• Peanut Butter Banana Brownies
    Baking,  Recipes

    Peanut Butter & Banana Brownies

    I’ve been looking for something special to bake for my boyfriend’s birthday and yesterday I saw this recipe for Peanut Butter Brownies on The Baker Chick’s blog. This was almost perfect but while he does love peanut butter and chocolate, his perfect pud isn’t complete without bananas so I thought I’d see what happened if I added some in! I’m a bit of a nightmare for measuring precisely so I’ve converted the original recipe into specifics as opposed to cups. For some reason I really enjoy measuring to exact amounts – I’m just weird that way! Ingredients: Chocolate Brownie Mix: 115g unsalted butter 85g dark chocolate (min 70% cocoa) 200g sugar 2…

  • White Chocolate and Raspberry Cheesecake
    Baking,  Recipes

    White Chocolate & Raspberry Cheesecake Recipe

    As it turns out, being a maker, baker, full time employee, girlfriend and friend means that there isn’t as much time for blog posts as I would like! After a hectic week I’m back in the saddle though with a recipe for a cheesecake that I made last weekend. This one was another request from my boyfriend (give in once and they start taking liberties…) but it turned out pretty tasty so it’s a good one for sharing and surprisingly, it isn’t too rich and doesn’t leave you feeling heavy. You’ll need: 170g raspberries (I used fresh but you can use frozen) 400g Philadelphia (or other soft cheese) 2 x…

  • Recipe for Key Lime Pie
    Baking,  Recipes,  Tutorials

    Recipe for Key Lime Pie

    This weekend, after a failed attempt to order a slice from a local takeaway, my boyfriend asked me to make him a key lime pie. Despite having a very sweet tooth, he doesn’t usually benefit much from my baking as I either take it in to work or bake things as a challenge that he’s not that into. As requests from him are rare (and I’ve never made key lime pie before) I decided to oblige. Ingredients: 150g hobnobs 75g butter 3 egg yolks 397g can of condensed milk 4 limes 1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade 2. Put the biscuits in a food processor and blitz for…

  • Baking,  Cake Decorating,  Tutorials

    Mary Berry’s Chess Cake

    This is a recipe from the Great British Bake Off ‘Showstoppers’ book. It’s a Mary Berry recipe, I love Mary Berry. I love her even more after watching Alan Carr interview Mel and Sue last night who told him that she went to Pacha in Ibiza at 71 and likes to drink tequila slammers! The woman is a legend! Anyway, I was making a cake to take to work for my birthday (an odd tradition, feeding everyone else on your birthday but we’ll go with it) and I chose this one because I loved the surprise element of cutting into what looks like a chocolate cake to find a checkerboard…

  • Baking,  Cake Decorating

    Teapot Cake

    What are weekends for other than making random shaped cakes for absolutely no reason? I got some hemisphere cake pans from Lakeland for Christmas and hadn’t managed to try them out yet, I looked up a recipe for the pans on their website (a basic sponge) and set to work. The cake recipe has to be quite dense for the finished cake to hold its shape although I did read somewhere that you can use ganache for the crumb coating as it will set more solidly and make the construction sturdier. For this one I used vanilla buttercream as the sponge was solid enough. At this point I hadn’t actually…

  • Baking,  Cake Decorating

    School’s Out!

    This is my final assessment piece for my cake decorating qualification. It features: – Piped lettering – Graduated line work – Piped flowers – Scrollwork I’ll find out my mark next week but I’ve definitely passed so I’ve got a real cake decorating qualification, who’d have thunk it?? Tutorial to follow soon on the piped orange flower. Update: I got a distinction!!! Whoop.

  • Baking,  Cake Decorating

    Piped Flowers: Easter Daffodils

    Just a quickie – royal iced flowers are great for getting ready in advance. Add a bit of gum trag to the icing for strength and using a leaf nozzle pipe five or six petals in a circle onto a square of grease proof paper. Once dry, colour some icing yellow and pipe a built up spiral using a number 2 writing nozzle in the centre of the petals. Leave to dry and then carefully peel off the paper and stick to your cake with a blob of royal icing.

  • Baking,  Cake Decorating,  Tutorials

    Train Driver Cake Topper

    This is the cake topper I’ve made for my boyfriend’s dad’s 60th birthday party. He loves trains so the cake is going to have a railway theme (I have a model steam engine drying as I type!). This is the first model person I’ve ever made and I’m pretty proud of him, although he does only bear passing resemblance to the birthday boy! I used Sainsburys own ready-to-roll icing and Dr Oetker Coloured Regal-Ice plus additional pastes as follows: Paprika/Flesh – head and hands Liquorice – hair (tiny amount) Navy – jacket and hat (used in addition to pre-coloured blue) His trousers and tie used the pre-coloured icing. His legs…

  • Baking,  Cake Decorating,  Tutorials

    Making Sugarpaste Bows

    Tonight I made an icing bow to use on the christening cake I’m making for my assessment. Although the instructions are easy to follow it’s actually quite tricky to get the bow to look perfect (particularly with acrylic nails!). 1. Roll the icing out thinly. Mine is coloured with Wilton Rose Red and has some Sugarcell mixed in so that it will dry solid. 2. Using a ribbon cutter (or a knife) cut a strip of icing at the desired with – should be just over twice as long as you’d like the bow to be. 3. Now cut the strip of ribbon in half vertically. Dab the inside of…

  • Baking,  Cake Decorating,  Tutorials

    The Power of the Crimp

    Last night’s cake decorating lesson was all about sugarpaste. We covered boards and polystyrene dummies with a layer of sugarpaste and also learnt about embossing and crimping. The picture shows my crimping practice on a test dummy. I’m still a beginner with the crimper but here are some tips that helped me improve: 1. There’s no need to push the crimper right into the sugarpaste, a milimetre or two is enough. 2. Hold the crimper as shown in the picture. Gently squeeze the crimpers together slightly – squeezing too hard makes the indent stick out and look silly and untidy. 3. Move the cake so the section you are crimping…