Saturday 29 December 2012

Stacey's Bailey's Blondies

These Blondies are also known as "Monica Geller's" because they came to be due to my uncontrollable need to please people.



Basically, on the day of our December meeting we had a few last minute cancellations, which under normal circumstances wouldn't pose a problem, but because of the Secret Santa theme this month it meant that some bakers would not receive their "gift" (i.e. have their word baked) and that simply couldn't do.

I finish work at 5pm, and on club nights aim to get to the Friends Meeting House by 7pm to start setting up. Usually I take my bake club things to work with me in the morning, stay at work until 6:30pm and go straight from there, as work is about halfway between my house and the meeting house. This time, however, to ensure that everyone got their words baked, I left work bang on 5pm, ran to the supermarket to buy some ingredients, ran home, and started baking like a mad-woman! Anyway, I ended up getting a taxi up to the meeting house, and the brownies were still lovely and warm by the time I got there. Thankfully, Ruth had arrived before I did and started setting up shop :-) We then sat and ate some of the gooier brownies with spoons. It was a good day.

Anyway, the words that needed to be baked were Bailey's, Stars and Red. so below is my recipe for Bailey's Blondies with white chocolate stars and red edible glitter to decorate!


Ingredients:
200g slightly salted butter
100g white chocolate
2 medium eggs
135g caster sugar
100ml Bailey's Irish Cream
300g plain flour
Edible glitter and white chocolate stars to decorate (optional)

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 35 - 40 minutes
Makes 16 blondies

  1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a square tin with baking paper.
  2. Put the butter into a small microwavable bowl and melt in the microwave. Place this to one side to cool.
  3. Melt the white chocolate, either in the microwave in 20 second blasts, or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Once melted, place to one side to cool.
  4. Put the eggs and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl and beat until frothy. Beat in the cooled melted butter, Baileys and white chocolate. Finally add the flour to the mixture and fold in until just combined.
  5. Pour the batter into the prepare cake tin, then sprinkle on the edible glitter and white chocolate stars, if using, to decorate.
  6. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until golden brown in colour, and springy but still moist to touch. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan before turning out and cutting into 16 gorgeous, gooey brownies!

Monday 10 December 2012

Tom's Piggies in Blankets

This month I went for something classic and simple: sausages wrapped in bacon.
Pick your sausages and buy lots of them; I went with full sized sausages from the local butchers. You'll also need a couple of rashers of back bacon per sausage (or one rasher for small sausages). I made some with smoked and some with unsmoked bacon. Preheat your oven to about 200°C. Oil enough baking trays to hold your sausages. Wrap each sausage in one or two rashers of bacon and skewer them in place. I used a couple of long metal skewers to make a sort of long double kebab for each tray, but anything which will hold the bacon on should work. Put in the oven for about an hour (less for smaller sausages), observing and turning every 15-20 minutes.
Eat! Enjoy!

Friday 7 December 2012

Stacey's Ginger and White Chocolate Cheesecake

So, the word I drew out of the hat this Christmas was ginger (THE flavour of Christmas last year!!) Originally I was planning to bake a gingerbread house that we could assemble together at the meeting, but as I did the draw I knew that another member had gingerbread, so I decided to go for something a little bit different. As it turned out - Steph made a cheesecake too!! There's no such thing as too much cheesecake, though, and Steph's was baked and tasted just like gingerbread, whereas mine was of the chilled variety



Ingredients:
200g gingernut biscuits
100g margarine
30g crystallised ginger, plus extra to decorate
150g white chocolate
300ml double cream
300g cream cheese
150g icing sugar
A little bronze lustre dust
Gold edible shimmer spray

