Curly Whirly Cream Cheese Brownies and my new Ozeri kitchen scales

One day at work I spotted a sign advertising a Macmillan charity bake sale. The thing was, the bake sale was in two days time, meaning I didn't have very much time to shop for ingredients and bake something, as I'd already decided I needed to bake my dad's birthday cake at the same time so it was ready for the weekend!

I didn't want to miss the Macmillan bake sale since a recipe I devised appeared in the Macmillan Little Book of Treats, which came out in 2013. You can see that recipe, for toffee popcorn cupcakes, here on my blog or on the Baking Mad website.

Since I didn't have much time I went to a failsafe recipe: chocolate brownies. They are so easy to throw together and everyone loves a chocolate brownie. I chose the Curly Whirly Brownies from the Konditor & Cook book Deservedly Legendary Baking as they looked a bit different but still quick and easy to make.

At the same time I decided to make a start on my dad's birthday cake - unfortunately it was a bit of a disaster! The cake tasted great and was really moist, but that was part of the problem -so moist that it broke apart across the top while in the oven, then broke more when I was putting it into a cake tin, then by the time I reached my parents' house the cake was pretty much in three separate pieces!

I used my new Ozeri Pro Digital Kitchen Food Scale, 1g to 12 lbs Capacity, in Stylish Black which I was sent by the company to review. At only £9.99 currently and with free delivery on Amazon they are a real bargain - compact enough to not take up much room in the cupboard but the weighing plate is big enough for almost any bowl or plate, or you can put food directly onto the scales. If you're using a bowl, the 'tare' button allows you to subtract the weight of the bowl. The chrome weighing platform looks good and is easy to keep clean as well.

 

You can weigh in pounds, ounces, grams or kilograms and can change from one to the other by pressing a button - I found the scales very precise and as good as much more expensive ones. What's more the two AAA batteries you need come included.

So disregarding the cake which didn't quite work out, I also used the scales to make the chocolate brownies. Here's the list of ingredients from Konditor and Cook's recipe and then in my own words a bit about what I did:

To make about 16 brownies, you need:
3 eggs
275g caster sugar
175g salted butter
200g 54-60% dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces
100g 70% dark chocolate, chopped into chunks
175g plain flour

for the topping:
200g cream cheese
75g icing sugar, sifted
seeds from 1/4 vanilla pod
1 egg yolk

Preheat oven to 180C. Line a 20x34 cm tin with baking paper or greaseproof paper.

Beat the eggs and sugar together in a bowl.

In a saucepan, melt the butter over a medium heat until it is melted and just starting to bubble. Remove from the heat and stir in the 54-60% chocolate and a third of the 70% chocolate until melted.

Add the chocolate to the egg mixture and mix well then fold in the flour. Stir in the remaining chunks of chocolate.

Pour into the prepared tin and level the top with a knife.

In another bowl, bbat the cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla until smooth then mix in the egg yolk.

Using a piping bag or a teaspoon drizzle or pipe the cream cheese mixture in swirls over the top of the brownie mixture, using a fork or the tip of the teaspoon to drag across the lines.

Bake for 22-25 minutes in the preheated oven then leave to cool in the tin. When cool cut into squares.

The brownies were lovely and fudgy and the cream cheese topping had a slightly sharp contrasting flavour, a bit like sour cream; it made the brownies look more interesting as well and they disappeared very quickly at the bake sale!

Coffee Cupcakes with Chocolate-Covered Coffee Beans

Coffee is not one of my favourite flavours; I generally dislike coffee cake and I don't drink coffee apart from on rare occasions. But in the hot weather we had recently I started craving iced coffee and even went to Starbucks for a Frappucino one time, something I haven't done in years.

How do I get from that to cake? Well, I found out at short notice that the front-of-house team were holding a bake sale in the lobby of my work building for Battersea Cats and Dogs Home. I love baking and I love cats (dogs too, but cats more!) so I wanted to lend a hand.

I needed to bake something that wouldn't take too long, that had ingredients I already had in the house, but also a cake that would last well in the heat and be something to tempt people on a hot summer's day.

 

I had a packet of chocolate-covered coffee beans in the cupboard from a recent Degustabox which I thought would be great on the top of cupcakes - which then had to be coffee.

I used a recipe from 'Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery' though I switched out the espresso powder as I didn't have any, for some strong coffee made from instant granules; I also used the same brown sugar rather than splitting the quantities between demerara and light brown sugar as advised. This is what I did:

Makes about a dozen cupcakes:
110g butter, softened, or margarine
130g light brown sugar
2 eggs
120g self-raising flour
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
50ml strong coffee
75ml semi-skimmed milk, at room temperature

to decorate:
150g butter, softened, or margarine
350g icing sugar
1 tbsp. strong coffee made from instant granules
chocolate-covered coffee beans to decorate

Preheat the oven to 180C or 160C fan. Cream together the butter and the sugar and mix in the eggs. Fold in the flour, vanilla, coffee and milk and combine until thoroughly mixed.

Spoon the mixture into cupcake cases in a muffin or cupcake tin and bake in the oven for 25 minutes. Allow to cool on a cooling rack.

