Vegan Mocha Stripes

Well that’s it kids, summer’s over! We had sunshine for a whole week and now it’s raining. Again. Here’s hoping the rain doesn’t last as long this time! I hope everyone managed to at least enjoy the sun while it lasted and didn’t get horrifically burnt like me! Having to aftersun eight times a day even when at work is not fun. I have quite a few summer recipes I really want to test so I’m hoping August will put me in the mood as today I really wasn’t feeling it so I made these cookies instead.

This is another recipe taken from The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes by Kris Holechek which you’ll know from reading my other vegan posts I’m blown away by! All the recipes are so accessible and if you don’t want to go out of your way to find what I consider to be unusual ingredients like flaxseeds or different oils, you don’t have to! Even if you’re not vegan, these recipes are so delicious it would be silly to disregard them purely for that. Also, eggs are often the most expensive part of baking so recipes that don’t require them must be a good thing!

Whenever I’ve made anything vegan I don’t generally tell people its vegan (unless they are actually vegan) until they’ve eaten it as I feel it can often colour their judgement. When I tell them the reaction I get is always ‘Wow, I had no idea!’ which I always find to be a slightly crazy reaction because why should the absence of dairy mean that its going to taste weird or completely different to a non vegan cookie?! But anyway, this recipe is another classic cookie recipe resulting in cookies that are almost crunchy round the edges and gooey/chewy on the inside with the added crispness of the drizzled chocolate on top, mouth-watering!

They are very simple, take minimal time in the oven and taste delicious! The dark chocolate balances the coffee flavour much more than milk chocolate would. However, if you are not a coffee fan then I’d think twice about putting 4 tbsps of coffee in as it is quite a strong flavour but as I’m a big coffee fan I love them and have eaten two already…

Here is the recipe:

2 cups flour

1tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

4 tbsp instant coffee

¼ cup warm milk

¾ cup margarine

1 ½ cups sugar

1 tsp vanilla

½ cup chocolate chips melted (I used 50g chocolate)

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt. In a small bowl, dissolve coffee in warm milk. In a large bowl, cream together margarine and sugar. Add vanilla and coffee mixture. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients in batches until well mixed

Drop tablespoon-sized balls onto a baking sheet, about 1 inch apart. Bake for 10 minutes until the cookies spread and the edges are set. If you are baking more than one sheet at a time, rotate the sheets halfway through the baking time. Let cookies cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a cooling rack

Once the cookies are cool, carefully spoon melted chocolate into a sandwich bag. Make a small snip off one of the bottom corners of the bag to create a very small opening. Pipe chocolate onto cookies in thin stripes, zigzagging across all the cookies until the chocolate is used up. Store cooled cookies in an airtight container at room temperature


And don't forget to Lick Your Spoon!

Smores Cookies

WOW! These are so good!! I’ve been wanting to make these since I first started research recipes for my blog but they needed Graham Crackers which aren’t easily available over here. The closest thing is apparently digestives but they are nothing like them. However, my lovely friend Louise is currently studying at Yale (amazing!) and she kindly brought me some on her recent visit home! So here we go, Smores Cookies. De-lish!

I found the recipe on Obsessed with Baking’s blog who found it from someone else but regardless, they are very American and very tasty! The cookie dough is some of the most delicious I’ve ever tasted. To give you a hint as to just how tasty, the recipe is supposed to make 36. I made 29. I’ve also been told that the “sensation of marshmallow and tasty chocolate in and on a melt in your mouth cookie” are more than anyone could ask for. Now that, if you ask me, is praise indeed for this amazing cookie.

As with another great cookie recipe I made, this requires chilling time for the dough to become more solid so make sure you leave yourself plenty of time! The oven part is pretty short but make sure you have your chocolate cut and mallows ready to go in as quick as possible! Don’t push the mallows in too far or else they’ll make a hole in the cookie as they aren’t strong enough to hold it together. The original recipe uses Hershey’s chocolate but I just cut up some of the thin dairy milk bars. If the chocolate you use is quite thick it won’t melt very well.

