The little ginger house

As it is very nearly Christmas, today I thought I would have a go at making a gingerbread house as I have never made one before. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I told you it was very time consuming and although fun to decorate the construction was a living nightmare! Never the less I persevered through all the times that my roof would slide of the top of the little ginger house, one of my sides even broke in half so I had to make a new one at the last minute!

After all this my apron  was left covered in white icing and the kitchen was a tip however the little ginger house wasn't half bad in the end. And looking at it now I can tell you it is holding out well and hasn't yet fallen apart! The hardest part of this baking experience is yet to come! Trying not to nibble at it for a day till Christmas day! That would really be a Christmas miracle if it lasts un-touched in my house for a whole day.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away?

I decided that I wanted to make an apple crumble however I did not know a recipe for apple crumble at the time so I decided to improvise and hope for the best.

Luckily everyone in my family loved them! Although I was guttered that we didn't have any eggs so I couldn't make a homemade custard to go with it. Never the less it tasted just fine, well judging by the empty plates anyway.

The recipe for this apple crumble was as follows:

Ingredients:
For the crumble:
150g Rolled Oats (Blitz till fine)
150g Breadcrumbs (I blitz a loaf of fresh wholemeal bread until it resembled breadcrumbs)
150g Butter (Cold from the fridge, diced)
100g Soft Brown Sugar
1-2tsp Ground Cinnamon
A pinch of grated Nutmeg
For the apple filling:
750g Apples (peeled, cored and cut into chunks)
4tbsp Soft Brown Sugar
A squeeze of Orange Juice

1) Preheat the oven to gas mark 5.
2) Firstly to make the crumble topping put all the ingredients into a bowl, excluding the butter and mix till well combined.
3) Add the diced butter to the dry ingredients and using your fingertips blend the ingredients together until it resembles quite large looking breadcrumbs.
4) Set aside until needed.
5) For the apple filling put the apples, sugar, orange juice and the butter into a saucepan and stirring occasionally leave the apples to soften for 5 minutes.
6) In a shallow dish pour the apple mixture inside, get your crumble topping and spread evenly over the top.
7) Bake for 40-45 minutes.
8) Best enjoyed whilst hot.

I included step 8 (best enjoyed whilst hot) because this is very true, it feels so much like comfort food when eating it pipping hot with a mug of warm milk, mmmmmm yum.  However it is still nice the next day, I recommend that you re-heat it as believe me, when it is pipping hot it is very very scrummy. And if the saying an apple a day keeps the doctor away then I will defiantly be making this more often (yes it doesn't count) But I can use that as an excuse for baking apple crumble frequently, cant I?

Its beginning to smell a lot like mince pies

At long last the best 25 days of the year has arrived for baking. I have been waiting to bake lots of Christmasy goods, but have been holding back till the 1st December. FINALLY this day has arrived and I have been able to make one of the many cakes and bakes on my list of cakes and bakes to make in the next 25- 24 days not including Christmas, although I will probably be baking something even then!

From my very long list of things to bake I picked to bake mince pies first as they are a classic after all and everyone in my family loves them. The recipe I settled on was Jamie Olivers' mince pie recipe. It suggested that I add marzipan into the filling and I will defiantly try that next time. However even without the marzipan these mince pies went down a storm in my house. I can now honestly say that its beginning to smell a lot like mince pies in my house. Is it in yours?

The shortbread for the millionaires?

Millionaires shortbread? Why is it called millionaires shortbread? I asked myself whilst looking at Mary Berry's  recipe for this particular baked good. However as I looked at the photo of the crumbly shortbread topped with a gooey looking creamy fudge like topping finished with a layer of melted chocolate my question was answered.

To my surprise we had all the ingredients to make the millionaires shortbread in the house-it must have been destiny. Once I had proceeded on to make this recipe I had found it extremely hard to resist eating the fudge like mixture and the melted chocolate straight from the pan-I'd even go as far as to say that it could be considered torture to some-however I managed to resist; Once I took the millionaires shortbread out of the fridge I cut it into pieces and as I did so I heard the crisp snap of the chocolate and the squelch of the fudge like center. I then delegated a slice to myself immediately.

They were very scrummy however I still don't know if they really are 'millionaires standard' but lets just put it this way; If I was a millionaire I would be more than satisfied if someone was to present these to me.

The disappearing brownies...

I made up my own recipe for brownies today... the tray of brownies were gone by the end of the day. I guess I should call it luck as it was my first attempt of making up my own brownie recipe (adapting it from a lot of others) and judging by the empty tray I am looking at now, they were a success. They were gooey inside yet firm on the outside; real comfort food.

