Marshmallow Butterscotch Biscuit Slices

Part biscuit, part butterscotch, plenty marshmallow and all delicious, these slices of heaven are hard to pigeonhole into one particular dessert category. I attempted these more as a bold attempt to try something new than because I thought they would actually work, although the sugar content alone was promising. Their picture in Cake Days by the Hummingbird Bakery had been staring at me tantalisingly since I first opened those magical pages, and one average day in February I finally decided to accept the challenge.

Let’s start with the bedrock supporting all that sugary joy. Actually, sugar plays an important role in the biscuit base, which contains plain flour, butter and icing sugar, rubbed together to form a dough. This is much easier to do if the butter is soft because you remembered to get it out of the fridge before you started. I did not. I’m not very good at getting butter to that optimum state that lies somewhere between solid enough to serve as some form of hammer and melted yellow pool. Microwaves, ovens and most recently radiators have all lured me into trusting them with my precious block of fatty goodness only to turn it into a mess and me into That Person who screams at kitchen appliances.  The moral of the story is, take the butter out of the fridge really far in advance, and never trust radiators with your food.

After that cautionary tale, we return to sugar, specifically the icing sugar in these biscuits. The Hummingbird Bakery has pulled off another genius move with this one. The fine, powdery texture of icing sugar leaves you with a biscuit that holds together neatly until you bite into it, when it just starts to crumble and release that delicate sweetness. You know when you open the bag of icing sugar, or try to mix it into butter, or even just look at a sealed box of the stuff, and it releases that puff that engulfs the room with a cloud of sugar? It’s like eating that, but without the choking and the coating of white dust that gets over everything, like ash from a particularly tasty volcano. It’s welldocumented that angels don’t bake and have too much self-control to eat dessert (and besides they’re contracted to Angel’s Delight and Philadelphia cheese), but if they did, they would be making and eating biscuits that taste like this.

If the concept of a crumbling, sweet biscuit layer has your mouth watering in a slightly undignified manner, consider the ingredients in this next part. The butterscotch is made of two types of sugar, golden syrup, butter, vanilla essence, crunchy peanut butter and double cream. Well, instead of cream I used soya milk, but with that much sugar there really wasn’t very much that could go wrong. Surprisingly, this theory held out throughout the rather intimidating process of getting the solution of sugars, golden syrup and water to the soft boil stage, which involves lots of bubbling, flooding of hobs, more bubbling, and tentative prodding of the angry-looking mixture.

I’d never made butterscotch before so I had no idea what to expect, although with that much sugar I assumed it would be tasty. Rather than over thinking it, I trusted the good book, performed a standard ritual dance and made a small sacrifice to the baking gods. They must have been on side because when it set, the bubbling, boiling mess had turned into smooth, edible, fall-apart-in-the-mouth butterscotch.

The really fun part of the process was testing to see if it was at soft-boil stage, which was a bit like being in a science lesson at school. The teacher tells you the probable outcome of an experiment and lets you get on with it. You hover over the chemicals, which look dubiously unreactive, and then, suddenly, everything bursts into life and there you are with a blaring fire alarm and a chunk of gold. Actually, in this case, you drop a tiny amount of the boiling mixture into a cup of cold water and watch in wonder as the little translucent bubbles the book so sincerely promised form before your very eyes.

The final aspects of this multilayered slice of joy were the marshmallows and nuts. The recipe recommended using 100g of marshmallows. I never thought that I would come out with the following statement, since it contradicts both the wise words of the Hummingbird Bakery and my own understanding of the world, but existential crises aside, that’s too many marshmallows. By the time I was through they looked like desperate pasty people jostling for space in the park on that one record-breaking hot day in summer. I will put marshmallows in any food going (except lasagne, that’s a crime) but these slices were just crying out for a health and safety inspector to declare them overfull.