Overall, I think these are great, not too sweet but deliciously indulgent at the same time. Definitely one to be made again and certainly one you should try if you can get hold of some Graham Crackers!!

Raspberry Cupcakes with White Chocolate Frosting

So my friend Lisa lent me her Primrose Bakery cupcake book and when flicking through this recipe caught my eye. I absolutely love the raspberry-white chocolate combo so this was obviously perfect for me! All aspects of the recipe are quite different to my own standard recipes for both cupcakes and icing so it was somewhat of an experiment to see how these methods changed the final result as well as the taste test!

The first thing that struck me about this recipe was that it used both self-raising and plain flour which I have never seen before in a cake recipe like this. It also involved a lot more steps than my all in one method so it was definitely a lot more time consuming! The original recipe says to cut a hole in the centre of the cupcake once its cool and fill it with jam but to add an extra element of experimentation I put a whole raspberry into the centre of half of them instead to see what that turned out like.

Turns out, I totally do not like this recipe! The cupcakes are much denser than I personally like and somehow seem to wet as the cases seem to peel themselves off after a day… The frosting however was delicious and I will be using that again! I also really like the idea of the mixture having jam in it to give it that extra raspberry flavour so I think I will try adding it to my own cupcake recipe next time and see how that goes.

While this was definitely not the best recipe I’ve ever followed (or maybe it was me who did it all wrong) I have at least learnt that when I want to experiment in future, just change one thing at a time instead of ending up with a disaster! You have to admit, they do look good though!

Mocha Pecan Brownies

Happy Birthday Dad! I made these delicious brownies for my Dad’s birthday as he loves chocolate, coffee and nuts! Normally I buy him chocolate covered brazil nuts so I’m sure this was a nice change for him. This is a Waitrose recipe I found in store featuring Starbucks VIA. Now I love Starbucks, love everything in there with my all time favourite being their peach and raspberry muffin, so obviously this recipe appeals to me too and my hands still smell like coffee, yum!

For this recipe you have to prepare three elements separately before bringing them all together. First off is melting the chocolate and the butter together so you have time for it to cool while doing the other elements. Personally I prefer melting it in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water so you can keep and eye on the mixture the whole time but unfortunately I broke my big glass bowl so I had to use the microwave in this instance.

Next mix all the dry ingredients together and put to one side. Finally, whisk the eggs and sugar with an electric mixer for ages! Basically until it’s grown in size and is thick and mousse like. The same technique as used to make Death by Chocolate. Then you add the chocolate, followed by the flour mixture and then the pecans and then you’re ready to bake! After reading the intro to my vegan baking book, it says to bake brownies in a glass dish to stop the outside getting too cooked. Don’t ask me how but if you can, use a glass dish just in case!

Personally I don’t really like pecans but when smothered in chocolatey coffee brownie goodness, it’s hard to remember why! Amazing brownies and I’ll definitely be making these again, maybe with white chocolate chunks instead of pecans next time…

Present Birthday Cake

So those of you who know me know that it was my birthday about 3 weeks ago and I’ve finally got around to posting about the cake I made for my birthday! After seeing some cakes online that were decorated to look like presents I’ve been dying to make one so my birthday was obviously the perfect opportunity. My lovely friends gave me some Lakeland vouchers for my birthday and so I used some of them to buy this great square tin with moveable sides so you can make it any size square/rectangle you like, pretty good huh?

While I may have splashed out on a tin, I did not buy myself any icing as I had some odds and ends in my baking cupboard so I used them up. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough white to cover the whole cake so it’s very thin and patchy so ignore that in the pictures but the main thing I wanted to do was the bow on top. I watched a quick online tutorial and found out that it’s quite straightforward and you get a great result with a simple method. This is the bit that I’m most pleased with and as it was my first attempt, it can only get better!

The cake itself was just a plain Victoria Sponge mix using 6 eggs in total which made an 8in square cake. I also bought a cake leveller which I used to slice my block of cake in half to put jam in the middle and also to level off the top slightly so that it wasn’t so domed. The cake took a lot longer in the oven than anticipated so unfortunately the edges got a little dry so I’ll have to work to improve that next time but I was very pleased with my first present cake.

