| by Bel | 


Katya made these delicious looking (and tasting!) rainbow decorated cupcakes this afternoon.

And then Bluejay decided she would share mine with me.

(Yes this is me with my uggs-wearing feet up in front of the fire)

You have not laughed at your cat being ridiculous until you have laughed at your cat being ridiculous with blue icing all over her whiskers.

| by Lou | 4.10pm UK time |

Oh, hello blog. Sorry. We've been neglecting you. Um, how about some home baking to get things pumping again?

Earlier this year I had a wonderous Jaffa Tart in a restaurant in Te Anau and have been looking for an opportunity to make one myself. With a bag of jaffas sitting in my kitchen and my gentleman friend coming to stay it seemed the perfect excuse... but... there seems to be no recipe for a Kiwi Jaffa Tart on the internet.

Allow me to provide one, with credit to Mary Berry and Willie for the base and filling respectively.

I made two mini tarts, so double the recipe if you are making a big one.

Kiwi Jaffa Tart

Pastry:
85g flour
50g butter
1 tbsp icing sugar
Half an egg yolk
Half a tbsp cold water

Cut the cold butter into tiny cubes and rub through the flour (or use a food mixer if you have one). Rub through the icing sugar, then add the egg yolk and cold water. Use your hands to mix it into a nice consistent lump of dough and stick it in the fridge for half an hour.

Tip from Mary: Lay baking paper over your bench surface before the roll out phase - it's sooo much easier for clean up. Grease the tart tin's base and sprinkle with flour, then roll the dough out so that it exceeds the edges of the tin base by about an inch (or more if making one big one with higher sides).


Fold the sides in and delicately place it into the tin, then fold the sides back up and press them into the (greased) tin sides. There will be surplus hanging over the edge which Mary would leave, but as mine fell off the tin into the bottom of the oven and nearly set my kitchen on fire (leading to me burning my arm and the pastry in the panic...), I would actually recommend cutting the surplus edges off. Also check there isn't surplus flour on the bottom of the tin.

Cover with tin foil and weigh with baking beans (or actual little stones, or I used rice), and bake for 15 mins at 200C. Remove the foil and baking beans, then cook for a further 10 mins or so until it is dry.



Filling:
90g very dark chocolate (I used 85%)
25g butter
35g castor sugar
90ml maple syrup
1 and a half eggs (use the rest of the egg from the pastry for the half)

Chop the chocolate finely and melt with the butter over boiling water. Gently heat the syrup and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Whisk the eggs and then combine all three.

Great British Bake-Off tip: put the bases into the oven and then pour the filling in from a jug. It avoids spilling as you transfer from bench to oven.

Bake 10-15 minutes until it is firm.

The Kiwi Bit:
Crush a whole load of jaffas. This is not as easy as it sounds - I used a rolling pin and still found them to be ridiculously resiliant.

Sprinkle the crushed jaffas (or just halved, as the photo shows many of mine to have been) over the tart. I did it while it was still very hot so that the jaffas melted a tiny wee bit, helping them to adhere.

Once everything has cooled remove the tart from the tin, and voila:

Posted by Lou. The time is 9:00am here in London UK.

Tell us about some recent baking expeditions

I've decided that today's actual topic is lame, so am instead catching up on my baking posts, including an accident involving too much baking soda and a Chocolate Guinness Cake (recipe from Nigella), and a happy experiment making Cookie Monster Cupcakes (no recipe).

Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake

Nigella is one of my fave chefs as she is a woman who appreciates the importance of indulgence being indulgence - none of this "low-fat" and "sugar-free" guff when it comes to making decadent cakes and desserts. I've been wanting to make her Chocolate Guinness Cake for a while, so used Cara's 30th Birthday as my excuse.

Basically it is a very dense chocolate cake containing Guinness. The Guinness makes it a very dark brown which, when topped by cream cheese icing, gives a visual nod to a pint of Guinness.



