Victoria Sponge Cupcakes

I love Victoria Sponge, sweet light cake with a generous layer of strawberry jam and cream in the middle. I saw a picture of mini victoria sponges a while ago (I can't remember where) so I gave them a go myself. I made them for my sisters who aren't fans of cream so I just put jam in the middle of mine. If you do like cream, whip up a couple of tablespoons until it holds its shape and spread it on after the jam.

Ingredients
4oz (125g) butter, softened
4oz (125g) sugar
2 eggs, beaten
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
4oz (125g) plain gluten-free flour, sifted
1 level teaspoon baking powder
approx. 2 tablespoons strawberry jam

Blueberry and Lemon Baked Cheesecake

The Great British/American Bake Off: Part 2
It's been a while since my last bake-off with Jess from Baking in Brooklyn, and so here we are back with part 2. The theme this time is...JAM. You can find Jess's rival Jam post HERE.

Now I was all set to roll out some jam tarts or a jam rolly-polly, when Jess let slip that she's going to make the jam first. As my friends will vouch I am a teeny bit competitive (I did nearly break my arm in a tense game of rounders when my competitive streak won out...) So I decided to rise to the challenge! I made Blueberry Jam, check out the recipe HERE.

Today the second part of the bake-off commenced. What to make with the jam? I opted for cheesecake, which I adapted from a Rose Eliot recipe for Baked Lemon Cheesecake.

Blueberry and Lemon Baked Cheesecake

Ingredients
100g ground almonds
15g butter, softened
400g soft cheese (2 tubs)
2 eggs
150ml double cream
grated rind of 1 lemon
2 tbsp Roxanne's Blueberry Jam

Blueberry Jam

My homemade blueberry jam

I'm not a fan of excessive sugar in cooking and the idea of putting the same amount of sugar as fruit in jam is just ridiculous! After a lot of internet research and a look through my cookbooks I turned to my new favourite book The SuperJam Cookbook. I adapted my recipe from one in there, where it advised using white grape juice in place of sugar.

Roxanne's Blueberry Jam

Ingredients

1 litre purple grape juice

400g blueberries

2 tbsp lemon juice

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.

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

Red Nose Day Dodgers

Now I’ll be the first to say I do love a jammy dodger, the tasty shortbread with the yummy jam inside. So when I was researching a recipe to make for Red Nose Day I came across the perfect thing Red Nose Day raspberry cookies which I adapted to make my own jammy dodgers.
 

Red Nose Day Dodgers

Bakewell Tart

After promising to make a Bakewell Tart all week it was today I finally found the time. There was a great recipe in a book called The Great British Book of Baking. I followed the exact recipe (for once), and unusually it worked perfectly!

Jam thumb-prints

I made these after winning a copy of 'The Great British Book Of Baking'. They are a cakey-biscuit, and have a thumb-print full of (my homemade) jam in the centre. They are easy to make and taste great with a cup of tea. My tip for the future would be to make the thumb-prints slightly bigger so there is more room for tasty jam!