Hot Chocolate

Enjoying one of my Christmas presents. Delicious :)

Christmas cake complete

All done and cut on Christmas eve. Everyone enjoyed it x

Christmas cake contd

Time to add marzipan and icing :)

melted snowmen cupcakes

Christmas cake continued

After a week of soaking fruit today it was time to make the cake. This is only my third Christmas Cake I have ever made. I've always followed Delia Smith's famous Christmas cake recipe and just varied the fruit a little. It's worked the last two times so fingers crossed it will be a success again. I can't say for sure as the cake is still cooking at the moment. Three and a half hours to go! It's one of my favourite parts of the run up to Christmas and it's one of the first Christmas things to do. The house smells of cinnamon and oranges and lemon and then as it slowly cooks in the oven the house is filled with a richer smell- divine. When it's cooled I'll wrap it up well and store in an air tight container until the week before Christmas when I'll ice it ( my favourite bit!) I will also feed it once a week with extra brandy up until it's time to ice it. Anyway I'll post a picture of the finished cake later but you'll have to wait to see the completed marzipanned and iced cake until December. :-)

Christmas cake

Stage 1- soaking fruit in brandy.

A delicious Sunday brunch :-)

American pancakes and crispy bacon, I don't think there is anything more delicious! It is a rare treat that I indulge in, normally on a Sunday after a lie in and instead of having a late breakfast I have this delicious and filling brunch which will set me up for the day. I first tried on a break to New York in a diner I found. I was blown away the soft pancakes with the crispy bacon, the sweet maple syrup with the salt from the bacon it just all made sense. Unfortunately I couldn't finish everything on my plate the first time I tried this as it was a big American portion (but I gave it a good go!)

This is the simplest way to make pancakes and you can adapt recipe to make more or less just keep milk and flour the same. These quantities make between 8 and 10 pancakes.

1 cup of S.R flour
1 cup of milk
a pinch of salt
1 egg

butter for cooking.

In a glass bowl put in ingredients and whisk until combined into a thick but runny mixture. Put in fridge for 15 mins to allow to chill and thicken slightly more.

Put large frying pan on medium heat and melt some butter. Remove batter from fridge and using ladle pour mixture into same spot at edge of pan. The mixture should naturally expand but then stop and set. Don't worry that they aren't all the same size and shape ( you won't care when you're eating them!) First they will set then you will start to see bubbles rise to the surface. Wait until the pancake is covered with little bubbles, this tells you that the other side will be nicely browned. Using silicone spatula, flip pancakes and cook for another 30 secs because by this point they are cooked you just want them to turn golden.

Remove from pan and repeat until you have used all the mixture. You should be able to cook three in a pan at the same time. This way is much quicker than using an individual pancake pan which is what I used to do but it took forever.

Serve with well cooked crispy streaky bacon and lots of maple syrup. Enjoy!

This recipe can also be adapted by adding blueberries into batter or slices of bananas.

Lemon tart

Unfortunately everyone was too eager to eat this delicious desert so I only got a picture of the remaining half :)

Holiday Time!

I feel some baking coming on...

Individual tomato and mozzarella or garlic mushroom tarts

Nigel Slater

I've started watching Nigel Slater's new cooking series on BBC, it'really interesting. I love the idea of being adventurous with flavours and mixing opposite kinds of foods. Sweet with sour, spicy with cool. I definitely want to try the chilli and coconut chicken recipe, it looked delicious.

Banana loaf

Sunday night, all my planning done decided to use up some ripe bananas and make a delicious banana loaf. Lovely with a cup of tea after work, tastes good just tried the end piece :-)

Egg custard and florentines

I've been watching the great British bake off on BBC2 and I love it. Every week it makes me want to attempt a technical challenge or something I've not done before. Anyway last weekend I decided to make am egg custard. As I've said before I'm a cake baker really and had only once before made pastry. I'd been putting off having a second attempt as I thought the success the first time may have been beginners luck :) turns out I can make pastry. It rather labor intensive. I was in the kitchen about 3hours and ended up making chocolate florentines while I was waiting for the pastry to proof. The egg custard was a big success and went down very well at my parents house.

