Recipe Exchange - Chocolate Orange Marmalade Cupcakes

I've just got sent this email...


'You have been invited to be part of a recipe exchange. I hope you will participate. Please send a recipe to the person whose name is in position 1 (even if you don't know them): it should be something quick, easy and without rare ingredients. 

Actually, the best recipe is the one you know in your head and can type right now. Don't agonise over it, it is one you make when you are short of time. 
 
After you've sent the recipe to the person in position 1 and 2 below, copy this message text into a new email, move my name (& email address) to position 1 and put your name (and email address) in position 2.

Only mine and your names and email addresses should show when you send your email. Send to 10 friends BCC (blind copy).

If you cannot do this within 5 days, let me know so it will be fair to those participating. You could receive 20 recipes. It's fun to see where they come from! Seldom does anyone drop out because we all need new ideas.'

What a good idea! I had just made made some cupcakes, so i thought i may as well share the love!

No photos i'm afraid (you'll just have to use your imagination!)

The recipe:

Chocolate Orange Marmalade Cupcakes. - Makes about 6 or 7 because i'm greedy and if i made more i'd eat them all and they are quite rich.

60g  Butter

60g  Sugar

1 large Egg

60g Plain Flour

Healthy sprinkling of baking powder

Large tablespoon of good quality chocolate powder

Large tablespoon of good quality marmalade - or if you are as lucky as me - Grannie Annie homemade marmalade!

Oven at about 180

1. Cream butter, add sugar.

2. Add egg - sieve a tablespoon of flour if its curdling.

3. Sieve in dry (flour, baking powder, chocolate) ingredients and mix. If a bit dry add a splash of milk.

4. Add marmalade & pop into cupcake tin.

They are a moist cake because of the marmalade, so if you use press technique, they won't bounce back as quickly as non fruit cake would

About 15-20 minutes - try not to burn your tongue :)

xxx

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

Coffee & Walnut Cake

Okay, so it doesn't look like the most appetising of cakes, but it tastes like a rather large slice of heaven.

So of course today, considering yesterday was a right-off, I should have been sorting through the boxes piled up in the living room, doing some paperwork, filing my tax returns or at least making things i can actually make some money out of. But, I've quite clearly got the back to school nerves and was having a little wobble, when I realised that a little baking would probably calm those pesky nerves and feed naughty the sweet tooth.

I've never made this before, and as you will realise I'm not very good at keeping measurements (both time and scale always seem to baffle me) but i always stick to the same quantities of fat, sugar, egg and flour (one large egg to approx. 60g of each).
One day, as my confidence grows i will change this, but as this always gives me a lovely sponge i'll stick with it for now. Thankyouverymuch!

Ingredients:
Sponge -
120g Fat (i used soy spread, strangely it always gives a lovely light texture)
120g Sugar - Beautiful golden caster sugar
2 large free range eggs (whisk them together in a bowl ready to add)
120g Self raising flour
1x tsp of baking powder
35g approx. of walnuts, most roughly broken + some for decoration
a strong shot of coffee (half now, half for the buttercream)
Buttercream-
100g Butter
100g (approx to taste) natural golden icing sugar
half your coffee shot


Method:
1. Pop the oven on to heat up at 200c/ gas mark 4 and prepare a tin with butter and or baking paper (today i used a loaf tin for mine)
2. Cream the fat and sugar together until you have a lovely fluffy buttery mix.
3. Add half the shot of coffee -  i made this by putting what i would normally put in the caffettiera to make 1 rather large cup of strong coffee for myself, but only putting in a quarter of the amount of boiling water.

This gives a nice subtle coffee taste, but of course you can change this according to your own taste.

4. Mix this in well, it may take a while and may curdle. Don't worry if it does, add a spoon full of flour to help bring the consistency back.

5. Add the eggs, bit by bit, adding a little flour as you go.

6. Sift and fold in the rest of the flour and baking powder and then add the broken walnuts and pour into the baking tin, this should be a fairly wet consistency.

7. Pop the tin in the pre-heated oven for about 30 minutes or so. It should be done when you press the sponge and it springs back or your put a skewer in and it come out clean. 

8. Leave to cool and prepare the buttercream icing! (yummy - my best bit)

9. In a bowl add the other half a shot of coffee to around 100g of icing sugar to make a paste.

10. In another bowl, cream the butter until creamy and soft and then slowly add the coffee sugar paste.

11. Once the sponge has cooled, butter the top of the cake and arrange the rest of the walnuts you've saves for decoration.

12. eat eat share eat.

NB: Now i have to be honest with you, i've been distracted all day which is probably why mine looks like this, but if i payed attention, i probably could have made it well buff.

The Black Cat

Her name is Mouse.