blue suede cake

for last week's bake i decided to go crazy with the food colouring. as it was burns night i thought it would be good to go for a blue and white theme, combine this with my recent love of blueberries i thought i would tackle a variation on the red velvet bake and make it blue. and with it being blue i decided to change the fabric to suede and so i present you with the blue suede cake!

this is the recipe i used, from the blog bake bake bake - but maybe don't read this until the end because the picture may give you unrealistic expectations! as the number one thing i learnt (or reaffirmed) during this bake is that english food colouring just is not the same as american, as you will see.

as with a normal red velvet cake, this recipe required buttermilk so remember the trick to make your own - one cup of milk mixed with one teaspoon lemon juice, left to stand for 10-15 minutes will be a fine substitute.

 being by creaming the butter and sugar - then add your eggs one at a time

then in a separate bowl you want to make the blue suede part by mixing together the food colouring and coco powder. if you're using a liquid food colouring this will seem a bit strange at first because the two ingredients really separate - you'll have a layer of coco powder with the food colouring underneath. there will be a sciencey explanation for this i'm sure, but if you mix it hard enough (use a creaming action) they will eventually come together

 you can just about see the blue coming through in the right hand photo

reading back over the recipe now, i feel like i might have freestyled from this point onwards - but it came out fine so no fear! you want to alternate adding the milk and dry ingredients (flour, baking powder) to the sugar mix so it never goes too dry or wet.

 you want a nice fluffy mixture - mine went super glossy which made it hard to resist

then came the fun part of adding the food colouring mix in. as you can see, this went rather more green than blue - i kept adding more food colouring in but i don't feel it made that much difference and it does begin to add a weird taste so try to resist doing this!

 my super glossy, but rather green mixture

 then it is in to the oven for baking, when it comes out it's hard to tell what the final colour is. you can get a hint through the cracks but the big reveal is saved for later.

while the cake is cooling you want to make your cream cheese frosting. personally i find cakes completely smothered in this too sickly, so i decreased the quantity and 'just' iced the middle and top (i say just, this was still three thick layers)

ice your bottom layer, then add a covering of blueberries. then ice over these - i decided this was easier than icing and flipping over the other cake layer, that just seemed like a recipe for disaster.

then place the next cake layer on, ice and decorate with any leftover blueberries.

this cake did turn out to be a bit of a monster!

now if you aren't put off by the sheer size of this cake, you will be rewarded by cutting in to it and getting the colours and layers.

  

i think it's really cool to get the blueberries running through the centre, and they add a much needed zing against the sweetness of the cream cheese frosting.

have you made any unnaturally coloured bakes recently? perhaps it's time to crack out the food colouring to add a little pizzaz to your normal bakes!

next time it's back to brownies (not again i hear you groan but, trust me, these are worth it). until then bakers!

love,

nen

x

celebration brownies

good evening bakers,

how are your january's going? it's one of those weird months that seems to be flying by and dragging at the same time - last week in particular seemed to go on forever but then how is it already a weekend?! one thing i have been particularly proud of this month is my commitment to my new healthy living food/exercise routine which i started at the end of last year; but, have no fear, the baked goods are here to stay! so here is an indulgent chocolate number for you...

this arose as we emerged from the post christmas and new year haze to find a large supply of chocolate selection boxes dotted around our house. as we were making slow progress on consuming them, i decided to take action and mix things up. i remembered reading a recipe in the green & black's chocolate recipes book a while back titled 'celebration brownies'. the premise is extremely simple but also completely ingenious, as is often the way!

to take your brownies to the next level you bake a layer of mini chocolates into them.

so whip up your favourite brownie mixture (i used a simpler version to my normal one, which usually involves a lot of whisking which would probably be undone by adding chocolates).

 i used dark chocolate to counter the sweetness of the celebrations

 

 pure calories - so good! 

 adding the sugar to the chocolate mix

 eggs are whisked and added

somewhat odd looking, but go with it

when your mixture is ready to go, it's on to the fun part - the chocolates!

pour half of the mixture into the baking tray:

then arrange the chocolates on top - do try and be methodical so that each brownie will have a chocolate in it:

 i left certain chocolates out, mainly bounty's because i am not a fan, but also twix's because i wasn't sure i'd want the biscuit part in my brownie

all of the chocolate

then pour the remaining mixture over the top, try to make sure all of the chocolates are submerged, otherwise they will catch in the oven:

then it's in to the oven to bake. i do struggle a bit with brownies and knowing how gooey to go, you want that beautiful texture but not raw cake! my mixture was very wobbly in the middle but the edges cooked very quickly so these slices were more cakey but the middle was SO good. 

 

 

they certainly added a novel dimension to a standard brownie and anything that increases chocolate intake is definitely a good thing!

this weekend i'm planning on whipping up a banana and rolo cake and perhaps something new too. until then, have a good week bakers.

love,

nen

x

christmas concoctions part two: white chocolate and cranberry cakies

so this post may be a little out of season, but we'll roll with it!

life has been a little crazy recently: the post christmas/new year period is always a bit of a blur and then on monday i started my new job. it's going really well so far and the people in the office are really nice and welcoming! but it does mean i have been coming home, having dinner, working out and crashing!! hopefully i'll get back in to the swing of things soon - three weeks off means i am a little rusty!

so this week's post is a hangover from the festive season, but these will taste good all year round - especially now when it's still dark and cold. however, as the title might suggest, these did not go 100% to plan! i'll reveal all as we go along but i have definitely created a new bake!

this was a hummingbird recipe, i think i have made them before (with greater success!). i made them for my christmas party (which went really well).

ingredients ready to go

 the recipe is nice and simple, building up a cookie dough in stages

 

at this point there was a very narrowly avoided disaster! our spices have big letters on the top of the jars and i had (stupidly) reached in and grabbed the first 'C' that i could find.

thankfully i was waiting on my mum to get back from the shop with the flour so i put the 'cinnamon' in a separate bowl ready to mix in, at which point i thought, this looks rather dark! double checking the jar confirmed that i had picked up coriander rather than cinnamon!! i was so close to making, what would probably have been, some of the worst cookies ever!

 a very close call! 

 coriander free dough coming together

 love, love the contrast of the cranberries!

 

pretty hard to resist eating it at this stage!

 so we get to this stage with my cookies all ready to go. the dough felt right, it's normally stiffer and stickier than a cake mix and then it spreads out as it cooks to form the round, flat cookie shape. however, as you can see from the oven picture below, this process did not happen! i'm not entirely sure why this happened, a little googling suggests something to do with the flour or raising agent.

the resulting bake was a new creation (or at least so i am claiming), ladies and gentlemen i present to you: the cakie

 a strange bake the exists somewhere between the realms of cake and cookie - probably most closely related to a rock cake!

of course the important thing (as always) is taste over appearance and these still tasted scrummy - i mean white chocolate and cranberries! obviously the texture was not the gooey, chewy cookie goodness i was hoping for, but it was novel! and they still went down well, so no complaints!

next time i'll give you an option for what to do with the post-christmas selection boxes you probably have lying around!

until then, have a good week!

love,

nen

x