A traditional cake but still one of my favourites, it’s good for feeding the masses too!
Ingredients:
225ml sunflower oil
3 eggs, large
120g golden syrup
150g soft light brown sugar
240g self-raising flour
1½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp allspice (if you don’t have allspice you can just leave it out!)
½tsp ground ginger
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
300g grated carrots
This is the perfect recipe for cream cheese frosting. It’s pipeable, spreadable and will set just nicely for you without running all over the place, but there are a few things to remember. Continue reading
To celebrate baking with Lurpak I’m doing a spot of Brownie Baking
Black Forest Berry Brownies – care to join me??
These are my Nanna’s favourite and I often make her some up and trip round with them – she slices it up and then bobs it in the freezer. I once made these and went to snap a pic on my phone before baking and dropped my phone right in it – I think I’d like to dive in headfirst too!
Anyway, I’m waffling on…You can find the recipe here and it brings me to why I’m regaling you with Brownie stories…
Next week I’ll be doing a Baking Q&A on all sorts of baking and brownies over on the Lurpak Facebook Page
Thursday 17th May 2012 12.00-13.00 if you fancy bobbing over to join us?
Lurpak have teamed up with Last.fm and launched Foodbeats – An online music tool that generates and streams recipe-based playlists to bake (and cook) along to!
So in celebration I have five sets of the following to giveaway to you lovely Pink Whiskers,
A Lurpak tea towel, a limited edition Stuart Gardiner tea towel, 3 Lurpak vouchers and 3 Lurpak bread baking tins!
To enter just leave a comment on this post telling me your favourite bake-along sound track!
Giveaway closes at 4pm Thursday 17th May 2012, five lucky winners will be chosen at random from all the comments received and will be contacted directly shortly after closing.
Ruth Clemens, Baker Extraordinaire
Zingy fruity cupcakes packing a taste of sunshine and perfect for adorning with your own Pineapple Flowers.
Makes 12.
Ingredients:
200g butter, softened
100g soft brown sugar
75g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
200g self raising flour
140g fresh chopped pineapple
80g raspberries, frozen
1 x batch of Cream Cheese frosting recipe here
12 x Pineapple Flowers to decorate – instructions here
Preheat oven to 160c (fan)/180c/Gas Mark 4.
Cream together the butter and sugars.
Add the eggs and half of the flour and beat well.
Fold in the remaining flour. Don’t overbeat it at this stage otherwise the cakes will be tough – you want to keep them as light as a feather.
Chop the pineapple into small pieces and gently crush the frozen raspberries.
Fold the fruit through the mixture.
Divide the mixture between 12 cupcake cases and bake in the oven for 35 minutes until golden.
Because they are packed with fruit the cupcakes can feel fairly moist. It’s important to check that they are fully cooked by testing with a skewer which should come out clean. If not bake for a further five minutes and check again.
Allow to cool for five minutes in the pan before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Mix up the cream cheese frosting as per the directions here. Fill a piping bag fitted with a large closed star nozzle.
Pipe a ruffle of frosting onto the tops of the cupcakes and top with a beautiful pineapple flower.
Pineapple and Raspberry Cupcakes
Ruth Clemens, Baker Extraordinaire
How beautiful do these look? They taste great too!
I won’t lie they’re a bit of a faff – okay quite a lot of a faff but they certainly have the wow factor and if you fancy spending an afternoon messing with a pineapple then these are just up your street!
Here’s how to make your own pineapple flowers. Continue reading
Another of our family favourites to share with you – the recipe that is, unfortunately there’s only crumbs left in the tin here!
These chocolate chip cookies are chewy, oaty and soft in the middle. I can promise you one is never enough.
Makes 24.
Ingredients:
110g butter, softened
110g caster sugar
85g light soft brown sugar
1 egg, large
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp salt
180g rolled oats
200g chocolate – chips, chunks, white, milk, dark – whichever you and your lot prefer!
Preheat the oven to 190c (fan)/200c/Gas Mark 5.
Line a couple of baking trays with non-stick baking paper or grease well.
Cream together the butter, caster sugar and light brown sugar. Because there’s more sugars than butter it forms a thick paste type consistency.
Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix well.
Now mix in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.
Tip in the oats and mix again. If you’re making by hand you’ll need a wooden spoon and a strong arm as the dough gets more difficult to mix!
