Life has zoomed by since I first started this blog. Here I planned on looking at food and exploring what I’d baked. It had all started so well.

I still bake, I just don’t have the time to upload the images and write the recipes. Or rather, if I’m truthful, I don’t enjoy it as much.

So I’m going to keep this blog going but I am changing tactic. For a long time I have been interested to write, blogging seems to be a good way to get into the habit of writing something everything day. The plan is to keep up with writing pieces and hopefully I might improve. I also plan to talk about food. You have been warned.

For you Luce,

Came from a Marks and Spencer Baking book I had bought years ago.

Ingredients:

175g stoned dates, chopped

175ml boiling water

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

85g butter: plus extra for greasing

140g caster sugar

1 large egg, beaten

1/2tsp vanilla essence

175g self raising flour, sifted (I sift twice for extra air)

Toffee Sauce:

85g light muscovado sugar

40g butter

2tbsp double cream (I did 4 to make the sauce not as heavy)

1. Preheat oven to 180c/350F/Gas Mark 4. Grease and line a 20cm/8inch tin

2. Put the dates in a small pan with the boiling water and bicarb of soda. Heat gently for 5 minutes but do not boil. Leave until dates are soft.

3. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add the egg, vanilla essence and date mixture.

4. Fold in the flour with a metal spoon. When mixed evenly, pour into the tin. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until cake is firm to touch and just starting to shrink from the edges.

5. Meanwhile, blend together in a pan the toffee sauce ingredients, until you have a smooth sauce. Keep stiring constantly for two minutes.

6. Remove the cake from the oven, prick it all over the surface with a fork. Pour the hot sauce all over, then leave to cool until set. Remove from tin and cut into squares.

Bec x

http://baconconcentrate.blogspot.com/2009/02/most-dangerous-chocolate-cake-recipe.html

May test this out on the child later…

Book club is on Thursday night, so I’ve made pecan pie. Hopefully it will survive until then! Cheated by buying a shaped base, baked it blind, dusted with icing sugar and made the filling. Very simple, one I shall try out on unsuspecting visitors!

I really love how simple this cake was to make, the toffee sauce is divine, though I’ve used light muscavardo for the sauce, I think next time I’m going to use something more intense, with that caramel burnt undertones.

Here you go Mrs! I’d gladly bake you a 40th cake just not sure how I’d get it to you though!

Recipe:

250g Self Raising Flour

250g Soft Brown Muscavardo sugar (normal is ok, I just love muscavardo for the burnt quality it brings to chocolate.)

100g Cocoa Powder (best quality you can get.)

300g 80% plain chocolate

250g butter (salted)

4 eggs (I use duck eggs for baking but hen eggs work as well, number still the same.)

Icing/Fudge

200g plain chocolate

200g milk chocolate

25g butter

248ml single cream

cocoa powder for dusting.

1.Heat oven to gas 3. Line a 20cm x 20cm square cake tin.

2. Sift flour, sugar and cocoa together.

3. Melt the chocolate and butter and add 200ml of water.

4. Remove from heat, cool, then add eggs and vanilla essence.

5. Add flour mixture

5. Pour into tin and bake for 1 hour or until skewer comes out clean.

Make icing:

1. Melt chocolate with cream and butter until smooth.

2. Then cool until spreadable consistency. (You might have to add more icing sugar if it doesn’t thicken.)

3. Cut the cake and spread icing inside and out.

4. Dust with cocoa powder.

I won’t be adding cornflour to the mixture again, thought I’d give a new recipe a whirl. Dried out very quickly and quite a heavy mixture!

Haven’t updated in ages so thought to add some pics! Here are some mint chocolate and pecan nut brownies!

I know I haven’t updated in a while, crap excuses of being too busy, too ill, too everything but I’m here so I’ll be more positive!

Anyway, I have been baking my cotton socks off and had mostly positive outcomes, however, the Swiss Roll went..well a bit wrong.

At Waitrose, on the way out there is a small stand where you can browse a selection of recipe ideas and some are great and have become firm house favourites and others…well not for me! I’ve tried lots and lots of these cards and have a deck holder now and so far have only had two bad experiences. Though I tend to adapt the recipes more often than not to suit my tastes or to change an ingredient around so it will work better. (And usually does.)

Coconut cream and Double Raspberry Swiss roll have been failed experiments and costly. Coconut Cream is supposed to be a desicated type sweet which never set and then Stewart informed me he didn’t really like desicated coconut! Double raspberry Swiss roll failed horribly today in that it just wouldn’t set when baking so I binned it and started again but made changes. The original recipe is as follows:

3 eggs, beaten

100g gold granulated caster sugar

100g self raising flour

200g raspberries

The above is to make the roll part, the eggs were beaten for well over 10 minutes with the sugar to create this gorgeous whipped creamy mixture and the flour was sifted and folded into the mix with a metal spoon.The raspberries, I felt were too heavy for the mixture and sank and just wouldn’t blend together well. So the new version I omitted the raspberries and changed the sugar for just plain white caster sugar and so far I have a very springy roll waiting to be filled.

