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