Honey Cake Bites with Lemon Buttercream and Sculpted Lemons

Hey, so I made these bite sized cakes as a treat for my Dad, and I only just managed to get a picture of them before we ate them. When you drizzle honey over the cake be careful not to drizzle too much because you can make the cake quite soggy, which is the problem I faced.

Ingredients for honey cake:

150g plain flour
150g caster sugar
100g unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp milk
4 tbsp honey + 1 tsp more for drizzling later
2 eggs

Butter cream icing:

150g icing sugar
75g unsalted butter
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp milk

Lemons:

100g cake icing
1 tsp yellow food colouring
10g icing sugar to dust over the surface

 Method:

1. To make the cake, pre-heat the oven to 180C. Line a square 20cm tine with greaseproof paper and set aside.


2. Then cream together the butter and sugar into a large bowl until light and fluffy. Then add in the eggs, vanilla, honey, and milk, and mix until smooth. Fold in the flour and stir until mixture is smooth and silky in consistency, if not add a little more milk.

3. Pour the cake mix into the lined tin, and bake for 20-25 minutes until the cake is golden brown, and when a skewer is put into the middle of the cake, the skewer comes out clean.

4. Now the cake is out of the oven, place on a cooling rack. Skewer several holes into the top of the cake and drizzle 1 tsp of honey into the cake to the honey soaks in while the cake is cooling.

5. While the cake is cooling make the butter cream icing. In a large bowl mix the butter, icing sugar, and milk together until smooth. Add the lemon juice flavouring, you can make it more or less lemony than what I did, if you would prefer to. Put the icing into a smaller bowl in the fridge to chill for the assembly.

6. Take the cooled cake and trim the edges, so the cake is a square. Cut the cake into cubes of about 20.

7. Take two cake squares, and the butter cream. Put a teaspoon of butter cream on the top of one of the squares, then sandwich the other on top to make a tower. Then on the top of the top square take another spoonful of butter cream and smooth it over the top. Do this for all the rest of the cakes until you have around 10 stacked cakes with butter cream on top and in the middle.

8. To make the lemons, sprinkle some icing sugar onto your work surface, take the cake icing and the yellow food colouring, and mix together, kneading the colour in with your fingers until the icing is a lemon yellow colour.

9. Take chunks of the icing, about half the size of a malteser and shape into a ball. Pinch the icing on opposing sides of the circle to make the top and tail of the lemons. Place the 1 or 2 lemons on each cake. Put the cake in the fridge until ready to serve. 

Happy Baking xx Beth

Death By Chocolate Giant Cupcake

It was my Dad's birthday last Tuesday and he specifically wanted me to make him a giant chocolate cupcake. Thanks to my wonderful Great Nan who brought me a great mould to use. Hope you enjoy this. Happy Baking xx

Ingredients:

For bottom half of giant cupcake:
250g self raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 tbsp cocoa powder
220g caster sugar
220ml vegetable oil
220ml milk
3 eggs
3 tbsp golden syrup
For the butter cream:
160g unsalted butter
500g icing sugar sifted
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp milk
3tbsp cocoa powder
For the top half of the giant cupcake:
125g self raising flour
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tbsp cocoa powder
110g caster sugar
110ml vegetable oil
110ml milk
2 eggs
2 tbsp golden syrup
Ganache:
150g milk chocolate
150ml cream
To decorate:
Maltezer treat pack ( or a choice of chocolates)

Method: 
1. Pre-heat your oven to 160C and grease the top and bottom parts of your giant cupcake mould, with a few drops of vegetable oil.

2. In a mixing bowl sift together all the dry ingredients for the bottom half of the cupcake except the caster sugar. Mix that in hen all the other dry ingredients have been combined. (flour, bicarb, cocoa powder). Mix together all the wet ingredients for the bottom half and make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the wet ingredients. Blend with a hand mixer until you have a smooth consistency. Fill the bottom half of the cupcake mould with the mixture, bake for about 45 minutes. Do this same step with the top half ingredients but bake for 20-25 minutes instead. Cool on a wire rack. You should now have two cakes one top and a bottom.

3. For the butter cream. Cream together the butter, icing sugar, vanilla extract and cocoa power until evenly combined. Add the milk in a little at a time until you have a smooth consistency.

4. Chop the chocolate into small chunks and put in a bowl. In a small saucepan bring the cream to the boil before whisking onto the chocolate. Continue whisking until all the chocolate is melted and you have a smooth silky ganache. Trim the bottom side of the top half so it will sit well on the bottom half. Put a blob of ganache on the cake board and place the bottom half of the giant cupcake to it so it sticks to the cake board.

