Strawberry Meringue Layer Cake, Not So Good Chocolate Muffins, and My Very Own Banana Muffins

Fancy, no?

As promiced, I have been up to more baking ^_^ Yup, I had a free Saturday and the need to bake, so I got going for some Sunday dessert.
I decided that I haven't really done anything new or interesting for a while, so I decided to try this from Nigella's 'Forever Summer', not exactly the weather for it, I know but it looked pretty.

Mmmm, cake!

Ingredients:

• 125g plain flour
• 25g cornflour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 100g soft, unsalted butter
• 300g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons natural vanilla essence
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 50g flaked almonds
• 375ml double cream
• 250g strawberries (I used raspberries)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Line, butter, and flour 2 X 22 cm Springform tins.
2. Weigh out flour, cornflour, and baking powder in a bowl.
3. Cream butter and 100g of the sugar in another bowl until light and fluffy.
4. Separate the eggs and beat the yolks into the butter and sugar.
5. Fold in the dry ingredients, add the vanilla, stir in the milk.
6. Divide between the two tins.
7. Whisk the egg whites 'til soft peaks form. Then add the remaining 200g egg whites. Spread meringue on top of sponge in each tin, sprinkle with almonds.
8. Bake for 30-35 mins until meringue is dark golden brown. Let cool in tins, and spring open at last minute when ready to assemble.
9. Whip double cream, hull and slice strawberries.
10. Invert one cake and pile with cream and berries. Place the second cake on top, meringue side up.

All in all, I think this turned out quite well. I was a bit nervous about there being a really small amount of sponge, I was aftaid that it would just burn and be, shall we say, not so good. Then there was the whole problem with me not actually having two springform tins, but I did have once springform and one loose-bottomed, and that turned out okay. It is a bit delecate, but not half as fragile as I thought it would be. I could'nt get hold of any fresh strawberries, so I had to do with frozen raspberries, which were still pretty damn good.
Taste wise it was pretty much what you would expect, classic taste really. Meringue, raspberries, cream, and almonds, but I think the sponge gave it a little extra something, definitly worth the effort, and I think it looks pretty good too (thought my photos aren't so hot, I really have to try and take them before 12 at night >_<)

YUCK!

Then my sister, not being a fan of cream and fruit, asked me to make here some big ol' chocolate muffins with big, crusty tops and squishy insides. This all sounded pretty tasty to me, but I've yet to find a good chocolate muffin recipe in my cookbooks, so I went online and found one that I thought looked promicing. The results? Not so good, not worth posting the recipe. I mean, they were palatable, but you wouldn't buy them. They stuck to the wrapper, were quite dry (though I might have overbaked them a tiny bit) The only thing I can think of is that, since I ran out of coca powder half-way through, I had to use 25gs of drinking chocolate and reduce the sugar, but I don't think that could have effected them that much. All in all, I was none too happy. So, now I'm asking, anyone out there found their ultimate chocolate muffin recipe? And, if so, would you be willing to share your secrets?

My Very Own!

Finally, I decided to go on a baking adventure of my own! (wow, I sound really lame). I've been making recipes out of books for a long time now, and although I do modify them, I've never made my own. I had a craving for banana muffins and thought: Hey, let's try making up a recipe!
The results weren't bad. I decided to make them healthy, so there is wholemeal flour and not a lot of sugar. I think their lack of 'oomph' was due to this, I've had tastier, sugar-packed ones, but they had a wholesome quality and I'd have them again. Next time I would love to try substituting bran for some of the wholegrain flour, but I didn't have any at the time.
By the way, did you notice my adorable little muffin cases? I got them in habitat in Dublin, only one euro for twelve cases! I was DELIGHTED ^_^

Unfotunatly, in all my enthusaism I forgot to actually write the recipe down >_<>

Mammy's Day Baking!

Hello, all, and happy March! I hope it's been a good month for everybody so far ^_^
So, slightly belated, here's my post for Mother's Day! Seeing as how me and my friend are poor and cheap, we decided to get together and bake cakes for our mothers for mother's day! There were four of us in total, and we all went over to my friend Daniel's house, where we very quickly discovered that he has a very limited amount of kitchen space and... well... not a whole lot of stuff for baking either - including a weighing scale >_< Still, we had to make the best out of the situation, and I think it turned out pretty well. We went on the ol' interweb and found some recipes; we decided to go for applesauce muffins for starters, followed by chocolate devil's food cake, finishing with banana muffins (nobody else wanted them except me, but in the end they all loved them ;)). Then we went for a walk and got the ingredients, along with some pizza and other lunchables. It took us a while to get around to actually doing the baking, between making the pizza, looking for mixing bowls (we ended up using lasaigne dished), and trying to find a way of doing the washing-up with only boiling hot water (the result? We got burned), but once we got started it all went well, and we had a good time doing it. It drives me a little crazy doing less than precise baking, but I think it's good, otherwise I get way too worked up if things go wrong.

Applesauce and Banana Muffins! Yum!

The applesauce muffins were great, and making the applesauce was really cool, I've never seen it done before and it smelled SO GOOD. They were really moist, and you could definitly taste the apple. Plus, my friend Sharon brought along these really adorable muffin cases her mum got in England, and I added the flags. DECORATION GALORE! The banana muffins were my favourie, possibly because I just like anything with banana in it, but more likly because they just tasted really, really good. Usually I want to have some kind of something in my muffins, nuts or chocolate chips or something, but these were perfect witout anything, just plain muffin goodness (with brown sugar sprinkled on top for extra yummyness).

Decorated with Pockey and love!