The filling is supposed to be just raspberry conserve but I’m going for a whipped cream and fresh raspberry approach instead! So once it is constructed I shall post pictures!

The other cake for lunch tomorrow is carrot cake. I’ve spent so long trying to find a quick and easy recipe and have found one that takes less than 20 minutes to prep and 35 minutes to bake. It’s a good old Waitrose favourite at home and though originally to make mini versions, you can make a good 8 or 9inch cake it just needs baking a bit longer.

Carrot cake with orange zest

2 large eggs

175g caster sugar

150ml sunflower oil (I changed this for groundnut oil, lovely taste)

200g self raising flour

3 tsp mixed spice (I use All spice when I run out and makes it a bit spicier)

2 medium carrots, grated

1 tsp vanilla extract

grated zest of 2 oranges

200g tub of cream cheese

50g icing sugar (sometimes I use golden to give it a nice warm colour)

200g butter at room temp

1. Preheat oven to 180c or gas 4. Line your chosen tin (8inch round or a good 2lb bread tin)

2. Put eggs, sugar and oil in a large bowl and whisk until fluffy and light (I normally do this for 5 minutes)

3. Using a metal spoon gently fold in the sifted flour, spices, grated carrot, vanilla extract and half the orange zest until thoroughly combined. Spoon mixture into tin and bake for 35 minutes or until cooked, well risen and browned.

4. Frosting: Beat the icing sugar, cream cheese and butter together until combined. spread over the cake and sprinkle the remaining zest over the top. Chill until ready to serve.

I used to use a Paul Rankin carrot cake recipe but it was so faffy and took an hour to prep that the above works a treat and is very moist without being heavy. I like the cake to have some crunch so I’ll throw in a handfull of chopped almonds sometimes and that gives it a lovely texture.

Also on my travels I have discovered mushroom ketchup and I love it. You add it to stocks, savory pies and puddings, gravy and things that need some flavouring without using salt. Today I made home made onion gravy using the mushroom ketchup and it is gorgeous. Very strong on its own (well I had to try it!) but a lovely alternative to an oxo cube if you need to make a quick stock up.

I have also added photos of the second attempt at New York Blueberry Cheesecake. It’s a recipe from Marks and Spencers cook book organiser. Very different to how I normally make it, where I tend to bake the whole lot in one go this new recipe involves baking it in sections.

New York Baked Cheesecake

85g butter

200g crushed digestive biscuits

400g cream cheese

2 large eggs

140g caster sugar

1 1/2tsp vanilla extract

450ml soured cream

1. Preheat oven to gas 5/grease an 8inch-20cm tin.

2. Melt butter and add crushed digestives then press into the tin base, chill for 10 minutes to set.

3. Whiz cream cheese/eggs/100g of the sugar and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract until combined. Pour into tin and bake for 30 minutes or until set. Take out, cool but leave oven on.

4. Meanwhile, whizz soured cream with remaining sugar and vanilla, spoon over set cheesecake and bake for a further 10 minutes. Cool and then chill overnight.

Compote:

55g caster sugar

4tbsp water

250g blueberries (or preferred berries)

1tsp cornflour or arrowroot.

1. Combine all ingredients into a pan and heat gently letting the compote thicken. Cool and then spoon over chilled cheesecake when ready to serve.

Right I’m done for today! Ciao!

I think I’m going to keep an ongoing list of nibbles that I can create for this birthday party. I know I have a fair bit of time to do it all in and a quick google now has already thrown up these gems!

Ritz crackers spread with primula cheese

Cheese and pineapple on sticks

Egg and sausage plait

Avacado stuffed with prawns

(Though I’m going to adapt that to make little ice gem lettuce leaves stuffed with mashed avacado and prawns laid on top so it’s not fiddly to eat.)

mini hotdogs (is that 80’s?)

Cheetos from Walkers

Devilled eggs

Cheese straws

Club sandwiches

tinned fruit salad and evaporated milk! (Not a party food but funnily enough we had this a lot!)

mini hamburgers

Indian nibbles

Quiche

Vol-au- vonts

Also quite a lot of other food forums talk about how food was constantly served with parsley and that is so true! I just remember the curly stuff being put on everything you ate. Suffice to say I hate the bloody stuff!

Anyway, I’ll keep the list going though I doubt I’ll be making much of the above…

B x