Storecupboard Apple Sauce and Cinnamon Cake

This cake is made from ingredients you probably already have at home - or you might only need to buy one extra ingredient - so is great for those last-minute 'I need to make a cake' moments. It's also incredibly moist and really tasty so I think this is something I will be making again!

I made this cake when my parents came to visit - we'd had a busy weekend and I hadn't really thought about what food we would eat until two days before, so quickly did an online shop. I thought it would be nice to have some cake while they were here but hadn't thought about it in time to add anything to my shopping list, so decided to find a recipe using what I had in the house.

I have a recipe book I love called United Cakes of America, which has a different cake or pie representing every state, which I haven't used for a little while. It has a recipe from West Virginia for apple butter cake which I decided to adapt.



Apple butter is like apple sauce but creamier and more concentrated in flavour and more like a spread. I didn't have any and while you can get it in the UK, it's not something you can just pick up in Tesco. I did have a jar of apple sauce in the fridge so decided to use that, and the cake turned out really well. I also added more cinnamon to the mixture as the recipe only called for a quarter of a teaspoon which I didn't think was very much.

The filling for this cake also looked very elaborate - a buttercream that involved using milk, flour and sugar, heated in a pan -I usually just mix butter and icing sugar! I didn't have a lot of time so decided to make my usual easy buttercream but flavoured with cinnamon, as in the recipe, but also add a splash of apple juice.

The top of this cake would look nice decorated with sliced apple but again as I was only using storecupboard ingredients I didn't have any. Here's what I did - I'm calling this an original recipe as it was so far removed from the one in the book!

This makes a pretty deep 8 inch cake.

140g butter or margarine, softened
425g caster sugar
3 eggs
340g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
1 level teaspoon ground cinnamon
60ml milk
270g jar apple sauce
1 tsp vanilla flavouring

for the buttercream:
400g icing sugar, sifted
200g butter or margarine, softened
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp. apple juice

Preheat oven to 180C and grease two 8-inch or 9-inch cake tins.

Cream together the butter and sugar then beat in the eggs one at a time.

Fold in the flour, along with the salt and cinnamon.

Carefully fold in the milk, and then the apple sauce and vanilla flavouring until the mixture is well combined.

Spoon into the two cake tins and bake for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the pans, then turn onto a baking rack to finish cooling.

To make the buttercream, cream together the butter and icing sugar with the cinnamon and apple juice.

When the cakes are cool, spread the filling in between the two layers and also on the top if you like (you will need to increase the quantity if you also want to ice the top and sides of the cake).

This cake kept beautifully moist for a few days and I really enjoyed it - you can taste both the cinnamon and the apple.

I'm sending this to Baking Crumbs hosted by Only Crumbs Remain
Love Cake at Jibber Jabber UK
CookBlogShare hosted by the Peachicks Bakery

 

Oreo Marshmallow Fluff Cheesecake

Whenever I buy a jar of marshmallow fluff for a recipe I end up eating the whole jar  - not in one go, but it doesn't usually end up being used in the recipe I intended!

This time around I bought two jars so I could definitely make the recipe I wanted! My husband loves Oreos and I decided to make an Oreo cheesecake and use the marshmallow fluff in the filling.

I kind of made the recipe up as I went along and it didn't set particularly firm - you need to eat this with a spoon rather than a fork - but it tasted really good!

See the recipe below..









You need:
1 packet Oreos
50g butter
213g jar marshmallow fluff
200g tub soft cheese
100ml crème fraiche
100g icing sugar

 

Crush the Oreos either with a rolling pin or in a blender. Melt the butter in a small pan over a low heat or in the microwave and stir in the crushed Oreos.

Press into the bottom of a 7 or 8 inch loose-bottomed cake tin.

In a large bowl, mix together the marshmallow fluff, soft cheese, crème fraiche and icing sugar and spread over the crushed Oreo base.

Allow to set in the fridge, ideally overnight.

I'm sharing this with Baking Crumbs and Casa Costello's Bake of the week (even though there is no actual baking involved!) and CookBlogShare.

Mini Trick or Treat No Bake Lemon Cheesecakes for Halloween Party

 

Party food for Halloween parties is pretty easy, I think - as well as all the usual suspects (sausage rolls, sandwiches or mini burgers or quiche or whatever) and then any kind of 'scary stuff'. Here's an idea that's hopefully a little bit different.

