Lemon, Lime and Poppyseed Cake

Let me start this post by apologising about the lack of posts around here lately – you may not have noticed it, which is great, but Fi and I actually had a rough blog plan to post something every 3/4 days this month. Quite a tall challenge under normal circumstances, but then throw in a couple of busy bank holiday weekends, a trip to Amsterdam, a ridiculously busy week at work which saw one of us working all hours (Fi) and then getting hit by a stomach bug for the best part of a week (Fi) and you’ll understand how the best laid plans fell apart magnificently! {Please let’s ignore the fact that I had no real excuse for not getting posts written}. Anyways after only two posts in May so far we are hopefully back on track now.

So let’s get down to business and talk cake. Lovely, lovely cake! So way back when it was Mother’s Day here in the UK – 30th March – we made a cake for our Mum, well you kind of have to don’t you? It’s a Lorraine Pascale recipe and it’s actually one that we’ve featured on here before. But it’s so good, you’re getting it again! Plus this time there are more pictures and even some all about the icing!

Recipe – So I’m not going to repeat the recipe again as you can find it right here.

Instead let’s just look at some pictures and try not to drool over the memory of this perfect cake!

I have to admit that when Mum saw this she wasn’t too excited. I think she was expecting peanut butter brownies – awkward! But then she had a slice (and maybe another) and was a bit of a fan. Phew, thank god for that!

Lau xx

Coffee and Walnut Cake

It’s time for another cake recipe. Yep, it’s been all about the sweet stuff recently! I’ve been talking about making a coffee and walnut cake for ages and ages, mainly because it’s my youngest sister’s favourite cake ever.  Plus I now like coffee which means it’s a cake that I want to actually make (and then eat now), whereas previously I just wasn’t bothered! So with Easter upon us, and knowing that Becca would be home with us for the celebrations, the four day weekend seemed like the perfect time to get baking. Trust me guys this is a good recipe that you can make with your basic store cupboard ingredients. It’s super easy with as it’s just a slightly amended Victoria sponge cake, but it looks gorgeous and tastes so good.

Ingredients – 

For the cake
175g softened butter
175g brown sugar
175g self-raising flour
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp strong coffee powder (i used espresso granules) mixed with 2 tbsp boiling water and then cooled

For the Icing
100g softened butter
200g icing sugar
9 walnuts

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease two circular baking tins
2. Cream together the butter and sugar

3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well in between. Add the vanilla and whisk again

4. Sift in the flour and baking powder and then gently fold into the mixture

5. Add half of the coffee mixture and fold in again
6. Now divide the mixture between the two tins and bake for 20-25 mins

Once the cakes are cooled it’s time to make the icing.

7. Beat together the butter and icing sugar into a smooth icing
8. Add in the remaining coffee and mix well. Have a taste of the icing and add more coffee as needed – we added about half the same again as we like the taste of coffee a lot!

9. Use half the icing to sandwich the cakes together and then spread the remaining half on the top. Now top with your walnut halves.

Happy Baking. Lau xxx

This recipe originates from The Baking Book by Dorling Kindersley.

Peanut Butter Brownies

Happy Easter everyone! I hope you’re all having a fabulous Sunday morning and that the Easter bunny was super kind to you. I’m rather happy to be tucking into an absurd amount of mini eggs this morning – whilst still in my pajamas of course. Lucky me!

As it’s Easter, and that’s a LOT to do with family and chocolate – at least if you’re not religious and me, I thought I’d share a chocolatey recipe that is one of our family’s favourites – the humble peanut butter brownie. I made these yesterday for a barbecue and surprise surprise we’ve got only a couple left – they’re that good. We’ve mentioned these in the past but never shared our slightly amended version of the Life is Peachy recipe. So we thought it was high time we did – enjoy this Easter gift!

Ingredients

• 150g Dairy Milk chocolate
• 100g smooth peanut butter
• 175g margarine
• 325 caster sugar
• 120g self-raising flour
• 3 eggs

Melt the chocolate and margarine and then stir in the peanut butter until the mixture is smooth

Add the caster sugar and combine

Now add the self-raising flour and mix thoroughly

Crack the eggs in and combine until smooth

Pour into a greased brownie tin and bake on 160 degrees for 40 minutes. Then EAT them all at once (go on you know you want to!)

