Mary-Anne's Mojito Genoese cake recipe

Sorry this has taken so long, I know I haven't put any recipes on here so I'm going to try and get some on!

This can be made with or without the rum, I usually make it without and it tastes delicious.

• 150 g (5.3oz) Soft light brown sugar - Sugar syrup
• 40 ml (1.4fl oz) Water - Sugar syrup
• 2 Finely grated zest and juice of limes - Sugar syrup
• 80 ml (2.8fl oz) White rum - Sugar syrup
• 1 Bunch of fresh mint, leaves only - Sugar syrup
• 260 g (9.2oz) Caster sugar - For the sponge
• 115 g (4.1oz) Butter, melted and cooled, plus extra for greasing - For the sponge
• 260 g (9.2oz) Plain flour - For the sponge
• 100 g (3.5oz) Butter, softened - For the buttercream
• 200 g (7.1oz) Icing sugar - For the buttercream
• 1 Vanilla pod or 2 drops of vanilla extract - For the buttercream
• 1 Lime - Finely grated zest and juice - For the buttercream
• 6 Eggs, lightly beaten - For the sponge

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F), Gas Mark 6. Grease a 20cm cake tin and line the base with baking paper.
2. Make the sugar syrup first to allow the flavours to infuse. Put the sugar, water, lime juice and rum in a medium pan over a low heat. Cook until the sugar dissolves, then boil for 2-3 minutes until the syrup thickens. Add the mint and lime zest and set aside.
3. Fill a large saucepan around a third full of water. Place over a high heat and bring to the boil, then remove from the heat. Set a large heatproof bowl over the pan, making sure the base isn't touching the water. Add the sugar and eggs to the bowl and whisk. This causes them to foam up and gives a lighter, fluffier cake. The egg mixture should be whisked for about 10 minutes, then remove the bowl from the pan and continue to whisk for a further 5 minutes. The mixture is ready when it holds itself well in the bowl and, if you take a spoonful and then drop it back in, the resulting `blob' should take 3-4 seconds to blend back into the mixture.
4. Once you have reached this `ribbon stage', pour the melted butter into the bowl, around the sides (pouring it into the middle knocks out all the air). Fold the butter into the egg mix, moving the bowl around and scooping down to the bottom to fold the mixture over itself, using as few movements as possible to retain the air.
5. Next, add the flour and fold in until the mixture is uniform and smooth. Pour gently into the prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for about 30-35 minutes. When cooked, the sponge should spring back when pushed lightly, will be a light golden colour and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake will come out clean. Leave to cool for 10 minutes or so, then remove from the tin and place on a wire rack to cool completely. Once it is cool, slice the cake in half horizontally and set aside.
6. To make the buttercream, put the butter, icing sugar and vanilla in a bowl and whisk until pale and fluffy. Add the lime zest and juice to taste.
7. To assemble the cake, put a dollop of buttercream on a serving plate (to stop the sponge sliding around the plate). Place the bottom of the sponge on the plate and brush with the reserved sugar syrup. Be quite liberal to make the cake really moist. Put a big dollop of buttercream on top and, using a palette knife, spread the buttercream over the cake until it is level. Take the top half of the cake, turn cut side up and brush with the sugar syrup. Turn it back over and put it on top of the buttercreamed sponge.
8. Next, cover the whole cake with the buttercream, including the top and sides, making sure it is as smooth as possible with straight sides and top. Finish with slices or wedges of lime.

Lorna's Pecan Cake

For our Cake 'n' Bake charity picnic/tea party i decided to make a pecan cake, with fudge icing, decorated with lovely glittery butterflies! 

So shiny!

Anyway, too the  recipe;

Ingredients:

Cake:

150g margarine, softened

120g caster sugar

3 eggs

270g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 heaped tbsp golden syrup

45ml milk

50g pecans, chopped

Icing:

30g butter

15ml milk

20g brown sugar

2 tsp golden syrup

200g icing sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C, and line a deep 8" round tin (a 7" would also be fine but you'll get a tall cake).

Cream together  the butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs one at a time. If you want, add a squirt of vanilla extract but it's not necessary if you don't have any in - the cake will still be super tasty! Beat in the golden syrup, then stir in half the flour along with all the baking powder. Mix in the milk, then the remainder of the  flour. Finally stir in the pecans until well distributed. Bake for 40-45 minutes (if you're using a 7" tin then increase the cooking time by 10-15 minutes).

For the fudge icing, melt together the butter, syrup and brown sugar (i blasted them in the microwave for 30 seconds). Then stir in the icing sugar and milk. Beat until smooth. It will be a little runny while it's still warm, but will solidify as it cools.

When the cake is cooked, take it out of the tine and let cool completely. Cut in half and spread your icing in the middle, then sandwich back together.

I finished my cake with some melted dark chocolate, and glittery butterflies (made from white chocolate modelling paste). You could alternatively top with more fudge icing, or just a simple glace icing.

Birds Vs Bees Bake Sale

A few weeks ago we were contacted by our new friends at the National AIDS Trust to ask us to take part in their Bake Aware Campaign. Raising funds and awareness for the charity through baking? Just our cup of tea!

The campaign aims to get people talking about the birds and the bees, and so that became the theme for our bake sale! We split into two teams, Teams Birds and Team Bees, and a number of our members donated baked goods to the cause. On Sunday 19th May, Joy and I spent the day selling cakes to the lovely folks at the Cambridge Nursing Centre.

