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 ;)