Lemon and Poppyseed Loaf Cake

Towards the end of my maternity leave - and right after my baby was born - I developed the famous 'nesting instinct' and decided to sort out my kitchen cupboards. It's been really helpful because now I'm short of time I can find everything more easily - I also made a fair bit of space by throwing out packets of food I'd forgotten I'd bought that were long out of date!

I found a packet of poppy seeds - still in date - which I'd bought for a recipe ages ago and never used. I was expecting neighbours around the following afternoon to meet baby S and thought a lemon and poppy seed cake - lemon is commonly paired with poppy seeds for some reason - would be a nice easy one to make if I did it as a loaf cake.

I used this recipe from BBC Good Food which turned out really well - very light and fluffy and surprisingly moist. In the end the neighbours had to cancel and reschedule for the following week so I ended up eating most of this cake myself!

The mixture looks quite odd when you add the poppy seeds:

Much better when the other ingredients are in.

Before baking in the loaf tin:

The baked cake, cooling on a rack.

 

 With the lemon glaze

Perfect with a cup of tea!

 

.I'm sharing this with CookBlogShare and Love Cake hosted by JibberJabberUK.

Super-Moist Vegan Strawberry Cake

 

I’m not that good at taking a hint, I guess. I made this vegan strawberry cake for my friend Alice’s birthday in 2013,

 

Vegan Strawberry Rose Birthday Cake - Caroline Makes www.carolinemakes.net I made this birthday cake for my friend Alice, not that we needed more cake as we also went out for afternoon tea! But I wanted to try out a chocolate transfer sheet ...

 and since then she has mentioned a few times that it was one of the best cakes she has ever had. So when it came around to her birthday this year, I thought I had better make it again!

 

I didn’t want to decorate it in exactly the same way – I covered the cake with pink fondant last time – and I recalled from reading my blog post that it was an absolutely massive cake.

 

The recipe below converts the quantities from US to UK measurements, and halves the amount. This was plenty to make a two-layer cake, which I filled and topped with vegan buttercream and fresh strawberries.

 

I brought the cake with me when I went to see Alice for her birthday and we all enjoyed a slice. The cake was really light and moist and as I’ve said often before, if you have preconceptions about vegan cakes not being good, you really must try this!

 

Vegan Strawberry Cake

 

280g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
140g caster sugar
60ml vegetable oil
600g strawberries
60ml soya milk
For the frosting:
200g vegan margarine eg Pure
400g icing sugar, sifted

Preheat the oven to 180C.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Add the oil and mix well. Puree 400g of the strawberries, keeping the rest for decoration, and mix the pureed strawberries into the cake batter along with the soya milk.

Grease an 8-inch cake tin with Cake Release or with vegan margarine. Pour the cake batter into the tin and bake in the pre-heated oven for 35-40 minutes.

Allow the cake to cool in the tin and when cool turn out onto a board. Slice the cake through the middle so you have two layers.

Beat the vegan margarine with the icing sugar to make frosting. Spread half the frosting onto the bottom layer of cake and slice half the reserved strawberries. Arrange the strawberries on top of the frosting.

Repeat with the second layer of cake with the remaining frosting and strawberries and gently place the top layer of cake on top of the bottom one. Sprinkle with icing sugar if desired.

 

I'm sharing this with Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabberUK, and CookBlogShare, hosted by Hijacked by Twins.

 

Easy Traditional Christmas Cake - Mary Berry

Every year I say I'm going to make a Christmas cake and Stir Up Sunday comes and goes (I'm never sure if that is just for Christmas puddings or Christmas cake as well), and then by the time I am ready to do it, it's only a week or so before Christmas. The idea of a Christmas cake - essentially a rich fruit cake - is that you soak the fruit in booze (usually brandy) and then feed the cake with more alcohol over several weeks. So it's not really something that I want to make at the last minute, though I'm sure some recipes for doing just that exist!

This year I've been really busy at work, and often working on weekends, so haven't done any Christmas baking at all - apart from this cake. This year I did manage to get myself organised early. I couldn't actually make the cake on Stir Up Sunday as I intended - I got out all the ingredients and then read I was supposed to soak the fruit in brandy for three days, so put them all away again! I soaked the fruit from mid-week and made the cake the following weekend.

Since then - about three weeks ago - I've only remembered to feed the cake with brandy twice, but used quite a lot both times so hopefully that will be enough!

I have the Great British Bake Off Christmas recipe book which is full of things that look amazing - I received it as a gift one Christmas but haven't made that many things from it. When it comes to Christmas cake though -  very traditional, British cake - who else but to follow than Mary Berry? As the BBC Good Food website puts it, she has been making Christmas cakes for longer than GBBO co-host Paul Hollywood has been alive (probably!). Her recipe for a classic Christmas cake is available online here.

This is the recipe that I used, but I covered the cake using 500g marzipan and used 2/3 of the suggested quantity of royal icing. It seemed a lot and the amount I used was plenty to cover the whole cake, though whether it would have been better with a thicker layer remains to be seen.

As I was short of time, I decorated the cake with royal icing and a cake topper I was sent to review by My Cupcake Toppers - read more on this below.