5. Cool the ganache to a spreading consistency, I left it over night. Once the ganache has cooled to a spreading consistency, spread it onto the bottom half of the cupcake using a palette knife. Spread a large layer of ganache onto the top of the bottom half. Accompanied by a handful of Maltezers. Now spread a layer of butter cream onto that. Place the top half of the cake on top of the decorated bottom half. Decorate with as many maltezers as you want!

6. With the remaining butter cream, pipe around the join of the two cakes, spread the rest of the butter cream evenly all over the rest of the top half. Put in the fridge for 5 minutes. Place the bottom of the ganache bowl in hot water, and whisk until a thick pouring consistency is achieved. Take the cake out of the fridge and drizzle the ganache over the peak of the cake.

Happy Baking, Beth xx 

Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Cake

On Sunday it was my Grannies birthday and we went over to her house to celebrate, I of course made a cake for her- as I had never made a marble cake, so this was the perfect opportunity. Happy Baking xx

Ingredients:

For the cake mixture:
225g unsalted butter
225g self-raising flour
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
3 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used seeded)
2 tbsp cocoa powder

For the icing:
270g unsalted butter
450g icing sugar
75g cocoa powder
1 tsp milk 
1 tsp vanilla extract 

Method:

1. Grease a round 20cm cake tin, and put grease-proof paper on the base. Pre- heat the oven to 180C/160 fan/ gas 4.


2. Beat together the sugar and the butter until smooth and creamy. Add in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition, fold in the flour, milk ,and vanilla extract. You may want to mix more to get the mixture the correct consistency (fall off the spoon) with an electric hand mixer.

3. Divide out the mixture into two bowls- in one of the bowls add in the cocoa powder and mix well. Then place in the prepared tin alternately with two spoons. Then take a fork and swirl around the tin for effect. Bake for 30-40 minutes. When a skewer has been placed in the centre and pulled out clean the cake is done.

4. To make the icing beat the butter and icing sugar, and vanilla extract, together with an electric hand mixer until smooth, about half way through mixing add the milk to loosen the mixture a little to make it easier .

5. If you want to make alternating colours of icing on the cake just as you did with the marbling in the cake, split the icing into two bowls and mix cocoa powder into one of them, place the vanilla down one side of the piping bag and chocolate the other. This way when you pipe it will come out in two colours side by side. I did this in the centre by squeezing and lifting the bag to make a starry effect using a starry nozzle size 1M so it was quite large to those who don't know.

6. If it's chocolate icing you want add in the cocoa powder without splitting the mixture. I made two cakes and sandwiched them together with piped chocolate/vanilla icing in the centre. Take your butter-cream (I used the chocolate) and spread over the top of the cake with a pallet knife until it's smooth or looks how you want it to look. Dust with a sprinkling of icing sugar to finish.

Happy Baking xx Beth

Honey Buttercream Rose Cupcakes

Hiya,  I had a little experiment with my piping, as I'm not the best at decorating.
I decided to try out this to help me a little. A basic cupcake recipe can be found on my blog elsewhere, such as the Nutella Cupcakes. 

I am subscribed to the Something Sweet magazine and it is amazing with so many tutorials, to help you get better at decorating. I have about 50 copies of this magazine. So throughout this year I will try definately more decorating techniques. This was just a little experiment an I will more than likely do repeats to perfect the technique.

Updates soon! Happy Baking, Beth xx

Banana Cake

This is a second attempt at my banana cake, I did one about 6 months ago but it didn't work out - at all. But this one was delishious, hope you enjoy!

Ingrediants:

140g unsalted softened butter ( and a bit more for greasing the tin.)
140g castar sugar
2 large eggs beaten
140g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 very ripe bananas mashed
50g icing sugar

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160 fan. Grease a loaf tin and line the base and sides with baking parchment.

2. Cream the butter and sugar toghether, until lightand fluffy. Slowly start to add in the eggs, mixing with a little flour so the mixture dosen't split. Fold in the rest of the flour, bicarbonate of soda, and the bananas.

3. Pour into a tin and bake until golden brown, which takes 30-40 minutes. Also it's done when a skewer comes out clean.

Into the tin!

This is a gorgeous recipe for parties, and almost everyone loves banana bread.

Lovely Golden brown!

Good Luck, Beth xxx