Flour, Cake and Pastry

Happy Thursday! I hope you all enjoyed The Great British Bake Off  last night! I'm looking forward to catching up on it when I come back from South Africa. I thought I'd share with you one of my favourite basic baking recipes: cupcakes. They're so easy and they're certainly a crowd pleaser! You can pretty much add any flavourings you want, how great is that? So this recipe makes 12 cupcakes, and enough icing to pipe a swirl on top! Simple! Ingredients: 110g self raising flour, sieved 110g caster sugar 2 large eggs 110g softened butter 120g softened butter 250g icing sugar, sieved 1tbsp milk 1tsp vanilla essence Method: Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius and line a cupcake tin with 12 cupcake cases. Beat together the flour, butter eggs and sugar for two minutes, or until a golden batter is formed, it should be thick and fluffy. Add any flavourings! Split the mix into the twelve cases. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown and a skew...

Scones are one of my favourite things. I love them! And they're even tastier when filled with a good dollop of jam and a spoonful of whipped cream, perfect for those summer nights sat in the garden with a nice cold drink. The recipe comes from one of my favourite recipe books...Be-Ro. It's so simple to make and there's so many different varieties to choose from-fruit, cheese, cherry, blueberry, coffee and walnut. The list goes on! So, here you go! Ingredients: 225g Be-Ro Self Raising Flour 50g Margarine Pinch Salt 25g Caster Sugar (omit this if you're making a savoury scone, such as cheese) 1 Medium Egg To add any extra ingredients, such as cheese or sultanas, just add 50g of your selected filling Method: Heat the oven to 220ºC, 425ºF, Gas Mark 7 and grease a baking tray. Mix flour, and salt, rub in margarine and stir in sugar and fruit. Add egg mixture and milk reserving a little for brushing the tops. Knead lightly on a floured surface and roll ou...

This month sees Macmillan's annual coffee morning. The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning is Macmillan’s biggest fundraising event for people facing cancer. People across the UK host their own Coffee Mornings and all donations on the day are made to Macmillan. Last year alone a whopping £25 million was raised and donated to a fantastic charity, that is constantly changing and improving lives. Macmillan is one of the leading cancer support charities. 1 in 2 of us will be affected by cancer at some point in our lives, whether it is personally or a close relative or friend. Their work is vital in helping individuals regain some form of normality in their lives. Their ambition and aim is "to reach and improve the lives of everyone living with cancer and to inspire millions of others to do the same." Since the charity was created in 1911, a lot has changed. New cancers have been discovered, new treatments have been found successful and the survival rates have come on leaps ...

The Great British Bake Off is back again tonight, and this weeks episode enters the world of biscuits; it's going to be a good night! There will no doubt be many snaps, cracks and crunches as the remaining 11 bakers battle it out to bake the best biscuit build and impress Mary and Paul. So in honour of biscuit week I thought I'd share 3 of my favourite biscuit recipes, each distinctively different, yet each incredibly tasty. Double Chocolate Cookies So I love chocolate, like a stupid amount. It's my weakness. And if you follow my blog, you'll know I've posted this recipe before on here, but it's just so darn good! Every time, the cookies come out crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, with molten chunks of chocolate running through. Does it really get any better? Of course, you can replace the chocolate chips with whatever other filling you like, and you can replace the cocoa powder with flour if you'd rather have a vanilla biscuit base. The...

Bread is one of those bakes everyone thinks will be difficult to do by hand, and always just opt for shop bought produce. But I am here to tell you it can be easy as 1,2,3. There are so many simple recipes out there, and more often than not, you can find a simple recipe on the back of a pack of bread flour or dried yeast; so you don't even have to go searching! I usually always follow the recipe on the back of whichever bread flour I have purchased and then just either create bread rolls or a loaf, just depending on how I feel that day. However, if you're looking for some exciting bread bakes, just head over to the BBC Good Food website, they have tonnes of recipes to feast your eyes on. So here is the recipe I use for my Wholemeal Bread Rolls, I always use Allinson's bread flour, I don't know why, I just always seem to pick that up from the shelf in Morrisons! Ingredients: 400g S trong wholemeal bread flour 100g   Strong white bread flour   1 Easy bake yeas...

