Double Chocolate Muffins

My form at school has decided to have breakfast together every Tuesday, with us taking it in turns to bring the food. It’s been going since about October, meaning we’ve had quite a variety – despite only having a microwave and kettle in our common room kitchen. We’ve had American pancakes and maple syrup, chocolate brioche, iced fingers, croissants, bacon sandwiches and more. When it was our teacher’s turn she brought in a full cream tea – scones, clotted cream, jam, strawberries and hot tea. Slightly strange at 8:30am but delicious all the same! Sometimes the breakfast is homemade, sometimes its shop-bought but either way it’s nice for us all to get together and there’s always a slight twist to the meal, be it Sri Lankan tea bought home from somebody’s holiday or cinnamon rolls made using a family recipe. My friend and I were the first to bring food so we played it safe with something we knew everybody would like – chocolate muffins. They went down so well that when our turn came round again there was no chance we were allowed to try something new: the muffins made a comeback. At the end of the day my History teacher came up to me and said ‘So, I hear you’ve been making muffins…’ – word clearly gets round fast when it comes to chocolate! No doubt I’ll be making more of these soon then!When I made these for the second time, I made a few slight changes to the recipe. The recipe (courtesy of Nigella) has a generous amount of chocolate chunks but I thought the actual sponge could do with an extra boost of flavour so I swapped out 2tbsps or so of flour for some more cocoa. I make these in the morning so they’re still warm and fresh out of the oven at breakfast club and this is definitely a recipe best eaten on the day of baking as they dry out quite quickly. Overall though they are moist, sweet and perfect for an indulgent breakfast! You can find the recipe here or in Nigella’s Feast book. Enjoy!

Orange Highlanders

Recently I’ve got into a baking routine of doing all my baking at the weekend – one bigger, main recipe such as a showy cake or elegant tart, and then one recipe for happy snacking during the week. Muffins, flapjacks, tablet – something to fill the 4pm sugar dip. More often than not, this recipe is some sort of biscuit.A simple recipe I can make when I’m not completely awake on a Saturday morning and that will be out the oven by the time my sister wakes up. Bright citrus flavours are perfect for February and for a trusty cookie recipe I turn to my Granny’s old WI Book of Biscuits, which led me to these Orange Highlanders. I was confused about the name but essentially these biscuits are an orange version of these so the link must be due to shortbreads origins in the Scottish Highlands. I loved the crunchy demerara coating and the crumbly, buttery shortbread centre – they definitely didn’t last the whole week!Orange Highlanders, adapted from WI Book of Biscuits
Makes about 20 small shortbreads
100g butter
50g icing sugar
75g plain flour
75g self raising flour
zest of 2 oranges
25g demerara sugar
1. Preheat the oven to 180’C/350’F. Cream the butter, orange zest and icing sugar until light and fluffy. Sift the flours together and fold in to make a dough.
2. Shape the mixture into a sausage. Sprinkle the demerara sugar over a piece of cling-film and roll the dough in the sugar, pressing it to make sure it sticks. Wrap in the cling-film and chill for 1hour.
3. Cut the dough into slices (5mm-1cm thick), place on baking sheets and bake for 8-10 minutes. Remove to a wire rack and leave to cool. Enjoy!

Orange Lightning Cake

There seems to be a permanent trend and desire for super fast cooking. Jamie Oliver went from his 30 minute meals to just 15 minutes and magazines sell editions by emphasizing the fast and simple nature of recipes that are perfect for after work. Often, however, these recipes are hardly recipes at all, using pre cooked, chopped and garnished ingredients to get something tasty on the table fast. This cake is the best of both worlds: fits the speedy bill – hence it’s name – yet you end up with something delicious and all natural.I’ve seen lots of recipes for all-in-one whole orange cakes that involve boiling oranges for hours until soft and then whizzing to a smooth cake mixture. Today’s unusual cake goes one step further – simply quartering a whole, raw, unpeeled orange, taking out any pips and whizzing until smooth in a food processor followed by the rest of the ingredients. It feels quite strange, and a little bit wrong, but it works out so well! Whizzing up the fresh orange means the mixture and cooking cake smell amazing and the final cake has a great sunshiney orange colour.The little chunks of orange peel add a nice texture to the cake – just like candied peel but without all the added sugar! All in all I was a real fan of this cake – it’s one of those that you just keep cutting tiny slivers of until you realise rather a large proportion of the cake has now gone… You can find the recipe here (I left out the walnuts, keeping the delightfully soft and squidgy texture of the cake) – enjoy!