Baking for Easter

Easter is quite possibly my favourite time of the year as it seems to signal the start of the summer and outside dining. I love the opportunity to get together with all the family and chill out in the garden, plus it brings with it the possibility of a barbecue as well as a fabulous roast dinner on Easter Sunday. Never mind the easter egg fun.

This Easter my sisters and I have decided to cook out amazing pulled pork at some point over the four days for the parental units to enjoy. Plus I’m planning on trying out a coffee and walnut cake as I’ve never made one. But before that point we get to make all the yummy sweet stuff that contains easter treats. You know what I mean, all the creme eggs and mini eggs that appear in the shops as soon as Christmas is over. Well it would be rude not to include those in some sort of baking wouldn’t it. So that’s what this post is all about – Baking with Easter sweets!

Hopefully you are all well aware of the awesome mini egg blondies that we made last year. If not then what are you waiting for? Check them out right here, right now. So these have been made again because they are just totally awesome and Fi has an actual real life obsession with mini eggs.

So yes, we made mini egg blondies, but we also decided to try making creme egg brownies. Now different versions of these have been all over the internet and on twitter, so it really was high time we had a go ourselves. They honestly couldn’t be easier – mostly because I used a packet brownie mix – sometimes you just have to cheat!

Here’s what you do –
1. Create your normal brownie batter – I used the Ghiardelli brownie mix because it’s totally awesome.
2. Throw in 10 mini creme eggs to the mix.
3. Pour the whole lot into the brownie tin.
4. Chop another 8 mini creme eggs in half and lay these gooey side up on the top of your batter.
5. Bake as per normal brownie instructions.

See, easy peasy and don’t they look amazing? I promise you guys, these actually taste like heaven. Seriously the gooey levels are epic in this. These beauties ended up at work and they all disappeared in record time. I think that’s a good sign, right?!

Now you give them ago and let me know what you think.

Lau xxx

Cheese Straws

I made cheese straws at the weekend. I think the last time I made these was during a food technology lesson at school. I think I was probably about 11 at the time. Anyway I had definitely forgotten how easy these are to make and also how good they tasted. Like seriously good. All crumbly pastry and strong cheddar. Nom nom nom!

As I’ve already mentioned these are super easy to make. You’ll need just 2 ingredients, ready made puff pastry and cheese – I used cheddar as it’s my favourite! Yes that’s it.

The first thing to do is to grab your pastry and cover it in half of the grated cheese. I used half a sheet of pastry and grated about a third of a block of cheese. Now fold the pastry in half and roll out the cheese pastry to the thickness of a pound coin.

The next thing to do is to cut the pastry into strips about 1cm wide. 

Now twist them and place them onto a baking tray and sprinkle them with the rest of the cheese.

Bake in the oven at 220C for 12 minutes.

Now that I’ve rediscovered the wonderfulness that is the humble cheese straw I think they will be making quite a regular appearance in my kitchen (and my tummy)! What about you all, any pastry favourites? Also if you fancy some other delicious pastry things then checkout our pastry pinwheels post.

Happy baking, Lau

January 2014 Eats

Hello lovely people and welcome to our little update on what foody delights have been occurring with us this month. Wow January has been a long month, but as you can see we’ve mainly managed to survive it by eating lots of yummy things! Yay to us right.

Cooked
Kedegree
RSC#5 – Cod with bacon and a tomato sauce
Butternut squash pasta
Butternut squash risotto
Steak and potato wedges – the stuff of dreams!

Baked
Apple and Blackberry Crumble
Bourbon Biscuit brownies (as see on this rambling corner)
Avocado brownies
Bread & Rolls
Granola (coming soon I promise!)

Eaten
Dinner at Five Guys
Pizza and quiz fun at the Elephant on the Hill
Brunch at Tom’s Kitchen. Look out for a post about this soon.
Drinks at the Tinder Yard
Dinner at The Seahorse Pub (One of our favourite places ever – their sticky toffee pudding is to die for)
Lunch at Denbies Vineyard

What about you lovely people? What have been your food highlights this month?

Lau xxx

December Eats

Greetings chums, here’s a quick round up of what we managed to cook, bake and eat in December. It was the time of Christmas cheer and food so it was quite a lot obviously! Here’s hoping January doesn’t look quite this bad!

