Banana and chocolate chip loaf cake

If you are new to baking and just want to throw everything into one bowl this recipe is for you. Last week I baked an easy lemon drizzle loaf cake and I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to bake another loaf cake. I was lucky enough to come across some over ripe bananas which are perfect for baking as it will give the cake strong flavour. I looked at a few recipes but finally decided on this one as it seemed simple.

Ingredients 

• 325g self raising flour

• 100g caster sugar

• 100g soft brow sugar

• A pinch of salt

• 175g chocolate chips

• 3 tablespoons of melted butter

• 80ml milk

• 1 egg (I used a medium free range)

• 280g mashed banana (around 3 medium bananas)

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Method

First mix all your dry ingredients. I sifted the flour and caster sugar, added the brown sugar and last of all the chocolate chips (I used dark chocolate). I only had 100g of chocolate chips however there seemed to be a good balance of banana and chocolate. If you are wondering why you add the chocolate chips at this stage it's because when chocolate chips are coated in flour it prevents them from sinking to the bottom of the mix when baking.  

Add all your wet ingredients a bit at a time. The recipe states to mash the banana however I left it chunky so when you eat it you get a flavour burst.  

It does take a bit of elbow grease if you are using a wooden spoon like I was but be careful not to over mix just mix until all the flour is incorporated

Line a loaf tin with parchment paper by buttering the tin before hand, this acts like a food glue. The parchment paper help you to remove the loaf once baked.

Pour you yummy mix into the tin, give it a little tap on the top to get rid of any air bubbles and smooth the top with the back of a spoon or a spatula. 

Pop it in the oven at 180 for about an hour. I have a fan oven so I baked it at 160 and turned it round half way through.

Test the cake by using a skewer or a knife, if it comes out with a few crumbs it's ready. Take it out the tin and place it on a cooling rack. Serve warm with ice cream or once cooled just as it is.

With chunky banana pieces and less chocolate than expected I was surprised that this turned out so well. So well in fact that my partner didn't want to share with anyone else!

If you want to try an easy bake why not give this a go?

Happy baking,

Ms B

xx

Easy lemon drizzle loaf cake

Lemon cake is one of my favorite cakes, so on the weekend I decided to bake a lemon drizzle loaf. I was keen to find a recipe that meant I could bake with what I all ready had in the house and came across this one which can be found here.    

Ingredients

175g self-raising flour1 teaspoon baking powder175g soft butter 175g caster sugar3 medium eggs (I used free range)2 tablespoons milkRind of 2 lemons

For the syrup

Juice of 2 lemons

115g  caster sugar

Method

Sift all your dry ingredients into a large bowl and give it a quick stir.

Add all your wet ingredients into the same bowl a bit at a time, being careful not to over mix.

Great two lemons until they are fully 'naked'.

Add the zest to your mix and give it one fine stir.

Line your loaf tine with parchment paper. It's a bit easier if you butter the tin first as it acts like a glue.

Pour your yummy lemony mix into the tin, tap on the work surface a few times to get rid of air bubbles and smooth the top with the back of a spoon or a spatula.

Pop it in the oven for about an hour. I put it in for a shorter time because my oven gets ridiculously hot but as long as the top isn't wiggling when you lightly shake it and the knife comes out clean it will be ready. 

While it was baking I measured out my sugar and squeezed the naked lemons ready to make the syrup.

Once I took the loaf cake out the oven I put the sugar and lemon juice in to a pan and put it on a low heat until all the sugar was dissolved.

Pour the syrup over the loaf and serve while still warm or wait until fully cooled.

I had a slice warm and a slice cold the next day. I thought it tasted more yummy the next day as the syrup was soaked up by the cake.

It was very easy to make, so if you love cake and love a citrus kick why not give it a go?

Happy baking,

Ms B

xx

My baking resolutions

Hello 2015! I am very excited for the year ahead. I have so many ideas and things I want to do. So today I will share with you some of my baking resolutions.

1. Blog more - my one priority this year. I started writing this blog in 2013 and I believe I know more about how I want to write. So my aims are to plan more and make it more diverse.

2. Go to more events - Last year I attended Cake International and my review can be found here. This year I'd like to attend this again and also try The Cake and Bake Show.

3. Experiment more - I want to take myself out my comfort zone and try unusual bakes and also make some films for the blog.

Do you have any baking resolutions for 2015? I'd love to hear them! 

Ms B

xx

A Cakie Christmas

Well that's it. Another Christmas over and what a lovely one it was. I wasn't in a very festive mood last year but after a trip to Winter Wonderland and seeing lots of old friends I was all for it this time round.  
Now it wouldn't be Christmas without a bit of baking and I tried a few bakes I haven't tried before and some didn't go to plan. The one I was happy about was the stained glass window cookies, I found this recipe on BBC Good Food and can be found here. I loved the concept but I was skeptical about it working. I found the mixture sticky which made cutting out the middle difficult. 

I was very happy with my first attempt but i think next time I might find a sightly different recipe and use bigger cutters. These looked lovely on my first real Christmas tree.

I had a lot of the mix left over but instead of making more I made this giant heart! If you can't be soppy at Christmas then when can you be?

   Being a recreational baker I had some lovely Christmas presents from family and friends.

I can't wait to use all the above!

 One of my best friends gave me a jar of fruit cake ingredients she found at Ludlow Food Festival. When I bake this and invite the girls round for games and cake!

Another one of my best friends gave me this personalised stamp which I will be using every time a bake.

