Mom Birthday

Oreo and Blueberry Cheese Cake

Recipe
240 g OREO Original Cookies
40 g butter, melted
350 g Philadelphia Original
100 g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
250 ml Greek yogurt
1 sachet (11g) powdered gelatine
A few fresh Blue Berries
A few extra OREO cookies, broken into pieces



Place 160g of the Oreos in a food processor and process to a fine crumb.(or crush with a rolling pin inside a sandwich bag)  Add the butter and mix together. Press the mixture into the base of an 18cm spring form tin. (or oven proof flan dish) Roughly chop the remaining 80g cookies and set aside.
Put 3 tablespoons of water in a small basin and sprinkle on the gelatine. Stand the basin over a saucepan of hot water and heat gently until dissolved. (don't worry if it looks gross)
Beat together the Philly, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Then fold in the yogurt. Next stir in the gelatine.
Stir the set aside cookies through the filling then pour over the biscuit base. Refrigerate for 3 hours or until set.
Serve decorated with the fruit and biscuit pieces.

I added blueberries into the cream mix I highly recommend you DON'T do this.
This recipe has been slighly modified but pretty much comes straight from the Philadelphia website http://www.philadelphia.co.uk
They use Strawberries but as the cake was for my mummy and she has a strawberry allergy I made a fruit swap bet this would work well with banana also.

Happy 17th Birthday Emily

Vanilla Cup Cakes

Recipe

225g olive oil spread (Bertolli)

225g Self raising Flour

225g Caster sugar

4 eggs

1tsp Vanilla Extract

Cream together sugar and spread, add vanilla extract. Sift in flour and stir in eggs gradually until mixture is smooth and creamy. Bake in cake cases for 20-25 mins at 180C 

Easy Peesy recipe to follow, decorate as you please, I used a basic butter cream and fondant shapes.

Butter cream Recipe (olive oil spread alternative)

100g icing sugar 

100g olive oil spread

1tsp vanilla extract

Stir ingredients together until smooth and creamy (If you happen to over cream your mixture you can stick it in the fridge for half hour or so)

I used pre made fondant available in most super markets or at your local cake craft shop, and cookie cutters for the exact shapes. Also added edible silver balls for a little bit of sparkle. 

(side note) It is cool to use unsalted butter for this recipe, I however am very lazy and didn't want to walk to the shop so went with the what have I got in the fridge option. 

Christmas Men

 This Recipe is also covered in gingerbread men with a kick

but.... as it's Christmas I thought I'd go through it again with a few photos

As I made a lot of these this year for friends and family I doubled the original recipe
Recipe Ingredients 


200 g unsalted butter
200 g caster sugar
250 ml treacle
2 egg yolks
500 g sifted plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsps ground cloves
2 tsps ground ginger
1 tsp nutmeg

Destructions 


Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature. Then cream the butter and sugar together

stir in the egg and treacle

combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl

sift the dry ingredients into the butter mix

As the mixture gets thicker and forms a dough you may want to get your hands in there

your finished dough should be easy to mould in to a large ball, chill this in the fridge for at least an hour

when the dough has been chilled it is ready to cut, pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C or gas mark 4.
line several trays with baking paper. Roll out the dough to about 1 cm thick and cut out you cookies with your favourite cutter.  (You may wish to break the dough into quarters to do this  as you may not have enough shelf space in your oven do bake all the cookies at the same time)

place on lined baking trays and place in oven for about 8 minuets. 

cookies will still be a little soft when they come out of the oven when cool enough to handle they can be moved to a wire rack to cool completely

once cooled I store my cookies in a tin for a day, ginger bread always tastes better the day after baking

now they are ready to decorate, be creative I used chocolate chips and white icing but most sweets can be made into gingerbread men buttons. Super markets are filled with various coloured ready to pipe icing.

As I give away a lot of my ginger bread men as gifts I like to wrap them up in shear fabric and tie the top with ribbon the make lovely  parcels for neighbours and unexpected Christmas guests.

White chocolate and coconut loaf

375 g Plain Flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
220 g caster sugar
150 g unsalted butter
3 eggs
40 g coconut
100 g white chocolate

Cream butter and sugar together beat in eggs, in a separate bowl measure out flour and add baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt, sift this mixture into the butter, sugar and eggs then add coconut and white chocolate. Super easy to make i then poured this mixture in to a loaf baking tin lined with baking paper and baked for 1 hour at 175 degrees C.

There was a little mixture left over which i put in muffin cases and baked at 175 degrees C  for 20 minuets.
I thought it was a little dry and next time i make this i may add a little hot water to the mixture but once cooled  it carves like a fresh loaf and is lovely with a smidgen of jam.   

Ginger loaf

It's been a while since i posted any new recipes, due to the volume of birthday cakes ive been making ive been concentrating a lot on decoration and oh what fun we've had with all that fondant. Most of these cakes have been a basic vanilla sponge which you can find the recipe for in Spotty Sponge
How ever i finally invited my mum over for dinner in my new house this weekend and with the evenings getting darker and colder, i think it's quite nice to find those cakes that have a little extra flavour and go well with custard.
Enjoy Ginger Loaf hot or cold, with or with out custard, on your own or with friends and family.

Ginger Loaf 


100 g Caster sugar 
125 g unsalted butter
1 large egg
225 ml Treacle (this is about half a tin, sticking with my table spoon measurement here i went for 5 spoons but if you want a bit more of a kick feel free to put in a little more)
300 g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves ( as with the treacle this is a rough measurement guide and you can alter cinnamon ginger and clovers to taste) 
1/2 tsp table salt
250 ml hot water  


Cream butter and sugar together, stir in egg, stir in treacle.
In a separate bowl measure out flour, add bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and salt  Slowly in small amount sift the flour mixture in to the wet mix. (we do this slowly so the mixture can absorb the flour evenly, unless you have a high quality electric mixer it which case you can pretty much just wack it all straight in.)

Only the water to add, again we do this slowly to ensure even mixture, do not worry if the mix seems much to wet, the cake we are making is quite moist and sticky. You are now ready to transfer the mix to a loaf tin, in a standard size loaf tin the mix will come nearly to the rim. bake for an hour at 180 deg C / gas mark 4 

Goth girl kitchen, where all the magic happens.

My kitchen is the centre of the home, I am very lucky to have such a big open space to work in and my collection of baking paraphernalia grows larger every week.

Kitchen island courtesy of Ikea

  

Recipe booked stand much need please Santa. 

Halloween

For Birthdays in late October its fun to have a Halloween theme 

This is two basic vanilla sponges with butter cream and jam centre covered with bright green fondant with black fondant detail. The spider legs are made from mint chocolate matchmakers broken and the melted back together at an angle.