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.

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.

White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies

 My essays have been handed in, a brand new pad of paper opened and the locations of my lectures have been ascertained.  On the wave of these triumphs I indulged in my first baking project of 2012.

I recently discovered something about myself which I had missed for years.  Occasionally the suggestion would spring to mind, but I would ignore it, not daring to believe it could be true.  However, I cannot lie to myself any longer: I love cranberries.  I love them with brie and bacon; I love them in those ‘Eat Natural’ bars with the light blue wrappers; I love them with chocolate.  What I do not like them in is juice, and it was this which put me off of trying them for so long.

 While I was perusing my recipe books over Christmas, dreaming of one day having time to put down a book and pick up a mixing bowl, one recipe kept catching my attention.  It was in The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days and was accompanied by a glossy picture of large, American-style white chocolate and cranberry cookies wrapped in ribbon.  The combination of chewy cookie, sweet white chocolate and strong, fruity cranberry suck in my mind and now, finally free from the clutches of deadlines, I decided to provoke some Christmas memories and try them out.

I do not have a very good record with cookies.  While I will happily play salmonella roulette and risk eating the mixture from the bowl (not something I would recommend, by the way), I am paranoid about exposing anyone else to this by giving them something which has been undercooked.  As such, my cookies are generally overdone and crunchy rather than golden and chewy.  However, I was determined that I would break this curse.

The dough turned out to be very thick; it resembled the cookie dough that is sold in tubes in America, which I decided was probably the right idea.  Following the recipe, I rolled it into large balls containing about two tablespoons of mixture each and put six on a tray with enough space to allow them to spread out.  Peering through the oven door ten minutes later, I saw that a miraculous change had occurred: they had all sunk into, well, cookie-shaped cookies!  The timer went and I took out the first batch.  Cue a dilemma: did they really need to go back in, or was I being paranoid?  I put them back in and waited, tensely. 

Despite an agonising few moments while they were cooling, in which they seemed to be flopping around in an undercooked mess, they hardened up and – a Christmas miracle – were chewy and gooey in all the right places.  The cranberries and chocolate were delicious, particularly caked in cookie goodness, and my housemates, who become endearingly childlike in the face of free cookies, were delighted.

With the cookie curse broken, the Christmas muse offering a final helping hand before December and the cranberry having claimed its rightful place in my affections, it seems that this is the start of a beautiful friendship and, hopefully, a bright baking year.

Christmas Cupcakes

While the majority of my Christmas holidays were taken up with present-buying, Articulate and essays, I found some time to make some cupcakes for Christmas Day.  I wanted to use flavours which taste essentially of Christmas, so I chose the Gingerbread flavoured ones I made for the course Christmas dinner and some original Chocolate Log cupcakes.

Gingerbread Cupcakes

I used the same recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days but for some reason the mixture did not smell quite as ‘Deck the Halls’ as before.  Fortunately, the Christmas muse managed to get me before I dyed the icing bright red; equally as fortunate, Tom’s mum gave me some Christmas-shaped sprinkles to decorate the cakes with, and my grandma gave me the toppers.  I have never used toppers on cupcakes; I think I am naturally drawn to decorations which are edible and preferably made almost entirely of sugar.  However, these looked sweet and were kind of a souvenir which allowed people to have a small reminder of their cake while eating it too.

Chocolate Log Cupcakes

While I doubt the wisdom of adding mint to chocolate and carrot to cake, I have a strong and unwavering belief that chocolate added to more chocolate can only lead to good things.  As such, chocolate logs rank very highly with me.  Originally I intended to make a full-sized and traditional chocolate log (the size of a full-sized standard cake, not a full-sized log) but it seemed somehow more inventive to try and reproduce that distinctive taste in a miniature form.  It was time to see if chocolate logs and cupcakes were a winning team.

For the actual cake I used the chocolate cupcake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days, as the vanilla cupcake recipe had worked so well in the mini birthday cakes.  While the cakes cooled off after baking, I mixed up the chocolate butter cream for the filling and the icing from the recipe in Love Food: The Cupcake.  I chose this particular book because the vanilla butter cream recipe produced beautiful, light icing and adding chocolate to this seemed like an exceptionally good idea.

Once the cakes were completely cool, I used a small, sharp knife to cut out a little well in the top of each cake.  Each hole had to be deep enough to contain a reasonable amount of filling, but not so deep that it went through the cake and made it split.  Once each had been filled, I replaced the part I had cut out and iced the cakes with a pallet knife.

I used the snowflake-shaped sprinkles to cover the cakes, as I thought the white looked nice on the brown.  I cut a chocolate Flake into sections about a centimetre long, dusted these with icing sugar and put them on the cake.  You may possibly be wondering why I did not dust the whole cake with icing sugar: I had already put the snowflakes on when the Christmas muse (here embodied by my mum) suggested this.  However, I still think they turned out rather nicely and tasted quite similar to the real thing, although next time I might try a solid chocolate topping.

The curse of the dessert struck again, and everyone was so full of potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, turkey and various other birds that no one could manage much dessert.  My granddad, dad and boyfriend managed a gingerbread one each, and my brother had a chocolate log.  Fortunately, Christmas is the best time of year to drag out celebrations, and over the next few days they were forced on various people in the spirit of good will.

Vanilla and Strawberry Cupcakes

Having iced the thirteen mini birthday cakes for Gramps, I had fourteen vanilla cupcakes left over.  I made some more butter cream icing using the recipe from Love Food: The Cupcake, adding three teaspoons of strawberry jam and mixing well.  I smoothed this onto the cakes and rolled out a small lump of fondant icing.  Using a small sharp knife I cut little hearts out of the fondant and stuck them gently on the cakes.  They still tasted light and fluffy even after a few days, and the butter cream and strawberry icing worked nicely.  Waste not want not, I suppose; you cannot have too much of some good things.

