Marvellous Melting Moments

So I am sitting at the Dunedin airport as I write this. I am on my way home after my third year of university study. Flip, what happened to all that time? I remember thinking in first year that I had tonnes of time until I have to enter the real world, now one measly year separates me from the world of polyester suit pants (dear lord I hope not) and limited holiday time. I should spend these holidays wisely. I have a list of things I want to do and people to visit. I guess in three months time I will tell you if I got up and did them.

My good friends Gil and Brad are also leaving Dunedin today. They are driving however. So to prepare them for the 10 hour drive to Picton I made up some sweet little noms for them to munch on along the way.

There is a bakery in Auckland that Instagrams pictures of all their beautiful baked goods. Some of those little treats included some gorgeous looking pink and yellow melting moments. I was inspired! I love melting moments but if they were coloured it would make them infinitely better!

Melting moments are so great. They are a lovely butter delicate short bread like biscuit with soft and luscious buttercream icing in between.

The Edmonds Cookbook is the reliable source for such creations. This mixture is a funny one though, it is quite sticky. It contains a lot of butter but not that much in the sugar, flour or corn flour department so it is quite unnerving when you are rolling out balls of what looks like half finished cookie dough.

Also, I feel like melting moments should be of either a mini mini size of a good handful. Average size is so mainstream haha.

Melting moments

Adapted from the Edmonds Cookery Book

Makes 12

200g softened butter

75g icing sugar

125g cornflour

125g flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees bake.

Cream together the butter and the icing sugar. Once that has become a light fluffy mix, add in the vanilla, baking powder, flour and corn flour.

If you want to make two different colours, split the mix in half after all the other ingredients have been combined. If you just want to make them one colour then add in the colour in the butter and sugar mix.

Roll into small balls, try dusting your hands with flour to stop the mix from sticking. Place the ball on a tray lined with baking paper. Use a floured fork to lightly press them down.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. The amount of time depends on how big you make them. You want to make sure they don’t brown around the edges but also if they aren’t cooked through enough they just crumble in your hands. The ones here I baked for 20 minutes and they were about a 5cm diameter.

Leave for the biscuits to cool before filling with a normal buttercream icing (30g butter creamed with 2ish cups of icing sugar, a splash of milk and some vanilla essence). Sandwich the biscuits together and enjoy!

Have fun making these! You wont regret it!

Sophie x

Sweet Sweet Cinnamon Buns

Bread has always fascinated me.

I have been fascinated from afar though. It has always seemed like such a laborious activity. All that kneading and all. We never had a bread maker at home (probably a good thing) and so I was never able to at least cheat the first few phases of the process.

Yeast. Its a crazy little thing. This organism, dormant, is activated by the warmth and sugar you give it and then it goes on to expand your dough. Then to thank the yeast for all the hard work it has done, we kill it at 220 degrees in our ovens.

Anyway, I have always wanted to make cinnamon scrolls. They smell so good and with icing drizzled on top they are to die for! I got inspired by this post here. They looked amazing.

I chose not to use the recipe on that post. I didn't have enough oil. I found one on Annabel Langbein's website that looked just as tasty.

The only problem was when I was going to make these buns. I had exams and I was living in the library which I am pretty sure doesn't have an oven.

My last exam was yesterday. So as a treat to all those poor souls still stuck in the central library I made these buns with plenty of love and nurture and brought them around for morning tea time. The smell of hot buns wafted through the library air. I got a few curious looks as I walked past carrying my large baking tray. I probably made as many enemies as I made friends. But unfortunately I could only brighten the days of 20 souls with my 20 buns.

I recommend starting this the night before if you want to make them for morning tea. My yeast was coming to the end of its most active period so not only did I give it a bit of extra time to rise in our toasty warm hot water cupboard but I put a bit more yeast than the 3 teaspoons Annabel told me to. Just to make sure they rose.

If you have a bread maker, just prepare the dough in the bread maker using these ingredients just as you usually would but take it out once the dough has risen and then roll them out.

Lets make some magic shall we?


