Red Velvet Cupcakes

I know it's been a while since I posted but a combination of lack of inspiration and a bust electric whisk have put me off for a while but I now have a shiney new mixer to play with and seem to be getting my baking urge back!

We recently had yet another school holiday and during the half term BabyBear and I made the journey up to Cheshire to visit our Northern family.  It had been my younger sisters birthday a few weeks earlier and as a late birthday cake she requested that I make her red velvet cupcakes.

I've had limited success with red velvet cakes before - I tried them once and while they tasted Ok I was distinctly underwhelmed - they turned out brown rather than the vivid RED! that they appear to be in pictures.  So I did what any one would do and hit the internet to find out exactly where I went wrong.  It turned out that the food colouring that you can buy in most supermarkets is unsuitable for red velvet cakes.  The Hummingbird Bakery cook book specifically says to use Dr Oetkar red but since that was published the EU guide lines on food colouring have changed.  Rather than the incredibly artificial colours that you used to be able to get most supermarkets stock 'natural' colours which just aren't strong enough.

I was knew that the best thing to do was use a gel rather than a liquid colouring but was unsure which one to go for (there are a bewildering amount of colours available) when I saw a tweet from Lorraine Pascale recommending Sugar Flair's Red Extra (available here from Amazon)

The first recipe I tried was from The Hummingbird Bakery's book and while I was happy with the results it didn't taste very chocolatey.  The recipe called for 40ml of food colouring.  Instead I used 1 teaspoon of gel and made it up to 40ml with extra water.  If you have a particular red velvet recipe that you prefer then this technique should work.

the next recipe I tried was from Ed Kimbers book.  This one was much more to my taste - it used more cocoa powder so actually tasted like a chocolate cake.  It was incredibly moist and went beautifully with the cream cheese icing.  I've now a red velvet convert and am very tempted to see if the same technique can be used to make diffent coloured cakes (I'm particularly tempted to make a pink velvet cake)

The Ed Kimber recipe was actually for a 3 layer cake but as I was making cupcakes I decided to reduce this by a third.  This made way too much mix and we've been in the unfortunate situation of having too much cake! (a terrible situation to be in I know) The mix made 12 large cupcakes, 8 bite size ones that BabyBear has been taking to school with him in his lunch box and a loaf tin sized cake that I've frozen to make cake pops with in the future!

Red Velvet Cakes - makes a 2 layer cake or 24 cupcakes (ish) - from Ed Kimber's The Boy Who Bakes

150g softened butter
235g caster sugar
1 tsp red food gel
2tb boiling water
30g cocoa powder
160ml buttermilk
2 eggs
235g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
1/2 tbsp white vinegar


1 Pre-heat the oven to 170C and line your tins with cupcake cases or grease your cake tin.

2 In a jug mix together the boiling water, cocoa power, buttermilk and food colouring.  Mix until thoroughly incorporated.

3 Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  In another bowl mix together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt.  Add 1/3 of the flour mix and half the buttermilk mix to the creamed butter and sugar and mix thoroughly.  Repeat until all the mix is added.  Finally add the vinegar.

4 Spoon into your prepared tins/cupcake cases and bake for 20 minutes.  Allow to cool before icing.

Cream Cheese Icing

160g unsalted butter, softened
330g icing sugar
260g cream cheese (not low fat, it goes really runny)

1 Beat the butter to soften it then add the icing sugar and beat until smooth.  Add the cream cheese and beat until light and fluffy.  I find that putting the icing in the fridge for a little while before using makes icing the cakes a lot easier.

How to adjust a cake recipe for different sized tins

Picture from the awesome web comic xkcd.com

Picture this - you've got a recipe for a gorgeous sounding cake, you've got the ingrediants to make it, the time to give it your full attention, the burning desire for something sweet.... the one thing you don't have is the correct sized tin.  So what do you do?  Do you give up on the idea or do you have a go at reducing the recipes quantities?  But how much by?  Do you use an educated guess or do you go for something a bit more precise?  It may seem a bit of a daunting task but by using Science! (or at least maths) it's one that's surprisingly easy to accomplish.  All it needs is a tape measure, a calculator and a piece of paper.

For this example I'm going to use a simple Victoria Sponge recipe.  This recipe calls for the use of two round 20cm sandwich tins.  However seeing as it's just going to be myself, my husband and our son who'll be eating it I don't want to make that much cake.  I could use the recipe to make cupcakes I suppose but it's just not the same.  Instead I'm going to use a couple of very dinky little cake tins that I picked up in our local pound shop.  The recipe calls for

225g caster sugar
225g butter
4 eggs
225g self raising flour

but obviously that's going to be way too much mix for the little tins I have.  So how do I go about reducing the recipe?

The first thing to realise is that it's all about volume.  If that recipe is meant for two 20 cm tins then the first thing to do is work out the volume of the tins.

1 Measure the inside of your cake tin.  This is the diameter.  Half it and you'll have the radius (r) of the tin

2 Measure the depth (d) of the tin.

3 Now comes the maths.  First you need to work out the area of the tin.  To do this you need to use the basic formula of 3.14 x (r x r) which in the case of a 20 cm cake tin is 3.14 x (10 x 10) which gives us an answer of  314.

