Marble Cake!

The Husband and I were invited over for dinner on Saturday night so I decided to use my new sunflower cake mould to bake a simple marble cake. I found a lovely recipe online for a 20" cake and as the sunflower cake is only 16.5", I used the rest of the batter to make daisy shaped marble cakes.

Marble cake is a mix of vanilla cake batter and vanilla cake batter with cocoa powder added to it! Just dollop the different colours into the cake tin, swirl with a skewer and you have marble cake!

Unfortunately I think I overestimated the baking time due to the new cake tin size and the top came out a tad crusty and dry. However, everyone at dinner seemed to enjoy it enough to ask for seconds! The Husband has pronounced it 'not one of your best' though...oh well....

Blackberry Traybake!

Blackberries are currently on sale and they are really yummy and juicy! I had this lovely blackberry traybake recipe from a magazine, so decided to bake it.

This traybake consists of self-raising flour, five eggs, 125g blackberries, golden caster sugar, baking powder and butter topped with another 125g of blackberries, 40g of flaked almonds and icing sugar mixed with orange juice and vanilla extract.

It was actually quite tricky and messy to beat together but I am hoping it will be worth the effort!

Squidgy Spiced Apple Cake!

As the Husband and I were having colleagues over for dinner this weekend, I decided to bake something for dessert. As I have a couple of apples lurking in the fridge, I wanted to bake something appley. This lovely recipe required 300g of cooking apples and I used 260g of Royal Gala apples and 40g of raisins instead.

This cake called for 2 teaspoons of nutmeg and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon to give the 'spiced' flavour and it did turn out with a pretty strong nutmeg flavour. I suspect if one is not a nutmeg fan, one might prefer 2 teaspoons of cinnamon instead.

The cake turned out quite moist and fruity. It is also gratifying when your dinner guest asked for another piece! The rest will be going to the Office tomorrow!

Cranberry Almond Squares!

To use up frozen cranberries I brought for the another baking session, I found this cranberry almond bar recipe.

This recipe called for 75g of cranberries, 6 tablespoons of flaked almonds and 1.5 teaspoons of vanilla extract which gives it a lovely scent while one is mixing the cookie-like dough. It is also quite pretty with the red of cranberries peeking through the golden brown almonds.

Will update on taste later!

Sweet & Nutty Tea Bread!

I found this recipe sometime ago and never got a chance to use it until this weekend. This recipe came about as a means to use up leftover dried fruit and nuts. I did a 150g combination of mixed fruit, walnut, pecans and pine nuts as a result.

Disappointingly, the tea bread turned out quite bland when it should have been moist and sweet. The dough was also surprisingly sticky with vegetable oil used instead of butter. I wonder if I should have used more sultanas and dried berries instead. It does cut easily like crusty bread and maybe might be tasty with butter.

Will report on taste from other tasters tomorrow!

Apple Fruitcake!

On Christmas eve, I decided that the Husband should have something homemade for Christmas since we are having Christmas lunch with the parents-in-law.

As everyone would know fruitcakes are a must for Christmas and I will be the first one to say I am a massive fan of my mother-in-law's. I found this 'easy' fruitcake recipe and thought it was a lovely recipe for a Christmas eve baking afternoon.

The cake was meant to contain 200g of grated apple and 300g of raisins, sultanas and currants but another review recommended 100g of apricots and glace cherries instead of 100g of apple, so I decided to make a combination of 100g grated apple, 100g cherries, 300g of luxury fruit and raisins. I have to confess I was quite keen to reduce the grated apple content as I am not a fan of grating. If anyone can recommend a great automatic grater, please let me know!

Anyway, this cake turned out delicious. We left 3/4 of the cake with the parents-in-law and we took a piece with us on holiday which was still yummy three days later.