Challenge #9 Coffee & Walnut Tray Bake

It's been a while since I've done a recipe out of the Mary Berry Baking Bible (http://danngoodcake.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-mary-berry-baking-challenge-1-lemon.html)  but here's a tray bake I made the other day. I loooove coffee cake, even though I hate coffee as a drink.

It's a great 'throw it all in the mixer' recipe and comes out lovely and moist. Yum.

The icing is also very tasty and easy to make - it has a lot of icing sugar compared to butter (more than usual) so be prepared for an icing sugar explosion from the mixer!.

Mary Berry tops hers with walnut halves but I had run out. Luckily I happened to have some chocolate sauce left over from pancake day so used that instead. 

My parents came to stay the following weekend and coffee cake was requested so I used the same recipe but made them into cupcakes.

Challenge #2 Maple Syrup Cake

So recipe number 2 from Mary Berry's baking Bible was maple syrup cake. The main ingredients were maple syrup (obviously), pecan nuts and orange rind. I was a huge fan of the instructions which were pretty much 'measure all ingredients into a large bowl and mix together'.

All in all it was pretty straight forward to make but it takes a long time to cook in the oven (1hour and a  half) as it's made in a deep 8 inch cake tin. 

Then you have to slice it into 3 layers (mine were a bit dodgy but you can't notice once it's assembled).

The cream filling and coating was also easy to make - double cream whisked to spreading consistency and then maple syrup folded in. 

And then to finish it all off you sprinkle grated orange rind to the top. 

It was a really nice cake, subtle flavours and not too sweet or heavy (surprisingly, considering it was smothered with cream!!!).

The only annoying thing is having to store it in the fridge!...

Lemon Drizzle Tray Bake

One of my favourite recipe books is Mary Berry's Baking Bible. It is my favourite because I know that whatever recipe I choose - it'll be awesome.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mary-Berrys-Baking-Bible-Berry/dp/1846077850

I had some lemons that needed using up so I looked up 'lemons' in the (baking) Bible and out popped a lemon drizzle tray bake recipe. Which is basically a lemon drizzle cake that isn't baked in a loaf tin and therefore doesn't take donkey years to cook.

And as usual, it turned out great (because of her recipes - not blowing my own trumpet!).  It has a really yummy crunchy topping. Here's the recipe....I recommend it.

225g softened butter

225g caster sugar

275g self raising flour

2 level teaspoons baking powder

4 large eggs

4 tablespoons milk

Finley grated rind of 2 lemons

Crunchy topping

175g granulated sugar

Juice of 2 lemons

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160ºC2. Place all the ingredients into a bowl and beat until well mixed3. Bake for 35-40 minutes (or until the cake starts to come away from the sides and is springy)4. Let it cool a little but whilst it's still warm mix the crunchy topping sugar and lemon juice together and pour over the cake.5. Leave to cool completely and then consume

Sparkly Cupcakes

A few weeks ago my husband asked me to make a batch of 20ish cupcakes for the teachers at his school.

After 2 hours of kitchen carnage ta daaaa!

I used cream cheese icing and lots of edible glitter & sprinkles. I really need to track down some extra large piping bags but I haven't discovered any yet.

I've had good use out of these cupcake boxes - great for transporting large amounts of cupcakes in the cars rather than using hundreds of cake tins.

http://www.cupcakeboxesuk.com/Corrugated-Cupcake-Boxes/24-Corrugated-Cupcake-Box-White-6cm-Divider/flypage.tpl.html