Since the marshmallows were dominating the space, there wasn’t much room left for the peanuts. Any type of nut would have been fine but I only had these, and they are the friendliest members of the nut world. I managed to cajole and squeeze a few in, along with some dried cranberries for extra colour, but next time there will be a more equal distribution of ingredients. That being said, the marshmallows were the perfect texture for the butterscotch, since the warm mixture melted them slightly and gave them that just-off-the-bonfire chewiness even when the whole thing had been left to cool overnight. The nuts and cranberries added a bit of substance to the ethereal, sugary heaven, like that sensible but necessary voice that reminds you to eat the lettuce that comes with the cheeseburger and to zip up your pockets before you get on the rollercoaster.

If you’re looking for a challenge and mountain climbing seems like far too much effort, the butterscotch in this recipe requires attention but no spectacular skill level. Once you’ve got past that task, the taste of victory is sweet, melt-in-the-mouth, and devilishly divine.

Mothers Day Cupcakes

As much as I love traipsing around countless shops which have been plastered in pink and filled with scented candles, mum-friendly DVDs and chocolate, I decided that it would be more fun to bake my mum a present this year.  I decided on red velvet, as she had previously mentioned, in a slightly mystified way, that they seem to be really popular at the moment.  Normally, Mum is not one for food dye (blue food is a red flag in her eyes) so this seemed like a good opportunity to unleash my inner child on the rainbow while still making her happy.

I used the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook for both the cupcake sponge and the cream cheese icing.  I also used muffin cases because these recipes are for American-style cupcakes, which are traditionally larger than English cupcakes.  However, the recipe only made eleven of these, whereas using smaller cake cases would, obviously, leave you with more cakes.

While I always enjoy baking, this recipe was particularly intriguing for two reasons.  Adding the distinctly brown cocoa powder/ food dye paste and watching the mixture turn red was a bit like watching a low budget but fascinating magic show.  On a similar note, the combination of bicarbonate of soda and vinegar brought back memories of papier-mâché volcanoes and the time when science was still fun.  I was a bit worried that these two oddities would reveal my baking ignorance (I went a bit Quentin Tarantino with the red food dye) and ruin everything, meaning a last minute dash to a garden centre.  However, the cakes rose (thank you God of Baking) and were definitely red.

I used cream cheese icing to top the cake, as I liked how the two colours contrasted.  As flowers are a traditional Mothers Day gift, I decided to make roses like the ones from Erin’s Birthday Cake.  I bought ready-made fondant icing and used liquid food dye in yellow, green, blue and pink to dye lumps of it, and for the purple I mixed the blue and red in a separate bowl before adding it.  I found that the easiest way to spread the colour evenly was to divide about two tablespoons of fondant in half, carefully putting about five drops of colouring (for a really bright colour) in the middle and then folding the fondant in on itself until the colour was spread consistently with no marble effect.  If the fondant is too cold or is left out, it will go hard and crumbly; if it is too warm, it will be slippery and will fall apart.  By the time I got to the last few colours, the fondant had gone quite hard.  However, the food dye made it softer, but not so soft as to be disobedient.  To find out how to make the fondant roses, click here.  My top tip would be to keep the petals an equal size, and to make sure that they are not much taller than the thin strip, as this makes them look slightly disproportionate.

While the roses were still far inferior to those in the tutorial, I was really pleased with how these cakes turned out.  In fact, there may even have been a small jig and musical number involved, but that’s another story.  More important than my response or musical ability was Mum’s reaction; she loved them, which just goes to prove that it is the thought that counts.  While the cakes saved me from sore feet and hours of hunting through pink chocolate-flavoured scented candles, they also meant that I got to eat cake.  Although this was delicious, the sweeter treat was being able to give Mum my time and appreciation in tasty cake form.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sometimes, chocolate chip cookies are the only possible answer.  They are easy to make but eternally tempting, smell amazing in the oven and taste like luxury out of it.  The mixture is almost as delicious as the cooked product, as long as you don’t mind eating raw egg.  They are also wonderfully transportable, which is handy if you are spreading cookie goodness across the nation and so they need to survive a train journey.

I used The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook chocolate chip recipe, which leads to perfectly sized cookies (roughly the size of a small cat, if there was any doubt) that taste so distinctly like a piece of classic American baking that you almost need a very small Stars and Stripes and a baseball mitt to eat them.