Sweet Sweet Cinnamon Buns
Adapted from Annabel Langbein's recipe
Makes 20 (generous buns)

For the dough:
2 cups milk
3/4 cup white sugar
3 teaspoons active dry yeast
125g butter, melted but not hot
6 cups high grade flour (you need to use high grade as it has a better gluten content which is essential for the structure of the dough)
1 teaspoon salt


For the filling:
50g butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

For the glaze:
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons sugar


In a small saucepan, warm the milk until tepid, ie only just warm to the touch. Take it off the heat and whisk in the sugar to dissolve. Sprinkle in the yeast and whisk that in too. Leave the yeast to activate for ten minutes or so. Leave it somewhere warm to help the process. You don't want to heat the milk too much or else you will kill the yeast. Remember they are living organisms, how would you like it if someone boiled you in a saucepan of milk? Then whisk in the room temperature melted butter.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour and salt. Make a well in the centre. Once the yeast has fully activated (it smells wonderfully yeasty, slightly alcoholic and it has gone foamy) pour the milk and butter mixture into the well. Using a wooden spoon (or whatever) stir the dough until it is a roughly mixed sticky blob.

Take all your rings and bangles off! haha unless you want to get bits of dough stuck in them. Or worse, the bacteria from underneath the rings in your dough! Gross!

Sprinkle the bench with a bit of flour and tip the dough onto the bench. Start kneading the dough. This will help the mixing of ingredients. The theory behind the kneading is that you help to work and develop the protein, gluten, in the flour. This helps the dough become more elastic and stretchy. This allows for the dough to form pockets of carbon dioxide (produced by the yeast) and stay that way until the dough is baked. The more you knead the more light and fluffy the final product will be. If you cant be bothered, find a nice boy to do it for you. Convince them that it is a good forearm work out (which it is!). If you don't know how to knead probably the easiest way is to either ask your mum or to just youtube it. You want to knead for around ten minutes, or until the dough is nice and soft and elastic (Annabel describes it as silky, which I think is perfect!). When you press your finger gently into the dough you want the indentation to stay there. That means it is kneaded enough.

Lightly grease a large bowl (not a cake tin like I did!) and place your dough inside. Leave your dough to rise in a nice warm place. The hot water cupboard works well so does making a nice warm hot water bath in the kitchen sink (just be sure that no one turns the tap on with your dough underneath). As I was a little uncertain about the integrity of my yeast, I left mine in the hot water cupboard overnight to rise. If your yeast is nice and fresh, try leaving it for just an hour, that should do the trick.

Once your dough has risen, knock it around a bit (remove some of the big air pockets). On a lightly floured bench, roll the dough out into a rectangle around 30x60cm in size.

Spread the softened butter for the filling all over the dough rectangle. Sprinkle over the sugar and cinnamon.

Next, tightly pinch one of the longer edges of the rectangle and start to tightly roll the dough until you have one long sausage. With a sharp, non serrated knife, slice the sausage into 3cm thick slices. Arrange the slices in a baking tray or large cake (lined with baking paper) with 1-2 cm spacing between each one. You may need another tray (I used my brownie tin and my large cake tin). Leave the scrolls somewhere warm to rise again. I left them for an hour but you will probably only need 20 minutes if you have super active yeast. While they are rising, preheat the oven to 220 degrees.

Before being left to rise again

After the second round of rising!

Once the scrolls have risen, pop them in the oven for 15 minutes. While they bake, make up the glaze by placing the water and sugar in a saucepan and boiling until a thick syrup forms. This takes around 5 minutes.

When the buns come out of the oven, brush them with plenty of glaze straight away.

I drizzled some very thin white vanilla buttercream icing over mine once they had cooled down. Icing them is a good idea if you are planning on serving them later in the day when they have cooled. If you ice them when they are too warm the icing melts and makes a mess.

Flip these were so good. Unfortunately they disappeared too quickly for me to take photos of them (plus awkward food photography is frowned upon in the library).

If you are too impatient to wait for them to cool, devour them straight away! You house will be filled by now with the sweet aroma of sweet baked bread. It is heavenly.

The holidays are coming up, if you have the time I highly recommend you give these a go. They will most certainly make you friends and amaze your family.

I got a wee bit nostalgic (the worlds worst emotion) after delivering these for my time here at Otago. I am here next year for my fourth year but quite a few of my friends are moving on, graduating, doing placements in other cities. It kind of feels like the beginning of the end. Soon we will be grown up and expected to know everything. To be honest I have no idea what I am doing and I am lucky that everything so far has sort of fallen into place.

