30th Birthday Cake

One of my best friends in the whole world turned 30 last friday. To celebrate, she threw a fancy dress party and left me in charge of baking her a cake, the only stipulation being that it was very girly. I'm fairly sure I lived up the request. This is my best cake yet :)

read more...

Peanut Butter Fudge

For anybody who claims to be a fan of peanut butter, this recipe is a MUST try. It's delicious - and I don't even like peanut butter that much. Apparently it can be made with Nutella also, which I plan to try out very soon. I nabbed this recipe from the amazing One Perfect Bite blog. If you're not a peanut butter fan, you should check out this blog anyway:
http://oneperfectbite.blogspot.com/2011/03/peanut-butter-fudge.html

read more...

Cocoa Cookies

I sit next to a lovely woman at work who has an equally lovely 5 year old. Said lovely woman brought a cookie into work for me a few months back. The lovely 5 year old apparently found it slightly too chocolatey, which was of course no such problem for me. In fact, I liked it so much that I took to the internet to find a similar recipe. I used this recipe from www.laist.com to bake the below treats: http://laist.com/2007/12/15/laist_cookie_ex_5.php

read more...

80th Birthday Cake

No recipe to post here, I just wanted to share my creation with you. A lady at work asked me to bake her Father an 80th birthday cake. At this point in time, I had only baked one cake previously so needless to say I was pretty nervous. I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out though :)

read more...

Fudgey Chocolate Brownies

I've never met a single person who dislikes brownies, and I'm willing to bet that anybody who does is probably miserable, surly and eats cauliflower for fun. This is a Jamie Oliver Recipe. Not usually a big fan myself, but this recipe really cannot be knocked.



Ingredients:

• 250g unsalted butter
• 200g dark Fairtrade chocolate (70% cocoa solids), broken up
• 80g cocoa powder, sifted
• 65g plain flour, sifted
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 360g caster sugar
• 4 large free-range or organic eggs
• optional: zest of 1 orange
• optional: 250ml crème fraîche

Directions

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4. Line a 25cm square baking tin with greaseproof paper.
2. In a large bowl over some simmering water, melt the butter and the chocolate and mix until smooth.
3. In a separate bowl, mix together the cocoa powder, flour, baking powder and sugar, then add this to the chocolate mixture. Stir together well. Beat the eggs and mix in until you have a silky consistency.
4. Pour your brownie mix into the baking tray, and place in the oven for around 25 minutes. You don’t want to overcook them so, unlike cakes, you don’t want a skewer to come out all clean.
5. Allow to cool in the tray, then carefully transfer to a large chopping board and cut into chunky squares.

read more...