Chocolate & Blackberry Cupcakes

 

As per my note on my last post yesterday, here is my second recipe for the week ... one that was an experiment! A successful one, I may add. I have tasted enough to come to this conclusion! It is national baking week so you really should be baking something this week. I think I may have gained several pounds by the end of the week...  nothing new

Makes 18 Cupcakes

Pre-heat oven to 180°C

Bake to perfection for 15 minutes

You will need the following:

Cupcakes

175g Butter

175g Caster Sugar

3 Eggs

175g Self Raising Flour

100g Dark Chocolate

100g Blackberries

1Tsp Vanilla Extract

1Tsp Baking Powder

Icing

100g Blackberries

75g Butter

350g Icing Sugar

Method:

 Line a muffin tray with cupcake cases

Cream together the butter and sugar 

Add the eggs, one at a time

Till pale and fluffy

Melt your chocolate in a bain marie until runny or in a microwave for 1 minute

Combine your chocolate with your cake mixture

Until it looks like this

(a bit like the kind of chocolate you just want to drink/stick your head in à la Dawn French in the Vicar of Dibley) 

Heat the blackberries over a bain marie or in the microwave for 1 minute

Combine until smooth

Sift in the flour

Fold in the flour with the baking powder

Until the mixture represents something like this

Using an ice cream scoop, put a scoop of mixture into each cupcake case

Bake to perfection for 15 minutes

Whilst the cakes are baking, make the icing

Combine the butter and icing sugar together

Heat the blackberries as before

Seive into your mixture, you do not want any pips or skin in the mixture

The icing will turn a great magenta colour

Once your icing mix is nice and smooth I used a small pallet knife to spread roughly a tablespoon of icing on each cupcake

I opted to use a silver confectionery spray on some that I was giving as a gift... just because!

Enjoy ...





Blackberry and Apple Crumble

Just two points of housekeeping:

1. It is National Baking Week!

2.Shocking scenes from Downton Abbey last night!! 

3. Homeland ... Nicholas Brody, is the truth about to be revealed?!!?!

So to the first point... it is National Baking Week (yes it is real, I'm not making it up as an excuse to bake) I thought it would be appropriate to share a blackberry recipe as my first post for the week ...I am going to attempt to pop one up every day. This is simply my favourite pudding...it screams autumn and leaves you feeling far too full but oh so satisfied!

Serves 8

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C

Bake to perfection for 30 minutes 

You will need the following:

3 Large Cooking Apples

400g Blackberries

100ml Water

125g Butter

125g Brown Granulated Sugar

100g Rolled Porridge Oats

75g Plain Flour

Method:

Peel your apples 

Cut the top & bottoms off and quarter the apples

Cut out the cores and half each quarter

Layer in your dish of choice with the apples

Heat for 5 minutes in the microwave or in a pan with the water

Make your crumble by placing all the ingredients in one bowl and rubbing together with your finger tips until it resembles fine breadcrumbs

Allow your fruit to cool and pour over crumble topping

Bake in the oven for 30 minutes

Serve with ice cream & devour


Enjoy ...

Blackberry Picking

Its that time of year to forage amongst the hedgerows. The upcoming months welcome plenty of excuses to bake & fresh produce is the best of excuses. We are officially well into autumn, there is no denying that we are on the slippery slope to Winter & Christmas. I adore autumn & I adore how optimistic the British are about autumn; describing the blinding cold weather as 'crisp', focusing on the clear blue skies rather than the dark mornings & the changing colour of the leaves, whilst trying to avoid the commercial onslaught of Christmas. 

My weekend has been typically autumnal ... I was strolling around John Lewis and came across 'The Christmas Shop', its only just turned October and already there are early Christmas offers everywhere. In the Waitrose weekend paper there was a special pull out 'Countdown to Christmas', and a few weeks ago Scott Mills played Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' ... it seems I'm not doing so well at avoiding  the commercial onslaught of Christmas!

I'm not so good with the cold weather, braving the 'crisp' (in my opinion mind numbingly freezing cold)  weather today I donned my Barbour, a million & one layers and wellies to go foraging for some blackberries. It is a great time to pick blackberries, if you live near a hedgerow they are in abundance! I went out with an old 2 Litre ice cream tub in order to gather enough blackberries to make some jam and a crumble. So you can guess that there may be some blackberry recipes following shortly! 

The only downside is that I now have really rather purple fingers & several puncture wounds from the copious amount of thorns that blackberries are surrounded by. However, both worth it for the abundance of blackberries that are sat in the fridge ready to be turned into some fruity baked goodness tomorrow! 

My advice ... avoid the pricey blackberries on supermarket shelves 

&

go and pick your own!

Choc & Stem Ginger Rocky Road

Not one for the waist line but definitely for the indulgence and taste. This is just so delicious and 100% inspired by my visit to the Cake and Bake Show and in particular watching the Mary Berry Presentation. She made a stem ginger rocky road biscuit & I was just too busy watching her cook that I forgot to take note of the measurements ... so this is my attempt to make something that was near perfectly close to what I tasted. I have to say its pretty damn good. The proof was in the pudding, literally, when I serve it up to some girlfriends with some fine taste buds at a dinner party on Saturday; it was swiftly all demolished. Can be cut into small squares and served as an inexpensive petit fours or cut to the size you feel you can manage!!