4 You then need to multiply this by the depth of the tin to work out the volume of the cake tin needed.  So it'd be 314 x 4 which is 1256.  Because the recipe calls for 2 cake tins the total volume of the cake is 2512

5 I repeat this process with the smaller cake tins I will be using.  These are 12 cm in diameter, 4 cm deep.  So the maths is

Area of the circle - 3.14 x (6 x 6) = 113

Volume of the cake tin - 113 x 4 = 452

Volume of 2 cake tins - 452 x 2 = 904

6 Since 904 is approximately 1/3 rd of 2512  I will need to use 1/3 of the amount of mixture (in this case I'd have a bit of mixture left over which I'd probably turn into a couple of cupcakes)  The new recipe is thus

75 g caster sugar
75g butter
2 eggs (it'd be nearly impossible to get 1/3 of 4 eggs so I'll use two)
75g self raising flour

This method can not only be used to scale down recipes but also scale up.

Now that's all very well and good for round cakes but what if you only have a square tin?  Well that can be worked out fairly easily as well.

1 Measure the height (h) depth (d) and width (w) of your tin.  Now all you have to do is h x d x w.  Which in the case of my 18 cm square tin is 7.5 x 18 x 18 = 2430

Hope that wasn't too scary and if you have any questions about the maths please ask!

The 5 2 diet 4 weeks on

Today marks my fourth week of following the 5 2 diet and I thought I'd put up a little update.  After four weeks I've lost a grand total of 10 lbs and I'm really happy about it.  While I haven't lost that much since my last diet related post I know the reasons why (Wetherspoons rack of ribs I'm looking at you)  My clothes feel baggier, I can tell that I've lost weight and most importantly I don't feel like I'm on a diet!  I've found that I'm eating healthier, probably because I'm eating a lot more vegetables than I used to do, in fact on my fasting days I find the easiest thing to do to keep the calories down is simply to go vegetarian.

One of the nicest dinner recipes I've come up with is roasted veggie cous cous - it's packed full of good things and uses spices to keep the flavours interesting.  It's not a tricky recipe but because it uses oven roasted tomatoes it takes a while to prepare.  If you don't have time then you could simply use de-hydrated sun dried tomatoes, Merchant Gourmet do some really nice ones.  The beauty of doing it at home though is that you can take a cheap punnet of not very interesting tomatoes and turn them into something wonderfully flavourful.

Roasted Vegetable Cous Cous (serves 2)  138 calories per serving according to www.myfitnesspal.com

200g cherry tomatoes, halved
1 red pepper, chopped into bite size pieces
1 courgette, chopped into bite size pieces
1 onion, chopped into bite size pieces
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cumin
chili to taste
pinch of salt
100g cous cous

1 Pre-heat the oven to 150C.  Put the halved cherry tomatoes on a baking sheet cut side down.  Roast in the oven for 3 hours.

2 Take the tomatoes out of the oven and turn the heat up to 200C.  In a small bowl mix together the spices and salt - how much chilli you put in is entire down to personal taste.  Put the rest of the veggies on a large baking sheet and add the spice mix.  Use your hands to mix everything together so that the veggies are covered with the spices and them pop in the oven for 20 minutes.

3 After the veggies have been in the oven for 10 minutes prepare the cous cous following the instructions on the packet - I find that 100g of cous cous needs about 100ml of boiled water.  After the cous cous has been allowed to soak for 10 minutes the veggies should be down.  Take them out of the oven and stir into the cous cous along with the roasted tomatoes.

This cous cous is lovely on its own but is also good served as a side dish to chicken.  If you're not dieting then it could be made more substantial by adding chunks of feta cheese.

Amazing Disney World Inspired Cinnamon Rolls

My husband and I are currently planning a family trip to Walt Disney World in a couple of years time (we're hoping to go in February 2015 but it all depends on whether or not BabyBear's school will let us take him out for a week during school time)  Naturally as a food obsessive a lot of the research I've been doing into the trip have focused on what noms we can get.  One of the things that immediately leapt out to me is warm cinnamon rolls from Main Street Bakery.

The recipe used the basic en-riched dough that I used for the hot cross buns back in March.  As I don't want to repeat myself I'll just put a link up.  I used half the dough that recipe made so while the pictures show 7 buns if you use the whole mix it'll make 14.  Once the dough has proven for the the first time rather than turning it into buns it needs to be rolled out and the cinnamon/sugar mix spread on top.

In addition to the dough you'll need -

30g of softened butter
100g brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

50g icing sugar

Mix the three ingredients together.  Spread over the rolled out dough.

Now it's time to roll up the dough; working from the shorter side roll it up like you would a swiss roll.  Once rolled cut it into slices about 3 cm thick and put on a baking sheet.  Allow to rise for 1 hour and then bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 25 minutes.  Word of warning here - the dough rises a lot and will need to be put on fairly large baking sheets for its second prove.   Alternatively they can be left to rise over night in the fridge and baked fresh in the morning for an amazing breakfast treat.

While the rolls are baking mix together the ingredients for the icing.  Mix the icing sugar with enough enough water to make a thin icing.  Once the rolls are baked pour the icing over the top and allow to cool slightly before eating.

Unicorn Poop Cookies!

As you probably know this weekend is a bank holiday and that can mean only one thing; the Bear family is off LARPing!  LARP for the uninitiated is short for Live Action Role Play - think historical re-enactment meets amateur dramatics meets Dungeons and Dragons.  It basically means that we get to spend the weekend camping in Wales with friends (nerd alert - the site is next to sand dunes that were used in Torchwood for the planet of Boe) while dressed up in costume, pretending to use magic and getting hit with foam swords.

I asked BabyBear what if he thought that I should bake some of my famous brownies to take with us but he said no he wanted me to bake unicorn poop!  Now before you leave in disgust I should mention that unicorn poop are simply biscuits that have been dyed with food colouring.  They're known as unicorn poop cookies because if the Internet has taught us one thing it's that unicorns poop rainbows.  Oh and you can never have enough cat pictures.

