Very Best Chocolate Fudge Cake

I made this cake this time last week, and put it in the freezer, ready to take away with us.
I have actually made it once before, having been given the recipe by my mum, so I knew it was a good one, and would go down well with our holiday hosts.
The sponge mix was straight forward, and so too was the icing. I think part of what makes it such a nice cake is that warmed apricot jam is spread over the sponges before icing. You don't really notice the flavour of the apricot, but it helps to make the cake moist.
Everyone really enjoyed it, and with 10 of us, it didn't last very long! We had it for dessert, served with creme fraiche - in an attempt to reduce the calories!!!
You would not have known that it had been frozen, apart from a slight loss of shine on the icing - I should say that the photo was taken pre freezing.

Pound Cake

 As I mentioned in my last post, we have just got back from a short holiday. Our friends very kindly had us to stay, which we really appreciate. It's no small ask to have 6 of us!
I felt that the least I could do was to take some cake up with us, so I made this pound cake, mainly with the adults in mind, and also a chocolate cake for the kids - although the adults all ate it too!
This cake was very tasty, although as you can see from the picture, the fruit sank to the bottom.
Having just looked up the "baking tips" section of the Baking Bible, Mary says that "if fruit sinks to the bottom of the cake, it means that either the mixture was too runny to support the fruit, the fruit was too wet, or the wrong fat was used". I am not actually sure which one of these was the cause of my sinking fruit. I can't really remember, having baked it a week ago. Besides, it still tasted very nice, and managed to score 8.5!
My favourite fruit cake is still the quick boiled one.

Chocolate American Muffins

As I type, my birthday cake is baking in the oven! We only got home from a  few days away, this afternoon, and with my birthday being tomorrow, I thought I had better make myself a cake - photos to follow!
These muffins were made over a week ago, in fact it was another beans on toast Tuesday, and I thought the kids could do with a treat!
I'm not sure if its because they are "american" muffins, but they taste quite different to muffins that I have made in the past. These were more like a bun, in fact, Ad said that he thought they tasted quite like a dense brioche. They were still well received, and we gave them 7.5 There are two other muffin recipes in the book, so it will be interesting to see if they are similar.

Iced Animal Biscuits

 I made these biscuits this morning, with the help of Nathan. They were simple to make, although, Mary's suggestion of 50 biscuits is probably rather optimistic  Also, I needed to add quite a bit more flour as the dough mixture was very sticky.
I took them along to the baby shower with me this afternoon, and they went down very well.
I have to say that I did enjoy decorating them, and was pleased to discover that the edible pen that is supposed to write on icing, also writes straight onto biscuit! Hopefully the white icing looks like a nappy and not Y-fronts!
They were fairly tasty, but not really delicious - hopefully what they lacked in flavour, they made up for in looks! We would give them 7.5

We are out all day tomorrow, so there will be no Sunday afternoon baking - let's hope we don't get withdrawal symptoms!

Basic all-in-one Sponge Traybake

I am not sure why anyone would make this traybake, when there are all sorts of delicious alternatives in the book. However, as I must make everything, (and really don't want to make anything twice unless I have to!), I set about making this yesterday, with a sneaky idea in mind. Today I went to a baby shower, and when I offered to bake something, I was asked to make the lemon traybake. So, having followed the recipe for the basic sponge mix, I cut  four pieces and took this photo - not a lemon in sight! I tasted a bit of the sponge, and it was fine, quite light but nothing special, probably about a 7.0.
I then proceeded to slice the rest of the cake in half, and spread it with lemon curd, to make up for the fact that there was no lemon rind in the cake. I then made the icing sugar and lemon juice topping and spread it over the top! No one would ever know, in fact I think the lemon curd was a nice addition.

Quick Boiled Fruit Cake

I made this on Thursday as we had visitors coming on Friday. It is boiled in the sense that you heat up condensed milk with butter and cherries. Oh, and I have just realised, looking at the book that you are also supposed to boil the fruit as well. As you may have guessed, I left it out, and added it after, along with the eggs and flour. Thankfully, you would never know. This cake is delicious - probably the best fruit cake so far, with perhaps the exception of Adam's birthday cake. We scored this 9.5
There is a small slice remaining today, so I guess the boys can fight it out amongst themselves!

Anzac Biscuits

Tuesday evenings are always really busy and we often end up having beans on toast for tea. Tonight was no exception. I tend to feel a bit guilty about this - not that beans on toast isn't healthy, and not that I don't cook proper meals the rest of the week, but it just seems a bit inadequate.

*** we interrupt this blog to make a statement  - yes, beans on toast is inadequate! But if we get cakes or biscuits, we don't mind! signed Adam n kids *** 

Thank you Ad, anyway, this feeling of guilt made me turn to the Baking Bible.
In the book, these Anzac biscuits are also known as Diggers. They are an Australian biscuit, and as Mary says, they are really easy to make. What she does not say is that they are really yummy.
She said that they made 45. I actually made 35, as I thought they seemed a bit small. They spread quite a bit, but I managed to fit them on the two trays.
They cooled very quickly, which was a good job, as I had several, clearly malnourished children - not to forget Adam, queuing up to taste them. They were very very good, and come highly recommended, especially as they get a thumbs up in the new TnT test - taste n time.  A score of 9.5 for taste, and 9.5 for time. Not sure I will give all bakes a TnT rating, but you get the idea. You must bake these, although, not if you are on a diet - I had no idea just how much saturated fat is in coconut. Oh well, if you only have beans on toast for tea, its ok!!!!
p.s we gave away a dozen to our neighbours to help share the calories around! I bet you wished you lived in our street!

