back to back baking :: part 1

Over the last two years I have been fortunate enough to have three kitchens to bake in. Not just one, but three. One at home, one at childminding (brilliant industrial super-powerful oven, I love it) and one at school. Well, technically speaking, there's two at school & I have baked in both of them, but let's just call it one for now.

Anyhow, for some slightly crazy reason I managed to end up baking in all three of these places on Thursday. Yep, a serious amount of baking occurred & I had plenty of little helping hands to assist me & to teach.

The morning was spent in the school kitchen baking banana muffins with my 3 & 4 year old Nursery Class children. They were brilliant bakers. They cracked eggs like pro's, mashed banana to the absolute perfect consistency, washed up like they do it every day & said things like, 'I'm having so much fun!


Banana Muffins makes 12 - 14

ingredients

3 very ripe bananas
1 egg
50ml semi-skimmed milk
75g / 20z butter, melted
125g / 5.5oz caster sugar
275g / 5.5oz self raising flour
70g white or dark chocolate, cut into rough chunks


1) Pre heat the oven to 180C / Gas Mark 4 & line a 12-hole muffin tray with paper cases.

2) In a large mixing bowl, mash up the bananas.


3) Melt the butter & stir into the banana mixture, along with the egg, sugar & milk


4) Stir together the flour, chocolate & bi-carbonate of soda in a separate mixing bowl.


5) Combine the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients and stir very gently together with a wooden spoon until only just combined - the key to soft springy muffins is to do as little stirring as is required to combine the wet & dry ingredients.


6) Spoon heaped dessertspoons of mixture into the muffin cases and bake for 20 - 25 minutes until well risen & golden.


Cake Count :: 930

keep watching to find out what happened next in my day of back to back baking.

the marble rut

So there's been a bit of a thing going lately with marble cake & me. As much as I try to stay away from it because I feel we've seen more of each other than is healthy, I just don't seem to be able to. It's the children's fault, I promise.

Every time the children want cake, they want marble cake. Or lemon cake. That's acceptable too. They even discovered a great love for the cranberry & white chocolate cookies I told you about before, but even their buttery goodness has not conquered there desire for all cakes to be marbled.

When Will told me what he wanted for his birthday cake, well, you'll never be able to guess what he asked for, not in a million years. Oh, did I hear someone yell, 'marble cake?' Ah well, you're cleverer than I gave you credit for. Of course he wanted marble cake. What else?! Also, it needed to be a marble cake that was a football pitch. Okaaay.

Now, before you judge me, please remember that I never said I could decorate children's cakes. I might be able to do wonders with a piping bag, but novelty cakes? They're not really my thing. So, I will ashamedly show you a photo of this cake when it was four days old - Will did not want to spoil it at his birthday party, so refused to cut it. I had talk him into spoiling this 'masterpiece' today.

Feel free to laugh. I did. It looks awful. But just remember that we're talking about marble cake here, not about how to make children's birthday cakes, ok?

Right, deep breath...I might end up removing the photographic evidence from this blog because it is just so embarrassing, but I suppose pictures make blogs look better, even if they are embarrassing.

Are you rolling about laughing right now? Or maybe you just threw your head back with laughter? Please do tell me if this cake has induced laughter because that really would be the right response. Please don't tell me that it's good because I would have to call you a liar. The photo I would really love to show you is the one I took right after I'd taken this one - it's of Will licking the icing off the backside of one of the playmobil footballers - a classic shot - but I don't have his parents' permission to post photos of him here so I won't do that.

Swiftly moving on to this marble cake I keep jabbering about. I'll post the recipe here once & for all and hopefully I'll never have to talk about it again. Don't get me wrong, it's a tasty cake, but I am a little bit shocked about how marbling could take over my baking so much.

It is so simple to make. Essentially, if you were to follow this recipe for chocolate sponge, but divide the mixture in two before adding the cocoa, you'd be three quarters of the way to having your marble cake in the oven. I'll break it down for you anyway to try & make it as clear as is possible with a marble cake...

Marble Cake

ingredients

225g / 8oz unsalted butter, softened

225g / 8oz caster sugar

200g / 7oz self raising flour

25g / 1oz cocoa

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

150g milk chocolate - optional

1) Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4. Grease & line a rectangular roasting tin - approx. 30cm x 23cm. (I'm sorry, I don't know the exact dimensions of the tin I use.)

2) In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter & sugar.

3) Beat in one egg. Add a little flour, sieved, & the vanilla extract, then beat again.

4) Beat in the second, third and fourth eggs as above - adding a little flour with each addition.