My work with regal ice and sugar paste is definitely improving through practice and I’m starting to love celebration cakes more and more. The next one you’ll see here will be a champagne cake which a lovely lady at work has asked me to make for her husband’s 50t birthday. Eek!

Chocolate Peppermint Cupcakes

The mint chocolate combination has always been a classic pairing of flavours and one that is definitely popular in our household! This little combo is one I’ve been meaning to try for a while but just have too many on my list of things I’m dying to make. Hopefully one day you will see them all up on here. I am very fond of making cupcakes as the decoration and icing of them is fun! Plus the making of the cupcakes has become almost second nature so for me it’s all about the experimentation and presentation.

For these cupcakes I used my basic chocolate cupcake recipe which is the same as the one I used for my Chocolate Orange Cupcakes but with out the orange of course! I enjoy the speed of this recipe as once you've put all the ingredients in the bowl and mixed them you’re done! This mixture makes 16 cupcakes in standard sizes of 12 if you’re using slightly bigger than standard cupcake size like I did here.

I again, used my standard buttercream icing recipe for these cakes. I added a few teaspoons of peppermint flavouring to the mixture and found the more I added the more it affected the consistency meaning I needed to add more icing sugar to make in ‘pipe-able’ again. The flavouring I used wasn’t as minty as I would have perhaps liked it to be so I might look around for a better quality flavouring to use next time! I added a couple of drops of green food colouring to the mixture to make it look pepperminty.

While my cupcakes were cooling I melted some chocolate and put it in a piping bag and made some chocolate shapes to use as decorations. Simply pipe your desired shapes onto a tray lined with greaseproof paper and put in the fridge to set hard. Then all you need to do is use a small palette knife to remove them from the paper and voila! Your own handmade chocolate decorations. Delicious!

White Bread

I made bread! While this may seem glaringly obvious as I am posting about it but, never did I expect my first attempt to make bread actually turn out to be, well, bread. I’ve always heard that bread is really hard to make and assumed myself that it would be because it’s about technique rather than simply following a recipe but I did it! And I’m very proud of myself however crazy that may seem!

Someone I work with, Glen, told me that he made his own bread and so I asked him to give me a very simple, basic, potentially Kathryn-proof recipe for bread. And guess what? It worked! He said that the simplest bread to make was white bread and wholemeal is overall trickier because of the texture of it. My mum also said from experience that homemade wholemeal bread can turn out rather dense. Needless to say, I went with the white option but after a few more practices I think I’ll branch out a little more.

A key part about making bread is the kneading. I kneaded mine for about 10 minutes in total at two different stages in the process. The idea of kneading is to stretch out the dough (I’ve heard this activates the yeast but that would be a lie…). Somewhere along the line through watching various cooking programmes and reading recipe books I picked up a simple methodical kneading technique. Once you have the dough on a floured (very important!) surface I pull the dough towards me wit the knuckles of one hand and simultaneously push it away from me with the heel of my other hand. I then fold it in half give it a quarter turn and so it again and again and again until I’ve been doing it for 5minutes.

Whether this is the proper way to do it or not I have no idea but it seemed to work well for me as, I may have already mentioned this along the way but, I made bread!

Vanilla Iced Biscuits

Well the weather my still be absolutely appalling but! I am keeping in the summer spirit with my baking, presentation wise anyway! At the beginning of the week I spent the day with my friend Lindsay who surprised me with a whole host of new baking equipment including these lovely cutters which of course I used at the first opportunity! In the first series of the Great British Bake off Miranda made some vanilla cookies which she decorated amazingly. Taking inspiration from her, I used the recipe she contributed to the book from the series and then decorated them!

The recipe calls for a vanilla pod which I hadn’t used before, usually going for the cheaper and easier option of vanilla extract. I splashed out a little on this recipe and decided to buy some and they do add a depth of flavour not achieved by its bottled substitute but it isn’t something I’ll be doing every time! If you ever do use them, keep the outside of the pod as you can put it in a jar of sugar to make vanilla flavoured sugar which is what I’m doing with mine.

