Baking with Hemina - Cheese & mustard scones recipe

As I mentioned in my Fuego Lounge review, my friend Hemina kept us occupied one weekend when I was feeling very down.  On the Saturday she came over to bake with me and the kids, Priya especially had a blast and the scones were so easy to make and tasted amazing!  We had them hot for lunch with some truffle salami from Aldi (highly recommended by the way).

Twins' 3rd birthday cakes - recipes and decoration - Pin it do it

I thought I'd finished writing this last year but apparently not!  I've just added the photos so here it is in time for this year's Halloween if you're after a spooky cake idea.  Sadly I don't really have any "during" photos as it was a bit frantic the evening before their party!!

For weeks before the big day, carrot cake was requested by the twins for their birthday cakes this year.  There was a last minute change from one of them suddenly wanting chocolate cake and so the two cakes this year were decided.  I had already chosen a design to go with their Halloween party theme and hoped to make two monster cakes much like the one I saw on Pinterest but as separate cakes.  I asked them which colour monsters they'd like and orange and green were the final choices.  (Perfect Halloween colours too!)

Lemon & Lime Cake with Lemon Buttercream - recipe by Bex

I've made a version of this cake a few times now and it's always a winner!  It's light, moist and super tasty - sort of a cross between a lemon drizzle and a normal sponge cake with buttercream (I use my own buttercream recipe which isn't too sweet).  The original version includes lemon curd which I'm not a fan of but if you want it to be sweeter and even more lemony then by all means add a layer between the slices and mix some in to the icing.  I added the lime when I ran out of lemons and it worked well so here's my version of this delicious cake.

Black Forest Cheesecake Swirl Brownies - recipe by Bex

I made this recipe for my Baking Club Christmas do recently and was really pleased with it despite having preheated the oven for 3.5 hours!  (The kids woke from their nap far too early and I kept trying to get the brownies ready to bake, including the kids in helping, but I didn't manage until they went to bed again that evening - an hour early!!)

Anyway, I had the idea of brownies with cherries and had always wanted to try baking something with a swirl of cheesecake so I googled and combined a couple of recipes I found.  One from the American/Ukrainian Let The Baking Begin Blog for the cheesecake part as I liked the sound of adding sour cream but I couldn't be bothered converting all the measurements for the brownie batter too so I used one from Olive Magazine for the main brownie batter, although I did adapt it slightly by adding dried and tinned cherries as well as changing the method after a wasted pan of seized chocolate mixture!

Below you will find my combined and adapted recipe for my version of Black Forest Cheesecake Swirl Brownies:

For the cheesecake filling:

225g cream cheese
80g sour cream
70g sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg

For the brownies:

200g butter, plus extra for greasing
225g light soft brown sugar
200g golden caster sugar 
125g cocoa powder
100g dark chocolate, broken into chunks
¼ tsp salt 
2 tbsp kirsch or cherry liqueur
4 eggs
125g self-raising flour 
100g dried sour cherries
1/2 tin cherries (optional), de-stoned & halved

For the cream:

whipping cream 300ml
kirsch 2 tbsp (I added 4)
icing sugar 3 tbsp, sifted
1/2 tin cherries (optional), de-stoned and chopped

Method: 

Combine cream cheese, sugar, sour cream and vanilla extract and beat together until smooth, scraping down sides of the bowl as needed.  Add the egg and beat until smooth again.  Put aside.

Preheat oven to 170oC.  Butter a 20 x 30cm baking tin and line with baking parchment.  (I only had square tins so split my mixture between two 20cm square tins, I still baked them for 30 mins.)

Melt the butter in a large saucepan then add the sugars and continue stirring until they start to dissolve.  Remove from the heat and add the chocolate, stirring occasionally as the chocolate melts.  Add the cocoa powder and stir to combine.

Cool for 5 minutes then beat in the salt, kirsch and eggs until smooth again (I did this part in my Kitchenaid).  Stir through the flour and cherries, then scrape into the prepared tin(s) and bake for 30 minutes.

While the brownies are baking, prepare a roasting tin of iced water that will fit the brownie tin inside it.  When the brownies have a crisp top and only a slight wobble to the centre still, lift the tin from the oven into the water bath – this will keep the centre soft, but set.  Cool completely in the water.  Run a knife under hot water before drying and using to cut smoothly.  The brownies are nice and gooey which makes them stick to the knife.

To serve, whisk the whipping cream with the kirsch and icing sugar until softly peaked then stir through the cherries.  Dust the brownies with a little icing sugar and cocoa if you like, and add a dollop of kirsch cream with extra fresh cherries to serve.

I was really pleased with how these turned out!  They were squidgy, gooey and rich.  The Kirsch/cherry brandy was a nice addition and the dried sour cherries add a lovely bit of chewy bite to them.

