A Year in Cake – 2016

As I’m currently tucked up in bed with a rotten cold on New Year’s Eve, I thought I’d do another blog post like I did this time last year looking at my top bakes of 2016.

I won’t bore you with the details but this year has been the worst one for a long time for many reasons and has left me a bit emotionally battered to say the least. I’m hoping with all my strength that 2017 is an improvement and that the changes I’m desperate to make in my life will come about.

Still, baking is a part of my life come rain or shine and I’ve managed quite a few successful bakes this year, including several celebration cakes which I was really pleased with. My creations will never be up there in the showstopper stakes, but I think my presentation skills have improved and I’ve been a bit more daring with decoration.

One new thing I’ve tried this year is meringues. I’d always been a bit nervous to try them as I got the impression they’d be very temperamental and difficult to pull off, but happily I was wrong. My piping skills are still as dire as ever, but they were surprisingly easy to make and tasted absolutely delicious – crispy on the outside with a gooey marshmallow-like interior. And so SO much better than the brittle, chalky shop-bought ones. I was hoping to make a chocolate or cappuccino pavlova for NYE dessert and unfortunately being ill has put paid to that, but I’m keen to make something meringuey again soon! Like an idiot I forgot to include the fruits of my labour in the collage below so here’s a snap of my cute little ghost meringues from Halloween:

I’ve decided to make on culinary resolution this year, and I’m sure I’ve made it before. I would really like to have a go at making proper bread, i.e. using yeast (not soda bread!) I’m a very impatient cook which is what’s put me off trying this previously but the effort would be worth it in order to create a nice big tear-and-share centrepiece, either a delicious chocolatey monkey bread or a mouth-watering sundried tomato and cheese number. I also fancy having a go at brioche, which is my all-time favourite bread, with its indulgent melt-in-the-mouth buttery sweetness and cloud-like texture. Watch this space!

So anyway, here’s a wee compilation of my personal favourite bakes from 2016:

1. Chocolate Orange Bonfire Cake (recipe here)
2. Spiced Tea & Chocolate Cake with Cinnamon Ganache Icing (recipe here)
3. Banana, Peanut Butter & Caramac Loaf (recipe here)
4. Honeycomb & Chocolate Flapjacks with Marzipan Bees (recipe here)
5. Raisin Spice Christmas Cake with Fondant Sealies (base recipe from the 1000 Cakes & Bakes cookbook)
6. Moomin Lebkuchen (base recipe from the Bake Off Christmas cookbook)
7. Lady Baltimore Cake (recipe here)
8. Ducky Custard Cream Cake (base recipe here)
9. Cheese & Sundried Tomato Quiche (recipe here)

I’ll sign off now by wishing everyone in the Bakeosphere a very happy and healthy 2017! 🙂

Cloud9.1 x

Banana, Peanut Butter & Caramac Loaf

I wouldn’t like to estimate the number of times I’ve said “this bake has got to be one of my all-time favourites” in my blog posts over the years, but I really think this Banana, Peanut Butter & Caramac Loaf might actually be my all-time-all-time favourite!

For me, it’s simply heaven in cake form. I love banana bread, I love peanut butter and I love Caramac, and they go together so darn well. This is what I make when I’m feeling blue or when I fancy some proper sweet, squidgy, unapologetic comfort food. I can only describe it as a warming hug in cake form, perfect for this time of year when the nights are drawing in and another Summer bids us farewell.

I know it looks, at best, unremarkable and, at worst, downright sloppy but, honestly, it tastes SO good it really doesn’t need any aesthetic adornments – the flavour says it all. No frills, no fuss, just pure unadultered pleasure. Happiness = biting into a big slab of this sweet, nutty cake as a pool of gooey Caramac melts in your mouth (with a cuppa on the side, of course). What could be better??

And if you’re bananas for this cake, why not check out my recipe for scrummy banana and toffee cake with brown sugar buttercream too?

INGREDIENTS – makes 1 standard loaf cake

• 175g/6 oz butter/margarine
• 175g/6 oz brown sugar
• 175g/6 oz self-raising flour
• 2 eggs
• 2-3 ripe or overripe bananas, mashed
• 3 tbsp peanut butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 x 110g bag Caramac buttons or 110g Caramac bars, roughly chopped

METHOD

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees C (or 150 fan) and line a loaf tin with parchment paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat together the butter/margarine and sugar until pale and fluffy.
3. Beat in the eggs, peanut butter, cinnamon, vanilla extract and mashed bananas.
4. Fold in the flour and Caramac buttons until a batter of soft dropping consistency has formed.
5. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for around 30-40 minutes or until a cocktail stick inserted into the sponge comes out clean (although it doesn’t do any harm to leave it a bit squidgy in the middle!)
6. Leave to cool on a wire rack before turning the cake out of the tin, cutting into slices and devouring with gusto.

Banana Toffee Cake with Brown Sugar Buttercream

Originally posted 21/05/2015

As a keen and frequent baker, I’m not quite sure why I’d never made banana bread/cake before as I love bananas and it’s pretty much a failsafe culinary venture. In fact, it almost seems to be a rite of passage recipe for those who begin to pursue an interest in baking. Anyway, when the time came to make a cake for my mum and dad’s joint birthday celebrations back in April, I wanted to make something different that I hadn’t tried before which would be indulgent but not too complicated. I decided to do a banana cake but with added toffee flavouring, and paired with a brown sugar buttercream and chopped up Caramac and Chomp bars for extra celebration-appropriate banoffee decadence.

I found that the brown sugar buttercream was a bit thinner than normal frosting but if you need it to be stiffer just add in some extra icing sugar.

INGREDIENTS – makes 2 sponge layers of 8in/20cm diameter

For the cake:

• 225g/8 oz self-raising flour
• 100g/3.5 oz granulated/caster sugar
• 90g/3 oz dark brown sugar
• 225g/8 oz butter/margarine
• 4 eggs
• 2 ripe/over-ripe bananas, peeled and mashed
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp Lakeland buttery caramel flavouring (optional but delicious)
• Half a tsp baking powder

For the buttercream/topping:

• 100g/3.5 oz butter
• 100g/3.5 oz dark brown sugar + a few pinches for sprinkling
• 100g/3.5 oz icing sugar
• Few drops of Lakeland buttery caramel flavouring (again, optional but so good!)
• 2 Chomp bars (or other toffee/caramel chocolate)
• 1 Caramac bar

METHOD

For the cake:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C (or 160 fan) and line two round baking tins with parchment paper.
2. Whisk the butter/margarine and sugars together in a large mixing bowl until pale then whisk in the eggs.
3. Fold in the flour, mashed bananas, vanilla extract, caramel flavouring and baking powder until a batter of a soft dropping consistency has formed.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tins then pop in the oven and bake for around 20-25 minutes until a cocktail stick inserted into the sponges comes out clean.
5. When baked, leave the cakes to cool on a wire rack before turning them out of the tins. At this stage the sponges can be frozen for decorating at a later date if you wish.

For the buttercream & topping:

1. Place the butter, caramel flavouring and brown sugar in a bowl then whisk while gradually adding the icing sugar until a smooth mixture has formed.
2. Spread half of the buttercream on one of the sponges and sandwich the other on top, then spread the rest of buttercream on the top layer.
3. Chop the Caramac and Chomp bars into small squares using a sharp knife or scissors then place them on top of the cake before finishing off with a few sprinkles of brown sugar.

I also used this recipe to make cupcakes to take to my old workfriends 🙂 The above quantities will yield about 15-18 cupcakes.