Jaffa cakes

The bake off challenge! I have set myself the challenge of making the technical challenge bakes from the great British bake off each week. This week it was Jaffa cakes, they were easy to make and sooo yummy!! To be honest I didn't realise they were actually a thing (other then shop bought) untill I watched the bake off on Wednesday lol! You learn something new everyday!

I used Mary Berry's recipie, I followed it exactly and it does NOT make 12 only 10 . Other than that faultless recipie :) Mary Berry's

Blueberry muffins

I had some blueberrys which were slightly too ripe, so instead of binning them I decided to make some blueberry muffins. I got the recipie from goodtoknow.co.uk. Next time I make them though I will add more sugar and vanilla essence as they didn't seem sweet enough for my liking. 

Egg fried rice

Another recipie from eat well for less, healthy egg fried rice.

Really easy to make, and tastes really healthy too, so win win.

Chicken satay noodles

After watching eat well for less on bbc one. I thought I would try out the chicken satay noodles from this weeks episode.

It was really easy to make, and sooo tastey! I changed the recipie slightly by not adding spinach, just because I didn't have any.

Gluten and lactose free chocolate cake

I made this cake for my sister Kirsty's birthday, as she has a gluten and lactose allergy. 

The recipe for the sponge is from Nigella Lawsons website. To be honest the cake on her website looks pretty boring and uninteresting so I thought adding buttercream and decoration would help to jazz it up. 

For the butter cream I just used stork margerine (which is lactose free), icing sugar, cocoa powder (keep adding both till the mix tastes good), a couple of tea spoons of vanilla essence and a couple of table spoons of hot water.

I then cut up fresh strawberrys to decorate the top. 

The cake turned out lovely, so moist and delicious, everyone enjoyed it, even my 6 year old niece 

Chocolate brownies

I am going to my friends house tomorrow, and needed to think of a sweet treat to bring so thought brownies would be perfect. Found the recipe on bbc food, it was really easy to make. I added double the amount of chocolate chips though as it just didn't look like enough 😂 they taste pretty amazing!! Might not make it to my friends house! 

Mirror up-cycle

I really enjoy bringing new life into old furniture, especially when it's this easy! I literally just bought a can of copper spray paint from halfords and sprayed a few coats onto the mirror frame. It only takes about 10 minutes to dry as well 😊

Lemon posset and shortbread dessert

Ive just moved in to my new house and my friends were coming round for dinner. As my house is a little disorganised from moving and I haven't got a lot of spare time what with all the unpacking, I wanted to make a effortless but impressive dessert so thought lemon posset would be a really good idea. They are literally made with 3 ingridients, lemons, double cream and sugar so super easy. I made the shortbread using heart shaped cutters

Victoria sponge

As requested by my dad, he wanted a classic Victoria sponge for his birthday as he's not one for too much icing. This is my fool proof recipie. 

You need two 8" cake tins

Ingredients 

400g of butter or margerine 

400g of sugar 

2tsp of vanilla essence 

4 large free range eggs 

400g of self raising flour 

1tsp of baking powder 

A splash of milk 

For the filling 

Raspberry jam 

100g of unsalted butter 

200g of icing sugar 

Splash of milk

Method 

Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees. Grease the cake tins with some margerine or butter and put to one side. Using a large mixing bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy then add the eggs and the vanilla essence and mix together, don't worry if it looks like scrambled eggs just add a little flour and that will soon smooth out. Then sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and add some milk if it looks too dry. Divide the mixture Into the two tins and put in the oven for around 40 minutes. Once cooked turn out onto wire racks to cool completely. 

Once the cake has cooled make the butter cream by mixing the butter icing sugar and milk together. Spread the jam on one of the cakes and the buttercream on the other cake and put them together. Finish the cake by dusting with icing sugar

Homemade Tiffin

It's my Dad's birthday this weekend so I wanted to make him a birthday treat and his favourite sweet thing to eat is tiffin, so thought I would give it a try. Here's the recipie I adapted and used

Ingredients 

115g margerine or butter 

2 tablespoons of sugar 

2 tablespoons of golden syrup 

4 tablespoons of ovaltine 

250g of chopped up digestive biscuits or mcvities digestive bites 

3 handfuls of raisins 

230g of milk chocolate, I used cadburys dairy milk 

Method 

Melt the butter, sugar, golden syrup and ovaltine in a pan. Once all melted add the digestives and raisins and stir well. Poor the mixture into a throw away foil tray or Swiss roll tin and spread evenly so that the whole base of the tin is covered. Melt the chocolate in a microwave and poor and spread evenly over the tiffin mixture. Place in the fridge for around 1 hour then take out of the tin and cut into even chunks.