of what I baked.

(The brownies featured at the top are the miniature version of the brownies I presented in the last post.)

Cake count :: 454

Birthday Brownies

.

It turns out I have a lot of friends who were born in January.

So, second birthday baking opportunity came around very quickly, thanks to Ben being born 18 years ago this month.

I have to say I was slightly cheeky in that I used the Birthday Brownie Baking session (don't you just love alliteration?!) to have a trial run for my mammoth baking session that was to happen later the following week.

I needed to work out how many miniature mouthfuls of brownie goodness the recipe would make, so doubled the quantities and made half of the mixture into Ben's Birthday Brownies and half into bitesize brownies. (Ben, I'm sorry you never saw these, they were eager to be eaten up by five hungry children.)

Result?
12 fairy cake-size brownies
30-odd bitesize brownies (a slight downfall in this Bake2010 plan could be my inaccuracy in counting...)

As a little treat, why don't you whip up some of these little ones for yourself and your loved ones? They're wonderfully quick...

Birthday Brownies :: from Cupcake Heaven by Susannah Blake

Ingredients
75g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids (I always use Divine - I like knowing my cakes are ethical)
75g unsalted butter
1 egg
75g caster sugar
25g self raising flour
50g macadamia nuts (optional - personally I prefer my brownies without nuts)

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4.

1:: Melt the chocolate and butter in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water, or in the microwave on medium heat, stirring every 30 secs for a couple of minutes until melted.

2:: Remove from the heat and leave to cool for 5 minutes

3:: Beat in the egg then stir in the sugar. (The quantity of ingredients is so small that you can do this all by hand very easily.)

4:: Sift in the flour and fold in using a metal spoon. Then stir in the nuts, if using.

5:: Spoon the mixture into small cupcake cases or muffin cases if you'd like bigger brownies. The quantity will yield about 6-8 large cupcakes and 12 small, off the top of my head, so give or take a bit with that!
Alternatively, put mixture into a measuring jug with a spout and pour into petit four cases for miniature brownies.
If making miniatures, I just place the petit four cases onto a baking tray.

6:: Bake for 15 - 17 mins until the tops have a cracked appearance and is just firm to the touch.
If making larger brownies, they'll need a slightly longer cooking time, but not too much longer, as in, just a few minutes.

7:: Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire cooling rack.

I'll try to give slightly more precise timings at some point - sorry for the vagueness of it!

So there you have it. A slight deviation from birthday cupcakes, but no less delicious!

Cake Count :: 54