This recipe requires patience as it takes some time to chill the mixture at various stages throughout the process. As for the decorating well, it took me around 2 hours to achieve these results. I piped round the edges of all the biscuits in the sections of colours I wanted and then diluted the icing a little more and ‘flooded’ the enclosed area with icing, like colouring them in really!

I made 24 biscuits but my cutters were quite large sizes so if you use smaller ones, you will obviously be able to make more! The recipe advises that the mixture makes around 30.

Here is the recipe I used:

200g unsalted butter, softened

200g caster sugar

1 vanilla pod

1 medium egg, beaten

400g plain flour

Put the butter and the sugar into a mixing bowl. Split the vanilla pod in half along its length and scrape out the seeds into the bowl. Beat with an electric whisk/mixer until very light and creamy. Gradually add the egg, beating well after each addition. Sift the flour into the bowl and work in using a very slow speed

Use your hands to bring the mixture together and make a soft dough. Divide the dough in half and form each portion into a thick disc. Wrap in clingfilm and chill until firm - around 30 minutes

Roll out the dough, a portion at a time, on a floured work surface to a thickness of 5mm. Cut out shapes using cutters. Gather up the trimmings and knead gently then re-roll and cut out more biscuits. Arrange the biscuits slightly apart on a lined baking tray to allow for spreading then chill for 15 minutes. Preheat the oven to 180°C

Bake the biscuits for 9-12 minutes, until just starting to turn golden brown around the edges and firm to touch. Remove from the oven and leave to firm up, then transfer the biscuits to a wire rack to cool completely. Then decorate as you wish!

Red, White & Blue Cupcakes

Happy Jubilee Weekend Everyone! I hope you enjoy your 4-day weekend, it’s a shame the weather didn’t get the memo. In the spirit of the jubilee, I’ve made some very simple red, white and blue cupcakes. There is something about cupcakes that is just so fun to make whatever the occasion and with the extra time off there is almost no excuse not to!

As usual, I used my basic vanilla cupcake recipe (200g and 4 eggs) to make up the cake batter. I then divided the mixture as evenly as I could between three bowls. For the white section I left the mixture untouched and added a bit of blue food colouring to one bowl and some red to the other and mixed thoroughly to combine. I used basic liquid food colouring for this (blue Dr Oetker and red Silverspoon) but if you don’t already have food colourings and are thinking of buying some I highly recommend buying gel colours. While they can be slightly more expensive they produce much more vibrant colours with a very small amount of product whereas I find the liquid ones don’t have a very good intensity.

Once my mixture was coloured I started to put the mixture in my cases. I did one teaspoon of each colour in the bottom of each case then went back and did another teaspoon of each on the opposite side to mix the colours up as much as possible. I then swirled a cocktail stick through the mixture in each case wiping it clean after each one to gently mix the colours together. I then baked them in the oven for 20minutes.

Once out of the oven and completely cooled I made up a batch of buttercream icing and swirled it onto the top of each cake and decorated with red, white and blue sugarballs. This very simple but effective recipe is perfect for any jubilee celebrations! You can also use different colours and layering to create different effects in your cupcakes or transfer the ideas over to larger cakes!

Vegan Chocolate Cake

This is one of the most amazing chocolate cakes I’ve ever eaten! First tried when my friend Rose made it for my birthday last year and last eaten for hers the following month, I decided that it was finally time to make it myself. I’ve also been asked to make a chocolate cake for someone in a week’s time so thought it would be a good idea to have a practise and it’s pretty lucky I did! I’m not sure of the origins of this recipe I just took it from Rose but I do know it was originally in cup measurements which is why all the quantities appear slightly odd.

For making the mixture this recipe is ridiculously simple. Whack it all in a big bowl and beat with an electric handmixer until smooth, job done. You then transfer it to the tins you wish to bake it in. I used two 9inch cake tins but I know Rose has used a square one before and that as worked fine also! Now. Here comes the part where I tried to follow the recipe but just couldn’t bring myself to do it!

