wildaboutbaking.wordpress.com

Wildaboutbaking.co.uk

March 11, 2016

This blog is no longer active. Please hop over to my business page at Wild About Baking

Back in the early days with my daughter I got really into my baking and cake decorating, so much so I baked and blogged here at wildaboutbaking. Then she became a Toddler, I became pregnant, pregnancy became a little boy too and Mummy got a bit busy and poor old wildaboutbaking got neglected.

Well, time to put that right… now she can get involved too, surely now there will be time for baking once more.

Let baking commence….

We begin with Chocolate Rice Krispie Cakes 🙂

: 1. Put on Gruffalo Tabard Apron and mix Rice Krispies into melted chocolate.

: 2. Place mixture into paper cases (this was the easy bit, persuading her not to put it there via her mouth first took a little work).

: Yes, now you can eat it.

: We all know this is the best bit

: They work very well with a nice glass of milk

Success! I only had to slightly detour from convention by putting them in the cold oven to “cook” so that she wouldn’t eat them all straight away. Next time I think we will work up to proper oven based biscuit baking.

Elderflower Cake and Cake Club

April 21, 2013

This month’s Clandestine Cake Club was “Your Favourite Tipple”. As a preggers lady I decided to go with my drink of choice at the moment of Elderflower Cordial with a slice of lemon. I chose a Nigella recpie for a Lemon Drizzle cake and adapted it to be an Elderflower Cake. I used lemon zest through it to give a hint of lemon and then after it had baked I pierced the top and poored oodles of Elerflower Cordial to soak in through the cake. Elderflower is quite a subtle taste but I think it tasted quite nice. I meant to do a lemon drizzle icing over the top but in the end I just had to go with a sprinkling of icing sugar and a rustic look. I think it looked a bit dissapointing next to the exciting other cakes at Cake Club but I think it’s simple taste could hold its own.

The cake club was held at a local pub where we had a lovely little area in a side room cordoned off for ourselves. It worked really well. We had 5 cakes and 8 attendees and it was just enough cake to be able to sample decent slices of each without getting sugar rush and overwhelmed.

The attending cakes were;

An Irn Bru cake

My “Rustic” Elderflower cake

A Black Russian cake

A Port-laced cake (cherries laced with port for at least a week!!!!)

and a Chocolate Guiness Cake

All exceedingly yummy.

Instant Espresso Cupcakes and Coconut Macaroons

March 24, 2013

I had a request from my husband to make some of the Espresso Cupcakes for him to take into work with him for a meeting. Also there would be a gluten-free requirement and so I chose to accompany these with some coconut macaroons.

Both of these are Nigella recipes from the How To Be A Domestic Goddess cookbook.

The chocolate cakes were essentially made to Nigellas recipe as in the last post here. This time I had nice new soft muscavado sugar which made them a lot quicker to make. I also when full out with the Instant Espresso making the chocolate covering with added espresso powder too. This made them more intense coffee, but they did leave the chocolate covering drying with a mottled look.

Then I knocked up some easy coconut macaroons. Essentially dessicated coconut, ground almonds folded into whisked egg whites and caster sugar. Then they were drizzeled with melted chocolate.

Now, this is where I get cheeky. I am going to enter them into the Alphabakes March “I” challenge under “Instant Espresso” ingredient. I feel a little cheeky as I entered them under E for Espresso cupcakes last time but this is another bake afterall.

So here they are for Alphabakes challenge hosted by Caroline Makes and The more than occasional baker.

Iced buns

March 24, 2013

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at Iced Buns for a while now. However, in my household I don’t usually do yeast-based baking, that is reserved to my very competent bread-making husband. He does the bread and I do the cakes in our household. So this was a little out of my comfort zone. However, when I spotted that this months Alphabakes challenge was to make a recipe based on the letter “I”, I thought I would give it a shot as it is a sweet bun after all.

I chose the Paul Holywood Great British Bake Off Iced Bun recipe here. I have to confess my husband has made these before and they were FANTASTIC, light and soft just like I remember them… but I didn’t hold the same hope for me to be able to get them as light as 1) as I said I don’t have much success with yeast based baking and 2) I was planning to use the Kenwood dough hook to do the kneeding work for me rather than by hand.

The recipe involved putting everything in and mixing into a sticky dough which was then left to prove for 1hour. They were then shaped into fingers and placed on a baking tray before another 40 minutes rising.

The trick was to get them spaced so that they just touched when they had doubled in size, so that they could be pulled apart to give a soft side. I didnt quite get this right and they came out a little irregular. They only took about 10 minutes to bake and then once cooled drizzled with icing.

I filled them with Jam when ready to eat… only shame was I didnt have cream to fill them with.

And so I will enter these into Alphabakes challenge run by Caroline Makes and Baking Addict.