Pear & parsnip cake with rosemary - recipe by Bex

As I said on Instagram the other day, I was given a few parsnips last week by a friend at our local village pop-in which I go to every Tuesday.  I made a big batch of my lovely parsnip soup and still had a couple of parsnips left over so I thought I'd make a parsnip cake to take along this week to say thank you.  (It turned out she was on holiday though, but everyone else loved it!)

I searched on Pinterest and Google for ideas and  I found a few I liked the sound of.  I originally wanted to make a parsnip & lemon cake but didn't have enough parsnips left over.  I also liked the idea of parsnip & ginger but I didn't have any stem ginger.  In the end, I settled on this one and I'm so glad I did.  It's unusual but seriously yummy!  I've adapted the recipe slightly, I left the cinnamon out of the cake and halved the amount in the icing as Nik and I aren't huge fans of a strong cinnamon flavour.  I also made double the quantity of buttercream as the 1st batch I made was nowhere near enough.  This may be because I made wider cakes than instructed although I still don't think it would have been enough and that's not just because I love buttercream!  ;)

I've re-written the recipe using all the quantities and instructions as I made it.  As much as I'd love to spend lots of time making it look pretty maybe with a couple of pears next to it and a dusting of icing sugar and taking beautiful photos against a nice background rather than a few quick snaps of it on our practical spotty table cloth!  The ones on the original blog where I found the recipe are much more beautiful, I urge you to take a look.  I was lucky to have time (and cooperative twins this morning) to make the cake and add a little rosemary embellishment though :)

Ingredients:

For the cake 
320g unsalted butter, melted and cooled 
320g soft light brown sugar 
4 medium eggs 
320g plain flour 
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
pinch salt 
100g peeled and grated parsnip 
200g peeled and chopped pears
1 tbsp finely chopped rosemary 

For the syrup
125g golden caster sugar
2 springs of rosemary 
place sugar and 
250ml cold water 

For the buttercream
250g butter 
400g icing sugar 
2tsp ground cinnamon 
100 ml double cream (I didn't have any so I used 100g half fat crème fraîche and it seemed to work well!)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 170oC, grease and line four 8 inch tins with baking paper.

Using a stand mixer or electric hand held mixer beat the butter, sugar and eggs together for 2 minutes until pale and well combined.  Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt in a clean bowl.  Add flour mixture to sugar mixture and beat gently to combine.  Finally fold in the parsnip, pear and rosemary and divide between the four tins.  Bake for 20 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean.  Leave to cool on a wire rack. 

To make the syrup:
Heat the sugar and rosemary in a pan and simmer gently, stirring occasionally until the sugar has dissolved then set aside to cool and discard the rosemary sprigs.

To make the buttercream:
Using a stand mixer (I use mine with the whisk attachment for the icing to make it light and fluffy) or hand held electric mixer beat the butter with the icing sugar, cinnamon and cream/crème fraîche and mix until smooth. for 5 minutes until pale and smooth.

To assemble:
Level cakes by cutting off any domed tops and place one layer on a cake plate.  Brush the top with rosemary syrup then smear on the buttercream and then repeat with another layer and continue with the third and fourth layers finishing with a layer of buttercream on the top.  Decorate with rosemary.

It was absolutely delicious and one I'd definitely make again.

The twins' birthday cakes - recipes by Bex

I had a whole day of baking before the twins' birthday as I wanted to make their cakes myself and I wanted them to have one each.  And then I decided there should also be a third cake for a number one.  And then I thought I may as well make a few cupcakes.  I really don't know when to stop!  Anyway, I found a few recipes I liked the sound of and pinned them.  I planned to try them all out before the big day but only managed one practice lemon cake and ended up ruling that one out as it was nice but quite heavy and stodgy and one chocolate cake for Halloween which was a bit dry so I changed the method slightly and baked it for less time.  I wanted nice, light, moist, delicious cakes.  I think I delivered.  I liked them all anyway (although the chocolate one was still a little drier than I'd hoped).

Here are the recipes I used, in case you fancy trying any of them:

I made these cupcakes for their actual birthday so they'd each have a birthday cake on the day.  It was their first ever taste of cake so I made simple vanilla cupcakes using this cupcake recipe from the BBC.

It worked so well and the cakes were delicious (none survived until the party on Saturday!) so I modified it to make the third sponge cake and luckily it came out just as nicely.  I also made another batch of cupcakes and a few teenie tiny cakes for babies.

For Kalyan's cake I used this chocolate cake recipe by Mary Berry and although I put the ganache in the middle, I used the simple buttercream icing from the cupcakes above to ice all of my cakes.

Priya's lemon cake was absolutely delicious and again I used the same simple icing.  I'll definitely be making this one again!

I spent a long time practising smoothing buttercream icing and spent ages trying to get them as smooth as possible.  I was pretty chuffed with the finished result, although they weren't perfect.

I enjoyed spending a bit of time painting the white initial cake toppers.  In retrospect, I wish I'd decorated the number 1 on the middle as well as you can't see it against the white wall!  I left that one white as I used my rainbow sprinkles on the top of that cake.  I also used the mini bunting I made for the rainbow cake I made for the twins' naming ceremony in May.