To make the buttercream beat the butter with the icing sugar and mix in the coffee. Spread on top of the cooled cupcakes and swirl with a flat palette knife; place a couple of chocolate-covered coffee beans on top of each cupcake.

 

I'm sending this to Treat Petite hosted by Kat at Baking Explorer

Jammie Dodger Cupcakes

We had a bake sale for Macmillan at work recently and even though I wasn't going to be in the office that day, I wanted to take part. I decided to make cupcakes as I was going to have to do them mid-week after work, and I don't get home that early thanks to a long commute.

When there is a lot of choice in a bake sale, the things that go first tend to be the more indulgent-looking or more unusual. I remembered ages ago seeing some Jammie Dodger cupcakes online and knew there was a recipe in the Hummingbird Bakery book .

The recipe in the  book explains how to make your own Jammie Dodger-style biscuits, which might be a fun thing to do one day, but I didn’t have time for that, so I bought a packet of mini Jammie Dodgers to use on top of the cupcakes. I remembered how good my cupcakes were that have an Oreo biscuit base and a Jaffa Cake base and decided to use a full-size Jammie Dodger in the base, before the batter was cooked, and also add a spoonful of jam in the middle of the cake after it was baked, which isn’t part of the recipe and is my own adaptation.

 

 

Here’s what I did

Makes around 15 cupcakes

 

For the cake:

15 Jammie Dodger biscuits

70g butter, softened

210g plain flour

250g caster sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

210ml whole milk

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

15 tsp strawberry jam (about 200g)

 

 

For the frosting:

15 mini Jammie Dodgers

500g icing sugar, sifted

250g butter, softened

 

Preheat oven to 180C.

 

Mix the flour, butter, sugar, baking powder and salt with an electric mixer. Normally I would cream the butter and sugar first then add the eggs; this way gives you a breadcrumb-like texture which I think gives a more biscuity-flavour somehow, which is just right for this recipe.

 

Pour the milk into a jug and beat in the eggs and vanilla, and gradually pour the liquid into the dry ingredients, mixing slowly as you go. Increase the speed of the mixer until you have a smooth batter.

 

 

Line a cupcake or muffin tin with large cupcake cases. Place a Jammie Dodger – with the heart facing up – in the bottom of each cake case, then spoon the cake batter on top until the cake cases are almost full. Bake for 20-25 minutes then leave to cool.

 

 

When the cakes have cooled, use a teaspoon to remove a little of the centre of the cake, retaining the part you removed in one piece. Add a teaspoon of strawberry jam to each cupcake, and replace the 'lid'.

 

 

 

To make the icing, beat the icing sugar and buttercream until smooth. I had intended to pipe swirls onto the cupcakes but ran out of icing (I thought I had more but didn’t!) so ended up spreading it on top to make it go further. Top with a mini Jammie Dodger.

 

 

I'm sharing these with Charlotte's Lively Kitchen as she runs the Food Calendar challenge, and this month was the Macmillan Big Coffee Morning.

 

 

Macmillan World's Biggest Coffee Morning and Little Book of Treats

Macmillan Cancer Support held its World's Biggest Coffee Morning last Friday; the organisation encouraged individuals, companies, schools and community groups to hold a coffee morning and bake sale on the same day to raise money for the cancer charity. I think it's a great cause and we had a bake sale at work - I work in an office with a couple of hundred people, and even though only a tiny percentage bakes cakes, almost everyone buys one or makes a donation to the charity.

Macmillan publishes a recipe book in advance of the coffee morning event, featuring recipes from celebrity chefs and a handful of amateur bakers as well, called the Little Book of Treats. I was exceptionally pleased  to find out my recipe had been selected to appear in the book. It's not every day you get a recipe published in the same book as Mary Berry!

I submitted a recipe via a competition on the Baking Mad website earlier this year and decided to enter my toffee popcorn cupcakes - you can see the recipe here. They consist of toffee cupcakes (with toffee chunks), toffee frosting, and popcorn on top drizzled with toffee sauce, and I used cupcake wrappers that look like retro popcorn buckets.

There are recipes in the book from Hugh Bonneville, Mich Turner, Lisa Riley, Tom Parker Bowles, Rachel Khoo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dolly Parton, Gizzi Erskine, Eric Lanlard, Dame Maggie Smith, former Great British Bake Off contestant Ruth Clemens, Antonio Carluccio (who writes the foreword to the book) and of course Mary Berry. I still can't quite believe my recipe is in the same book as all of them!

The other bloggers whose recipes were chosen are: Sarah Wilson of heylittlecupcake.co.uk; Karen Burns Booth of lavenderandlovage.com and Kate Harries of whatkatebaked.com,  (both of whom I know as the co-host of Tea Time Treats, a monthly blogging challenge I enter - and in turn they regularly enter my challenge Alphabakes); Rebecca Norris of florencefinds.com; Nicola Flowers from cherrapeno.com, and Charlotte (Lottie) Verrill of lottiesworldofcakesandbakes.eu (another Alphabakes entrant who is familiar to me, and I love her website).

