Coca Cola Cake

while browsing Nigella & Mary Berry's cake books on Thursday I stumbled upon Nigella's Coca-Cola Cake recipe. It's chocolate flavoured - exactly what Zack wanted for his birthday. So I rushed off and bought a bottle of coke (the full fat, full sugar, full caffeine version), and made it for the 7th birthday party yesterday. thanks to Haribo and Nigella for the decorative suggestion....

 

it's another really easy recipe, that requires nothing but a wooden spoon and a whisk. and comes out delicious.

Lemon & Poppy Seed muffins

Calvin has been begging me to make him Lemon & Poppy-seed muffins for an age. As such I had a look online and found a wonderful recipe on the Nigella website. It isn't actually Nigella's own, but the work of a woman called Linda Fisher - the Muffin Lady, I presume. It is a fabulously easy recipe in that you can make the entire thing without a mixer/blender. This is always good news as it means less washing up.
The recipe, when doubled, makes much more than 2 dozen muffins. The ingredients are easy to come by. My only complaint is that there is so much 'fat' (ie. oil & butter) in the recipe that it's left marks on the floor every time someone drops crumbs. And yes, they are very crumbly muffins. Overall I would give them 10/10 for flavour and 10/10 presentation. You could easily top them with a lemon icing, lemon drizzle or even a dollop of lemon curd.

- thank you Instagram

what to do with 3 OLD bananas?

 

The answer of course is : Nigella Lawson. Bless her!
in her book, Nigella Express, she has a lovely little recipe for banana muffins with butterscotch bits. It's got a huge amount of oil in it, but the muffins come out light and peel out of their cases with ease. What more could you ask for ? Just delicious.

Victoria Sponge

Nigella's Victoria Sponge recipe is easy to make with great results. Only thing I would change was to try and make it even lighter.

Applefest last week

Apple publishing have produced a bucket of little "500 of X" books. This recipe is from the cupcake one. They were delicious and disappeared in one sitting

Recipe : apple sauce & cinnamon cupcakes

makes 12

115g (4oz) unsalted butter, softened

115g (4oz) caster sugar

115g (4oz) self-raising flour

2 eggs

115g (4oz) unsweetened apple sauce

3/4 tsp cinnamon

50g (2oz) chopped pecans **

75g (3oz) sultanas ≠

1 small red eating apple, thinly sliced

2 tbsp granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 175˚C (350˚F / Gas mark 4). Grease a 12 cup muffin tin.

Place the butter, sugar, flour and egg in a bowl and beat with electric whisk until smooth, about 2 - 3 minutes.

Stir in the apple sauce, cinnamon, pecans and sultanas.

Spoon the batter into the cups. Lay the apple slices on top and sprinkle with a little sugar.

Bake for 25 minutes. Remove tin from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes

Remove the cupcakes and cool on a rack. Serve warm.

Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months :)

Ruth's notes :

** I used 1/2 pecans and 1/2 walnuts

≠ Zack wanted chocolate chips so I made up 2/3 sultanas and 1/3 chocolate chips = total weight of 75g

I tripled the recipe and it made 25 large cupcakes (filled to the top). I didn't have enough apple sauce to triple, but it doesn't seem to have made a massive difference.

This is Nigella's Apple Kuchen recipe. It's not bad but it's not amazing. The base took a lot of work - kneading and allowing it to rise overnight, etc etc. It came out lovely and bready which you then top with the apple, eggy-custard topping and the all-spice, slivered almonds, etc. It looks great but wasn't sweet enough or apple-y enough for me. I wanted something more sticky... more sweet throughout. Gotta keep trying.

nutty seeded wholemeal bread

So I am on a mission to make a delicious, seeded loaf that has just enough sweetness and seeds in it to fill a nostalgic void in me. ha ha! Not sure if it's possible.
In the meantime, I've made a recipe I that was passed down to me by my aunt - it uses buttermilk and honey.
Today I'm trying Nigella's Norwegian Mountain loaf - there are tons of seeds in it, but it doesn't have honey in it.
Once this loaf is eaten I will try another one - possibly with rye flour.

Nigella - chocolate guiness cake

Jackie's 40th called for Nigella's Chocolate Guiness Cake. The frosting is cream cheese, icing sugar and whipping cream - light and sweet and a perfect topping to this dense, moist chocolatey extravaganza.

