Sausage rolls

I don't know why more people don't make their own sausage rolls. They are so easy to create. I made these in about an hour, including cooking. Just a simple pasty with flour and marg rubbed together and a little egg and water. Put it in the fridge to chill for 10 minutes or so, then roll it out and add a line of sausage meat. Don't forget to wet the pastry where you are going to roll it over so it'll stick, cut into appropriate sized bits and stick on a baking tray. Brush on some egg and cook for 30 minutes.  A much tastier treat than the tiny puffy things you can buy.

Chocolate covered marzipan balls

As promised this is what to do with spare marzipan.  Roll it into smallish balls.  Melt some dark chocolate and then roll the balls in the chocolate until covered.  Leave on a sheet of foil in the fridge to chill and there you have the perfect quick present for someone.

Christmas Cake

I don't really like Christmas cake.  It's normally too heavy and I don't like the way it is so often saturated in alcohol.  So instead I make my own version.  I have a recipe for a 'picnic fruit cake' which is full of fruit but light and perfect for taking on a picnic.  I have to admit to calling it 'panic cake' though, a name from when I first made it many years ago and miss read the name.

Normally I would make it in a traybake style, but who wants a square Christmas cake, so I made it round.  That's probably why the fruit sank, in the traybake it has no where to go.  A little apricot jam, some marzipan and some easy roll icing and the cake is done.  I'd like to decorate it some more, but couldn't get my icing to keep its shape.  

I'll show you what to do with left over marzipan later in the week.

Cookies

This weekend I needed something quick to make.  The perfect quick sweet treat are cookies.  They take about 5 minutes to put together then 12 minutes in the oven.  The recipe I use came out of one of my Mum's magazines years ago.  The beauty is the variety of things you can use, for instance dried fruit, cherry's, chocolate chips and in this case fudge.  I had hoped that the fudge would stay soft, but it went hard.  Still made for tasty cookies.
(The secret of a soft cookie is to put them in the tin while still slightly warm.)

Millionaire shortbread

This week I've made millionaire shortbread.  Different from normal shortbread as it has caramel topped by milk chocolate on top of the shortbread.  It is very rich and delicious.
I have attempted it several times in the past, with the most memorable being the one where the caramel set rock hard and had to be chipped out of the dish!  The last two times I've used the recipe from the tin of condensed milk and the caramel has been perfect.

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?

Butterfly cakes with chocolate icing

I’m not very good at decorating cakes.  Most of my cakes are practical looking, with maybe a little sugar sprinkled on top or chocolate icing left to melt and drip off the sides.  I am more interested in it tasting good than faffing about with icing bags etc.

But I do remember having a go at piping icing on a Christmas cake as a kid.   And so when I saw a set of icing nozzles in a shop recently I had to get them.  But what to try icing?

I decided to make some plain butterfly cakes with butter chocolate icing; this way I could try piping the icing without it mattering too much if I messed it up.  It would also make them a little easier to transport for lunch.  I used Mary Berry's cake and icing recipe which made good little cakes, although I would have liked them to have risen a little better, and I found the icing a little soft so some of it did not hold its shape.

The cases are silicon and can be used again and again.  Brilliant.

Baking from a young age

I love baking.  I enjoy cooking, but I love baking.  The simple process of mixing eggs, flour, sugar and butter together and ending up with some delicious cake is a miracle that I will never bore of creating.

It helps if you can lick the spoon too

It helps that I started early.  As long as I can remember I’ve been encouraged to cook.  With our kenwood food mixer (forever to be known as Ken) anything was possible and little arms wouldn’t get worn out mixing.  

The Love of Cooking helped me create tasty things to go in my lunch box and I’m continuing this tradition, although not for my lunch box but my boyfriend’s.

Helping to make my Aunties Wedding cake

Care Bear cake with pin the tale on Rainbow Bright's horse 'Star light'

And with inspiration including a Care Bear cake, (which I seem to remember had marbled insides for bear guts) a green crocodile and a spider cake with chocolate finger legs how could I not be a baker?

Spider cake

Here I will share with you the highs and lows as I attempt to keep my boyfriends lunch box full.