All posts tagged: Baking

Maple, Banana & Dark Chocolate Tray Cake

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You will never need another banana cake recipe once you have tried this. It’s so easy rustle up and is the perfect way to get rid of the bananas browning in your fruit bowl. The finished result is a sticky sweet banana bread that’s still spongy and light, perfect served hot with ice cream or custard, or enjoy cold with a cup of tea. 130g butter, softened 100g golden caster sugar, plus extra for dusting 2 medium eggs 3 medium ripe bananas, well mashed or pureed using a hand blender 45 ml milk 1 tsp vanilla bean extract 100g dark chocolate, broken into small chunks 1 tsp cinnamon 250g self-raising flour 1 tsp baking powder 1 pinch of salt 3 tbsp maple syrup   Preheat your oven to 180C and butter a small deep baking tray. Using a wooden spoon, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Now crack in the eggs, add the mashed/pureed banana, milk and vanilla extract and beat until until smooth. Into the wet mix pour the chocolate chunks, …

Halwa Spiced Carrot Cake with Condensed Milk Icing & Gold Leaf

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Styled and shot by Lauren Miller (www.laurenmiller.co.uk) (@millerisere) and Faye Wears (www.forksknivesblog.wordpress.com) (@forks_and_knives) Halwa is the most amazing Indian dessert – it’s a carrot-based, nut ridden version of our rice pudding made with loads of condensed milk, saffron, cardamom and golden sultanas. I thought how amazing it would be to have all of the flavours that make halwa taste so fab baked into a  light, spongy carrot cake. So I tried it. And it worked a dream! My fool proof carrot cake recipe has taken many forms in my kitchen (usually depending on what dried fruit and nuts I have in my cupboards) but this version is very special. It has a bold, aromatic taste that works really well with sweet carrots and orange zest. If you can’t get hold of cardamom powder, you can use ground cinnamon or allspice instead. Condensed milk is an essential ingredient in halwa, and here it gives a lovely shine and gooey texture to the icing, which trickles beautifully down the sides of the cake. It’s a perfect wintery treat Ingredients For the …

Blackberry Marble Cheesecake

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More fool you bakers! This ‘no bake’ cheesecake looks like it has taken ages to prepare, but in reality it takes 20 mins to put together and 2 hours to set in the fridge. Try it now while blackberries are in season and free on the roadside! Sit down and watch this week’s Great British bakers struggle to work their ovens while you tuck into ‘no bake’ cheesecake heaven. Serves 6-8 people in an 8 inch loose based tart tin For the buttery bisuit base: 100g butter 250g disgestive biscuits 100g soft light brown sugar For the cream cheese topping:  180g/ 1 tub of cream cheese 300ml double cream 200g icing sugar For the blackberry marble drizzle: 250g blackberries 1 lemon 50g caster sugar mint leaves Reserve 10 blackberries for garnish later and add the rest to a small pan with the juice of half a lemon and the caster sugar. Heat until bubbling then simmer for 10 minutes until the berries have broken down and the sauce has thickened. Then leave to cool. Gently heating the butter in a small …

Cooking with matcha

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I have recently rekindled my love of green tea after discovering matcha – a powdered green tea made from specially selected green tea plants, which are shade grown for a few weeks before being ground up. The result is a clean, smooth-tasting tea that doesn’t have that horribly bitter after taste that first put me off regular green. It’s really easy to drink and has helped me through many a starvation lull on one of my fast days, as i’m currently trialing out the intermittent fasting (or the fast diet) in an attempt to (pun-alert) have my cake and eat it too (sorry.) But I’m more interested in matcha being used as an ingredient in cooking. The first time I tasted matcha was in a life changing dessert at So Japanese, Soho. This place was recommended to me by an ex colleague for its unbeatable sushi (and at a reasonable price for sushi) but I would also highly recommend the Japanese desserts. The Matcha & White Chocolate Cake with Black Sesame Ice Cream & Fruit Mousse   This was ordered …

