Chocolate Coconut Squares!

After the success of the blueberry lemon cake with coconut crumble topping, a colleague of mine, who is also a good friend, asked if I could bake something chocolately and coconutty as she is a massive fan of both.

I found a recipe for a chocolate coconut cake but thought it might be a bit too much for the Office with the cookies and fairy cakes, so I settled for these chocolate coconut squares.

These are quite similar to lamingtons, a famous Australian cake, but there have been some disputes on the recipe website, as these chocolate coconut squares have cocoa powder while lamingtons are made out of sponge cakes.

The most fiddly part of these squares is the dipping in chocolate icing (butter, melted chocolate and icing sugar) and then into desiccated coconut. As you can imagine, it is quite tricky to immerse the pieces into sticky gooey chocolate icing and then into dry coconut without bits flying all over the kitchen counter!

They have turned out really rich, moist and yummy so I hope they would meet expectations tomorrow!

Cherry Chocolate Gooey Cookies!

As I had cherries and chocolate bits leftover from Thursday night, I decided to bake more cookies this weekend as well.

This dough is made of two different sugars, golden caster and light muscovado, egg, butter and self-raising flour. This time, rather than sticking on the cherry and chocolate bits onto the dough before baking, the cherries and chocolate bits are mixed into the dough.

However, this dough spreads a lot more so I only arranged 9 cookies on each tray. As you can see in the picture, the cookies are quite big and the Husband has pronounced them 'ok' after sneaking three off the cooling rack!

Brambles Fairy Cakes!

As berries are still on sale, I decided to continue the fruity theme this weekend. These are blackberry fairy cakes and because my lovely boss always calls his Blackberry a bramble, I decided to call them brambles fairy cakes instead. :)

This is an interesting recipe where every ingredient is measured in a yogurt pot of 150g. This batch of 20 fairy cakes consists of a pot of yogurt, caster sugar, oil and 2 eggs beaten together before adding in 2 pots of self-raising flour, rind of 1/2 an orange rind and 250g of blackberries.

Icing is made out of the remaining orange rind, icing sugar and a tablespoon of orange juice. I think I added too much orange juice as my icing turned out quite runny but taste sweet enough. I decorated my fairy cakes with extra blackberries and some with a drizzle of melted dark chocolate.

I think they are quite yummy but will keep you posted on taste tomorrow!

Raspberry Cupcakes with Orange Drizzle!

Baking overdose this week!

The Office was supporting the Macmillan Cancer Charity Coffee Morning on Friday September 24. How it works: The Social Committee asks for volunteers to bring in some home baking on the day and the office will be able to 'buy' some baking during the day with all procceeds going to the Charity. Known as the frequent baker in the office, I was happy to help. My original baking were raspberry cupcakes with orange drizzle (as above!) and the blueberry lemon cake with coconut crumble topping ( in a previous entry). However, after checking the list, nobody were baking cookies so I also decided to bake the choc-cherry cookies (the choc-cherry lollipops without the lolly sticks!).

Despite baking the blueberry lemon cake on Wed night, it still took me a good few hours on Thursday night to finish the raspberry cupcakes and the choc-cherry cookies.

On the day itself, it was a tremendous spread as lots of people have brought in stuff ranging from lovely pink iced cupcakes, chocolate fridge cake, rock buns, empire biscuits and more. Out of my baking, the blueberry lemon cake was the first to go, followed by the choc-cherry cookies and sadly, the raspberry cupcakes were the last. The Husband believed that I should have drizzled some chocolate over the raspberry cupcakes to make them look more exciting as they did look rather plain despite being quite tasty!

It was a good day as the Office raised GBP367.00 that was matched by the Company and also our team's charity. Hooray!

Triple Ginger & Spice Cake!

Still on the ginger trail, I found another ginger cake recipe that calls for three different forms of ginger.

First is 100g of glace ginger that goes into the ginger bake, second is the two teaspoons of ground ginger that also goes into the bake and lastly is the ginger syrup that gets mixed with icing sugar to form the ginger icing drizzled over the cake.

This cake has a stronger flavour than the previous ginger cake as it has a higher content of black treacle and uses dark muscovado sugar.

This was quite a big traybake and I ended up with 24 pieces that were finished by the second day!

The Husband has commented though that he did not think it was as good as the other crumbles I have made. :)

Lemon Curd & Sultana Cookies!

To use up leftover lemon curd from last week's blueberry lemon cake, I found this lemon curd cookie recipe from one of my baking books.

This cookie is made out of 350g plain flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, caster sugar, 100g lemon curd, 100g sultanas, butter and eggs. As I am quite fond of sultanas, I added another 25g which makes the cookies more fruity.

These cookies only take 12 - 15 mins to bake and they turn out really delicious. The icing is made of lemon juice and icing sugar which gives the cookies additional lemony flavour.

The Husband has pronounced them 'ok'.

Blackberry & Coconut Rectangles!

Still on the berry trail this weekend, blackberries were my next choice for baking.

This lovely crumble is made of 350g blackberries, dessicated coconut, brown sugar, self-raising flour, butter, eggs and oats. The topping is just a teacupful of the sponge base but as it was the third 'layer' and scattered at the end, it turned out quite crumbly unlike the moist sponge base. I also used large eggs rather than medium eggs which might have made the dough more moist than usual and the topping less crumbly and scatterable but the taste was still intact!

And yes, these were meant to be squares but due to the size of my baking tray, they ended up as rectangles! I brought a few over to the parents-in-law for dessert yesterday and my father-in-law described it as 'class', which as he is quite fond of fruit puddings, is quite a compliment.

The rest are going to the office tomorrow, so will keep you posted!

Blueberry Lemon Cake With Coconut Crumble Topping!

With blueberries currently on sale, I thought it was quite a shame not to bake more berry bakes during the season. I remembered this lovely blueberry lemon traybake in my books and decided to bake it again.

I love baking with coconut as the finished product usually smells fantastic! Although ingredients are few, this bake is made out of 3 'layers'. The first layer is the cake made out of flour, butter, sugar, eggs, blueberries and lemon zest. The second layer is melted lemon curd that is drizzled over the almost-done cake and blueberries. The third layer is the topping mixed out of desiccated coconut, sugar, butter and eggs.

As you can see in the picture, the traybake cuts really well and into quite big pieces as the tin is a 30 by 20cm size!

The Husband has a piece for dessert and said it is pretty good!

Anzac Biscuits!

After a busy day at work on Friday, I wanted to bake something comforting and familiar and hopefully not too unhealthy if I end up eating lots(!), so I went through my recipes and found this lovely oaty biscuity recipe.

What are Anzac biscuits?

According to Wikipedia, "Anzac biscuits have long been associated with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) established in World War I . It has been claimed the biscuits were sent by wives to soldiers abroad because the ingredients do not spoil easily and the biscuits kept well during naval transportation."

These biscuits are made of sugar, oats, golden syrup, coconut, butter, flour and bicarbonate of soda, which makes them spread nicely in the oven and has a lovely coconutty smell to them when done.

The Husband is a big fan and has been eating them from the tin when I am not looking! :)