Chocolate Blackout Cake

I'm always on the look out for REALLY good chocolate cake recipes, this one is brilliant.
I made it for my husbands birthday and the cake mix got the seal of approval from both me and my daughter while making it (it was hard putting it in the cake tin, we wanted to eat it all).

It was super easy and seemed to take being Gluten free really well as it already had lots of moisture.
I didn't have any buttermilk in so I did the old Milk and lemon juice trick and just upped the liquids a touch and added a tsp of Xanthan gum.

This will probably be my new go to recipe for chocolate cake - I was that impressed with it! (did I mention it was easy).

The chocolate pudding was pretty tasty but MESSY. I did the whole cover it in pudding and crumble a layer thing, and it just looked like a chocolate crumby messy blob. It wasnt attractive (so bad I didnt take a picture) so I think next time I shall use a different filling and definitely not do that crumb coating.
I think the pudding recipe will probably come in handy for something else I'm sure - my husband said he thought it tasted like really thick chocolate milkshake which I was taking for a good thing as he likes chocolate milkshake!

Gluten free Pancakes (crepe style)

So it was pancake day the other day and I meant to post this on the day, but I failed at both taking any photo's and actually finding time to post.

I made these crepes based on Tartelette's and they were AMAZING. I love that blog so much - she's a real foodie and un-comprimising on taste so I know when I take a look at one of her recipes they are always going to be great, not just OK but great and I wasnt disapointed with these :)

So I made mine with honey baked pears - which were scrummy, I also had lemon and sugar, maple syrup, and Nutella. I was stuffed.

I have also discovered that my ideal balance of Sorghum flour to Doves GF Plain flour is about 15% - any more than that and the taste is too much, and they are too heavy for me but 15% seems jut perfect in terms of flavour and texture.

210g GF plain flour
40g Sorghum flour
pinch of salt
500g whole milk
3 eggs
15g Butter (melted)
125g Sparkling water

Stick blend everything together until smooth and let rest for at least 1hr (or overnight). Cover the bottom of a frying pan and then cook 2mins each side.

I'm pretty sure this will also make good Yorkshire puds and/or batter to cover things to fry although I havnt actually tried yet but it's definately going to be my go-to recipe from now on.

February - So many cakes so little time!

I've been baking I promise!

Things have been busy, we're getting a new garage, the baby is less baby and more toddler it feels a bit like I've short cricuited recently but I'm still working on things. I'm trying to write things out so eventually I'll have a lovely book that will be organised and make sense. It's a dream (;

So things I have learnt recently? That Gram flour doesnt work in very plain tasting cakes, you can definately taste it as something that just isn't right. It's been annoying me, I'm far too particular but it does seem like if the recipe is suitably enriched with eggs that actually it doesnt seem to matter too much as long as you've still got the xanthan gum in and you give it some time to 'rest' you're getting the extra protien in the eggs and it seems to balance out ok.

This week I'll try making pound cake again, but without the Gram flour.

Last week I made oreo's. I cant tell you how happy it made me I had to send off for some special cocoa powder, black cocoa is basically impossible to get a hold of for some reason but Hershey's special dark is good. It's not perfect but it's pretty close. The bit I was most excited about was getting a biscuit that wasnt shortbread. Custard creams might be next on the biscuit list. But yeah, biscuits that CRUNCH and don't just crumble when you look at it. I was pretty happy, if you use normal cocoa it might not taste quite as 'mellow' but they will still be really good I promise. Also brilliant Brownies that are also pretty frugal (well they don't use real chocolate that makes them a bit frugal, ahem except for the whole block of butter).

So recipes!

Yorkshire puddings

I messed around with the yshire pud recipe and it just wasnt working out for me again. I have some kind of yorkshire pudding curse I think. I'll keep working on it but this was the one I had most success with.

200g GF Plain flour
1tsp Legume Flour (Gram)
1tsp xanthan Gum
1/2tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
150ml milk
150ml Sparkling water
2 eggs
2 egg whites 
Oil or vegetable shortening or lard

Sieve dry ingrediants into a bowl.
Combine milk and eggs and egg whites. Add the sparkling water.
Add Liquid ingrediants to the dry, whisking until a smooth batter is formed.
Rest for 20mins.
Heat oven to 220C, Add oil to tray and heat for 10mins.
Ladle into tins and bake for 10mins turn temp down to 180C bake for another 20mins.

I think next time I'll skip the legume flour and just go with 5 whole eggs.

Chocolate Muffins

These chocolate muffins cake out pretty good:

Chocolate Muffins

150g Plain GF Flour
10g legume flour
4g Xanthan gum
1tsp Baking powder
200g light brown sugar
200g baking margerine (or room temp butter)
4 eggs
50g cocoa powder
150g Milk
100g chocolate chips or chocolate bar chopped into small (5mm) pieces.

Sift flours, gum and baking powder together and put to one side.
Using electric whisk mix sugar and margerine until pale and fluffy, add eggs and whisk until combined.
Add cocoa powder and whisk until combined.
Add milk and combine, and flour mix and whisk until smooth.
Stir in chocolate chips/chunks and divide into cupcake tray lined with paper cases.
Bake for 14mins 200C.