NGS event : cupcakes

My friend Viv is involved with the NGS and this weekend was her turn for an "open garden" afternoon. More than 20 people volunteered to bake cake for her, and I made Nigella's cupcakes and then had to scratch my head for the butter icing. In the end I used the recipe from the Wilton Cupcake book, because I just couldn't find something in Nigella or the Bake book. It's a good recipe because it's half Trex (white vegetable fat) and half butter, so you end up with something that's very light and fluffy - hence my choice of baby pink. I pulled out the Royal (fondant) icing that I had left over from Zack's party etc. and made the little flowers. I've actually cut out more, for use in future decorating - no point in throwing the stuff away if I'm going to use it in the near future. This baking session has made me add two things to my shopping list : I need some green food colouring paste, I'd like another large star nozzle for the toppings. Having one means that I have to wash everything if I change colours.
Negatives : I used the yellow Wilton cupcake papers that I bought in the USA and because Nigella's recipe cooks at 200˚C they came out brown, and the fat content in the recipe meant they were stained. A real pity as they are pretty papers. I wonder if it would have looked better if I'd iced them in yellow ?

half way through

eager little fingers

OK, so we've got to Friday and so far we've made wicked chocolate biscuits (Apple Publishing recipe), and Nigella's cupcakes/fairy cakes recipe last night. I decorated them with the blue liquid colouring mixed into the bog-standard butter cream icing. I have now decided that the liquid colouring is terrible - just like they told me at the cupcake decorating evening. It is such terrible quality. I ended up with blue-grey which you can't really fix. What a waste of icing! Thank goodness for "confetti" which Keith sprinkled ontop. I need to buy some colouring paste now and pronto! I have to make the cake & cupcakes tomorrow for the big day on Sunday.

busy busy

Last weekend was Calvin's Dedication service. I made some wonderful vanilla cupcakes, and then topped them with Nigella's Blonde icing (creme fraiche & white chocolate). I stepped out and purchased a wonderful book on Canapes by Eric Treuille - made a great carrot and spring onion fritata with feta cheese & black olives, home-made blinis with creme fraiche and salmon roe (from the Japanese shop in N Finchley). I also was brave and made Nigella's scones with cream and raspberry conserve. I am usually terrified of scones as mine turn into hard little cakes in the oven, but these rose so nicely - Yum!
Tonight we had friends for dinner, and since I had heaps of ingredients left from last weekend, pulled out an old trusty friend - Jamie Oliver. Made two of his recipes this evening: wonderful lemon & lime cream tart (8 eggs), and his Fish Kedgeree. All delicious.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake & Icing

I am dead keen to make a fabulous chocolate cake or choccie cup-cakes. I've been perusing Martha's recipes, and the ones on the Waitrose site, as well as my modest collection of cookery books, and decided to try Nigella's Sour Cream Chocolate Cake because it sounded smooth and very chocolatey. Oh dear me... it's turned out to be a far-too-sweet chocolate affair. It has good chocolatey colour and a lovely fine crumb (smooth texture), but overall it's not chocolatey enough for me. Or rather, it's not as 'dark chocolate' as I'd hoped for. The recipe for the icing produced something that's lovely and smooth and light, but far too sweet. I just feel like it needs to be dark and bitter, rather than light, chocolate, whippy.
Another thing is that my decorating technique is horribly OLD FASHIONED. I don't think it works at all. So, overall, there's heaps of room for improvement.

I think I'm going to pension this cake off (to the grateful & hungry souls at Keith's office), and make the box of brownies Heath sent me for my birthday. It's one of those – just add oil, an egg and hot water – jobs. It looks painless, and might be more satisfying in the chocolate arena. Let's wait and see.

Victoria Sponge

Annie & Clare came for supper on Tuesday night, and I felt inspired. I chose the Victoria Sponge recipe from Nigella's Domestic Goddess book, and went ahead and made it. The actual cake came out really nicely - well risen, golden colour and good texture. I suppose a part of me had expected it to be lighter, but there you go. I covered the cake in raspberry jam (home made by a B&B we stayed in near Tonbridge Wells). Annie sliced up the strawberries so that the assembly was a work-of-art, and we dolloped cream on top of that before adding the second layer. It was superb.