Category Archives: Recipes

Fall in love with cake again

31 Wednesday Jul 2013

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You know when you’re little and you have a bad experience of a certain type of food and you decide never to eat it again, well mine was carrot cake. I remember being eight years old, not a fussy eater, a lover of chocolate (that hasn’t changed) and in the mood for a piece of cake in my school canteen when I first tried carrot cake. It was absolutely horrible, a big slab of cake with big chunks of tough carrot squashed into a dry sponge. This was not my idea of a desert, I vowed never to have carrot cake again.

However the other week Craig and I decided to head down to Brixton to get something from the food market for lunch. But this wasn’t just any regular market day in Brixton it just so happened to be ‘the Great Brixton bake off!!’ I never even knew this existed but thank god it does. Rather than food stalls mapping out the stretch of the market, every stall, and there must have been at least 30 of them, was filled with cake and free samples of it too! It was absolutely amazing.

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How not to bake a cheesecake

04 Saturday May 2013

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It was the London Marathon last Sunday and as my brother was running it I thought it was a perfect excuse to do some baking as a ‘Well Done’ gift for crossing the finish line. I was looking forward to cooking dinner on Saturday but my brother informed me that he was making lasagna, a HUGE one, and that there was no need for me to cook anything. Although I do enjoy a good lasagna  I was actually quite looking forward to planning a recipe and trying out something new. It’s difficult in my house to ever be the one to cook, some people may love that, but I’ve always believed that if you never get the chance to do it for yourself, how are you going to learn? I don’t complain so much on a work night but on a weekend it would be nice to have the chance to cook more. Therefore, I decided to help with the lasagna by chopping the mushrooms and repeatedly exclaiming to Ed, “Three packets of mince!!” Despite all my moaning and best efforts to say, “not another jar of sauce” or  “lay off the cheese just a tad”, the lasagna was actually one of the best I’ve had in a long time. It definitely beat my cheesy mess of a veggie lasagna I tried to make some months back which looked more like slush than a tasty pasta dish.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!

17 Sunday Mar 2013

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Happy St Paddy’s Day everyone. I must admit mine, this year, hasn’t been the most exciting which is shameful considering I am Irish. Normally it’s tradition to head out to a pub on the Saturday then Parade on the Sunday but this year the most I’ve done in regards to celebrating is making an Irish coffee ahh! Oh and watching the Rugby –  I know Ireland weren’t playing but watching sport counts a little wouldn’t you say?

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It’s a pancake, not toilet paper!

22 Friday Feb 2013

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I know it’s a bit of a late post considering it’s a week after Pancake day but who says you can’t eat pancakes all year round! However last Tuesday was officially Pancake Day so of course I was going to make some. I always remember the excitement of having pancakes when I was little. Being one of four, I would come home to my mum in the kitchen whipping up some batter and making delicious pancakes. Annoyingly she would always give the first pancake to the oldest in the family meaning I was always third in line. We wouldn’t even have anything savoury for dinner just get straight to eating the pancakes and have at least five each, mostly always with simply lemon and sugar. It probably wasn’t until a few years ago that I started having them with nutella and have never looked back.

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This beats Bruce Bogtrotter’s cake anyday!

04 Monday Feb 2013

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When I was little I received Roald Dahl’s ‘Revolting Recipes’ which had all sorts of brilliant recipes such as lick-able wallpaper and Baked Alaska with warm ice cream, but one recipe which always stood out was the mean feast that was Bruce Bogtrotter’s Chocolate fudge cake. Well, you’ve probably guessed from my title that I haven’t made that cake (probably due to the fact I couldn’t find the book!) but I have made what I think is a good equivalent!

This delicious chocolate recipe has been created by Angela Nilsen and it had hundreds of positive reviews so I thought I better try it out. I used to always make cakes with either Cadbury’s or quite often with the plain cooking one from whichever supermarket I was shopping in. However, sometimes you just need to use a good quality chocolate and in this case I used Lindt 70% (which I can’t get enough of at the moment!) and one bar of Bourneville. I chose Cadbury’s Bourneville mainly for price reasons as it was slightly cheaper but I don’t think it made much difference to the taste of the cake.

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Wholemeal Soda Bread

25 Friday Jan 2013

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Wholemeal Soda Bread

This week I had Wednesday off so what better way to spend a day off when it’s snowing and cold outside than to whack the oven on and get down to some baking. If I’m truthfully honest I quite fancied a lie in but when you want one it doesn’t happen so I woke up the same time I would for work and thought I might as well bake some bread.

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The recipe is taken from Paul Hollywood’s ‘How to Bake’ a book I bought for my boyfriend for Christmas but took back as I liked it to much!

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Banana Bread

14 Monday Jan 2013

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Banana Bread

Banana Bread

Baking is something I absolutely love doing, however I never get round to doing enough of. This is possibly due to the fact that I end up eating the majority of what I produce which isn’t good for the waistline! However with the New Year ahead and with the weekend being quite a chilled one I thought it was about time to start baking again.
To kick off my baking, I’m starting with a family favourite and that is Banana Bread.

There are so many ways to make banana bread and lots of different ingredients you can add to it such as chocolate, nuts or cinnamon. However as I didn’t have the time to get to the shops I thought I’d go with the basic banana bread as it needs hardly any ingredients at all!

Ingredients:

•             75g butter , softened

•             110g golden caster sugar

•             125g plain flour

•             100g wholemeal flour

•             2 tsp baking powder

•             2 eggs

•             4 ripe bananas , mashed

•             50g pecans , each snapped in half

Banana Bread Ingredients

Banana Bread Ingredients

Method

1.  Heat the oven to 180C/fan 170C/gas 4. Line a 450g loaf tin with some butter or  butter a parchment case if you have one to line the tin.

2.  Beat the butter, sugar, flours, baking powder, eggs and banana together.

3.   Stir in the nuts and spoon into a lined and buttered 450g loaf tin.

4.   Bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

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It’s super easy and if you don’t have pecans you can use wlanuts or leave it out altogether although it does give a nice extra crunch.

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If the sponge is soft and boucy under your touch, you’ll know it’s a good bake. Mine was slightly crumbly which means it might’ve needed a little longer in the oven, but the taste was delcious and the texture soft so it entirely depends on how you like it.

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Overall a lovely way to spend the afternoon. Preparation only takes 10 to fifteen minutes and then it’s left in the oven. It went in no time at all and was lovely especially with a good cup of tea.