I did these Blueberry ones too but they were too oily and I think next time I wouldnt use the Gram flour there is enough egg in the recipe to skip it I think, I've done some before and they were lovely so Im not sure where I went wrong but I'll have another go sometime soon and amend it:

Gluten Free Blueberry Muffins

100g Olive Oil
150g Sugar
3 Eggs
75g Milk
1tsp Vanilla extract
150g Plain Gluten Free Flour
7g Gram Flour
3g Xanthan gum
1tsp Baking powder
100g Blueberrys (fresh or frozen)

Pre-heat oven to 200C
In a bowl mix oil, sugar, egs, milk and vanilla together until combined.
Sift the flour, gram flour, xanthan gum and baking powder into the bowl and mix together until smooth.
Mix in blueberrys and leave to stand for 15mins.
Bake for 14mins.

These are just SO GOOD. Seriously good.

Brownies (tray bake tin)
250g Butter
250g Sugar
100g Cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1tsp vanilla extract
5 eggs
50g Milk
130g GF flour
3g Xanthan Gum
4g Legume Flour
Optional: 140g Chopped walnuts

Melt butter, sugar, salt and cocoa together either in a bowl over gently simmering water or in a microwave (20secs, stir then 20secs more stir and check if any further time is required).
The chocolate mix should look gritty, but all the butter should be melted.
With an electric mixer add eggs, vanilla and milk until combined. Then sift in the flour, xanthan gum, and legume flour and mix until smooth batter. Stir in nuts if desired.
Bake in oven for 25mins at 160C.



Oreo style cookies
150g Vegetable shortening
200g Sugar
200g GF flour
4g xanthan gum
6g Legume flour
90g Hersheys Special dark cocoa powder (or green and blacks cocoa powder)
1 egg
80g milk
1/2tsp salt
1/4tsp baking soda

Cream sugar and shortening.
Add egg, and milk and cocoa powder.
Sift together flour, xanthan gum, legume flour and add along with salt and baking soda.
Mix until combined, divide into 4 and leave to chill in fridge for 30mins.
Roll each ball out inbetween two pieces of greaseproof paper about 3mm thick. Cut out disks of about 4cm wide.
Bake for 12mins at 160C, leave to cool then bake again 40mins at 100C (to make them crunchy).

GF Pasties

So with the xmas leftovers I made pasties and had a go at making some pastry. I should have used more gravy but they were ok - the pastry I used however tasted like Shortbread. Which was a bit wierd. I used half butter half vegetable shortening and the texture was really good, it was really easy  to roll out so I think it will make a brill pastry for sweet things like tarts and next time I will try using all Vegetable shortening and roll it out a bit thinner and see if that tastes less like Shortbread!!

I'll post the recipe for that when I'm happier with it.

Fizzy Pop cake

So for xmas I needed a cake for after dinner, I ran out of time I wasnt sure what to make so I went with Delia Smiths Chocolate Stout cake recipe and changed it to use cola instead - because that was all I had. It was good.

Then in a moment of madness I amended it again and made it with Lemonade. And it was GOOD. Felt like I had achieved something worthwhile!

So here are the recipes (makes enough for 12 good sized cupcakes or 2 small round cakes):

Chocolate Cola Cake:

180g Plain GF flour
40g Chocolate powder
100g Baking Marg or softened Butter
10g Gram (Besan) Flour
4g Xanthan Gum
1tsp Baking powder (heaped)
3 eggs
200g Brown Sugar
200ml Cola

Cream together sugar and marg. Add eggs. Sift flour, gram flour, xanthan gum and baking powder into mix, and fold in. Mix a little cola with the cocoa powder into a paste, then gradually add the rest of the cola and slowly mix together. Add this mix in stages to the dry ingrediants until combined.
Pour into baking tins and let sit for 15mins.
Bake 17mins and 200C.

Lemonade Cake:

200g Plain GF flour
100g Baking Marg or softened Butter
10g Gram (Besan) Flour
4g Xanthan Gum
1tsp Baking powder
3 eggs
200g Sugar
200ml Lemonade

Cream together sugar and marg. Add eggs. Sift flour, gram flour, xanthan gum and baking powder into mix, and fold in. Add Lemonade mix together until combined.
Pour into Baking tray and let sit for 15mins.
Bake 17mins and 200C.

You could swap the cola for Dr pepper or Dandelion and Burdock or Cherry Cola, and the lemonade for almost any fizzy pop. Make sure if the pop you are using has sweeteners in it that they are heat stable - do your own research! (eg I think that Sucralose might be OK but Aspartame may not be so good - this link may help).

I decided to write a book about everything I'm playing with - I'll still put up the recipes on here though because I'm nice like that - but hopefully when I'm done the book will make more sense and be easier to read.

Recognisable Bread! Yorkshire puddings and other stuff

So I seem to have been have some bad making Mojo recently, I recognise my brain isnt really in the right place and so my baking has been suffering - HOWEVER I did make the closest thing the bread I have yet using Richard Coppedge's recipe (they were SO CLOSE, fluffy on the inside with a really good crust like a baguette but I didnt keep them in the oven long enough and they were a bit soggy still inside).

Also I made the most amazing coffee cream puffs ever. I kept checking the flour because they were so good, and didnt taste GF.
So good infact I forgot to take photo's of them. I'll make some more and post pics later along with the recipe.

Made some pretty decent Yorkshire puddings too, but I think I can improve on them so I'll do some more tweaks before I post that.

I did try and make a pizza base using the bread recipe, but I messed up the order of ingredients and while they didnt come out bad when I pre-baked them, the bases ended up really soggy when I put toppings on. So I need to look into how to avoid that.

