The easiest chocolate cake decoration ...

Last weekend we popped down to see DH's parents. The weekend fell neatly between his Dad's birthday and Mothering Sunday, so cake was definitely in order.

This is possibly the easiest way to decorate a chocolate cake. A warning though - it's not the cheapest and it is definitely the most calorific!

Mincemeat muffins

I am very fond of mince pies, and most years I produce a fair few jars of homemade mincemeat in November, in anticipation of the creation of dozens of festive treats. Christmas this year was relatively quiet, and I only used one jar in anger. I didn't even manage to offload any onto unsuspecting friends. Apple and mincemeat crumble accounted for some of the surplus, and at the weekend I made mincemeat muffins. This is a recipe which a friend gave me about ten years ago, when muffins were the new baking trend. I have no idea where it came from!

Ingedients

10 oz plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda

0.5 tsp salt

3 oz granulated sugar

1 egg

8 fl oz milk

8 fl oz mincemeat

3 fl oz vegetable oil

3 oz sultanas (optional)

icing sugar for dusting

Method

1. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases, or you can just grease them if you want.

2. Sift all the dry ingredients, (except the sultanas, obviously), into a large mixing bowl.

3. Put all the liquid ingredients into another bowl. This is easiest if you use a large measuring jug and start with the mincemeat, then add the milk on top so that the level reaches 16oz and then add the oil. Break the egg into the jug and give the whole thing a good whisk. 

4. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry. Using a wooden spoon mix them quickly together, until no dry flour is visible. Strangely, the batter is supposed to be lumpy! If you are using sultanas, add these with the last few stirs.

5. Fill the muffin cases until they are three-quarters full and bake for 20-25 minutes at 190C/ Gas Mark 5. They are ready when the tops spring back when they are gently pressed. Dust with icing sugar when cool.

 

These didn't hang around very long! I prefer muffins to the sickly sweet cupcakes which supplanted them in the cake-eating public's affections. And as for cake pops...life is just too short. (Apologies to the very accomplished bakers who can actually make them!)

DH's birthday it is!

Today is DH's birthday. I don't know about anyone else, but I really struggle with making birthday cards for the men in my life. I'm sure there are some lovely papers out there that appeal to science-mad, football-hating engineers, but I have yet to find them. This year DH's card was a little different:

I am not experienced with origami. I struggle to make a paper aeroplane, so Yoda was a bit of a challenge! I entered a strange world of mountain, squash and rabbit-ear folds and emerged, triumphant if bemused, an hour later. I didn't use proper origami paper, (the cloak is the inside of a wrapping paper roll), but he does stand up, if a little drunkenly. The pattern for him is here. 

DH had some time owing so we took the day off while the children were at school. It felt like we were playing truant! We went to the cinema , courtesy of T*sco vouchers, to see the latest Star Trek prequel, "Into the Darkness". Can you guess whose choice that was? I did enjoy it; the effects were brilliant and the storyline clever. However, I found the amount of violence in it hard to take, and it really spoilt it for me. Maybe I am getting old!

Of course, no birthday is complete without cake. DH is a fan of Black Forest gateau so I had a go at a chocolate and cherry gateau style cake. Of course it was nothing like a real Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte, it lacked alcohol for a start, but it went down well.

DD is thirteen!

My lovely daughter turned thirteen yesterday. I am slightly in shock at how fast the time has gone. My happy little girl in pigtails is turning into a beautiful, intelligent and creative young woman. It's the bit in the middle that worries me!

Today she decorated her birthday cake, as she has some friends coming to watch a DVD and eat pizza tomorrow. I hope they leave some for me!

Bread pudding

What do you do when you find large loaves of bread reduced to 35p in the supermarket? Fill your freezer and make bread pudding of course!

I used a Delia Smith recipe, but there is a very similar recipe on the BBC Good Food website. I used value mixed fruit, which has candied peel mixed in, so I didn't add any extra peel.

It's not the most elegant of desserts, but it tastes wonderful. We had it with custard for pudding. It should probably come with a health warning given the amount of calories, but I only had a small slice. Honest.

Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins

A few weeks ago T*sco were kind enough to give me a free white chocolate Easter egg, presumably in recognition of the fact that I spend far too much time and money there. This morning they were also generous to discount some raspberries. So what could I do except bake some muffins? This is based on a recipe given to me by a good friend a fair few years ago.