Here are a few pictures of the different stages, from soaking the fruit (top right), then moving down and across the cake batter, and in the main picture, the cake once it had come out of the oven. A little darker than I would have liked but I'm sure it's fine!

I turned the cake upside down to remove the greaseproof paper and decided to ice it this way up so it would have a flatter top.

This looks like fondant but it's actually marzipan - I bought a pack (I know on GBBO you would be expected to make your own!) and covered the cake with it.

I made up some royal icing using icing sugar, egg whites and lemon juice and covered the cake. It's easiest if you do this on a cake turntable if you have one, and use a crank knife (a palette knife with part of the handle at an angle) so you can run the knife around the edge of the cake and smooth it all off.

Here it is looking a bit smoother!

 

As I was quite short of time I was very glad to have just received a few things from My Cupcake Toppers to review. This is a website where you can buy pictures printed onto icing or rice paper - everything from Christmas to TV shows to your own design. I'll talk more about these when I review the ones they sent me to go on cupcakes tomorrow.

One thing I hadn't seen before was the option to have a large 7.5 inch round cake topper printed onto icing, that I could cut around and place on my cake. I chose a snowflake design and when it came - protected in a stiff envelope - I found that the icing was a flexible sheet (rather than hard and brittle) meaning I could easily cut around it and place it on my cake. It worked perfectly (delivery was very swift) and looked really good on the cake.

I finished the cake with some Christmas washi tape from Hobbycraft around the edge of the cake board and a Santa and Christmas tree made of royal icing I bought from Sainsbury's when they were reduced to 25p each in the January sale last year!

Here are a couple of pictures of the finished cake...

And a few days later after I cut into it to give the first couple of slices to family friends as we were seeing them for dinner. I'm no expert - until recently I didn't really like Christmas cakes at all - but it tasted pretty good, like a Christmas cake ought to taste!

I'm sharing this with Love Cake, hosted by Ness at Jibber Jabber UK, as her theme is winter wonderland.

Peaches and Cream Summer Sandcastle Cake

Copyright Caroline Makes dot Net

I bought a sandcastle cake mould from Lakeland two years ago and only used it once, when I made this pineapple and coconut sandcastle cake. The uncomfortably but beautifully hot weather we've had for the past week or so inspired me to dig it out again and to come up with another summery flavour for the cake. I decided not to decorate it as a lot of fondant or buttercream is not always a great idea in hot weather, and I wanted the natural colour of the cake to reflect the colour of the sandcastle.

I wanted the cake to be light and moist so decided to make it peaches and cream flavour. I used tinned peaches as I had some in the fridge to use up, and it meant I could use the peach juice from the can as well, but if you want to use fresh peaches I'd use three or four peeled and chopped, and for the liquid element, perhaps the Granini Peach Drink that's made using peach puree (available in Tesco and Waitrose) or peach-flavoured squash, made up quite strong.

Peaches and Cream Cake - an original recipe by Caroline Makes, for Caroline Makes.Net

You need:

Cake Release spray for greasing the mould

200g butter, softened

200g caster sugar

4 eggs

1 cup peach juice or squash

about 200g peaches, either tinned or fresh, peeled and sliced if necessary

275g self raising flour

 

 

I used the Lakeland sandcastle silicone mould for this cake, which doesn't seem to be available on their site any more - if you want to purchase one, keep an eye on Ebay, or you can use any shaped cake tin or mould.

Preheat the oven to 150C. Spray the sandcastle mould with Cake Release or similar.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer then mix in the eggs.

Add the peach juice and mix again. Finally add the sliced peaches and the flour and gently fold in.

 Stand the sandcastle mould in a large roasting tin and pour the cake mixture into the mould. Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour.

Allow to cool in the mould and then turn out onto a cooling rack.

 This was a beautifully light and moist cake; so moist in fact it started to break as I took it out of the mould before it was completely cooled, which will teach me to be more patient next time!

 

I'm sending this to Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabberUK; her theme is garden party and this cake would make a great centrepiece.

 

I'm also sharing this with the Food Calendar linky on Charlotte's Lively Kitchen as it's summer holiday season!

 

Ferrero Rocher Cupcakes

A neighbour gave us a box of Ferrero Rocher for Christmas, but my fiancé doesn't like them, and I'm trying to lose weight. Which is not to say I won't eat chocolate but I'm not going to open a box of chocolates and munch my way through them -even over a longer period. Friends and family have known that for a long time so never give me boxes of chocolates any more!

It was a very nice gesture by our neighbour though and I didn't want the goodies to go to waste, so hit upon the idea of using them in cupcakes. I wish I could say the idea was my own but I have come across them on the internet a few times and my good friend Ros has made them and posted the recipe on her site, The More Than Occasional Baker.

It was this recipe that I used when I went to see my family a few days before my birthday.

Ferrero Rocher, for anyone who hasn't had one before, consist of a whole hazelnut surrounded by wafer, a 'velvety filling', smooth milk chocolate and finely chopped hazelnut pieces. The box also included three Ferrero Rondnoir, "a delicious combination of tastes and textures from fine wafer and rich velvety cocoa filling to a dark chocolate covered hazelnut at its heart", and three Raffaello - "delicate layers of wafer, an elegant velvety centre and a toasted almond, all finished with a sprinkling of coconut".