So anyway - I just need to persevere and get my head back in the kitchens space these recipe have so much potential (preferably before I go broke from buying so much GF flour!!).
I decided to buy his book from 2008, knowing that the flour blend he uses is a bit out of date BUT his techniques are where it's at and I wanted to see what other interesting ways of doing things he's got. He's got a new book out next year which I might get as well depending on how things go to keep myself updated with how he's doing things.
I nearly died when I opened it - there's recipes for stollen, and doughnuts, sandwich bread, puff pastry. The new year is going to be full of fatty delicious foods by the looks of it! very excited to have a go with it all.

Testing testing - Gluten Free Pancakes.

So this is a bit later than I'd hoped, partly because Asda had run out of the GF flour and partly because I had a stomach bug. No one want panckes made when you've been ill!.

So Step one:
Time to adjust my trusty Doryaki recipe. I choose this recipe because I know it works and makes lovely pancakes with normal flour. Basically it's a lovely soft sweet scotch pancake - fingers crossed it still will be when we're finished!

4 Medium eggs
60g Sugar
60g Honey
1 tsp Baking soda, dissolved in 1 tbsp water
240g GF flour (Doves Farm Plain)
9g Gram Flour
8g powdered egg white
3g xanthan gum
40ml Corn/Sunflower oil
80ml Milk
60-80ml Milk
So the orginal recipe uses 30ml of milk and from what we know about GF flour we-re going to need more as it's thirsty Richard Coppedge recipe 3/4 (around 180ml) milk but uses less eggs.
As a rough guide I tend to add around 2tbsp (30ml) more fluid per 100g GF flour so we're looking at possibly an extra 60-80ml milk maybe we'll see how the batter looks and if we need to add a bit more.

Lucky me when I ordered the Gram flour from Asda what I got was exactly what I wanted - Besan Flour which is a combination of Chana Dal and Yellow pea!

From what I worked out last time, for the whole recipe we'll need around 9g Gram Flour, 8g powdered egg white, and 3g xanthan gum and all I'm going to do is add the gram flour and egg white to the flour and mix it gently with a hand whisk and I'll add the xanthan gum in with the 80ml milk to let it's do it's work as a hydro-colloid (lightly whisking with a fork to incorporate at first - it'll look a bit gunky after it's rested for a while, give it a quick stir before adding it in) - I'm going to add that bit of the milk to the mix before letting it rest (remember thirsty flour!)

Wow! It looks like a stretchy dough at this stage! That's pretty interesting something is definitely doing it's job pretending to be Gluten in this.

We're still going to let is rest, so the the flours have a chance to soak up some moisture. I'm then use the 60-80ml to loosen up the dough to make it a looser batter to fry, it needs to be runny enough to fall off the spoon but thick enough to keep a bit of shape (a lot is down to personal preference anyway so make it to the thickness you want!)

The mix didn't flatten quite a well as I'd hoped and was making quite chunky pancakes so I used the back of a spoon to help smooth it out a bit - this seemed to work pretty well. You need to be very careful with the heat of the frying pan, too hot and they will just burn, you want a pretty low heat 2 or 3 on mine works about right for me, but I had mine too high to start with and they ended up burnt.
If you want to pipe pancake shapes/patterns this batter will be pretty good.

Mine tasted off...so off in fact I decided I better check my ingredients and discovered my oil was out of date by about 6months (this is what happens when you have a baby). Gross.

Apart from their rancid taste - the pancake texture and colour was really good so I will try again but with different oil next time!!

Gluten Free - Flour blend? No thanks. (As yet untested Maths)

So the Craftsy video I was talking about is done by a guy called Richard Coppedge from America's Culinary Institute - which is basically a technical school for people in catering. He's been working with Gluten free things for a long time, and has also written a book which has very mixed reviews and is now a bit out of date with his current methods but sounds like it has lots of useful recipes in.

His idea is to create flour blends with the right mix of protein and gums to replace Gluten in recipes, which while might be more effective for catering isnt quite as useful (and is pretty expensive) for us casual once in a while bakers so my plan is to adapt his recipe using a ready bought pre-mix of Gluten free flours and then adding the right percentage of proteins/gums needed for the right recipes.
For this I will refer to my good friend Bo Friberg (I don't actually know him, but his pastry chef book is sooooo useful). In his book he explains about bakers percentages - so I'll use that to work out what weights of the protein/gum additives I need.

I think it's probably important to talk about technique a bit here - baking with GF flour doesn't have the same risks as flour with gluten in one sense as over beating it wont make much different with the flour, what it will make a difference with is the Gum's you add. So be careful with that, over mix the gum and you're probably going to end up with a chewy product.

It sounded to me from the Richard Coppedge's book reviews that the recipes were sound, but based on a lot of baking experience and that the techniques used were important to the final product so people who just wanted to throw something together wern't getting much joy out of it.

My first and most dangerous step is to substitute some of the ingredients he uses. I am doing this with the full knowledge that results may change from this, but the ingredients he uses are expensive and hard to get. Depending on the results I might invest in some of those ingredients, but I'm not made of money - neither are most people so I wanted to bare that in mind.

Rather than use Yellow Pea flour (for those of us in the UK there is ONE mill in Scotland that produces this and it's definitely not cheap) I'm substituting with Gram flour which is made with chickpeas - it has a similar level of protein but may have a slightly more bitter taste something I will need to look out for in testing.

