Recipe: Marble Loaf

For the longest time I’ve struggled to perfect a loaf recipe. They always sank in the middle, didn’t cook through or overflowed from the tin. Now after much trial and error I have perfected it, so expect a lot of loaf recipes from now on. But today I’m starting off my new found love of loaf recipe with a simple marble loaf.

Ingredients
- 150g Caster Sugar
- 150g Stork
- 150g Self Raising Flour
- 3 Eggs
- 20g Cocoa Powder
- 2 Tsps Vanilla Extract
- 2 Tsp Chocolate Extract

Method
1- Pre heat oven to 160C. Line a 2lb loaf tin with a tin liner or greaseproof paper.
2- Into a bowl place your caster sugar and stork. Cream together until pale in colour and fluffy in texture. I always advise leaving your stork out at room temperature as it helps create a nicer texture within the cake.
3- Add one egg at a time along with a tablespoon of flour. Beat until well combined, taking care to scrape the edges of the bowl.
4- Repeat until all three eggs have been incorporated and everything is beaten and well combined.
5- Fold in the remainder of the flour. Take your time when folding in your flour as you don’t want to knock all off the air out of your mixture. Boring I know but necessary if you want a deliciously light cake that melts in the mouth.
6- Separate the mixture evenly between two bowls. In one bowl add your cocoa powder and chocolate extract. Gently fold through until fully combined.
7- In the second bowl add your vanilla extract and fold through until combined.
8- Now it’s time to marble the two together. A skewer worked between the two mixture once they’re in the tin works wonders but I chose to do a somewhat chequer board effect in which I created by spooning alternate spoonfuls of both mixtures into the prepared tin. Any left over I spooned over the top, tapping the tin gently against the counter so the mixture sat evenly in the tin.
9- Place in the oven and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour. The best way to test to see if it’s cooked is to place a skewer in the centre of the cake but you can also tell by doing the press test. If you gently press the sponge and it springs right back then cake is done.
10- Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes and then transfer to a wire cooling rack to cool completely. Then all that’s left to do is slice and enjoy with a nice cuppa.

Recipe: Coffee And Walnut Cupcakes

Whenever I ask family and friends what cakes they’d like me to bake, coffee and walnut cake almost always tops the list. However because I’ve never been a fan of the flavours combined I’ve never made it for them. But as I’m enjoying a week off work and needing to keep myself busy, I thought I’d finally give it a go.

Ingredients
For The Cupcakes
-100g Stork
-100g Caster Sugar
- 100g Self Raising Flour
- 20g Cocoa Powder
- 2 Eggs
- 2 Tsps Chocolate Extract
- 1 Tsps Coffee Extract

For The Buttercream
- 200g Unsalted Butter, softened
- 320g Icing Sugar
- 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 1/2 Tsps Coffee Extract
- A Splash Of Milk
- Walnut Halves To Decorate

Method
1- Pre heat oven to 180C. Line a twelve hole muffin tin with paper cases.
2- Into a bowl place the caster sugar and stork. Cream together until pale and fluffy in texture.
3- Add one egg and a tablespoon of flour. Beat until combined and then repeat with your second egg and another tablespoon of flour.
4- Fold in the flour, coffee extract, cocoa powder and chocolate extract. Fold instead of beat so that all the air you’ve just built into the mixture isn’t knocked out and you don’t end up with a tough, chewy cake.
5- Spoon the mixture into your prepared cases and bake for 20-22mins or until the top springs back when pressed. Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes and then transfer to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
6- Now it’s onto your buttercream. Place your softened unsalted butter into a clean bowl and beat until pale and soft.
7- Sieve in half of your icing sugar and beat until fully combined. Scrape repeatedly along the sides of the bowl and down your spatula, beater or wooden spoon so that there isn’t any little pockets of butter or icing sugar sitting unmixed in your buttercream.
8- Sieve in the remaining half of your icing sugar and beat until fully combined. Now is the best time to add your milk if you need to. It’ll help to loosen the buttercream if it’s too stiff to pipe or spread.
9- Beat in your vanilla and coffee extracts. On its own the coffee extract makes the buttercream strong and a little bitter but the vanilla helps to sweeten it and give it a nice little twist.
10- Spoon  your buttercream into your piping bag fitted with a piping nozzle of your choice. I went with the JEM1D nozzle as it gives a nice loose swirl that gives even the wonkiest looking cupcakes a classy finish.
11- Pipe onto your now cooled cupcakes and top with a walnut halve. Then all that’s left to do is let them set and enjoy.

