Jane's fruit cake

Personally I like a nice light fruit cake, but he likes it dark and heavy so this recipe is perfect.  I don't know who Jane is but this was a very easy cake to put together with a little help from Ken.  It then took 3.5 hr's to cook!
It's one of Mary Berry's so of course it worked fine and tastes good, if a little heavy for my liking.  

Cornbread

 I may love cooking cakes but I have recently got the bread baking bug.  I have read so much American fiction which refers to Cornbread, most recently Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, that I decided I just had to have a go.  It is pure coincidence that it was Thanks Giving on Thursday.

A quick search on the net bought up lots of different recipes with many different things in them, but I ended up with a basic recipe and just added a little bit of cheddar cheese.  Of course I had to convert it from cups into some useful type of measurement, but I am pretty happy with how it turned out.  Kinda reminds me of fried bread, fritters and bubble-and-squeak all mixed together - not unpleasant.

Gingerbread men

Today I made gingerbread men.  Everyone seems to have a recipe for them, but I always go back to the recipe in my children's cook book.  So easy to make and lovely to eat.  Eyes and buttons are made from sugar decorations.

Crunchy lemon syrup loaf

Tomorrow is Children in Need and to help raise some cash for them the University is holding a cake sale.  I won't be buying as I am trying to loose a little weight, but that doesn't stop me from joining in - they still need something to sell.

Ideally I would make a chocolate cake like the one in the last post, but cakes like that don't work so well when wrapped in cling film, so I've made a crunchy lemon syrup loaf.  It is another of Mary Berry's recipes and one that is easy to make and tastes wonderful, if you like lemon.

I am particularly pleased with the loaf case, as it took me ages to find some and it worked perfectly.  Hopefully it will keep the syrup under control.  (this cake is very moist and can get very sticky.)

So if anyone is in Guildford tomorrow morning there will be cakes for sale in the Lecture Block from 1200.

Can't go wrong chocolate cake

Over the years I've had several chocolate cake recipes, that have worked well, but this is the best of all of them.  As the title suggests, it just can't go wrong.  As my recipe is a photocopy of a photocopy I'm not 100% sure who's it is, but believe its a Mary Berry recipe.

Basically everything is put in a large bowl and mixed together.  That's it.  The icing is equally easy and depending on how warm it is when applied to the cake can give a variety of textured finishes.  I like to pour it on hot so it dribbles down the sides.

I added Maltesers this time for decoration but forgot how hot the icing was and they soon melted and rolled off!  Doh!  Still it was a good cake for a party, even with milk chocolate Malteser skid marks!

Putting waste pastry to good use

I really hate waste, especially in the kitchen.  There isn't any need for it, we should know how many we are cooking for and shop and measure accordingly.  But when making pastry I would always rather have too much than not enough so I do normally end up with a ball of pastry unused and feeling sorry for itself.  This week I had just enough to make a snack.  It is so easy to do, and sometimes I think things like this taste even better than the cakes that take me forever to put together.

I rolled out the pastry, covered it with a layer of sweet mince meat and chunks of our one-and-only home grown apple, then rolled the whole thing up using a little milk to stick the end down.  If I'd not been trying to cook dinner at the same time I might even have remembered to sprinkle a little sugar on top before sticking it in the oven for 25 mins.

A tasty treat my dad taught me how to make.

Double chocolate marshmallow muffins

Still holding their shape

I've never really had a go at making muffins.  I guess I never really saw the need, what's wrong with fairy cakes?  But I found a tasty sounding recipe in Eric Lanlard's Home Bake, double chocolate marshmallow muffins, and thought I would have a go.

Oh dear.  It's not often that things go wrong with my cakes, but when they do they do it properly.  In the tin they seemed ok, but as I moved them onto the wire wrack to cool I realised things weren't as they seemed.  Slowly they flattened, so rather than the nice big fluffy muffins I was hoping for, I ended up with pancakes. 

Flattened

I could deal with this, but apparently they don't taste that exciting either.  I wonder if the marshmallow that the recipe required you put in the middle of the muffins had something to do with it?  Maybe I need to find a very basic muffin recipe and perfect that first?