Banana Rum Cake!

I bought a new baking mould that looked fabulous so I was very keen to try it out. From one of my favourite websites, I found quite a few recipes for bundt cakes so I picked the recipe with the Husband's favourite fruit, bananas.

This fabulous looking cake is baked out of self-raising flour, butter, sugar, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, eggs, rum and buttermilk.I then iced it with rum flavoured buttercream icing.

This cake has got rave reviews and was eaten in a day!

Tropical Burst Cupcakes!

This weekend I needed to use up some sugar decorations and soured cream. This tropical burst cupcake recipe seemed ideal.

This cupcake is baked out of self-raising flour, vegetable oil, soured cream, caster sugar, dried mango, raisins, eggs and pineapple chunks.

I topped the cupcakes with a frosting made out of lime zest, lime juice and icing sugar as well as a sugar butterfly and pink sprinkles!

Have yet to try them out on the Husband so will keep you posted on taste!

Orange Chocolate Chip Cake!

It's the time of the year when we do a Charity Bake in the Office.

The boss outsourced his baking to me and asked for something orange. The Husband remembered a cake that my mother-in-law used to bake that was orange and chocolatey so asked for the recipe for me to bake.

This cake is absolutely fabulous and really simple. The cake is baked out of eggs, self-raising flour, butter, sugar, orange juice, orange zest, chocolate chips and walnuts. It is sandwiched with orange buttercream icing and then topped with chocolate fudge icing.

The best compliment from the Husband was 'it's exactly what I remembered it to be'.

The cake was 'sold' in a couple of hours!

I also baked an old favourite, the mango and chocolate brownies, which was 'sold' in an hour!

Coconut Buns!

From one of my favourite baking books, a simple coconut bake sounds like a good idea when I was very jet-lagged.

These coconut buns are baked out of butter, caster sugar, milk, self-raising flour, raisins, egg and desiccated coconut. The Husband and I both thought they tasted a bit bland so I decided to finish them with icing sugar and a sprinkle of desiccated coconut.

46 buns were finished in two days at the Office. 

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars!

From one of my favourite websites, this bake was a surprise hit in the Office with the entire batch finished in a day.

These bars are made out of three layers - the first layer is the cookie dough mixed out of flour, white and brown sugar, eggs, butter, walnuts, vanilla extract and chocolate chips. The second layer is beaten cream cheese, egg, sugar and vanilla extract and the third layer is just scattered crumbs of the same cookie dough of the first layer. 

Lesson learnt  - if you are told to line the baking tin with aluminium foil, there is usually a good reason for it! The cream cheese layer is really runny and it dripped between the removable bottom while baking so it was a nightmare to remove.

Anyway, it must be good if the Husband ate two pieces in one sitting!

Orange & Hazelnut Drizzle Loaf!

Baking with oranges sounded like a great idea on a hot summer day and this weekend was hot, hot, hot in Edinburgh!

This loaf is baked out of orange zest, orange juice, orange marmalade, self-raising flour, baking powder, butter, golden caster sugar, ground hazelnuts and eggs. After coming out of the oven, the loaf is drizzled with a mix of golden caster sugar and orange juice.

A couple of good reviews from the Office and the Husband has declared it 'quite good' rather than 'very good' due to it being a bit too moist.

Chocolate Chip Treasure Cookies!

After baking millionaire shortbread for the Husband last week, I had some condensed milk left over. I started searching my favourite websites to see if I can find any recipe that calls for condensed milk and I found one!

These cookies are named chocolate chip treasure cookies and I can only guess these are treasures because of the condensed milk secret ingredient that replaces the sugar and eggs typically found in a cookie recipe.

This cookie is baked out of digestive biscuits crumbs, plain flour, ground cinnamon, salt, condensed milk, baking powder, vanilla extract, chocolate chips, butter, walnuts and desiccated coconut. 

The Husband has pronounced them 'pretty good'.

I also got a request for the recipe from a colleague in the Office!