I used the same basic biscuit recipe that I used to make the Dr Who biscuits a couple of weeks ago recipe.  There were however a few extra ingredients, namely the food colouring.  You can use as many different colours as you like but I like to stick with four.

Once you've made the dough separate it out into four balls.  Using a tooth prick put a tiny amount of food colouring on one of the balls and kneed it in.  Once the right colour has been achieved wrap the ball in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least half an hour.  Repeat with the other three balls.

Once they're chilled take the balls out of the freezer and split each ball four again.  This will make the shaping process a lot easier.  The balls will probably look a lot like Play Doh now and it's time to get in touch with your inner child and treat it like it!  Roll one of the the dough balls out on a lightly floured surface just like you would if you were back at school and making plasticine snakes.  Repeat with the other three colours until you have something that looks like this

Now cut your snakes into quarters and begin curling them round so that they look like snail shells.  It doesn't matter if they're not perfect or if the dough breaks while you're bending them, they're meant to
look irregular.  Squish them slightly so that the colours all mingle together.

Repeat this process with the rest of the dough balls and eventually you'll have beautifully colourful poop!  Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 10 minutes.

My verdict on the 5 2 diet two weeks on

I've been following the 5 2 diet for two weeks on and thought that I'd write a little post about how I'm doing on it.  Well so far I have lost 8 lb's!  Not bad considering that I only diet 2 days a week.  I've found the diet easier to follow than I thought it would be; I've been eating three meals a day but have drastically cut down on the amount of snacks I eat through the day.  Following the diet has made me realise just how many snacks I eat over the course of a day and that there's times that I'll just grab a little something because I'm bored or out of habit when I'm having a cup of tea.  Unfortunately those little something's tend to be of the sweet variety and have no doubt added to my weight slowly creeping up and up.

The meal that I've struggled with the most is lunch.  I'm used to just grabbing a sandwich but because white bread is high in calories I'm having to find tasty alternatives.  Miso soup with lots of veggies in is good (I tried it with tofu in but have decided that it's a total waste of calories)  Vegetable sticks with low fat soft cheese were also a good lunch but so far my favourite has been this home made tomato soup.  According to myfitnesspal.com/ it comes in at just 53 calories per serving.

Tomato and oven roasted red pepper soup - serves 4

1 red pepper, quartered
1 stick of celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 tin chopped tomatoes
350ml vegetable stock
60g extra low fat soft cheese

1) Roast the red pepper at 200C for 20-25 minutes.

2) Fry the onion and celery until softened then add the tin of tomatoes and stock.  Simmer for 20 minutes.

3) When the pepper's done blitz in a blender or with a stick blender.  Once pulped add half the soup and blitz.  If you prefer a smoother soup then blitz all the soup.

4) Add the soft cheese and re-heat.  Adjust seasoning to taste and serve.

Iron Man inspired billionaire's shortbread cupcakes

Steve Rogers: Big man in a suit of armour. Take that off, what are you?

Tony Stark: Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.

(The Avengers, 2012)

Today sees the return of Iron Man to our screens and I've been inspired to bake!  Now what could be more perfect for everyones favourite genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist than millionaires shortbread inspired cupcakes?  

To make these just that little bit special I'm playing around with the usual millionaires shortbread layers of shortbread, caramel and chocolate and reversing them - I've baked a rich chocolate cupcake, filled it a with sticky salted caramel centre and topped with vanilla butter cream liberally studied with pieces of shortbread.  There's quite a few elements to these cakes so it's a recipe to do when you've plenty of time!

Billionaires Shortbread Cupcakes

The cupcake (recipe taken from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days available here)

80g softened, unsalted butter
280g caster sugar
400g plain flour
40g cocoa
pinch of salt
1 tbsp baking powder
2 eggs
240ml milk


1) Cream together the butter, sugar, flour, cocoa, salt and baking powder.  
2) In a jug lightly whisk together the eggs and the milk then add 2/3's to the dry mix.  Once incorporated add the rest.
3) Put into cases and bake in a pre-heated oven at 180C for 15-20 minutes.


Salted Caramel Sauce

150g caster sugar
120ml double cream
1tsp salt

1) In a non-stick pan gently heat the sugar until melted.  You need to keep an eye on it as it can easily burn and become quite bitter.  You need to be a bit careful when melting sugar as it gets incredibly hot and personally it's not something I do while Babybear is about as I wouldn't like to leave it alone too long if he needs my attention.


2) Once the sugar has all melted and gone a golden colour add the cream.  I find that if I take the cream out of the fridge about 15 minutes before I start the sauce it doesn't spit as much.  Give the stir a sauce to make sure that the cream is all incorporated.


3) Start adding the salt; it's best to do this in small amounts as it's easier to add more than it is to take away too much.  You can test how the caramel tastes by dropping a small amount in cold water and then tasting it.


4) When it's ready take off the heat and set to one side.  (Top Tip - Fill the sauce pan with very hot water immediately after using the sauce, this will make it far easier to clean.  If you do find yourself with a pan with bits of rock hard caramel caramel stuck to it just pour in very hot water and bring to the boil; the caramel will dissolve in the water making it far easier to clean)


Shortbread

60g caster sugar

110g soft, unsalted butter

110g plain flour

1) Cream together the butter and sugar.  Add the plain flour and mix until it forms a dough - I find it easiest to use my hands here.
2) As it doesn't need to be any particular shape I didn't bother rolling it out, just put it on a baking tray and flattened it with my hand.
3) Place in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 15 minutes.


