Chocolate Brownie Cake aka 'Ugly Cake'!

I baked this chocolate cake for the office sometime ago as it looked quite delicious. Despite its sunken appearance, the cake was a huge hit especially after 10 secs in the microwave to get it warmed up. The Husband is a huge fan of the cake and last November, suggested it as a birthday cake for his brother.

As the whole family are big fans of chocolate including the children, I was happy to oblige. However, I was quite upset at the look of the cake with its sunken middle which I do not think is what a birthday cake should look like, so I decided to bake another cake, a blueberry and lemon drizzle cake, as well for the occasion. I brought both cakes for the dinner party and they were both well-received. Hence, from that occasion, this cake was dubbed the 'Ugly Cake'.

This time, it was my sister-in-law's birthday. I know she is a fan of chocolate so the Husband once again recommended the 'Ugly cake'. To be honest, I think he just wanted a slice as throughout the process, he was asking if we could give a cake with a quarter slice missing although I do not think he was serious. :) As a treat, I made a full-sized cake as well as 2 muffin-sized mini ugly cakes. He was very happy when I gave him the mini ugly cakes.

We brought the cake over on a Saturday morning and only a slice was left by the end of the morning. Success!

Raisin & Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies!

This was a weekday treat for the office as we received startling news that a colleague was leaving. To cheer up the team, I went through my recipes for something tasty and quick and anything with chocolate is always a good choice. These cookies turned out to be more crispy than I expected but it was still quite tasty. A single batch turned into more than 40 cookies which filled up a good-sized biscuit tin. It took 2 days to finish and the Husband sneaked a couple home at the end of the day!

Honey, Cinnamon & Pine Nut Shortbread!

I wanted to bake something vaguely healthy over the weekend and thought this recipe with rice flour, honey and pine nuts look quite delicious. Note I said vaguely healthy as the butter content is quite high! It turned out not as crumbly as shortbread but quite caramel-like in the middle. The pine nuts were pressed onto the shortbread dough at the end and caster sugar was then sprinkled on top. The Husband really liked it and pronounced it 'different'. This 20 piece baking was eaten in a day!

Orange & Clove Snowballs!

This was the other treat I baked over the weekend. A colleague of mine was having his wisdom teeth taken out and to make him feel better, I found a soft cookie recipe that is meant to make cookies that will melt in your mouth without chewing. These cookies are really soft and crumbly and the smell of cloves was quite distinct. I did not mind though as the kitchen smelled fabulous while they were baking. This took 2 days to finish.

Raisin & Cinnamon Biscuits!

The Husband came wandering into the kitchen this afternoon and asked, "Did you only bake a loaf today?" That was my cue that he wanted something to snack on. So I found a new, quick and simple biscuit recipe and set to work after dinner. It only took me about an hour to come up with a batch of 40 biscuits.

Not surprisingly, the Husband came wandering back to the kitchen as the scent of cinnamon filled the apartment. He picked up a biscuit and immediately pronounced that since it is a biscuit and not as substantial as a cookie, he can have more than one. The next time I knew, 7 biscuits have vanished in 5 minutes. I assume he quite likes them even though he said they were 'just ok'.

These biscuits have been rated 4.4 out of 5 and I suspect will take another day to finish.

Honey Cake with Honeyed Almond Crunch!

This was a recipe I found online and I was quite keen to make it as I am quite a fan of honey-nut crunch. There is 160ml of honey, 85g of ground almonds and another 85g of flaked almonds in this loaf, so you can guess it could taste like honey-nut cereal crunch baked into a cake.

The honey in the cake smelled delicious while baking in the oven but the dough did take 30 mins longer than stated to bake. After the cake is done, another 30ml of honey is drizzled over the almonds to coat them and then back to the oven for another 5 mins before the final drizzle of another 60ml of honey.

This cake turned out to be quite moist and honeyey. It has been rated 4.6 out of 5. I think it went down really well as it was finished in a day!

Bunny Blobs!

I bought a bunny cookie cutter specially for Easter baking but I did not get a chance to use it for baking until the Sunday after Easter weekend. I found a new cookie dough recipe that uses sour cream and that requires chilling. It was unusually warm for Edinburgh so the dough 'cooled' down really quickly which made cookie cutting quite tricky. Of course it did not help that I included chocolate chips and raisins to the dough that made cutting more difficult but I really wanted to add them to make the cookies more yummy.

I did not count on the bunnies 'mutating' in the oven though to become bunny blobs! At least the Husband did ask me if they were meant to be bunnies before he ate a couple.

They turn out to be quite soft chocolate chip and raisin cookies which I quite like but the Husband was not that keen.

These blobs were finished in a couple of days.