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. 

Blueberry and Orange Muffins

Basically I made muffins.

They are simple and delicious and great for snacking or breakfast-ing.

These are made with the normal cake stuff but with oil not butter and added orange juice and zest. Once these are all combined you lightly stir in some on the blueberries. The mixture is put in to muffin cases and the remaining blueberries and sugar are sprinkled over the top.

They are then baked, obviously and then they are ready to eat.

 

Next Recipe: A simple Victoria Sponge

Flapjacks

Flapjacks are very easy and very quick. Popular at school bake sales around the country as busy mothers don't have time to make anything else. Therefore you are probably all familiar with them. If you are not, Google a more detailed recipe, sharpish!

So due to the mundane-ness of the flapjack, this shall be brief.

To make flapjacks you mix oats, melted butter, syrup and honey together- creating something like this...

mmmmmm oats 

Then you squidge them into a grease proofed tin with the back of a wooden spoon so the mixture is flat. This is then baked.

They are pretty dull to look at, so I tried to jazz them up a bit with a bit of melted chocolate drizzled on the top. Everything dull can be fixed with chocolate. 

This may be the worst photo I have ever taken in my life... 

So that was the humble flapjack- boring, simple and comforting.

Next Recipe: Passionfruit Cheesecake

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

Treacle Tart

Treacle Tart is a traditional English pudding and surprisingly enough it doesn't have any actual treacle in it. 

It is a shortcrust pastry filled with a golden syrup, lemon, apple, egg and breadcrumb mixture.

There was a bit of a pastry incident... nothing a bit of first aid couldn't fix....

I had so much mixture I had to make little ones too but I have no pictures of them.

It is very sweet and perfect with cream as it takes away some of the sugary sweetness.

Next Recipe: Carrot Cake

Blondies (White Chocolate Brownies)

I love brownies, and I love white chocolate so Blondies sounded amazing.

They have honey and syrup in them making them very sweet (in total 300g of sweet) so this is a sweet tooth's dream. It also obviously has white chocolate in it, hence the white chocolate brownie thing...

So you mix honey, syrup, butter and vanilla in a pan and let it melt, once cooled you beat in one egg at a time and then fold in flour and baking powder. You then chuck in the white chocolate chunks and done. Simple.

You then bake them.

Now my oven is particularly vicious so they burnt and they are a little toasted, however they were still yummy.

They didn't taste as I had expected them too, like white chocolate, but more like honey as there is so much in there. It wasn't unpleasant but I expected more from something with white chocolate in it.

Next Recipe: Treacle Tart

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

Scotch Pancakes

For breakfast I made scotch pancakes as they seemed simple to make and everyone loves pancakes! They are apparently the simplest thing to make in the book and they were the simplest thing so far.

You mix sugar, flour, salt, milk and melted butter together so it is a batter. Apparently the melted butter stops the pancakes from sticking to the pan which I was sceptical about but it did seem to work so that's an interesting tip.

Anyway they were yummy and I have already made them again, where I made double the mixture.

Next Recipe: Brooklyn Blackout Cake

Apple Clafoutis

Clafoutis is a french pudding traditionally made with cherries but in this book they are substituted with apples.

It is a very puddingy pudding with a kind of bread and butter pudding feeling, but with apples.

A simple batter is made out of sugar, milk, flour and egg, this is then left to rest for a while. You boil rum with sugar and add the apples to make them softer and the rum syrupy. You then poor the apples on top of the batter in a glass dish.

It is then baked for around 35 mins and served warm.

It was nice but kind of strange as although the rum was supposed to burn off, the apples were still quite alcoholic and crunchy rather than soft. But in other ways it was a very nice pudding and very warming.

Sorry the picture is so bad, I took this on my phone. 

Next Recipe: Scotch Pancakes

Red Velvet Cake

Or the meat cake as it will henceforth be known... 

This cake is really fashionable at the moment, so I thought I would give it a go. However, it wasn't very easy, or it was easy and I did it wrong. One of the two. 

Anyway the air gets in to it by adding bicarb to vinegar which fizzes, you then  add it to the mix and then you add food colouring. In the book she uses colouring paste...which I didn't have so I improvised using liquid instead. This may have been a mistake...

It is then baked (obviously) for a while. 

I put a skewer in to the cake and it came out clean. So I assumed that the cake was done. 

HOW ABOUT NO. 