Ingredients

9oz/255g plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

4oz/110g granulated sugar

1 egg

8 fl oz/240ml milk

3 fl oz/90ml vegetable oil

2.5oz/65g white chocolate (or 1 small Easter egg!)

4.4oz/125g raspberries

Method

1. Grease or put muffin cases into a 12-hole muffin tin.

2. Chop the chocolate into small chunks.

3. Sift the sugar, flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl.

4. Beat the egg in a different bowl, and mix in the milk and oil.

5. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix gently. The strange thing about muffins is that the batter is supposed to be lumpy; as soon as you can't see any dry flour you are done. Mix in the raspberries and chocolate with the last few stirs.

6. Fill the muffin cups so they are three-quarters full and bake at Gas Mark 5/190 C/375 F for about 25 minutes. They are done when the tops spring back when pressed lightly.

These are lovely when eaten while still warm from the oven, although they will keep for a few days in an airtight container. This is never an issue in our house...

"At home" days

Although we enjoy getting out and about, the children and I are quite happy to spend time pottering around at home. The last few days have definitely been stay-at-home, happy, creating days.

DD has been working hard on her Baden-Powell badge at Guides. I never even graduated from Brownies, so I am amazed at the amount of work that she has put into it. For one of her challenges she has decided to organize a birthday party for a friend's small daughter.

Every party needs bunting!

Pin the wand on the fairy, anyone? DD's general creativity infected the rest of us.

You are never too old for a rubber duck, so DS decided to paint his own.

Of course we had to do some baking. DS made a chocolate cake with very little help from me, and DD produced the icing. This bodes well for the future!

DS has two obsessions in life; scooters and film-making, so he combined the two to produce a stop-frame animation. Watch out, Nick Park!

And me? Well, not at all coincidentally with the advent of "The Great British Sewing Bee", I finally got out my Mother-in-Law's sewing machine. It has been lurking in the corner of my bedroom for 15 months, instilling fear and guilt in equal measure. I have been meaning to conquer it since I spent hours sewing a waistcoat for DS last year, and today was the day I faced my fear. It took an hour or two, a broken needle and a fair bit of huffing and puffing, but I did get it threaded and producing something resembling a line of stitching.

Yay! So what to do now? I need a few more "at home" days for inspiration to strike!

Homebaked January - the finish line!

I have thoroughly enjoyed my baking challenge this month. Producing all our baked goods has definitely been interesting, if time-consuming. I originally thought that baking enough bread would be the hardest part; actually it has been keeping up with our biscuit consumption that has taken the most time! It has been quite an eye-opener finding out how many we get through. 

I was hoping to try out lots of new recipes, but it didn't actually work out that way. I made standbys such as tea bread that I knew I could bake quickly and would get eaten. I rediscovered a few old recipes such as Mars bar cake that I hadn't made for years. What I didn't do was experiment with new recipes as I didn't want to spend any extra time in the kitchen. However, yesterday I made these chocolate brownies from this recipe here in a luscious blog called "Posie Gets Cozy". Reading it is like perusing a beautiful glossy magazine and there is some stunning photography.

These brownies were easy to make and tasted amazing. The recipe called for unsweetened chocolate which I believe is plain chocolate. I substituted half plain  value brand chocolate and half milk chocolate. They still tasted great!

So as we march on into February there will be a little less baking going on in our household! DH likes having shop-bought bread around because it is easy to toast a few slices without risking fingers. (I did have a few plasters which made crochet very difficult). So as a compromise there will be home-baked bread at the weekend and home-baked rolls for the children's lunch boxes. There will hopefully always be something sweet and homemade in a tin, but there will be shop bought back ups in the cupboard just in case. Hopefully there will be a little less biscuit eating going on!

Mars bar cake

Or what to do when you have had enough of baking and need something really easy to make! I regularly helped my Mum make these; the taste of them instantly transports me to the 1980s.

Ingredients

2oz/50g margarine or butter
2 standard size Mars bars
2 cups Rice Krispies (or supermarket puffed rice cereal)
100g - 200g chocolate

Method

1. Grease and line a 20cm x 20cm shallow tin or a near equivalent.

2. Chop up the Mars bars and melt with the marge in a large heavy-based saucepan. This takes a little while and does not look pretty!

