Welcome back Brownies?

It has, again, been a while. But in the interim, I promise I have been doing exciting things, and so hopefully will once again fill this blog with photos and thoughts, rather than leaving it to the silent wastes of termtime. Before I launch into that though, here's finally a recipe! Hurrah! This was one that I adapted for a student newspaper feature I did last term, so if you've seen it, many profound apologies...but look again, because these are goooood.

Dark Chocolate Brownies

These are adapted slightly from my sister’s recipe, and are thick, dark, dense and rather gorgeous. Perfect warm with berries and cream, or munched on cheekily straight from the tin. Obviously try to buy good dark chocolate, but I’ve made these with half 70% and half Tesco value plain chocolate and can’t complain of the result. Also if the mixture seems a strangely gloopy one, do not worry

Ingredients

200g dark chocolate

250g butter

100g plain flour

80g hot chocolate powder, mine was slightly raspberry flavoured because that’s what I happened to have around and it was lovely! (or cocoa powder if you’ve remembered to buy any, and increase the sugar a bit to taste)

100g caster sugar

75g light brown sugar

1 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

Preheat your oven to 180º (or 160 º for a fan oven) and grease or line a baking tin

Break the chocolate into a bowl with the butter and microwave on 30 second bursts, stirring in between each, until all melted together.

Add the flour and cocoa powder gradually and mix in, then the sugars. Sprinkle the baking powder over and give that a good mix as well.

Crack eggs in one at a time and mix in till you have a viscous thick chocolate-y mess (feel free to add in any nuts, fruit, chocolate chips in here)

Gloop the aforementioned mess into your baking tin and bake for around half an hour, until cooked but still a bit gooey. Keep an eye on it, the top does catch quite easily, but this has yet to be a major problem to the taste! Leave the brownie to cool completely in the tin, or as long as you can bear not to eat it. Enjoy! 

Christmas Cupcakes with Spiced Cream Cheese Icing

Just one of the various things I've been forcing my brother to take to school this week (well what else am I meant to do in the holidays?) other delights include some dubious looking cheesecake-cupcakes (not to be posted) and sweeter-than-sweet coconut florentines...The old 'stuffing oneself with food at Yuletide' trick is fully in force.

The basic cupcake recipe was taken from ‘Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery’ by MarthaSwift and Lisa Thomas, although the idea is from a Hummingbird Bakery recipe. My version was a bit haphazard, so this may need some tweaking (partially because I can’t really remember what I put in them, except it’s a mixture of lots of Christmassy tastes)

This recipe made 24 mini cupcakes and 6 normal sized ones

Ingredients

105g butter

10g (ish?) marzipan, cubed and softened

225g caster sugar

2 eggs

275g self raising flour

100ml milk

20ml orange juice 

(a good one like Innocent Juice is fine)

2 teaspoons mixed spice

1 teaspoon cinnamon (or to taste)

A couple of handfuls of raisins, chopped dried apricots, dried cranberries or any other dried fruit you fancy

A good glug of brandy 

Spiced Cream Cheese icing

(this is half the recipe in the book, and was just enough for my amount of cupcakes)

85-90g cream cheese

225g icing sugar

60g unsalted butter

½ teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon mixed spice (again, or to taste)

Some dried cranberries to decorate

First put your dried fruit in a bowl and glug the brandy over it. Leave this for as long as you dare. Overnight would work, so would an hour or two (depends how spur of the moment your baking is)

Make your icing before you start if you like, so that it can firm up in the fridge if necessary (especially with lower fat cream cheese) Beat the butter and gradually add the icing sugar a tiny bit at a time, keeping it light and fluffy. When you’ve added as much as possible, then beat in the cream cheese (keep adding the icing sugar) and the spices.

Preheat your oven to 160 for a fan (180 for normal) and line your muffin trays

Cream the butter, marzipan and sugar together, then add the eggs, beating after each one. Mix the flour with the spices and alternate between this and the milk, adding it to the butter and stirring in. Move on the orange juice when the milk is gone. Fold in the boozy fruits, and a bit of the leftover brandy if you like. Spoon into the cases and bake for around 15 minutes for the little cakes, and 25 for larger (check with a skewer, the amount of liquid/fruit means they may require longer) Inhale the spiced brandy smell…and let them cool before icing and decorating!

