Mixed Berry Crumble Pudding

I had a friend coming round for dinner and I ummed and ahhed about what to make for dessert, basically key ingredients that needed eating were gooseberries, raspberries and an egg white. I'm quite proud of having made this dessert up ALL BY MYSELF, I didn't even glance at a recipe book.

Ingredients (to serve 4)
for the fruit:
250g gooseberries
1 tbsp light brown sugar
100g raspberries
for the topping:
50g butter
50g caster sugar
20g ground almonds
½ tsp baking powder
20g porridge oats
1 tbsp creme fraiche
20g rice flour
1 egg white

Marshmallow Teacakes

Move over Mr Tunnock, it's time to make marshmallow teacakes at home. The sense of satisfaction when these are made can never be rivalled by simply removing red-and-silver tin foil.
I adapted this recipe to suit my ingredients (the original is in Peyton and Byrne's baking book), and there are a number of possible alterations you can make. You can follow the original and use plain wheat flour and double cream in the biscuit base. If you prefer you can use dark chocolate to cover the teacakes, or even white chocolate if you want to give the teacakes a makeover. A good thing about this recipe is that the marshmallows don't contain any gelatin so it is suitable for vegetarians.

Mr Tunnock would be proud.

Ingredients: (to make 6 teacakes)

biscuit base:

30g butter, softened

30g caster sugar

1 egg yolk (reserve the white for the filling)

¼ tsp vanilla

1½ tsp crème fraîche 

55g rice flour

pinch each of baking powder and bicarbonate of soda

pinch of salt

marshmallow filling:

1 egg white

50g caster sugar

2 tsp golden syrup

pinch salt

¼ tsp vanilla

chocolate topping:

100g chocolate (milk/dark/mix), chopped into small pieces

B is for... Bourbons

So it's week 2 of my Baking the Alphabet challenge, after my success with custard creams I decided to try my hand at bourbons. They are a little time consuming to make, but it's totally worth it!

You will need: (to make 16)
50g butter
50g caster sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
110g plain flour (I used gluten-free strong white bread flour, but use normal plain flour if you have it)
15g cocoa (Green & Black's is best)
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
for the filling:
40g icing sugar
25g butter
½ tablespoon cocoa
1 teaspoon milk

Doughnut Cupcakes

My friend Sophie is having a birthday party this evening,  I wanted to bring along some kind of baked goods and decided these doughnut cupcakes were the perfect birthday treat! They aren't hard to make and are a nice change from regular cupcakes.

1. Put 250g self-raising flour (regular or gluten-free) and 1 tsp baking powder into a bowl. Dice 50g butter and rub in until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in 80g caster sugar.

Secret Chocolate Brownies

Now there is something a little bit special about these chocolate brownies, they have a shhhh secret ingredient. And this time it's not mashed potato...

Chocolate brownies - the 'healthy way'

Ingredients (to make 10)
50g dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids)
50g gluten-free plain flour
15g Green & Black's cocoa powder
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
25g caster sugar
25g light brown sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp skimmed milk
1 small egg
50g mayonnaise(!!)

Potato and Lemon Drizzle Cake

It was my sister's birthday last weekend, and I cooked up a delicious chocolate cake, unfortunately it didn't cook properly, so my mum had to make a second one, but the less said about that the better. I, meanwhile, was living a gluten-free nightmare. Jelly babies and chocolate buttons on her cake were calling to me. There was only one thing for it, I made a rival cake.

Unfortuntely I didn't have any flour, after a bit of web searching I came across a gluten-free lemon drizzle cake, and its secret ingredient? MASHED POTATO!!

Here's how I made it:

A is for... Anzac Biscuits

My next challenge 'Baking the Alphabet' began today. I had quite a hard time finding a recipe beginning with 'A' that I hadn't made before, and that didn't contain apple (long story). Eventually I found a recipe for Anzac Biscuits and decided to give them a go. They didn't look to be the most exciting of things (although having tasted them they are pretty good) so I decided to mix it up and make mine chocolate-coated. 