Recipe: Flapjacks

I love a good flapjack. You know that buttery melt in the mouth kind of flapjack where you only plan on eating one but end up eating three instead. That’s my kind of flapjack and when I was looking through my recipe ideas for the year I realised I’ve never made and shared a flapjack recipe with you. So today that’s changing and here is my first of many flapjack recipes.

Ingredients
- 150g Butter
- 250g Porridge/Rolled Oats
- 75g Light Brown Sugar
- 3 Tbsps Golden Syrup

Method
1- Pre hear oven to 180C. Line a 20cm square tin with greaseproof paper.
2- Into a large saucepan place the butter, sugar and golden syrup. Melt together over a medium heat, stirring regularly.
3- Once everything has melted together take the pan off the heat and pour in the porridge oats. Mix together until everything is covered in the butter/syrup mixture. At this point you could any other ingredients you like. I was tempted to add chocolate chips to my flapjacks but decided to leave it as a traditional flapjack instead.
4- Pour your oat mixture into your prepared tin and press down with a knife or the back of a spoon.
5- Bake in the oven for 25 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes and then transfer to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
6- Once it has cooled you can easily drizzle melted chocolate, Nutella or even peanut butter over the top and leave to set. If you want them plain however this is the part of where you cut them up and help yourself to a slice or two.

Recipe: Hazelnut Brownies

Brownies are something I spent a good portion of my time as a baker failing at. Until a couple of years ago I always ended up with a bread/cake hybrid that tasted delicious but were never my intention to make. Yet now I can make some of the most fudgy, delicious brownies I've ever tasted and I'm constantly on the lookout of what I can add to them to make them even more yummy. Today I'm sharing with you my recipe for Hazelnut Brownies which is possibly my favourite brownie recipe to date. They're fudgy, they're rich and they've got a delicious hint of Nutella alongside the crunch of the chopped hazelnuts.

Ingredients

- 200g Dark Chocolate

- 200g Unsalted Butter

- 275g Caster Sugar

- 90g Plain Flour

- 35g Cocoa Powder

- 100g Dark Chocolate Chips

- 150g Nutella

- 50g Chopped Roasted Hazelnuts

- 3 Eggs

Method 
1- Pre heat your oven to 180C. Line a 9 inch brownie tin with greaseproof paper.
2- In a bain marie melt your dark chocolate and unsalted butter. You can melt the two together in the microwave but it does tend to catch and burn more than when it's done over a bain marie. Once everything has melted together, place to one side and leave to cool.
3- Into a bowl place your sugar and eggs. Using a hand mixer or a stand mixer, whisk until the mixture has doubled in size, has become pale in colour and has a mousse like texture. I really do advise using an electric mixer for this part as I did it by hand and it hurt a lot.
4- Hopefully by the time it's taken to mix your egg and sugar mixture together, your chocolate/butter mixture will have cooled and you can gently fold the two together. Now you have to fold them together otherwise you'll knock out all the air that you've just beat into the egg/sugar mix.

5- Now it's time to fold in your flour, chocolate chips and cocoa powder. Folding it all in together not only helps keep the air in your mix but also stops your chocolate chips from sinking to the bottom.

6- Then fold in your Nutella and chopped hazelnuts, scraping the edges and the bottom of the bowl so nothing is sat unmixed at the bottom. Now I just put the Nutella in at room temperature and let my spatula fold it evenly through the mixture but you could also soften or melt it slightly so that it folds in easier.

7- Pour into your prepared tin, using your spatula or wooden spoon to spread it out evenly in the tin and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Sometimes it may take just a few minutes more for them to bake but that's okay, everyone's ovens and mixtures will cook differently.
8- Once they're cooked, leave to cool and set in the tin before cutting and enjoying. These last for a good three days if kept in an air tight container and are some of the most delicious brownies I've ever tasted (if I say so myself), even more delicious than the Mini Egg Brownies I posted earlier this month.

