Scary Cake

I was really worried about this cake, not worried about the outcome or if the recipe would be easy to follow, oh no I was worried by the amount of very unhealthy stuff in it.  Now I know cake is not deemed a healthy option but this Nigella cake seemed to be really scary!  I had some lovely white chocolate to use up from my sister and a some raspberries from my parents garden so I set about finding a recipe.  I have not made many Nigella recipes in my time usually due to the large quantities of butter/cream/sugar......etc.  Anyway I thought I would give this one a go, I actually halfed the quantities (an even number of eggs always makes this easier!) and then used less sugar, about 40g less I think and it worked really well.  I over cooked it slightly having not taken into account the lesser quantinty but I just about got away with it, 10 minutes less and it would have been moister.  I served it with fresh raspberries and creme fraiche as I thought the white chocolate ganache may be a little too much.  Scary but very very tasty!

Choca Mocha

I have fancied doing a mocha cake for a while now and with the in-laws arriving I had my chance!  Its another Hugh F-W recipe, and they always seem to work.  The only change I made was not marbling the two mixtures as quite frankly I dont think its a good look!  I just added the coffee and cocoa into the main mix.  It was lovely.

Happy Birthday Kate

It was my little sisters 30th Birthday last week so I duly made the cake, it had to be chocolate (I used the bero classic recipe) but I wanted a twist so the icing layer through the middle was blackcurrant as Kate loves purple stuff!  Iced with chocolate and decorated with flowers from the folks garden (all edible) and home make cake bunting, which quite frankly is one of life's essentials!

DIY Couture

I had a very exciting custom order recently for the launch of the new book by Rosie Martin of DIY Couture.  Rosie asked me to create a box of biscuits based on her 10 designs in the book to be used as a prize at the book launch night.

Strawberries

Although it is tipping down in most parts of the county it is June and very much strawberry season!

Bourbon time

Bourbons- my favorite shop bought biccie!  I had a home made one a couple of years ago and it was so good, I kept meaning to try making my own but iced biscuits always seem to take priority.  I had some chocolate butter icing left from a birthday cake I made so decided it was at last bourbon time.  I used a rectangle cutter and used my usual chocolate biscuit recipe and piped the butter icing onto one side and sandwiched together. yum.

Collections

I have always been a collector, I like stuff, pretty stuff....teacups, vintage buttons and lace, ribbons, handbags, the list is endless.  One of the best things about collections is displaying them, now I live in a tiny rented flat where most surfaces are covered already and space is limited but I dream of a farm house and lots of cabinets, shelves and walls for theses displays.  Kitchen ware and more specifically old bake ware is a real favourite,  below are some collections from the lovely RE who now have a shop in Liberty.

Easter Biscuits

Here are some chocolate egg biscuits for Easter...

And some spring tulips....

Honey Cake...thanks Jen!

For my birthday, my friend Jen adopted a beehive for me.  Another hobby of mine is gardening and although I'm pretty new to it I think I am doing OK.  As all gardeners will tell you "the honey bee is our friend" and I am hoping my new hive pack will teach me much more about them.  One of the things I am growing this year is lots of flowers to brighten the place up, attract the bees but mainly edible flowers I can decorate my cakes with!  This gift was in many ways very appropriate! 

So back to honey....In my adoption pack was some lovely honey from the Chain Bridge Honey Farm on the Scottish borders/Northumberland (my parents neck of the woods!).  It tastes divine and needed to be used well so I turned to my trusty River Cottage Cakes book and set about making Gills Honey Cake.  Easy to make and cooked in exactly the 45 minutes it said it would, RC has not failed my yet!  It tasted lovely...the honey forms a sugary crust on the top with the crunchy almonds and the whole things tastes very spring-like somehow.  Handy hint...its a big cake but I reckon it can easily be halved as it has equal amount of eggs and this smaller quantity will fit nicely into a loaf tin. 

PS The hive pack also came with some wild flower seeds that have be duly planted and as soon as I get blooms I will post some pictures!  Thanks Jen x

Happy Mothers Day!

For my lovely Mum and Mother in Law....Lemon Primroses and Daisies. 

I love spring!  New season, the sun comes out, the days a longer and most exciting of all spring flowers!  I am feeling particularly inspired by flowers at the moment, colours flavours, shapes....I shall keep you posted!

Baby Biscuits

Biscuits for a Baby Shower, available in pink or blue or more neutral yellow.

Hearts and Roses

One of my aims for 2012 is to design a little Valentines Biscuit Collection.  I am not a huge fan of the day, mainly as it is so commercial but I think these little biscuits are quite fitting.   Here are my first additions, Heart and Rose tea cup biscuits.  Delicately flavoured with rose water, the colours are natural and each is finished with a sugared rose petal.  Available to order now!