3. Remove from the heat and gently stir in the Rice Krispies. Tip into the tin and flatten with the back of a spoon.

4. When the mixture has cooled, cover with melted chocolate. The amount is up to you, personally I prefer more! Put into the fridge to set and then cut into squares.

I am now resisting the urge to crack open my "Johnny Hates Jazz" and Rick Astley tapes!

Home-baked January - half way there!

I can hardly believe that we are already half way through January! This week I have had a bit of a setback to my baking challenge. My beloved Kenwood Chef mixer, which I blogged about so proudly last week, decided that it had mixed one cake too many and went on strike. After much fiddling with screwdrivers, trawling of the internet and muttering under his breath, DH pronounced it irreparable. This led to a bout of soul-searching - can I justify the money for another one?

I have a slightly strange relationship with money. I am very fortunate that DH brings in a good income - my role in our partnership is to manage it. I am frugal by nature and conviction and tend to overjustify every purchase. After listening patiently to my blathering for a while DH went online and found a basic model for about half price. That decided me and my new mixer is already sitting proudly on my work surface.

Picture from Amazon

Rather amazingly, given that my new model is about thirty years younger than my old one, all the old attachments fit my new mixer. So I have two bowls and two beaters, which is really useful when baking in bulk.

I have still managed to produce all our baked goods despite being stupidly busy at school, (for a governor - I definitely wouldn't manage it if I was a teacher!)  Surprisingly, bread has been the easiest to manage due to my breadmaker. (I feel slightly nervous praising it here in case it also decides to retire!) I have made biscuits or cakes nearly every day and frozen quite a stockpile "just in case". I found a really good recipe for chocolate chip cookies here. I've tried a few different recipes for these and this is easily the best.

I have discovered a few interesting facts this week:

• Biscuits spontaneously disappear. I have no idea where they go!
• No matter how organised your cupboard is, the bicarb is never where it should be.
• Home-baked cakes are much harder to resist than the shop-bought kind.
• However much your family love your baking, they will still crave Kit Kats!

Home-baked January; a slow start!

The first week of my baking challenge has been a bit of a phony war! I had a bit of a stockpile of cake and bread to use up, as it would be a bit of a false economy to let them go stale. However, we have now finished all the cake and I am down to the last loaf of bread.

Bread will be our biggest issue. I think that I, (OK - the breadmaker!), will probably need to produce a loaf of bread every morning, and have some rolls in the freezer for the children's lunches. Fresh bread doesn't tend to last much past breakfast! I have baked some parmesan rolls to stock up the freezer as I had some quasi-parmesan in the fridge. I am going to tweak this recipe to use normal/cheaper cheese and will blog it if it is any good.

 

I have also made a kind of mocha chocolate sponge. I baked a recipe using six eggs so I used my Kenwood Chef which originally belonged to my Mother-in-Law.

I love it because I know that it has been used to bake countless cakes, including many enjoyed by DH when he was small. It has a very on-trend retro look and it also does the job beautifully. I made four sponges, froze two and filled two with chocolate butter icing. The mocha cake had mixed reviews; DD thought it needed more coffee, DS thought it had too much! You can't please all the people...DH maintained a diplomatic silence!

I have also stocked up on biscuits. I used the hob-nob recipe which Morgan kindly gave me the link to. The recipe is supposed to be for 20 cookies, but I doubled up the quantities and made 88, so some maths has gone awry somewhere. I should have enough to keep us going for a while anyway!

We have also made flapjack, gingerbread men (from a Christmas kit), plum tarts (least said, soonest mended) and tiffin. I know that for many people this is a normal way of life, and you are probably wondering what I am making such a fuss about! For me it feels like a natural progression, but the real test will start next week as the kids go back to school and normal routines resume.

A home-baked January?

One of the things I have enjoyed since starting this blog is rediscovering my love of baking. I have particularly enjoyed writing the posts on the costs of baking from scratch. This has all set me thinking, and I have decided to set myself a challenge for January. I tend to go through phases with my baking; at times I can bake every day and then I go for weeks without producing so much as a biscuit. To be honest, my cupboard usually has quite a lot of shop-bought stuff lurking on the shelves. So for January I intend to bake all the family's cakes, biscuits, puddings and bread.

