Pecan Toffee tray bake and Shrek Birthday Cake

So a while back you may remember that I had a German friendship cake that just kept on going. I tried a few variations on the recipe and one of the favourites was Pecan fudge. After all the sourdough mix had finally gone from cluttering up my small work top and been given out I decided to adapt the pecan fudge cake to a normal tray bake square cake so that I could use up the leftover pecans and fudge, ok ok, I admit, I had to go and buy more fudge in the end because I ate the rest.

This was really just a basic cake but the flavours marry really well together and it came out soft and light. I even had to make another one a few days later as boyfriends brother liked it so much he wanted one to himself.

Any way, not the best pictures but here are some slices, right before they were scoffed.

And here's how it's made 

80g Caster Sugar

100g Light brown soft sugar

170g Butter

3 eggs

170g Plain Flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1  - 2 handfulls of pecans (broken up into chunks and left a few whole)

1 large handfull of all butter fudge cut into smaller chunks

Pre heat the oven to 180 deg C and grease and flour a square cake tin or deep tray.

Cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time whisking as you go.

Then sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and fold in until all the ingredients are combined. 

Toss the pecans and fudge in a little flour and then stir into the mixture until evenly dispersed.

Bake in the pre heated oven for approx 20 minutes or until cooked through and a skewer inserted comes out clean. Slice into squares, decorating with more fudge or pecans if desired.

I found the flour did stop the pecans from sinking to the bottom of the cake but most of the fudge still sank and melted a little as it was heavier but it still tasted great.

I've also had a couple of big birthday cakes to make recently which I'll be posting here and here's the first, done a few weeks back. A Shrek themed cake for a 3rd Birthday: 

Inside was a vanilla sponge with ogre green icing. I'm cant really make models so I improvised with the 3 with Shrek ears and because I couldn't find any Shrek figure toys I attempted his face.

Any way that's all for today

Keep Baking

Cupcake Kris xxx

Chocolate Orange Shortbread and many cupcakes.

I've just downloaded the pictures of recent cakes Ive been baking and realised I'd totally forgotten to show you all the cupcakes I made for the Queens Diamond Jubilee for a friends bake sale in work.
so quite a bit late but oh well here they are:

I'm definitely going to be using the crown cutter I got to make some biscuits for a certain friend who thinks she is a princess.

I also made some vanilla cupcakes and chocolate orange cupcakes for another bake sale:

And some rude cupcakes for a hen party (avert your eyes children)

Any way in between all this I have found a little time to do some non cupcake baking in the form of chocolate orange dipped shortbread. I had half a chocolate orange left and I'd been meaning to make shortbread for a while so I thought I'd combine the two to make the shortbread extra naughty. Here it is:

and pre dipping:

I think I definitely prefer it with the chocolate. Shortbread is also a really simple recipe that doesn't require many ingredients unless you want to jazz it up with fillings such as cherry or chocolate to dip in. Here's how it's made:

Makes 8 wedges:

Chocolate Orange Shortbread 

175g Plain Flour
Pinch of salt
55g Caster Sugar (Plus extra for sprinkling)
115g Butter chopped into small pieces, (plus extra for greasing)
1/2 Chocolate orange (or any chocolate you wish to dip)

You could also add a grating of orange zest to the shortbread for that extra zing.

Pre heat the oven to 150deg C and grease an 8 inch tart tin. Mix together the flour salt and sugar then rub in the butter into the dry ingredients. Work in the butter until you have a soft dough however do not over work or the shortbread will be tough not crumbly. Add a tablespoon of water if needed.

Lightly press the dough into the tart tin or shape on a baking tray and pinch the edges.

Mark into 8 pieces and prick all over with a fork and bake in the oven for 45 - 50 mins until firm an lightly coloured
.
Sprinkle with sugar and leave to cool in the tin before cutting into wedges.

