Bonfire beauties

We had a really lovely bonfire party at friends' yesterday, lots of sharing dishes and cakes. Here's one recipe from me, and one from someone else that I tried on the night and loved.

Bonfire cupcakes (makes 24)

I made a standard 4-egg chocolate sponge mix (sub out 30g flour for cocoa powder). For me, this made 24 cupcakes with about 40g raw mix. I made them in muffin cases so there was a bit of freeboard, and they baked in about 20 minutes at 160°C (fan).

Once cooled:

Paint the top with marmalade and roll in, or sprinkle on, any chocolate/dark sprinkles, especially around the edge.

Pipe in a 'fire' of buttercream. I made one with 250g butter, 350g icing sugar, and milk to loosen (turned out there was about 20-25% too much for what I needed, but I don't like over-frosted cakes). I coloured it red, orange and yellow in three batches with gel colour, and placed it in the piping bag by alternating spoonfuls.

Add chocolate sticks for "wood" - I used posh Elizabeth Shaw things due to a lack of choice but Matchmakers would be ideal. There are 24 in a box and I had 2 boxes, so each cake got 6 bits. However, the sticks needed to be shorter than I first thought to look good (too-tall pyramid fires look silly) so I have a pot of snapped off ends to eat...

For a final touch I added two mini marshmallows on a cocktail stick to each :)

The other recipe I want to record before I lose it...

Delicious, rich-tasting, barbecue-y vegan baked beans from A Virtual Vegan. (Advice is to omit the vinegar.)

Stollen spirals and other festive gift goodies

Stollen spirals - really just festive Chelsea buns I guess...

BBC Good Food recipe

Take 1 (test run, not a gift):

All went fine except I crammed too many in the tin and the middle ones were too doughy. Next time space them out better/use more tins. Also use more fruit, and slice the marzipan rather than using a big wodge in the middle.

Take 2:

Made these dairy free by subbing in coconut oil for butter, and soya milk for the milk. Not a deliberate choice, just what I had in the house to make them for a dairy-intolerant recipient. Also made the changes as above, and happened to use more sultanas and cranberries, no mixed peel, no nuts, and no icing, purely for time reasons. They fit perfectly, with room to expand, at 12 to my big roasting tin, with the remainder (I hesitate to say rejects) in a smaller tin. The 12 were frozen as soon as they were cool, defrosted in the car while travelling, reheated in a low oven for half an hour or so, and hoovered up in no time, so this recipe is definitely a keeper!

Take 3:

Easterised as follows: soak the fruit (a sultana/cranberry/cherry mix) in a mix of tea and amaretto; sprinkle it in the buns along with grated marzipan and dark chocolate chips. Serve warm so the marzipan and chocolate are a bit gooey.


German cinnamon star biscuits

Outdoor Chics recipe

These went OK but cooked too quickly in my oven at 200°C, so were a bit toasty. They have a chewy macaroony texture. I put allspice in the icing, as I'd run out of cinnamon, and some lemon zest. The icing was very sticky to apply, and I also found the mixture a bit crumbly and liable to get stuck in the points of the star cutter,


Nigella's bar nuts

Recipe

Sweet, salty, spicy, herby roasted nuts. Yum. Again, made with coconut oil not butter - no difference.


Ginger cupcakes

A Jamie Oliver recipe

I was a bit worried by the amount of oil in these but they didn't come out greasy at all. Would be good with some sort of spicy dark chocolate topping.

Rose peshwari cake / cupcakes

I read this and thought it was a fab idea! Yes, another one from my baking bible. I'm going to shorthand the recipe, partly for speed and partly because I'm not sure about reproducing in full quite so many recipes from the same book here! I did modify this one by adding the rose element, which I thought would go well with the theme.

Small cakes or muffins: (see below for large cake)
These always go down well at bake sales! As does the full size cake (below) if you can transport it.

Make a basic 6oz/175g sponge mix: 3 eggs, and the same weight (~175g) each of butter, sugar and SR flour; begin by creaming the butter and sugar, then add the eggs and finally the flour. Add a good pinch of ground cardamom (freshly ground seeds from a few pods, if you can).

