Red Pepper Sausage Rolls

I’m currently working at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, serving in the umpire’s restaurant.  I’m essentially a posh dinner lady (think the mass catering challenges in Masterchef) but it’s actually really enjoyable, soaking up the Wimbledon atmosphere and listening to the stories of the different umpires. The umpires come from all over the world to judge the tennis – from Sweden, Italy, Australia, America, China and more. One bizarre fact I have realised whilst serving them at lunch is that many of the ones travelling from further afield have never tried a sausage roll before! I wasn’t aware that sausage rolls were a particularly English thing, but time and time again this week I have watched as the umpires point curiously at the sausage rolls and ask me to explain exactly what they are before nervously deciding to try one out. As a result, this week’s recipe is in honour of them!I’m not going to lie, I made these ages ago. I was going through my photos on my computer and discovered these hidden away in an obscure file, dated November 2012. 7 months have passed between the baking and the posting of this recipe, for no explainable reason as they were so good!Sausage plait is a midweek favourite at my house (I’m surprised I’ve never blogged it) and is something I’ve gradually introduced all my friends to as they have come for dinner at mine or I had it in my school packed lunch. It has also recently been made more famous here in the UK due to Nanny Pat frequently making them on Towie. Essentially, a sausage plait is just a giant sausage roll that can be sliced and shared, but this Alice Hart recipe shakes it up a little with some added flavour from sweet roast peppers. The result was really delicious, super juicy, bursting with flavour – I think the umpires would be a big fan! You can find the link to the recipe here – enjoy!

Jaffa Cakes

Funny story to go with these Jaffa cakes. I took them to my friend’s house when she was holding a get together of all our friends at the end of Easter break. I always forget to bring in the stuff I make for my friends and I knew that my family of 3 didn’t really need 18 of these lying around! One of my friends brought their cousin with them, who had never met any of us before. He didn’t realise that it was me who had made the Jaffa cakes, and therefore remarked when the tin was passed round ‘Who on earth has time to make Jaffa cakes? Don’t they know you can buy them?’ Cue much, much embarrassment! Luckily he was very sweet and spent the rest of the evening trying to recover from the gaffe. I’d also like to point out that he ate 4!It did make me think though about the funny things having a food blog can make you bake. Some people were similarly bemused when my friend Emily and I made marshmallows, considering you can buy a big bag for 90p! However as you know I really enjoy making homemade versions of shop-bought favourites – you can see my previous challenges here. I’m not sure how well known Jaffa Cakes are out of the UK, but basically they are little flat cakes with a disc of orange jelly on top, covered in dark chocolate. I was inspired to make these after seeing the recipe here by the guys at Sorted Food –my new favourite way to procrastinate is exploring their site!These were really satisfying and fun to make and I was so pleased when they worked perfectly and looked like the original! After a few baking fails I love it when a plan comes together. I followed the recipe to a T and my only comments would be that I think the amounts for the jelly and chocolate were too generous – 200g of each is stated in the recipe and I only used 100g of jelly and 120g of chocolate. I didn’t really mind about the excess jelly as it comes in packets of 200g so you can see why the recipe just says to make all of it (and it was very soothing when I came down with a really sore throat!) but I think it is good to have a heads up. Happily, I also got 18 instead of 12 final cakes and mine were a decent size! The ratios of the layers in the final jaffa were perfect – the classic thin Jaffa cake layers all combining perfectly. I also really liked the method of using a packet of orange jelly cubes (the finished cakes are still a lot more homemade than normal!) and jazzing up the flavour with the juice of an extra orange, which made it really strong and stand up to the chocolate. Enjoy! :)

My Birthday!

So, last Tuesday was my birthday! The big 18! A lot of my friend's birthdays are around October, December, February so I’m definitely the baby of the group and it is so exciting to finally be 18. I’m also currently in the midst of exams so I haven’t celebrated too much yet, but I did take the day off from revision on my actual birthday to spend the day with family. My Mum always makes my birthday cake and whilst there have been some pretty epic ones in the past, this years was the best yet and I felt I had to share it with you! Take a look:Aand a little bit closer…It was a work of art! The top was made of white and dark chocolate buttons, chocolate raisins, truffles, sprinkles, chocolate drops and Vice Versas and I think it took a pretty long time as it is so intricate. It was inspired by this Telegraph article, specifically this cake – it was very similar only slightly smaller as there are only 3 of us and it was still pretty big! The cake itself was chocolate with chocolate buttercream (which tasted just like Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream!) and was absolutely delicious. As well as marvelling (and then eating) this, we also went out for a champagne afternoon tea at the top of the National Portrait Gallery in London. This was the view by our table…and this was my afternoon tea…Yes, we had one of those each! The bottom tier consisted of: a mini blueberry pavlova with chantilly cream, a wedge of Victoria sponge, a hefty slice of carrot cake, a millionaires shortbread with chocolate ganache, a chocolate brownie and a scone with jam and clotted cream. Each! I tried my best but was eventually defeated and had to take the brownie home with me. Every aspect was delicious, I think my favourite was the Victoria sponge as I often find them too dry or heavy for me and this one was so feather light. It was the best way to spend my birthday and I would thoroughly recommend it if you have a celebration coming up. Hope you enjoyed reading about it! These white chocolate truffles coated in coconut were the final touch…