I wanted to make something a bit different for Halloween but wasn’t quite sure what. I was in Iceland picking up a few groceries and saw these on the Halloween display: a pack of six mini plastic pumpkins, which you can fill with treats (or tricks!) and use as a game, a bit like an Easter egg hunt perhaps. They were only £1 so I bought them. I had a better use for them though – use them to serve desserts!

 

 

Of course these are plastic and can’t go in the oven but my mind went straight away to no-bake mini cheesecakes. When I got home I devised the following recipe.

I made, and served, each mini cheesecake inside the pumpkins – I went with a lemon flavour with a ginger biscuit base, but you could always do pumpkin flavour cheesecake or anything you like. I wanted to make one of the six a ‘trick’ rather than ‘treat’ and thought about putting a small plastic spider inside to surprise the recipient – but didn’t think that would go down too well with my husband!

 

Instead I decided to colour one of the cheesecake toppings green with food colouring. You could easily do that to all of them for a children’s Halloween party, but I thought it would be a nice touch when I served the mini cheesecakes in the closed pumpkins, if everyone chose their own and when one person opened theirs, they got a bit of a surprise!

Here’s the recipe I came up with

Mini no bake Halloween lemon and ginger cheesecakes - an original recipe by Caroline Cowe @Caroline Makes

 

 

Makes six mini cheesecakes

You can also make these mini cheesecakes in paper cupcake cases, or ramekins, or anything you think will work!

6 McVitie’s ginger biscuits

2 level tbsp. butter or marg, melted
175g cream cheese
60ml double cream
50g caster sugar
Juice of ½ lemon (or more to taste)
Couple of drops of green food colouring if desired

Crush the biscuits either in a food processor or with the back of a wooden spoon. Melt the butter either in a small pan over a low heat or in the microwave and stir in the crushed biscuits.

Divide between the cheesecake cases and press the biscuit mixture down using the back of a teaspoon.

In a separate bowl, beat the cheese, cream, sugar and lemon. If you want to colour all the cheesecakes, add the food colouring now.

 
Divide the cheesecake mixture between the cases. If you are only making one green, reserve a little of the cheesecake mixture in the bowl, add the food colouring then fill the final cheesecake.

Refrigerate until ready to serve.

 

 

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat the Baking Explorer and also with Cook Blog Share.

Strawberry and White Chocolate Unicorn Cake with a Surprise Inside

Scrolling through the messages on my Blackberry on a day off, I spotted a message about a bake sale at work for Comic Relief the following week. I always bake cakes when there is a charity bake sale and occasionally there has been a competitive element. I won the work bake-off two years ago with this floating malteser cake:

The following year I made this 'surprise inside' Mini Egg ombre piñata cake, but was out done by one of the other entrants (my sponge was a bit dry)

This year I wanted to make something special again and spent a while browsing the internet to get ideas and find out what current cake trends were, and decided to make a unicorn cake. I chose a strawberry cake recipe, bought some of the ingredients, spent time planning exactly what I was going to do... and when I got back to work and read the email properly, I realised that while all cakes were welcome for the bake sale, there were three competitive categories: tray bake, savoury cake, and chocolate cake. And I wasn't going to make any of those.

I considered scrapping my plans and making a different cake entirely but still wanted to do this one, and hit upon an idea: I could make a strawberry cake with white chocolate. I had a feeling that the other chocolate cake entries would all be milk chocolate or plain chocolate so having something with white chocolate might be a nice change.

In the end there weren't that many entries in the chocolate category after all so I won the bake off hands down! The cake tasted delicious, was really light and moist and I hid some white chocolate covered strawberries in the centre, which tumbled out when the cake was cut. It wasn't actually that difficult to decorate either and if the comments I received are anything to go by, it was definitely worth doing!

I didn't want the strawberries to overpower the white chocolate but also didn't want them just in the filling, so I decided to puree the strawberries in a blender and swirl it through the cake mixture in the tin before it was baked. To make sure the white chocolate flavour came through, I made a white chocolate buttercream for the filling and a white chocolate ganache to coat the outside of the cake before covering it with fondant.


Strawberry and white chocolate cake - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

I used a 6-inch cake tin (which is pretty small) as I wanted the cake to be tall but not too large and heavy as I had to carry it into work. This quantity makes four layers of a 6 inch cake.