The recipe says leave in the oven for 20minutes without opening it at all and then the cake is done. Rose did say to me it would still be moist so I was prepared for that however all but the edges of my cake were still liquid and I just couldn’t take it out like that! So I cooked it for 10 more minutes and then took it out but I must admit, it was still totally soft in the middle. Way beyond anyone’s definition of the word ‘moist’. I then left it to cool of about 10mins before I tried to take it out. ERROR! I basically put my hand through the cake and the liquid inside went everywhere.

After consulting with Rose, it transpired that you’re supposed to leave it in the tin to cool completely before removing the cake which I never ever do and she always always does! I left the other layer in the tin to cool and while it sunk slightly (again, apparently normal!) it did come out without creating a giant hole in the middle. To try and create something yummy out of my mistake I sandwiched the two cakes together with vegan buttercream and filled the hole on top with strawberries. It tastes delicious so while this time was far from perfect, I at least know where I went wrong!

Here is the recipe:

186g butter

450ml soya milk

3 tbsp golden syrup

1 ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

374g self raising flour

74g cocoa powder

374g caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease and baseline your tins of choice

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl until you have a smooth batter. Put the mixture in your tins and shake

Lick Your Spoon!

Bake in the oven for at least 20minutes, bake longer at your own discretion! But do not open the door during these first 20 minutes

LEAVE TO COOL IN TIN - very important!

Then ice and decorate how you want!

Lemon Shortbread

Another recipe from the lovely yummly site! I had originally wanted to make a chocolate orange cake but I didn’t have the necessary equipment so I’ve added that to my list of things to do! I did a quick online search looking for something fresh and simple and came across this. I’m a massive fan of shortbread and haven’t made any since my chocolate version back in February. I chose this one because it used real lemons and the use of cornflour and icing sugar suggested it would be nice and light.

And it was! It was hard work again for my mixer though so I think it needs a rest after these last two recipes I made. When making any new recipe it is always a good idea to read the entire recipe before starting. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before and yet I still haven’t learnt. As most of my recipes are ‘chuck it in a bowl and mix’ I naively thought this would be the same so I started out using my biggest bowl. However, it turns out you are just prepping the dry ingredients in that bowl and they’ll need to be added to a different (preferably your largest bowl) later.

Once you’ve prepared the ingredient in their three separate bowls it’s just a case of added the flour and buttermilk alternately until it’s all thoroughly mixed together. This mixture does need an our to chill in the fridge so also make sure you have time to accommodate that before you start! My rolls weren’t very cylindrical and any roundness they did have was removed when slicing the rolls into the individual biscuits. While they still taste great and the recipe worked really well, I do wish the presentation (as always!) was slightly better so I might work it a little differently in the future.

This is however definitely one for the recipe binder and I will be making it again. I made around 60 little biscuits with this recipe and they’ve lasted about a week in my house now! Perfect with a cup of tea for a little sweetness.

Chocolate and Raspberry Whoopie Pies

Yet another delight from over the pond! I was struggling for baking inspiration when I came across these and couldn’t resist. The recipe was features on a top ten whoopee pie recipe list and is from Gourmet.com. I’ve only eaten them once before and intrigued by the biscuit come cake sandwich parts. As for the filling, super sweet! But upon reading a variety of recipes I realised lots of different fillings are used so I picked one that contained marshmallow fluff as I’m still totally excited about it. While the recipe made a chocolate and vanilla version, I used raspberry marshmallow fluff instead to create these chocolate and raspberry pies.

The sandwich parts are often referred to as ‘cookies’ but to me they are much more cakey in taste and texture once baked. The mixture is however quite stiff once everything is mixed in together and the 25 year old handheld I was using was struggling somewhat towards the end! The recipe said to keep them 2inches apart and after my cookie fiasco I thought I’d better pay attention but mine didn’t seem to spread a whole lot. They also didn’t come out as smooth as I expected and all whoopee pies I’ve seen have been very flat and smooth. Next time I think I’ll make more of an effort to smooth them before they go in with the hope of achieving better presentation!

When I made the filling up, I was a little concerned there wouldn’t be enough to fill each of the sandwiches but it was very deceiving as after filling them twice over there was still enough for me to eat by the tablespoon! This mixture said it made 8 sandwiches in total so I followed it exactly this time to test it but I think in future I will make smaller balls and flatten them more myself with the hope of making more from the mixture!