In a bowl over pan of simmering water melt the chocolate until fully melted, then dip half of each piece of shortbread in or spread or drizzle the chocolate over. Leave to set in the fridge on a plate covered in clingfilm or greaseproof paper.

Once the chocolate is set store in a biscuit tin, or as what happened with my batch hand them out to be eaten all at once.

Till next time

Cupcake Kris 

Double Chocolate Cookies and baking lessons with friends.

Hey! again I've been away from the blog for a bit, busy baking for orders as well as carrying on making various incarnations of German friendship cake, It seemed for a while to be the cake that never ended as part of the sourdough mixture was passed between me and my mum for a while, and as tasty as all the different variations of cake I tried were (Pecan fudge was the favourite) I am kind of glad the bowl of sourdough is no longer cluttering up the worktop in my tiny kitchen.

I've also been away for a couple of days to the lovely Bath. The weather wasn't great but it's such a beautiful town and full of great restaurants and bakeries. They even have they're own bun, the Bath bun, it's sort of like a mix between brioche and a teacake and very yummy. There's also the Sally Lunn bun which is a very old recipe of a giant soft bread bun served in Sally Lunns house, the oldest house in Bath, here's the boyfriend with his Sally Lunn bun and some tea (he will kill me for posting this hehe)

Any way a couple of weeks ago my friends Chris and Jen popped round to my house just as I was taking a batch of Peanut butter cookies out of the oven (funny how well timed my friends visits can be) the cookies were enjoyed but Chris must have went home craving more as he asked if I would give him a cookie baking lesson. He hadn't baked a lot before and thought a lesson would be much more useful than simply following a recipe. So I sent him off to the shop with a list of ingredients ready for his first baking lesson.

We decided to make both the peanut butter cookies as well as double chocolate cookies. So we donned our aprons and got started.

The peanut butter ones turned out great as usual as this is a tried and tested recipe which can be found here.

The Double Chocolate recipe I had required a bit of tweaking but in the end they turned out great, soft in the middle and really rich with chocolate. Here's Chris looking all proud with himself with the first batch of Double Chocolate:

I forgot to take a picture of just the cookies as I was too busy eating all of them.

I got the recipe from the hummingbird bakery and the cookies were rich and gooey and very chocolaty but I found I had to add quite a bit more flour that they suggested as the dough was too runny to begin with.

Any way here's the recipe (with my amendments)

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes12

50g unsalted butter
450g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
2 eggs
170g soft light brown sugar or light muscovado sugar (Again I used a little more to balance out the extra flour)
¼ tsp vanilla extract
85g plain flour (I used more like double this )
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
Preheat the oven to 170°C/gas 3. Put the butter and half the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (do not let the base of the bowl touch the water). Leave until melted and smooth.
Put the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract in a bowl and beat until well mixed. Pour in the chocolate mixture, beating on slow speed until well combined.

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a separate bowl, then stir into the chocolate mixture in 3 additions, mixing well after each addition (scrape any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula). Finally, stir in the remaining chocolate until evenly dispersed.

Arrange 6 equal amounts of cookie dough on each prepared baking tray. Make sure that the cookies are spaced apart to allow for spreading while baking. Bake in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes, checking regularly after 10 minutes. They are ready when the tops start to crack and look glossy. Leave the cookies to cool slightly on the trays before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Again these turned out really tasty but be prepared to have to fiddle around with the mixture to get the right consistency.

That's all for today any way I have a lot of orders this coming week but I'm gonna try and bake a few new things as well

Bye for now

Cupcake Kris 

Birthday Cakes Galore

The last couple of weeks I have been kept busy with Birthday orders, its a busy time for friends and family birthdays in my world and they all seem to want cake (well who can blame them)

As I mentioned in my last blog I needed to make a birthday cake for my little brothers 16th Birthday. There was no party but we were having a family dinner and that always requires cake. As i wanted practising covering a cake with Chocolate icing I went for a triple layered chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream and covered in a layer of roll out chocolate icing. I had bought loads of big jazzies to decorate this with however after I'd put the lettering on they didn't look quite right so it was decorated with Dr. Oetker Mini Jazzies to look like polka dots. and they were so mini they were just to cute not to use.
The recipe I used for the layers of the cake was the same as I use for my chocolate cupcakes here I just tripled it so I had enough mix for the 3 layers.