Mini Birthday Cakes

My next cake project was for my grandad’s eightieth birthday.  Birthday cakes for me have a very specific taste – soft vanilla sponge with a strawberry jam and buttercream filling and topped with beautifully sickly fondant icing.  I decided to try and emulate this specific taste in the miniature form of a cupcake.  Since birthdays are supposed to be extra happy days, I wanted to make them standout; with this in mind, I decided to try and make 3D icing balloons coming out of the cakes.

For the sponge, I used the vanilla cupcake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days.  For some reason the recipe uses double the amount of all the ingredients in the same bakery’s vanilla cupcake recipe in The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook while claiming to produce the same amount.  I decided to try out the new one and ended up with twenty seven, rather more than I needed for Gramps.  Luckily, Grandma was making dinner for everyone on Thursday, in two days time, so I put the rest safely away and kept thirteen to write ‘Happy Birthday’ on.  Despite a new oven, the cakes came out looking generally unscathed, although a few were a bit brown on top.  While they cooled, I got on with making the balloons.

I made three balloons in green, pink and blue, and four in yellow.  I washed thirteen coloured paperclips in washing up liquid, rinsing and drying them well before straightening them out.  I bent a curve into the middle of each one, with a straight bit at the top.  At the bottom I doubled the paperclip over to stop it toppling over once the balloon was on top.  To make the balloons I used small lumps of fondant icing dyed with food colouring.  I took a small lump of the coloured icing, a couple of centimetres in diameter, and rolled this into a ball.  For the knot of the balloon I took a small bit from the coloured icing and pushed it to form a point.  I stuck this under the balloon, pushing gently until it stuck on.  I put the balloon down on a clean surface to dry, as I would need to wait until I was at Gramps’ house to assemble them. 

Meanwhile the cakes had cooled so I added a teaspoon of strawberry jam to the top of each cake and smoothed it over.  Using butter cream icing from Love Food: The Cupcake I put this on top of the jam and smoothed it down with a spoon.  Although it got a bit mixed up with the jam, this did not really matter as the taste would be the same.  I rolled out white fondant icing and used a cookie cutter to cut wavy circles large enough to cover the top of each cupcake and gently put each one on top of the jam and butter cream.  I had initially wanted to spell out ‘Happy Birthday’ on the cakes in blue fondant icing, but I did not have any cutters and was running out of time.  Instead, I used spare butter cream to stick small blue circles in the centre of each cake, and went to Gramps’ to construct the cakes.

A few of the paperclips needed bending again to make them look more like balloon strings, and I think that the ‘Happy Birthday’ message would have looked better.  The idea did not quite work as I had hoped.  However, the vanilla sponges were very light, and were proclaimed by Mum to be ‘the best we’ve had yet’, which was a nice compliment.  They really tasted just like little birthday cakes, even if the balloons left me a little deflated.

Merry Christmas Gingerbread Cupcakes

As the Uni term drew to a rather early close, my course mates and I found ourselves so overwhelmed by festive cheer and goodwill that some kind of course Christmas fest seemed inevitable.  Sure enough, in stepped domestic goddess Sarah and the elf to her Mrs Santa, Olivia, and suggested a Christmas dinner.  Knowing that my cooking skills are limited, I thought the best I could offer would be a dessert.  For Christmas inspiration I turned to The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days, my new birthday book, and found Gingerbread cupcakes.  Although they sounded a bit strange, the prospect of two desserts in one was an offer I could not refuse and seemed in-keeping with Christmas generosity.  It is, after all, the thought that counts.

It turned out that these cupcakes require a lot of ingredients, including three types of spice, golden syrup and black treacle.  The kitchen smelt like a gingerbread house, which was delicious.  Once they had cooled, I mixed some cream cheese icing and waited for the Christmas muse to drop by and explain to me how to use the load of red, gold and silver edible glitter I had at my disposal.  I tried a few experiments, but the glitter was hard to control and I had no clear idea of what I was trying to do.  In the end, I mixed half of the gold into the icing and added a lot of red food dye.  Just as I set down the bottle of food dye and surveyed the 'happy red' icing, the Christmas muse suggested making snowy white snowman faces.  Sigh.  I carried on regardless, icing them with the red icing and my shiny new pallet knife (such an unappreciated tool unless one is without it), before melting some white chocolate and carefully spelling out ‘Merry Christmas’.  On closer inspection, the glitter had disappeared into the icing, suggesting that further work on the use of edible glitter may be a future project.  I put them on a tray and braved the cold and embarrassment of carrying a tray of cupcakes round the chilly streets.

Like fairies in a pantomime, Sarah and Olivia produced a delicious Christmas dinner, including four kinds of meat, homemade Yorkshire puddings (unheard of where I’m from), potato in three different forms and enough vegetables to supply a family of rabbits throughout the festive season.  With everyone full to bursting, it seemed that just as at my family birthday party the desserts would go unloved.  However, students are hungrier people than proper grown-ups, and gradually the cakes began to dwindle in numbers.  They did taste like gingerbread and the cream cheese and chocolate added a bit of sweetness.  Although the food colouring meant the icing was not as tasty as that which the Hummingbird recipe usually produces, it was not particularly noticeable.  I even managed to convince people to take them home, suggesting that the unusual combination of biscuit and cake was a success.

If you are looking for an original idea for a Christmas dessert, these work really well.  Just make sure you consult the Christmas muse about your decoration well in advance of adding any red food dye.