I like cake!

Got the Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days in Easons the other day and some of the recipes are absolutely amazing!

Made the Hazelnut Praline Muffins earlier and myself and OH have eaten half already. Total gluttons I know but the nutella in the centre is just amazing!

Finally figured out how to incorporate cheesecake filling into apple and cinnamon bundt. Very happy!

Space Dog wrote: »

Dear God, that looks fantastic, would you share the recipe?

Erm sure, now I just have to figure it out. I combined two recipes to make it.

Right, so this is the Bundt cake recipe, I don't melt the butter nor do I use the icing. I'll add the cheesecake filling next but sometimes I plop condensed caramel from the tin (dulche de leche) in the middle. But the cheesecake filling is so damn good. But both work beautifully with the apple.

Apple-Cinnamon Bundt Cake
From Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food, March 2004
Ingredients
Serves 10
300g plain flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
225g unsalted butter, melted
300g packed light-brown sugar
4 large eggs
6 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and sliced 1/4 inch thick
125g icing sugar
1 to 2 tablespoons water
Directions
Preheat oven to 180C.
In a medium bowl, stir together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, and bicarbonate of soda. (Don’t worry about sifting).
In a large bowl, combine melted butter, brown sugar, and eggs. Whisk until smooth.
Gradually whisk in dry ingredients just until combined (do not overmix).
Using a rubber spatula, fold in apples.
Spoon batter into a 26cm non-stick Bundt pan, and smooth top.
Bake until a tester inserted in cake comes out clean, 50 to 60 minutes. (Check at 40 minutes – mine was ready in 45).
Cool in pan on rack 15 minutes; invert onto rack to cool completely.
Once the cake has cooled, whisk together icing sugar and enough water to form a thick yet pourable glaze.
Set rack with cake over a piece of baking paper (for easy cleanup); drizzle cake with glaze, and let set before serving.
*******************

Cheesecake mix, just whop it all together in a bowl then pour most of your bundt mix in tin, pop in cheesecake mix then pop the rest of the bundt mix on top. Bundt mix is heavier so bare that in mind.

300g cream cheese
125g mascarpone
1egg and 1 egg yolk
2 tbsps flour
90g caster sugar

Some cakes/cupcakes I've made recently:

Coffee Swirl Cake - Donal Skehan recipe - I got a retweet from Donal himself when I sent the pic to him



Victoria Sponge



Chocolate Malt Cupcakes



Red Velvet Cupcakes



Vanilla Cupcakes

Found something new - well, to me anyway.
It's a cake called Monkey Bread.

Now, it doesn't look anywhere near as picture perfect as some of the cakes posted on here, but it's incredibly tasty.

It's similar to cinnamon rolls, but the dough is not shaped into Danishs but into little balls, rolled in sugar and cinnamon and placed into a cake tin, with some melted butter, sugar and more cinnamon poured on top, then baked.

I meant to take some into work tomorrow, but I doubt there'll be anything left over....

Out of boredom yesterday, I made carrot cake.....again. Hairy biker's diet book recipe so I feel good having a slice

...or 3!:D

I made monkey bread last week from one of the GBBO books. Dough balls rolled in melted butter, then a cinnamon/brown sugar mix, packed together in a loaf tin. Kinda difficult to cut because it's in balls but delish nonetheless!!

Nothing better than hot cinnamon sugar dough balls fresh from the oven.:D

Did a bit of baking over the weekend :-)

maryk123 wrote: »

The cake looks fab. That's donal skehan cake is it. How did it taste.

It was absolutely AMAZING! I highly recommend it! Yes, it was Donal Skehans recipe

I attempted pineapple upside down cake yesterday. Got the recipe from Jamie's Comfort Food. It was not a success. Took three attempts to get a smooth caramel...and it was burnt. The pineapple wasn't sweet enough. And it fell apart when I took it out of the tin.

On the positive side, the sponge was delish! Coconut milk and desiccated coconut is added to the cake mix. I ate that part and binned the fruit!:p

Trying this made me realise how much of a pain caramel is to make. Next time, I might melt a tin of Carnation caramel instead.:D

Made this chocolate, almond and pear cake from a lovely new book I got recently (Sesame & Spice). Decorated it with edible flowers, bought on a recon mission to prepare for a wedding cake I'm making in two weeks!

Some recent efforts.



how the evangelical vegetarian and I can compromise on a quiche.

though, since then, it has been declared that quiche is not on the "to eat list". bummer. I think it's the pastry.

Banana bread and chocolate brownies, pre-cutting!

From the Odlums recipe at the back of a packet of 2kg flour. Carrot Cake.



Upfel Pi und quiche to the side.


In 2012 I tried to do a VEC cooking course on World Cuisine, or something but was too late. It was full but the woman on reception persuaded me to join the Introductory to Cooking. Hmm, it was okay, but I made this Frangipan and a Tiramisu, which was great and I ate nearly the whole thing (which wasn't a bad thing, tbh!)

They cut it into fingers and served it like you would any other cake, it didn't seem to be an issue at all!
So many people now have sponge cake rather than fruit anyway, the only difference is the lack of fondant I imagine.

Apologies for misunderstanding, they did square it off but in doing so cut the edges into fingers too, it held up quite well. I would have loved a big slice of it myself!

OMG I NEED to bake again - but I'm trying not to at the mo SO many things I want to make!!

This is my first ever Victoria Sponge (that I've made, not that I've eaten).
Don't laugh, it's a bit lopsided:

sdp wrote: »

Well done! its lovely, you got a nice height on your sponge don't worry about it been lopsided,thats what home baking is all about, if you wanted you could trim the top of one sponge, so the base of it sits on plate and level, and the top you trim is level and covered with cream, great job

Hey thanks a million!

I've had a bad record with sponges in the past; they never turn out right.
They used to stick to the tin, whether I lined them or not.
Or the greasproof paper would take half the sponge with it.

Anyway, I used silicone cake moulds today (8inch, €1.49 from Dealz!) and the sponges came out really easily.
I was so happy when none of the cake stuck to the mould and yeah, I'm impressed with the height too!

Good tip with the trimming of the sponge, I'll do that next time.
It tasted gorgeous too (it was a Mary Berry recipe)

Bake sale in work tomorrow, I made a double batch of paul hollywoods jam doughnut recipe and just ringed one half. Recipe says to make ten but a double batch made 25 HUGE ones. Not the most professional looking doughnuts but they look good and taste even better!!



Very handy recipe but it says you can knead it by hand, it's waaaaaaay too messy for that, use a dough hook if possible!

I got Mary Berry's Cook Now, Eat Later from Amazon yesterday. Very excited!! I'll have the kitchen to myself tomorrow so I'll have to try some of the cake recipes.:)

First on my list: Double Chocolate Chip Brownie Cake. *drools*