And here  is the cake:

I also recently had to make a Spiderman themed cake for my friends Nephews birthday, He was 5 and is obsessed with Spiderman. I just went with a vanilla cake triple layer with vanilla butter cream and the decorated Spiderman style with a city night scene and web, in the appropriate colours.
It did also eventually have a little spiderman figure on top however that was placed on after the photo was taken.

Here it is:

The only other thing I've had time to bake was a mass of peanut butter cookies (recipe in an earlier blog)  that I was guilt tripped into making by the boyfriend for giving the last piece of chocolate cake away (oops). So I haven't had a chance to make anything new, but I'm planning on working on fixing that this week.


Bye for now

Cupcake Kris xxx

Chocolate Marmalade cake and my German Friendship cake

I was in the Lake District a few weeks back and tasted the loveliest chocolate orange cake in a little cafe. I asked the man in the cafe for the recipes and he informed me it was Nigella Lawsons Chocolate marmalade cake (although like mine, he had covered his cake in a chocolate orange ganache.)

So this week I found the recipe and decided it was time to recreate the tasty cake. The cake itself turned out nice, it tasted a lot better than it looked but that was my fault. It was lighter in colour and not as rich as I remember, I might add a little more chocolate last time although I think it doesn't need it with the chocolate Ganache. The cake sank a little in the middle (as had the man's in the cafe) so I might play around with the recipe a little to try and rectify this next time. Overall though it tasted great and the topping made it rich enough that you didn't need to much (but still had to much, in my case.) As I said it tasted better than it looked and this was my fault mainly because on removing it from the tin I managed to drop it on my chopping board so it was a little pieced together and flattened before i covered it. Any way, here it is:

And here's how it's made :

125g Unsalted butter
100g Dark chocolate
300g good quality orange marmalade
150g Caster Sugar
a pinch of salt
2 Large eggs
150g Self-rising flour

Melt the butter slowly in a saucepan. When it's almost melted, add chocolate pieces, stir and take off the heat. Stir with a wooden spoon, until chocolate has melted.
Add the marmalade, sugar, salt and eggs. Stir thoroughly (it's okay to leave small visible chunks of marmalade in the batter).
Add sifted flour, stir and pour into a buttered and floured 20-22 cm loose bottomed cake tin.
Bake at 180˚C oven for 45-50 minutes, until the cake has set. Leave to cool in the tin slightly then finish cooling on a wire rack.

To cover the cake I used

100ml Double Cream
180g  Dark Chocolate, chopped into chunks.
2-3 drops of orange essence
zest of orange (optional)

Warm the double cream gently in a pan with the orange extract and add the chocolate, stir until melted. 
Leave to cool slightly before spreading over the cake and then garnish with a little zest of orange and leave to set in the fridge.
Also this week I got to bake my German Sourdough friendship cake that I mentioned in my last blog. Before adding the remaining ingredients and baking I split the mixture into 4, gave one part to my sister, one to my Mum and one to a friend in work. They have started at step one and I followed the recipe on the instructions, adding a little extra here and there and an extra egg (so it was big enough to bake in my bunt tin rather than a tray)  and then it was done, and before I knew it it was gone! It was really tasty, I took half into work, which didn't last long and left the rest at home and that was gone almost half as quick. I will definitely be making another one of these in the future, maybe making my own starter mix so I can carry on baking them at will. Any way here it is:

The darker patches are where it was drizzled in melted butter and sugar, mmmmmmm.

Filled with apple and raisins.