Christmas Biscuits

Well now that they have been handed over as Christmas gifts I can post the pictures on here!  I got a great response to my robins and Christmas pudding tea cup biscuits, so I am now coming up with new designs for the coming year.

All packed up and ready to go!  I took some along to a market with the wonderful Kath's Cakes and received some lovely feedback and sold a few packets!

Coffee Macarons

I recently made these Coffee Macarons for friends and they worked really well and so they should have as I have practiced Macaron making enough times!  The recipe was pretty standard I used one from this beautiful book,  I Love Macarons by Hisako Ogita.  I added some coffee as I was mixing the wet ingredients for a light flavour and colour.

Now it was the filling I was most fond of!  I adore Devine Chocolate, (which you can buy in Oxfam shops along with many other places) so this filling is a ganache made with the milk chocolate and coffee chocolate, the results were great.

 This is what you do....
100ml double/whipping cream brought to the boil in a pan and taken off the heat,  add 100g of chocolate and allow to melt into the cream, mix together on a slow speed until you have a pipe-able consistency.  Pipe onto the macaron half's and sandwich together. 

Granddads famous biscuits

My granddad was quite unusual for his generation and loved cooking and baking.  He was an excellent baker (although not quite as good as Grandma, but more on that at a later date!) Arriving at their house was always exciting as you would be greeted with a pot of tea (always tea leaves) and a ginger biscuit.  Now apparently the original recipe name was "Caravan Cookies" but in our family they are now just "Granddads Biscuits"  I made them for my cousin the other day and he declared they were almost as good as Granddads which is good enough for me!

They are really easy to make and suitable for people who don't eat egg.

100g Butter/Margarine
100g Sugar
1tsp Bicarbonate of soda blended with a dessert spoon of hot water
2 tbs warmed golden syrup
100g Self Raising Flour
100g Rolled Oats
1/2 tsp ground ginger

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180oc
Cream the butter and sugar
Add bicarbonate and water mix
Add warmed syrup
Add flour, oats and ground ginger
Form into balls about the size of a marble, on a baking sheet (they spread so leave enough space)
Bake for aprox. 15mins until golden

Flamingo!

Here are the flamingo biscuits!

Wedding Favours - Little Animals

Here are some of the pictures from a recent wedding commission.  The couple are animal lovers and we chose their 3 favourites, Elephants, Turtles and Giraffes....

Gingerbread men

We recently received a corporate order for 250 gingerbread men with iced t-shirts.  250! Would the Little Bench cope with such numbers? But cope it did and apparently they "went down an absolute storm".

Here they are

Gifts of cake

My Dad and Father in law are two of the most difficult people to buy for; but do love a nice bit of cake!  So for Fathers day this year it was decided that “the dads” would get a cake each.  I wondered if Royal Mail was capable of delivering a cake in one piece, only one way to find out….

I have very early memories of food people like and a Battenberg cake always seems to remind me of my dad so his gift was decided.  I used the recipe from Farm House Kitchen, (a Yorkshire Television publication) that my Mum has had for years and I managed to pick a copy up in a charity shop for 50p  It is excellent for the basics.  The cake is dead easy just a classic sponge mix split in half and one half coloured with pink food colouring.  Next time I make it I am going to try colouring a flavouring the pink bit with raspberry puree.  I made my own marzipan to cover it which is always more tasty than shop bought of course!

Ian was more difficult and with not such a sweet tooth I finally decided on Bara Brith a Welsh tea loaf where the fruit is soaked over night in tea.  I used the recipie from my new favourite book, Cakes by Pam Corbin (River Cottage Handbook).  Apart from the soaking of the fruit overnight the cake was so simple, Pam suggests making two at a time and freezing one, and fresh they will last a good 2-3 weeks in the tin.  As it was a loaf I could not have a sneaky taste before it was packaged up and posted off, fingers crossed!!!  

 

Decoration time

I love to look at pretty things and beautifully decorated cakes and biscuits are probably a favourite but they also have to taste as good as they look.  There are some lovely cake decorations out on the market but sometimes I wonder how edible they actually are.  My favourite have to be sugared flowers and rose petals.  I have rose petals and mimosa flowers from Uncle Roys (Product of the UK too!) and they look stunning on cakes and biscuits.  I also think you cannot beat real flowers and to make sure they are truly organic I decided to grow my own Nasturtiums and Lavender.  I am going to try roses and violas next.  I use violas on a recent 60th Birthday cake and they looked beautiful.

Here is my first Nasturtium flower on my carrot cake