So to all of you leaving dear Dunedin this year, I will miss you. I will miss you a lot. Good luck!

Sophie x

Flourless Peanut Butter Choc Chip Cookies

Uggh. I feel sick. I ate too much cookie mixture and it was too rich! 

I recently downloaded this really cool Martha Stewart cookie app for my iPhone. It has tonnes and tonnes of cookie recipes in it.

I get to the library early to study so I don't have to do so in the evenings. That leaves the evenings free for things like going to the gym and baking (they seem a little contradictory don't they?)

Anyway I found this recipe on the app for flourless cookies. My friend Gil the other day was telling me about how you can make cookies with only three ingredients. I found this hard to believe until I looked at this recipe. This recipe has four (once you take away the extra peanuts and the chocolate). It has an egg, 1 cup of peanut butter, sugar and some baking soda. 

So curious as to how these would turn out, I gave them a go. 

The mixture was really strange. Check out the photo, it doesn't look like cookie mix. It was also really oily and if you squeezed the balls, oil oozed out. Not very appealing. But regardless, I rolled them out and baked them. 

They came out looking amazing. They had flattened into these huge discs of chunky deliciousness. Once they had cooled down a wee bit I tried a bit. They are excellent. Although you can feel the fat moving south to your thighs and the sugar rising quickly to your head, the discomfort gained in your stomach is far outweighed by the taste sensation in your mouth. 

So here we go  . .

Flourless Peanut and Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from Martha Stewart

makes 15

1 cup smooth peanut butter

2/3 cup sugar

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup chopped peanuts

3/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

beat together the peanut butter, sugar, egg and the baking powder.

Mix in the chocolate chips and peanuts.

Roll into balls and place evenly on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Bake for 20 minutes or until golden.

Easy as right?

Sorry this was such a short, sharp post. It is late and I really need to sleep :S

Enjoy!

Nighty night!

Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Maple and Pecan Filling

How's the study going.

As you can see mine is going excellently.

For the last two days I have found myself leaving the library at rather early times (1pm and 2pm) after feeling uncomfortably hot on the upper floors. I also found myself with epic hunger sickness (that point where your hunger turns to nausea) but then the heat caused my salad and my tuna to warm up and that grossed me out. So in order to fix the problem I had to go home. Yup. That was my justification.

Like Tuesday. It was so so hot. 6am Tuesday morning it was pouring down. I mean bucketing down so I dressed in stockings (for once!) and a woollen top as was appropriate for the miserable weather. By the time lunch came around I had my tights around my ankles and shoes thrown on the floor under my desk. Thank god I was in the celebrity squares or else I would have been given some odd looks at my lack of pants. I had to go home. I couldn't study like this. It was indecent.

So yesterday. Yesterday was Wednesday. Once again my salad heated up and my mind had become more fogged than a bathroom mirror. Time to go home. I was going to have a nap. But then I didn't.

I baked instead. My reasoning? It was fun, it was soul restoring and Alix and I needed study noms for the week.

Ahaha. yeah. Well it was soul restoring, it was fun. But for the weeks worth of study noms? uuh it was more like three episodes of cougar town worth of noms, no study in sight.

The last time I made whoopie pies they were super domed and rather dry. The method also almost broke my beater, it was too thick and dough like.

To overcome this I altered the recipe and method a bit. Rather than add the wet ingredients last, making a huge glutenous mess, I decided to mix all the moist ingredients together first then slowly add the flour. I also upped the amount of yoghurt and milk in the mixture. I found this helped and made them far less stodgy.

As for the filling? I just made a simple buttercream icing and threw in a few good squirts of maple syrup. I had a few pecans left over from my pecan pies so I chopped them up finely and sprinkled them in between. Walnuts would work too. They gave a nice wee crunch in between all the soft moist cakeyness.


Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Maple and Pecan filling

80g softened butter
150g castor sugar
1 large egg
140g plain yoghurt (I used vanilla)
50ml milk
I teaspoon vanilla
70g cocoa
200g flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Filling:
60g butter, softened
2 cups icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
A splash of milk to combine
A couple of squirts of maple syrup
chopped pecans or walnuts


Preheat the oven to 170 degrees

Attempt to cream the butter and sugar together. It won't work very well because there isn't enough butter but try to lighten the colour a wee bit. Add the egg. Beat until most of the sugar dissolves and the colour is a very pale yellow and the texture is fluffy. Add in the vanilla, yoghurt and milk. Beat until smooth.

