Jen's Chocolate Digestives

For Cake Club's guilty pleasures theme, I decided to make chocolate digestives. My reason for making these was simple; I love eating them! 

More like hobnobs than digestives? 

Ingredients

•  4oz/100g wholewheat flour

•  4oz/100g medium oatmeal 

•  2oz/50g soft brown sugar

•  1 teaspoon baking powder

•  pinch of salt

•  4oz/100g butter

•  1 tablespoon of milk to mix

Method

I mixed together all of the dry ingredients and rubbed in the butter. The first time I made these, I used my fingertips and got a dry breadcrumb texture. The second time, for speed I used a food mixer and the dough came out quite wet.

Next, the recipe (by Gary Rhodes), told me to add up to 2 tablespoons of milk to make a soft dough. As my first batch was dry, I did add the recommended measure of milk (2 tablespoons), but for the batch made in the mixer I only added a very small amount, certainly no more than 1 tablespoon. For the record, I preferred the texture of the biscuits with less milk in.

Next I wrapped the dough in clingfilm and refrigerated for 15 minutes to firm the mix.

When rolling the dough, Mr. Rhodes recommended that it should be rolled between two pieces of clingfilm to prevent sticking and cracking. This worked well and would use this technique again.

I rolled the dough to a thickness of about 5 mm and cut out circles using a cutter with a 6 cm diameter. This produced about 11 biscuits.

I used a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper that I lightly greased with butter to bake the biscuits on. I baked them for about 20 mins at 180ºC (gas mark 4/350ºF).

When cooled, I melted about 200 g of milk chocolate and spread a generous amount on each biscuit. When cooling, I used a metal cake tester to drag vertical and then horizontal lines through the chocolate to make the standard chocolate digestive pattern. At this point I realised I had been a bit too generous with the chocolate - the lines were much more effective on the biscuits with a thinner layer! 

I then popped the finished biscuits in the fridge to completely set the chocolate, and then stored them in a plastic container at room temperature. 

Jen's Granola

Decided to make this as a quick, easy option for cake club as I was short on time and I love granola (just baked another batch to have as breakfasts for the next week or so).

Makes a large jar - about 6 portions. Quantities were halved (though they really don't need to be exact) and recipe based on one from BBC Good Food website. Anything goes in this it seems - so use whatever nuts/fruit you fancy!

88g nuts - recipe said peanuts and pecans but I don't like peanuts and the pecans seemed very expensive so I used blanched almonds and hazelnuts.

225 g rolled oats - chunky ones

25 g sesame seeds

25 g sunflower seeds

a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds

a sprinkling of poppy seeds

43 g berries - I used cranberries, raisins, dried apple and mixed peel.

50 ml honey

63 ml sunflower oil

I blitzed my nuts in a food processor first to knock them down in to bite-sized pieces, then just mixed everything together in a bowl except the berries/dried fruit which I added about 5 mins towards the end of baking time.

Bake at 170 C fan oven for 20 mins ish, stirring occasionally. To crisp it up more leave it in for a couple of minutes extra/as long as it takes!

Serve with milk or greek yoghurt.

The finished product!

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! 

Jen's Lemon Yoghurt Wimbledon Cake

Hi all, this is my Lemon Yoghurt Wimbledon Cake recipe: 

300g caster sugar

50g butter, softened (I used unsalted)

3 large eggs, separated

225g Greek-style yoghurt

Zest of 1 lemon

175g self-raising flour

100g sifted icing sugar

1½ tbsp lemon juice

Method:

1. Cream the softened butter, sugar and egg yolks

2. Pour in the yoghurt and add the lemon zest. Beat.

3. Sift the flour and fold.

4. Next whisk the egg whites and fold into the mixture.

5. Pour mixture in to base-lined loose-bottomed tin, 20cm in diameter.

6. 180 C for around 1 hour.

The only thing i did differently was to make lemon butter icing instead of runny icing. I also used a square tin instead of a round one, and it was slightly larger than required so the cake looked rather thin! It also, therefore needed less than the recommended cooking time.