Prep time: 20 minutes
Chill time: 3 hours (minimum)
Serves 8-10

  1. Crush the gingernut biscuits into fine crumbs, either by putting in a blender, or by bashing with a rolling pin the old fashioned way.
  2. Melt the margarine and mix into the biscuit crumbs. Pour the biscuit mixture into the cake tin you are using (I used a 7 inch springform pan) and press down with the back of a spoon to flatten. Pop the tin in the fridge to allow the biscuit base to set whilst you make the cheesecake filling.
  3. Start by chopping the crystallised ginger into teeny tiny small pieces, and put these to one side. Melt the white chocolate - either in the microwave or in a bowl over hot water - and put this to one side to cool.
  4. In a large bowl, whisk the double cream to soft peaks, then whisk in the cream cheese and icing sugar. Separate 250g (approximately 1/3) of the filling into a smaller bowl, and stir in the chopped ginger and bronze lustre dust. Put this to one side.
  5. Whisk the cooled white chocolate into the remaining cheesecake mixture.
  6. Remove the biscuit base from the fridge and start to layer the cheesecake fillings on top of this, making sure to level the top of the cheesecake between each layer. Start with half of the white chocolate filling, then all of the ginger filling, then the remaining white chocolate filling.  
  7. Spray the top of the cheesecake with the gold shimmer spray, then place one or two pieces of ginger in the centre to decorate. Pop the cheesecake in the fridge for at least 3 hours to set before serving. (It's best to leave it overnight, if you can!)
 

Wednesday 5 December 2012

December - Secret Santa

Ho Ho Ho!

We decided a little while ago that we'll try not to repeat themes from last year, but we also decided that we couldn't NOT do Christmas in December, so we decided to put a Secret Santa spin on it. Each member had to put a word or phrase which made them think of Christmas into a hat, and then the words were drawn out at random for another member to use as baking inspiration.

Here are the words everyone put in:

Me - Christmas films
Sally - Tinsel
Charlie - Baileys
Steph - Mulled Wine
Joy - Red
Katrina - Praline
Laura S - Stars
Ruth - Pine smell
Angel - Bacon
Jen - sweet mincemeat
Catherine - gingerbread
Kate - candy canes
Tom - Ginger

So what did we come up with? Well, unfortunately Angel, Catherine, Charlie, Jen and Kate couldn't make it, but the rest of us were very pleased with our Secret Santa Bakes! Joy baked some Pine-infused Caramel Shortbread Tartlets for Ruth, Katrina baked some Vanilla Cupcakes topped with images from some Christmas films for me, Laura baked a big  Chocolate Cake which was iced with a Christmas Tree and edible glitter tinsel for Sally, Ruth baked a Mulled Wine Bread and Butter Pudding for Steph, Sally baked some wonderfully interesting Praline Bacon for Katrina, Steph baked a Gingerbread Cheesecake for Catherine, Tom baked some big and very tasty Pigs in Blankets for Angel, and I made a Ginger and White Chocolate Cheesecake and some Ginger Cordial for Tom, and also some Bailey's Blondies topped with red glitter and white chocolate stars for Charlie, Joy and Laura!

We had a great time, with Christmas songs, cracker jokes and paper crowns, and we all ate our fill of sweet, savoury, and sweet and savoury combined goodies - I'm sure a few belt buttons were undone when we all got home, just like the real thing!

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Stacey's Rainbow Birthday Cake (of doom!!)

I was tempted not to post this recipe, simply because I can think of no reason why any sane person would want to recreate the monster I created for our first birthday party. But then I thought about it, and there are a lot of crazy people out there who might want to bake a 9lb birthday cake, so here's the recipe!



Yes, it really did weigh 9lbs. I weighed it and everything!


This one slice fed 5 people. I'm not even kidding.

I never actually intended to make a cake of this size. You see it was all an error of judgement. You see, I had planned to bake this in my 6" cake tin, meaning it would have been a smaller cake. However, I (stupidly) ordered the wrong size cake topper, and so the topper was too big for a 6 inch cake and I couldn't trim it down without losing too much of the design, so there was only one thing for it - I had to bake a 9 inch cake. The problem there being that I also couldn't reduce the number of layers... all colours of the rainbow should be present in a rainbow cake, and I'm already cheating a bit by merging "indigo" and "violet" into "purple".
 
Anyway, if for whatever reason you find yourself with way too much time of your hands, a kitchen full of baking ingredients, and a hankering for a cake of giant proportions, the recipe is below! Just to give you an idea of the quantities if you'd like to make a less gargantuan cake: I was going to use a 100g/1 egg mixture per layer for the 6" cake.

