Strawberry Lemonade Muffins!

Berries are now in season and on sale, so I was quite keen to bake a berry recipe this weekend. These lovely strawberry lemonade muffins are made out of chopped strawberries (of course!), lemon zest, lemon juice, brown sugar, butter, vanilla extract, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. They turned out quite moist and I think they were better warm rather than at room temperature. Anyway, 14 muffins were all finished in two days.

Double Chocolate Coffee Toffee Cookies!

I found a bag of toffee lurking at the back of the cupboards this week so decided to bake with them. Chocolate is always a firm favourite so this chocolatey toffeey recipe should be perfect.

I halved the recipe and still got 36 cookies. This cookie is made out of flour, brown sugar, cocoa powder, chocolate chips, toffee bits, instant coffee bits, egg, butter, baking soda and vanilla extract. They came out beautifully chewy and I have to stop the Husband from scoffing them all weekend!

These were finished in a couple of days and the Husband has rated it one of his Top 5!

Maple Ginger Apple Cake!

I thought this was an interesting receipe and with apples in season, decided to try it out. As the original recipe is equivalent to 16 cups, which is A LOT, I decided to halve the recipe for an 8" baking square tin.

This recipe calls for plain flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, butter, brown sugar, eggs, 80g of maple syrup, vanilla extract, ginger root (but I substituted ground ginger instead), sour cream and 125g of diced apples.

The cake seems to have baked beautifully in the oven and it turned out to be a really moist cake. It took two days to finish in the Office.

Black & White Brownies!

These gorgeous brownies are seriously yummy! For some reason, the Husband & I have been scoffing chocolate all week so it was inevitable that chocolate will be on the baking menu this weekend. I have been hoarding this chocolatey recipe for some time now and concluded this weekend is its time to shine!

This recipe is made out of three layers - the batter is mixed out of sugar, butter, vanilla extract, eggs and flour and then divided into two halves, where 180g of melted white chocolate and 180g of milk chocolate are beaten into each portion. The bottom layer is the white chocolate batter, the second layer is 180g of white and milk chocolate chips and the third layer is the milk chocolate batter.

After the baking is done, the entire kitchen smells delicious! My parent-in-laws were my first tasters and they both seemed really pleased with the brownies! These brownies vanished in a day at the Office!

Blueberry & White Chocolate Coffee Cake!

I was planning to bake two items for the Office last weekend but due to the oversupply of cookies, I decided to delay the baking of the coffee cake. However because the blueberries were going to expire, this evening was spent in the kitchen.

This coffee cake batter is mixed out of flour, vanilla and almond extract, sugar, butter, buttermilk, egg, baking powder and baking soda with a final stir of 150g of blueberries and 90g of white chocolate chips topped with a sprinkling of demerara sugar.

The cake came out of the oven beautifully brown. Sliced into 20 pieces, they were all eaten in a day!

Apricot Pecan Oatmeal Chocolate Cookies!

This weekend, I found a bag of chopped apricots in the kitchen cupboard and so decided to bake some apricoty cookies. This recipe came in handy as the cookie has almost everything to cater to everyone's taste whether for fruit, chocolate or nuts! The total fruit, chocolate and nut content comes up to 539g and despite a stated production number of 3 dozen, I ended up with 73 cookies instead!

The Husband has pronounced it 'too apricoty', a colleague 'too sweet' but another colleague who loved the fruit content requested for the recipe!

The cookies must be alright though as all were finished in two days!

Tomato Juice Spiced Cake!

Dinner with the girls calls for dessert, especially when the starters and mains are courtsey of M&S! I decided that I would try another new recipe, spiced tomato juice cake with cream cheese frosting. Luckily, my girlfriends were happy guinea pigs and ate the cake. The cake tastes just like carrot cake and I wonder if I might have just found a happy replacement instead of grating carrots!

I brought the extra portions into the Office and the comment from a taster was 'So moist and the topping was delicious. You can repeat this one again. I think this is your best yet.'

Happy days!