Sift in the cocoa. Beat until the colour lightens from a dark brown to a lighter shade.

Sift in the four, baking soda and baking powder. Mix until combined. Try not to overmix.

Wet your hands and par dry them (so they are sill a little damp). Take small teaspoon sized blobs of dough and roll them into balls.

Next is the fun bit, throw the ball as hard as you can onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. This helps them to flatten out. Repeat and lets hope you don't have any collisions like I did. Flatten them a bit more with a wet spoon. I didn't do this. I wish I had, I think mine were far too round.

Bake for 10 minutes. You don't want to overcook them. It is better for them to be slightly undercooked than overcooked. That was they will be nice and fudgy.

Leave to cool because sandwiching together with the icing (which you creamed together earlier) and the chopped nuts.

Enjoy!

I advise you don't eat them all in one go right before dinner haha.

Mini Date and Pecan Pies

Hello there,

Yesterday I showed you how to make mini pumpkin pies. Knowing how to make these absolutely to-die for pecan versions and not sharing with you is just cruel.

I once tried a pecan pie slice. It was amazing. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. It was nutty and caramelly. Words really cannot describe it's excellence.

These are definitely worth the hideous amount you pay for pecan nuts (we are talking $6/100g). The best thing about these ones is that you only need one nut per pie. So say you are making 30, you only need 30 nuts. Although I did chop a few up and pop them in the mixture. I don't think you need to do that though.

You will make friends for life with these pies. They are that good. Pretty sure a few boys could be seduced with these things too.

I found a recipe for baby pecan pies on Jo Seagars website which was really simple. I then found another pecan pie variation with dates in them on the Fisher and Paykel blog. I love dates, sure I coudn't afford fresh ones but I could use dried ones to bulk up the pecan pie mixture so I could get more bang for my buck. The dates leant a lovely dark sugary caramel flavour to the pies, more than what the brown sugar lends. I soaked my dates in hot water for a few minutes then chopped them up. This way they became nice and juicy.

As I had far too many things to do, I decided to cheat in the pastry department. I don't have a food processor to help me out and my skills in the pastry department are significantly lacking. I'm sorry. I have let you down.

To cut out the pastry to fit the mini muffin trays I used, I used the lid of a marmite jar. The cut out you use needs to have a diameter of 5-6cm. Luckily I was lent the most amazing of tools for helping me line the muffin trays. Before making these I had never seen a tart tamper in my life (probably due to my avoidance of all things pastry). It fit perfectly into the muffin trays and allowed me to press the pastry in evenly and without forming lump or hole. Try spraying your tamper with a bit of baking oil then dipping it in some flour. This will stop it from sticking the the pastry when you press it in. Those little toys are genius!

Luckily Alix prefers the pumpkin pies whilst I am team pecan, so no arguments over who gets the last one there :).

Mini Date and Pecan Pies
Adapted from Jo Seagar's recipe 
makes 30

2 sheets, pre rolled sweet crust pastry
24 pecan nuts (1 cup)
1/2 cup dried dates, soaked in boiling water, drained and finely chopped
1 egg
60g butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

2 mini muffin trays
baking spray
rolling pin (or a bottle of cider haha)
flour for dusting the bench with
5-6cm circle cutter (eg a marmite lid)
a tart tamper (or fingers if aesthetics aren't of the biggest concern)


Preheat the oven to 180 degrees on bake. Spray the mini muffin trays generously with baking spray.

Flour the bench and carefully roll out the prerolled pastry a little thinner (so it stretches out another cm or so in both directions).

Take the cutter you are using and cut circles out of the pastry. Using the tart tamper or your fingers, carefully line each muffin tray with pastry shells.

Place a pecan nut inside each shell, you can break them into smaller bits if you wish.

In a bowl, whisk together the melted butter, sugar, egg and vanilla. Mix in the mushy dates. Whisk until the mixture is thick and 'gluey'.

Spoon a teaspoon and a bit of the mixture into each pie shell.