Swiss Roll

I confess that I made this at 9am last Sunday morning before going to church. Actually, it only took me 30mins from start to finish, and I even managed to practise the piano while it was baking.
I already had the cream whipped - it was left over from the meringues, and it only took a very short time to fill and roll up.
Compared to the hours spent making chocolatines and mokatines, this was a dream, and was very well received by the kids at lunchtime.
It scored 8.5 for taste, but in some ways it should get more because it was so quick and easy to make. Maybe I should start a new rating of taste compared to effort. This would score highly.

Chocolatines & Mokatines

 These are not for the faint hearted! Of all the recipes that I have made, these have been the most effort, and while they were very tasty - receiving 8.0, I wanted them to be fantastic!
Although they did look pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself!
So if they were so much effort, why did I make both of them at the same time? Well, when I looked at the recipe for the chocolatines, I realised that I did not have the right size tin, and also that they only made 9 cakes. I noticed that the mokatines had the same basic sponge mixture, so thought I would make enough for both in a larger tin, and get two difficult bakes out of the way at the same time. Thankfully, I did this stage of the baking on Friday, and left the icing until Saturday morning.
The icing, now there's a story! You may think that this is just ordinary butter icing - wrong, this is "creme au beurre chocolate", translated, "very complicated chocolate icing that tastes just a bit better than ordinary butter icing, and is a nightmare to make"!
Firstly, I had to make a syrup mixture from sugar and water. Unfortunately on my first attempt, I heated it for too long, and when I added it to the egg yolks, it went completely hard, like a lump of brittle toffee. I had to abandon this and start all over again. The second time was much better, and I remembered to get the mixer going before slowly adding the syrup. Butter and chocolate were then added after that.
The decorating of the chocolatines was quite fun, although by this time I was feeling a bit stressed, especially knowing that I still had more sponge to make the mokatines with.
What I had failed to notice was that the mokatines required not one type of icing, but two. For the inside of the cakes - the bit that no one was going to see, I needed to make a ridiculously small amount of "creme au beurre moka" Help! This was to be followed by soft coffee icing which would cover the cakes.
I took a momentous decision to disobey Mary, and only make the soft coffee icing. I just couldn't face making syrup again, and decided that no one would have the first clue, or even care about what I had done! Adam says that I have "crossed the Rubicon" now!
Now, I don't tend to look at the other baking bible blog (rising to the Berry) very often, unless I am not sure how things should look, but thankfully this time I did, and learned that the recipe needed more soft icing than Mary suggested, (and especially if I was going to use it as filling as well) and also needed to be left until it went a little bit firm.
Cutting a long story short, I managed to ice them, and although they were not quite as pretty the chocolatines, the coffee ones were more popular.
The verdict was, very pretty, pretty tasty, but never again!

Basic White Meringues

Apologies that I am behind with my blogging again. Where does the time go? Anyway, last weekend, Adam and I went to a friend's 25th Wedding Anniversary party. Once again, it was a good opportunity to offer to bake, so I made these meringues, as well as the chocolatines and mokatines  - these will appear on the next post.
I used Mary's basic white meringue recipe, and piped the mini meringue shapes onto the baking parchment. It made 20, so I did two batches as I was planning to sandwich them together, and I didn't think 10 would be enough. As it turned out, one 11year old boy managed to eat 5, and no, it wasn't Ben!! They were very well received, and although dipping them in chocolate (my idea, not Mary's, well, actually something my mum used to do with her meringues) was rather a pain, and quite messy, it really did add to the taste and texture! They received a score of 9.0, and were demolished very quickly.

Strawberry Dessert Cake

I prepared this completely on Saturday and kept it in the fridge overnight. I then baked it on Sunday for lunch, and we had it warm with creme fraiche (we thought we'd be healthy and have that instead of cream!!). It was delicious, and everyone in our family liked it, although some of them  picked the flaked almonds off the top!
It was very easy to make, and I would definitely recommend it as a prepare in advance pudding.
The mixture is thicker than a usual cake mix. Half of it goes in the bottom of the tin, this is followed by quite a thick layer of freshly sliced strawberries, and then covered by the rest of the cake mix. The strawberries when cooked go lovely and soft, and almost like a jam.
Mary says it also works well with fresh sliced peaches, and is excellent with apples. Will be sure to make this one again - once I have finished baking all the other recipes in the book. 68 baked, only 150 to go!
It scored 9.0, and although it was nice cold, it was definitely better warm.

Crunchy Orange syrup loaves

On Saturday afternoon, I was about to make a banana loaf with some rather over ripe bananas - having made all the other banana recipes in the book apart from banoffee pie-  when I spotted this recipe on the opposite page. I decided that it would be better to bake something new rather than make the banana loaf again, so the kids ended up having a smoothie instead.
This recipe says to make two 1lb loaves, but I only own one 1lb tin, so I made a 21b one instead, and just baked it for longer than it said.
Mary says that these loaves "may not look madly exciting, but they are very popular and delicious". Well, not in our house. The trouble is that I think we are now getting spoiled, and have become more fussy about our cakes. This only scored 7.0, and most of it got eaten by Tom. He finished it off in his lunch box today - he's not complaining!

Very Best Scones

I managed to go 5 days without doing any baking last week, so by Saturday I was raring to go!
As it happened, Adam was helping some of our neighbours cut down a large tree in their garden, so I thought I would make some scones for the workers.
The cutter that I used was a bit small, and I managed to get 30 scones instead of 20 - still, they looked very sweet, and I was able to put 10 in the freezer.
They went down very well, and everyone thought how light they were - especially with all the cream and jam!!
I can't remember what they scored, but they were very good, so probably about 8.5