Anzac Biscuits have an interesting history. They are associated with the Australian and New Zealand Corps (ANZAC) which was established in World War I. It has been claimed that soldiers abroad were sent the biscuits by their wives as the ingredients didn't spoil and so would survive the transportation. I'm only transporting these across London, but it's good to know... 

I made my biscuits gluten-free by using rice flour, but use normal plain flour if you can.

You will need:

Blueberry Popovers

This recipe is both quick and easy. Popovers are basically American Yorkshire puddings. Here is a little poem I found to teach you the difference, it claims the popover came first...

Let's call Yorkshire pudding

A fortunate blunder:

It's a sort of popover

That turned and popped under. 

(Ogden Nash)

These blueberry ones are great for breakfast on the run or as a healthy dessert.

Strawberry Almond Cakes

After my recent biscuit baking binge I was left with a surplus of egg whites, so I cracked out one of my new recipe books and found these! The ground almonds in these cakes make them light and fluffy and the strawberries add a lovely sweetness.

Strawberry Almond Cakes

Ingredients (to serve 6)

3 egg whites

90g butter, melted

60g ground almonds

120g icing sugar, plus a bit extra for dusting

35g plain flour (I used a gluten-free blend, but normal is fine)

75g strawberries, thinly sliced

Little Lemon Biscuits

This biscuit dough recipe can easily be adapted for a variety of different flavours, I chose lemon today. Make sure you use real butter in this recipe and not 'I can't believe it's not butter' which makes the dough much harder to roll out! It makes between 30-40 biscuits depending on the size.

My next challenge - Baking the Alphabet

I was thinking about what to do for my next blog challenge, and I decided I would bake a brand-new recipe every week. One that I'd never made before. I was discussing this with my friends, and one of them said why not work your way through the alphabet.

I loved the idea, and so I'm starting with A (shocking I know!)

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know - especially for Q, X and Z...although luckily they are a while off yet...

Custard Creams

I had a baking marathon last night, unfortunately one batch of biscuits ended up in the bin, I didn't have time to cook the second, so these custard creams were the only one that emerged. The recipe is fairly simple if not a bit fiddly.

Ingredients:

175g butter

50g caster sugar

50g icing sugar

2 egg yolks

2 tsp vanilla extract

300g plain flour

For the filling:

50g butter

70g icing sugar

1 tbsp custard powder

Chocolate Chip Fairy Cakes

So last Friday was the start of 'summer hours', a perk of the publishing industry whereby you can leave work at 1pm on Fridays. To celebrate the start of this grand tradition I knocked up a batch of fairy cakes to take in for my work colleagues. Fairy cakes are one of the easiest things to make, brilliant for the novice baker to try, and you get to have lots of fun decorating them!

Victoria Sponge Cake

This is the second of the two birthday cakes I made, a traditional Victoria Sponge cake. They key is to have a really light sponge so don't over mix, and a good quality jam (homemade is best).

Ingredients:

175g butter, softened

175g caster sugar

175g self-raising flour

½ tsp vanilla extract

 3 eggs

150ml double cream

4 tbsp strawberry or raspberry jam

Chocolate Fudge Birthday Cake

A couple of weeks ago I went to a joint birthday party for two of my friends. I decided I would bake them a cake, and set about 'subtly' finding out their favourite. Basically I told them I was doing a 'straw poll for my blog' and asked what their favouite cake was. This is where my plan fell down Rowan said Chocolate Fudge and Dave said Victoria Sponge - so I ended up making two! Here's the first one:

Chocolate Fudge Cake

That time when it all went wrong

If you're a regular reader of my blog you can be forgiven for thinking I'm a bit of a baking genius, all of my recipes are perfect and I regularly produce works of art that look like this... 

But actually I didn't make that, and there are times when things go very wrong.


Today I decided to make a Roasted tomato, basil and Parmesan quiche (see photo above) as I had bought some gluten-free pastry. I've never bought ready-made pastry before so the whole experience was a little new to me. The package instructions said to defrost in the fridge, but I wanted to use it straight away so I thought it can't hurt to stick it in the microwave to defrost right? Wrong. I cooked it in the microwave. This meant that it crumbled when I tried to roll it. 