Bake for 17 minutes or until the pastry is golden.

Leave to cool for a few minutes before twisting each pie to release it from the muffin tray. Leave them to cool on a wire rack or clean tea towel.

Don't forget to respray the tins for the next lot that you cook. They can easily become very stuck if there is any left over pastry crumbs in the bottom too.

Mini Pumpkin and Mini pecan pies :)

These are best served warm. If you are making these in advance, store them in an air tight container once they are fully cool. You can heat them up for a few seconds in the microwave.

Enjoy! (I know we did :))

Sophie x

Mini Pumpkin Pies

I got sent a free turkey.

Win.

Turkey is a Thanksgivingy food. Thanksgiving means pie. Pumpkin Pie. I like pie.

I am hosting a Thanksgiving dinner party where this beast of a turkey bird will be served as the main attraction. But as we all know a great show is lacking when there isn't a delicious finale at the end of it.

By finale I mean dessert. The most important meal of all.

My first and only previous experience of pumpkin pie was when my Auntie Rachel made it one year (for Christmas I think). I loved it. It was great. Mum however wasn't so much a fan. She got a bit weirded out by a vegetable (slash actually a fruit) and sugar combination thrown into a sweet pie. To me that sounds excellent. Unfortunately I do not own a decent pie dish. There is only a quiche dish here. Great sadness I know. Then I thought, hey! what's better than a pie? Lots of mini pies! Everything is better in miniature. Like mini bagels. They are amazing.

(I'll tell you how to make the pecan ones tomorrow :))

I found a recipe to sort of follow in my Hummingbird Cookbook (of course). I was feeling lazy as I had a whole tonne of other things I needed to do so I bought some pre rolled sweet crust pastry. Sure it isn't as good as homemade but it sure is easier.

The recipe calls for 424g of tinned pumpkin puree. Last time I checked they don't sell that here. I googled the best way to make my own. The Pioneer Woman helped me out with this one. I baked around 700g of fresh pumpkin and it yielded me bang on 425g. Phew!

Because I was using mini muffin trays to cook these, the pie cases only held half a tablespoon of filling in each one. I only had enough pastry to make 30ish of these (I needed to save the other half of the pastry for my mini pecan pies later) and so I was left with quite a bit of left over filling. That is ok though, i'll just buy some more pastry and make some more later.

Mini Pumpkin Pies
makes 50-60
adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

4 sheets, pre rolled sweet short crust pastry
425g pumpkin puree (see here for instructions)
235ml evaporated milk
220g castor sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon flour
baking spray

mini muffin trays
a tart tamper
a 5cm circle shape you can use as a pastry cutter


Mix together the pumpkin, spices, evaporated milk, sugar, egg and flour with a wooden spoon until a smooth mixture is formed.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees on bake. Generously spray the mini muffin trays with baking spray.

Lightly flour your bench a place on it a defrosted sheet of sweet, short crust pastry.

Using the 5cm circle, cut out circles from the pastry. Using the tart tamper (or your fingers if you don't mind them being all knobbly) press the pastry circle into the mini muffin hole. Make sure there aren't any holes in the base.

Once you have filled up the tray with the cases, spoon 1 1/2 teaspoons (or half a tablespoon) of the pumpkin filling  mixture into each case.

Bake for 17 minutes or until the filling stops wobbling.

Leave to cool for a few minutes before twisting the mini pies in their trays to release them. Leave to cool on a clean tea towel or cake rack. Repeat until you have used up all your pastry and/or filling.

These are best eaten warm but are still delicious the next day. Once they are fully cooled, place them in an airtight container.

My favourite new (borrowed) toy!

My rolling pin for the day.

We made four bigger pies out of the pastry scraps we had left :) nom!

I know what I am thankful for! That brilliant tart tamper device!

Nom!!

Enjoy! (I know Alix did)

Sophie x

Funfetti Birthday Cake: A cake for Chris

Or as I like to call it: A cake that looks like a magical unicorn threw up into it.

Charming.

This pretty, girly, colourful cake is for Chris' 21st. The same Chris that broke up with me last week. Despite that I am still making him a birthday cake. His punishment for breaking up with me is that it is not banana cake. Oooh take that Chris! Instead it gets to be whatever the hell I want it to be. Since I found a 190g packet of hundreds and thousands in my cupboard I decided to make a funfetti cake.