Peanut Butter Apple Cookies

Once again, this post is not quite what is was meant to be, but as I haven't typed the recipe up for my Christmas cupcakes yet I thought I'd fill the space with these lovelies, which have been waiting a long time. I don't know if you've discovered the uber-snack that is apple slices and peanut butter (I'm sure I've gone on about it before) but these cookies were the product of that, baked for a friend's Amnestea. And very good they were too, I promise you. 

Peanut Butter and Apple Cookies

Adapted from ‘The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook’ this makes around 15 cookies

Ingredients 

110g butter

100g caster sugar

100g soft dark brown sugar

1 egg

120g crunchy peanut butter

170g plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

One medium apple, chopped finely

Preheat the oven to 160 for a fan,

Cream the butter and sugars together until light and, well, creamy looking. Then beat in the egg, followed by the peanut butter (more or less depending on taste, and also feel free to use smooth if you rather, but I like the added texture of the peanut pieces.) Mix the flour and the bicarb together as you weigh, then fold it into the cookie dough, with the chopped apple. Put the mixture into the fridge (I left mine overnight) then when you’re ready and it’s nice and chilled, bake around 5 on a tray at a time for 12-15 minutes until golden (Mine weren't quite as orange as the photo's suggest, but the camera was having a tango moment)

Baking Inspiration; Christmas at Oxford

I'm back home now for the holidays, and busy planning all the things I'm going to be making and baking for the festive season. Influenced in no small part by the incredible offerings around Oxford in the last week of term, including this INCREDIBLE cake in The Cake Shop which depicts a famous feature in fondant glory; the Radcliffe Camera (images of the real thing can be found here.) I see this gorgeous building on a daily basis, so to see it here, in cake form? Pretty much perfect... And more cake based beauties came from Happy Cakes' stall at the Christmas Lights switch on. Unfortunately I was just about to eat, otherwise one of these beautiful christmas cupcakes would have been mine. To test whether they tasted as good as they looked, of course.

 

Shameless Toffee Apple theft

 
I had meant to do a big Halloween baking extravaganza post, but naturally the week just raced ahead without me and so that fell by the wasteside somewhat. But these, made by a lovely friend for our Halloween party, were just too darn good to be left hovering on my computer like the ghosts of caramel past. But hopefully a bake-fest post WILL be on its way with some recipes, following an Amnestea tomorrow afternoon (my peanutbutter-apple cookie dough is already in the fridge, and chocolate and blueberries poised for brownie making) Watch this space!

Rumkin (Rum and Pumpkin) Pie, and some sneaky Rumkin flapjack in the corner there

Also extraordinarily excited about the launch of Olive's online store tonight, although so very sad I wasn't in Cheltenham for it. Writing this while wearing a pair of their knee-patch leggings isn't quite enough, although it shall have to do for now. Have marvellous weekends everyone!

Sweet Dreams...

Unfortunately I do not have a recipe to share for these, I intended to post this more successful attempt at macarons from home when I actually made them towards the end of the summer. Naturally, that did not happen, and now me and the recipe are estranged. So these little beauties ( not massively professional looking but better than these ones) serve as an illustration of my progression along the road of almond based delights, and a promise for more attempts over Christmas. Plus they were gorgeous, filled with either Nutella, or a chocolate ganache and berry jam. Sweet memories...

 

Toffee Apple Muffins

So remember how summer was 'over'? Apparently the weather's had different ideas and is treating us to one last blast of sunshine before everyone heads back to uni...and who am I to complain? Plus it means that I can pack away all my jumpers ready for the Oxford winter, and still have things to wear for the next few days. Excellent. So this week I've given up on work really, and have been preparing mentally and physically (packing, not working out, although I have become rather addicted to a Zumba game over the last few days) to go away again, and of course that means baking. These toasty-warm lovelies don't really go with the weather, but we had some good homegrown apples this week and I wanted to use them. And toffees.

Adapted from the 'Apple Spice Muffins' recipe in 'Muffins fast and fantastic' by Susan Reimer

Ingredients

9oz plain flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

3oz caster sugar

1 egg

6oz chopped apple 

150ml milk

90ml sunflower oil (or 85g melted butter)

about 7 toffees, chopped

Preheat oven to 180 degrees for a fan

Sift the flour, baking powder, spices and sugar in a large bowl, and in another bowl beat the egg. Stir the chopped apple, milk, and oil/butter into the egg until its all nice and eggy. 