These cupcakes are the perfect solution for a warm summer's day treat. You can even have them with cream to have a scrumptious strawberries and cream dessert. Perfectly British! You can always mix up this recipe by replacing the strawberries with either raspberries, blackberries and blueberries! Just remember to change the colour of icing on top! Ingredients: 110g self-raising flour 110g caster sugar 110g softened butter 2 large eggs 110g strawberry jam 110g softened butter 225g sieved icing sugar 2tbsp milk 1tsp vanilla essence Pink food colouring Method: Pre-heat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius. Line a cupcake tin with cupcake cases. Combine the flour, sugar, butter and eggs in a bowl and whisk together for 2 minutes or until smooth. Divide half of the mix between the paper cases, then add 1tsp of strawberry jam in the centre of each one. Top with the rest of the cake mix and transfer the tin to the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, until a skewer inserted in...

So last night saw the beginning of The Great British Bake Off . And blimey was it an exciting episode! So Week One was Cake week, which saw each baker make 3 exciting sponges to tantalise the senses. The baker's first task was to create a Drizzle Cake. Now in terms of flavours, the world was their oyster. As long as the sponge was moist and had a good drizzle, the bakers could pretty much create anything they liked. Kate opted for a Berry Best Apple and Bramble Drizzle Cake , while Tom chose an extremely bold G&T Drizzle Cake , which certainly livened up Mary and Paul's tastebuds. On to the second round. Round Two was the ever-challenging Technical Bake. And this week was Mary's choice-Jaffa Cakes. In the technical bake, the bakers are given a basic recipe and certain ingredients, and it us to them to interpret and create a perfect piece for Mary and Paul. Last night's challenge saw many-a-baker confused as to which way to coat their cakes in chocolate, how...

Across the country aprons are being unfolded, mixing bowls dusted off, and recipe books are emerging from the cupboards. It can only mean one thing: Bake Off is back! Yes, it's that time of year again, The Great British Bake Off has returned in full force, with 12 new bakers ready to prove that their bakes really are the best of the bunch. After two weeks of intense sporting action on our TV screens, we are ready to sit back, relax, and get our bake on. I mean, cake > sport any day, right? (Massive shout-out to the GB Olympics team by the way! What an Olympics we had!) So in honour of Bake Off day, I thought I'd share with you some of my favourite Bake Off moments from previous series, as well as sharing the baker I'm backing this year! Favourite Recipe-Chessboard Cake So this recipe has featured on my blog before. And that's because I absolutely LOVE it...it looks really technical and challenging but it's actually dead easy! It makes the perfect celebr...

So next weekend I'm heading out to South Africa on a volunteering holiday, where I will be working on a private game reserve, taking part in anti-poaching projects and also heading out to a day care centre for disadvantaged kids. I'm so excited, so to get in the mood for an incredible two weeks, I thought I'd share some classically South African desserts. Food 24 has some yummy recipes from across the globe, and they have some pretty awesome South African ones too, however my favourite has to be the Peppermint Crisp Tart. It is DIVINE. Like I absolutely love it. So the recipe can be found HERE , but is my own version of the recipe that I adjusted slightly to fit in with what I had in the cupboards at home. Ingredients: 1 pack of digestive biscuits 250ml double cream 1 can Carnation caramel 2 bars of Mint Aero chocolate (or 1 large bar) Method: Grease a flan dish (whichever size you want). Whip the cream until thick. Spoon the caramel into the cream and f...

Good Evening! I hope you all enjoyed my 4 summer sizzler recipes, I know I enjoyed writing, baking and eating them (perks of the job). So tonight I thought I'd share with you THE BEST chocolate advice blog known to man-kind, like I literally rely on this, its like my baking bible. Some recipes can be a bit confusing when it comes to chocolate, I mean how good is 'good quality' chocolate? Which is the best to bake with and which is best to avoid? Well hopefully the following hints and tips from this Craftsy blog will help you choose the very best to bake your yummy cakes with... Click HERE to read this awesome blog! However, if you're all about saving time, here are some quick bullet point tips to picking the perfect chocolate for your bakes. Baking Chocolate -Also known as: unsweetened chocolate, bitter chocolate -This chocolate contains no sugar (surprising, I know), so its basically chocolate at one of its purest forms. -Always use the unsweetened...

Thursday is here! And so is my fourth recipe in the summer sizzler series. Now I love anything chocolatey... I mean, where can you go wrong with chocolate? Like seriously? So today's recipe is Millionaire's Shortbread...rich, buttery biscuit, a layer of gooey caramel goodness, and then a layer of melted chocolate on top. It really doesn't get much better... Although traditional recipes tend to use shortbread as the biscuit base, you can use pretty much any biscuit you like. I usually go for digestive biscuits, although some recipes use ginger nuts or rich tea biscuits. Its the part of the recipe where you can make it totally unique, and perfect for your taste-buds. Just choose a biscuit you like, and get crushing! Without further a do, here is the recipe for what is quite possibly the greatest dessert on the planet... Ingredients: 1 pack biscuits (I used 1x500g pack of Morrison's Digestives) 120g butter melted 150g butter 150g dark brown sugar 1 x can ...