In a food processor whizz up 50-60g each of pistachios, desiccated coconut and sultanas, and stir this into the cake mix. Without a processor, just make sure the pistachios and sultanas are chopped well. This makes 20-24 small cakes, or 12 generous muffins, which bake in 15-20 minutes at 180°C/160°C fan (but do the skewer or spring-back test to check).

When cooled, top with basic fondant icing (fondant icing sugar & cold water measured by eye and mixed to a stiff but still dribble-able consistency), flavoured with a couple of drops of rosewater and coloured with a tiny amount of red colouring. Optionally, sprinkle with pistachios, coconut, dried rose petals (!) or sprinkles.


Large cakes:
Make an 8oz/4-egg sponge version (you could increase the nuts etc. as well, it's not an exact science) and bake in two lined 20cm tins until springy. When cool, sandwich the cakes with raspberry jam (or spread of your choice - something a bit sharp is nice) and half the buttercream (see below), with the rest of the buttercream on spread the top, or just use jam in the middle and then water icing as above. Don't forget the sprinkles!

Make buttercream with 200g icing sugar (well sifted) and 100g soft butter, plus milk to loosen if necessary, and rosewater and red colouring as above. Optionally, you can use the thicker, solidified part of a tin of coconut milk instead of (some of the) butter, and then use the liquid part to loosen.

Bakewell experiment

I'm going to be making some cakes for a charity afternoon tea later this month, and so am experimenting with a few new recipes to go with some old favourites. I saw a recipe some time ago which used grated marzipan in a cake batter, and thought that would make a nice bakewell-style cake. But I can't find that recipe, so I tried adapting Apple marzipan cake from UKTV Food.

As I went through the original recipe I found it a bit unclear and difficult in places. Flour and sugar in ml instead of grams is just odd, but seems to have worked. As to the method, I had no chance of "whisking" grated marzipan (which had lumped together) and softened butter. Melted butter, maybe. Then it says to put the egg yolks in the bowl with the marzipan and butter, but do you mix that together immediately or wait for the next ingredients? And even with the yolks, the marzipan mix is claggy and stiff enough that "folding in" the egg whites later is amost impossible without flattening them in the process.

I also (through not reading properly) beat all the air out of the first lot of egg whites after adding the sugar, so had to repeat it, but with only ~60ml of sugar as that's all I had left.

So, a good start but it needs a bit of tweaking I think. Here's my modified recipe...

Ingredients

• 250g marzipan, chilled and grated
• 200ml plain flour, sifted
• 150g butter, liberally softened
• 60ml caster sugar
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1.5 tsp baking powder, sifted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp seedless raspberry jam
• icing sugar
• cold water
• 6 glace cherries, halved

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C, and line a muffin pan with 12 cases.

Mix together the grated marzipan and butter, and the vanilla extract. Separate the three eggs and combine the yolks into the marzipan mix; reserve the egg whites.

Sift the flour and the baking powder, plus a pinch of salt, into the marzipan mixture, and mix well. It will probably be quite stiff. Persevere :)

Using a clean whisk and bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Fold in the caster sugar gently, being careful not to knock any air out of the whites. Fold the resulting mixture into the the marzipan mixture, bit by bit. It's not easy but just take it slowly and keep cutting and folding. You might be able to mix an early spoonful in a bit more vigorously to loosen the marzipan mixture - you sacrifice a little of the air in the egg white initially, but I think you will keep more in the long run.

Divide half the mixture between the cases and make a small well in each. Place a blob of raspberry jam (about half a teaspoon) in each and cover with the rest of the mixture.

Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Ice with plain icing (icing sugar/water) and top with half a glace cherry.

Well, the following day, the verdict is that it's worth the faff! These are delicious sweet, almondy cakes with a nice crumb. They did not need more sugar.

Unfortunately the jam has leaked to the bottom in each case - I am not sure how I can stop this. Perhaps the batter is so light with the egg whites that the jam just sinks? Next time I will try baking them without the jam, then taking out a core, jamming them, and replacing the core before icing them. Not such a "surprise", but better I think.

The cakes only just fill the cases, so perhaps making 10 rather than 12 would be good if I don't manage to increase the volume of batter by retaining the air in the egg whites better next time