Peanut butter biscuits and mocha biscuits!

Today I decided to be a little crazy and make biscuits instead of cupcakes! Oh my! The Boy requested peanut butter biscuits, so naturally I had to bow to his wishes. I additionally made mocha biscuits (although I sort of forgot how strong coffee is...)


The peanut butter biscuits I made using, of course, Mary Norwak's recipe. I won't post the method on here (if you really really want it, let me know and I can send it to you) but it is quite a basic recipe; use a bog standard biscuit recipe but chuck in 100g of peanut butter (smooth or crunchy, whichever suits your fancy). I WAS going to leave them as they were but it felt WRONG not to decorate them in some way! I made the stars out of fondant using a cutter I bought in France years ago. Stupidly enough, I never thought to use it in baking; I've always used it to cut out of vegetables. Anyway! I melted some dark chocolate and spooned it onto the biscuits, then added the white stars. I'm really rather pleased with how they turned out. I think they look pretty cool and they taste quite nice too :D

Now then! Here is the recipe for my mocha biscuits. It's quite a good recipe because you don't need to use any eggs! I'm not sure how good it is for rolling out and using a biscuit cutter; you may have to pop the dough into the fridge for a few hours so it'll be firm enough to roll out.


50g sugar
100g butter
175g flour
1 tbsp cocoa powder (I probably put about 2tbsp in... oops)
1 tsp coffee (I used instant, and put about a million tbsp in, ooooops)
A dash of milk!

• Heat your oven to 150°C
• Cream the butter and sugar together
• Sift in flour, cocoa powder & coffee
• If the mixture is too dry, keep adding tiny bits of milk until it gets to the right consistncy
• Roll into balls (mine were a little smaller than a ping pong ball), line them up onto a baking tray (don't forget to greaseproof it first!) and squish them gently with the back of a spoon until they're biscuit shaped!
• Bake for 20-25 minutes (depending on how crunchy you like 'em) then leave on a wire rack to cool.
• Buttercream is standard (see previous posts for ingredients & method). I didn't add any flavouring because I've run out of vanilla essence (aaarghh!) so my buttercream was very very plain! Feel free to add whichever flavour your little heart desires.
  
• Pop some sort of decoration on top to make it look beautiful! I bought a pot of strawberry flavoured buttons from Van Hagues earlier this week, although I'm sure chocolate buttons would taste much nicer. You could probably make your own. In fact, I may do that this week....

These did taste nice although they were pretty flipping overwhelming! I am, alas, a very lazy cook and tend to pour things in like cocoa powder rather than actually measure them... and I forgot how strong coffee is! So perhaps it'll be a good biscuits for those who like really strong black coffee :D

Sacha xx

How NOT to cover a cake.

Hi, I'm Rae, the other baker on this blog and I'm here to show you my first attempt at covering a weird shaped cake.

I have covered many a round cake, and many a mini cake, all to varying degrees of success but they've all been fairly presentable.

Today however, I was, for whatever reason, trying to cover a cake in the shape of a lower case 'e'. Here is what happened.

So I started with two chocolate and baileys sponge cake which I had whipped up the day before using a very simple quick mix sponge recipe. 

(4oz self raising flour

 4oz butter/margarine

 2 eggs

 1 tsp baking powder

 4oz caster sugar

 1tbsp cocoa mixed with 1tbsp boiling water

 Mix it all up and add some baileys)

I leveled the two cakes and sandwiched them together with a vanilla buttercream. I then applied the template I had made for the 'e' to the cake and carved around it with a small, sharp knife. I ended up with this:

So far so good. I then covered this with a thin layer of buttercream to give the fondant I would be applying something to cling to. Thus:

At this point I made a very rudimentary, yet damning mistake. Pay Attention fellow cake decorators: 

CHILL THE CAKE!

Before you even think about applying fondant, give the cake half an hour in the fridge just to let the buttercream set again. If you don't, well... you'll see.

Well, I didn't chill my cake. I went straight on to colouring and rolling out my fondant. I had planned to try and cover this cake all in one but failed straight away when I dropped my rolled out fondant straight on the cake. So I ended up cutting the gaps out and going back and filling them later with scraps of fondant.

This is where I encountered the problem I had caused myself. Because the buttercream was soft, the icing was bulging where the buttercream was moving underneath the fondant. This would not happen if I had chilled it. (Are you getting the idea that chilling is GOOD? I thought so.)

Anyway, after lots of fiddling and a few muttered swears I had covered it to the best of my abilities. This is the finished product. Thank god it was just a practice cake and not for an event.

So there you have it. How NOT to cover a cake. As you can see, it's rather bulging and not too pretty. At least I know what I did wrong, right?

Cream Tea Cupcakes!

Sacha's Cream Tea Cupcakes

So today I tried to make bakewell tart flavour cupcakes but it went a little bit wrong. First of all I don't think I put enough almonds in the mixture (used Mary Norwak's method, as demonstrated in the previous two recipes) and I also reckon I baked them for too long. They came out of the oven kind of crunchy on the outside which doesn't bode well for nice light cupcakes...