This isn't quite such a challenge as it sounds; I own a venerable but reliable bread-maker. I also have a few days' worth of cakes and biscuits in the cupboard and freezer. However with DH working from home, and two growing children, not to mention my own over-consumption, we get through a fair few biscuits in a week! I am obviously going to have to bake in bulk. If anyone has any simple recipes for biscuits or cakes that freeze well I will be very grateful!

Today DD and I made a start on using up the store-cupboard cakes. Every year we make a cheap-skate yule log using a value brand chocolate swiss roll and chocolate butter icing. (I did of course make double quantities of icing and freeze the leftovers!) 

Double figures!

Tomorrow is DS's birthday, when he reaches the grand old age of ten! I can hardly believe quite how quickly the last decade has flown by.

It has always been a bit of a challenge making his birthday special so close to Christmas. He hasn't had a party for a few years, but we do usually manage a special meal. As regular readers of my blog know, I love baking. It has been particularly galling when I have resorted to shop-bought birthday cake. So today DD and I have spent the afternoon producing our take on a Super Mario cake. 

Inside it is a marble cake. The grass is produced by mixing green food colouring with dessicated coconut, and I cheated by using ready to roll coloured icing! The leftover icing will go in the freezer. 

DS will see all of his grandparents tomorrow, and everyone will make a big fuss of him. He has never complained about having his birthday this time of year, and for years was convinced that all the decorations and parties were for him!

Mince Pie tasting

I had a fabulous evening yesterday. I am part of a small group of six Mums from church who meet to chat and pray. Last night we decided to have a mince pie tasting. I really love mince pies, so this was almost my perfect Christmassy evening. We all brought different brands of mince pie and did a blind tasting. We had pies ranging from the budget brands up to artisan bakery offerings. I and another friend brought semi-homemade mince pies. I say semi-homemade as I used shop bought mincemeat. I usually make my own, but as the apple tree failed to produce any fruit this year I didn't get round to it. Boxes of apples sitting in the garage tend to motivate me!

Mine were very basic mince pies made with standard shortcrust pastry. My friend was more adventurous than I and did exciting things with orange juice and a star cutter. I felt a bit like I was entering a WI competition as the different pies were sampled, along with cream of course! And the results? We didn't like the artisan bakery pies at all and everyone preferred the homemade pies. Yay!

Festive preparations

Christmas may actually happen in this house....

The puddings have been made and the poinsettia bought. A friend and I made the puddings together, amid much laughter and tea-drinking. The small ones will be for presents.

After reading the blogs of some wonderfully organised people, who appear to be all ready bar stuffing the turkey, I placed quite a few internet orders last week. Unfortunately they all arrived today, I was out, my husband works from home in the loft...let's just say he is a little fitter now.

DD has also been busy making cards and decorations. I'm just happy to see some sun for the sun-catchers! She has made a whole tribe of snowmen. Somehow snowmen and sun doesn't seem like a sensible combination!

Is it really cheaper to make scones from scratch?

In our family we have a bit of an addiction to cream teas. Whenever we visit the West Country we seek them out; we have been known to fit in one each day of a holiday. We also enjoy making our own at home, especially when the weather is as miserable as it has been this weekend. I think it reminds us that summer will come again!

I enjoyed writing last week's post on the cost of baking Victoria Sponge from scratch so I decided to take the same approach with scones. I didn't buy the cheapest "value" scones, as these contained fruit and DD considers cooked dried fruit to be an Abomination, only tolerated under sufferance. The scones I did buy claimed to be made with butter, so this time I used proper butter in my baking.

The ingredients!

The recipe I used was similar to the one on the BBC website here, except that I used milk rather than beaten egg to glaze them. This time I coerced DD into helping measure the energy used. Following Angela's advice I baked twice the normal amount to save even more energy. I froze half before they could be eaten!

Mine are the scones on the left.

My scones turned out to be the same weight as the shop bought scones. Mine worked out at 8p each, and the shop bought ones were 16.7p each. The shop bought scones looked neater, apparently mine have "character", but the home made variety were much lighter. So now the only question is, cream first or jam?

Is it really cheaper to bake from scratch?!

One thing that I often read on the blogs that I enjoy is that it is cheaper to cook from scratch. Being of a scientific and mathematical bent I decided to conduct an experiment to find out if this is actually true. I promise I won't befuddle you with calculations!

