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

This last week has been a very trying one for us at home. I do value my privacy and don’t like to post too much detailed information about my family on this blog where I can’t restrict who views it, so I’m not going to divulge too much other than to say life with three very young children is a very testing experience. When any combination of those children get ill, that experience is made all the more trying. Our daughter has been quite unwell since the weekend and we’re hopeful that she’s on the mend now.

In any case, as we’re off to London tomorrow I thought that we should have a more relaxing evening with a family meal together so I have spent some time today cooking. Tonight we had carrot soup, roast chicken with white wine sauce and lemon drizzle cake.

Recipes
Carrot soup

2 litres of stock (I used home made chicken stock)
2lbs carrots, sliced
2 onions, sliced
25g butter
2 cloves garlic, chopped
natural yoghurt to serve (optional)

Melt the butter in a large pan, and add the garlic. Let it infuse for about a minute then add in your carrots and onions and let the vegetables soften over a medium heat. Once they’re soft, add your stock and turn the heat up until the soup is boiling. Cover and simmer for as long as necessary (I usually leave it for around an hour) then blend. Add a dollop of natural yoghurt if you feel like it, and serve.

Lemon drizzle cake

I had some gorgeous lemon drizzle cake from Theo’s cafe a few weeks ago and I decided to try and recreate it. Such a gorgeous cake, and reasonably easy to recreate. I googled for the recipe and found this entry on the Gastronomy Domine blog written by Liz so I’ve pinched it. The original recipe is from Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake book.

4oz (100g) soft margarine (I used butter as I had no margarine)
6oz (175g) caster sugar
6oz (175g) self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 extra large eggs
4 tablespoons milk
zest of 1 lemon

For the topping:
juice of 1 lemon
4oz (100g) caster sugar

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4, and line and grease a 7in deep round cake tin. Other recipes I found recommended using a 2lb loaf tin for this purpose.

Combine the sugar and margarine, then add the eggs and milk. Sift in the flour and baking powder and beat the whole lot together. Add the lemon zest and tip into your prepared tin. Bake for 40 minutes. Liz recommends listening to your cake at this point – as she says, “to find out whether your cake is done; put an ear near it. An underdone cake will make tiny pricking noises. A done cake will be silent.

When you’ve taken the cake out of the oven mix the lemon juice and sugar together. Prick the cake surface with a skewer or fork then spread the sugary lemon (or lemony sugar, however you want to look at it) over the top, and leave the cake in the tin to cool.The lemon juice will soak into the cake, leaving a crunchy lemony topping. Turn out and serve.

Posted under baking, cooking, recipes