Rather than use Guar gum I'm going to use Xanthan gum, because I already have it and it is now very easy to source (you can get it from most supermarkets now). I am aware there is a debate around it, and if I find the recipes work well I think I will most likely invest in buying some guar gum and see if it makes much difference. Guar Gum seems a much more natural product and I havnt heard as many people complaining that it causes them as much problems as Xanthan gum but for now it's what I've got and it should work in a very similar way.

To avoid having to faff around too much I'm going to use a pre-bought flour blend which will either be Doves farm GF plain flour or Asda's own brand (both are pretty similar) which is a mix of rice and other GF flours and starch's.

So at the moment Richard Coppedge is using 2 blends of flour, one high in protein, one with just the gum and he mixes them together to create the right blend depending on the recipe.

His high protein blend looks like this:

412g GF Flours (white rice, brown rice)
340g Starch (potato starch)
71g Pea flour
64g Powdered egg white
24g Guar Gum

His low protein mix looks like this:
714 GF Flours (white rice, brown rice, Sorghum, Buckwheat) 
185g Starch (Potato, tapioca)
7g Guar Gum

So you can see quite clearly blend A has more starch, protein and gum to create structure and elasticity where B would be a much more crumbly 'tender' affair - we're talking bread vs cake.

Because the flour blends I will use already contain some starch, I need to take into account that blend  contains quite a bit more so I may consider adding some additional corn flour at some point.

So how does this look in bakers percentage? I'm going to ignore the starch for now and lump it in with the flour for simplicity.

Blend A:
Flour and Starch 100%
Pea flour 9.5%
Egg white 8.5%
Guar Gum 3%

Blend B:
Flour and Starch 100%
Guar Gum 0.7%

My scales don't do less than 1g so I will need to round up, but basically for recipes I would have used bread flour in for every 100g of plain flour mix I will need 10g of legume flour (in my case Gram flour), 9g of egg white and 3g of Gum

And for recipes that would have used cake flour for every 100g flour I will need to use 1g of xanthan gum.

Realistically there will be recipes that will combine the 2, for example his pancake recipe called for a ratio of 3:5 of mixes A and B so very roughly per 100g I'd want to use around 4g Gram flour,  3g of egg white and 2g of Xanthan gum.

This is all looking very precise so I'm afraid those teaspoons and tablespoons might have to retire and it's time to invest in some digital scales.

Just for reference his Muffin mix used a ratio of 1:1 so you'd want to halve it, the same for pie crusts and also the non enriched bread recipe. So we're talking for 100g plain GF flour - 5g Gram flour, 4g egg white, 2g xanthan gum. Remember we're having to round up the 0.5gs so if you're using a larger measure say 200g then remember to calculate from scratch as numbers will be quite different otherwise.

I found a copy of his recipe for pate a choux online which used his old formula's for the flour blends but seemed be a ration of 1.5:1 of equivalent blends so rounding up we'll call it 2:1 - 100g plain GF flour, 7g Gram flour, 6g egg white, 2g xanthan gum.

Phew.

Next time - Some actual experiments to see if any of this actually works!

Going Gluten Free

I never did really catch up on posting on here, but I have added a few recipes to the website as I've made them.

Something terrible happened when I tried to lose some baby weight a few months back...I discovered I was wheat/gluten intolerant. As someone who loves all things carby and made of wheat this was a bit heartbreaking. Especially after I tried eating some GF bread.

Now I've had a bit of time to get used to it it's not so bad, I have lost over stone just from cutting it out and not really any other effort which is great, and I feel a lot better generally. Turns out it was causing all the lower back ache, and joint ache I was getting, not to mention the panic attacks (seriously - I NEVER would have associated them with eating wheat, but there is a definite correlation), my eczema also weirdly got loads better - again something I wouldnt have associated with it. So it's a good thing.
Just sometimes I really want fluffy bread or a doughnut.

I did get a blood test for coeliacs, which came back negative, so I'm lucky in the sense that if I do break and scoff a doughnut, I'm not actually damaging myself (but I WILL regret it for about 3/4 days afterwards with a bad stomach, and some emotional freaking out).

So anyway I've been learning a lot the last few months and I thought I'd pick up this blog again and share. Going GF is a bit of a nightmare and can be a bit confusing so I think it's helpful to read other people's tips.

I live in the UK and surprisingly I've found that Asda seem to have the best GF own brand alternative foods so far. Which was a massive surprise to me. Their bread is pretty decent (and handily split into 2 vacuum packed halves) and their pasta actually tastes like pasta and doesnt dissolve in water (I'm looking at you Heinz pasta).
Something I am also beginning to learn is not to trust the cooking instructions on the packets, I get the feeling they often just copy it from the 'real' packaging which means it doesnt often work that well. Take the pasta for instance - cook it as per instructions and it turns into a mass of chewy half cooked stuck together horror.

Soak it for say 30mins before hand in cold water, make sure you add it to a pan of already bubbling boiling hot water (with a touch of olive oil in the water to make sure the bubbling doesn't get out of hand). et voila. Perfect pasta. Which is so good you can actually eat it cold (seriously).  The science is something to do with the extra starch I think.

I had to spend a fair chunk of time searching on the internet to find that bit of advice which is daft because if they actually put it on the packages surely more people would buy it as they wouldn't be put off by the frankly inedible pasta they get otherwise. It was only because I was desperate that I kept looking for another way.

I tried making bread btw - it was a disaster. But I was never any good at bread WITH gluten in so I wasn't particular surprised. I will keep trying though - I did manage to go from inedible scone, to inedible crumpet. So there was some progress just not a lot but I promise I will keep at it.