To recreate the Ferrero Rocher taste the cupcakes have a whole Ferrero Rocher baked inside! They consist of a chocolate cake, with Nutella frosting, topped with chopped nuts and drizzled with chocolate. Ros did two types of frosting on top of hers and topped them with a whole Ferrero Rocher but I didn't have enough of the chocolates to do this and decided a whole Ferrero Rocher was a big so instead I piped a swirl of buttercream, which I made from just icing sugar, butter and Nutella, sprinkled the chopped nuts over the top and then drizzled over some Choc Shot - this is a liquid chocolate that is designed to be used as a hot chocolate drink and has 85% less fat than leading brands of solid chocolate - but what I also like about it is that it's great to drizzle on cakes and desserts.

Check out the link above for the recipe itself which I followed other than the tweaks described above. Here's how I made the cakes:

 

Mixing up the batter

Here I've spooned a little of the cake mixture into each cake case then popped a Ferrero Rocher into the bottom of each cupcake case - I used gold cases to mimic the chocolate wrappers.

 

After filling up the cake cases and baking in the oven

 

Piping the Nutella buttercream on top in swirls with a star nozzle

Chopped nuts and Choc Shot

 

The cupcakes in all their glory

 

 

 I'm sharing this with Alphabakes, the blog challenge hosted by myself and Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker - we have come to the end of the alphabet for the second time and our final letter is F.

 

 I'm also sharing this with Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat the Baking Explorer. They probably would have fit better with last month's theme which was favourite sweets and chocolate but this month their theme is picnics. I took these down to my parents' house and they travel fine in a tin so while they might mean you need a wet wipe for your fingers I don't think there's any reason why you couldn't take these on a picnic!

Finally I'm sending these to Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabberUK. Her theme is 'signature bakes' and while I don't have one particular cake that I'm known for as I make something different every time, that's actually my signature - I'm known for unusual cakes, showstoppers and turning everyday sweets, chocolate and snacks into cake, which is what I've done here!

 

 

 

Chocoholic Birthday Cake with Cadbury Twirl

My fiancé is a total chocoholic so for his birthday this month I wanted to make him an awesome chocolate cake. I have a lot of baking books and they pretty much all have chocolate cake recipes - so where to start?

I realised I hadn't baked anything from my Outsider Tart book, Baked in America, for a little while. Outsider Tart is a bakery in Chiswick that is meant to be amazing, though I've never actually been there (even though I live in a different London borough it would take me about an hour and a half to get there - but I'm starting to think it might be worth the trip!). The bakery is run by two Americans who have brought a lot of new techniques to their baking and new ideas to 'bridge the culinary divide'. What they have also done is provide some amazingly decadent, delicious recipes that approach baking in ways that you wouldn't necessarily have thought of.

The cake I made is called "Coke layers" and is on p175 of their book Baked in America. I know that it's possible to reproduce a recipe on a blog, because the original author can copyright the ingredients but not the way they have described the method, but in a way this cake is as much about the method as the ingredients so I wouldn't feel quite right reproducing it without their permission (if I get around to asking and getting permission I will update this post!). After all, have you ever made a chocolate cake using buttermilk, oil, AND butter and 5 eggs.... but more to the point, using marshmallows and Coca-Cola?

I'm going to share with you some of the process I went through. The recipe makes three layers of cake, and half way through adding the ingredients I realised I was going to end up with a LOT of cake -far too much in fact as I was only catering for a meal with my fiancé's parents, not a huge party (that will come next year, when he's 40!).

Starting off by melting butter with the Coca Cola

adding marshmallows and chocolate

Mixing the sugar, oil and vanilla

Here it is after adding the eggs - all 5 of them

Now adding in the cooled chocolate mixture

Two layers about to go in the oven

After baking - three giant layers of cake!

I made a ganache from melted chocolate and sour cream and spread it between two layers

I spread more on top and decorated the top with Twirl Bites

I then decided it needed ganache around the side and more Twirl Bites on top!

I actually ended up with all three layers of the cake baked and decided it was just too big and put one layer in the freezer! I also used self-raising flour rather than plain flour and raising agents, and milk chocolate rather than plain - which would have made the cake sweeter but actually it wasn't an incredibly sweet cake in itself, but the icing was. Mmm, the icing....

I made the chocolate sour cream fudge frosting from the same book to spread in between the layers and on the to, then ran out of sour cream so made a chocolate ganache with double cream which I spread around the sides. I then decorated the top with Cadbury Twirl bites as they were the perfect little chunks of chocolate - slightly unevenly shaped and 'rock' like which appealed to me for this cake.

My fiancé absolutely loved the cake and said it was one of the best I've ever made and I'm inclined to agree. It was light and moist; the cake itself wasn't too sweet but the icing was deliciously decadent.

As I used Twirl on top I'm sharing this with Alphabakes, the blog challenge I co-host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker as the letter I've chosen is T.

I'm also sharing this with Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabberUK. Her chosen ingredient this month is things you can drink, and this cake includes Coca-Cola.