Butter cream

250g Icing sugar
80g Butter
25ml Milk

1) Place all the ingredients in a bowl and mix together until light and fluffy.


Assembling the cakes


1) Once the cupcakes are cooled you need to slice the top off and scoop out some of the inside to create a hole for the caramel sauce to go in. (The tops aren't needed again so go ahead and eat them!)

2) Put a teaspoon of the caramel sauce into each cupcake.

3) While the shortbread is still slightly warm cut half of it into 1.5cm X 1.5 (ish) squares.  These will go on top of your cupcakes.  Crumble the rest into smallish pieces and gently fold into the butter cream.

4) Spoon the butter cream on the cupcakes and make them pretty! (This is the bit I normally struggle with)  Top each with a piece of shortbread and enjoy!

So have any of you been to see Iron Man 3 yet?  What did you think of it? 

Hmmmm, pie

Today is one of the warmest days of the years so far so naturally I'm baking a pie.  Maybe I should start looking at the weather forecast more when planning my meals?  Today is one of our semi-regular Dungeons and Dragons sessions with friends so I'm trying out something new.  Rather than just using stewing steak as I'd usually do I thought I'd include some oxtail to give a different sort of flavour to the pie.  The basic recipe for the pie mix was the one I used for the stew I made to celebrate the return of Game of Thrones so I probably won't be including it here.
Like the masochist I am I decided to make things even harder for me - as well as using a completely new ingredient (well, new to me anyway) I decided to have another go at making puff pastry.  I've had limited success in the past, I've made it twice before and while it tasted lovely and buttery it didn't puff up in that distinctive way it's supposed to.  Fingers crossed that it'll be third time lucky!
Puff pastry has a reputation for being difficult to make and I won't lie, it is time consuming.  The key is to keep all the ingredients as cold as possible; I think part of the problem I've had before was that even in winter our kitchen is quite warm.  We've been known to have our kitchen and living room windows open when it's been snowing outside!  Another thing I've done wrong before is handling the dough too much which again warms it up.  So this time I took extra precautions to keep the ingredients as cold as possible.

Puff Pastry

225g plain flour
1tsp salt
250g cold, unsalted butter
150ml very cold water (I put mine in the fridge ahead of time)

1) Mix together the flour and the salt.  Once thoroughly mixed place the bowl in the fridge for a few minutes to cool down.

2) While the bowl is getting cold cut the butter into cubes.  Once done take the flour out of the fridge and being careful not to be too vigorous with it add the butter.  Using a knife gently roll the butter in the flour so that it's coated.  Return the bowl to the fridge for 10 minutes.

3) After 10 minutes take the bowl and the water out of the fridge.  Add the water to the mix and stir with a round ended knife until it forms a rough dough.  You might need to use your hands to get it to all stick together but ideally you want to handle the dough as little as possible.  Take a large piece of clingfilm and put it on your counter.  Place the dough on the cling film and squish it together to form a ball.  There should still be big chunks of butter showing through the dough.  Wrap it in clingfilm and return it to the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

nice big chunks of butter still visible in the dough

4) once the dough has been thoroughly chilled it's time to begin the rolling out and layering.  Take the dough out of the fridge and while it's still in the clingfilm shape it into a rough square.  Now there are those who say to roll the dough out between two sheets of clingfilm but to be honest I'm not convinced that this is any easier than just rolling it out on a flour dusted counter.  My personal preference is to not use the clingfilm method but it might work for some.  I dust my counter and rolling pin with flour and do it the old fashioned way.  Roll out your pastry til it's about a 15cm by 45cm rectangle.  You should be able to see streaks for butter in the dough still.  Lift up the bottom of the pastry and fold about 1/3 up then do the same with the top third.  Turn the dough 90 degrees and roll out again.  Repeat the folding then return to the fridge for 30 minutes.

5) Repeat the rolling, folding, chilling sequence another 3 times.  When you're doing this you're creating the layers that will (hopefully) give the pastry its puffiness.  Once done with the folding chill for at least a couple of hours or preferably over night.

The pastry is now ready to use in whatever recipe you want.  Good luck!

How to make a pink princess castle

As I said in an earlier post I recently paid a visit to my family up in Cheshire.  Part of the reason for going up was because it was my niece's fourth birthday.  I originally volunteered myself to make a Batman cake while her older sister wanted to make a princess cake but due to a family emergency my older niece wasn't able to make her sister a cake so I was asked to make the princess castle cake rather than the Batman one.

It was originally suggested that I use shop bought Swiss rolls to make the spires but I was less than happy with that idea.  If I'm making a cake I want to make all of it goram it!  I toyed with making my own Swiss rolls but having never made one before I didn't want to add to the stress of making it by adding an unknown element to the baking.  I instead decided that as well as baking a round cake for the  castle I would bake a sheet cake and cut out rounds from it, stack them together and use them as the spires.  I was very happy with how this worked and it was far less faff that it sounds.

The recipe I used originally appeared in Good Food magazine and is a very nice vanilla cake.  It can be made ahead of time and frozen until needed and will keep well for a week or so.  This makes a lot of cake mix so be sure to use a big enough bowl!

Vanilla cake

375g unsalted butter, softened
375g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste
7 large eggs
130g plain flour
150g Greek yogurt
375g self raising flour
5 tbsp milk

Sugar syrup

75g sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
75ml water

Butter cream

250g icing sugar, sieved
80g unsalted butter at room temperature
25ml milk
1/2 tsp vanilla paste.