Spiced Apple Buns

These buns are the recipe I mentioned I was forced to put on hold due to the combination of a lack of ingredients + heavy snow = me not going outside. Normally I’d have just forgotten about the recipe and moved on to one of the many other tempting bakes in my cookbooks or recipe files, but something made me keep thinking about these. Then I was looking back through my archives and noticed that in January 2011 I posted these Stollen Swirls and in January 2010 I made Glazed Fruit Rolls – I clearly have a thing for yeasted rolls in January! It must be a combination of wanting to start the new year by challenging myself in baking including doing more work with yeast, and the more simple desire of something warm, doughy and carby to eat in the cold! Either way it was a clear sign and as soon as the pesky snow melted I was out making sure my cupboards were prepared for these.The recipe was an interesting twist from standard Cinnamon Rolls and I thought the combination of tart apple and super sweet marzipan alongside the rich bread dough would go down a treat. I was not proved wrong! When I was layering up the fillings onto my rolled out dough there seemed to be a heck of a lot of apple, marzipan and sultanas if I was planning to roll these up neatly. I decided just to add one large apple instead of two and whilst the buns were definitely quite full I think they would have benefited from the extra apple for more tartness as the apple chunks reduced in the oven quite drastically. Note to self: stick to the recipe! Having said that, I added a simple glace icing which I think added a good extra element.These are nicest warm out the oven, but even after a couple of days a few seconds in the microwave will easily restore them to this goodness. You can find the recipe here – enjoy!

Tablet

If you’re still  on a January diet then a) I admire your dedication and b) you may want to look away now. The two main ingredients in today’s post are 1. sugar and 2. condensed milk…which is essentially milk with plenty of added sugar. Yep, tablet is no health food.I’ve wanted to attempt making something in the fudge/caramel/tablet family for a while now but scary stories of scorched sugar and candy thermometers made me hesitate. Along with the fact that I knew I would find it impossible to just. stop. eating. But when my planned baking project was scuppered when the heavy (by London standards at least) snow made me very reluctant to leave the warmth of a house to buy ingredients I had to turn to what was already in the cupboard. I’m glad I finally took the plunge and entered the world of sweet making!After surviving all the heating sugar and endless whisking phases, the step of the recipe I skipped was marking the tablet into squares when it was still only semi-set. Mistake. Whilst the tablet melts on your tongue into crumbly goodness, it sets into one pretty rock solid slab. I only just restrained from breaking out the hammer but eventually perseverance with a big knife meant we ended up with happily oversized shards of tablet, but neat little squares would have been better and easier! I think this is easily one of my favourite things I have made, purely because my suspicions were right and I found it impossible to stop eating! It was sweet, rich, crumbly, melt in the mouth…I could go on! I definitely recommend it if you think you have more willpower than me – you can find the recipe here. Enjoy!

Pear and Almond Cake

It’s always difficult to start again in the New Year. Not just resuming work, the gym and everything else that's been totally ignored whilst we happily vegetate on sofas for 2 festive weeks - but cooking too (especially when your camera cable goes walkabout). We've grown accustomed to nibbling on cold leftovers and Quality Street or grazing on bits and pieces from the fridge. As a result the idea of whipping up a huge cake or batch of yet more cookies seems bizarre. The food magazines are full of healthy living, salads and superfoods… yet its snowing outside and you’re craving something carby. Especially when in my house there's still an untouched Pannetone, 2 Christmas puddings and a hunk of Christmas cake left to eat. The relaxed seasonal eating style has been reflected in my cooking recently - some irresistible yet super simple cheddar and chorizo straws, dulce de leche shortbread sandwiches for relatives and these ridiculously moreish cheese crackers. All good food that makes for excellent snacking, but a tad out of place on the blog in January.

I think this cake is a happy medium. It’s simple, isn’t too rich and contains fruit to be mildly healthy if you have strict New Year’s resolutions still going strong and is really comforting in snowy weather. This cake slightly unnerved me whilst in the oven as it properly filled the tin right up to the top, but as the pears sunk into the mixture it just about stayed constrained. The recipe can be found here, it comes from the trusty Good Housekeeping magazines – after sorting through 3 years of GH magazines the recipes are now all neatly in one big tempting lever arch file so expect more recipes from there soon! Including my first attempt at candy making with a batch of tablet – pretty much pure sugar and therefore unsurprisingly delicious and addictive…Coming soon!