I decided to bake a Victoria Sponge from scratch and compare the results with the shop bought variety. To be fair I used the cheapest ingredients I could find and bought the value brand sponge, (for research purposes you understand!).

I was a bit dubious about using the "spreadable" butter-like spread. I usually use value butter but the spread claimed to be suitable for baking and it was considerably cheaper, so in the basket it went. I couldn't bring myself to buy caged hens' eggs, but you can get free range eggs fairly cheaply these days.

I use the weighing eggs method as I have a rather nice pair of kitchen balances. I am not going to write out the recipe here. (The words "suck eggs" comes to mind!)  It is available here, although this recipe promotes rather more expensive ingredients.

While the oven was heating up and the cake was baking I measured the electricity I used with an energy monitor. I sat there with a stopwatch and the monitor watching the little light on the oven go on and off. I really need to get out more...

In case it isn't obvious, the one on the left is mine! I then weighed both cakes and settled down to some serious work with the calculator. I was very pleased to find out that my cake cost 18.3p per 100g and the shop bought cake was 24.6p per 100g! 

But what of the taste? I found some very willing volunteers, blindfolded them and gave them small slithers of each cake. Fortunately for my self esteem they both preferred my cake. In fact, the shop bought cake is now trifle! I was also happy to find that the butter-substitute gave as good a taste as the real thing, so there will be a tub in the fridge from now on.

Of course there are a lot of other reasons to cook from scratch apart from cost. Knowing what's in your food and environmental factors spring to mind. I am now wondering what else I can compare...

Courgette loaf

This morning saw me trawling around the supermarket. Even though I honoured Stoptober more in the breach than the observance, I had more or less emptied the freezer and needed stocks urgently. I was very pleased to find some yellow-stickered courgettes and bananas lurking in the fruit and veg section.

Using bananas was not going to be much of a challenge, but courgettes? Neither of my children will touch them, not even DS, who can be relied on to finish off the salad bowl and prefers apples to chocolate cake. I had vague memories of a recipe for courgette loaf in the back of my recipe file, so I bought the despised courgettes anyway.

I had to adapt the recipe, (which originally used buckwheat flour), but the results were very well received. It makes a semi-healthy "back from school" snack. I like it spread with margarine, but the kids preferred it plain. This quantity makes two loaves, which can be frozen or stored in the fridge for up to three weeks, if you can resist them for that long!

Ingredients

350g grated courgette (no need to peel!)
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp cinnamon
165g plain flour
165g wholemeal plain flour
275ml sunflower oil
350g caster sugar
175g raisins or sultanas
3 eggs

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C/gas 4

2. Grease and line 2 2lb loaf tins.

3. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.

4. Divide mixture between tins.

5. Bake for about 50 minutes until a metal skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Autumn comforts

Autumn is normally my favourite season. I enjoy the light, the colours, the fruit, the cooler temperatures, the Christmas preparations. I am often to be found kicking piles of leaves and searching for conkers. However, these last few days have been particularly dank and murky in my part of the world. We have been shrouded in mist and permanently damp.

For some primordial reason, weather like this makes me want to bake bread. Well, I do cheat slightly! I own a reliable Panasonic SD-253 bread maker which has been faithfully kneading dough and baking loaves for at least 6 years. Today it produced fresh bread for breakfast and rolls this evening.

My other instinctive response to gloom is to light candles.

I am very fond of these tea-light holders. I bought the first one with some birthday money last year, and the second one is a supermarket bargain. Something about them cheers me up instantly.

Gluten-free people

I look after a Sunday School group for ages 5 to 7. Not that it's called Sunday School any more! This week the teaching material suggested icing gingerbread men to help us talk about our friends. The children were then to eat them, which is slightly disturbing! One of the little girls is gluten intolerant so I trotted off to the supermarket to examine the gluten-free aisle. I couldn't find gingerbread men, which I suppose is quite a lot to ask, so I bought some gluten-free plain flour and had a play. 

These are the results! I only had a teddy bear cutter, so the heads were done freehand, with some wonky results. I used a normal biscuit recipe and simply used the gluten-free flour instead of the plain flour. The biscuits tasted fine, they were a little bit more grainy than normal and slightly more crumbly. The children all used writing icing to decorate them and were a lot more creative than me!