My dad is a fan of Kingfishers, so I plopped one on top of a log cake for his birthday. I used my favourite chocolate cake recipe from the BBC good food website.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3092/ultimate-chocolate-cake
Happy birthday dad! X
Happy birthday to my sister-in-law Cleo!!! I made a Victoria sponge and jazzed it up with chocolate fingers and mini eggs. Top tip: go to Pound Land for the eggs and fingers and make a lot more buttercream than you think you need.
It’s my brother’s birthday today. I made him a ‘Butty bear’ cake. It’s safe to say that everything in life looks more fun with a sandwich. And a bear.
Lisa Jones is responsible for such a cute design. Check out her art:
It’s Tiffin time! Technically this does not count as a bake, it’s more of a smash and melt. Yum. To make these glorious beauties you need:
Melt the butter, sugar, syrup and cocoa powder together to make a delicious chocolate butter. Smash the biscuits to within an inch of their being- but leave some big bits because everyone likes chunks. It’s just a fact. Mix the crushed biscuits into the chocolate butter and throw a handful of sultanas in. Mix and press into a shallow lined baking tin. Melt the chocolate and pour on top. Allow to cool at room temperature and then pop in the fridge to solidify properly. Using a sharp knife, divide the tiffin into yummy sized pieces. Takes about an hour to solidify.
Happy Tiffin day people!!! It’s really nice on top of ice cream.
This cold January night calls for some double chocolate cookies. For anyone who’s doing a healthy new year thing, it’s worth scrapping it for this treat. You barely need any ingredients, it doesn’t break the bank (just good habits). To make these delicious beauts, you need:
Melt the chocolate and butter together and mix in the rest. I know. That’s it. Lazzzzzyyy. Place the mixture in the freezer for five minutes and prepare a baking tray with parchment. Make small balls with the mixture and pop on the tray with good spaces between them. The mixture tends to spread in the oven. I always put extra white chocolate buttons on top of each cookie. Gives a sense of occasion in my opinion. Bake for 15 minutes at 160 degrees. They are done when they have spread and sort of cracked. My advice is eat them warm with a blob of ice cream. Goodbye rubbish January.
I haven’t had a great track record with caramel shortbread. I’ve burnt the caramel and struggled to get the shortbread off the tray etc. However. That time in my life is over and I now welcome my new and improved self. Behold, my successful caramel shortbread following James Morton’s recipe online. Dead simple and dirt cheap to make.
Check out those layers !
My tips for avoiding caramel shortbread disasters:
This recipe uses salted butter for the shortbread and the caramel- I have to say NOM! Wouldn’t be the same without the salt.
http://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/the-ultimate-millionaires-shortbread
I made a coffee and walnut cake smothered in dark chocolate ganache for my boyfriend’s birthday. Matt is a huge Star Wars fan and fell in love with BB-8 when the film was released. I saw this as an excellent cake challenge. To make this cake, I used a half sphere cake tin and baked two halves and stuck them together. Icing the sphere was quite tricky but nailed it in the end! Several orange shapes later and a good dusting and BB-8 looked mucky enough to me. 🙂
I popped a candle in BB-8’s belly to give him his ‘thumbs up’. The birthday cake went down pretty well, check out the birthday boy!
Check out this link for tips on making a BB-8 cake:
My dad turned 60 at the end of April and to celebrate I made him a very sticky chocolate cake. I have decided that this is my favourite chocolate recipe (see link below) and it’s LOADED with chocolate ganache. I decorated my dad’s cake with a sprinkling of his hobbies… scrap booking, dinosaurs, bird watching, being nosey (hence the binoculars) and a love of cars. My dad also has an unusual habit of placing glacĂ© cherries on top of any starter he makes for fancy dinner parties… prawn cocktails, crab cakes, you name it, if he can float, balance or wedge a glacĂ© cherry on it then it will be present! Naturally, I respectfully put a cherry on top…..
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3092/ultimate-chocolate-cake
Happy Easter everyone! I decided to make a hill top and cover it in frollocking bunnies. My favourite bunny is the grey one with the surprised expression. I don’t really like the white one lurking behind the grey bunny… looks a bit shifty to me. I actually made a lemon & lime drizzle cake which is a little controversial for Easter Sunday, but I have made an awful lot of chocolate cakes recently.
Look at their little bunny tails! I had a lovely rainy Saturday making these bunnies. My sister owns a couple of Lionhead bunnies so the white and brown bunny is an impression of her less evil bunny (she has one which isn’t so friendly – we don’t really know why).
These bunnies may look innocent but they have actually stolen lots of mini eggs from some chicks (no-one knows what condition they were left in) and were then hidden (rather badly) inside the tree trunk. So this cake is a little bit more Watership Down than one might think upon initial inspection.
I was asked to make a Reese’s Pieces birthday cake for a dear friend. I made a chocolate cake and filled it with a layer of peanut buttercream inside and out. I topped it off with lots of dark chocolate ganache and cut up Reese’s Pieces.  Sometimes it’s nice to play with chocolate and buttercream instead of icing for a change. Peanut buttercream is quite possibly one of the best substances on the planet. You have to use smooth peanut butter as I think crunchy peanut butter would be much less magical. No-one wants non-magical peanut buttercream. It’s a good thing I bought extra Reese’s Pieces as my nephew of 18 months was found eating the toppings whilst I was out of the kitchen!
This recipe is definitely worth checking out.
http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/542441/reeses-pieces-chocolate-peanut-butter-cake