Next time I will put more chocolate in (when my answer is not cookies, it is chocolate) but I finally found the correct cookie texture.  They may have survived the journey, but these cookies were anything but tough.  

Chocolate Whoopie Pies

Last weekend I braved not just scary ticket prices and the monotony of trains, but real, cold, wet snow to deliver whoopee pies to Cambridge.

I had been flicking through my recipe books, looking for something new which would travel well, when I found a recipe for some mysterious round treats called whoopie pies.  I had never made them, but with a name which doubles as an exclamation of joy, how could they go wrong; besides, they were chocolate.

It was a bit strange working with such a thick dough, and they came out looking almost dangerously large.  The Hummingbird Bakery recipe called for Marshmallow Fluff, which, for those not yet inducted into this particular American treat, is really just the sticky inside of marshmallow mushed up and put into a jar.  It is not exactly widely available, so instead I made a white chocolate ganache to stick the two domed halves together.

My whoopie pies were something of a surprise, since I was expecting something resembling a macaroon but found it was more like sponge cake.  Chocolate sponge cake.  Two domes of thick chocolate sponge cake stuck together with white chocolate ganache.  They may not have looked quite as smooth as the ones in the book, but they were tasty.  I was informed that they needed more ganache, which I can only agree with.  I would also have made them smaller, as I feel they may have overwhelmed those of a less chocolate-loving inclination.

Having survived their frosty journey, the whoopie pies found a warm reception.  While I did not hear any shouts of joy, I am hopeful that this was because people were happily munching on cake-based goodness.

Eerily Endearing Halloween Ghost Cupcakes

Although the main focus of Halloween is the important task of warding off evil spirits, we all know that its real purpose is to dress up and eat silly amounts of sweets.  And biscuits.  And, of course, cakes.  I had a real trick up my sleeve for this year, thanks to my shiny new cupcake book; super spooky, frighteningly fearsome, eerily enticing ghost cupcakes!

I used the Hummingbird Bakery’s chocolate cupcake recipe, purely because this makes the richest and most mouthwateringly moist cupcakes known to man.  In order to make six ghosts, I made twelve large cupcakes and five smaller ones; this slightly strange numbering came about because, despite my pleading and coaxing, the mixture stubbornly refused to make one more small cupcake.  While I waited for them to cool down completely, I mixed up a quarter of the usual amount of the Hummingbird Bakery’s vanilla icing, adding a few drops of green food colouring for a Halloween effect. 

Then came the construction.  Using one of the large cupcakes that had behaved itself and stayed in its case, I smoothed a layer of icing thick enough to act as glue on the top.  After taking one of the naughtier large cupcakes out of its wrapper, I placed this upside down on the icing.  I put another layer of icing on the upside down cupcake and placed small cupcake, also upside down, on the top.  I then cut a small slice from my block of readymade fondant icing and rolled it out between two sheets of clingfilm until it vaguely resembled a sheet.  Although my Love Food: The Cupcake book suggested smearing icing all over the tower of chocolate cake goodness, I felt this was a bit risky, so I draped the sheet over the tower, and pinched it together slightly to give it more shape.  Using melted chocolate, I carefully drew two eyes and a wiggly mouth on each sheet.

The ghosts did not look particularly scary, but then again it is quite difficult to make something formed mostly of sugar and chocolate look more blood curdling than cuddly.  They were not perfect; a few people thought that the mouths were moustaches, and some of them – the cakes – were rather oddly-shaped.  Still, they were sweet spectres, and devilishly tasty at that.

Pink Cupcakes for the Blues

With the weekend’s chocolate chip muffins reduced to a few crumbs and an extra layer of insulation, a long and cake-less day loomed before me.  In the four and a half hour gap between lectures, I had to cram in writing an article, reading the text for the lecture, making and eating lunch and some mindless procrastination. Time was not on my side, but my need for cake overpowered my ability to think clearly. I scavenged through my fridge and baking box and found that I had the ingredients for The Hummingbird Bakery’s mouth-wateringly sweet vanilla cupcakes.

