Classic Sponge

Rose Petal Sponge Cake

So despite saying I was going to lay off the rose petal treats it was the only jam in the house so I made rose petal jam and cream filled vanilla sponge cake. Quite the mouthful in many ways. The sponge cake was made using Delia Smith's All-in-one-sponge which is the recipe I always use because it is dead easy. On my mothers instruction I used Soya butter to my disgust but you couldn't taste it in the cake. For more about the all in one sponge cake have a look at a previous post: Rose Petal Fairy Cakes but the basic ingredients are flour, baking powder, eggs, caster sugar and soft butter. I also used vanilla extract.

The Ingredients for an All-in-One-Sponge

I doubled the recipe so as to make two cakes but when I took them out of the oven they were a bit shallow as I suspected. Upon turning the page of the cook book I discovered that for layered cakes 50% more cake mixture was needed. Not to worry. So what happened to the other cake... Well I attempted to make lemon curd but it was all lumpy and not worth photographing and well the cake was disgusting. Still gobbled it up all the same. Fortunately, the second cake was simply filled with rose petal jam and cream and then dusted with icing sugar. Yum Yum!

The Sponge Cake Cooling

Rose And Cream Sponge Cake

Glittery Cupcakes

Glittery Cupcakes

My housemate who co-creates most of our novelty cakes was having her 21st birthday at her parents house so I knew they'd be getting her a cake. So as not to interfere we decided to make cupcakes instead.  I had recently just got a cupcake stand as a present and some gorgeous black foil cupcake cases so we were ready to roll. We knew she was wearing a black dress with red shoes so we thought about making red and black cupcakes. We mixed the icing up but for some reason the colours wouldn't work. The black was too grey and the red was too bright. 

So after we threw out an obscene amount of icing we decided to do something simple as we did not have time to pipe any icing. So we mixed up normal icing i.e. water and icing sugar and poured it onto the cupcakes. I had some green/pink edible glitter so we just sprinkled it on top of the cupcakes and voila! We had created simple tasty and pretty cupcakes. It certainly was a change from our usual creations. My other housemate created the top cupcake using edible gold stars and silver sugar balls. 

Mini Glitter Cupcakes

Another example of using the glitter was for another friends 21st in their house where once again I knew the parents would be providing the cake. This time we made mini cupcakes using silicon moulds which meant they had no cases but that didn't matter as they were bitesize. This time we did pipe un-coloured buttercream icing and then decorated the buns with the glitter and balls etc. Making and decorating mini cupcakes is quite time consuming so I invited some friends over to help decorate them. It is great fun and you can have a chat while doing it. The guys are particularly good at it.

Tasty Summer Treats!

It is summer time and that means everyone wants light tasty treats packed full of fruit as opposed to rich tasty Biscuit Cake. First up is a strawberry and blueberry roulade. I used the following  Mary Berry Strawberry Roulade Recipe. However, I did not use any almonds or greek yogurt and I added blueberries. The strawberries and blueberries were fresh and locally grown which made for a very tasty treat. It was my first time making a pavlova mixture and I was quite happy with the results. The recipe was excellent and very clear. As you can see the pavlova cracked in places as it was too deep for rolling. This happened because the oven I was using didn't fit a normal size baking tray and I had to use a smaller one! I also over did the filling from an aesthetic point of view but no one complained about the taste.

Strawberry and Blueberry Roulade

Stork Perfect for Cakes

 I am always making strange cupcakes and cakes so I decided for once to make a simple fairy cake... well sort of. I used this recipe by Delia Smith, All in One Sponge Video which I simply spooned into bun cases instead. You need to reduce the baking time by about 5mins for buns instead of a cake.  It is best to use a soft butter that comes in a tub such as Stork Perfect for cakes which is available in the UK and Ireland. Since I did not have any of this butter I used Stork Perfect for Pastry Butter which is also soft but resulted in a more crispier than fluffy sponge as you can see from the photo. This meant that it was difficult to cut the top off the bun and make the traditional fairy cake wings. Therefore I scooped out a circle in the middle carefully so as not to break it up. Dropped in half a teaspoon of raspberry jam followed by a desert spoon of cream. Then I placed the removed sponge back on top and placed half a homegrown raspberry on top.

Raspberry and Cream Fairy Cake

Finally, maybe not quite a summer treat as these pancakes were quite thick for Irish standards and not anywhere near as thin as a crepe would be. However, they were scrumptious and a good alternative to a heavy fry for breakfast on a busy day. They are smaller than usual as the only non-stick pan left in my student house was for frying eggs but I think it was a nice touch. The shapes were cut out using cookie cutters.

The pink sugar was left over from a previous baking experience. I made it by placing ONE drop of red food colouring in a bowl and adding sugar until the desired colour was achieved. It is not uniform in colour at first due to the food colouring clumping together but if you pass it through a sieve the clumps will be removed. Be warned, you need alot of sugar to make it pink, the food colouring goes a long way. It may even be up to 500g! However, I've just been using the sugar as normal in other cakes and it has not effected the colour. Though pancakes take awhile to make and cook they are worth it. Other topping that we had were the traditional lemon and icing sugar, chocolate spread, golden syrup and bananas. Yum. Keeping on the theme of light treats this summer I also made Marshmallows!

Pankcake with Pink Sugar

Pancakes with Chocolate Spread