I think the cakes turned out looking fantastic! They were mini ones, because there was no way we would have had time to make four big ones. We covered them with chocolate ganache (much of which was eaten off spoons while waiting for the cakes to cool) and then I did the decorating with POCKEY!, and chocolate shavings. I think I went a bit overboard, but I had fun, so it's all good.

Decoration taken to a whole new level

Then, after all of that, we took the dog for a walk ^_^

His name is Murphy :P

I don't think there's much point in posting recipes, seeing as how we altered them so much that I don't think they resemble the originals :P But the one for the chocolate cake is the one I already have posted here, and I must say it's pretty damn good. And appologies for the crappy photos, I didn't really have time to take proper ones >_<
*Yawn*. I'm very tired now, I think I'm gonna go paint, then read, and then sleep. I'm thinking of doing some more baking tomorrow, so there will be another post soon. Chow for now ;)

Vegan Raspberry Muffins

Yes, after a long, long time I'm finally back! I know, I know, it took forever, but there are a lot of things going on at the moment with mean I really don't have tiime to make a lot of posts, but hopefully I'll manage to find the time between school and other things to keep this blog updated reasonably frequently *is hopeful*.
Anyways, back to baking. I've still been keeping up with it, but I haven't really ventured outside the world of cookies, muffins, and cakes in a while now; I really need to get back into trying things like pie etc., but they just take so damn long to make >_<

Daniel, preparing to bake!

Me, doing likewise!

All mixed up!

Ready to be baked!

The Results!

Overall, we were really happy with these! They were really good fresh from the oven, they tasted really healty! Perhaps just the raspberries were a little too bitter, but overall they made on hell of a good muffin!

Two kinds of muffins...

English Muffins = <3

"I can hardly eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. "
- Algernon Moncrieff (The Importance of Being Earnest)

Yay for yeast! I've been trying more savory breads now that I've realised that yeast isn't that hard to use, so I decided to make English Muffins... well, my brother wanted them so I decided to make them. He read The Importance of Being Earnest and had to have them.
Fresh bread just tastes so damn good, no matter what kind it is. These were really nice straight off the pan while they were still hot, you didn't even need to toast them!

I found 'baking' them on the pan really strange and I was paranoid that they wouldn't cook all the way through, some of them were really thick. But they worked out fine, better than fine. Though I did absentmindedly start tapping on some of the ones waiting to be cooked and knocked the air out of them >_< The recipe came from 'Essentials: Bread by Linda Doeser. It's a good book for people like me who are just starting to make bread using a bread machine. All the recipes come with pictures, which I love, and the instructions are pretty clear.

I didn't really change the recipe at all except I used half wholegrain flour and half white, and I didn't have any rice flour so I just used plain (it's only for decoration anyway).

Recipe: English Muffins

Ingredients:
350ml hand-hot milk
450g strong white bread flour (or 225g strong white flour plus 225g wholemeal bread flour)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp caster sugar
15g butter, softened or diced
1 1/2 tsp easy-blend dried yeast
ground rice or rice flour, for dusting
Oil, for greasing

Method:
Pour the milk into the bread pan. Sprinkle the flour over the liquid to cover. Place the sugar, salt, and butter in 3 corners of the pan. Indent the flour without exposing the liquid and add the yeast. Set the bread machine to dough setting and press start.
Remove the finished dough from the pan and knock back gently on a lightly floured surface. Roll out to 1 cm thick. Stamp out rounds with a plain 7.5 cm pastry cutter. Gather up trimmings, knead together, leave to rest for 3 minutes. Re-roll and stamp more muffins.
Place muffins on a baking sheet dusted with rice flour. Dust the tops with ground rice. Cover with oiled clingfilm and set aside to rise in a warm place for 25-30 minutes, until doubled in size. Remove clingfilm. Lightly oil a griddle or heavy frying pan and heat well. Cook the muffins in batched, over a low heat, for 6-7 minutes on each side (I cooked them for about 10-15 each side). Serve warm, or toasted.

I think this recipe turned out really well, I made them twice in two days! It probably just has something to do with my undying love for English muffins, but even so it's definitely a good one :)

... and the other kind of muffin...

The Classic Muffin

I've been longing to make blueberry muffins for ages, they're just the sort of thing that everyone's made. But blueberries are so damn expensive in Ireland, it's insane. Thankfully Dunnes was selling them for about two euro per 125g because they were reaching their sell-by date, score :)
The recipe is from Delia Smith's 'Summer Collection'. I love all her recipes, she explains things in great detail and doesn't leave anything to guesswork. Plus it made some friggin' tasty muffins, so thumbs up from me. Though this recipe makes a freakishly small amount of muffins, so doubling it is a good idea.

Mmmm, crunchy topping

Recipe: Blueberry Pecan Muffins

Ingredients:
150g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
40g caster sugar
110 ml milk
50g butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
110g small blueberries
50g pecans Finley chopped
50g pecans Finley chopped, for topping.
Demera sugar, for sprinkling

Method:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C/ 400 F
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl mix together the egg, sugar, milk, melted butter, and vanilla. Sift the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. Fold in the dry ingredients quickly, about 15 seconds. The batter should look lumpy, do not over mix.

Fold in the 50g of chopped pecans and blueberries lightly. Spoon into prepared muffin, sprinkle with chopped pecans and sugar. Bake on a high shelf in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Ummm, they're healthy because they have fruit in them ;)

This was the first time I've ever had proper, home-made blueberry muffins, and they are so much better than shop-bought ones. In my experience the blueberry part of the muffin is just a kind of blue smudge that looks like there was once a blueberry there, but these had proper chunks of fruit in them, lots of flavour. The topping of brown sugar and pecans in amazing; the pecans toast and the sugar caramelises. It's not the best muffin I've ever had, but it's up there.