I first got the idea for funfetti off this post by Rosie from Sweetapolita. She has made both a cake and cupcakes. I tried out adding sprinkles to my cupcakes a few months back. They were so fun to make and eat. So logically a whole cake with that much internal colour would be infinitely times better.

I just took my simple vanilla cupcake recipe and multiplied it by four then split the mixture into three 20cm cake tins and baked for around 45 minutes on around 170 degrees. I turned the temp right down to stop the cakes from doming. When they dome I have to cut the tops off, throwing away precious cake and precious height. My oven is weird, half the time it fan forces and the other half of the time it doesn't. If your oven is on a steady bake then you can probably increase the temp to just 180 degrees.

I wrote the above before the cakes came out of the oven. I obviously spoke too soon. For some strange reason the sugar decided to all sink to the bottom and form a hard sticky purpley brown toffee at the bottom. The first two to go in had hollows in the sides. It looked like I had taken massive bites from the cake. I swear I hadn't. Even more strange is that the third cake turned out beautifully. It was the picture of cake perfection. One of the cakes however was so munted that it was lop sided, a terrible cake for layering. So in record speed I whipped up another batch for a single layer and threw it in the oven. Alas the gym had to be delayed another forty minutes. The scientist in me decided to use a different brand of 100s and 1000s. When I added the previous brand, all the colour ran off into the mixture very quickly. When I added the new brand the 100s and 1000s held their colour. This could perhaps have had an impact. Maybe the sugar wasn't dissolved enough in the first batch. When making cakes out of these cupcake recipes you absolutely need to use castor sugar over normal sugar. In the larger batches there just isn't time for the sugar to dissolve properly.

I wish there were more than just two of us in the flat sometimes. Today is the perfect day to be making scones while it sporadically rains. Unfortunately, it takes a long time for just two people to eat batches of anything and since we are not obese we don't really like the idea of having baked goods lying around all the time for us to eat. We need a few guys around the place I think. They would hoover down anything giving them the satisfaction of eating home baking and me the satisfaction of making it. Win win. Funnily enough, Chris didn't/doesn't have much of a sweet tooth so he was never much help in the consumption department.

I'm still thinking of that Jon Snow look alike that I saw yesterday. I wish my phone had a face scanner feature, sort of like what shazam does for music. You could just sneaky take a photo of someone and the app could tell you who they were. Then you could stalk them on facebook and them plan to 'accidentally' bump into them. Ok I need to stop being so creepy. Now. If the Jon Snow look alike is reading this (highly unlikely) I apologise for this creepiness. I am actually normal (most of the time).

Sooo where was I? ah right. I'm making a cake. A cake with lots of sprinkles. How exciting.


Vanilla Funfetti Birthday Cake
Adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery's vanilla cupcake recipe
makes 3x20cm cakes

560g castor sugar
160g butter, softened
480g flour
2 tablespoon baking powder
4 large eggs
480ml (2 cups) whole milk
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
150g 100s and 1000s or other colourful sprinkles

Vanilla buttercream icing:
700g icing sugar, sifted
150g butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
A few tablespoons whole milk


Preheat the oven to 160 degrees bake. Like three 20cm sandwich tins with baking paper and grease around the sides.

Beat together the butter and sugar until all the sugar lumps have been broken down. Add the sifted flour and baking powder and beat until a sandy consistency is achieved.

In a separate bowl, whizz the eggs with the beater so they become a little frothy.

Add half the milk to the dry mixture, beat then add half the egg mixture, beat. Add the rest of the milk, beat again. Then add the rest of the egg and beat on high for a few minutes to smooth out the batter. Remember to regularly scrape down the sides of the bowl so you don't miss any bits. Pour in your sprinkles and lightly mix. If you mix too much the colour bleeds and you get a cake mixture that looks like a giant's snot rather than a unicorns stomach contents.

Using a large cup measure, scoop the batter evenly between the three tins.

Place as many of the tins as you can on the same shelf (don't use two shelves) and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Leave to cool before tipping them out onto a cooling rack. I made the mistake of taking them out too early when I made my brothers birthday cake a few weeks ago. The cakes sank and caused the edges to bulge making getting a smooth side very difficult.