I also found a new toy, purchased on Friday and yet to be unleashed on unsuspecting cakes: food colouring.  Bright pink and bright blue kid-in-a-candy-store food colouring.  The bottle, rather handily, came with a sensible lid which allowed only one drop at a time to prevent any pink and blue colour explosions happening.  I mixed six drops of hot pink colouring with the mixture, paused, and added some more.  I was determined that this time these cakes would be undeniably, definitely and positively pink inside.

The picture does not do the pinkness justice; the colour would have made a Barbie convention look shamefully pasty.  The colour did, however, cause a bit of confusion; on biting into it, one found oneself  thinking two things: ‘Mmm, vanilla’ and ‘Why is this cake pink but does not taste like strawberry?’ I like the colour; it was girly and fun just as I had planned. Next time, however, I think I will go for a strawberry-flavoured pink cake, because sometimes expectations are too ingrained and sensible to deny.

The other colourful fun was the blue icing. This did not go quite to plan. It is difficult to mix icing sugar in a bowl without covering the kitchen in a thin but persistent coating of fine, snow-like sweetness, which is tasty and decorative but not universally appreciated. As such, the butter and sugar were not blended as well as they should have been. Also, I threw milk in without checking the amount, because sometimes when you are making icing, your rebellious spirit kicks in and tells you ‘to hell with this need for exactness’. Turns out that although the rebellious spirit knows how to make delicious blue goo, it does not know how to make icing which is not incredibly runny when piped. The piping itself needs work, but the addition of a special pink (purple) Smartie hid this rather well, or at least distracted from it.

Sadly the cakes were not finished in time for me to take them to my last lectures. I had to make do with a massive, overpriced blueberry muffin.  However, I am pleased with the way these turned out; sweet, fun and topped with a special Smartie, they appeal to the inner child that sometimes need appeasing with cake, chocolate and confusing food colouring.

Triple Chocolate Flake Cupcakes

A bizarre and slightly alarming habit has formed with me since I have taken up baking.  I have found myself buying books.  This in itself is not a personal revolution; as an English and American Literature student, it is a positively encouraged personal trait.  The new and unusual part of this phenomena is that they are baking books.  Where once I perused the fiction section for hours, I now find myself devouring cookbooks before I go to sleep.  I wake up surrounded by books about doughnuts and sponges.  The latest addition to my growing collection is dedicated solely to the delicate and widely variable treats that are cupcakes.

The first recipe I tried was a chocolate cupcake with a melted chocolate centre.  I felt this reflected my motto that adding chocolate to chocolate can never be a bad thing, and, also, I like chocolate.  Instead of using the plain chocolate suggested by the recipe, however, I chopped up a Cadbury’s flake and scattered the crumbs on top of the Hummingbird Bakery’s chocolate icing.

So far so good.  As it turned out, there was only one problem; the chocolate didn’t melt.  Or rather, it may have done, but because I was desperate to ice the cakes I let them cool down and the chocolate solidify.  The mixture also did not quite spread to the recipe’s eight, and I ended up with six instead.  As it happened this was perfect, leaving one cupcake for everyone and enough fridge space for everyone else.  The piping of the icing did not go quite as smoothly as I had envisioned, despite the useful tips in my new book.

Although my basic chocolate logic was correct, the application was problematic. However, this book has proved to be a lovely addition and a source of inspiration for a few upcoming cupcake escapades.

White Chocolate and Strawberry Jam Muffins

I’m told that it is socially acceptable to eat muffins for breakfast, even if they contain very breakfast-unfriendly things.  My love for chocolate is well-documented, and while I approve of chocolate mixed into breakfast things – Coco Pops, Nutella, Coco Pops Munchers – I cannot reconcile lumps of it for breakfast.  However, I decided to put my personal feelings aside and make something that people could eat at breakfast, lunch or dinner.  Or even brunch.  So I settled on muffins; but what kind?  Chocolate seemed obvious (at least to me) and something healthy.  OK, so jam is not that healthy, but it contains fruit and gives lovely gooey centre.

I used the Hummingbird bakery’s recipe for blueberry muffins, then mixed in about half a jar of jam and folded in 200g of chopped up white chocolate.  I spooned the mixture into cases then added a teaspoonful of jam to each one, and popped them in the oven.