Mini Lemon Cheesecakes

There are only four of us in my immediate family. My sister is away and my Mum doesn’t eat that many sweet things – so this leaves just me and my Dad to bake for. Whilst we wouldn’t exactly say no to eating layer cakes and batches of muffins and trays of scones, it’s hardly good for us and more often than not the food is no longer its freshest and best before we’ve had a chance to eat it and this waste is super annoying. It also limits my recipe choices: when I had some leftover cream cheese I knew immediately I wanted to make cheesecake but all the recipes I read were way out of my feasibility – calling for 700g of cream cheese, 400g of biscuits, finished bakes serving 12 etc. It was time to go it on my own!I don’t create my own recipes from scratch very often so I used this as a starting point but halved it to make it even smaller. I prefer chilled cheesecakes to baked – they seem to be creamier yet lighter and so much easier. I’ve also written before about how citrus desserts for me need to be rammed with flavour so I wanted this to be really punchy with lemon. These also gave me the chance to finally use my food rings which I got for birthday nearly a year ago now and had never used, and I was really pleased with how they turned out looking very neat! I wasn’t exactly sure how to use these so I just set the cheesecakes straight onto the little plates and then removed the ring at the end which actually worked well as I didn’t have  to risk moving them! Overall I loved the finished cheesecakes – they were the perfect size for a satisfying, slightly decadent individual treat and tasted divine. Mini Lemon Cheesecakes
Makes 3-4 mini cheesecakes

Ingredients: 50g butter

120g digestives

200g cream cheese

1tbsp creme fraiche

50g icing sugar

1 lemon, zest and juice

Method: 1. Heat the butter in the microwave until fully melted. Place the digestives in small plastic bag or bowl and use the end of a rolling pin to bash the biscuits to crumbs. Tip the biscuits into the melted butter and stir until fully combined then press a few teaspoons of crumbs into the base of each food ring.

2. Combine the cream cheese, crème fraiche, icing sugar and lemon zest and juice all together in a bowl until smooth. Taste and tweak if you like – the exact quantities do not matter too much in this recipe, so feel free to add more sugar for more sweetness or some more lemon for a sharper cheesecake etc.

3. Spoon the cheesecake mixture between the food rings, pressing the mixture down and levelling the top to prevent air bubbles forming. Cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for 3-4 hours until firm.

4. To remove the cheesecake from the ring, I just warmed them slightly with my hands and ran a knife round the edge and then gently pulled the ring up and off. Zest a little more lemon over the top of the cheesecakes if you wish and enjoy! 

Chocolate Orange Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Baking, and food in general, can often be a comfort. That might seem strange at this time of year – fair enough to talk about comfort food in rainy November, but surely now that we’re in May (where has time gone?!) it’s time to be moving on to light, summery, bikini-ready food, right? Well, not necessarily. For starters, London summers take a long while to get going so the weather is only sporadically beginning to warm up here.  Secondly, just because it is summer doesn’t mean life stresses (I’m looking at you, exams!) don’t occur. And thirdly, when is cake ever a bad thing? That was my thinking recently when I had a stash of oranges that needed using up and I was looking for a new way to use them. With a title as good as this – Chocolate (tick) Cream Cheese (tick) Orange (tick) Cake (big tick) – this cake that I’ve had bookmarked forever finally got its day! Pound cake is an American classic but I’d never made it before and I think this was also my first time using cream cheese in a cake. I liked that the recipe made a properly generously sized cake – one that keeps well for a few days and is very much a cut-and-come-again cake. Despite sounding quite rich and indulgent, it really didn’t taste that way (particularly as I used slightly less chocolate than suggested) so it was perfect as a 4pm pick me up. I also liked the firm texture of a pound cake and am looking forward to trying out more – I think they would be the perfect sturdy cake to bake before a weekend away and take away with you. As I mentioned, it was my first time baking with cream cheese and I had mixed feelings about the results in that respect. Whilst you could taste it in the cake batter, the flavour really cooked out in the oven and I guess the cream cheese is really there to provide texture. I was a bit disappointed by this as I love the flavour, but I guess if you wanted you could add indulgence to this cake with a cream cheese icing! You can find the original Joy the Baker recipe here – enjoy!

White Cobb Loaf

Sometimes I think that the foodie and blogging world can do weird things to baking patterns. Like when Larkin, a finalist on the most recent series of Masterchef, could make incredible multi dimension main courses, often using molecular gastronomy techniques and equipment, but had never made a dessert before he entered the series! Or when contestants on Great British Bake Off can whip up stunning towering layer cakes but have never made jam before. I am exactly the same (albeit on a smaller scale!). I am approaching my 5th blogoversary and 200th post so I’ve made dozens of cakes, cookies, pies and tarts. But I’d never made a simple loaf of bread. I’ve made tomato fougasse, focaccia, pizza dough, naan, bagels, pitta breads, hot cross buns , rosemary honey fruit bread and cheesy tear and share bread. But never a plain white loaf! It was time to go back to basics and change this. I chose a Paul Hollywood recipe following his recent bread television series and the tempting round cobb loaf recipe, a traditional style that really reminded me of big loaves we used to get from the bakery on a Saturday when I was younger. I was so pleased when this turned out well! I’m always nervous of making bread and some of the more complicated breads I listed before did not turn out quite as I’d like – too flat, yeasty or dry. I really took my time when making this and I think this is probably the key with baking bread – it can’t (and shouldn’t) be rushed in order to get the perfect loaf. I loved this loaf warm straight out the oven but it lasted nicely for a few days (although the crispy crust softened) and made great toast. You can find the recipe here – enjoy!

ALSO: Exciting news today – a few weeks ago I was interviewed by Podium for a podcast all about baking and blogging and it is now online and available to listen to here!