Lovely Lemon Pud

Despite owning all twelve of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks I rarely cook from them. I'm not sure why, perhaps the sheer volume of them overwhelms me. My friend Sophie made this for me a while ago and it was so tasty and didn't look overly complicated. I had a friend round for dinner so after serving up home-made pizza and home-made chips I cracked out this lemon pud!

Raspberry Flapjack

 I was flicking through a friend's BBC GoodFood magazine when I came to a section with recipes that cut back on refined sugar. I made these tasty flapjacks the same evening! They were so quick to make - only took about 20 minutes, including baking time.

Preheat oven to 220°C/gas 7 and grease a 20x20cm baking tin. In a pan melt 50g butter with 75g clear honey and a pinch of salt. Take off the heat and stir in 200g rolled oats and 50g ground almonds. 

Rhubarb and Custard Cake

I LOVE custard, not just a little bit,  like those people who have it with crumble or spotted dick, I actually love it. If I could eat just one food for the rest of my life it would be custard (don't worry I won't challenge myself to a week of just eating custard...) 

If I've got time I'll make it from scratch, but bought custard is pretty tasty. And at aged 20 I discovered you could buy it in cans - a miracle! 

Anyway I digress, I had some rhubarb that my mum had given me from her garden. After some internet research I found this recipe, it originally served 16 so I scaled it down, decreased the sugar and added more CUSTARD.

Ingredients (to serve 4)
200g rhubarb, ends cut off and any stringy bits removed
20g soft brown sugar
60g butter, softened
50g caster sugar
100g ready-made custard (I used Ambrosia, you can use custard made from scratch if you have lots of time)
70g self-raising flour
¼ tsp baking powder
1 large egg
few drops vanilla extract
icing sugar, for dusting

Quick Chocolate Pudding with Custard

The farmers are rejoicing, weeks of no rain and it's finally come to the south-east of England. Being a farmer's daughter I definitely appreciate the necessity of it, however, it certainly made my commute a bit miserable, and so by the time I got home I was in the mood for some comfort food. I whipped up these puddings in less than 10 minutes and they were in the oven before I'd taken my raincoat off. They are relatively healthy as they have no butter and not much sugar, so you can enjoy them without feeling guilty. 

Gingernuts

I recently had a sudden craving to bake gingernuts, I wasn't sure why and then it hit me, they were featured in one of the guest posts, check it out here.
Try as I might I couldn't find a recipe for gingernut biscuits that used fresh ginger. I have the whole Jamie Oliver collection, no gingernuts there (although he uses shop bought ones in one of his recipes). Any other recipe I came across were full of golden syrup which I didn't have.
So I made up this recipe, using fresh ginger and ingredients that I found in my cupboards!

Ingredients (to make 12 small biscuits)
50g/2oz butter, softened
25g/1oz soft dark brown sugar
20g/¾oz (about 2 tsp) molasses
25g/1oz cashews, finely chopped (or any kind you have)
thumb-sized piece of ginger (about ½ inch across), peeled and finely chopped

½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp ground ginger
75g/3oz wholemeal rye flour

Granola Bars

Firstly, I want to say a MASSIVE thanks to all those who contributed a guest post. I loved reading what other people have been making, and it has filled me with inspiration! It feels good to be back in the hot-seat though!


When I'm at work and need a snack I often turn to cereal bars, I have found a few healthy ones (where I can pronounce all of the ingredients, and sugar isn't the number one ingredient), but they are expensive and tend not to be very filling. 


My recipe does contain sugar, but considerably less than a lot of the granola bar recipes I found.  Although they aren't particularly low in calories or fat (175 calories and 6.7g per bar) they give good slow-releasing carbs from the oats and fruits and have good fat from the seeds and nuts. The great thing about these granola bars is you can substitute whatever you have in your cupboard for the ingredients below, as long as you keep the ratio of wet and dry ingredients more or less the same. For example you could try pumpkin seeds instead of sunflower seeds, hazelnuts instead of walnuts and apricots instead of figs.

Roxanne's Granola Bars