1) Pre-heat the oven to 160C/140C fan/gas mark 3.  Grease and line a 20 cm round tin and a roughly 30cm by 15cm rectangular tin.  I needed to be able to get 12 mini cakes out of the sheet cake so that I could stack them together and make the towers.  I used a 5cm cutter but obviously if you use a smaller cutter then you'll be able to get more mini cakes and so taller, skinnier towers.

2) Cream together the cream and the sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the vanilla paste and eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Once all the eggs are incorporated add the yogurt.

3) In a large bowl mix together the two flours then add them to the wet ingredients, mixing well.  Add the milk.  Pour half the mix into the round tin and the other half into the rectangular.  Put in the oven for an hour.

4) To make the sugar syrup dissolve the sugar in the water in a pan on the hob.  Add the vanilla paste and pour over the cooled cakes.  This will help keep the cake moist.

5) while the cakes are cooling prepare the butter cream.  I find that the easiest thing to do is cream together the icing sugar and butter by hand at first - this should hopefully stop all the icing sugar puffing up out of the bowl and covering you and every surface around as it tends to do if you use a mixer straight away!  Once the butter and icing have been incorporated add the milk and vanilla paste and reach for the hand mixer.  Keep mixing for at lease 5 minutes to give a lovely light and fluffy butter cream.

Decorating the cake

1 ) Once the cakes are cooled it's time to start constructing.  I used a 5cm round cutter to cut circles out of the sheet cake to turn into spires.  I then used the same cutter to cut four chunks out of the round cake for the towers to sit in (this was one of the first mistakes I made - I should have used a slightly larger cutter on the big cake as I forgot that once iced the cakes would be bigger)  Once finished the round cake should look kind of like a Maltese cross.

2) Cut the round cake in half horizontally.  Fill this with butter cream then place the top half back on the cake.  Cover this entirely in a thin layer of butter cream - this is known as a crumb coating and it'll help the fondant stick to the cake.

3) For the towers you'll need some wooden skewers.  My sheet cake gave me 12 little cakes for using as the tower and as I wanted 4 of them each tower would need three cakes.   I measured them, cut a skewer to size and then carefully inserted it into the middle of the tower (make sure you let people know there's a skewer in there or they might get a surprise!)  Cover the towers with butter cream.

4) Now it's time for the fondant.  You can either buy pre-coloured fondant or buy white fondant and colour it yourself with gel colours.  The pre-coloured fondant is slightly more expensive and depending on whether or not you have any local cake shops you might have to order it online.  White fondant is available in any good supermarket and has the advantage that you can dye it whatever colour you want.  Of course you have to make sure you colour enough - getting half way through icing and finding out that you've run out would be a nightmare.  Also the colouring can stain hands and kitchen surfaces.

5) Prepare your fondant.  Fondant can be fairly hard at first, particularly if it's been stored in a cold place but once warmed will become pliable.  I find the easiest way to do this is to play around with it a bit while it's still in the packet.  If you're colouring your own be sure to add a little colour at a time until you reach the desired result and be sure to knead it in well.  I used a 1kg block of fondant with 2/3 going on the round cake and towers (the pink icing) and the rest on the spires (the purple)

6)  Roll out half of the pink fondant on a surface dusted with icing sugar.  It should be about 5 mm thick.  Pick it up carefully and drape it over the round cake.  Using your hands mould it to the cake, making sure that it sticks to the butter cream.

7) Now comes the tricky part.  I admit that I made life hard for myself by not measuring the towers and icing them in a very ad-hoc way which meant that they were far messier than I'd have liked them to be.  So this is the technique I'd use if I were to make them again!  First work out the circumference of your towers -  there are two ways to do this, either using a tape measure to measure around the cutter you used, or the maths way which is 2piR (hmmmmm, pi)  Which translated is (3.14x2)x the radius of the cutter.  This figure gives you the length that you want your fondant to be.  So for my towers this would be (3.14x2)x 25 = 157mm length.  Next measure the height of the tower.  Using these two measurements make a template and use this as a guide for cutting out your fondant.  Place your tower on one end of the fondant and roll it up.  The fondant should stick to the icing and as long as your measurements are right should be a perfect fit.

8) Ok, I lied, that wasn't the really tricky bit.  No, the total pain in the arse was making the spires.  If I'd had more time then I would have made a test cake to see what the finished article would look like and to practise icing the towers and turrets.  Unfortunately due to a combination of it being sprung on me last minute and BabyBear being off school for Easter meant that didn't have time to do this.  We bought ice cream cones to ice but unfortunately they were not straight edged so had to be trimmed to fit.  If I do it again I'd probably make cones out of thin card and mould them round them instead.  I coloured the fondant a light purple and covered the cones with it.  I then left them to dry out slightly over night before putting them on the cake.

9) Add whatever other decorations you want, in this case I used edible glitter, sugar paste flowers, a princess figure my younger sister had bought for it and dinosaur candles (at the moment my niece loves two things, Rapunzel and dinosaurs!)

There are a couple of things I would change about the cake if I had a second chance to make it; instead of making one large tier I'd do two smaller ones and stack them.  I'd also make the spires bigger.  Also when icing the cake I forgot to take into account the fact that the fondant icing would make the cake bigger which lead to a couple of problems - the holes I cut into the cake for the spires weren't big enough and as a result it no longer fit the cake board!  But overall I'm quite proud of the way it turned out and most importantly the birthday princess loved it!

Well, I wasn't expecting that!

