Welcome to my cake blog..enjoy my creations! gracie x x

Welcome to my cake blog..enjoy my creations! gracie x x
Mother's day cakes

Friday 30 August 2013

Eton Mess

This is my go-to recipe for a quintessentially English dessert when you're in a rush.

Serves 10

Ingredients:

Box of meringue nests (usually come in 8)
600ml double cream
600ml greek yoghurt (full or low fat)
200g raspberries (or other berries of your choice)
2 Tbsp Caster Sugar
1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract

Method

Combine the cream, yoghurt, sugar and vanilla and whip together until thickened
Crush half of the raspberries and keep the other half whole, stir into the creamy mixture.
Crush the meringue nests into chunks and stir in only when you're ready to serve.

This dessert doesn't keep well as the sugar based meringue dissolves back into the mix never to be seen again.. a good excuse to have seconds!


Nigella's Coffee and Walnut Cake

Today's my dad's birthday..Happy Birthday! 

As we're still trying to finish birthday cake from another celebration this weekend I decided to go for a coffee and walnut as they generally last a little longer.. so hopefully it'll still be edible by the time we've caught up with the cakefest!

I used this recipe by Nigella Lawson, I've never tried it before but it came out well.  I have to say that Nigella is a woman after my own heart, with instructions such as.. "pulse the icing sugar in the food processor until it is lump free" how could you not love her!


Sunday 25 August 2013

Scones with Jam and Cream

Here's my first ever attempt at scones.  I used this recipe by Paul Hollywood of Great British Bake-Off fame as my big sister highly recommended it..and it'd didn't disappoint.

The scones came out a good size and were really soft but moist to bite into.  We had them with clotted cream and strawberry jam (what else!) but sadly I don't have any pics of them made up.  Anyway, they were delicious :-)


Wednesday 21 August 2013

Birthday Cake Bunting

I LOVE bunting, so imagine my excitement when I discovered that someone somewhere had come up with the brilliant idea of miniaturising it and decorating cakes with it..

I was bestowed the honour of making the 1st Birthday cake for the daughter of the family I live with and thought this would be a great time to try out the bunting. Once again, I took inspiration from my brilliant big sister who had done something similar for her daughter and so, I spent the best part of an evening outlining and cutting out tiny triangles then sticking them all together onto bits of string and kebab sticks..  



Yes I know, I probably do need to get out more but I have to say, I think it was worth the effort
:-)

(The cake is just a plain sponge with Vanilla Buttercream)


Chocolate Eclairs

Tuesday was a very exciting day for me as it was the start of the Great British Bake-off (GBBO).  If you've never seen it, it's like the world cup of baking with bunting!

So, in honour of the day I made some chocolate eclairs for us to tuck into as we watched the show.

I used this Rachel Allen recipe.  To be honest, as much as I love and admire Rachel, I wasn't super impressed with this recipe, the eclairs were delicious but came out a little too wet for my liking.  I think I would definitely have lost points from Paul (Hollywood one of the GBBO presenters) for lack of crispiness.  Next time, I'd either try another recipe I've used before for profiteroles, or add a little less egg.







Afternoon Tea

Oh my goodness, I can't believe it's been almost a year since I last blogged! Have to make a big effort to BLOG MORE from now on!

Here's a nice one from a while back..

We held an afternoon tea for the women at church to invite friends to, it was a fabulous afternoon and the best part was that lots of people got to hear a really great message about Jesus and how he gives us more riches than anything that the world has to offer us.

The downside was that I've yet to learn the art of delegation so ended up having a major bake-fest the day before (although I did love being in the kitchen!).

So, here's what I made:

Coffee cake
Chocolate Sponge
Scones
Lemon Drizzle Cake
Shortbread Fingers