Pour the eggy-apple mix into the flour bowl and stir, adding the toffee pieces in the final few stirs. The batter will be quite gloopy and lumpy so don't worry! 

Fill muffin cases and sprinkle with demerara or brown sugar and bake for about 25 minutes until they're golden brown. Take the muffin cases out of the tin as soon as poss, as the toffee WILL leak everywhere and if it cools you won't get the cases out at all. 

Soak the pans so no-one else sees the mess.

Enjoy the melty, spiced apply cakes.

Note the crater where some toffee was?

Hazelnut-Choc-Chunk Cookies

Really, I can claim no credit for these 'crunchy on the outside, nuttily sweet and soft on the inside' beauties. The recipe is shamelessly stolen from my sisters lovely blog , the only difference being me FORGETTING to add oats. How does that happen? I love oats! So as you can see, I rolled a few of the dough balls in oats to assuage my guilt slightly. And in place of dark chocolate chunks I used some cheeky Green and Blacks Butterscotch chocolate I found in the baking cupboard. Mmmmm. And nice for a change, but next time I make these I'll revert to dark I think, to showcase the hazelnutty dough.

Sarah's Choc Chunk 

Hazelnut Oaties

Ingredients

8oz butter

4 oz caster sugar

5 oz dark brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla syrup 

5 oz plain flour 

4 oz bread flour (or just 9oz plain)

50g chopped up chocolate and hazelnuts

50g oats

Preheat the oven to 160 ish for a fan

Cream the butter and sugars together until they have a buttercream-like consistency, then add the egg and vanilla and beat again till smooth.

Sift the flour(s) into the bowl and fold in with a spoon, then add the chocolate, nuts, and oats (optional apparently)

The dough will be quite stiff. Put it in the fridge and forget about it...go have lunch, cuppa tea, tiddlywinks match, whatever you fancy just let the dough to chill a bit so your butter doesn't melt the cookies all over the place when in the oven. Then when you're ready and the dough's nicely chilled, place balls of it onto lined sheets and bake for 12-15 mins until golden.

Plumble Cake

Warm out the oven with a nice blob of cream...mmm

 Plum + Crumble = Plumble

 Makes perfect sense, see? It seems strange that I haven't done a good recipe post in a while, but then my baking recently hasn't been all that picturesque I have to admit. There were some cookies that spread and glooped everywhere, a Peanut Butter slice that just screams 'heart attack' and some failed macaroons. But nothing I was aching to blog about (these beauties aside of course.) But we ended up with quite a lot of greengages recently which were going a bit squishy, and so I decided to use these lovely little plums before they went to waste...et voila! It isn't the prettiest thing, but then Autumn baking is all about comfort complete with sweet, caramelly stewed fruit. At least in my head it is.  

 And imagine my suprise to find a wonderfully similar-ish looking cake on one of my baking-blog-crushes Desserts for Breakfasts  posted just today! Although her photos are incredible and the whole thing is a far more elegant homage to these 'ugly green plums' as they're named on her blog...

Plumble Cake

Adapted from ‘Good Housekeeping’ magazine Oct 2011 (despite the fact it is September, I never understand why magazines insist on doing that)

100g butter

50g dark brown soft sugar

150g caster sugar

3 eggs, beaten

100g sour cream

200g self raising flour

6 greengages and a large plum, chopped into wedges

For Crumble topping

50g butter

50g Demerara sugar

100g flour

(or any crumble topping of your choice)

Preheat oven to 160 for a fan oven and line a baking tray. Beat the butter and sugars with a whisk or electric whisk (this time, shock horror, I actually whisked it by hand, and it ended up lovely and light…victory!) until it’s nice, creamy and non-grainy looking.

Then gradually whisk in the eggs and sour cream (it may curdle a tiny bit but don’t worry, the flour will take care of that) Fold in the flour till no more lumps show, then spoon it into the baking tray. 

Lay the greengage and plum slices on top in a completely non-necessary pretty pattern (optional) then sprinkle the crumble topping over the whole thing. Bake for around 40 minutes until golden on the top and smelling deliciously fruity.  