5) Fold in the remaining flour.

6) Divide the mixture in half, putting one half into a new large bowl. 

I never bother to weigh the halves, I just go by sight & it's fine. All that happens if it's not very precise is that you'll end up with one half more chocolatey or vanilla-ry then the other half.

7) Add the sieved cocoa to one half and fold in. Dollop heaped dessertspoons of the mixture into the prepared tin then use a knife to swirl the vanilla & chocolate mixes together.

 

8) If you fancy some chocolatey goodness in your marble cake, melt 150g milk chocolate and drizzle in a swirly marbly fashion over the mixture. You'll end up with beautiful chunks of chocolate throughout the cake.

If you do this, the weight of the melted chocolate will mean that the cake does not rise evenly. This really isn't a problem as you cut it up into squares so it doesn't show. Unless, of course, you need to transform your cake into a football pitch. If that's the case, don't use melted chocolate otherwise you'll have lumpy turf.

9) Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes away clean.

10) Leave the cake to cool in the tin for a few minutes before transferring onto a wire rack & removing the baking paper.

On Wednesday I baked this cake twice. The second time around I used a bigger pan & went a little wild, using 5 eggs and increasing all of the other quantities by 1oz / 25g and it worked like a dream. So feel free to adapt to fit your cake requirements and the likelihood is, it'll work if you stick to the general rule of equal quantities of butter, sugar & flour.

Cake Count :: 902

white chocolate & cranberry cookies

I discovered this recipe in an advert in my delicious food magazine last Christmas. The advert was for Carnation Condensed Milk. In my view, Condensed Milk is the  secret ingredient required for my idea of the perfect cookie. Chewy & soft with a slightly crisp edge. Yum.
So, when I saw the advert, I knew I needed to go & buy some condensed milk at the soonest possible moment. Perfectly Christmassy with their cranberries, I thought, but having tasted them, I have become a little hooked and so this is no longer a recipe to be reserved for Christmas. This is one that should be baked as frequently as you like. For breakfast, lunch & dinner and a treat to go with your afternoon coffee if you fancy. 


Thankfully, these cookies got me out of my marble rut with great ease. Well, almost. More about that in my next post. I had dried cranberries in the cupboard & I knew where they needed to go. Into a big old mixing bowl with some condensed milk, plenty of butter & a few other bits & bobs. So, off they went...


White Chocolate & Cranberry Cookies makes 50

ingredients

225g / 8oz unsalted butter, softened
225g / 8oz caster sugar
350g / 12oz self raising flour
150g /5.5oz white chocolate, chopped into chunks
397g tin condensed milk*
as many dried cranberries as you see fit!


* I didn't realise until baking a second batch of these cookies at home with my Mum last weekend that I have always used double the amount of condensed milk than the original recipe states. I tried using half the amount in my second batch & the cookies were still delicious but didn't spread as much, so were smaller, and they had less of a chewy-buttery feel to them. So I'm sticking with using too much. If you want to be slightly healthier, use a 170g tube of condensed milk  instead!

1) Pre-heat the oven to 180C /Gas Mark 4 / 350F. Grease 3 baking trays. You'll need to cook these in batches unless you happen to have an industrial sized double oven with lots of shelves, so I tend to use 3 trays at once. When the first batch has come out of the oven, I remove the cookies then regrease my original trays & use then again.

2) Beat together the butter & sugar. They don't need to be beaten for too long, just long enough to get them combined & a little bit fluffy.

3) Stir in the condensed milk.

4) Stir in the flour (no need to sieve) followed by the white chocolate & cranberries.

5) Using a teaspoon, place little balls of the cookie dough onto your baking trays, with plenty of space to spread. These guys love to take up as much space as possible when they go to hang out in their favourite place - the oven. 

6) Bake in the pre-heated oven for 12 minutes until going slightly golden around the edges. Remove from the oven & allow to cool on the baking tray for a couple of minutes. This will allow them time to harden slightly. If you try and remove them from the tray immediately, they'll be so soft that they'll break.

 
After a few minutes of resting time outside of the oven, remove from the baking trays and allow to cool on a wire rack, or just eat a few straight away while they're still warm. 
Because the quantities yield such a huge batch, you have more than enough to wrap a few up & give them away as presents, or to give to children as an after-school snack.

Cake Count :: 900

lemon buttercream frosting

This frosting goes perfectly with the lemon cupcakes listed below. It's lovely and quick to make, which is often a bonus if you haven't got hours to spend baking.


