Yorkshire Parkin!

What is a Yorkshire Parkin? According to Wikipedia, a "Parkin or Perkin is a soft cake traditionally made of oatmeal and molasses, which originated in northern England", "often associated with Yorkshire" and traditionally eaten on Bonfire Night, which is the 5th of November.

I decided to bake this cake as it is meant to mature for 3 to 7 days before being eaten and can also be kept up to 2 weeks in an airtight container. This is ideal for me as I will be visiting my sister and family this weekend and we can all have it on Bonfire Night!

The recipe actually came from a magazine from one of my favourite clothing shops, so fingers crossed it will actually be quite tasty!

Ginger Cupcakes!

It's Halloween!

For the first time in many years, I am actually around to make some Halloween treats for the Office!

This year we see the arrival of ginger cupcakes. These cupcakes are made out of treacle, ground ginger, milk, self-raising flour, butter, chopped stem ginger, brown sugar and eggs. The ginger fudge icing is beaten out of butter, icing sugar, ginger syrup and lemon juice. They are then decorated with sugar decorations of pumpkins, spiders, skulls and cobwebs! You can't see it from the picture but I have also used Halloween black cupcake cases!

Will update on taste tomorrow!

Pink Cupcakes Part II!

October is Breast Cancer Month and the Office does a coffee morning offering pink iced donuts and coffee for a donation to the charity.

I volunteered to bake some cupcakes with pink icing to supplement the donuts and hopefully helped to increase the donations.

These are rose flavoured cupcakes with rose flavoured icing. From my experience colouring our niece's cupcakes, I was more careful this time to mix the icing into a soft pastel pink.

These cupcakes are then decorated with sugar pink and purple elephants and pink sugar sprinkles.

I think they went down well as I got a couple of emails saying they were delicious!

Pink Lemon Cupcakes!

Pink lemon cupcakes!

These cupcakes are meant to be a present for our niece who is celebrating her birthday tomorrow! She is meant to be a lover of pink but not of fancy cupcakes, so I chose a simple lemon cupcake recipe and just mixed a few drops of natural red food colouring with icing sugar to make pink icing! I also bought lovely sugar decorations as well as those of Winnie The Pooh to top them off.

Fingers crossed she will like them!

Apple & Apricot Cake!

A fruity weekend! After watching the Great British Bake Off on telly, it always makes me want to bake while it makes the Husband want to eat!

Mary Berry is turning out to be one of my favourite bakers and I have also recently bought one of her books, '100 Cakes and Bakes.' This lovely fruity cake recipe is from that book.

The cake is baked out of 250g self raising flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 225g caster sugar, 2 eggsm 150g melted butter all mixed and beaten together before 225g chopped apple and 100g apricots are stirred in. The batter is poured into an 20cm tin and then 25g of flaked almonds are scattered on top. The cake is then baked for an hour and a half at 140 degrees.

This is a lovely fruity moist cake and the parents-in-laws seemed to like it enough when they kindly became my tasters!

Orange & Sultana Traybake!

Another recipe from Mary Berry! The fruity theme continues this weekend with this orange and sultana traybake.

This traybake is baked out of 225g self raising flour, 225g caster sugar, zest of 2 oranges, 225g butter, 275g sultanas, 2 tsp baking powder, 4 large eggs and 2 tbspn of milk all beaten together. It is then baked at 160 degrees for 35 mins. The orange icing is mixed out of 225g sifted icing sugar and 3 tbspn of orange juice.

The Husband came wandering into the kitchen when the cake was baking as the entire apartment smelled so good! I thought it is quite tasty and my only gripe is the sultanas seemed to fall out when the cake was sliced into pieces.

Will update on taste tomorrow!

Little Gems!

This week is National Baking Week in the UK! I decided I cannot let it pass without some baking of my own, so the Office got an unexpected treat on Friday!

This 'little gem' cake recipe is again from Mary Berry and really easy! They are baked out of self raising flour, caster sugar, 2 eggs, butter, baking powder and milk beaten together and scooped into 65 petits fours cases. The icing is mixed out of icing sugar and a tbspn of lemon juice. The only hard part is icing the 65 little gems which took ages!

The Husband said they were 'quite good'!

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Chocolate chip cookies are an all time favourite and I am always trying to find new ways of making them different.

This banana chocolate chip recipe seems ideal as it combines plain flour, baking soda, 2 eggs, 100g light brown muscovado sugar, 200g granulated sugar, 112g of butter, 1 medium banana and 360g of chocolate chips! This cookie smells wonderful and comes out of the oven quite chewy.

The Husband has declared them 'not bad'.

Orange Olive Oil Muffins!

Continuing the fruity theme and trying to be vaguely healthy, this orange olive oil muffin recipe seems like a good idea.

This muffin is baked out of plain flour, baking powder, 180ml of orange juice, 60ml of olive oil, granulated sugar and an egg. Before the muffins go into the oven, more sugar is sprinkled on top to give them a slightly crackled look.

The Husband has declared them 'quite bland', hence I have glazed some of the remainder with an orange icing to add some sweetness to the muffins.

Iced Apricot Fruit Loaf!

A fruity theme this weekend!

This apricot loaf from Mary Berry recipes is baked out of self-raising flour, butter, 150g sultanas, 100g chopped dried apricots, 75g glace cherries, 100g light muscovado sugar and three eggs. The icing is mixed of 100g sifted icing sugar and two tablespoons of orange juice. It looks great so will update on taste later!