Porridge Muffins

This summer has been most strange so far, I can't really think of what I've been doing, but it seems to be going rather quickly! So I'm sharing another older recipe, in lieu of me having anything interesting to say. I actually made these over Christmas, having eaten far too much porridge in my first term at university and thus having it pervade my baking endeavour once I got back home. So these aren't especially summery, but then they kind of fit in with the weather we've been having recently. Let's hope it holds up for my brother's open air performance at Stratford-upon-Avon tomorrow...?

‘Porridge’ muffins
Adapted from a maple pecan recipe in ‘Muffins, fast and fantastic’ Susan Reimer (on account of me not having pecans, or indeed enough maple syrup) These ended up tasting like porridge, in a muffin, and I was told by my sister’s boyfriend that they ‘taste warm.’ Not sure about how that works, but they are certainly very comforting, and have oats in so are obviously good for you! 
Ingredients
1 egg
240 ml milk
60 ml golden syrup
30 ml maple syrup
2 oz 60g rolled oats (or porridge oats, never sure of the difference)
3oz 85g unsalted butter, soft
3oz 85g caster sugar
8oz 225g self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Topping (optional)
Crumble topping
Walnuts, chopped
Demerara sugar
Cinnamon or mixed spice

Preheat oven 180 for fan oven
Beat egg with a fork and add milk, both syrups and oats. Try to stir in as much as possible (slightly tricky with the golden syrup) set aside so that the oats soak up all the syrupy goodness. In a separate bowl, cream the softened butter and sugar together. Sift flour and baking powder into the butter mix and rub until it looks like breadcrumbs
Pour wet ingredients into dry, and stir till just combined (you can add chopped walnuts/pecans here if you like)
Spoon into muffin tins with cases, and sprinkle with your favourite crumble topping, finely chopped walnuts, extra sugar and maybe a touch of cinnamon on top before baking for 20-25 minutes

Not looking particularly attractive, it has to be said...

Slightly blurry, but note the festive red and green cases (!)

 

Indecision Cookies

I'll get to these in a minute...

Last week was actually quite busy on the baking front, so busy in fact that I didn't really stop to photo or post any of my endeavours. Apart from 'that cake', I made some cherry and almond cookies and quick brownies (from a packet mix, not gonna lie) for my brother to take for a bake sale, and lovely mini Red Velvet Cupcakes for my friend's birthday on thursday (Incidentally, we went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter, which was brilliant. The atmosphere was incredible; loads of people were dressed up, we all had our little round HP 3-D glasses on, everyone cheered at Molly Weasley. What more could you want from a night out?)

I digress. Here's a recipe from a few weeks ago in replacement for my poor post planning

Peanut-Butter-Oat-n-Raisin Cookies
Adapted from Sugar and Spice
Reeni's cookies looked amazing, but unfortunately I didn’t have any walnuts or spare chocolate around to chunk up so as I couldn’t decide what to do,  I combined this with one of my favourite cookies ever - the humble oat and raisin. And as it’s an American recipe, normally I’d go ‘aw, they look nice, but I know my estimation skills are shoddy so lets not try and guess cups…never mind’ but no more! Due to my mother’s excellent finding skills I am now the proud owner of these adorable Russian doll measuring cups. Really I just needed an excuse to try them out. Don’t you just love it when a coincidence like that comes along?

Ingredients
3 /4  cup butter
2/3 cup peanut butter (I like the extra texture of crunchy but it’s up to you!)
1 cup caster sugar
1 /2 cup dark brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 /2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla syrup
1 ¼ cups plain flour
2 cups rolled oats
2 handfuls of raisins

  

Preheat the oven to 180 for a fan oven. 

Beat the butter and peanut butter together using an electric hand whisk and then add the sugars, baking powder, bicarb of soda and cinnamon. Then beat loads again till it’s as smooth as possible (resisting the urge to just eat the mixture as you go)
Add the eggs one at a time and then the vanilla, still beating. 

Sift the flour in an stir by hand for a bit so you don’t get big flour clouds, then once it’s roughly incorporated get the electric whisk on it again.

Finally stir the oats and raisins in and put the whole thing in the fridge. Forget about it for as long as you like, just so it solids up a bit and doesn’t spread so much when you get to bake them. Then when you’re ready place rounded tablespoons of cookie dough onto lined baking trays, and bake for 10 minutes (I’m afraid I don’t know exactly how many this makes, around 15-20 depending on how much of the mixture you eat while ‘letting it rest’)

A labour of love and carrot based mystery...