I made lots of them and didn't want them to go to waste, so I spread jam over each of the cakes and whacked a dollop of buttercream on them (same method as usual). With jam and buttercream, these cakes taste like the scones you get with a cream tea! Yay!

I additionally made vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream at the request of one Mr Charman ♥

Chai and vanilla cupcakes

Chai and Vanilla Cupcakes

Have you ever tried Chai Spiced Latte? It's like the stuff they sell in coffee shops and it's sooooo nice! So naturally I decided to make cupcakes using it :D

I also decided to have a go at using my icing pipe -- mooma bought me a cupcake creations book yonks ago with a free one that I had yet to test out! I had a tiny bit of glitter left over too...


I used Mary Norwak's rich cake as the cupcake base and simply added a whole load of chai instead of cocoa powder. The vanilla buttercream was just the usual mix pipped on top of the cupcake. The recipe for this is:

Cake Mix

175g butter
150g castor sugar
225g plain flour
25g chai latte (add more if you love cinnamon...)
1 tsp baking powder
3 eggs

Buttercream

100g butter
200g icing sugar
1 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla

• Turn the oven to 180°C/GM4
• Cream the butter & sugar until light & fluffy.
• Sift the flour & baking powder and add a little to the creamed mixture.
• Beat in eggs one at a time.
  
• Fold in flour & chai.
• Divide into cupcake cases (makes about 24) about 3/4 full.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes.
• When cooled, ice and decorate!

Pretentious cupcake shot!

Chocolate and Banana Cupcakes

Sacha's Chocolate and Banana Cupcakes


Ohmigosh these bad boys were tasty! I popped into Hertford on Friday to visit the cake shop and came away with a little pot of edible glitter. Needless to say, I got glitter EVERYWHERE when I made these! So much fun! :D

I used Mary Norwak's chocolate & banana cake recipe and adapted it to make these cupcakes. If you can get hold of a copy (it's gone out of print, boo!) then I would encourage you to do so as it's the best cake book I own (and I owe A LOT!).

If you can't, the recipe is as follows:

Cake Mix

175g butter
175g castor sugar
3 eggs
200g self-raising flour
25g cocoa
2 bananas, mashed (save a tbsp for the butter cream)

Buttercream

100g butter, softened & cut into cubes
200g icing sugar
Tbsp milk
Tbsp mushed banana
30g cocoa

Smoosh everything together with an electric beater (seriously, invest in one of these!)
If it's taking forever, add a LITTLE more milk (too much and it'll go soggy!)

• Turn your oven onto 180°C/GM4
• Cream the butter & sugar together until light and fluffy.
• Beat in the eggs together with 3 tbsp of the measured flour.
  
• Fold in the remaining flour & cocoa, then stir in the mashed bananas.
• Spoon the mixture into cupcake cases (I made roughly 24) about 3/4 full.
• Bake for 20-30 minutes (depending entirely on your oven!)
• When cooled, ice the cupcakes with the butter cream!
  
• Glitter is OPTIONAL but it looks so pretty... :D
  

The original recipe is for a cake rather than cupcakes. If you want to turn it into a cake, divide into two greased & floured 20cm/8inch sandwich tins and bake for 35 minutes. The recipe calls for plain chocolate buttercream to sandwich the two cakes together and a chocolate glace icing for the top, but if you want to add extra banana, go for it :D

Peanut Butter and Jam Cupcakes

Sacha's Peanut Butter and Jam Cupcakes


For the cupcakes:
100g butter
100g sugar
2 medium eggs
100g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1-2 tbsp peanut butter

Strawberry jam for the filling!

For the buttercream:
1 tbsp milk (room temperature)
250g icing sugar
25 butter (room temperature)
Vanilla flavouring


Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.


Cream the sugar and butter together in a bowl until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at the time, beating each one in.
Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture then beat well.
Add peanut butter to taste -- the more you use, the stronger the taste will be.

Divide batter into cupcake cases. If you're using small cupcake cases, it'll make between 20-24. Larger cupcake cases will make between 12-16.

Pop into the oven for about 14 minutes. You can check to see if it's cooked by wetting a knife and poking the cupcake. If it comes away clear, you can take it out of the oven. If there's mixture on the knife, put it back in for a few more minutes.

Leave to cool on a wire rack for five/ten minutes. When it's cooled down, cut a hollow in the middle of each cupcake; this will be where the jam is! I found that a knife was actually easier to use than a spoon but both will work. Each hole should go about half way down the cupcake. The excess cupcake bits can be nommed on while you work.

Spoon half a teaspoon of jam into the hole of every cupcake, making sure it's nice and flat on the top.

Next, buttercream!

Combine the butter with half the icing sugar (electric beaters reccommended at this stage!), add the milk and vanilla flavouring then the rest of the icing sugar. Either pop your buttercream into a piping bag (it'll look prettier this way!) or grab a handy spatula/knife and cover the tops of the cupcakes. Make sure you have enough to cover up the middle where the jam is; this way you get to surprise your friends when they bite into it :D

You can decorate the top with a few sparkles or crushed peanuts or leave it blank -- whichever works best for you :)