So I had my first day following the 5 2 diet yesterday and while it wasn't always easy I did manage to (mostly) stick to the 500 calories the diet allows.  I found myself flagging in the mid-afternoon but as tempting as it was to dig into the left over birthday chocolate I instead reached for an apple and continued being good.
Rather than attempting to track all the calories myself I let myfitnesspal.com do all the hard work for me.  It couldn't be simpler to use - simply put in the name of the food you're eating and it'll find the calorie value for you and add it to your daily food tracker.  Handily it also lets you add your own recipes for those meals that you plan on making on a regular basis.
Having completed my fast I decided to weigh myself this morning and to my shock found that I had lost 2lb's!  I had been hoping to maybe lose a little weight but had not for a second thought that I'd lose that much that quickly.  Seeing such a fast weight loss has encouraged me to fast again tomorrow.

Trying something new

Well, I'm back from visiting my family up in Cheshire and while I had a lovely time I'm afraid that as usual when I pay a visit up there I rather over indulged.  There was a belated Easter chocolate orange from my parents, an all you can eat Chinese to celebrate my birthday, a party for my niece's birthday a few days later.... The list goes on and on.  As a result I've been left feeling more than a little fat.

Over the last few years I've started and abandoned the Weight Watchers diet more times than I can remember - it has worked really well for me in the past but for some reason I just haven't been able to stick with it recently.  It seems way too restrictive to fit into my life style and I've found myself feeling incredibly guilty when I'm not able to follow it and almost resenting the diet because of this.  So I've been looking for a new way to lose weight.

I first heard about the 5 2 diet a couple of months ago and I have to admit that I was sceptical of it.  It seemed like just another faddy diet.  But I did some research and after buying this book I've decided to give it a go.  The basic premise is that you eat normally for 5 days out of the 7 and have restrictive calories (500 for women, 600 for men) for the other two.  My plan is to restrict my calories today and Friday
Today is my first fasting day and this is my meal plan for the day

Porridge
Miso soup with tofu
Roast chicken and ratatouille

I plan on drinking lots of water and the occasional cup of tea (there's no way I could stay off caffeine as well as cutting down on calories) and will update the blog this evening with how I got on.

More info about the 5 2 diet can be found here thefastdiet.co.uk/

A (rather belated) Mother's Day Present

This year for one reason and another (mainly due to Baby Bear having the flu, since he started school last September he seems to have picked up every germ going) I ended up being rather rubbish and not getting my mum a Mother's Day present back in March.  As we live 200 miles away from my family most presents I get for them come courtesy of Amazon and while they're convenient they're not exactly personal.  Which is why I decided to make up for the present being late by making a box full of sweet treats.

After umming and ahhing for a few weeks I came up with what I think is a good selection of treats - coconut ice, home made fudge, lemon and poppy seed shortbread and millionaire's shortbread chocolate bark.  I thought about doing peppermint creams but the last time I tried them they did not travel well and I knew that the goodie box would have to stand up to a 4 hour car journey when we visit Cheshire this week.

Coconut ice is a really good recipe to do with children as it's quick, easy and involves no cooking (it also involves getting your hands dirty which kids generally love!)

Coconut ice

1 can of condensed milk
300g dessicated coconut
300g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
red food colouring

1) In a large bowl mix together the coconut and the icing sugar.  Add the condensed milk and vanilla and mash together with a spoon.  It should form a sticky, messy ball when ready.

2) Divide the mixture between two bowls.  Add a couple of drops of the food colouring to one lot of the ice and mix well.  Press into a 20 inch cake tin lined with cling film.  Spoon the white mixture over the top and chill for at least 4 hours.

One of my fondest memories of visiting my grandparents was watching my Nanna making toffee sauce for popcorn.  She might have failed miserably at trying to teach me how to knit but she taught me how to check for the soft ball stage of toffee making!  This skill comes in surprisingly useful when making other things such as honeycomb, jam and of course fudge.

I was pleasantly surprised by how easy this recipe for fudge was (having never actually tried to make it before) and it is genuinely far better than anything you'll buy in a shop.

Vanilla fudge

1 can of condensed milk
150ml milk
450g sugar
115g butter
1/2 tsp vanilla paste

1) Put all the ingredients in a large nonstick pan and heat gently on the hob.  Once the sugar has dissolved turn up the heat the bring to the boil.

2) Allow to simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't stick.  When it starts to thicken it's time to do the soft ball test.  Using a glass with about an inch or so of cold water in it drop a small amount of the mixture into the water.  If the fudge is ready it will form a ball in the glass.  If the fudge hasn't reached this stage yet let it boil some more, re-testing it after a couple of minutes.  If you have a sugar thermometer then the temperature should be about 118C

3) Once the mix has reached the soft ball stage take off the heat and beat vigorously for at least 5 minutes - it's this beating that will give the fudge its characteristically grainy temperature.  Once thick and creamy pour the fudge into a grease proof paper lined 20cm tin.  Allow to cool completely and set before cutting.

Shortbread is a beautifully simple biscuit to make, using only 3 ingredients.  Because of it's simplicity it needs to be made with the best ingredients you can afford as the quality of them really does make a difference to the finished product.

Shortbread

125g butter
55g sugar
180g flour
Zest of one lemon
1 tbsp of poppy seeds

1) Beat together the sugar and butter until creamed.  Add the flour, zest and poppy seeds and mix to form a firm dough, I found the easiest way to do this was by using my hands. Transfer on to a floured surface and roll out to about 1cm thick.

2) Cut into whatever shapes you want and then chill for 20 minutes.