Ingredients enough to frost 15 large cupcakes


zest of 1 lemon
300g icing sugar
50g unsalted butter at room temperature
125g cream cheese

1) Beat the icing sugar and butter together until well mixed.

2) Add the cream cheese & lemon zest and beat for a few minutes until your mixture is lovely and fluffy.


If you find the frosting too sweet, just add a bit more cream cheese, or vice versa if it's too cream-cheesy! 

3) Fill a piping bad fitted with your nozzle of choice and pipe away, starting at the outer edge of the cake & swirling inwards. Or, spread onto the cake using a small pallette knife.

This basic cream cheese frosting is pretty forgiving in terms of quanitites - you can add a bit of this and a bit of that without it going too wrong.

lemon cupcakes

These little zesty bites made up the other half of the cupcake team for the wedding that I baked for last weekend.

They are incredibly simple - essentially a basic sponge recipe with some lemon zest & juice.

Here we go...

Lemon Cupcakes makes 12 large cupcakes, 24 small

ingredients  

225g / 8oz butter at room temp
225g / 8oz caster sugar
225g self raising flour
3 eggs
zest of 1 lemon (if you like super-lemony, use 2!)
a squeeze of lemon juice

1) Pre-heat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4 & line muffin trays with paper cases.

2) In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy.


3) Beat in the eggs, one at a time, adding a little flour (sieved) after each addition.

4) Fold in the remaining flour & lemon zest.

5) Stir in the lemon juice.

6) Spoon a heaped dessertspoon of mixture into each case, being careful not to overfill to allow space for the frosting.


7) Bake in the pre-heated oven for 15 - 20mins until going ever so slightly golden around the edges.


8) Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack, ready for frosting.

Cake Count :: 800

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

As promised, here's the recipe for the chocolate buttercream frosting that topped the chocolate wedding cupcakes...

This recipe is originally from joythebaker, who is a most excellent baker & blogger. I highly recommend visiting her little spot in cyberspace.

I have converted the quantities from American measures to metric for those of us who don't work in cups. (For those of you who do, follow the link to joy the baker's blog & they'll be right there for you.)

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting 

makes enough to frost about 40 small cupcakes or 25 large cupcakes

ingredients

170g butter at room temperature
75g cocoa
400g icing sugar
110ml milk
110ml double (heavy) cream
50g ovaltine (or other malt based drink)
2tsp vanilla essence


1) Beat together the butter & cocoa. (It will be quite stiff.)

2) Sieve in the icing sugar & beat to combine.

 

3) Gradually add in the milk & vanilla extract, beating well after each addition to create a smooth consistency.

4) In a measuring jug, stir together the cream & ovaltine.

5) Add a small quantity of the ovaltine mixture to the buttercream and beat to combine. You might not want to use all of the ovaltine mixture, so just keep adding it until it reaches your desired consistency. 
(I was piping the frosting so needed it to be thick enough to keep its shape, but if you're going to be spreading it on & like malty chocolate, add the whole lot!)

6)  Once your frosting has reached the desired consistency, either spread straight onto the cooled cakes, or fill a large piping bag fitted with either a star or round shaped nozzle and pipe away!


7) If using hundreds & thousands, or any other sprinkle to suit your fancy, now's the time to sprinkle away.


photo credits :: Ben Currer

wedding cupcakes

Weddings & cakes, cakes & weddings. These words are music to my ears.

Weddings & cakes & 'Hannah, will you make some cakes for my wedding?'

Well, that's more like an orchestra reaching its crescendo in my ears.

A few months ago, I had the joy of hearing this crescendo which culminates in one thing.

Baking. 

So here's how I rolled for the wedding at the weekend....

The order:

Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (like you've never tasted before)
Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream Frosting

For both types of cake I used very simple & straightforward recipes - the kind you know like the back of your hand. 

The frostings are the most time consuming element for both, but they're worth the effort, promise. So as not to overwhelm you with recipes, I will post them in separate posts.

Chocolate Cupcakes: recipe: from my Mother's kitchen

ingredients

225g / 8oz butter at room temperature
225g / 80z caster sugar
200g self raising flour
25g cocoa
4 eggs

NB: I had been asked to make relatively small cakes for the wedding, therefore these quanities yielded far more than if I had used cupcake cases & trays, but you can use whatever size you like, depending on how little or large you like your cakes to be.

1) Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4 & line your bun trays (whatever size you like) with cases.

2) In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in one egg.

3) Add another egg & sieve in a little flour then beat together. Repeat this for the remaining eggs,

4) Fold in the remaining flour & cocoa (sieved) with a metal spoon. 