 So. This was meant to be a post featuring a gorgeously decorated, ever-so-good-for-you-don't-you-know carrot cake, that I made on monday afternoon for my father's birthday. And yet...several things went wrong with this plan, and what was meant to be a relatively do-able bake became a veritable struggle with me trying to cope with my various mistakes. I started with a lovely looking Hummingbird recipe for a three tier carrot cake, which I'd reduced to two tier on account of lacking a third cake tin. So far, so good, the recipe was helpfully in 3 or 300g measurements, so that was easy enough. Did my usual adding little bits in like orange juice, raisins and more spices, the cakes came out the oven lovely and moist and golden (perhaps a tad too moist, but they kept together.) And then I tried to ice it...now, cream cheese icing has a tendency to go a bit liquid-y at the best of times, and I had chosen an incredibly warm and muggy afternoon to bake. Combine that with the fact I didn't really make enough icing and my cakes weren't stacked very straight, and it became a bit of an ordeal as the icing became increasingly difficult to work with. Never matter, a load of crushed walnuts and chopped up apricots meant it wasn't a huge dilemna sight wise. And at least I could look forward to the inside; a golden sponge streaked with amber carrot strips, chunks of walnut and juicy raisins. Right?

Luckily after the cake had been in the fridge overnight, the icing hardened up and improved hugely, so didn't look quite so glisteningly unappetising

This is where things get interesting. When we cut the cake the next day, my light, moist sponge was flecked subtly, but unavoidably, with green...My mother was happily tucking in and innocently asked 'ooh, this is interesting, what's the green? Apple? Lime? Courgette? Basil? Rosemary?'(her suggestions got a little extreme as she tried to guess my bizarre experiment) Having decided that somehow the carrots had gone off inside the cake overnight, I retreated in shame. To the internet! And apparently, overuse of bicarbonate of soda (which I must have forgotten to reduce from the original 3 tier recipe) can have a reaction with the pigments in fruit and veg, and change their colour when baked! Thus turning some of the carrot streaks green! Luckily, although it looks a mite odd, the carrots are still absolutely fine to eat. This cake and myself have reached a mutual level of respect; it tried to best me at every opportunity and it isn't going to win any beauty contest. But goodness, it tastes marvellous.

note where the sponge still peeps through the icing..needless to say this wasn't my best baking endeavour.

Pear and Ginger Muffins

Having sat pondering for a good ten minutes on possible pear and ginger/ Fred and Ginger puns and coming up with nothing sensible, I decided to let the title stand on its own. I made these to use up a free morning and some slightly over ripe pears (those tricky fruits of the blink-and-you-miss-it ripeness) and they went down rather well, so enjoy! 

Adapted from ‘Muffins, fast and fantastic’ by Susan Reimer, these smell delicious; gingery and subtly fruity. Using fresh pear keeps these nice and moist, and I added more ginger, mixed spice and honey and reduced the caster sugar for a warmer flavour.

Ingredients
10oz self raising flour
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
½ teaspoon mixed spice
3 oz caster sugar
1 egg
100 ml milk
80 ml apple and pear juice (or just pear if you have it, or if you like just have 180ml milk instead, this just adds a bit more fruity flavour)
6oz well chopped pear
3 tablespoons honey
3 oz melted unsalted butter

Topping
Mine was a handful of dark brown sugar, a handful of oats and three walnuts (all I could find!) roughly chopped and mixed up to make a sugary crumble topping

Preheat to 180 for a fan oven and prepare your cases. I used my silicone cupcake moulds again, and a 6 hole silicone muffin tray (hence the varying sizes and shapes of muffin…clearly I wasn’t going for regularity here!)

Sift the flour, bicarb, ginger, mixed spice and caster sugar together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and add the milk, juice pear, honey, and butter. Stir this really well to make sure all the different things combine (the honey is particularly tricksy) and pour it as soon as possible into the dry ingredients. Stir until just combined as you don’t want it too smooth and obviously the pear will make it a lumpy batter anyway.

Fill the cases and sprinkle the topping on top (again if using, I like the occasional walnut flavour and crunchy sugary oats but these would be nice without as well) and bake for 20-25 minutes.