Black & White Pudding Pasties

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Hello, I’m Beth and I’m addicted to black pudding. I regularly exceed my RDA of iron and I am constantly looking for new ways to get my next fix. Last weekend, with an abundance of black and white pudding I have in my fridge from The Bury Black Pudding Company, I decided to find another excuse to ‘go to town’ on blood pudding and created the perfect lunch for my cousins to enjoy whilst working hard on their allotment! If you’ve never had white pudding i’d highly recommend it. It’s like black pudding, but without the blood (so basically a sausage, with plenty of pepper, spices and a firm, meaty texture). Ingredients 1 onion 2 medium potatoes 1 large black pudding sausage, chubb 1 large white pudding sausage a good glug of rapeseed oil 1 tsp English mustard 1 bay leaf a small sprig of thyme a handful of parsley 5 sage leaves 1 sheet of shortcrust pastry 1 egg salt and pepper a punnet of cress, for garnish Preheat the oven to 180°c Peel and dice up the …

Shortbread Jammy Dodgers

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My first memory of cooking is making salt dough decorations. If you’ve never made salt dough with kids it’s so much fun. The recipe is basic: 2 parts flour, 1 part salt & 1 part water. Mix into a dough, roll and cut into whatever shapes you want. Pierce each with a pen so you can string them up later. Bake in a low oven at 100˚c for 3-4 hours until they are completely dry. Cool, then paint and hang with string. Note: do not eat! You will be sick. Now, the only biscuits I really enjoy baking (and can be trusted to make) are ones where all the ingredients are mixed up in a food processor, rolled and cut with my retro cutters, just like salt dough. The shortbread recipe I use is from Adam Stokes on Great British Chefs. It’s tried and tested and i’ve made them so many times – it makes light buttery biscuits that are lush and soft in the middle with a short snap. I’ve taken the vanilla and cinnamon from the recipe …

Apple Strudel Tarts

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Necessity is the mother of invention – and I was in a desperately hungover situation last Sunday and in need of a proper dessert. A couple of bruised apples, half a pack of filo and the remains of my baking cupboard later and, voila, the glorious flavours of strudel quickly baked in a muffin tin. Considering how good these taste and how pretty they look they really are flippin easy… and I didn’t even have to run to the shops for any ingredients half way through.  You can use whatever dried fruit and nuts you’ve got lying around – sultanas and hazelnuts, apricots and pecans. (makes 4) 1 cooking apple, cored, peeled and cut into 1cm chunks 1 eating apple, cored, peeled and cut into 1cm chunks 50g soft light brown sugar a handful of raisins ¼ tsp allspice ½ tsp cinnamon 50g salted butter, melted 4 sheets filo pastry, cut into 5 inch squares (keeping the offcuts) a handful of flaked almonds icing sugar, for dusting Start my cooking the chopped apples, sugar, raisins …

Real Cinnamon Pretzels – I don’t know about you…

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I don’t know about you but when I’m traipsing through a shopping centre I always walk a little slower past the Mr. Pretzels stand, hoping they will start offering tasters. That smell of warm bread and cinnamon as the staff swing ropes of dough in the air like gymnasts puts me in a trance. So when my cousin got engaged and a Bavarian theme was decided for her Hen Do I got really excited. The perfect texture for a soft pretzel is crisp on the outside, soft and chewy in the inside. Pretzels, like bagels, are steamed in bicarbonate of soda before baking which creates a firm crust and keeps a fluffy middle! I referred to a wonderful recipe from thingswebake.co.uk, for tips and picture demonstrations. My version is an adaptation of this recipe: My own Mini Cinnamon Pretzels are lovely and spiced, bite-sized, with a chocolate dipping sauce to dunk them into. I have upped the cinnamon and sugar so they are even more like those classic shopping centre pretzels! For the pretzel dough: 140g plain flour 140g bread flour 1/2 packet quick yeast …

The Perfect Victoria Sponge

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 It’s the most versatile cake going. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like a Victoria sponge. This recipe is so easy that once you’ve read it once you will never need to read the recipe again.. For the sponge eggs, free range and organic self-raising flour salted butter, British and soft caster sugar vanilla extract (optional: I don’t think it’s needed if you’ve got quality eggs & butter) weighing scales electric whisk, or hand whisk wooden spoon mixing bowl sieve two cake tins, greased if non-stick or lined with baking parchment This recipe has ONE VERY SIMPLE RULE: Use 1 part eggs/ 1 part sugar/ 1 part butter/ 1 part SR flour So to start heat your oven to between 180°c and 200°c, depending how hot your oven is (ours is like a furnace). You need to weigh the eggs in their shells (I would recommend 3 eggs for two small tins.) 1 medium egg is usually around 60g. Add to a mixing bowl the equivalent ‘egg’ weight in butter and in sugar and whip up until really light and …