They did taste of strawberry jam, so that much was a success.  The problem was that the jam and chocolate chunks sunk to the bottom of the muffins and stubbornly remained there while the rest of the cake obediently left the case.  In fairness, a combination of jam and chocolate doesn’t taste bad, but a combination of jam, chocolate and cake tastes better.  Next time, I will add the jam after the cakes have cooked, in order to guarantee gooey goodness at the centre.  

So they were a miss in terms of the ingredients staying in the cake, but the flavours worked well, turning it into something a bit like a glorified jam sandwich.  And they’re socially acceptable at whatever time of day; right?

Clown Cake

Originally this was supposed to be Brooklyn Blackout Cake.  You know, that chocolate cake coated in crumbs with the dark, seductive chocolate custard peeking through?  Clearly I was aiming for a broody classic; also quite clearly, it didn’t quite end up like that.  A brief warning: if this is the first post you’ve seen, I would just like to apologise for the poor welcome, and promise that this is the messiest cake on the site (even including the Mississippi Mud Pie.  No, that was definitely worse.)

The recipe for the icing used corn flour, and as this was a spontaneous outburst of cake making I thought that running out to Tesco would ruin my creative flow.  In other words, I didn’t fancy going out in the rain.  Besides this was the first time in a while that I was making a cake that had no specific recipients; I only had to please myself, and that meant that Mum wasn’t there to protest against bright colours.  As such I turned into a child and covered the whole thing with yellow vanilla icing and pink stripes.  I made the vanilla icing with the Hummingbird recipe, but I have to confess that I cheated with the pink.  Tom’s mum, knowing that I love pink and I love baking, bought me some pink ready-made icing.  And I hadn’t used it: until today.  Gone was my enticing chocolate vision, replaced with a colourful, fun-filled mess.  I based the colours on those Party Ring biscuits that appeared at every party you went to when you were about seven, the ones that scream ‘EAT ME BECAUSE I’M FUN!’  It looks like a seven year old decorated it; I’m willing to claim that this was the intention.

The layers of chocolate cake came out moist and crumbly, and they tasted better than I had thought they would with the vanilla icing.  There are supposed to be three layers to this cake; I was using 21cm tins instead of the recipe’s 20cm, and the mixture didn’t spread as far as I thought it would.  This didn’t make too much difference, although it would have looked cooler.

So the piping needs work and the yellow is a bit anaemic; it tasted good and my inner child was delighted.

Maltesers Cupcakes

As I mentioned in my previous post, I made two lots of cakes this week.  Coconut is a rather divisive subject in my family; much like marzipan, carrots and those little green gherkins in McDonald’s burgers, everyone has strong views on it.  In order to please everyone, I decided to give them two options.  I had been itching to try the coconut cakes, but I didn’t want the poor, deluded coconut haters to feel neglected.  With this in mind, I decided to take something tasty – the classic chocolate cupcake – and mix it with another treat; the long-term snack-time favourites that are the mighty Maltesers

In truth, I was in a bit of puzzle over which flavour base would fully show off that taste which is unique to Maltesers.  I initially thought of vanilla, which would give them a chance to show off their chocolate malty flavour, but in the end I decided that the only flavour which can truly support chocolate is chocolate.  With this in mind, I used the Hummingbird bakery’s Hazelnut and Chocolate Cupcakes recipe to create the chocolate base, but instead of adding Nutella to the middle, I blended about 110g of Maltesers until they were roughly the size of chocolate chips and folded them in just before spooning the mixture into cases.  I also mixed half a teaspoon of vanilla essence with the milk, just for a bit of extra Maltesers flavour.

The results were interesting.  I was imagining crunchy little lumps of Maltesers.  In reality, the chocolate and malt melted in the mixture.  While this was not quite what I was aiming for, it did give them quite a unique taste.  The icing, again from the every trustworthy Hummingbird bakery, was just more chocolate, which my inner child tells me can only be a good thing.  Next time I would probably add a white chocolate swirl to the top of the icing, just for a contrast, but I think these successfully promise the Maltesers feast they were created to be.  

Don't like coconut?  It's not your fault.  These chocolate treats will unite both nutters and notters; just don't let us eat them all.