You will need the following:

300g Dark Chocolate

200g Ginger Nut Biscuits

200ml Double Cream

50g Crystallised Stem Ginger

50g Golden Caster Sugar

Method:

Measure out your ginger nut biscuits

Crush roughly with the end of a rolling pin

Measure out your chocolate

Melt the chocolate over a bain marie or for a couple of minutes in the microwave

Add the cream to the chocolate

Stir until it is completely combined

Add in the biscuits

Measure out your crystallised stem ginger

Finely chop into half centimetre pieces

Add to the chocolate biscuit mix

Add in the sugar

  

Cut a strip of baking paper and line a 8 x 8 inch tin 

Pour in your mixture and smooth over. 

Put in the fridge for a couple of hours and allow to set

Cut into pieces and eat whenever you like ... store in the fridge

Enjoy ... 

Chocolate Cupcakes

Thousands flocked to Earls Court over the weekend to visit The Cake and Bake Show ... obvs I took my opportunity to go & be surrounded by baked goods for the day! Yes, guilty I was up bright and early to get to the train at silly o'clock on the Sunday! My sister and I just could not get over how busy it was. We knew it would be hectic as the show had sold out and more tickets had to be issued, who knew baking was so in vogue at the moment?!?! 

I would however like to highlight very clearly, that I was not one of the mob-frenzied crowd that were fighting for the free sugar samples and recipe cards. A couple of middle aged women got really rather irate at how they couldn't have a recipe card for the Mary Berry demonstration! However, this was nothing in comparison to the tousling for seats in the Cake Kitchen to see live demonstrations... It reminded me a bit of Michael McIntyre's budget airport queue sketch of when everyone is trying to predict when the plane is going to go, suddenly one person decides the plane might be going and then everyone decides 'the plane might be going' and the plane clearly hasn't arrived but everyone starts to queue and starts edging around the queue ... 'all a bit tense' was I think how Michael described the situation. 'All a bit tense' is how I would have described the pandemonium to get a good seat! 

As it happens we lucked out & got a front row view for Mary Berry's demonstration, she was just fab, rather witty and full of cake knowledge. She made a stunning hazelnut roulade, a classic chocolate cake and a tasty dark chocolate, stem ginger rocky road (I know because I had a piece...that woman can bake!)

So after graduating, I'm learning that you do indeed live for your weekends. I'm getting pretty fed up already with copious amounts of photos racking up in my facebook newsfeed of friends still at University having fun on a daily occurrence. So I figured it was only appropriate that I post a recipe that can be shared amongst new friends, old friends or just all for yourself! Hungover or just hungry! A solid dose of chocolate. Everyone likes chocolate, when I moved into halls at university the two sharing things my mummy sent me with were chocolates & a jar of coffee ... no one drank coffee, everyone ate chocolate!! 

Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing and grated chocolate ... not one bad word in that sentence! Unless you're weird & don't like chocolate. or allergic - I'll let you off.

Makes 16ish Cupcakes

(depending on how full you fill your cupcake cases)

Pre-heat oven to 180°C

Bake to perfection for 16-18 minutes

You will need the following:

Cake

175g Butter

100g Caster Sugar

75g Soft Brown Sugar

3 Eggs

175g Self Raising Flour

50g Cocoa Powder

50g Dark Chocolate, melted

1 Drop of Vanilla Essence

2Tbsp Yoghurt 

1Tsp Baking Powder

Icing

275g Icing Sugar

50g Cocoa Powder

50g Butter

2Tbsp Plain Yoghurt

Decoration

Chocolate for grating 

Edible gold dust if you're keen

Method:

Cream together your butter and sugars

Then sift in your cocoa powder

One at a time add the eggs, make sure each egg is fully combined before adding the next 

Sift in the flour 

Add the melted chocolate & vanilla essence 

Followed by the baking powder

Finally add in the yoghurt 

Divide your mixture into the cupcake cases. Either use an ice cream scoop and put one scoop in each case or fill the cases with mixture just over half way 

Bake in the oven for 16-18 minutes, remembering the the golden rules of baking 

Whilst they are baking make the icing by combining the butter & yoghurt, then sift in the cocoa powder & icing sugar. 

Spread a tablespoon of icing on each cupcake 

If you're keen sprinkle with gold dust

It does look quite pretty...

 

Enjoy with friends, old or new ... or on your own!

Frozen Strawberry Yoghurt

"Adiós summer" is how I feel at the moment. The reality of the looming life post university is settling in, job hunting has commenced, friends are applying to jobs, starting their masters or moving into London and on top of the job wobbles, the weather is ducking and diving all over the place ... everything is incredibly shaky in life at the moment. I am stabling my life by organising 'things to look forward to' whilst I pace myself through the application process. My personal favourite is a winter holiday to Morocco; I have wanted to visit for a while now, so shall enjoy the chance to catch some pre-Christmas sun and explore the delicacies that Morocco has to offer! In the meantime, visiting friends is my perfect stabiliser for life at the moment!

So due to the vast amount of uncertainty and my worry that the warm summer days are drying up, I thought I would squeeze in a post that is a dead cert set (apologies)!! With gluts of strawberries on sale at the local market, we had too many to eat at once in our fridge. I thought it a good idea to make good of what we had surplus and make a slightly healthier alternative to ice cream... it is the last chance to get a summery blog in before my onslaught of all bakes autumn roll in! (I cannot wait)

You will need the following:

1 Tub of Plain Yoghurt

(500g or 1kg)

(not the fat-free or low-fat options)

300g Strawberries

1Tbsp Honey

1Tbsp Water

Method:

Chop up 50g of your strawberries and pop them into your tub of yoghurt.

Hull the rest of the strawberries and place them in a pan with the honey and water

Bring to the boil

Fold in your Strawberries

I decided to pop some of the mixture into little pots, to be able to serve with a hot pudding at some point!

Wait for several hours until yoghurt is frozen (best left overnight)

Serve on its own or with a pudding or cake of your choice!!

Enjoy ...