Halloween Cake Pops

With Halloween in a couple of days I wanted to create some easy but delicious treats that one could serve at a party or just for fun.

The basic recipe is for caramel cake pops then decorated into pumpkins, you could also design them to be eyeballs, ghosts or other such like depending on what you have.I have always associated caramel with autumn as it is such a warming flavor.

Ingredients: (for 20 cake pops)
60g caster sugar
60g butter
1 egg
60g self raising flour
1 tsp caramel flavoring (just for ease)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees fan.

Cream the butter and sugar together.

Mix in a bit of the egg, then a bit of flour, then a bit of, then a bit of flour until all the egg is gone and there is half of the flour remaining.

Add the flavoring and mix.

Fold in the remainder of the flour, get as much air as possible in to the mixture.

Grease your cake pop tin and fill the bottom half of the mold with cake mix.

Put the lid on the cake pop tin and bake for 10 minutes so that they fill the tin.

Then leave to cool.

For decoration:
4 tablespoons Icing Sugar
1 tablespoon water
Orange gel coloring- to effect
Orange sugar crystals
Mixed peel
Green food coloring

Mix the water, sugar and coloring together so that it is thick paste. Pour over the cake pops and then cover in the sugar crystals.

For the stalk I used a piece of mixed peel which I painted green with food coloring. 

Happy Baking and Happy Halloween!

Gx

Perfect Butter Cream Recipe

Yes, it has been a long time but I am finally writing this recipe which makes fab butter cream icing.
It is a slight variant on the recipe in Bee Nilson's "The Penguin Cookery Book" which everyone should look for in their local charity shop as I have never seen it anywhere else and it is amazing.

Ingredients:
250g icing sugar
35g unsalted butter
3 tsp water or milk
1 tsp vanilla extract (or whatever flavoring you want)

Method: 
Mix butter on it's own in order to soften it
Then beat in the icing sugar
Add the liquid and extract in order to create the desired consistency.

I find that in order to create a smooth butter cream icing the best thing to do is to just keep mixing for as long as possible so that any lumps however small are no longer there.

Victoria Sponge

Now, everyone has made a Victoria sponge at one time or another, simply because it is so simple to do and you can create your own methods of making it. I have my own method but of course I have to try Annie Bells, after this I will write my own method up for you.

So, obviously her first step is to cream butter and sugar together. You then pour in all the eggs and mix it, which makes the mixture very lumpy and I was slightly worried by it.

Then you add the self-raising flour and baking powder which again I was sceptical about as I never put more than one raising agent in to a cake but it turned out alright in the end. The recipe says to add milk, which I don't put in unless the mixture is too dry.

Also it says to bake the cake for 50 minutes but my oven is very fierce so mine was cooked in only 25.

I then layered the cake up with strawberries and cream to make it extra summery.

I then place the second sponge on top of the cream and then dusted it with icing sugar over a strawberry leaf to make a pretty pattern - I am just so arty!

The cake although a different recipe to my own, it was still soft and light. It was very tasty but because of the stress of the recipe itself, as it is not mine, I don't think I will use it again. However it was good and a very summery and fresh cake especially with the cream and strawberries. 

Summer Berry Genoise

Wimbledon has just finished! And thus a light, fruity, creamy summery cake is needed.

A genoise is different to a normal sponge as it has no raising agents. The only thing that aids this is beating egg whites into stiff peaks, thus filling them with air! The yolks are also included in this sponge, whisked with sugar. And mixed with the remaining sugar and plain flour. And finally melted butter. It is then baked.

The cake is brushed with a rose water and honey syrup, after being cut open -  very badly...  

              

Finally the cake is filled with a whipped cream and fresh strawberry and raspberry icing - like thing.

I then put a few berries on the top to provide a bit of decoration and it was ready to eat! 

                                                     

So that is a delicious and summery berry which is light pudding but still lovely. 

Now all that needs to be said is....

WELL DONE MURRAY!

Next Recipe: Blueberry and Orange Muffins

Coffee and Walnut Cake

This is my mother's favorite cake. I am not a huge fan of this cake but I don't dislike it.