All the recipes look brilliant and this is a great little book; you can pick it up exclusively in Marks & Spencer for a suggested donation of £4, but only until tomorrow (October 2nd). In fact this is the only downside to the whole thing - the book has been on sale since September 26, but Macmillan and Baking Mad failed to tell me my recipe had been selected - which they have since admitted was an oversight - so I only found out about it from someone on Twitter a couple of days ago! Needless to say I rushed out and bought several copies, but it would have been nice to know in advance of the big coffee morning event.

And what did I make for the bake sale at work? Well, I will post the recipes as soon as I have time but here's a sneak preview of my chocolate and peanut butter and white chocolate and star anise cupcakes. The icing didn't quite turn out as I'd hoped so perhaps there is some way to go before I truly am on a par with the other bakers in this book!

Pigs In Mud Cake - Mississippi Mud Pie with KitKats

Pigs In Mud - Mississippi Mud Pie with Chocolate Ganache and Kit-Kats

Lucy of The KitchenMaid challenged us to make a chocolate cake connected with the idea of ‘fame’ for this month’s We Should Cocoa. Some people have baked the recipe they are most known (or famous) for; others have looked at recipes by celebrity chefs or famous people. My first thought was a section in one of Nigella’s cookery books called the ‘chocolate cake hall of fame’ but while I was thinking about what to make, I kept seeing the same cake pop up on Facebook and couldn’t get it out of my head…. I’m not entirely sure where it started – apparently a Dutch company or website called Taartjes but I can’t find a direct link -  but there seemed to be a snowball effect of people sharing this photo, and almost every day it popped up on someone’s news feed. And that got me thinking, the cake had very quickly become famous. I wanted to have a go at making it so decided to make it for the bake sale at work we were holding to raise money for Comic Relief.

The cake looked pretty simple to assemble in principle - but I didn't think mine would look as good! I decided to go with the theme of pigs in mud for the cake itself and found a recipe for Mississippi Mud Cake from United Cakes of America.

I adapted the quantities slightly and ended up doubling this to make two cakes.

You need:
For one cake: (I doubled this)
1.5 cups flour
0.75 cup cocoa powder
2 tbsp double cream
200g melted dark chocolate
250g butter, softened
225g caster sugar
2 eggs

For the buttercream:
About 100g softened butter or marg
enough icing sugar and cocoa powder to make a stiff chocolate buttercream

For the chocolate ganache:
250ml double cream
200g dark chocolate

To decorate:
About 20 kitkats (i.e. 40 fingers) depending on the size of your cake. I bought three big multipacks and had a few left over.

Weigh out the butter and the sugar and cream together

Add the eggs and mix

Add the flour and mix again

And the cocoa powder... you get the drill.

Melt the chocolate - I did this in the microwave, then mix in to the cake mixture

Spoon into a cake tin and level off

 Bake at 180C for about 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. I decided one of these cakes wasn't anywhere near deep enough so I did the whole recipe again and made another.

I made some chocolate buttercream and spread half of it onto the cake

I spread the rest around the sides of the cake as you need something for the Kit Kats to stick to.

The Kit Kats fit perfectly around the side of the cake and worked almost better than I had hoped. Unfortunately one of the three packs I had bought was cookies and cream flavour - they were dark chocolate on the outside, so they are the same colour as the others, but on the inside they are white chocolate. Still, you won't be able to see the white parts when the cake is finished.

To make the ganache, bring the cream to the boil in a pan and add the broken up chocolate. Stir until the chocolate melts and the mixture thickens.

You then have a thick chocolate ganache. Leave to cool.

I spread the ganache on top of the cake - this is the mud that the pigs are wallowing in!

Next make the pigs - it really isn't as hard as it looks. I have learnt how to make cows and sheep at evening classes before so just applied the same principles. I coloured some roll-out fondant with pink food colouring (I always use gel rather than liquid colours, they are easier to work with and you get a better colour).

I wish I could take credit for this but I copied the design I had seen on the internet exactly. First I made a pig who will look like he is floating in a mud bath, so you can only see parts of his body. I used a modelling tool to make the indents on the hooves and nose and eyes and another rounded tool to shape the ears.

This is the top half of a pig who will be sitting upright in the mud

And finally the rear end of a pig who is diving in!

While the chocolate ganache was still soft I placed my pigs in their mud bath. Don't they look cute?

As a final touch I tied a pink ribbon around the sides and tied it in a bow.

I am really very pleased with this cake, it took a while but the actual decoration wasn't too complex and it definitely has the wow factor. I hope it goes down well at the Comic Relief bake sale!

I'm sending this to We Should Cocoa, the blog challenge started by Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog and Chele from Chocolate Teapot. This month the challenge, chosen by Lucy of The KitchenMaid, was fame - and as I said earlier, this is a famous cake that is all over the internet at the moment!

I am also sending this to Bookmarked Recipes, hosted by Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes, as when I saw this cake I bookmarked it immediately, even though I found my own recipe. Well done to whoever originally came up with the idea for this cake!