Any way that's all for today, I have to go and make another cake now as it's my little brothers birthday tomorrow.

Cupcake Kris xxx

A Very Flowery Birthday Cake

Wow I can't believe I haven't blogged in nearly 3 weeks. It's not from the lack of baking either. I've been busy over Easter making creme egg Easter chicks for friends (featured in the last post) and a big Victoria sponge for a BBQ as well as numerous hot cross buns. I used the same recipe as last year, which can be found here. However some I just used mixed dried fruit for rather than cranberry and orange. I also used the dough for a bath of 12 and made a hot cross bun loaf instead. Unfortunately as my friends and family rather like hot cross buns they had all gone before I realised I hadn't even taken a picture.

I also had an order for a carrot cake for Easter Saturday, I used this recipe. However I did take a picture of one cake I made recently. I had an order for a 30th Birthday cake for a girl. I was told she liked flowers but not really pink and it had to have Happy 30th Emma on it and this is what I came up with: 

  

The base is a basic Victoria sponge base with vanilla butter cream in 3 layers. 

I was quite happy with it, however I still think I need quite a bit more practise on levelling and icing the cake, I could really do with some better equipment of taking a class but it's just finding the time. Plus I much prefer making smaller cakes or naked un iced cakes any way but that's more for home baking I suppose.  

Well no recipe for today as I haven't made anything I haven't posted before, I do currently have a German sourdough friendship cake in the process. I was given a starter and some instructions by a friend and everyday you stir the mixture, adding milk flour and sugar every few days and then after 10 days you split the mixture into 4, use a quarter to follow the recipe and make the cake and give the other 3 batches to friends with the instructions to start the process again. Its currently sitting on my worktop half way through the process, so I hope it's successful and that I manage to think of who to give the other 3 batches too. It's good the way it carries on, it's like the cake that never ends! 

Lastly I just want to point out I've now put a little search bar in the left hand corner of the screen so you can search previous recipes I have posted. 

Any way I will post a picture of my friendship cake when it's done until then 

bye for now 

Cupcake Kris xxx 

Lemon Raspberry Mothers day cupcakes and Creme egg Easter chick.

As last week was Mothers day I was hoping to bake a treat for my mum, although I had too many cup cake orders and too little time that I wasn't able to bake her anything, oops, maybe next week!
I did however complete some orders for my friends mums and grandma's. I made 2 flavours cherry coconut, and lemon raspberry with lemon icing. And here they are:

The Cherry Coconut :

And the Lemon Raspberry:

 

The recipe for the cherry coconut can be found here. 

And for the Lemon Raspberry:

Lemon Raspberry Cupcakes:

115g Butter, softened

115g Caster Sugar  

2 Eggs 

115g Plain flour

1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
80 - 100g Raspberry's
Zest of 1 Lemon

2 - 3tbsp Lemon juice

Preheat oven to 180degC and line a bun tray with 12 cases.

Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and cream together until light and fluffy. Gradually add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Add the lemon zest and juice.  Sift in the flour and baking powder and fold them into the mixture. Toss the raspberry's in a little flour and then fold into the mixture.
Spoon the mixture into the cases and bake for about 18-20 minutes until well risen and golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. 

For the frosting:

250g Icing sugar
80g Butter
Few drops of lemon flavouring (or alternatively a squeeze of lemon juice and a little lemon zest)
25ml whole milk
Couple of drops of Yellow food colouring (optional)

 Beat together the icing sugar, butter, flavouring and food colouring, then slowly beat in the milk until you have the correct consistency and the icing is light and fluffy. Pipe or spread over cooled cakes. 

And that's it! 

also this week I have been practising some little Easter gifts for friends using a creme egg. Here's one: 

Oh hai! 

Any way that was my first try and I'll be making some more this week for friends, I got the idea from The Pink Whisk where you will find a handy tutorial video. 

Any way that's all for now. 

Cupcake Kris xxx