While there are some presentation issues I will be troubleshooting in future, these taste amazing! The chocolate sandwich is not overly sweet so nicely balances the very sweet raspberry mallow filling. Definitely something I will make again and I’ll be adapting the recipe to try out different varieties too.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Gorgeously gooey in the centre with a slight crunch round the outside, perfect chocolate chip cookies! I came across this recipe on yummly while looking online for the pecan cookies I did 2 posts ago and decided I needed to try it out. A rainy afternoon was the perfect opportunity and they were excellent with a cup of lady grey tea and a Disney movie!

These are ideal comfort food and it’s, yet again, a really simple recipe that yields around 30 cookies! At many stages during this recipe the mixture looks less than appealing but I promise it will be all good in the end. Also, once you’ve worked those muscles and mixed in all the flour and chocolate chips the mixture will look a little crumby. Don’t worry though because once you put it into balls it will hold just fine. I flattened my cookies a little when they had 5minutes left in the oven to help them spread as this is an issue I always seem to have with my cookies.

This recipe is very sweet, the chocolate chips actually help balance it out if you can believe it. It’s an American recipe and so typically has an awful lot of sugar in it. If I made these again I might try leaving out half a cup and seeing how that went as while I do love sweet things, I’d rather avoid having my teeth fall out or develop diabetes as I’m sure all you would too.

While I prefer my cookies warm, these stay soft on the inside even after they’ve cooled and you can always pop them in the microwave for a bit for added gooeyness! I also think this mixture would last a while in the fridge like the pecan cookies and so you could always cook yourself a couple whenever you fancy them.

Mini Victoria Sponges

These are so cute! I saw the tin to make these ages ago and thought they were a great idea, perfect for tea parties! I finally bought it the other week and so decided to try it out this weekend. The tin is by My Kitchen and is available from Lakeland. I got it as part of their buy one get one half price offer or else it’s a little expensive for a tin!

After reading the reviews on the website I found a post that said a 3 egg mixture was the right one for this tin so that’s what I used. If you use this tin make sure you grease the holes really well or else the loose bottoms will take the bottoms off the cake. Also be careful you make sure the loose bases are properly centred or else some of the mixture will fall through the bottom which you can see happened to one of mine!

I originally anticipated that each cake would be a layer so 12 holes would make 6 mini cakes. They rose a lot higher than I thought so I cut the tops off to make them flat. In hindsight, I think I should have tried cutting each cake in half and sandwiching it back together and so made 12 cakes as the 6 I made are pretty high! I just used jam in between mine and a sprinkle of icing sugar on top, keeping it simple but you can always add some buttercream or even fresh cream to make it a bit fancier.

I love the idea of these but am not totally satisfied with the outcome just yet so this is something I’m definitely going to be working on as I do think this bake is perfect for an afternoon treat with a cup of tea!

Vegan Chocolate Chip and Pecan Cookies

“I’d like some vegan cookies that are sweet and nutty”. That was the ‘job description’ given to me by a girl at work requesting some baking. I knew Rose had made some pecan cookies recently that she loved so I established that pecans were liked and then left for the weekend with that in mind. It turned out Rose couldn’t find the recipe she used so I set about finding a new one. After some internet browsing I came across this recipe from The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes by Kris Holechek as a preview on googlebooks. While I was at university I lived on googlebooks and it’s pretty much where I got ALL my references from but it never occurred to me to look for previews of recipe books on there… until now!

This recipe looked straightforward and didn’t require things I’d never heard of that were popping up in a lot of other recipes I’d seen. And I was right! It totally was. Although I must admit I find soya milk completely revolting. The colour and the smell were so unappealing but then I have the same feelings towards milk of any kind so I shouldn’t be surprised. The mixture came together really well and was really fun to make! I should, however, have used chocolate chips or cut my plain chocolate into smaller pieces as they were pretty huge in places causing the cookies to be a little fragile.