450g butter, softened or margarine like Stork
450g caster sugar
8 eggs
450g self-raising flour
200g white chocolate, grated
50ml milk
227g punnet strawberries (or roughly that amount), hulled, chopped and blended in a food processor until pureed

for the strawberry centre:
75g strawberries
50g white chocolate

for the buttercream:
175g butter, softened or margarine like Stork
350g icing sugar, sifted
100g white chocolate, melted
pink food colouring
PME Cake Release or butter/marg for greasing the cake tins

for the ganache:
60ml double cream
120g white chocolate

to decorate:
about 1kg fondant - I find it easier to have extra for rolling out
PME gold edible lustre spray
black food colouring or a black edible ink pen
a wooden dowel or similar, about 8 inches long
star-shaped piping nozzle and piping bag

First if you want to fill the cake with chocolate-dipped strawberries you need to start by making these. The other thing I'd recommend using for the centre of the cake is Rainbow Drops - I had been planning to use these as I thought I had some in the cupboard but then couldn't find them!

 

If you are using strawberries: Melt the 50g white chocolate in a small bowl in the microwave or a bain marie and dip in some chopped strawberries and leave on a wire rack to set. I actually did these the night before I needed them, though they don't take that long to set.

Preheat the oven to 180C and grease two loose-bottomed 6-inch cake tins. or spray with Cake Release.

 

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the sugar then beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour then grate in the white chocolate, then carefully stir in the milk.

Spoon a quarter of the cake mixture into each of the two tins (so you will fill four in total).

Take a few spoonfuls of the strawberry puree and swirl through the cake mixture in the tins. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, until the cakes are cooked through but still fairly soft.

 

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin, then turn out onto a wire rack.

Wipe out the two tins, grease or spray again and spoon the rest of the cake mixture into the two tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes and leave to cool as before.

Make the buttercream by creaming the butter and the icing sugar and stirring in the melted white chocolate.

Make the chocolate ganache by heating the cream in a small pan until simmering. Remove from the heat and add the white chocolate and stir until melted. Set aside until it has cooled and thickened to a spreadable consistency.

When you are ready to assemble the cake, carefully level the cakes - if they have risen unevenly, slice a thin amount off the top of the cakes so they are flat.

Place the bottom cake on a cake board. Then take the next two layers and using a round cookie cutter, cut out a circle from the middle of both cakes. Spread some buttercream on the bottom layer, place the second layer on top and spread buttercream on top, leaving the hole free; place the third layer on top and repeat. Reserve a little of the buttercream to make the unicorn's hair.

You will now have a three-layer cake with a hole in the middle and a solid bottom layer. Pop your chocolate-dipped strawberries or sweets or whatever you are using into the hole, and place the solid top layer of cake on the top.

Spread the white chocolate ganache around the outside and on top of the cake.

Roll out the fondant on a mat dusted with icing sugar until it is large enough to cover the cake. Lift by draping it over a rolling pin and place on top of the cake. Smooth down the sides and trim the bottom.

Using the offcuts, roll two thin sausage shapes and twist one over the other, tapering as you get to the end - this will be the unicorn's horn. If you want you can use flower paste and the horn should stand up on its own; I used fondant which is too soft, so I poked a wooden dowel into the horn, leaving about an inch and a half at the end, which I later used to insert into the cake.

Place the horn onto newspaper or kitchen paper and spray with PME gold lustre spray. Leave to dry.

Using more of the fondant offcuts, shape two ears - I made these quite thick so they would stand up. Colour a small piece of fondant with pink food colouring and cut two flat pieces to stick inside the ears. I then used a cocktail stick inside each ear to attach them to the top of the cake.

I bought an edible ink pen by Rainbow Dust which has a thin end and a thick end; it took me about ten minutes to get the lid off one end and the other one wouldn't budge at all! So I could only use the thin end. It would have worked better if I'd waited for the fondant covering the cake to fully dry but it was already 11pm so I drew on the eyes, with the nib of the pen cutting into the fondant more than I would have wanted, and I would have preferred a thicker line, but it looked ok.

Add a little of the pink food colouring to the rest of the buttercream and using a piping bag and star nozzle, pipe some hair on top of the unicorn's head. Finally take the horn when the gold spray has dried and fix onto the top of the cake.

When you cut into the cake, the strawberries inside will tumble out, which is a nice surprise - you can just about see the strawberry swirl through the cake as well.