Recipe: Lemon And White Chocolate Shortbread

Oh shortbread how I've gone from hating making you to wanting to make only you. Today I'm back with yet another shortbread recipe. After making my delicious Triple Choc Chunk Shortbread earlier this month, I wanted to see what else I could add to my standard shortbread recipe. It's always difficult trying to find flavour combinations that work but this combination is divine. Lemon and white chocolate is the combo I chose in the end, the sweetness of the white chocolate blending beautifully with the tartness of the lemon. And the addition of both lemon zest and lemon juice created a beautiful dough that can together easier than any other shortbread dough has ever done.

Ingredients

- 115g Butter

- 175g Plain Flour

- 55g Caster Sugar

- Zest Of One Lemon

- Juice Of Half A Lemon

- Pinch Of Salt

Method 
1- Pre heat oven to 180C. Line a tin of your choosing with greaseproof paper, I chose a round tin again as I found it gave me a better end result as I'm not rolling and rerolling my dough at all.
2- Into a bowl place your plain flour, caster sugar and salt.
3- Add your butter and rub together with your fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs. This is a bit of an arduous job but is practically the only way to make a delicious short, melt in the mouth shortbread.
4- Now it’s time to add your lemon zest and lemon juice. You don't have to add the juice but I find it gives it that little bit of a kick that you don't get from the zest alone.
5- Keep rubbing and kneading the mix together until it starts to form a dough. Usually you need a little bit of water to help bring this together but the lemon juice works as a binding agent and helps to bring the dough together quickly and easily.
6- Now you can easily roll this out and cut into whatever shapes you like but I decided to just press my dough into the tin as it saved me time and I find it bakes a bit better if it’s handled less. If you’re not cutting your dough into shapes just press your dough into your tin of choice and bake for 10-15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.
7- Once cooked leave to cool in the tin. The middle may still be a little soft when you take it out but cooling it completely in the tin allows for that to firm and cool evenly.
8- Then all that’s left to do is cut into triangles or squares or whatever shape you baked them into and enjoy.

Recipe: Summer Berries Sandwich Cake

Ingredients 
For The Sponges 
- 200g Caster Sugar
- 200g Stork
- 200g Self Raising Flour
- 4 Eggs
- 3 Tsps Vanilla Extract

For The Buttercream 
- 200g Butter, softened
- 320g Icing Sugar
- 3 Tsps Vanilla Extract
- A Selection Of Summer Berries (Raspberries, Blackberries, Red Currants, Black Currants, Strawberries)

Method 
1- Pre heat oven to 180C. Line two 19cm sandwich tins with greaseproof paper.
2- Into a bowl place your caster sugar and stork. Cream together until they become pale and fluffy.
3- Add each egg and a tablespoon of flour next, beating well in between each one.
4- Fold in the rest of your flour and vanilla extract. Take your time folding the flour through as you don’t want to knock out all of the air you’ve just beat into the mixture. I always add my vanilla extract at this point as well so I don’t have to keep unnecessarily folding or beating the mixture.
5- Spoon your mixture evenly between your two prepared tins and bake for 20-22 minutes or until golden brown and springy to the touch.
6- Leave to cool in the tins for five minutes then transfer to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
7- Now it’s onto the buttercream. Place your softened butter into a bowl and beat until soft and pale in colour.
8- Sieve in half your icing sugar and beat until fully combined. I’d recommend using a hand mixer or a stand mixer for this part so you don’t end up with cramp halfway through beating the icing sugar in.
9- Sieve in the remaining half of your icing sugar and beat until fully incorporated.  Make sure you scrape the edges of the bowl as you go so there are no pockets of icing sugar clinging to the sides.
10- Usually I add a splash of milk to get it to that perfect piping consistency but adding the vanilla extract will do exactly the same job, once beaten into the mix, your buttercream should be light, fluffy and ready to pipe onto your now cooled cakes.
11- Spoon your buttercream into a piping bag fit with a nozzle of your choice and decorate the first layer of your cake however you choose. I piped tiny icing kisses all the way around my cake, leaving just a small space in the centre where I spooned some of my fruit.
12- Place your next layer on top and continue to decorate. I again piped tiny icing kisses all the way around and in my cake, leaving only a small ring in the centre to spoon some more fruit on top. You can easily use the currants to create a pattern or slice the berries in half and place them sporadically around the cake.
13- Then all that’s left to is let the buttercream set and then slice and enjoy anyway you please. I know this is going to go down well with a nice cuppa.