(If you are fortunate enough to have a free standing mixer, then you probably just want to mix in the flour on a low speed. If speed is of the essence in your baking, just use electric beaters to mix in the flour. I am still a little old fashioned and like to follow my mother's technique.. She does everything by hand, but I only apply this to folding in where adding air is the main aim to get well-risen cakes.)

5) If your mixture is a little stiff, I would recommend adding a little slosh of milk to loosen it up nicely.

6) Spoon generous desertspoons of mixture into your cupcake cases. If you are using smaller cases, I would suggest using a teaspoon's worth of mixture instead. Be careful not to overfill the cases as you want to allow room for the icing. 

7) Bake in your pre-heated oven for 15 - 18 minutes (smaller cakes will require less time). A little trick my Mother taught me for telling when your cakes are baked is to listen to them. Yep, you read that correctly. Take your tray of piping hot buns and put your ear near to the tray (don't burn yourself though!!). If you can hear a little crackling sound emanating from them, they need a few more minutes. 

Alternatively, you could use a skewer, which should come out clean when inserted into the centre of the cake, but I think this is too much faff for little cakes.

8) When your cakes have had their time in the oven, remove and place on a wire cooling rack. Leave in the tins for a few minutes and then place onto the rack to cool completely before icing.

The recipe for the frosting will be coming soon...

Cake Count :: 753 

heart melters

If I told you that these chocolate bitesize beauties are practically good for you, would you think I was lying to you?

Well, worry not, I would not lie about chocolate, would I.

Last Saturday afternoon, I felt like baking & I felt like chocolate. I remembered the beautifully named chocolate full stops from one of my newest recipe books & thought that now was the perfect time to bake them. 

As I perused the pages of Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache my eyes fell upon the recipe for an August Wedding Cake & my mind wandered to thinking through the practicalities of baking my own wedding cake. I reminded myself that now was not the time to be having such crazy thoughts, I was on a chocolate mission.

Here are a few lessons I learned along the way of my baking journey to making chocolate full stops & how they came to be known by me as heart melters.

:: adapting recipes is a fine & fun thing to do, if you know what you're doing. usually, just changing the kind of tin you bake in is perfectly acceptable. usually, but not always.

:: it really is possible to bake something chocolatey that also boasts a vegetable ingredient.

:: rather than trusting your instincts & cutting out the vegetable ingredient because it seems ever so slightly mad, trust the beautiful woman who designed these recipes & enjoy the feeling of baking rebelliously

(NB: rebellious in this context means not using any butter but using butternut squash instead. Sure, they both have 'butter' in their name, but one is most definitely not butter.)

:: don't mistake an ice cube tray from ikea for a clever silicone tray. it might just melt in the oven.

After reading my lessons for the day, if you feel like you trust me enough to try this, I would highly recommend heart melters as part of your daily diet.


choocolate heart melters

ingredients makes 24

150g peeled, diced butternut squash
50g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
1 egg
60g caster sugar
20g rice flour (or plain flour if you don't have any - I used plain)
20g ground almonds
20g cocoa
2 tsp baking powder

1) Preheat the oven to 180C / Gas mark 4 / 350. Line two mini muffin trays with petit four cases. If you happen to have silicone mini muffin trays, use these - no greasing or cases required. If you don't have any of the above, just use a baking tray and line up your petit four cases (or any small kind of cake case you can find) in neat little rows.

2) Place the diced butternut squash in a saucepan & cover with water. Bring to the boil & let them bubble away for 6 mins. Drain the water and add the chocolate chunks. Stir together then leave for a couple of minutes before stirring again. The chocolate melts wonderfully from the heat of the squash.

3) Whisk the egg & sugar together in a large mixing bowl for 3 minutes. Add the flour, ground almonds, cocoa & baking powder, and whisk until everything is combined.

4) Having stirred the chocolate & butternut squash together, puree the mixture using a hand held blender, or food processor. Whisk the puree into the egg mixture until combined.

5) Using 2 teaspoons, carefully dollop small amounts of the mixture into each case, then bake in the oven for 12 minutes. (if you use larger cases, they'll probably need 15 - 20 minutes baking time.)

6) Remove from the oven & leave on a wire rack to cool. Or, if you're really desperate to see if this recipe has actually worked, eat them straight out of the oven.


Cake Count :: 703
 

marbly meringue

Why am I stuck on a marble theme at the moment? I have no idea, so I'll just roll with it until something else comes along.

So, this is my latest marbly creation, an adaptation of the Divine Chocolate Book chocolate meringues.