Finally add in the chocolate – I tend to use a mix of whatever sort of chocolate is in the cupboard – up to a total of 200g. Chop up bars of chocolate into chunks, use chocolate chips, steal children’s Easter eggs and use those – did I really say that? It’s okay, my boys don’t read the blog!
Milk, dark, white chocolate, fudge chunks, raisins they all work. You can replace some of the chocolate with nuts, pecans are delicious in these lovelies.
Cranberry and white chocolate cookies? 100g of each will do the trick.
You get the gist – you can make these cookies whatever flavour you like, raid the cupboard and chuck it in.
Okay so mix in whatever you’re mixing in!
Now roll the dough into balls using your hands - 1½” in diameter and then set onto the baking trays well spaced apart. You don’t need to flatten them they’ll do it themselves in the oven!
Bake in the oven for 8 minutes until lightly golden around the edges.
Remove from the oven but leave them to cool on the tray for ten minutes, they’ll be super soft and will fall apart if you try and move them now.
Once cooled a little you can then move them to a wire rack to cool completely.
I suggest you ration the children/husband/wife/colleagues with these otherwise your tin will be empty and you’ll be back in the kitchen making up another batch before the washing up is done!
Choc Chip Cookies
Ruth Clemens, Baker Extraordinaire
Well, it’s just a fortnight until my book hits the shops.
’EEEEEEEEEEK!!’
So it’s definitely time to fill you in on all the ins and outs of where you can nab a copy, or get me to sign it for you…..
If you’d like a sneaky peek then head to Amazon where you can do the whole ‘look inside’ thingy….
Whilst the cheapest place to buy The Busy Girl’s Guide to Cake Decorating is looking like Amazon I have had several requests from Pink Whiskers for signed copies.
You can order your own signed copy directly from me – all the details are here and if you order it now I should be able to get it to you before it hits the shops (perks of being a Pink Whisker!)
I’ll be in the Authors’ Area (another EEEEEEK of terror!) at Cake International – The Cake Decorating and Baking Show at ExCeL London 27-29 April 2012 – you’ll find me in a cloud of icing sugar where I’ll be signing copies and chatting so if you’re at the show please stop and say hello (and treat yourself to a signed copy too of course!)
Not only that, I’ve got five pairs of tickets to the show to giveaway, valid for any one day. So if you fancy winning yourself a pair of tickets just leave me a comment on this post. Giveaway closes at 1pm Thursday 19th April 2012, five lucky winners will be chosen at random from all the comments received and will be contacted directly shortly after closing.
COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED
Winners of the tickets are:
Debbie – Leigh on Sea
Tori – Essex
Joanne – East Yorkshire
Linda – Oxfordshire
Jocelyn – Newton
Each of the winners has been contacted directly.
See you soon – I’ll be peeking at you from the shelves of your local bookshop!
Ruth x
Ruth Clemens, Baker Extraordinaire
This is a really unassuming cake, looks like nothing but tastes amazing.
It’s not often my boys ask me to make something in particular but the other half will beg for this cake. I see some bribery tactics up my sleeve….
Ingredients:
200g caster sugar
125g butter, softened
2 eggs, large
1 whole orange
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
250g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda dissolved in 180ml water.
200g dark chocolate
Makes 1 x 8″ cake
Lots of you had a guess at the value of my Lakeland bag, lots of you will be horrified and on the other hand lots of you won’t be surprised….
The total of my shopping was the grand total of £86.56 and inside was….
Three ways to use this dough – as a loaf, whirls or the traditional buns – who could resist?
Ingredients:
Dough
315g strong plain white flour
1/2 tsp mixed cake spice
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp dried fast action yeast (or 1 sachet)
25g caster sugar
205ml milk
1 egg, large
zest of 1/2 and orange
100g currants
Filling
60g dark brown sugar
1 1/2tsp cinnamon
A little water icing to glaze (optional)
Makes 1 x 1lb loaf, 10 whirls or 8 buns
Place the flour, mixed spice, salt, caster sugar, orange zest, yeast, egg and currants in a large bowl.
Gently warm the milk until it is lukewarm.
Pour into the bowl and bring the dough together. I’m letting the mixer do it for me but it can also be done easily (if you have some muscles) by hand. Continue reading
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