What I Read: June

What a month June has been. I had a week off work, finally got to see my nana and I finally came out of my reading slump. What started off as a quick read to beat the boredom turned into a binge read of five books that have managed to ignite my love of reading once more. 

The book that kicked it all off is one I’ve been meaning to read since I got it last year but wanted to save until Halloween. However I couldn’t resist anymore and picked it up during my week off work. Comprising of thirteen retelling such of Edgar Allan Poe’s work as well as the original tales, this book was creepy, suspenseful and overall amazing. There were a few of the retellings that I would’ve have enjoyed as a full book of their own, that I was sad to reach the end of because I’d become so immersed in them. The original tales I wasn’t too fond but I think a lot of it was due to the fact that I had read the retellings first and then the original tales. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this book and couldn’t wait to start another once I’d finished this one. 

After His Hideous Heart, I picked up Wilder Girls, another book that I’d been meaning to read since I brought it at the beginning of the year. Following a school in quarantine whose’s numbers are dwindling, Wilder Girls is a gory, suspenseful tale centred around strong female friendships and what each girl will do in order to survive. I was hooked on what lay in store for the girls as their bodies transformed, friendships were tested and how they'd survive if they survived at all. However I did find the ending to be a tad disappointing. It was a very open ending which could have easily led to a sequel but from what I've read this is a standalone with no sequel in sight yet. The characters changed, their behaviour both fitting for how they were at the beginning but also very unlike them which put me off the ending. Overall though this book was a solid four star read and I can't wait to read Rory Power's next book.

One Of Us Is Next is a book that has been sat on my TBR pile for the last year and a half. I don't know why I hadn't read it by now but I've now happily ticked it off my TBR list. Following a group of four students who are suspected for killing their fellow student during a detention one afternoon, One Of Us Is Lying is a twisted young adult thriller that gives you shock at every turn. Some of the the shocks/secrets were obvious, somewhat overused tropes in YA books but still gave great shock value to the story overall. I absolutely adore the way Karen M. McManus writes, it keeps hooked on each word and you'll find yourself saying just one more chapter even though you should've been asleep hours ago.

And of course after I'd read One Of Us Is Lying I had to pick up the sequel, One Of Us Is Next. Set one year after the end of One Of Ous Is Lying, this picks up around four more students who were only witness to the events of the first book but are now thrown deep into their own darkest secrets and webs of tangled lies. I found it harder to lose myself in this book more than I did the first. I spent a couple of days picking it up and putting down before I found myself finally immersing myself fully into it. I loved how you could see everything slotting slowly into place, how there was more to the reveal than there was in the first book. I'd like to see a third book set in Bayview with the same recurring cast of characters but doubt it's likely to happen.

And the final book I read this month is the surprise favourite of the bunch and of the year. A Throne Of Swans by Katherine and Elizabeth Corr was one I only brought because I needed another book to complete an offer. I dreaded the day it would be the last book left in my eenie meenie mo (how I choose my books) but for some reason last week I decided to bite the bullet and pick it up. And I'm so glad I did. A mix between Game Of Thrones and Swan Princess, this book follows young Princess Aderyn who's suddenly thrust into the role of Protector of her dominion after her father dies. From there she travels to her uncle's court where treachery, treason and more lay waiting to just boil over. And whilst Aderyn is trying to learn the way of the court, she's also fighting to hide her own secret. In a world where nobles can transform into birds, she is flightless and destined to die if she can not transform before her cousin's wedding. I was hooked on this book, I didn't think I'd finish it in time to feature in this post but I just flew through it. It was everything I didn't think I needed in a book this month and I'm so glad to learn that there will be a sequel that's due to be released next year.