3) Put in a pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes at 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5, until golden brown.

I've seen chocolate bark on a couple of American websites, usually by melting chocolate and then studding it with broken up candy canes.  I took inspiration from millionaires shortbread and dotted 100g of melted chocolate with with tiny chunks of fudge and bits of broken up shortbread.

I'm sad to say that the bark wasn't a complete success - the chocolate I used was too dark for my mums taste and because I didn't have time to temper it properly it didn't have that distinctive chocolate 'snap' when broken.  Happily the rest of goodies seemed to go down quite well and more than made up for their lateness!

Happy Game of Thrones day!

Today sees the return of Game of Thrones to our screens (if you haven't seen it you really should, it's awesome) and to celebrate this I'm creating main course and dessert inspired by one of the noble houses, House Stark.

The Starks come from the North of the country of Westeros which is described as being an isolated, desolate place, especially when winter hits the realm.  The Starks words or motto is 'Winter is Coming' a reminder that no matter how long and how good the summer is winter is inevitably not far behind.  As I said the meal is inspired by the book/series, not an attempt to re-create the dishes mentioned - for that you should check out the blog Inn at the Crossroads.

The main course is a hearty beef stew served on a bread trencher.  The trencher was a traditional part of the medieval meal and since A Game of Thrones is set in a fantastical medieval world seems fit with the theme nicely.  I use a good basic bread recipe for the trencher - the recipe makes enough for 6 people but if you're feeding less the uncooked dough can be frozen and used for bread rolls or even pizza bases. I've cooked my beef stew in a slow cooker but it's just as easily cooked on the hob.  If done on the hob it might need more liquid.

Beef Stew - serves 6

900g stewing steak, cubed
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 swede, chopped
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 beef stock cube

1) fry off the steak in a little oil.  Once browned transfer to a slow cooker.

2) Using the same pan fry off the onions, carrot and swede.  Add these to the slow cooker then pour in the tomatoes and crumble in the stock cube.  Top up with enough water to cover everything. Season with pepper (stock cubes can be quite salty so   it won't need any more) Put the lid on the slow cooker and leave for 5 hours on high, 8 on low.

Trencher

350g strong whole wheat flour
150g strong white flour
1 packet fast acting yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
300 ml warm water

1) Tip the flours into a large bowl and mix together.  Add the yeast, sugar and salt being careful not to let the salt and yeast touch.

2) Add 3/4 of the water and mix.  I find the easiest way to do this is to let your hand mimic the shape of a dough hook.  Add the rest of the water.

3) Tip the dough out on to a lightly oiled surface.  I find using oil rather than flour makes the bread much easier to knead and cuts down on the amount of mess made by the dough.  Knead for at least 10 minutes until it forms a smooth ball.  Put in an oiled bowl and allow to rise in a warm place for at least an hour.

4) After the dough has doubled to twice its size it needs to be knocked back.  Give the dough a good poke and it should all deflate.  Take it out of the bowl and knead again.  It's now ready for shaping.  Split the dough into four and shape into rough squares.  Roll them out and then use your fingers to create dimples in the surface.  Prick the middle with a fork and leave to prove for an hour.

5) Bake in a pre-heated oven at 220C/fan 200C/gas mark 7 for 30 minutes

6) To assemble put the bread on a plate and pile high with the stew.

(This recipe got 20 thumbs up from Baby Bear!)

For dessert I'm taking inspiration from Sansa's love of lemon cakes.  I thought about making mini lemon drizzle cakes but decided in the end to go instead for a warm lemon pudding.  I'd never cooked anything like this before and was surprised by how easy and delicious it was.  The mixture was very liquid before cooking and I wasn't sure if I'd done something wrong but it turned out beautifully.  The sponge creates its own lemon curd like sauce underneath and it was lovely on an unexpectedly cold evening (seriously weather, it's April, stop being so rubbish!)


Warm lemon pudding - serves 6

50g butter
200g caster sugar
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 2 lemons
3 eggs, separated
50g plain flour
250ml milk

1) Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the zest, lemon, egg yolks, flour and milk and beat well.

2) In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until they stiffen.  Stir into the other bowl being careful not to beat all the air out of the mix.

3) Spoon the mix into ramekins and put the ramekins into a deep baking dish.  Boil the kettle and fill the baking half full with water (I find the easiest way to do this is to pull out the oven shelf, put the baking dish on the shelf then pour in the water)  Put in a pre-heated oven at 180C/160C fan/gas mark 4 for 25 minutes.

Enjoy!  And always remember, Winter is Coming.

Dr Who biscuits

The Easter weekend is fast approaching and in the geek calendar that means two awesome programs will be returning to the small screen - Dr Who and Game of Thrones.

In honour of this I plan on putting up two posts this weekend; this first one is Dr Who themed and the second on Monday will feature two Game of Thrones inspired dishes.

For Dr Who I decided to do some very special iced biscuits. My baking contribution towards last years New Years Eve buffet with friends was a gingerbread TARDIS complete with it’s own little Doctor. It was only my second attempt at doing something like this, my first being a gingerbread cottage at Halloween, and I was very pleased with the results. 

(please excuse the slightly rubbish phone picture)

 However I’ve decided against using gingerbread for this recipe seeing as Baby Bear is going to be off school I want to do something much quicker and gingerbread while not hard is time consuming. My favourite recipe involves melting treacle and butter together so is not really suitable for little hands to help with. This recipe on the other hand is one that I’ve done on multiple occasions and has never gone wrong. It’s a fairly basic recipe but one that can be perked with by adding whatever flavorings you might have to hand such as chocolate chips or raisins, and it freezes well so can be shaped into a roll and frozen ready to be cut into slices and baked should an emergency biscuit be required!