The hardest thing about gluten free baking, is learning to bake all over again, the cooking times are different because there is more liquid, the consistency to eyeball a mix is different (again because of the liquid). There is so much science involved into how gluten works in baked good that getting your head around understanding that to be able to change your own recipes is a head ache.

I do feel like I'm getting somewhere though.

Fortunately I've been doing normal GF cakes for quite a while for other people with success with the addition on some extra liquid in the batter and some xanthan gum so it's not all failure.

I've just watched a craftsy class on some gluten free baking and it's confirmed some thought's I had already been arriving (increasing protein) at so hopefully soon I'll get some experiments done and we'll see if we can get somewhere with that.

September 2013: Cupcakes and panda roll cake

 September was a quiter month - I made some simple lemon cupcakes piped with a little yellow food colouring to make the 'rose' shape stand out a bit. I'm always impressed at how good they come out. I should have made the butter icing a little smoother though, it was a bit stiff which caused some problems when piping.

I had another go at a picture roll cake, and made a panda - so many possibilities! I love Panda's.

August 2013: Cake picnic!

August was the highly anticipated cake picnic. There were chocolate cupcakes, I made a bundt cake with coloured balls in it (the balls were baked in a cake pop mold, then added to the batter in the bundt cake pan - it looked very colourful!), fruit pasties, brioche and curd sandwiches, pizza cake, apple and marzipan rolls and Earl Grey cake baked in tea cups! All very tasty.

 

Cake balls for the bundt cake

I also made another delicious coconut curd cake.

 

July 2013: Matcha Custard and Chocolate Cake, Strawberry Cream Cake, Chocolate and Strawberry Cream cake, Mille Fuille, Early Grey Profiteroles, Cake Tattoos.

 Yeesh, I am so behind in updating this.

So in July I was in the mood to make fancy cakes.
I got some Organic Matcha powder and experimented with it a bit. I decided to make lots of different things, I made some Matcha Crème Patisserie . It looks a bit grim in the bowl, but it's actually super tasty and looks much nicer in real life, a pale green. If you want it more vivid then add more Matcha powder.

My favourtie combination ended up being Matcha Crème Patisserie and Chocolate cake. So I made a chocolate cup by coating the bottom of a silicone cupcake case with chocolate, putting a circle of chocolate sponge in the bottom and topped it with a swirl of Matcha German butter-cream...which ended up a bit grainy (still working on getting that right). Next time I'll just use whipped cream instead.

I topped it with a strawberry from my garden (Im a terrible gardener so I was super proud I actually got some good strawberries from my plant).

I had a go at making what the French call a Fraisier cake, which is basically just a layer of cake, strawberries and Crème Patisserie and another layer of cake. I tried a few variations. So I had a chocolate cake layer, or a vanilla one, I also tried some of the Matcha crème patisserie with the chocolate cake version which was quite nice.

I made some very messy Mille Fuille as well, which was basically bought puff pasty cooked and layered with creme patisserie topped with water icing and decorated with chocolate. It tasted good but the crème patisserie sort of sploged out the sides a bit, so I think next time I need to experiment with adding some agar agar to set it better. 


I also had a go at some Earl Grey Profiteroles. Which were absolutely heavenly. I just made some choux pastry (pipped into blob shapes) and filled it with Earl Grey flavoured crème patisserie, and topped them with a Lemon and honey drizzle. (water icing made with 1tsp lemon extract and a drizzle of honey) SO GOOD. They tasted of summer, they were so light and delicious the only regret I had was not adding some whipped cream into the crème patisserie as I think that would have made them perfect.

I discovered  a Japanese lady called Junko who makes deco rolls. I think she's amazing - she's so creative and I had never thought about decorating cakes this way before. Essentially you make a roll cake and then colour part of the batter with food colouring, and pipe it on the bottom of the cake pan - cook to set it, then add the rest of the cake batter. It's a brilliant idea and her's are so amazingly cute.

I just used my normal cake batter filled with whipped cream. I printed off a picture about the size I wanted, put it under some greaseproof paper and the traced over it. Sadly my totoro was a bit too complicated to look good, but Hello Kitty came out so well. I was very proud.

I just used my normal cake batter recipe - but whipped the egg whites into a meringue to make it more like a chiffon cake. (So basically make as normal but only add the egg yolks with fat and half the sugar, add the flour and then add the egg whites whipped with the rest of the sugar last).

 Here is an English translation of the recipe she uses for her roll cakes - which I really need to try because they look so fluffy and pretty!

 Junko sells a book, with the recipe and templates in on Amazon but it is in Japanese. I really do want a copy though. Maybe someone will buy it for me one day!

June 2013: Microwave cake, Black Tea cake, Green Tea cake, German Buttercream, Cakes in a toastie maker...

June was a month of experiments with tea and cakes, and Pastry cream. looking back, I have no idea how I managed to bake so much, but it kept me occupied while I got used to hubby being back at work.

There are times in life of course, when what you really want is cake, quicker than now. I found a really good Cake in a mug recipe which was super easy, and topped with squirty cream - irresistible.

The great thing about this recipe is that there is no, eggs, milk or butter so it's dairy free for anyone who suffers from allergies. They have some good variations for different flavours on thier website, and I imagine would great if you had one of those, quick someone's coming round and I havnt done any shopping moments :D

For some reason in June I was obsessed with Tea in cake. I found out a lot of interesting things like how you shouldn't bake with tea leaves unless they're organic because the pesticides they spray on tea leaves arn't water soluble (hence why you can have them in your tea) but aren't great for you if you ingest them.