This cake would be lovely for a little girl's birthday I think - and of course it won the Comic Relief bake off!

I'm linking this up with Cook Blog Share, hosted by Eb at Easy Peasy Foodie.

 

I'm also sending it to We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme.

Slow Food: Braised Lamb in Cider with Apple and Pear



This is a recipe I was asked to create as part of a campaign around “living slow”. This campaign couldn’t have come at a better time as I really do need to take time to slow down.

 

I’m always busy at work – my workload has at least doubled in the past year for various reasons -  I have a long and stressful commute (thank you, Southern Trains) and when I’m at home I'm running the house. I’m lucky to be able to afford a cleaner but between meal planning food shopping, cooking, tidying up, laundry, dishwasher, and all the little things – sending someone a birthday card, replying to emails, choosing a restaurant to go out to etc – I never seem to have any time to relax. On top of all that we are planning a wedding (there are so many additional things for the bride to think about than the groom!)- and linked to that, I’m now getting up even earlier before work to go for a run as I’m trying to lose weight for the wedding.

 

I’ve also found out recently that I have high blood pressure – some days it’s been extremely high. So I’m looking into ways to deal with that (including possibly medication) – but one thing that I know is important to reduce high blood pressure is to eat healthily, in particular eating less salt, and to do more exercise.

 

I took part in a ‘mindfulness’ session recently which was very relaxing – mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress and even mean employees take fewer sick days off work. But since then I haven’t felt like I’ve got the time to sit down and be mindful, even just for ten minutes – I am literally constantly on the go, and even when I am watching TV in the evening with my fiancé I am multi-tasking replying to emails or cutting out paper hearts for our wedding.

 

So before I keel over from stress I think it definitely is time that I ‘slow down and smell the roses’. I was asked by Simply Beef and Lamb to create a recipe for either beef or lamb, on the theme of ‘live slow’. You might already be familiar with their Red Tractor logo, which means you can find quality assured beef and lamb in the supermarket.

This doesn’t simply mean cooking something in a slow cooker – as well as being easy, one pot meals, it should be value for money and affordable, and reflect the ethos of ‘live slow’: stop living life in the fast lane and take it slow for a change.

 

That can relate to all aspects of our lives, whether that’s not rushing around trying to fit a million things in; spending time in nature or with friends; working on something handcrafted; travelling closer to home and enjoying the journey itself; sewing to repair or make your own clothing or being creative; and even spending your money wisely on things that really matter.

 

When I do feel able to push the ‘to do’ list to one side, I love to handmake greeting cards. I think (or hope) people really appreciate receiving something handmade as they know time and effort has gone into it. I also find it helps me switch off as I’m focused on cutting or stamping, and I enjoy feeling creative.

 

I also travel by train a lot – to work as I already mentioned, and when I’m lucky enough to get a seat I always read. Losing yourself in a good book is a great way to start the day or unwind after a day of work. I’m still a relatively new and pretty nervous driver, so when I have to travel longer distances on my own, I prefer to take the train. So again that gives me a lot of time to read; mobile reception is sometimes patchy so I resist the temptation to go on Facebook or reply to emails and instead pick up a decent-sized book I’ve been meaning to read but don’t want to carry on my daily commute (I do have a Kindle as well, but prefer actual books!). Recently I’ve been going to Salisbury by train a lot as it’s where my family live and also the nearest station to our wedding venue, and I always feel happy and relaxed to see the rolling Wiltshire countryside and the lovely views as we pull into Salisbury station. I’m sure that does help my blood pressure!

What does #slowliving mean to you and your family and what do you do to relax?

 

So finally onto the recipe. I was thinking about what slow living might mean in terms of cooking and came across the Slow Food movement, which promotes using local produce and eating less but better quality meat.

 

Thinking about what was local, I started with my own garden. I’m hoping to get a small vegetable patch started (I was growing peppers last year but slugs ate them all) but at the moment don’t have anything other than herbs. But what a good starting point for a recipe – I have rosemary and a lot of mint, and mint is of course well known as a pairing for lamb.