 Above are some reindeer cookie cutters which I had as my secret Santa present this year. The person who gave them really thought about me and also baked some gingerbread cookies to go with them.

I am so grateful for all the gifts I received this year ans the time I got to spend with family and friends. 

I would love to know if you had any baking gifts for Christmas and what your favorite Christmas bakes were.

Ms B

    xx    

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I've only baked a red velvet cake once before when I made my partner a gumball machine cake and it had to be very dense to keep the sweets part of the cake up. I liked the taste but wish I could make something more light and fluffy and this lead me to bake some red velvet cupcakes.

I took me a while to find a recipe that I wanted to attempt, some seemed way to complicated but after coming across this Nigella Lawson recipe I knew this one was the one for me. The best thing about today's bake was that I got to have family time with my second cousin from South Africa.

Ingredients

250g plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
100g soft unsalted butter (I used stork)
200g caster sugar
1 heaped tablespoon of red food colouring
2 teaspoons of villa extract
2 large eggs (I use free range) 
175 buttermilk
1 teaspoon cider vinegar

For the frosting:

500g icing sugar
125g cream cheese
125g soft unsalted butter
1 teaspoon cider vinegar

Method

First, mix all the dry ingredients together.  

Cream the butter and sugar together. It would look like it normal does. It will more like a dough.

Like this.

Add the food colouring. We used paste.

Mix. It takes a while but it should get up like this.

Add the vanilla extract. We used this one as the baking stuff was 3 for 2 at Tesco.

It smelt so good :)

Mix in the dry ingredients, and eggs bit by bit before adding the butter milk and cider vinegar. This is the second time I have use butter milk. The first time I used it was for blueberry and almond muffins and I think it's a winner for making your cakes oozy.

Separate into cupcake cases. The recipe said it makes 24 but we were a bit generous with the mix so it ended up making 21.

We put all the frosting ingredients in at the same time then realised we needed a food processor. So we mixed them genitally then once incorporated we whizzed them together with the electric mixer.      

The best part about this bake was playing with some different piping nozzles.

These were the results.

We found some raspberry fudge cake toppers which I loved as it reminded me of my polka dot background. They also gave a burst of flavour which complemented the sponge. 

I will defintly bake these again as they went down a treat. I shared with friends the next day and they really liked them too.

If you like chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting why not give it a go?

Happy baking,

Ms B

xx

How to make a football cake

This weekend was my nephew's 2nd birthday and I had a couple of ideas for what cake I would make but decided in the end to bake a football cake. He's football mad at the moment and has impressive skills for a two year old! Not that I'm bias in anyway...

  I wanted to wrap a cute little scarf around the football when I realised that this would be a problem with my sister being a Liverpool supporter and my brother-in-law being a Manchester United supporter. Luckily both team colours are red. Plus with live in Wrexham, Wales so it worked well for this too! 

Now for the baking. I used a two pint pyrex bowl to give the correct shape and used a basic sponge recipe. However, any heat proof bowl will work. Before you make the cake batter prepared the bowl and turned the oven on to pre-heat to 180. Used parchment paper to line a heat proof bowl by cutting it into strips and use butter to 'glue' it down trying to not overlap the paper too much.

Make cake better in a separate bowl. You can use a box mix or the recipe below.

Ingredients 

250g self raising flour

250g soft butter

250g sugar

4 medium eggs (I use free range)

Teaspoon of baking powder

Icing sugar

Jam

White icing

Black icing

Red icing

Green food die 

First mix the butter and sugar together until pale then bit by bit add the flour and baking powder by sifting it into the bowl. Crack the eggs in a mug and beat with a fork and add in a bit at a time alternating between the flour. Once combined pour into your lined heatproof bowl  

Place in the oven for 40 minuets, test the cake putting a skewer in the middle and if it comes out clean the cake is ready, if not leave it for another five minuets and try again. Leave to cool and turn out on your severing place (or cake stand). Cut in half and add your chosen filling. I chose strawberry jam. 

 Next, role out your white icing (tip: put icing sugar on your work station to save stickiness) You can buy icing from most supermarkets however, I got mine from Sugar & Spice as Mike is really helpful and I like to support local businesses. Before you place your icing on top use butter icing, icing sugar or jam  on your sponge so the cake has something to stick to. I used icing sugar for the first time (I normally use jam) and it worked well. Once your icing is on the cake carefully pat it down and cut off the excess (it's always better to have too much and cut off than have too little.)

Role out your black icing and cut in to a pentagon. I started off with a house shape then my partner helped by thinning down the sides for the correct shape.

Place the black shapes on by dabbing your finger (clean of course!) into a bit of water so it can stick to the white icing. Space them out until it looks right.

Next prepare your green butter icing. It's very easy to make just place a few tablespoons of soft butter in a bowl and bit by bit add icing sugar until you can't taste the butter any more. Add in the green food die (I use gel as it is gives a strong colour for little gel). Pipe the butter icing around the cake so it looked like grass. To do this you can use a disposable icing bag with a star nozzle. 

Role out the red icing long enough to wrap around 3/4 of the cake. Role out the white icing and cut rectangles and place along the scarf so there is one red and one white rectangle along the scarf. Use a fork to press the ends of the scarf and wrap around the cake.

I'm happy to say they loved the cake and it went down a treat! 

If you know some one (big or small) who would like a football cake why not give this a go?

Happy baking,

Ms B

xx