Cooked
Sherry log
Sticky ginger cake (yes again)
Turkey Enchiladas

Baked – fyi, most of these are mentioned in the Christmas baking post.
Reindeer cupcakes
Mince pies
Mince pie fudge
Vanilla fudge
Snowman bread
Gingerbread star tree
Sausage Rolls
Baby shower cupcakes – with homemade chocolate buttons

mince pies

gingerbread star tree

Mince Pie Fudge

Sausage Rolls

reindeer cupcakes

baby shower cupcakes

roasting turkey

sherry log

Eaten
Bill’s Christmas lunch
Bill’s brunch
Zizzi’s
Busaba Eathai
Wooton Hatch
60th Birthday Cake
Christmas Sandwiches
Christmas Dinner
Honey glazed gammon
Chicken, Ham and Leek Pie
Vol-au-vents
Mulled Wine

I also need to tell you about a rum liqueur we discovered over Christmas. Some of our Australian family gifted us this Bundaberg rum liqueur that is chocolate and coffee flavour – they live in Bundaberg so it was an inspired gift idea. Now first impressions; rum? yuck. Smell? Yuck, but taste wise this is absolutely delicious with coke (or diet coke if your us). I highly recommend it, my sisters and I managed to get through most of the bottle over the Christmas period and we even got other family members trying it too.

Phew, that’s an awfully long list! Mostly sweet stuff and eating out it seems, but hey it was December which is always a busy month full of eating out. The fact of the matter is that when we weren’t out and about we were basically just exhausted and not fancying cooking. That and soup this time of year, is just one of my favourite things! What delights has everyone else been cooking, baking and eating?

Lau xxx

p.s. sorry about the lack of photos, we both took loads over the holiday break, but none seem to be of food!

Christmas Baking

The last post on here was all about our Christmas Recipe plans, which means that today’s post is all about what we actually baked. It’s the only logical way this post could go. It just makes sense!

In the past week we’ve had a Christmas Films night with a group of friends and a Sunday drinks party, both of which (of course) signalled the need for homebaked goodies. So of course we got our bake on and baked the following treats…

• Mince Pies – A Christmas classic!
• Mince Pie Fudge – apparently delicious, although I don’t like mince pies so I can’t actually agree with this claim.
• Sausage Rolls – another Evans family Christmas essential.
• Gingerbread biscuits – It is my opinion that you just can’t go wrong with these. They taste so perfectly chewy and gingerbready, click for the original recipe and 2012’s versions.
• Snowman bread – yes it’s really a thing. Okay it’s not I made it all up! Basically I made some bread dough and then positioned two round balls next to each other in a vague representation of Mr Snowman. It might have looked a tad weird but it tasted delicious and that’s the main thing in my opinion!
• Reindeer cupcakes – as seen here.

Mince Pie Fudge

Sausage Rolls

Reindeer Cupcakes

Mince Pies about to go in the oven

Although we’ve made most of these before, I thought I would include the recipes for the sausage rolls and mince pies below. Both are very easy as it’s all about the ready made ingredients, but just incase you need them here they are…

Sausage Rolls –
Frozen puff pastry
Sausage meat
One red onion
An egg

• Let the pastry thaw out (it takes a couple of hours) and then roll out into a rectangle shape.
• Next cut the rectangle in half lengthways to get two thinner rectangles.
• In a bowl add the sausage meat, about half of the egg and a chopped onion. Mix these together.
• Now place the sausage meat in a line down the middle of each pastry rectangle.
• Brush one edge of the pastry with more egg and then bring the other edge over to join it. Press down the two edges so that they stick together.
• Now you’ve got two long sausage rolls just cut them into normal sized rolls – about 1 inch each.
• Snip two cuts in the top of the sausage rolls and then brush the tops with egg.
• Cook in a preheated oven – 180°C for about 20 minutes. You want the pastry to be a golden colour.

Mince Pies –
Frozen shortcrust pastry
Jar of mincemeat
Two cookie cutters; one circle and one star shape that is about the same in terms of diameter – the circle shape needs to be a little bit bigger than your baking tray

• Again let the pastry thaw for a couple of hours before rolling out. Cut out equal numbers of circles and stars
• Place the circles in the greased cupcake baking tray
• Now add a spoonful of mincemeat mixture
• Top with the star shaped lids
• Brush the top with egg and bake in the oven – 180°C for about 20 minutes
• Once baked, let them cool before removing from the trays. Then sprinkle with icing sugar to serve.

