When life gives you lemons?

Okay, so maybe not lemons, but an awfully large amount of stuff to do and what is seeming more and more like a brain with no idea how to process it all!
So when life gives you all of the above? Thats right. Bake.

Just a quick one this time something to ease the heavy heart and deepen the breath.

Vanilla Vegan (you got it) Shortbreads

Ingredients:
125g Soy Spread (or butter!)
60g   Caster Sugar + a little extra for sprinkling over
180g Plain Flour
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
A little icing sugar for rolling out.

Method:
1. Cream the spread and sugar together until lovely and creamy
2. Thoroughly stir in the vanilla extract
3. Sift in the flour until you get a smooth paste and turn onto a lightly icing sugared surface and roll out to about 1/2-1cm thick.
4. Cut into what ever shape you like, fingers, rounds or use a cookie cutter - i favor a heart shape :) and place onto a baking sheet
5. Dust with your extra caster sugar and pop into the fridge to chill for 20 minutes or so.
6. Pre-heat the oven to 190c
7. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown and leave to cool or burn your mouth on eating them straight out the oven - surprisingly i favor the first approach!

They really make for a lovely short shortbread.

Deep breaths xxx

Ed's Plums....

It's that time of year again, the nights are drawing in, I'm starting to wear vests and the leaves are making beautiful patterns on the ground.
This also means it's the time for my friend Ed to grow another year older (a year in a day - amazing)...

Ed & Meredith

There is a rather long story behind why I made Ed this cake this year and I'm a little uncertain of the facts. But it involves a friend's wedding, Meredith (above), her love Alex and the eating of cake or rather the eating of Ed's slice of cake but not by the man himself.

The cake was a Plum & Almond...

Ingredients:
2 punnets of plums
360g Butter
360g Sugar
6 Large Eggs
240g Self Raising Flour
150g Ground Almonds
2tsp Baking Powder
2tsp Vanilla Extract
A large tub of Creme Fresh
A little extra sugar for browning the plums

Method:
This recipe is to make a sandwich cake so use only half the amount of ingredients for each the sponges - unless you want to make one big cake.

You may want to do this bit the night before so you can 'set' the plums - but i don't think it matters either way.
Pre-heat Grill to a medium heat.
1. Start by slicing the plums into segments and laying them into a patten onto (i didn't do this bit) baking paper on the bottom of a spring bottom cake tin. This is going to be the top of your cake.
Sprinkle with Sugar and place under the grill until they start to juice a little and you can see them turning.
Pop them in the fridge for a couple of hours or better still over night to set.

Pre heat the oven to 200c
Butter, line and put together your round 23cm/9" baking tin with the sliced plums in the bottom.
Next - Remember to only use half the ingredients or make the lot up and only use half the batter
2. Take the other punnet of plums and cut up into rough 1-cm chunks.
3. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy
4. Add the Vanilla extract and mix well
5. Add the egg bit by bit, adding a spoon full of sieved flour if it curdles.
6. Sieve in the rest of the flour, baking powder and ground almonds and fold in. You may find that not all the almonds sieve - add these to the mixture once you have mixed the rest.
7. Now fold in the plum chunks - again just half the amount.
8. Very gently cover the sliced plums with the mix and pop in the oven for around 35 minutes.
9. When it comes out it should spring back to touch and a knife should come out clean.

Now make the other half in exactly the same way or add the other half of the mix to a freshly cleaned tin or if you are very fancy and have two of the same size tins you should have two haves of cake that look a bit like these:

  

Let them cool and then dolop on loads of creme fresh to your bottom half and pop into the fridge to chill. When you are ready pop the top half onto the bottom and bob's your uncle. You're done.

I was a bit worried about sticky crumb mess, but turn's out this makes ace pub cake.

Happy Birthday Ed

xx

Noble Banana Cake

I got a bit of an SOS today.
My lovely and incredibly talented friend Danny has just moved to London.
She did all the right pre -move work, got herself a house and a job before she took the big leap from small seaside city to big black boogie metropolis, but the new job broke her and she now needs another less brakey job.
For Danny's leaving 'do' drinks I made her a Banana Cake and this is what the callout was for, well to be precise the call out was for the recipe.

So Danny, beautiful, lovely, talented, ever so funny and incredibly self controlled(see above link to get this bit) Danny, I don't know quite how to say this...... there is no recipe. I make it up. I always do.... But for you I scraped together the bits and pieces that i think go into making this cake... with love x

Firstly and most importantly the banana's have to be blackened and squishy, you can sometimes buy them discounted in 'the shops' or you can do one of two things i like to do. The first is to buy several bananas with the intention of being healthy and replacing all the sugar fuel you eat with a banana, but then leave them in the fruit bowl turning and over ripening all the other fruit you bought and haven't eaten yet either. Or, you can pop one or two in you're bag for the day with the intention of not buying snacks and then by the time you get home they are lovely and squish-sqwoshy.

I make mine in a 2lb (cause it's the only one i have) baking paper lined loaf tin and I pre heat the oven to 180c-200c.

Ingredients:
2 large blacked bananas
120g Butter/Spread
120g Sugar
2 Large Eggs
120g Self Raising Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
And then all the dried fruit and nuts you want to add - i really have no idea how much
I like-
Pecans
Hazelnuts
Sultanas
&
Dried Apricots

Method:
1. Cream the butter/spread together
2. Add the eggs bit by bit, using a spoon of sifted flour if it curdles
3. Sift in the rest of the flour and baking powder and mix well.
4. In a separate bowl mash the bananas to your own lumpy taste
5. Add the bananas, nuts and fruit of your choice to your batter and mix well
6. Pop into the tin and into the oven for around 35 minutes, using the knife test to see when it's done (Remember that you may be putting your knife through a bit of banana or fruit)
7. Take to interview and get fantastic job.

I guess that you'll need to try it out a couple of times and work out what combo you like best or what gives you the best results.... oh, and I mentioned it before but forgot the magic ingredient, you have to add a rather large pinch of love.

Good luck
xx