White Chocolate, Pineapple & Coconut Traybake!

Again from my holiday recipe book, I found the perfect recipe to use up leftover white chocolate and 2 tins of pineapple in juice at the back of the cupboard.

This traybake was baked out of melted white chocolate and butter, eggs, plain and self-raising flour, crushed pineapple, caster sugar and desiccated coconut. The icing mixed out of icing sugar and pineapple juice is then spread on top and more desiccated coconut is sprinkled.

The traybake smelled delicious out of the oven, and the Husband has declared it 'pretty good'!

Cupcake Class!

I went for a cupcake class this weekend to learn how to decorate cupcakes. The teacher was very nice and she bakes and sells cupcakes commercially.

Unfortunately the cupcakes we baked in the class turned out undercooked so the teacher kindly gave us a dozen of her own vanilla cupcakes to decorate.

I learnt to make sugar paste decorations with cutters and silicone mould. The different icing colours are made from white icing mixed with pink and purple paste colouring as are the different coloured sugar paste decorations.

Piping the icing is still a challenge for me but I realised that I was doing it all wrong as I was overfilling the piping bag, squeezing from the bottom rather than the top and not twisting the top of bag so that the icing can only go down when squeezed. Common sense, I know, but it helps to have a proper demonstration!

I thought the cupcakes looked beautiful when finished!

Sadly, the Husband was not impressed describing the cupcakes as rather bland, he didn't like the taste of the sugar paste decorations or the icing either.

Oh well, will try harder next time!

White Chocolate, Coconut & Cranberry Macaroons!

From the previous entry, you will know this weekend is macaroon weekend. This recipe is for a macaroon that does not require filling and so are much easier to make but obviously less pretty and less 'macaroon-like'.

The macaroon is baked out of egg whites, caster sugar, plain flour, vanilla extract, desiccated coconut, chopped white chocolate and cranberries. The 'dough' is then rolled into balls and each ball is then topped with a cranberry.

I thought they were really pretty but I think I might have over-baked them as they are not as chewy as I expected.

However, people seemed to like them!

Comment from a taster, "I particularly liked the macaroon with the fruit, nice and chewy for me."

Chocolate Almond Macaroons!

I have to confess I am not a fan of macaroons. However, the Husband is a big fan and it is his favourite baking since our holiday. So like any good wife who cannot cook, I decided to experiment with baking macaroons this weekend.

On our holiday, I bought two new baking books, one of which has lots of yummy macaroon recipes. I chose to make one type of macaroon that requires filling and another that just involving rolling the 'dough' into rounds, which you can read about in the next entry.

This chocolate almond macaroon is baked out of beaten egg whites, icing sugar, caster sugar, ground almonds and cocoa powder. The filling is chocolate melted with hot pouring cream. The main problem I have with making macaroons is the need to pipe perfect rounds on baking trays. I bought a macaroon silicone mould and it did help to make more even rounds but I still have to pipe it on. I have to confess I am rubbish at piping and besides getting the 'dough' all over the kitchen, I had to pipe the excess 'dough' freehand which was challenging.

I want to present the Husband with tasty macaroons when he gets back so the Office is the guinea pig tomorrow!

Comment from a taster, "Loved your chocolate filling in the other one."

White Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cookies!

I wanted to bake something chocolately this weekend as I haven't done so for a while now. This white chocolate and peanut butter cookie recipe came from one of my favourite websites and it seemed really tasty and easy.

A white chocolate and peanut butter cookie is baked out of plain flour, demerara sugar, caster sugar, butter, crunchy peanut butter, white chocolate chunks, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder. If you love peanuts, you will love this cookie as fortunately or unfortunately, depending on what you prefer, the peanut butter does overwhelm the chocolate in the cookie.

69 cookies took three days to finish in the Office. The Husband has pronounced them 'ok'.

Anzac Biscuits!

After arriving home from a three week long holiday (yes, people, be jealous!), I decided to mark the occasion by baking something native to the country we visited. Okay, I also chose to bake this biscuit because it is really quick and I was really jet-lagged! :)

From Wikipedia, "an Anzac biscuit is a sweet biscuit popular in Australia and New Zealand, made using oats, flour, desiccated coconut, sugar, butter, golden syrup, bicarbonate of soda boiling water. 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 really yummy and 60 biscuits were finished in two days!

Can you guess where we went for our holiday?