These are meant to be served as mini meringue mountains, but Eaton Mess was the order of the day & I wanted to do something a little more exciting than plain meringue. Knowing that this meringue was going to have a meeting with a rolling pin as soon as it had cooled, I didn't bother with making mini's, I just blobbed it right out of the bowl, onto the tray.

With a little bit of necessary fiddling with oven temperatures during cooking, the meringue couldn't have turned out more perfect.

Now, I don't know about you, but both John & I love meringue that it as chewy as possible - the joy is in the chew rather than the crunch - wouldn't you agree?

Unwittling, adapting the temperature during cooking & changing the cooking times seemed to be the perfect little trick for getting the texture right. In the recipe, I'll give you the official times stated & the Hannah times, so you can choose, depending on what you prefer.

chocolate meringue
ingredients
100g chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
3 egg whites
a pinch of cream of tartar
175g caster sugar
1. Preheat the oven to 120C / Gas mark 1/2 / 250F

2. Break up the chocolate & melt in a heatproof bowl over simmering water, or in the microwave. Once melted, remove from heat
3. In a clean mixing bowl, whist the egg whites until almost stiff, then pour in the sugar & cream of tartar & whisk briefly until stiff. (my mixture was not particularly stiff, which might also have affected the overall texture)

4. Drizzle the chocolate over the meringue mixture, then fold in using a metal spoon. To make the most of your marbling, only fold 3-4 times.
5. Scrape the meringue mixture onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, in one big old heap. Or, if you'd like to make smaller meringues, dollop dessertspoons-full onto the tray, evenly spaced.

6. Bake in the preheated oven for two hours until firm. (the official way.)

or...
Bake for 30 minutes at 120C then increase the heat to 140 and bake for a further 60 minutes, putting the meringue on a low rack in the oven, then remove after this time. (the Hannah way.)
I then smashed up the meringue in the most loving way possible, and ate it with strawberries & cream. Yum.

Cake Count :: 679

italian chocolate marbled cheesecake

This little number is a beauty. 

Until I discovered this recipe, I was rather wary of cheesecakes that called to be baked, having had a run-in with one of Nigella's recipes where you put the cheesecake tin in a basin of water while it baked in the oven. The results were disasterous & inedible.

Having never been let down by the Divine Chocolate Recipe book, I decided that I would brave the baked cheesecake route once again, sans water.

The only quibble (note to self: use the word 'quibble' more frequently - it's fun) I have with this recipe is the quantities for the base ingredients. The last time I baked it, I doubled the quantities and it still was not quite thick enough to compliment the dense height of the cheesecake. The great thing is about making biscuit bases is that if, when you put your crumbly buttery mixture into the tin & it doesn't look like enough, it takes hardly anytime at all to blitz up a bit more. I'll give you the doubled quantity that I used, but I would recommend doubling again!

italian chocolate marbled cheesecake

ingredients

base

100g butter

200g digestive biscuits (feel free to substitute for ginger nuts or butter crunch biscuits, or any crunchy thing you like!)

cream mixture

250 g marscapone

100g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence

1 egg

chocolate mixture

300g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

150g unsalted butter, room temperature

3 eggs

100g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Preheat the oven to 150C / Gas mark 2 / 300F

2. To make the base, crush your biscuits in either a food processor, or, using a rolling pin and a sealable bag to avoid crumbs flying everywhere. Melt the butter in a saucepan or the microwave (being careful not to boil) then stir the two together& press onto the base. Leave in the fridge to chill until it's needed.

3. To make the cream mixture, put the marscapone, sugar and vanilla into a bowl & beat well. Add the egg & beat until smooth. (It will be a very runny mixture, fret not.)

4. To make the chocolate mixture: Break up the chocolate & melt, either in a heatproof bowl over simmering water, or in the microwave. Once melted, stir in the butter (diced) until melted.

5. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar and vanilla essence for 3-4 mins until lovely&frothy. Add the melted chocolate mixture to this and whisk to combine.

6. Remove the base from the fridge & spoon 3/4 of the chocolate mixture onto the base. Pour the white cream mixture on top, then dollop the last bit of the chocolate mixture on top of this. Lovingly swirl it all together to create a marbled effect.

7. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 mins until just firm to the touch. Turn the oven off, leaving the tin inside & allow to cool. Once cool, remove from the oven, cover, and leave to chill in the fridge until it's needed.

If you're short for time, as I was when I last baked this, leave in the oven to cool after the cooking time for as long as possible, then remove & just enjoy it at whatever temperature it's at!