I made an organic black tea cake with honey and Lemon butter cream, which was nice.

I also played with Organic Matcha, which if you don't know is Japanese green tea, ground into a powder, it has this lovely green hue and an interesting slightly bitter taste. I tried lots of different  pairings. Chocolate cake with Green tea Creme Patisserie was probably my favourite.

Green Tea cake and Chocolate cake both with Green tea Creme Patissiere

Lemon swiss roll with Lemon German buttercream

Green tea and Organic black tea cakes with honey and lemon icing

I discovered that if you add butter to pastry cream it's called German Buttercream and is this lovely mousse-y texture. I have to be honest I havn't yet discovered a reliable way of making it, sometimes it comes out delicious, sometimes it comes out curdeled. Another thing you can do is add half as much Double cream to the amount of Pastry cream you have and whip it up into a light fluffy custard which is much more reliable. Both are very versatile and VERY tasty.

Vanilla cake with German Buttercream

Last but not least. The failure that was curd filled toastie cakes. The internet informed me you could make cake in a toastie maker. This was an exciting prospect for the Topsy Turvey Picnic.

I covered the plates in butter before adding the cake batter...and they still stuck. Disaster. It took forever to clean up the toastie maker, They tasted great though.

May 2013: Pizza cake, Slow cookers, Fruit Curds.

Pizza Cake

Pizza cake. Yes, this is pizza cake, and not in fact pizza which makes it slightly less gross!

I filled a round pizza tray with half the basic vanilla cake mix (Mine does not have holes in it - if your does, please remember to line it with baking parchment).  Baked for about 8mins at 200°C.

After this was baked and cooled, I spread the top with Strawberry jam, and topped it with grated marzipan.

Grilled for a couple of seconds to melt the marzipan and give it a bit of a browning. Et voila. Pizza cake. Tasted a bit like a bakewell tart, small pieces were very filling.

I had not in fact gone completely crazy. I was planning a topsy turvy picnic where all the foods were to look opposite to what they were, so desserts would look like savory foods and vice versa.


Slow Cooking

I love my slow cooker, never more so than after I had my baby. It meant I could have delicious roast meals super easy - as shown by this yummy roast lamb I did. You do most if the cooking in the slow cooker then tip it all out into a roasting pan, and crisp off the top in the oven. Sooooo tasty.

Then you use up the left over's in really easy meals, like fried up with rice, or in tomato in a wrap.


If you havn't got one get one. Really handy and made it so I could eat properly after I'd had her. Perhaps a little too well as I am now fighting to get the pounds off!!

Cute Cookie Cutters

Banana, Orange and Strawberry Curds

How cute are these!
The craft store near where I live has started selling cookie cutter recently. I wanted them all but I settled for these :)



Fruit Curds

I should probably do an entire post dedicated to fruit curds. I did a LOT of research on the net, and a LOT of experimenting. You've had Lemon curd - well turns out you can make basically any type of fruit curd. Yep.
And it tastes more awesome than the stuff you can buy in a shop. Yep.
And it's actually really easy with a bit of know how. Yep.

Coconut and Fruit Smoothie Curds

Oh and you can freeze it. YEP.
So why were any of us buying shop bought curd again?

The thing with fruit curds is you can do a ridiculous number of things with it. Layer it between cake slices, fill cupcakes, add to butter cream for flavor, add to Sweetened Whipped cream to make an easy fruit fool. You can freeze it to store, but if you eat it frozen it makes a divine creamy ice-cream like dessert which you can serve with other things. It's super versatile.

It all started with a recipe I saw for Strawberry Curd from Lavender and Lovage and the curiosity set in. I made that recipe and it was LUSH. I couldn't stop I wanted to know more.

It turns out there's quite a lot of science involved in making fruit curd. I wont bore you with it, basically if you follow the recipe as I worked it out it should just work but don't try and mess around with it unless you actually have looked into the science or you might end up crying over curdled curd.

Not content with finding a reliable recipe, I wanted a reliable LAZY recipe. Which is what I am posting, you mix it up and throw it in the slow cooker and it makes yummy curd, with out curdling, burning AND it's self sealing. Seriously.
I wasn't just being lazy at this point the baby was quite fidgety and stirring a pan of curd for goodness knows how long, and trying to work out if it was done yet ended up being almost impossible so there was reasoning behind it.

Oh. And DO seal the pot in the slow cooker. I forgot once, and it ended up curdled, and not the best tasting.

This is a great website for inspiration for different flavours, but basically it's all up to your imagination. I even used a fruit smoothie for the juice and it worked brilliantly. Coconut has to be a personal favorite, the combination of flavour and texture is spot on.

The internet gives lots of different storage time reccomendations, as I'm not sure which is food safe I am not going to advise - google it so it's at your own risk! I do recommend freezing though, I found no detrimental affects to the defrosted curd although you might need to give it a quick stir.


Fruit Curd - 2 1lb jars approx.

200ml Fruit juice/cordial/Coconut milk
4 large eggs
100g Butter
300g Granulated Sugar (reduce sugar a little if using cordial)
Optional - depending on chosen flavour add zest of 2 Lemons/ 1 Orange to give it some extra zest.

Set aside prepared jars (sterilised, or straight out of the top of a dishwasher - old Curry jars are ideal).
With an electric whisk, combine the butter and sugar until fluffy, add the eggs and combine. Add fruit zest if required, add chosen fruit juice and combine. Pour into the prepared jars and screw on the lids.
Place in a Slow cooker and surround with hot water (just below the lid of the jars), replace slow cooker lid. Cook on High for 2 1/2 - 3 hours depending on desired consistency.