No, the cake was not as we later found out when the inside was mushy and like meat... appetizing right? 

It was horrible, the consistency was sticky and gummy and revolting. Also the colour wasn't red enough as once the mixture was very watery, I was too scared to add more. So it was more of a salmon colour. 

It is topped with a cream cheese and sugar frosting, which is sweet but not too sweet. This was the best part of the cake. 

I didn't take a picture of this disaster of a cake because well it was a disaster, but as a visual representation... 

So that was the prize for the worst cake, woop woop!

Next Recipe: Apple Clafoutis 

Angel Cake

In order to make this cake, we had to make a trip to Divertimenti on Marylebone High Street to buy an angel cake tin which was very exciting. It is the most amazing baking shop ever. We spent nearly an hour in there deciding which one we wanted and looking at the other stuff that they sell.

Once we had eventually bought it and returned home, I started baking. It is an easy enough cake but the type of sponge is quite different. The sponge is made using icing sugar instead of caster sugar and it has 8 egg whites thus it is virtually fat free. But apart from that it is a very normal sponge in terms of ingredients.

All the ingredients are whisked together so that they are a creamy smooth mixture which is very pale. It is then baked in its really cool tin.

The cake itself is very white when baked and has quite a strange consistency which you either love or find a bit weird. It is served with blueberries which contrasts the white-ness of the cake well. 

Next Recipe: Red Velvet Cake

Cherry Crumble Cake

One slight change: It was raspberry crumble cake not cherry as 

THERE WERE NO CHERRIES ANYWHERE. So frozen raspberries were used instead.

This pudding is a layer of sponge and a layer of raspberries which is covered in a crumble. 

However although it has a lot of separate components in it they are still all baked together, rather than the sponge baked first and then baked again with all the stuff on it. This meant that the raspberry juice soaked through in to the sponge and gave it extra flavor. 

The crumble was all crispy, the raspberries were all squidgy and sweet and the sponge was soft. It was a nice combination and I will definitely be making it again at some point. 

Next Recipe: Angel Cake

Scones

scone as in gone not scone as in phone.

So scones... pretty dull, not going to lie, but it is in the book and I made it so there we go.

Scones are basically bread and are actually quite quick and easy to make, you make a simple dough of icing sugar, flour, baking powder, egg and milk. You then, using biscuit cutters, cut circular pieces out of the dough. They are then baked.

We ate them warm with jam while watching Skyfall.

So bloody British.

Next Recipe: Cherry Crumble Cake

Lemon Polenta Cake

Polenta for those who don't know is peeled barley and is used as a substitute for flour.

Anyway the cake.

It was very delicious if I say so myself and was made with very little catastrophes, thankfully. It is quite simple to make though so it doesn't say much...

You shove all the ingredients in to a bowl and cream together. The end mixture is grainy... because of the polenta, sounds really great right now doesn't it? Then you put it in the oven to do its thing.

I then had to make an accompanying strawberry compote. Now the problem with this was that it needed Kirsch. I had never heard of it before and surprisingly enough we didn't have any. After being told it was an alcoholic drink that if we bought a whole bottle of would just sit in the cupboard never used. I decided to improvise. Enter the sloe gin.

Along with the gin there is also strawberry jam, she says use Bonne Mama but that is way to fancy - I prefer Hartley's, and quartered strawberries.

This is then served with the cake along with some creme friache and it is all very yummy.

Next Recipe: Scones 

Pancakes

This pancake day was my first time making pancakes, ever. EVER!
Yes I had never made a pancake before so it seemed like a good time to try.

Anyway I began, not really reading the instructions just kind of shoving everything in to the bowl in random orders and whisking occasionally. This didn't work,
I only worked this out when I was about half way through and glanced over at the recipe book... The lumps in the mixture were also a good sign...

In order to fix this without having to start all over again (wasting 4 eggs in the process) the electric whisk came out. And after a few jooshes (no it is not a word, I am well aware of that) it was normal pancake mix again.

I left it for a few hours then began to cook them.

The first one to quote my brother looked like "wet scrambled eggs"... when were scrambled eggs dry?
But the point is it looked awful and it wasn't cooked enough.

So I tried again. After a few attempts with the pancakes being too thick, burnt or under cooked, they began to work.

So 30 pancakes later they were normal pancakes. I couldn't flip them, but I'll save that for next year.


Sorry there is no picture. You know what pancakes look like...

Next Recipe: Lemon Polenta Cake