I decided that to make the biscuits in a few different shapes. I made a template in the shape of a TARDIS and a second shaped like a fez ('I wear a fez now, fez's are cool') The third is a bow tie and for the fourth type I just used a gingerbread man cutter.  I made the templates using paint, printed them out and stuck them to an old cereal box.  I then cut around them to make the biscuits.

Vanilla Biscuits

70g icing sugar

1 egg, beaten

125g softened, unsalted butter

1/2 tsp vanilla paste (this should be readily available at any large supermarket)

180g plain flour

Icing

140g royal icing

60ml cold water

food colouring

1) Beat together the icing sugar, butter and vanilla paste then add half the beaten egg.  Add the flour and beat again.  If the mixture is too stiff then add more of the egg although you might not need it all.  The mixture should be of a rollable consistancy.  Put in the fridge to firm up for at least 20 minutes.

2) After chilling roll out the dough to about 5mm thick.  Cut out the shapes with the template and put in an oven pre-heated at 190C/180Cfan/gas mark 5 for 10-12 minutes.  You need to keep an eye on them as they burn fairly easily.  Once cooked allow to cool completely.

3) Once the biscuits were cooled I mixed up the royal icing.   Put the royal icing in a bowl and add the water a tablespoon at a time.  Mix together by hand with a wooden spoon at first until smooth then switch to using a hand mixer.  I find that doing it this way saves me being covered in icing sugar as inevitably happens when I try to use an electric mixer straight away!  The mix should be fairly thick in texture as it will be used to pipe an outline onto the biscuits.

4) Seperate the icing into bowls and colour it how you want it to be - in this case I’ll be using blue for the TARDIS (naturally) with details picked out in white, red and black for the fez and bow tie, . I like to use gel colours as they’re stronger so you only need a small amount to give really vibrant results and while are more expensive initially than the bottles of food colouring they last ages so are more economical in the long term. You can get them from specialist baking shops, online and I’ve noticed them turning up more and more in big supermarkets; I live in a fairly small commuter town and I’ve seen them in our Morrisons so they are becoming more easy to get hold of.

Scoop a small amount of each icing into icing bags - I find that propping the bag up in a tall glass makes this particular job much easier. Snipe off the end of the blue bag and use to draw an outline of the TARDIS.  Use the white to add the windows.  Pop any air bubbles that might be made with a tooth pick and leave to dry.  Repeat with the other colours on the bowtie and the fez, using the black to draw a tassel on the fez.

5) Once the outline is dry it’s time to flood the biscuits. Mix a little more water into the icing so that it’s of a fairly runny consistansy then pipe on to the biscuits, moving the bag from side to side while piping so that it floods the biscuit with icing. Leave to dry. 

So did you watch the episode?  What did you think and any theories about Clara?

Hot Cross Buns

For this first post I thought I'd do something seasonal; with Easter coming up fast I decided to try my hand at hot cross buns.

Hot cross buns use an enriched dough, a dough that as well as having the normal ingredients of flour, water and yeast also uses butter and eggs.  Enriched dough is a completely different beast to a standard bread dough; it starts out as a sticky, messy, weird feeling dough that with much kneading comes together into a beautifully soft, tender bread.  While not an overly complicated recipe it does take time and unless you have a mixer with a dough hook be prepared to get messy!

 
I took my basic enriched dough recipe from this Paul Hollywood recipe from the BBC's website - I've used it a couple of times before and it's always been successful.  It makes a lot of dough so I used half for the buns and froze the other half to use later on in the week to make Cinnamon AwesomeBuns (I'll post the recipe for those at some point soon)

Hot Cross Buns

Enriched dough

500g strong white bread flour
50g caster sugar
40g soft unsalted butter
2 sachets of instant yeast
2 tsp salt
150ml warm milk
140ml water

Extras to turn the dough into Hot Cross Buns
1 tsp mixed spice
75g raisins
2 tbsp plain flour

1. Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl being careful not to let the salt and the yeast touch as the salt will stop the yeast working.  Add the milk and most of the water.  Stir the mix with your hands then add the rest of the water.  Knead in the bowl until it comes together.

2.  Now for the really messy bit!  Turn the dough out on to a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes.  The dough should come together as a smooth ball once fully kneaded.  This will take time and you will get very messy fingers so this isn't a job to attempt when you're expecting an important phone call!  I find a dough scraper like this one from Amazon helped.

3.  Once the dough is forming a ball put it in a lightly oiled bowl and leave covered with clingfilm to prove for at least an hour until it has doubled in size.

4.  After proving the dough needs knocking back.  This basically means knocking all the air out of it.  I find the most satisfactory way to do this is to punch the dough.  There's something about seeing the way it deflates that fascinated me!

5.  Turn out onto a floured surface and knead again.  At this point I halved the dough and froze one part.   I then kneaded in 1 tsp of mixed spice and 75g of sultanas.  When they were fully incorporated I cut the dough into six buns and put them of trays to prove again (I could easily have got eight buns out of the mix but I wasn't sure how big they would be once they were proved)

6. After an hour I made up a paste using flour and water and using a piping bag piped the traditional cross design on the top of the buns.  They then went into a pre-heated oven at 240C/475F/Gas Mark 8 for 20 minutes.

In a pan heat a tablespoon of apricot jam and once the buns are cooked spread this over the top to give a lovely sticky glaze.

Delicious toasted with butter!