Representing Team Birds:
Jennie's Duckie Shortbread
Wendi's Snicker-Dodos
Stacey's Chicken and Bacon "Sausage" Rolls, Birdy Jam Tarts, and Bird Cake Pops

Representing Team Bees:
Catherine's Fridge Cake and Guinness Cake
Joy's Honey and Chocolate Cupcakes and Honey Spiced Cupcakes
(And standing in for Ruth, who had to drop out of Team Bees at the last minute...) Stacey's Bee Cake Pops

We had a fantastic time at the sale, and raised a respectful £47.15 for the charity - not bad for the club's first ever bake sale! If you too would like to raise funds for the National AIDS Trust, just head over to their website to find out how to get involved.

Happy Baking!

Baby-Cakes

Our friends at Baking Mad got in touch recently to invite us to join them in their latest campaign - celebrating the impending arrival of the Royal baby! We were asked to place a guess as to whether we thought our Duke and Duchess would be having a little prince or a little princess – Cake’n’Bake Club style!

Now, being a Royal celebration, we could have gone for a number of recipes from www.bakingmad.com. They have some great recipes for scones, or a Traditional Victoria sponge, but we went for cupcakes. (I especially like their chocolate cupcake recipe!)

After whipping up a batch of yummy cupcakes, I headed to the club meeting armed with two piping bags of butter cream – one pink and one blue! At our meeting, members were asked to “vote” by decorating their cupcake either pink for a princess or blue for a prince:

Once all of the votes had been cast (and the spare cupcakes consumed!!) two of our more mathematical members set about displaying them in graph form to indicate our results:

We think pink! The royal baby is due in just a few weeks now, so it won’t be long to wait to find out if we’re right. In the meantime though, if you wanted to play along and make your own cakey poll, Baking Mad have a great video tutorial on how to make cupcakes :-)


Happy baking!

Laura's Speculoos

Speculoos - the spiced biscuits from our Eurovison, these are belgian biscuits

The recipe is exactly what is written on this blog post

Ingredients

140g butter at room temperature
80g caster sugar
120g dark brown sugar
4g four spices
270g plain flour
3g baking soda
2g salt
1 egg
1-2 tbsp water

In the bowl of your Kitchen Aid, work the butter with the paddle until creamy and airy, add both sugars and keep on working the dough until well combined.  Mix together the flour, spices, salt and baking soda and add them to the mix. When the dough is homogeneous, add the egg and eventually a little water.

Unlike cookie dough, the Speculoos dough will be very soft and hard to get together. With a serving spoon, drop it on a piece of cling film and fold it in then put it in the freezer for 2 hours.

Once the dough is firm, preheat your oven to 150° C (300°F) then line the dough on parchment paper or silicon mat into a square or rectangular shape 2mm thick.

If you have trouble lining your dough, cover it with a piece of cling film at least the size of your baking tray. This way, the dough won’t stick to your rolling pin, you’ll just have to remove it delicately once the dough is properly lined.

Bake it for 20 minutes.

When you take it out of the oven, the dough is still soft when you press it with your finger. It’s normal and it will be very helpful as it will allow you to cut the biscuits.

Use a sharp long knife and start cutting the biscuits.

You can also use star, heart, animals cutters if you want to have more fun. In that case, keep all the leftovers in an airtight box. You can use them to replace Digestive biscuits in your Cheesecake base! Let them cool down and enjoy them the way you like them!

A couple of notes.

The recipe calls for four spices which is a french spice mix called quatre epices. I made this up myself using white pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, allspice and cloves in a ratio of about 4:2:2:2:2:1. First time I didn't believe the recipe when it said I needed the 4g of spice the first time I made them but I would say you need that if not slightly more.

The dough is quite tricky to handle and seemed to break a lot when rolling out. I cut it into pieces before baking rather that marking and breaking after the fact as suggested in the blog post

Laura's Kourapiedes (or Greek Butter Biscuits)

First Kourapiedes, this recipe if from Faling Cloudberries a lovely cookbook

The Ingredients are

250g Butter
2 Tbsp of Icing sugar
1 Egg Yolk
1 tsp of Vanilla Extract
1 Tbsp of Brandy (optional)
300g plain flour (Sometimes I have needed more to get the dough to hold)
1 tsp baking power

Beat the butter till light and fluffy (this takes 5-10minutes in my Kitchenaid).
Add the icing sugar and continue beating
Add the yolk and vanilla
Add the brandy
Add the flour and baking powder (The book says to sift but I generally don't)
Beat the ingredients together till they from a dough

Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes (I did it overnight and it took an hour or so to soften once it came out of the fridge)

Take roughly walnut sized balls of dough and place on baking sheet, they don't spread much so you don't need too much space between each one

Bake in an oven at 180 for 20 minutes (My first batch were a little brown I suspect 160 in a fan oven would be fine or less time)

June - Marvellous Miniatures

We have been neglecting this blog a little lately - we must resolve that! I'm typing this on my phone on a tea break at work whilst enjoying some of last night's leftovers, so please forgive the inevitable spelling and grammatical errors!

Back at our May meeting, Ana suggested that we have a feast of bite-sized portions in June, and so the theme was set as "marvelous minis", and it truly was marvelous!  (Although we don't think that any less was consumed!) We also welcome three new members this month, hurrah!

So, the role-call: Aileen decorated some cupcakes to look like super cute little big cakes, Ana herself baked some lovely mini potato cakes,  Laura made some greek butter biscuits, Lorna baked mini chocolate and beetroot cupcakes, Mary-Anne flew the savoury flag with some prosciutto and parmesan dough balls and some parmesan cookies, Ruth baked some delicious creme brule flavoured mini cupcakes, Sally baked some mini banana cupcakes, Sian baked some teeny lemon merringue pies, Stacey M baked some mini Victoria sponge cakes, I made dough balld with garlic butter and pesto, Tom make some sandwich cookies, and Wendi baked some butterfly shaped banana bread! Nom!