My recipe for these brownies were as follows:

Ingredients:
60g Self Raising Flour
60g Cocoa Powder
4 Eggs (Beaten)
100g Butter
250g Caster Sugar
200g Dark Chocolate
1tsp Vanilla Essence
Icing sugar (For sprinkling on at the end)

Method:
1) Melt the dark chocolate in a bowl and then leave to cool. In the mean time beat the butter and sugar in to another bowl until light and fluffy.
2) Beat the eggs and vanilla essence into the butter and sugar mixture until well combined.
3)Sift the flour and cocoa into the butter and sugar mixture and stir in the cooled dark chocolate until well combined.
4) Pour into a greased and lined tin and put into the oven for 30-35 minutes at a preheated gas mark 4 oven. Or until firm to touch but still sticky inside.
5) Leave to cool and sprinkle with icing sugar.

An advance warning on making these brownies; they do disappear so enjoy them before they're gone!

So apparently hedgehogs are a birthday icon.

When my mum asked me to make a Hedgehog cake for my brothers 3rd birthday the first thing that crossed my mind was, a hedgehog? remind me what that has to do with birthdays. Never the less I did make the cake as my brothers mind was set on receiving this cake for his birthday. The cake recipe I used was Nigella Lawsons chocolate 'Birthday Cake' from her book 'How To Eat'. This went down a great success as some of the parents of who's children attended my brothers party were asking for the recipe the next day.

Although the making of the cake wasn't to much of a challenge, the assembling was a mission and a half. I thought it would be impossible. However after a lot of time trying to assemble this cake together I did end up with a half decent hedgehog shape. After shaping the cake I then covered it in a chocolate butter cream icing. On top of this I put chocolate sprinkles and chocolate buttons to make the spike. I then used fondant Icing for the eyes and a chocolate button for the nose. I also piped green icing for grass and a plaque of fondant icing with rather dodgy lettering which spelled out my brothers name, to give it a personal touch. 

Judging by the oohs and aahs I got when I presented the cake to my brother I am sure that it didn't turn out half bad- although this is being judged by the standards of a 3 year old-who in my opinion are very tough critics. I still am unaware as to how a hedgehog cake is related to birthdays. But hey for all I know hedgehogs could be the latest birthday icon.

Dainty? I prefer the term rustic.

I made these cupcakes with a perhaps little to pretentious goal as to how they would turn out. I imagined these red velvet cupcakes to be dainty with the perfect amount of icing, like the ones you see on the windows of french patisseries. Let me tell you that although my vision was not achieved I did end up with a dozen rustic looking cupcakes with a more than hearty portion of cream cheese icing dolloped on top and topped with a handful of crumbs sprinkled on to top to give them that homey rustic feel. In fact now that I think about it they turned out the exact opposite to how I had imagined. But to my relief no one complained in fact inside I'm sure that they secretly loved the over average sized dollop of icing on top of the cupcakes-well I did at least- and I have to say they tasted pretty darn good. 

I put the stripe into the cake

Earlier this week I had a serious dilemma, what cake should I make? I looked through endless amounts of cookbooks but none of them suited the mood I was in. After looking through cookbooks for what felt like an eternity (don't get me wrong all of the cakes looked mouth watering. But I felt like making something different-and we only had the basic ingredients in the house at the time) I then stumbled across Lorraine Pascales zebra cake. My mouth dropped, I knew that this would be my mission to make this master piece of a cake. Once I had gathered my self together I started to prepare the ingredients;to my relief the cake recipe wasn't to complex and it was rather quick to make. But when it got to constructing the cake-holy macaroni- you don't want to know the stress I went through when it came down to constructing this cake. I'm overreacting? I think not. To construct the cake I had to pipe a small dollop of the chocolate mix into the center of the baking tin and then inside this chocolate dollop put a small dollop of the plain mix in the middle of it, I had to keep doing this until the cake mix was finished. Although I shouldn't complain to much,it was to be fair a great chance for me to catch up on my less than average singing skills-which I'm sure the neighbors just loved-once the mission of constructing this cake was finished I felt a sigh of relief, carefully I then placed the cake in the oven. The wait was agonizing but well worth it, once I took the marbled top cake out of the oven, I sliced it into bigger than average pieces of course, and when I sliced into the ingenious stripes which filled the cake all I could bring myself to say was I really did put the stripe into the cake. Appearance aside the cake was very scrummy however a little dry as you can probably tell from the picture. If I was to make this cake again (which I defiantly will, and you should too) I will alter the recipe to try and get the cake to be less dry.