But I made probably the worst amateur error of my baking life - I mistook teaspoons as tablespoons. In relation to baking soda. The worst possible accident to make. BUT I fixed it! Luckily I had no yet put the cake mixture into the cake tin when I realised (I had tasted the raw mixture as a last-minute check, and knew instantly what I had done), so was able to fly into recovery mode.

I quickly figured out how much extra mixture I could make based on my ingredient stock. Butter was my item in lowest supply, so I took the maximum amount of butter available to me and adapting all the other ingredients to match the correct ratios, and created a batch of mixture minus baking soda. At this point I should have taken out as much of the faulted mixture as I had replacement for, but I didn't think of that till later on. Instead I added my baking-soda-less mixture and hoped it would diffuse the mistake enough to cover the taste. Luckily it worked and the cake tasted fine.

Feeling quite happy with the result I bunged on some candles and carried it up the street and round the corner to Cara's flat. Colleen and I then completed the fun by giggling to ourselves outside her front door as we tried to light the candles. When we finally knocked Cara opened the door upon a surprise visit of two friends and a lit Guinness Cake.




Cookie Monster Cupcakes

A while ago I saw a photo of some Cookie Monster Cupcakes and of course instantly fell in love and felt the over-whelming need to make them. There is no recipe available that I was able to find, which is great as it leaves it open to creative license.

For the eyes I held milk chocolate chips against the fresh-out-of-the-oven muffin tray to get the base melting a tiny bit, then pressed them on to white chocolate buttons to create a variety of expressions:



I used a basic chocolate chip muffin recipe for the cupcake base, and then cut the tops off to create a flatter surface on which to put the faces:


The icing was chosen for taste (cream cheese - my fave!), but turned out not to be best for appearance. I had wanted to be able to create a more textured top (like the Cookie Monster's fur) and I think in retrospect butter cream icing would have worked better. But they turned out fine and ohmygod tasted delicious! (if I do say so myself...)

Posted by Lou. The time is 9.35pm here in London UK.

This past weekend I had the good fortune of sharing afternoon tea with two wonderful ladies in a gorgeous backyard on one of the sunniest most beautiful days I have seen in London.

We shared out a course each with Heidi providing sandwiches, Kelly (our host) the baked course, and me sweet treats. I decided to keep it simple and make two different sets of mini tarts, going for citrus and chocolate (which, of course, between them are the cornerstone of my cooking life!).

My first set of tarts were bitter chocolate meringue, which consisted of a basic biscuit base (approx 100g crushed digestives per 25g melted butter, mixed till they hold form when squeezed in your fist) with a dash of cocoa added, with an extraordinarily simple filling of 70% chocolate melted (200g) with cream (1/2 cup).

After they have been left in the fridge to set for a while, chuck on meringue (4 egg whites beaten till stiff with approx 220g castor sugar gradually added), and cook for 15 mins/ until golden.

Lemon in the ramekins on the left, bitter chocolate in the

silicon muffin cases on the right (not that you can tell the difference)

Second was lemon meringue, with the same base as above minus the cocoa, and a filling of lemon curd (I use Delia's simple recipe), meringue chucked on top. Conveniently, by the time you've made the lemon curd the bitter chocolate filling will be chilled so they can go into the oven together (if you happen to be making both!).

The added bonus was that with leftover egg white you can make some (flat, in my case) meringues as an extra treat!

I perhaps went a little bit too not-mini on the size as after eating Heidi's delicious cucumber and bellpepper cream-cheese sandwiches over a cup of tea, followed by Kelly's perfect scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream over a couple of glasses of bubbly, we were feeling a bit too full for the whole sweet delight. But managed to get it down in the end, of course.

Please note the awesome doily tray Kelly scored for £1 in a local store

Posted by Lou. The time is 11.00am here in London UK.

This recipe was a win. I shall be using it for all future occasions that call for Key Lime Pie. However I am yet to figure out how to get a slice of pie out of a pie dish without it looking like shit afterwards. Thus even though I took a photo of a piece, I'm not posting it as it doesn't do the pie justice. But the pie tasted good, and that's the most important thing.