Ingredients:

for the cake:
900g margarine (no joke)
900g caster sugar
9 medium sized eggs
150ml milk
900g self raising flour
3 tbsp vanilla extract
Food colouring in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple

for the icing:
500g vegetable shortening (Trex)
1kg icing sugar (still not joking!!)
2 tbsp vanilla extract

to decorate:
hundreds and thousands of hundred and thousands
an edible cake topper of your choice (optional)

  1.  Preheat the oven to gas mark 5, and grease and line two baking tins. 
  2. Unless you're using your kitchen sink as a mixing bowl, you're probably going to want to make this in batches. I made my batter in three batches, splitting each batch into two layers of cake. 
  3. Start off by beating 300g margarine with 300g caster sugar in a large mixing bowl until light and creamy. Beat in three of the eggs, one at a time, followed by 50mls of the milk and 1tbsp of the vanilla extract. By the time you've beat all that in, your mixture should be light and fluffy.
  4. Measure out 300g of the flour, then fold this into the cake batter a little at a time, until the ingredients combine to form a smooth batter. Scoop half of the batter into a separate bowl, and use the food colourings to create a red batter and an orange batter. I always start with red as it's the worst colour to mix. If you don't use enough blue or green colouring, you just end up with light blue or light green. If you don't use enough red food colouring, you don't get light red. Oh no, my friend. You get pink. So you need to use a fair amount of red food colouring to get a red sponge. Don't forget though, that the colours will be more vibrant and a little darker once baked.
  5. Pour the batters into the prepared cake tins, and bake for 25-30 minutes until firm but spongy to touch. Allow the cakes to cool in their tins for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
  6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 to create your yellow, green, blue and purple layers. (Optional extra: make yourself a cup of tea and try to figure out how you're going to get this massive hunk of cakey goodness from your kitchen to the venue!!)
  7. Once all the layers are baked and cooled, mix up your frosting by beating the shortening and icing sugar together. I used an electric mixer for this to save time.
  8. Place your purple layer onto your serving plate, and spread a thin layer (roughly 1 tbsp) of the frosting over the top of this. Place your blue layer on top of this and repeat. Repeat also with the green, yellow, orange and red layers.
  9. Once all of your layers are stacked, crumb coat the cake. A crumb coat is a thin layer of icing that goes onto your cake and is left to set before you put your actual icing on. It's like cake underpants. Crumb coating is a very good idea when making rainbow cake, as one of the purposes of a crumb coat is to stick the crumbs to the cake so they don't get into your outer layer of frosting. Rainbow cake crumbs stand out against white icing, so crumb coating is good. Plus it's fun to say: crumb coat. Anyways... once you've covered your cake in a thin layer of frosting, pop it into the fridge for an hour or so to allow the crumb coat to set completely.
  10. Once the crumb coat has set, ice your cake with the remaining white icing. Top your cake with the edible topper, and use sprinkles to hide the seam between the cake topper and your frosting. I also poked sprinkles into the side of my cake to look like polka dots. I'm not really sure why I did that, it was just a whim. I thought it looked pretty at any rate.
  11. Invite that guy from Man VS Food over, promising him a t-shirt and eternal glory if he can eat the whole thing in 45 minutes. Alternatively, share the cake with lots of friends and family, and lots of tea!       


Monday 3 December 2012

Jen's 1st Birthday Butterfly Cakes


Possibly the easiest cakes you can make. I chose these not for that reason, but because at my childhood birthday parties butterfly cakes always made an appearance. Of course, I failed to get them to taste as good as Mum did, but I did use a different recipe, which I thought would be better. Wrong.

The recipe I used is Mary Berry's. No offence to Mary, but I think I do prefer the one from Mum's copy of the old-school Be-Ro cookbook...


Makes about 12 small cakes.


100g (4oz) butter at room temp, 100g (4oz) caster sugar, 2 large free-range eggs,  100g (4oz) self-raising flour, 1 level tsp baking powder.

for the icing:  175g (6oz) butter at room temp, 350g (12oz) sifted icing sugar plus extra for dusting.
(I thought this was a lot, so I reduced quantities...)

You can just whisk everything together if you want to, but I always cream butter and sugar first, add the egg gradually - whisking well until everything is smooth - and then sift in the flour and baking powder. Divide evenly between cake cases and bake for between 10 and 20 mins depending on size of case used at 200 C/Fan 180 C/gas 6. I always rely on my cake tester to judge when cakes are ready, and also if they feel firm to touch.

When cool, cut a circle from the top of each cake, and cut in half to form the 'wings'.
For the buttercream, mix the icing sugar and butter until smooth. I attempted to pipe the buttercream in to the hollow space, but it didn't stick to the cake, so I ended up using a spoon. Position the wings on top, dust with icing sugar, and that's it!