Carefully remove from slow cooker using oven gloves and let cool on a heat proof surface, once cooled store in the fridge.

Coconut Curd Cake

After I stopped myself from eating the Coconut Curd straight from the jar (that was quite hard) I thought I better make some cake to go with it.

Basic Recipe Coconut cake, sandwiched with coconut curd, topped with Plain Buttercream (real butter, no flavouring at all) sprinkled with coconut. yum yum yum.

April 2013: Baby and Apple Marzipan Pastries

One fully baked baby!

So yeah April 6th, Emily was born. Needless to say not much baking was done in April!

I did manage to squeeze in some Apple pastries though. They were really easy and very tasty.

Cut some ready rolled puff pastry into even sized squares/rectangles. Spread over some Jam (warm it slightly to make it easier to spread if you like). Sprinkle some grated store bought marzipan over the top (if you put it in the fridge it's easier to grate). Then place some sliced apple over it (diagonally from point to point) sprinkle some cinnamon on top. Wrap over the points, glaze with a bit of egg wash and bake for 8-10mins. mmmmmmmm.

Of Boobs, Bonds and feeding. A fairly candid reflection of my first 4 months of motherhood.

As I know quite a few people who have just had babies or are due to have I felt it might be useful to some people to hear how my first 4 months have gone. 

I’m not writing this for sympathy or support but to offer a bit of insight and hopefully it might be helpful for other people to read. 

I know I found it helpful to read about other people’s experiences and I wanted to add to that but at the same time I don’t want to rub people’s faces in it if they don’t want to know hence putting this on the blog instead of straight on FB!

So where do you start? Perhaps I should say that while I was pregnant I had this nagging feeling that I wasn’t really sure how things worked out being a mum, a lot of people said not worry it just ‘happens’. 

Perhaps I should start with the incredible pressure now put on mums to breastfeed? Because both of these things are supposed to be the most natural things in the world I tried not to let it worry me and figured that everything would just work out - after all everyone always talks about how wonderful new babies are etc.

I do want to make something clear at this point, I support breastfeeding, and any mother who can is amazing, it is an incredibly difficult thing to do, and any mother who manages should be supported to the best of everyone’s ability. But perhaps in trying to encourage and help breastfeeding mothers, the pendulum has swung a little too far in the other direction again not everyone can, incredible as it seems not every baby wants to, and so came the trauma that happened once baby was born, and what was supposed to be the most natural thing in the world turned out to not feel very natural at all.

I had Emily one week late, she had been giving me signs that she was coming for the whole two weeks before her due date and the whole week before she actually came. I had a Sweep, to encourage her along at which point I found out she was in position and I was 2cm dilated. I started with early Labour signs a couple of hours later but I didn’t want to get too excited as I knew that sometimes that would happen and they would stop, and so they did at 1am in the morning.

24 hours later they picked up right where they had left off! 2.5 hours after that I went to hospital and found I was 4cm, a blurry many hours of contractions and gas and air later I was 6cm dilated, and then at 9am I entered into the later stages of labour, it got to around 10:50am I was coming up to the two hour mark of when they start to intervene, baby was not distressed, I didn’t want a ventouse. I got cross with myself and the baby for not being there and pushed extra hard, tore and had Emily at 11:03am, 6lb12.

When I looked round to see my baby two huge eyes looked back, she was slightly grey from being newborn and I couldnt help but think – oh she looks like a frog! Things are a big foggy here now, but basically everything happened as it should, I held her to the breast for her to suckle, I felt exhausted but adrenaline had kicked in and I actually didn’t feel that bad, I had stitches, I had a shower, I remember feeling a bit distant from the whole situation but I thought that was just shock, and exhaustion. At this point Emily was pretty quiet, she was healthy, I felt well and so we went to the ward, I wanted to go home all was fine.

And then while everyone else’s babies were basically chilling out after all the strain of being born, Emily decided she was hungry, she was cross and my god did she cry. And cry, and cry, nothing would settle her in her cot, she wanted to be held. She was so cross and hungry she shook, we tried everything to put her on the breast to see if that would help, in the end the nurses asked me if I wanted to try feeding her some formula and they thought she was behaving a bit like a premature baby.

She was just so hungry and so desperate I agreed. It was the right thing to do. She wolfed down the milk the nurses cup fed her and so started the nightmare of working out what to do next, all the while I still felt distant from her, she didn’t feel like mine. I didn’t really understand - but I thought I was just tired and the crying and the feeding problems were stressful.  I thought things would settle down. At the very least my husband had wanted this baby, even if things were a bit rocky now he’d be good with her and that would give me time to sort myself out.

Of course things never work out that easy.

The struggle with breastfeeding continued, she could latch on, she would suck (my god would she would suck) but then she would fidget herself off the breast and instead of doing what would be sensible and latching back on, she would immediately scream, and then the battle to calm her down and get her back on would start. On, off, on, off until I couldn’t take it anymore and the nurses would help me latch her on and then finally the nurses would give her formula and be astonished at the rate she gulped it up, and at the amount she wanted. She wasn’t even over feeding and throwing up she was just desperately hungry.