Happy Baking!

Laura

Christmas Recipe plans

I think it’s fair to say that Lau and I have shared before that for us Christmas if about the two ‘F’s: Family and Food. So today I thought I’d share some of the recipes I hope to make over the next few weeks. The recipes are a mix of old and new/favourites and newbies. If you have any other suggestions let us know and who knows we might add them!

Hot Chocolate – Nothing can beat it when you’re watching a Christmas film or playing board games with the family. I think this year though I might try this Toasted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate from How Sweet Eats. How amazing does that sound? I feel the texture will be akin to the river in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

Marshmallows – I had no idea you could make them so easily, but now that I do I’m thinking these would be perfect with the hot chocolates!

One hot drink I’ve never tried is Eggnog and I feel like amending that this year, maybe at the parentals’ Christmas drinks party before Christmas. Especially as it looks so easy, thanks Rosie for sharing the recipe for hot and cold eggnog.

Mince Pies – Mum’s recipe where the lids are stars, super-cute!

Stained glass window biscuits – we used to make these as a kid and they were so cool. I definitely want to find time to make them this year too, especially after being inspired by this Domestic Sluttery post here recently, where they made something similar. Such cute Christmas stars!

Sausage Rolls – Dad does the best ones having been taught by Nanna, but this year I fancy trying a twist on the recipe that I saw in Emerald Street recently. They shared a Ginger Pig recipe for pork and cranberry sausage rolls – don’t they sound divine?

Reindeer Cakes – We often make the reindeer cupcakes we shared here, but I think this time I might make chocolate balls that are transformed into reindeers. I’m thinking either truffles or chocolate crispy cake. That could work right?

What are you planning on making this Christmas? Any of the same things as us and are they favourite recipes or are you introducing some new ones too?

– Fi xxx

Banana and Walnut Bread

So every now and again I have this grand plan that I’m going to eat copious amounts of fruit instead of the usual crap that has infiltrated my diet. When this happens I head off to the supermarket and stock up on apples, bananas and some more exotic looking/sounding fruit and make a pact to switch the chocolate for the fruit. And then 24 hours pass and my enthusiasm wanes and the bananas go brown before I remember they even exist. When this happens I tend to whip up my standard banana cake with cream cheese frosting, courtesy of the Australian Women’s Weekly Kids Cookbook that I’ve had for eons. But a few weeks back I decided I needed to try something new and step out of my comfort zone – I’m not a fan of such things if I’m honest! So I decided on a banana and walnut bread. Yes big things happening over her, I’ve added walnuts and made a bread instead of a cake – get me. Give me a day or so and I’ll be taking over the world with giant leaps like this!

So back down to it I decided on a recipe from DK’s Step-by-Step Baking book and I’m glad it’s the one I chose as it’s super-easy and has helpful instruction pictures. Phew! So here we go, here’s the recipe. First off you’ll need…

• 375g strong white bread flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
• 125g walnut pieces (chopped)
• 3 eggs
• 3 ripe bananas (chopped, oh and peeled obvs!)
• finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 125 ml vegetable oil
• 200g granulated sugar
• 100g soft brown sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Now down to the method (it’s easy I promise!):
First off preheat the oven to 180oC and grease your loaf tins (2 x 1lb loaf tins)
Sprinkle flour into the tins and tap to remove all the excess flour
Sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt into a bowl and mix together.
Mix in the walnut pieces and create a well in the center

Mash the bananas with a fork until they create a smooth paste and add to the beaten egg with the lemon zest

Add the oil, granulated sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and lemon juice and stir together

Pour 3/4 of the banana mixture into the well in the flour and stir well
Gradually blend in the dry ingredients, adding the remaining banana mixture until the mixture is smooth

Spoon the mixture into the tins

Bake for 35-40 minutes until the loaves start to shrink away from the sides of the tins and a skewer comes out clean

Enjoy your banana bread and you know it’s fine to have for breakfast as it’s a bread AND it contains fruit – winning!

– Fi xx