Happy Tuesday! How is everyone's weeks treating them? Good I hope! Welcome to my third post in my summer sizzler series, I hope you've liked my past two recipes (if you haven't read them yet then go right ahead, I dare you!) So today's recipe is for a bacon and cheese quiche, perfect for those warm summer days where you just don't want to eat a lot because its so warm! Obviously you don't have to choose bacon as your filling, you can do another meat or make it completely vegetarian, its up to you! I'll leave some optional filling ideas for you guys too, the possibilities really are endless! Anyways, here is the scrummy recipe! Ingredients: 10 rashers of smoked bacon, cooked and then cut into chunks. 250g cheese, grated. 325ml milk. 3 medium/large eggs. Salt and pepper to season Check out the ingredients and the method for a scrummy fool-proof short-crust pastry HERE . Method: Pre-heat oven to 200C. Make your pastry and leave to chill...

Happy Saturday! Today's summer sizzler is a spur of the moment recipe where I kinda just made it up off the top of my head. But it tasted rather yum. Full of flavour and reasonably healthy too, it really is the perfect summer snack! And they are...raspberry and almond tarts! Now how often do you end up with a load of raspberries which are looking a little past their best and just no one is eating them? Well here is a sure way to get rid of those rejects in a tempting new dessert. As always, here's the recipe!! Ingredients: 225g plain flour 80g caster sugar 110g butter, softened 1 egg Punnit of raspberries 200g marzipan, grated Ground almonds (optional) Icing sugar (optional) Method: Crumb together the butter and flour by hand and then add the caster sugar. Add the egg (and a splash of milk if needed) to form a soft dough and leave to chill in the fridge while you prepare the other ingredients. Rinse the raspberries under cold water to get rid of any dir...

Here is our first Summer Sizzler recipe, and it's perfect for a family gathering at a bbq, garden parties, or whatever you have planned for your summer holidays. Today's sizzler is... Galaxy Chunk Chocolate Brownies! They are to die for, literally a slice of heaven (even if I do say so myself). Now if you've read some of my older posts you may recognise this recipe, as my base brownie recipe never changes. I found a recipe I absolutely adore, one that's quick, easy, and most importantly, turns out delicious every time. So I now stick to this recipe to make my brownie sponge but I simply change the flavourings, voila! Ingredients : 1 85g unsalted butter 185g dark chocolate 85g plain flour 40g cocoa powder 275g caster sugar 2 eggs 1 large bar of Galaxy Chocolate Method: Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius and grease a 20cm square baking tin.  Melt together the butter and chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water, stirring occasionally. Lea...

We all love cake, it's human nature. What I love most about baking cake is that you will never get two sponges identical in flavour, texture, height, nothing. They have a mind of their own (kind of). Last week I felt the need to bake (fellow bakers, you know what I mean). So I whipped up a nice simple chocolate sponge cake and then sandwiched the cakes together with a yummy vanilla buttercream, then topped with icing sugar. It really doesn't get much better. As always, here is the recipe. Have a go and let me know what you think! Ingredients: 6oz Self Raising Flour 2oz Cocoa Powder 8oz Butter 8oz Caster Sugar 4 Eggs 600g Icing Sugar, sieved (plus a little extra for dusting) 300g Butter, softened Vanilla Essence Method: Pre-heat your oven to 180 Degrees Celsius. Grease and line two 8inch sandwich tins and pop these to one side. Beat together the butter and sugar until a light cream paste is formed, this should take three to four minutes by hand or just ...

Greetings lovely people! Flour, Cake and Pastry is BACK! I'm extremely excited to get back to blogging and sharing some of my favourite bakes with all you guys. I know its been a fair few months since my last post (I think it was Easter-what!) but life has just been absolutely mental...and anyone who knows me can back me up there! Anyway, we're back, it's summer, and what better way to celebrate the summer than with baking? So over the next few days and weeks I'll be sharing some of my favourite summer sizzler recipes...you know the ones, the bakes that literally ooze summer; from cheesecakes to fruity treats to a good old gateau. Keep your eyes peeled, and as always let me know what you think! And   I am pleased to say we are now on BlogLovin', so if you guys are on there go ahead and search for 'Flour, Cake and Pastry' and be sure to give us a follow, we'd love to see you! Much love, Charley x