Coconutters Cupcakes

As everyone is uncomfortably aware, September has well and truly shoved what is known as summer out of the way in order to drench us all with rain, chill us to the bone and then promptly blow us away.  In order to inject some last summer joy into proceedings, I went with the Hummingbird bakery’s coconut-flavoured cupcakes this week.  It perhaps says something about the English summer that to remind everyone of sunshine, I chose a fruit which cannot grow in England.

This week, Tom and I decided to be adventurous; rather than use coconut milk from a tin, we bought two real live furry coconuts and proceeded to dismantle them with nothing but our determination, wits and bare hands.  Well, sort of.  We had to use YouTube to look up the proper way to make holes in the coconut and how to break it in two (see the links at the bottom of the post), which is actually disappointingly simple.  The recipe called for 120ml of coconut milk, which we got out of one coconut, with a little extra left over.  The other one is sitting rather nervously by the sink, having watched its friend being stabbed through the eyes with a screwdriver, drained of its milk and then hammered until it split into two and had its innards gouged out.  I ended up using all the milk, as the mixture didn’t really taste particularly coconutty, but even this didn’t give it much flavour.  Elsewhere in The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook there is a recipe for a large coconut cake, which explains how to grate coconut.  I cooked the two halves at 170 degrees for fifteen minutes, then spent ages attempting to grate the flesh.  In the end I gave up on the adventurous way, and used desiccated coconut from a bag.  The cakes didn’t taste overwhelmingly of coconut, but at least the desiccated coconut gave it the familiar texture.

For the topping I used, predictably, the Hummingbird bakery’s chocolate icing and more desiccated coconut.  When I had thought about which flavour to go for, I remembered Bounty bars, which was probably the first food I ate which contained coconut, and opted for chocolate.  The recipe calls for a lot of icing sugar; 300g for one batch of twelve cakes.  As I was making two loads of cakes (see the Maltesers Cupcakes) I thought I would be stingy and make one and three quarters worth of the icing to divide between both.  I started with three quarters of the original recipe, and this spread to enough for both batches of cakes.  I love their icings; this one had a lip-lickingly delicious chocolate taste, which worked well with the understated sweetness of the cakes. 

These cakes turned out to be somewhat lacking in the summery coconut punch I wanted, a bit like the weather.  Next time I will leave the coconut, screwdriver and hammer to one side, and use tinned coconut milk instead.  (Tin openers are quite adventurous, aren’t they?  The way you pull them apart, that confident, scissor-action, could almost be reminiscent of a Swiss Army knife, plus you have to avoid cutting your fingers on the edge of the lid when you throw it away.)  The desiccated coconut did give the cakes texture, and they were nice and light.  The chocolate worked well with the flavouring, and I quite like the colours together.  The original recipe used pineapple rings, which maybe would have given it more flavour, but that’s an exotic twist for another time.

If you fancy a glimpse of summer, these cakes will add a ray of sunshine to a gloomy day; just don’t get too adventurous.

If you still want to live on the edge and use milk straight from the coconut, find out how to drain a coconut here, on a website with the most self-explanatory domain name ever.

If having drained the coconut you want to break it in half and eat its insides (or clap the two halves together to make horse sounds), find out how to do this here.

I Love Pecan Pie

After the Mississippi Mud Pie mayhem, I was determined not to give up on my vision of presenting a perfectly turned out, mouth-wateringly delicious, dive-right-into it pie.  With this goal in mind, I embarked on another of the Hummingbird recipes: the mighty Pecan Pie.

The course of true pie love never did run smooth, and neither would the first batch of pastry.  Once that had been thrown (with feeling) into the bin, the next batch came out fine.  The recipe tells you to use a blender to mix the pastry, but as I don’t have one, I used a combination of a handheld blender and a handheld mixer.  For the first pastry, I used my hands to mix it together, which it didn’t like; it went very crumbly and wouldn’t stay in one piece long enough to roll.  I also put it to rest in the fridge, which the recipe didn’t mention specifically.  The second batch, treated with more patience, worked a lot better, although it still refused to roll out far enough to properly cover the (now correctly sized) pie dish.  Saying that, I did have enough left to offer some decoration, as primitive as this was.  I wanted to do a Stars and Stripes design, but there wasn’t enough, so instead I thought I would go for simplicity and give it a heart.  It also reminds me of The Pie Song from the film Waitress (if you love pie, this film was made for you), which mentions ‘a pie with a heart in the middle’.