Leave to cool completely before icing.

To make the icing, cream the butter and icing sugar together, adding a bit of milk to smooth it together. Beat until the icing is really light in colour and fluffy. Don't forget to add the vanilla, or whatever flavour you want it to be. I might actually add a bit of strawberry to this icing.

Follow the Whisk-kids instructions here on how to ice a cake properly :)

I hope this cake brings endless joy to your next birthday celebration and gives you less angst and frustration that it did for me.

So the next day at Chris' 21st was the moment of truth. To be honest the cake didn't last long enough to be examined by anyone properly so I was safe!

On a non-cake related note, I learnt a great deal about how to spit roast a whole lamb carcass that day. When Chris said he was having a barbecue for his birthday I assumed they were going to try and get the crappy rusty thing at the back of his flat to work. Oh no, they  got these people in who bring with them at 7.30am a 3m long spit roast barbecue and cook to perfection whatever whole animal you prefer. It was great. I'm pretty sure I had my years quota of red meat that day. It just melted in your mouth (well you would expect it to after being cooked for four and a half hours. 

So yes, happy birthday Chris.

Enjoy!
Sophie x

Mini Cinnamon Doughnut Muffins

I got an excellent text this afternoon calling for a girls night this evening. I decided that it would be most unladylike of me not to bring anything to share.

Recently I have been stalking the pages of a local student blogger Nessie, who writes Baking=love. She is amazing. I have epic blog envy. Her photography is beautiful and she always has this wonderful rustic feel to her photos.

In my stalking I found this scrumptious looking recipe for baked cinnamon doughnuts that she got from another awesome blogger Erica. They didn't require anything I didn't already have so I decided to give them a go.

Turns out our empty packet of nutmeg was put back in the cupboard so I had to substitute the missing nutmeg with more cinnamon. Terribly tragic.

On a side note, today whilst walking back from uni I saw an exact look alike of the guy who plays Jon Snow in GOT. OH MY GOD. I had to resist my feminine instinct to stalk him down the street but alas the call to New World was too great. He was amazing. I regret not walking in the complete opposite direction that I was going to follow him. Wow that just sounds creepy. I shall pray to be reunited with him again. Creepsaurous. Speaking of which I love this video.

On a second side note, when I got home, I put my things on the kitchen table and when I turned around I found a wee cat. This cat was intent on staying. I had to throw it out though once it starting scratching out couches.

Cinnamon Doughnut Mini Muffins
(makes around 30)
Adapted from Baking=love who adapted it from Erica's Sweet Tooth.

1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/4 cup castor sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon baking powder

Sugar coating:
80g butter, melted
3/4 cup castor sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

preheat the oven to 180 degrees on bake and grease up three 12 pan mini muffin trays with plenty of melted butter.

Cream together the butter and sugars until fluffy. Then add the egg and vanilla and continue to beat until all the egg has fluffed up and the volume has almost doubled.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

Sprinkle in a third of this flour mixture into the creamed mixture. Beat until just combined. Pour in half the milk and mix until combined. Add the next third, beat. Add the rest of the milk, beat. Add the rest of the flour and you guessed it, mix until just combined.

Spoon teaspoonful amounts into the greased muffin trays.

Bake for 12 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Once they are cool enough to pop out of their trays without falling apart (about a minute) dip each mini muffin into the butter, and roll around to coat. Then roll around in a bowl of the sugar and cinnamon to coat.

Eat them as soon as you can :) Or leave to cool completely before putting them in an airtight container.

All ready for tonight :)


I hope this satisfies your rainy day comfort munchies.

Enjoy :)

Sophie x

Morning Glory Muffins

More like 'soon it will be morning' muffins.

I started making these at around 11pm.

I got upset and angry and as sad as it sounds I know I can always count on a trip to the supermarket and a quickie baking sesh to fix me right no matter how late it is.

So we went to Countdown, Alix needed study munchies and I needed crushed pineapple. And mini Whitakers almond bars. And carrots. And prunes. And apricots. And an apple.

I was going to make these next week anyway as part of my study muffin series, so I justified this as I was really saving time in the future. Plus they have carrots and fruit in them. They are basically your 5+ a day in one delicious muffin. Or not.