Will be reviewing this recipe from 'Mary Berry's UCB' on the blog ASAP! 

Jen's Tarts

I went for two pastry bakes for the jubilee themed cake club. Two, because I had enough pastry left over from the bakewell tart to conveniently make some jam tarts..! 

Ingredients for the pastry

250 g plain flour

50 g icing sugar

125 g butter, straight from the fridge

1 large free range egg

Ingredients for the frangipane

75 g butter, at room temperature

75 g golden caster sugar

150 g ground almonds

1 medium free range egg

Other ingredients:

2 tablespoons of raspberry jam

a handful of flaked almonds

To make the frangipane:

Cream together the butter and sugar (I use a hand whisk) and then add the egg a little at a time, whisking after each addition. Stir in the almonds.

To make the pastry:

Sift flour and icing sugar and rub in the butter until breadcrumb like. Next add the beaten, large, free range egg, and mix initially with a fork, and then your hands until you have a dough.

Wrap the dough in cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, roll out the dough on a floured surface until approximately 0.5 cm thick. 

Roll the pastry into a lightly greased, loose bottomed flan tin (20cm in diameter) and press into the sides firmly. Roll the edges of the tin to remove excess pastry - there should be enough for about 6 small jam tarts! 

Prick the base with a fork then wrap in cling film and again chill for 30 minutes in the fridge. 

In the mean time roll out the excess pastry and use round pastry cutter to make jam tarts. I put mine straight in to a greased shallow bun tin, and then chill for 30 mins before putting them in the oven. 

Preheat oven to 180 C /350 F/gas 4. 

When the tart base is fully chilled, remove cling film and and line with baking paper. Add baking beans and pop in to the oven to blind bake for 10-12 minutes. After this time, remove the beans and baking paper and bake for a further 5 minutes. If you can, make the frangipane whilst the tart is blind baking. Once blind baked, the pastry case can be filled with the frangipane and jam filling. Spread the jam over the base and then add the frangipane. Decorate with the flaked almonds and bake for 35 - 40 minutes at 180 C.

Jen's Icelandic Iced Prune Jam Sponge Cake

I got Iceland as my country, and during research, the one cake kept popping up. It was a layered sponge cake sandwiched with prune jam. I wasn't confident about making a cake with so many layers, so I thought I would compromise by making a basic sponge cake with prune jam added to it. Bit of a cop out, but it was my first club meet.... ;)) 


So, this recipe is based on Sticky Orange Marmalade Cake from 'The Great British Bake-off' book, which I love, and a traditional Icelandic Vinaterta Prune Cake.

For the prune jam:

500 g dried ready-to-eat prunes

250 g sugar

juice of one small lemon

1 tsp dried cinnamon

Chop the prunes in to small pieces. I didn't, and found the prunes congealed together in the saucepan as one sticky mass; this made it difficult to spread the finished jam on to the cake, but produced a pretty cool effect with the icing!

Heat the prunes for 15 minutes on a low heat in a saucepan. Add the sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice. Cook for approximately 1 hour, stirring frequently, and then transfer to sterilised jam jars (these quantities fill 1.5 jars).

For the sponge:

175g unsalted butter, softened

175g of caster sugar

3 large free range eggs, at room temperature and beaten

175g self raising flour, sifted.

¼ tsp baking powder

3 tbsp prune jam

2 tbsp semi skimmed milk

To finish:

3 tbsp dried prune jam

100g icing sugar, sifted (1/2 cup)

2 tbsp warm water

Cream butter and sugar, gradually add the eggs and the prune jam. Fold in the flour and baking powder then add the milk. Spoon mixture in a 20 cm springform cake tin (base lined with baking paper) and bake at 175 degrees for 45 mins - this time is shorter than stated in the original recipe but any longer I find the edges get too brown. I also cover with foil for the last 10 mins of cooking time so that the top stays a nice golden colour and doesn't get too dark.

When just out of the oven, cover the top of the cake with the prune jam and leave to cool completely. Then make the icing and pour over the cake randomly. I found dripping from a height works pretty well!

The finished cake!