After the trauma of the pastry, the filling felt pretty easy, although I would offer this advice; do not check if recently boiled sugar and syrup is hot or warm by tasting a teaspoon of it.  It will hurt your tongue.  And you will feel very stupid.  Another problem I had with the filling was that my endlessly helpful boyfriend, Tom, and I searched high and low for corn syrup, including a Tesco so large it was frightening, and we couldn’t find any.  OK, so not high and low – we didn’t go to America – but in the end we just used golden syrup, and it worked fine.

While I was rolling the second lot of pastry, Tom, who has helped me through many dessert catastrophes, looked at it and promptly reminded me of the pie in the Lurpak advert; the man makes a really ugly but tasty-looking pie.  I was offended, initially.  I had high hopes for this pie – it would look exactly like the picture (well, except for the decorative pecan halves), it would unleash a taste of the divine, and would generally be considered to be The Father Of All Pies.  Having rolled, filled, cooked and eaten it, I have concluded that this was, perhaps, optimistic, particularly in light of the aforementioned Great Mississippi Mud Pie Mayhem.  Instead, I have decided now, that the homemade quality is its appealing feature.  It may not look piefect, but it tasted pietty good on the inside, and that is what counts.

Listen to 'Baby Don't You Cry (The Pie Song)' by Quincy Coleman and Andrew Hollander here.

Watch the Lurpak advert here.

Cuppa Cakes

No dinner at Grandma’s this week, as she is sunning herself on holiday in Slovenia, but I persevered with trying to make a Mississippi Mud Pie from my brand new copy of The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook.  Suffice to say it looked nothing like the picture (and that when they tell you to use a 23cm pie tin, do not assume that a 26.5cm one will work just as well).  Spurred on by this failure, and my weekly dose of The Great British Bake Off, to bake more, I decided to try something I had been thinking about for a few weeks, and which had a superb chance of not working.  If you are English and like to adhere to stereotypes, what is the best companion for a cupcake?  A cup of tea of course; the two were made to go together.  With that in mind, I decided to try a cupcake flavoured with good, old fashioned everyday English tea.

I had seen a recipe for green tea cupcakes in The Hummingbird Bakery: cupcakes and muffins, which used three tea bags brewed in milk overnight.  I didn’t have the time (or, admittedly, the patience) for this.  I put three tea bags in about 100ml of hot water, added about 20ml of milk, and left it to brew while I mixed the rest of the ingredients.  I took the vanilla cupcake recipe from the ever trusty Tarek Malouf and the Hummingbird bakers, but when it said to add 60ml of milk I added 45ml and mixed.  I whisked the egg and vanilla extract into the tea, then added this to the rest of the ingredients as instructed.  Once they had cooked and cooled, I used the Hummingbird Bakery vanilla icing, topped off with half of a mini chocolate digestive being ‘dunked’ into the tea.

I was a bit apprehensive about how these would work out, but they actually tasted quite good (at least in my very biased opinion).  When I make them next, I will probably use the same number of tea bags but less water, as they ended up being a bit too moist.  Are tea and cupcakes a match made in heaven?  My tea-hating boyfriend assures me that he likes them, but I’m not sure if that means they were not quite flavoured enough, or that they were just right.

The jury is still out, so I may have to test them on Grandma’s unwitting guests next week.  If nothing else, they will be a very English-tasting treat to welcome her home.

P.S. This is why I decided not to write about the Mississippi Mud Pie:

Next time I will aim for something that looks like a less literal interpretation of its name.  However, while it may look like something from Mary Berry's nightmares, the large amount of chocolate and cream drowned out the pastry and it actually tasted quite good.  Good old chocolate: I knew you wouldn't let me down.