So the story of the morning glory muffin begins in a cafe a woman named Pam McKinstry owned called the Morning Glory Cafe on the island of Nantucket in the US. She published the recipe in Gourmet magazine in 1981 and ever since these muffins in all their variations have been known as morning glory muffins.

This is her recipe that I used here. 

My Nana was given a similar recipe ages ago and Mum used to make them for us so I associate these muffins with my family. They are best made fresh in the morning, pulled open still hot with a nice knife-full of butter slapped between the halves where it melts into the moist, fruit filled muffin. I have memories in my head of a tea towel lined wicker basket being filled with these. 

Like I said before, they are filled with carrots, apple, pineapple and dried fruit. I also used half wholemeal flour in this recipe too. They are good morning energy muffins, especially when sleep is in short supply and concentration needs to be high. You can wrap them up in glad wrap then pop them in the freezer for when you need them. Either pop them in the microwave to defrost, or let them defrost over the course of the morning so they are ready for morning tea. Alix said that frozen muffins are great because they hold their shape in her bag and don't get squashed. Bonus!

It's 11.47pm and the house smells of fresh muffins. Not the best smell to go to sleep to. Somewhat torturous. At least our dreams will be sweet.

Morning Glory Muffins

adapted from The Original Morning Glory Muffin recipe

Makes 24

Dry ingredients:

1 cup wholemeal flour

1 1/4 cup plain flour

1 1/4 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 large apple, grated

2 large carrots, grated

1/2 cup prunes, halved

1/2 cup dried apricots, halved

1/2 cup desiccated or threaded coconut

3/4 cup raisins

1 cup crushed pineapple, drained

Wet ingredients:

3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line two muffin trays with paper cases (I use the large jaytee ones).

In a large bowl, sift together the flours, baking soda, sugar and cinnamon. Tip the bran that was too big to go through the sieve back into the bowl. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix until evenly combined.

In a small separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients. 

Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients. Stir with a wooden spoon until just combined. Do not over mix. 

Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases until they are about 4/5 full. They don't tend to rise much due to the density of the mixture so there is little risk of an epic overflow fail. 

Bake for 25-35 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. I am still confused with my oven. Half the time it wants to be a fan bake oven and the other half of the time it is a normal bake oven. The original recipe says these need like half an hour to 35 minutes to cook but they only took 25 with me. So if you are using fan bake don't forget to drop the temperature by 20 degrees and just keep an eye on them. 

Remove from oven and leave to cool slightly before turning out onto a clean tea towel or cooling rack. 

They are best eaten warm with a good lashing of butter on them. Yum!

Enjoy!

Sophie x

(12.59 am)

Marshmallow Bubble Bars

Hello again,

In my baking craze today I decided to re live my childhood by making these marshmallow bubble bars. Now my Mum believed in having healthy lunch boxes, we never had chip packets or roll ups or dunk a roos (oh how I loved those though). A treat we got very infrequently were those LCM bars. My primary school friend and I used to think LCM stood for lemon covered monkeys. We were 7.

At birthday parties we made those chocolate crackles, you know rice bubbles, chocolate and kremelta served in wee cupcake cases? Nom. But nothing with marshmallows.

I stumbled across this recipe one day and I saved it to my reading list on my phone. I had a weird and sudden desire to make these so off to new world I went in search of marshmallows and ricies.

This recipe is super easy, it has three ingredients. Although I did add a bit of vanilla essence and some pink food colouring to make it yummier and pinker.


Marshmallow Bubble Bars
(makes a whole heap)

4 cups ricies
200g pink and white marshmallows
60g butter

A Swiss roll or brownie tin lined with baking paper.


In a saucepan on a medium heat, melt together the butter and marshmallows and stir until smooth. Be careful not to burn the bottom of the pan.

Pour the marshmallow and butter melt mixture into a large mixing bowl containing the ricies. Stir quickly until evenly combined.

Transfer the mixture into the lined baking tray. Wet your hands slightly and press the mixture down into an even slab. Sprinkle over some 100s and 1000s if you wish.

Leave to set in the fridge for an hour or so before slicing and devouring.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge (if it lasts that long to be stored).

You could add some mini m&ms to this. That would be nom.

I hope this brings back blissful childhood memories.

Enjoy :)

Sophie x