Cake International

March 2, 2013

I’ve just entered a competition on Amelie’s House blog to win tickets to cake international. This is a big cake decorating show that s coming to Manchester and I want to go 🙂

http://amelieshouse.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/cake-international-giveaway.html#comment-form

Fingers crossed for me x

Espresso Cupcakes

February 22, 2013

I’ve been waiting a while to get back into the Alphabakes challenge… the month always seems to have passed before I have had time to bake something with the chosen letter. This toddler of mine is keeping me busy.

This month the chosen letter with which to bake is ‘E’.

I have chosen some Espresso cupcakes. The recipe comes from How to be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson… oh Nigella I am sorry I haven’t baked from your book for a while, you used to be my bible but I have deviated recently. Nigella never seems to let me down. It’s also been a while since I’ve done cupcakes.

I had planned to bake this the day before but I realised I had bought ground espresso not instant espresso that the recipe called for. A quick trip to the supermarket and I came home with something more instant… but I am not quite sure if this is really instant Espresso… Barista Style Instant Coffee.. but I am going with it.

I had somewhat of an issue with the dark muscovado sugar I had in the cupboard… it was a bit solid. The packet states leave overnight covered by a damp tea towel to soften, obviously I needed it the moment I took it out of the cupboard. Don’t ask me how I did it… it took a while, but I obtained the required amount of sugar in the end. Anyone know how to soften it up quick smart do let me know!

The recipe calls for mixing butter and dark muscovado sugar, followed with eggs. At this stage things looked a bit unappealing!

Then adding flour, cocoa and instant espresso coffee powder. Finally some melted dark chocolate was added into the mix and thinned with milk.

After baking 15 minutes these babies were done. I quite quickly sampled and oh Nigella, they are lovely and light in texture and so intensly coffee and not sweet (which I quite like). I have been strictly decaffeinated as I am pregnant and having consumed 2 (perhaps 3 by the time the evening is over), I am not sure how much caffeine I have taken in.. on top of the chocolate in it too… ho hum.

Once cooled I melted dark chocolate with butter and poured it onto them to form a nice flat surface (with a bit of cake shaving and hoovering up). Nigella calls for instant espresso powder in the chocolate but I decided I had probably quite enough coffee kick in them given above.

I think they are quite lovely.

And so I hereby enter this into February Alphabakes hosted by The more than occasional baker and Caroline Makes

Chocolate Courgette Cake Covered In Chocolate Ganache

February 21, 2013

For the latest Clandestine Cake Club meeting the theme was Hidden Fruit and Veg. But which fruit or vegetable to use for this??? I debated finding a sweet potato recipe, but as time was approaching I decided on a vegetable I have used before and enjoyed. A Chocolate Courgette cake was beckoning.

I used a recipe from the BBC Good Food on the internet and that was untested! Chocolate, Hazelnut and Courgette.

You can find the recipe here.

Briefly the cake requires mixing all the dry ingredients in a bowl, mixing the wet ingredients in a bowl (including grated courgette) and then mixing them together. Then baking.

Then for the magic bit… the Ganache. I haven’t done much with ganache before… I’m not sure if I ever have. I had a quick internet look and some say melt the chocolate some say put chocolate into the boiling cream to melt it. I went for the latter and it worked a treat. I was quite please I was able to get a really nice shiny smooth finish.

The cake tasted really nice and the hazelnuts gave a really nice texture.

As this is covered in Chocolate Ganache I can enter this into a baking challenge. Hoorah! So this is entering into the Classic French challenge on Blue Kitchen Bakes

Clandestine Cake Club at Cafe 76 – Hidden Fruit and Veg

February 21, 2013

The latest Clandestine Cake Club arrived with the theme of “Hidden Fruit and Veg”. For this I chose a chocolate courgette cake covered in Chocolate ganache (i’ll go into this in another post).

The cake club was held at Cafe 76 on Skipton highstreet. A lovely little cafe/deli with an upstairs seating area for us to use.

The venue opened up in the evening especially for us and were amazing. Lovely tea and coffee to go with out lovely cakes. At first many of the cakes kept their fruit/veg component secret so we could see if we could guess what the magic ingredient was. It soon became apparent that you cannot tell the vegetable that was used to make the cake! But all the cakes were incredibly moist which I would guess come from the use of the vegetables.

The cakes were all set up along a window table.

The Cakes that came were;

Chocolate Courgette Cake (me)

Chocolate, Cherry and Potato

Sultana, Walnut and courgette

Chocolate courgette and pecan

Chocolate beetroot

Carrot cake (made with polenta)

Carrot and orange cake

Chocolate featured heavily as did courgette as a vegetable ingredient. All were Yummy! I also had some lovely chats with some lovely friendly people. We had a nice number of around 10 so we could all chat away nicely. Now I have to get on with organising us another get together.