 

So that was my starting point: making a recipe with lamb and mint. I decided to braise the lamb, as that is a slow method of cooking that is fuss-free, but obviously there had to be more to it than that. Apples are abundant in a lot of areas – my late grandmother had apple and pear trees in her garden – and cider is very English (and to some, slow living might mean relaxing in the garden with a beer or cider…). Apple and mint does apparently go together – I found several mojito recipes online using those flavours! So my recipe was starting to take shape: spring lamb, mint, rosemary, apples and pears, cider. I used Pear cider in this recipe, and decided that because lamb is quite expensive I would go with a cheaper, bulking out ingredient: pearl barley. So you don't even need to serve this with potatoes as it's really filling and tasty.

Making the apples and pears at the start takes a little while but you don't need to do much; then you bung everything else into one casserole dish, put it in the oven and that's it - leaving you more time to relax and take it easy! This is what I came up with: I hope you enjoy it.

Braised lamb in cider with apple and pear - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

To serve 2, you need:

1 tbsp. butter
2 apples, peeled and chopped
1 large or 2 small pears, peeled and chopped
3 tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp. raisins or sultanas

4 lamb rump steaks
500ml cider
half an onion, peeled and cut into chunks
100g pearl barley
half a leek, trimmed and sliced
sprig of fresh rosemary
handful of fresh mint

First make the apple and pear accompaniment and pre-heat the oven to 180C. Melt the butter in a pan, add the apple and stir. Cook for 5 minutes until it has started to soften then add the pear and the raisins. Add the sugar and 50ml water; stew, stirring occasionally, until the water has evaporated and the fruit has softened. This can be made in advance and kept in the fridge or made at the same time as the meal.

Rub the bottom of a casserole dish with a little oil and place the lamb in the dish. Cover with cider and add the onion and leek, pearl barley and herbs. Put the lid on the casserole dish and put in the oven for 1-1.5 hours, until the liquid has been absorbed and the lamb is cooked through.

Serve with the apple and pear mixture on the side.

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The apple, pear and raisin mixture



The ingredients for the casserole

Ready to go in the oven

Just cooked



Close-up

Served with the apple and pear on the side

 

Chocolate Easter Cupcakes

I had a day off and decided to throw some quick Easter cupcakes together as the following day was my once-a-month visit to the design agency I work with and I always take them cake! My fiance snaffled a few before I went and declared them to be some of the best cakes I've ever made - and I think he's right. They are really light and fluffy and quite moist, and while the frosting is sweet, the cake itself isn't particularly - it's the perfect combination and these were gorgeous. And it's my own recipe!

I used a simple three-egg chocolate recipe but I ended up doubling the quantities as I only got 9 (large) cupcakes out of the first batch and wanted a few more than that. I decorated them in various ways.

Chocolate Easter cupcakes - an original recipe by Caroline Makes

To make 9 large cupcakes, you need:
140g margarine or butter, softened - I used Stork for cakes
140g caster sugar
3 eggs
100g self-raising flour
40g cocoa powder
splash of milk
For the frosting:
150g margarine or butter, softened - I used Stork for cakes
250g icing sugar
50g cocoa powder
50g milk chocolate, melted
Mini eggs or similar to decorate

Preheat oven to 180C. Cream the margarine and sugar and beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour and the cocoa power then the milk.

Spoon into cupcake cases and bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes until baked but still springy to the touch.

If you take them out of the oven when they are only just cooked, they will firm a little as they cool but remain beautifully light and fluffy.

When the cakes have cooled, beat the marg and icing sugar to make the buttercream. Beat in the cocoa powder and melted chocolate.

Using a star piping nozzle and a disposable piping bag, pipe swirls of buttercream onto each cupcake. Normally when I pipe, I start from the outside and work my way in, creating height in the centre of the cupcake. But if you start this time from the centre and pipe outwards, it looks a lot like a bird's nest. Finish the cupcake by adding a few mini chocolate eggs in the centre of the nest.

I'm sharing these with Alphabakes, hosted by myself and Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter she has chosen this month is C.

I'm also sending this to Treat Petite, hosted by Kat the Baking Explorer and Stuart at Cakeyboi, as their theme is Easter and spring.

The theme for We Should Cocoa, hosted this month by Linzi at Lancashire Food on behalf of Choclette at Tin and Thyme, is eggs so these cupcakes fit in well.

For the same reason I'm sending this to Simply Eggcellent, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.

Easter and spring is also the theme for Tea Time Treats, hosted by Jane at the Hedgecombers and Karen at Lavender and Lovage.

And finally because it's Easter I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.