The nurses checked how she was latching on and couldn’t find a problem, they double checked her mouth and couldn’t find a problem. One of the breast feeding specialists wondered whether my fairly flat nipples were making it more difficult and so we tried ‘The pump’ mainly to try and make it easier for her to latch on. We tried nipple shields. It became clear that supply wasn’t an issue as I pumped, colostrum came out. Those first few drops felt so precious and I was so proud and happy that it wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to feed her, it was just Emily being difficult. 

The regime became more complicated, I would try to breastfeed and then when I couldn’t cope anymore the nurses would cup feed her the Milk I managed to express, and then top up with formula. And I would break for half an hour to an hour and then express, then break again for half an hour to an hour and then we would do it all again. They were still surprised at how much she was wanting, in the end I was expressing plenty but she still wasn’t staying latched on. I was running on no sleep, my husband was so distressed at not being able to help and the desperate crying of the baby that he had to keep leaving the ward. The nurses insisted I get an hour or two’s sleep at night and managed to take her off me while they cup fed her my expressed milk and the formula. It didn’t bother me. She still didn’t feel like mine, but I felt sorry for her - she was hungry and I would do what I could, but I still didn’t feel attached to her at all.

And so after 4 days in hospital I was allowed to go home, we had not progressed at all with the feeding issues she still wouldn’t stay latched on, and was still desperately hungry but I wanted to go home. The hospital lent me the breast pump to take home on the theory that as much breast milk I could get in her the better. My breasts were covered in bruises from where the nurses had pinched to try and get her to latch on, my right nipple was scabbed from how hard Emily had sucked, both breasts were tender from the shear effort of trying to breast feed and pump. I just wanted to sleep. She still didn’t feel like mine, my husband admitted he also didn’t feel a bond with her. I got home and cried. I was relieved to be home, but where was this incredible bond I was supposed to have, where was the perfect family that was supposed to happen. Where was the breastfeeding? Emily wouldn’t even look at me when I fed her, she was soothed by people holding her but she didn’t seem to care who it was who held her. She also didn’t seem to have that bond with us. 

So there we were at home, one broken family and at 4am in the morning we ran out of the formula the hospital had sent us home with. I had run out of the milk I had pumped. My husband rushed off to Asda’s to find more formula milk, and Emily screamed, I tried to breastfeed her with my bruised and sore breasts, and she just screamed. And screamed and then went from red to purple and then stopped screaming. She had also stopped breathing. I fortunately remembered my cousin telling me her daughter would sometimes do the same when she was a baby and I jolted her, she started breathing again, I rubbed her feet and hands so that the colour came back. I swore I would never try to breastfeed again. Nothing was worth the anguish it caused the both of us.

But I still felt it was important to give her the breastmilk I knew I could supply. I pumped, I pumped every 4 hours for 2 months, it meant I never got any proper sleep and she would often want comforting when I was pumping so I would sit with her on my lap, her kicking the funnels of my breasts while I tried to pump. Sometimes I would reach over to pick her up and the milk would spill from the bottles. I managed to produce enough milk after the first week or so that I didn’t need to supplement with formula. I was proud I could feed her, I was exhausted, and she still didn’t feel like mine. And my husband still couldn’t cope with her crying. 

He tried so hard, he would change her and feed her my milk from the bottle. When he finished work he would come home and take her off me so I could have a break and get something to eat, and yet she would just cry and I would have to take her back because he would get so angry it scared him. It scared me.

After a while the formula started to sneak back in, I was tired, I’d miss a pump so I could sleep. At one point I was so tired I actually slept through her crying in the night - even though she was right next to me in the cot and my husband got up and sorted her. So much for the nurses saying you’d never sleep through your baby crying! At 3 months she was half formula half breast milk as I tried to balance out what was best. I wanted to stop, it was exhausting mentally and physically but I had decided I wanted to give her as much breastmilk as I could up until 4 months - I would review it again then. 

For that last month the pumping gradually declined until finally I was doing it only once a day. At 4 months 1 week I decided enough was enough. I wanted my body and my sanity back. 

She finally started looking at me while I was feeding her at around 3 months, she started being more clingy and seems to recognise me as her protector now. I still don’t feel that bond but I do feel we get on better, I try so hard to do what’s right for her because at the end of the day she is a living breathing human being, but sometimes I forget she’s mine. Sometimes I look at her and I don’t recognise the fact she is my child. My Husband is so much better with her now too, she has stopped crying like the apocalypse is coming, she laughs and smiles and giggles and can be very cute- she’s becoming a person in her own right. He looks forward to coming home and cuddling her. The worst is behind us.

I have been incredibly lucky to have incredibly supportive friends and family. I was so close to breaking so many times, just the fact they were there, even talking about other things was helpful.

I had people also tell me about how difficult they had had it when they had their own children, that helped. I wasn’t on my own. I wasn’t the only one who has struggled. I have got through what I hope is the worst of it.

I can’t say it’s easy to talk about it though, I understand why people tend to keep quiet about it, but I found it so helpful to hear about other people I really wanted to be able to help someone else.

It’s so hard, but you can get through it. One day it will be in the past and you can be proud you got through it. Don’t ever feel guilty for the decisions you make for your own sanity and for the health of your child. 

To the people who might not have had problems, and cannot understand how hard it might be for someone who has  - I have this to say. I am so glad you didn’t have problems, it’s good that you didn’t however please understand how someone might feel before you say something like “Well I managed fine, so can you”, and never EVER say something like “you are a failure” because even as a joke, it is not funny. It hurts. It hurts so deep because you are trying your very best and somewhere at your core you are afraid you are. 

You are not.