Posted by Lou. The time is 1.30pm here in London UK.

Raspberry Cheesecake Chocolate Brownie Cake

I had a big cake success this week after following Michelle's lead and turning raspberry cheesecake chocolate brownies into a cake. The recipe is one she has lying around at home generically printed on a plain white piece of paper that gives away nothing of its original, but after a bit of googling I have traced it to this Nigella speciality. Basically you just do it all the same except shove it into a loose-bottomed cake tin instead of a brownie tray (and please do remember to swirl - the swirl is very important). And - the key thing that she and I always forget - cook it for significantly longer than what the recipe says.

I made mine before heading off to the tennis on Monday, and despite leaving an extra 15 mins cooking time it was still a bit raw in the centre when I had to leave for my date with Federer. I left it in the (switched off) oven to hopefully cook a little more, then panicked all my way to Wimbledon that I was creating a disaster by letting it dry out. Thankfully the cheesecake component stopped it drying out, and the slightly-under-cooked nature of the brownie part just made it fudgier. I had also been concerned about the appearance at it developed a few crevasses, but my colleagues insisted it looked amazing and with one accusing me of buying it from a shop and passing it off as my own I guess I can believe them.

I was too embarrassed by the appearance to take a photo,

but here is one of cheesecake brownies to give you an idea of the potential.

And if you like could imitate the orgasmic sounds emitting from the dozen or so people enjoying a piece next time I see you. Thinking about their reaction in conjunction with the fact that Michelle won a cake competition at her work with it last year, I would say that of all the things I have ever made this is the one that is guaranteed to dazzle and delight so give it a go sometime! (They are, of course, also excellent in their intended state as brownies.)

******

Willie's Cloud Forest Chocolate Cake

Willie is a British chef who moved to Venezuela and bought a cacao plantation, which led to a business producing boutique 100% chocolate. (website here) He then had a Channel 4 series going behind the scenes of cacao production, featuring his recipes for food made using the pure cacao, both savoury and sweet. Kelly gave me his book and so - using Lindt's 90% dark chocolate as the closest alternative available at my supermarket - I've been trying a few of them out and this "Cloud Forest" chocolate cake has become a staple.

A slight twist that came through one of my serendipitous baking mishaps, was when I omitted the almonds, not quite realising that they were taking the role of flour, and was left with the most amazingly gooey cake ever. Not recommended if there is an emphasis on presentation and being able to eat it tidying, but definitely recommended for a messy treat at home.

******

Key Lime Pie - part 1

Whilst in Miami over New Year's, Di and I launched into the quest to find good key lime pie. Unfortunately the only really good one we did come across was at a bar one night after I'd eaten so much for dinner I didn't order one and had to be contented with one delicious forkful of hers. I decided to make some in the weekend in preparation for Di's upcoming 30th birthday celebrations (have to get some practise in to find the best recipe, you see), and used this simple recipe from the BBC Good Food website. Unfortunately I didn't think about it too much in advance, but in retrospect I should have gone with something more like this recipe from the Hairy Bikers as there is one key difference that is very important to me: one type of key lime pie has a creamier and larger filling (which is what I made), while the other is a thinner layer of a more tarty filling, with cream on top (which is very much my preferred version - in fact, I don't like much cream with it at all).

This is what my ideal key lime pie would look like - no artificial colouring,

focus is the citrus filling, and just a little bit of cream.

The pie was okay - luckily I had bought an extra lime or two as our local grocer turned out to have sold me expensive and too dry limes grr so it wasn't quite as citrus as I wanted it to be, but it was a very quick and easy recipe. Luckily I'd only made half though (in a loaf tin using a lining of greased baking paper to easily pull it out and leave me with a rectangular shaped pie) as I don't think I wouldn't have wanted to eat another full serving. So I'm going to call this part 1 with further experimentations to follow - anyone want to invite me round for a BBQ to give me an excuse to try the Hairy Bikers' version?