The cake has also made it on to "the disaster cake list" as it was a disaster.

When I stuck a knife in the cake to check that it was done after the allotted time it was still wet in the middle so I kept it cooking for longer which burnt the outside making it pretty solid.

It was basically raw in the middle which isn't particularly appealing. But it looked okay... 

And the coffee icing in the middle was delicious. I have decided I love marscapone.

However look what happened when you stick a knife in the top of it...

Yep it stays in by itself... great.

Next Recipe: Flapjacks

Carrot Cake

Carrot cake has always confused me as a concept. Why would you put carrot in cake? It's a vegetable.

However, I have of course eaten it before, (meal deals in Boots are so very cheap) I have never made it as I just didn't think it was really my style.

Then the time came to create one as my mum wanted to take cake in to work for her team. So I thought, hey, why not?

Carrot cake surprisingly enough has carrots in it as well as walnuts, hazelnuts, raisins and lemon. This recipe had no flour and instead of butter had sunflower oil...  spooky stuff...

It then has the traditional cream cheese frosting which I decorated with walnuts.

But it looked decent and apparently her work colleagues liked it, so all was well.

Here is a photo of a slice, which my mum took as it "got a bit battered" on the way to work.

Next Recipe: Coffee and Walnut Cake

Lemon Cupcakes

These are basically just cupcakes but with lemon extract in them... so obviously they were pretty standard. Except they were lemony.

They then have a lemon butter cream icing on them, which I have realized that I dislike... not lemon butter cream in particular but just butter cream in general. This may be down to the fact that I don't like butter.

Next Recipe: Blondies (White Chocolate Brownies)

The Football Boot Cake

I know this isn't lemon cupcakes, but I wanted to share this as it is cake related.

Last week was my brother's birthday so I helped my mum to create these

I know right if we say so ourselves, they look pretty damn cool.

We copied the design from The Birthday Cake Book by Fiona Cairns. This book is full of loads of other awesome recipes and you can buy it here  -->
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1844009858/?tag=hydra0b-21&hvadid=9551160789&ref=asc_df_1844009858

Happy Baking!

Lemon cupcakes will be next!

Vanilla Cupcakes

The very fashionable cupcakes which are ridiculously expensive to buy -£4 for a cupcake, come one! Anyway I decided to make them to Annie Bell's recipe as I have made them before but to a different recipe. 

So vanilla cupcakes are basically a normal sponge just instead of being in one large cake it is lots of little cakes. They are baked and then you ice them!

As I had some chocolate custard and crumbs left over from my mum's birthday cake I used them to ice some of them. But for most I made a vanilla buttercream icing tinted with pink food colouring and covered it in strawberry chocolate curls. So they were cupcakes.

If you want to save money, make your own as to be honest they taste pretty much the same... except posh cupcakes have better icing... but that might come with practise. 

Next Recipe: Lemon Cupcakes (sensing a theme?) 

Brooklyn Blackout Cake

It was my mum's birthday, a while back. WOOP HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

So a cake had to be made. Now on the cover of the book there is this cake, The Brooklyn Blackout cake and it looks amazing, and my mother agreed. And that was how we decided.

Anyway it is a very chocolaty cake covered in a thick chocolate custard and chocolate cake crumbs. yum.

So you make two chocolate sponge cakes and then cut one of them in half... which is difficult if you can't cut in a straight line. Like me.

So once you have done this you make a thick custard. Be warned it doesn't look like custard. it looks COOL.

Cool thick custard not like that weird stuff from primary school...

Anyway you sandwich three of the sponges together using the custard-y icing. And then you grate, yes grate the last sponge to cover the cake with. yum.

You cover the whole three sponges stuck together with custard and then you sprinkle on the crumbs as a thick layer.

It looks like a fluffy hat, but it doesn't taste like one, thankfully.

It was very delicious and chocolaty and yummy so I will be making that again as it also looks quite impressive.  So that was my mum's birthday cake. YAY!

P.S. I have no idea why it is called Brooklyn Blackout cake... I probably should have done so research but I am guessing because it is very dark... but who knows. If you do leave a comment. 

Next Recipe: Vanilla Cupcakes