I even got to use my new cookie scooper (basically an ice cream scoop with a bit to scoop out the inside) to try and make them all the same size to improve my usual presentation. The scoop worked really well I just ruined it myself by putting them too close together! While almost every cookie recipe I have tried has not spread, typically, this one did so some of them looked very square or even triangular! Luckily there were at least 12 regular ones for me to give to my friend at work.

With both chocolate chips and pecan nuts I’m hoping these fit the sweet and nutty criteria they were designed to meet and I’ve definitely found my new favourite cookie recipe and I will be buying the book to see all the other recipes! Let’s hope my friend likes them too!

Flower Cupcakes

I have a little bit of a cupcake obsession at the moment as I recently purchased my first set of icing nozzles so am experimenting with various decorating methods rather than varieties of baking. These flower cupcakes are for the girls at work in my department as I have been promising to bring in what I make for ages. Now that I finally have a car (yay!) I can bring these in without having to negotiate two buses and a walk!

As usual, I used my standard basic cupcake recipe for the cake. I made 16 this time but 4 were experimenting with different cases and tins so do not feature in any of the pictures! The thing I was most excited about in this bake was the frosting. I’ve recently discovered we have the food network on freeview from 6-10pm and they show a lot of cupcake programmes. I’ve heard and seen a lot about marshmallow buttercream so after googling it I discovered it was made with marshmallow fluff which is something I’ve wanted an excuse to buy for ages!

For this particular frosting I used the plain vanilla one (which comes in massive tubs) as I wanted to colour it green but I also bought a raspberry one too for future use which tastes amazing! I’ve been excited all week to try it and it was definitely a success. One thing I will be looking to change in future is the size of the round nozzle I used as I think it needs to be thicker so it doesn’t need to go round so many times.

I topped the frosting swirls with icing flowers I made from regal ice with a dot of white icing in the middle to make it look like a flower! I think these look really cute and girly while still being really simple so let’s hope the girls at work like them!

Chocolate Honeycomb Squares

So after a pretty poor week of weather and getting repeatedly drenched, a weekend of indulgence was definitely in order. Enter, chocolate honeycomb squares. The closest thing you could get to something ‘good’ for you in this recipe are the Maltesers and they aren’t really good, only less bad for you than everything else! I came across this recipe on Baking Mad and it’s unbelievably easy. Granted it doesn't really count as baking as no oven is required but who cares?!

When you make this, make sure you use a big saucepan because you are essentially making the whole thing in there. I, foolishly, didn’t read the whole recipe before I started and thought I was just melting things in it so I used a small one and then had a little bit of an issue when trying to mix in the biscuits and Maltesers. Nevertheless I just about managed it and any that spilt over the sides was a good excuse to sample the mixture!

The original recipe calls for a 20x20cm tin which I didn’t have to I just squashed it up to one side of a larger tin which worked fine it just means you don’t have such a square edge on one end. When it says ‘leave to cool’ I think it took mine about an hour or so but I must admit I didn’t time it. When it comes to decorating it, make you properly melt the chocolate so it’s really runny or else the toppings won’t stick properly which is what happened to me. It looks fine as a block but ten you cut it they all fall off…

Aside from that this is a very easy, super indulgent recipe that even a small finger of will satisfy the strongest of sugar cravings. Just remember big pan and thorough chocolate melting and you’ll be fine!

Here is the recipe:

100g unsalted butter

200g milk chocolate

3 tbsp golden syrup

225g roughly crushed digestive biscuits

225g roughly chopped Maltesers (honeycomb balls)

For the topping:

100g roughly chopped Maltesers (honeycomb balls)

50g roughly chopped digestives

50g milk chocolate

50g white chocolate

Get a large saucepan and melt the sugar, chocolate and golden syrup until all combined

Leave to cool while you chop up the digestives and Maltesers then mix them in with the melted ingredients

Grease a pan and line with greaseproof paper and then spread the mixture into it evenly

Leave to cool in the fridge until set (roughly one hour)

Once set, melt the milk chocolate and spread a layer over the base to act as a glue for sticking the chopped digestives and honeycomb balls to the top

Finish off by drizzling the top wit the white chocolate and any remaining milk chocolate

Don’t forget to Lick Your Spoon as much as is hygienically possible throughout this recipe as it’s delicious!