Pink Vanilla Cupcakes

My sister's university friend is visiting and I thought cupcakes would be a nice welcome.  Rather than do something unusual which she might not like, I decided to keep it simple and opted for vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing, both from The Hummingbird Bakery: cupcakes and muffins, by Tarek Malouf and the Hummingbird Bakers.

  However, on further thoughts, cakes made entirely of vanilla, the cake equivalent of whitewash, seemed a bit dull.  Rather than change the taste, I gradually added a few drops of red food dye to the cake mix.  I don't know about other people. but my mum has 'issues' with rightly coloured food (she claims it is a natural response as these are associated with poison, but I think is an excuse for being fussy).  As such, it may be worth not dying your cakes, say, bright blue, unless you are sure you will be feeding more broad-minded people.  I didn't put too much in, and only added it very gradually, until the mixture was pink.  It is not entirely clear in the pictures, but the inside of the cakes are very light pink.  I would probably have wanted it a stronger pink, but they look pretty in real life and at least my mum was happy.

Although they can be used to good effect, I don't really like using hundreds and thousands because they remind me of when, as a child, I would bury bowls of ice cream and tiny fairy cakes in them.  While at the time I probably appreciated this, I want to move on to more sophisticated decorating methods.  So I covered these in pink sparkles.  In the name of colour co-ordination, of course.

For a sparkly, girly treat, you can't go far wrong with sweet pink vanilla sponge and a glittery sugar topping.

Oreo Cupcakes

I felt like making something simple but with a classic, tasty twist, and what better than taking chocolate and adding more chocolate?  I chopped about eight Oreos into chocolate chip-sized chunks, and added these to the Hummingbird Bakery chocolate cupcake recipe by folding them in at the end.  I saved the inevitable crumbs the Oreos made on the chopping board, and dusted them over the Hummingbird Bakery’s vanilla icing.  There weren't quite enough, so I put two more Oreos into a small freezer bag and smashed them up with a wooden spoon, before topping each of the cupcakes with a mini Oreo.

The moist texture of the sponge was quite similar to that of the Oreos in the cake, which may not appeal to everyone.  However, chocolate cookie added to more chocolate can, in my book, only be a good thing.  Even my dessert-hating dad managed two in a row, so they can’t be that bad!

A mouth-watering treat for chocolate fans, these cupcakes are easy to decorate and sure to satisfy a sweet tooth.

Cappucino Cupcakes

Possibly in homage to my days as a waitress/barista, I wanted to make these coffee-flavoured cupcakes resemble little cappuccinos.  I used the coffee sponge recipe from Bake me I’m yours... cupcake by Joan and Graham Belgrove, and the cream cheese icing from The Hummingbird Bakery: cupcakes and muffins by Tarek Malouf and the Hummingbird Bakers, topped off with a dusting of sieved cocoa powder.  For a different effect, I cut a heart-shape into a piece of paper, held this over the cake so it was not touching the icing, while my dad sieved the cocoa powder through this to make a heart.

You can tell from the picture that icing was still slightly runny, although I think this makes them look tastier, in a home-made way.  I put less coffee in than the recipe said, so while mine still had a coffee flavour I suggest following the amount they tell you to use, unless you only want a hint of coffee.  Also, don’t go to o mad with the cocoa powder, as it can get caught on your throat!

These turned out pretty well, and with a few adjustments would make a nice treat to accompany a cup of coffee and a good book.

Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

I made these a while ago in July using the Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcake recipe from Tarek Malouf and the Hummingbird Bakers.  They have the delicious cream cheese icing and suggested topping of digestive biscuits from the same book, and I added quartered strawberries to finish.  Perfect to munch on while watching the tennis, they have strawberries in the bottom which gives the rest of the cake a lovely strawberry flavour.

The recipe tells you to use 200g of digestive biscuits for decoration - nearly all of a small packet.  I wouldn't recommend this, as even with generous toppings we were left with half a freezer bag of biscuit crumbs.  I would suggest that you start with only one or two biscuits, and break more up if you need them, which is common sense anyway.

These were a great hit with the family (I've been asked to make them again a couple of times) and I would recommend the recipe to any strawberry lovers out there looking for a taste of summer.