Tag Archives: afternoon tea

Royal wedding lemon curd cake

2 May

So, the Royal Wedding. I have to say that I wasn’t overly excited and I didn’t have any plans until a couple of days before. I still wanted to watch it though – mostly to see what Kate would be wearing!

I switched the TV on and something odd happened. As soon as I saw Kate climb into the car to take her to Westminster Abbey, I started balling whilst laughing at the same time. She looked beautiful and I couldn’t comprehend how she must have been feeling.

We had a few friends over for a curry (not typically British I know) and I baked a Victoria sponge with a difference. Instead of jam and strawberries, I lathered on the lemon curd – I have a picky other half that won’t touch jam. I added an extra vanilla pod, which worked really well and the whole cake was demolished in a matter of minutes.

Ingredients

225g butter, softened
225g golden caster sugar
4 Burford Brown eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 vanilla pod, desseded
225g self raising flour
Drop of milk, to loosen
170ml double cream
4 tbsp lemon curd (or however thick you want to spread it!)

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180degrees

1. Grease and line two sandwich tins with butter and baking parchment

2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl

3. Add the eggs and mix well

4. Add the vanilla essence and vanilla pod and mix

5. Sift in the flour and fold with a metal spoon

6. Add the drop of milk to loosen slightly. The mixture should not be too stiff

7. Spoon the mixture into the lined tins and place in the oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean

8. Whilst the cake is baking, whip the cream. This is best done with an electric whisk. Turn the whisk on a high speed and whisk until the cream starts to stiffen. Do not let it get too stiff as you need to be able to spread it

9. Leave the cakes to cook on a wire rack once out of the oven. Wait until cooled completely before spreading the bottom layer with lemon curd and your whipped cream. Place the top layer on top of the lemon curd and whipped cream and dust with icing sugar.

10. Enjoy!

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Sticky Black Gingerbread

22 Mar

Another day, another recipe.

A girl that I used to work with made a fantastic batch of gingerbread for a Macmillan coffee morning competition that we held in the office last year. She took the recipe from the Leiths School Baking Bible and won the competition hands down. Her prize was a delightful bottle of Laurent Perrier champagne, lucky girl.

So, inspired by her fantastic baking, I decided to bake a batch myself. I have the book that she used at home and it had been sitting dormant on the shelf for a while so I put it to good use! I adapted my recipe to include nutmeg, which worked really well!

The result is a light, airy and fluffy gingerbread – It is best left for a day so that the flavour really has time to kick in.

Gingerbread

Ingredients

225g butter
225g dark muscovado sugar
225 black treacle
290ml full fat milk
340g plain flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs, beaten

Method
Pre-heat oven to 150degrees

1. Line a baking tin with parchment paper
2. Melt butter along with sugar and treacle in a saucepan. When melted, pour in milk and cool to room temperature
3. Sift flour with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, bicarbonate of soda and then stir in eggs and melted mixture (once cooled!)
4. Pour into the prepared tin and place into the oven for 1 hour. Cover the top of the cake with parchment paper after 45 minutes in the oven
5. Check the cake after an hour – you’ll know that it is cooked when a skewer comes out clean
6. Leave the gingerbread to cool and then cut into slices

Enjoy with a cuppa!

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Lime, Vanilla and Almond Madeleines

2 Feb

My first memory of Madeleines is on my family holiday in Ibiza. Bet you didn’t expect me to say that did you?

Well, there was a little bakery next to the hotel that we stayed in every year and most days I would take a wander down with my brother, buy a sweet treat for the family and take it back to the swimming pool.

They sold the most delicious Cream Cakes and Madeleines. I also had fun making my way through large packs that you could buy in the supermarket. I found them delicious – rich and sweet with a fantastic vanilla taste.

So I am surprised that I only baked them for the first time last week. I guess I had never got around to buying the special tin – until Lakeland had an offer on just before Christmas time. I spotted it and thought I’d give them a go.

I also received a great present through the post last week, which spurred me on even more. When I was on holiday in Australia, I baked some Chocoalte Chip Cookies and I was telling my boyfriend’s grandma how much I love to bake. I opened my post last week and she had sent me the brand new ‘Baking Made Easy’ by Lorraine Pascale with a little note saying that she had been watching her new TV programme and that she thought I’d like her book. I do, I love it.

Lorraine has a great recipe for Lemon and Hazelnut Madaleines but I didn’t have any Hazelnuts in the house so I substituted this for Ground Almonds. I also swapped the Lemon for Lime to mix things up a bit.

They turned out well with a lovely zesty lime flavour. I couldn’t really taste the Almond and I have a feeling that it had made them slightly heavier than they were supposed to be so next time I’ll make sure I stick to Hazelnuts.

Ingredients (Makes around 30)

I used sunflower oil for oiling the tin

4 large eggs
100g golden caster sugar
80g melted butter
1/2 vanilla pod, deseeded (you’ll need to use the seeds)
Pinch of salt
100g Nature Friendly plain flour
40g ground almonds
Zest of 2 limes

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180degrees and oil the madeleine tin

1. Whisk the eggs in a bowl (an electric mixer is very helpful here) until almost doubled in volume
2. Still whisking, tip sugar down the side and keep going until the mixture is light and mousse like. Stop whisking
3. Tip the melted butter down the side of the bowl, followed by the vanilla. Fold the mixture carefully so that you do not knock too much air out of the mixture
4. Add the salt and the flour little by little (I didn’t sift this and it was fine) and fold until a batter is formed
5. Add the ground almonds and lime zest and stir to combine (again making sure that you don’t knock any air out)
6. Pour into the madeleine tin and bake for 10 minutes or until they turn a golden brown colour
7. Unless you have a few tins, you’ll need to empty the baked madeleines onto a cooling tray, cool the tin with cold water, re oil and add the next batch of batter. I did this 3 times

Enjoy with a cuppa or a steaming mug of Hot Chocolate.

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