Baklava

One of the trickiest things I've ever tried making was baklava which is  a rich, sweet pastry made of layers of  filo pastry filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey. It was very fiddly but totally worth it 
when my boyfriend now fiancée came home to his birthday surprise!


If you want to give it a try this is the recipe I followed:

Ingredients


18 sheets ready-made filo pastry(unwrap and keep under a damp tea-towel until you are ready to use)

• 225g/8oz unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
• 225g/8oz mixed pistachios and walnuts, roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 tsp ground cardamom

For the syrup

• 350g/12oz granulated sugar
• 300ml/10&frac1s;fl oz water
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp orange blossom water

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Grease a 17cm x 28cm (11in x 7in) baking tray with butter.
3. Melt the remaining butter in a saucepan over low heat or in a microwave.
4. Lay 10 sheets of filo pastry, one at a time, into the tray, brushing each sheet with butter before adding the next.
5. In a clean bowl, mix together the nuts, sugar and cardamom and spread the mixture over the pastry in the tray.
6. Layer up the remaining sheets on top of the nut mixture, brushing each sheet with butter, as before.
7. Using a sharp knife, cut a criss-cross pattern into the top layers of the pastry.
8. Place baklava in the preheated oven for approximately 20 minutes, then decrease the oven temperature to 150C/300F/Gas 2 and cook for an additional half hour to 40 minutes, or until the pastry is slightly puffed and golden on top. Do not allow the top to burn. Remove and allow to cool slightly.
9. For the syrup, heat the sugar, water, lemon juice and orange blossom water in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan and cook over a medium heat until the sugar has melted and a syrup is formed. (This will take about 20 minutes or so.)
10. Pour the syrup into the slits in the baklava and leave to cool. Cut into 

My wordle

Sometimes savoury often spicy!

In addition to baking I also love cooking meals for my family and friends. I especially like spicy food, anything from spanish and mexican to indian and chinese. Last year I treated myself to a set of tapas bowls so I could cook a spanish banquet. The best thing about tapas is you can try a small tastes of lots of different dishes. My favourites are definitely paella, patatas bravas and breaded calamari rings- yum. 

At request

Sometimes my friends and family ask me to make a big cake for a special occasion. Last year one of my best friends asked me to make a chocolate fudge cake for her boyfriends 30th birthday. Shortly after that my own boyfriend asked me to make a Christmas cake (something I had never done before) so I did. I have to say, as someone who mainly makes sponge I quite enjoyed making a fruit cake. Soaking the raisins in brandy and topping up the cake on the run up to Christmas was very exciting. I also had great fun decorating it with marzipan and royal icing.

Cupcakes!

There is something so wonderful about a small cupcake which has soft light sponge of a delicious flavour covered in creamy butter cream and decorated with glitter, sprinkles or a simple flower. They are things of beauty. I make them for family and friends and for special occasions. Now I am happy with the basic cupcake recipe and method I love experimenting and trying new flavours.

Here are some photos of cupcakes I have made- Christmas cupcakes which were rum flavoured and Baby shower cupcakes in three colours and flavours. Pink- Strawberry and cream, blue- blueberry and Yellow- lemon curd. All delicious and so pretty.

Welcome to Butter cream and Butterflies!

Hi everyone, welcome to butter cream and butterflies!

To start my blog I thought I would reminisce over some of the recipes that I have made before. Some are favourites that I make over and over, others are adventurous recipes that I have made up and others are things I've seen or read about and tried once for fun.

These first two pictures show a traditional sherry trifle- very popular with the family and a strawberry meringue roulade. This was one of my first roulades I made, I've made quite a few now but my favourite flavour in banoffee roulade yum!