Our hens are all coming back into lay and yesterday I had sixteen eggs so I decided that a bit of baking was in order! I’ve typed up the recipes for the things I haven’t posted on here before but you can click the photograph of the lemon drizzle cake and chocolate chunk cookies to go to the flickr page and the recipes are there too.

Firstly I threw together a Nigella Lawson store-cupboard chocolate orange cake (from How to be a Domestic Goddess)

This is one of my favourite recipes ever!

You will need
125g unsalted butter
100g dark chocolate broken into pieces
300g good, thin-cut marmalade
150g caster sugar
pinch of salt
2 large eggs, beaten
150g self-raising flour

20cm springform tin, buttered and floured

Preheat the oven to 180C, Gas mark 4.

Put the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and put over a low heat to melt. When it’s nearly completely melted stir in the chocolate. Leave for a moment to begin softening then take the pan off the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the butter and chocolate are smooth and melted. Now add the marmalade, sugar, salt and eggs. Stir with your wooden spoon and when all is pretty much amalgamated, beat in the flour bit by bit. Put into your prepared tin and bake for about 50 minutes or until a cake-tester or skewer comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out.

Serves 6.

Note – I actually had this in the oven for 1h 10m at the correct temperature measured with an oven thermometer and it collapsed in the middle when it came out. It’s a very heavy damp cake, I think this is fairly expected!

This is quite an adult cake so I decided that I’d make something for my little people. At my son’s request we used chunky peanut butter and the kids loved these. I found them a little oily but I think that could have been because I used the cheap and nasty peanut butter instead of the good stuff. After my recently documented muffin failure I was very pleased to have this work! This is an American recipe so the ingredients list is in cups

You will need
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup brown sugar
6 tbsp butter, melted and cooled (I worked this out as 85g)
1/2 cup peanut butter
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
3/4 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375F/Gas mark 5/190C. Line a a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and brown sugar.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the melted butter, peanut butter, eggs and milk until smooth.
4. Pour into flour mixture and stir until just combined.
5. Stir in chocolate chips.
6. Divide batter into your paper-lined muffin tin. Each cup should be filled to the top, not just half way up, to ensure you get a nice dome on the muffin.
7. Bake for 17-20 minutes, until a tester comes out clean and the top of the muffin springs back when lightly pressed.

So things were going well by this stage, I had got rid of four eggs and only had a dozen left THEN my husband checked the coop and we had another four eggs. ARGH! So I decided to make another few things.

This is my favourite cake in the world, lemon drizzle cake. I’ve made and posted this before and the recipe is available on this entry.

Finally I quickly whipped up some chocolate chunk cookies for my little people, these are a pretty regular make for me and the recipe is on this post

Phew! I don’t think I’ll be baking for a while now! I think this should tide us over for a little while.

Posted under baking, recipes

Okay I’ll admit it. I get so excited by the prospect of new projects that I quite often forget to complete old ones. This has really struck me this week as I tidied up all my craft supplies and put all my unfinished projects together. This is what I have so far:

In there I have a half-finished Jean Greenhowe scarecrow, a vintage pattern baby cardigan which needs the button band sewn on, two baby jackets (one in Rowan All-Seasons cotton and one in Sirdar Snuggly) which both need put together and bits added, a pair of Lil Devil Pants from Stitch and Bitch Nation which need sewn together and a pair of Fetching wristwarmers. Oh, and a sweater I knitted for #1 in age 4 years (he’s now 7, it’ll just about fit #2 though!)
I am a disgrace. Tell me it’s not just me though? Regale me with stories of your half finished crafty endeavours please!

I was at home this morning with the youngest babies and decided that I needed to make some of my fallback comfort food – chocolate chunk cookies.



My sister loves these cookies and I was supposed to be meeting her today, unfortunately I had to cancel on her for the second time this week because I am a very disorganised and rubbish sister. I will make it up to you, Steph! The cookies were yummy though

To make them yourself, preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

Cream together 100g unsalted butter with 50g caster sugar until fluffy then beat in one egg and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Mix in 150g sifted SR flour and 175g chocolate (either chopped up chunks or chocolate chips). I sometimes add 50-75g of chopped nuts here too. Grease a baking tray or two and put about a tablespoonful of cookie mixture at a time with enough space for them to spread during baking.

Bake for around 15 minutes or until they look like cookies. Don’t try and pick them up until they’re cool though as they tend to crumble!

Posted under baking, knitting, recipes