Sunday Baking – Sticky Toffee Pudding

I’ve been baking again. Yes I know traditional sticky toffee puddings are steamed, but I needed a good pudding in a hurry. This fitted the bill perfectly. All you need is 200g of good dates cooked in 250ml of black tea for 3/4 mins. Then stir in half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Leave to cool slightly.

Then cream 85g of unsalted butter with of 175g golden caster sugar. Add one egg, a teaspoon of mixed spice and 175g self raising flour. Then fold in the date mix and cook until firm to the touch. Whilst that’s baking melt 100g muscavado sugar with 100g of butter and a small carton of cream. Bring to the boil until sugar dissolves.

Serve a slice of the cooked cake with a generous splash of the warm sauce and a good dollop of ice cream. Yummy!

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Baking at Easter

It was the Easter weekend last weekend.  And like all weekends of note, it included some baking.

First up was a sticky ginger cake.  You may remember this recipe as Sticky Orange Cake, but with the use of some ginger preserve, some ground ginger and a pinch of cinnamon, we got us a new cake.  This one was actually better, I used a tablespoon more preserve than the recipe and it was much moister.  Plus before smearing with warm preserve on the top I made twice as many holes in the surface to soak up the preserve.  Yum yum yum!

Secondly, I made an Easter Rocky Road.  I had to cut up a whole load of Bunny shaped marshmallows – that felt a bit mean!  So I used 200g dark chocolate, 100g marshmallows, 100g Golden Syrup, 100g of unsalted butter and 100g of pink wafer biscuits.  Then topped off with a SMALL packet of Cadbury’s Mini Eggs.  I mean, come on, we don’t want to over do it!

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Did you bake over the weekend?

Mother’s Day Afternoon Tea

It was Mother’s Day last weekend here in the UK. I made afternoon tea, complete with cakes, for my mother-in-law. I made Coca Cola Cake as min loafs, Cherry Bakewell slices and a Victoria Sponge (that was guzzled before I could take a pic). Anyway, enjoy the images. The Cherry Bakewells were particularly nice and was a recipe the Hubster pulled out of our Asda magazine.  There is a scan of the recipe below.

Enjoy, what did you bake this weekend?

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Nigella’s Coca Cola Cake

There is nothing I love better than CAKE!  (apart from my hubby and my son, oh and the rest of my family… and… you get me yeah?).  So CAKE!  Something to soothe the soul, make you feel better and deliver a yummy, sugary chocolate fix.

This is one of our kitchen staples, Coca Cola Cake as introduced to the UK by the Baking Goddess that is Nigella Lawson. This recipe is not available on the website but in the How to be a Domestic Goddess cook book which most woman in the UK probably own.

This is a blissfully simple, quick to assemble moist cake.  You get your dry ingredients together, you get your wet one sin another jug, you melt your butter with some coca cola and some cocoa.  And then bang it all together.  Suddenly it comes together in a gloopy, chocolate, gloriously smelling batter.  Pour this into a well lined tin and bake.

A bit of icing, and VOILA!  (no images of icing as it got eaten v quickly…..)

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Sticky Orange Cake

This weekend we had lots of snow, about 5 or 6 inches. It isn’t a lot but it manages to make the world go crazy, at least in the UK. Three snowflakes and the country grinds to a halt. Madness. Anyway, whilst everyone was off sledging, I invested some time in a Sticky Orange Cake. I managed to use a whole jar of Seville Orange Marmalde…..

This recipe is from the book for the second series of Great British Bake Off, How to Bake: The Perfect Victoria Sponge and other Baking Secrets. I’m secretly in love with this book, there are lots of brilliant recipes and if it wasn’t for Boy Wonder (my 5yr old) picking this one out, I probably would have struggled to pick. Recipe was super easy, creaming butter, adding sugar, eggs and then flour. Finally some milk and marmalade. Bake, glaze with warm marmalade and then ice when cool. Yummy!

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Hello world! Posts will appear shortly

Hello there

I will start posting sometime in the next couple of weeks, I created this on holiday and so once the “back to work fear” has subsided expect relatively regular postings…..