**oooh just read the Hairy Bikers's one all the way through and it also is wrong - it has meringue on top, which makes it more like a key lime meringue pie, so I'm going to try this one from the Joy of Baking website**

Posted by Lou. The time is2.55pm here in London, UK.

I've realised that if I'm to post here consistently and regularly I need to find something in my life that is worthy of posting beyond the occasional review of films and books. (Beyond live-blogging my watching of Mad Men season 3 when it turns up...) The answer is... baking! But in the guise of avoiding copyright infringements I am not actually going to include the actual recipes (the real reason being that I can't be bothered writing them out).


First up:

The Baklava Cupcake Incident

For my birthday last year the lovely Kelly gave me a wonderous selection of glorious baking-related items including this recipe book Cupcakes: A Fine Selection of Sweet Treats and some silicon cupcake/ muffin cases. (I will tell you a fact to keep with you for life: silicon bakeware is the shizz. I will never look back. Especially after this one incident, in which I forewent the silicon bakeware to my demise.) This recipe book is also the shizz - it has a beautiful textured hardcover, and each recipe is is accompanied by a delightful full-page illustration that has you foaming at the mouth.

So I was heading to a birthday picnic in the weekend and decided to try out the Baklava Cupcakes recipe. Essentially it is rather simple: a fairly basic cupcake mix with a combination of chopped nuts (walnuts and almonds in this instance), sugar, butter and cinnamon placed in the middle and on top (pre-cooking!), with warm honey brushed onto the cupcakes as they cool.

The mistake I made was in defying the silicon moulds. I didn't have enough, so thought "hey, why don't I just put some paper cupcake cases into a large rectangular dish?". Do not do this. This is the second-stupidest thing I have done all year*. In case - like me - you haven't picked up on the obvious: there is a point to cupcake moulds. Paper cases do not keep their shape. You will end up with a big blob of a cake-like substance rippled through with paper cases.

Thankfully I had a brain-wave and recovered the situation by allowing them to cool, cutting them into smaller square shapes, and placing them delicately in the remaining cupcake cases. Of course there was a second disaster in that they turned out to have not actually cooked all the way through due to the lack of space between cupcakes, but this allowed the second brainwave of pushing the not-quite-fully-cooked bits cut off the sides into the magical silicon cupcake moulds before the second attempt at cooking them through, which left me with the bonus of having Drunken Cupcake Snacks when I got home in the middle of the night.

The Baklava Squarecakes were very well received and I can testify - on the basis of extensive testing of the square, cups and scrappy bits - that they taste mighty fine. Mighty fine indeed.


*The stupidest thing I have done all year is the fatal decision to take the number 100 bus home last Tuesday during the torrential downpour. This led to me spending more than an hour and a half on a hot and damp bus surrounded by wet people and their even wetter umbrellas and bags as we made a tour of all of London's traffic jams in defiance of the usual 40 minute travel time. I nearly cried.



On a happier note:

The Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes are the One Of The Best Things Ever. They are not-too-difficult to make, look amazing, and taste like heaven.

Essentially you: make a plain vanilla cupcake, only 3/4 filling the moulds and only 3/4 cooking them. Scoop out the centre. Put in a big fat dollop of lemon curd (I home-make mine but will only judge you a little bit if you buy it in a jar). Put an even bigger, fatter dollop of uncooked meringe on top, and bake just a couple of minutes until they start to look brown.

Et voila:

These specific ones were made for a Ladies Afternoon Tea Party.

Please note the glorious silicon cupcake moulds, which both

look good and slip off without even a hint of sticking.

My tip to enhance the experience of these is to scrunch the bits of scooped-out cupcake into the bottom of a smallish dish (or larger muffin moulds), spread on your leftover lemon curd, ditto with the meringue, and you have some mini- lemon meringue pies for that all-important Drunken Midnight Snack/ Hangover Breakfast.