I always planned to hang them on the twins' bedroom door with an ampersand after they were used on the cakes.

I had even more fun painting the ampersand post party as I had more time to concentrate on it and mixed more colours to get a good rainbow fade.  I used those colours to improve the P and K as well as neatening the patterns as I'd finished them at about 1am the night before the party in a bit of a hurry!  I'd messed up the chevrons a bit but managed to sort them out.  The ampersand is definitely my favourite though.

Pear & Fig Mince Pies with Rum and Marzipan - recipe by Bex (Pin it Do it)

I can't believe there are just 10 days left until Christmas already!  If you fancy baking some mincepies, I can highly recommend this recipe, they're quite boozy but very scrumptious!

I've made mince pies with orange pastry from the Hairy Bikers' Christmas recipe book before and really liked them but this year I wanted to try something slightly different and had a look for inspiration online.  I came across this pear & fig mincemeat recipe and adapted it slightly to my taste.  It turned out really well and it was delicious so I thought I'd share my version here.  I made lemon pastry to go with it (another adapted one from this orange pastry recipe) and kept nibbling the raw mixture as it was so nice!  To top them off I used marzipan stars instead of pastry lids.  They were yummy!

Make the mincemeat a few days (or weeks) in advance to let it mature.  This recipe makes a large tub full which will make plenty of pies.  I also thought I might use some to make mince pie ice cream but I haven't tried it yet!  It's quite a boozy recipe, I used rum in mine as I'm not a big fan of whisky or brandy.  (Ditto for my Christmas cake!)

Ingredients
For the mincemeat:
3 pears, diced
150g glace cherries, chopped
150g mixed peel
250g dried figs, diced
200g sultanas
250g raisins
zest of 2 oranges
juice of 1 orange
zest & juice of 1 lemon
5 tbsp brown sugar
200ml Captain Morgan rum
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground nutmeg

For the pastry:
500g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
175g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting
375g cold butter
zest and juice of 1 large lemon

For the tops:
Marzipan (I used approx 100g for 12 small pies)

Method
Combine all of the ingredients for the mincemeat in a large bowl and mix thoroughly.  Store in an air-tight container in a cool dark place, stirring every day for 3+ days.

To make the pastry, In a food processor, blitz together the flour, icing sugar and butter until you have fine crumbs.  With the processor still running, add in the zest and 3 tbsp of lemon juice.  The mixture should form clumps quite quickly.  Add a little more juice if required.

Bring the dough together and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.  It will keep for 3 days.  (It can also be frozen for up to 1 month.)

When ready to bake your pies, preheat the oven to 180oC.  Grease a muffin tin

Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll out to approx 3-4mm thick.  (I used about half the pastry to make 6 large pies and 18 mini ones.)  Use a cutter to cut out circles to fit your tin, I used a small, deep tin so needed medium sized circles.  Place the bases into your tin and fill generously with mincemeat.  (Not too much though as it will overflow and make the pies difficult to get out as it sticks around the edges!)

Roll out the marzipan to the same thickness, cut out shapes (I used stars) and place on top of the pies.

Bake for around 10-15 minutes (bigger pies will need longer) until golden.  Leave to cool for a few minutes in the tin then lever out carefully with a knife to cool on a wire rack and dust with icing sugar to serve (optional).

Or, eat while still warm with a dollop of cream, my favourite way to indulge!

My baby shower!

by Bex

As I mentioned last week, Gemma & Bella threw me a baby shower this Saturday and boy did they put in a lot of effort!  They had arranged an olive green and yellow colour scheme to match the invitations, organised baby vest decorating with stencils and fabric paints, an amazing afternoon tea spread which everyone brought along some baking for and basically spoiled me rotten!

Unfortunately a lot of people couldn't make it due to various illnesses, distance/cost issues and poor sick babies but we didn't let that spoil the day and I had a thoroughly amazing time with those who were able to make it!  Plus is was quite nice having a small group as I was able to chat with everyone easily.  My in-laws had driven down for the weekend to join in and see the house for the first time, my Mum is obviously still here (and arranged the most amazing favours which I had no idea about either!  Sneaky!), Bella & Gemma came early to banish me while they decorated the house and then Laura and Katie turned up (with the most adorable and youngest guest, Megan)!  Nik and his Dad had planned to go out but since we had so much cake and plenty of spare everything, they decided to stay and join in the fun :)

I wore the purple Seraphine maxi dress Dani so kindly sent to me a few weeks ago.  Roz was devastated to not be able to make it down so I thought wearing an abundance of purple would help add her spirit to the occasion ;)  I added gold accessories for a bit of glitz.

Gemma and Bella banished me from the house in the morning and did an amazing job decorating our half-finished dining room using the paper pom garland I'd kept from my wedding (albeit a bit squished after 3 years in the attic) as well as some fresh gorgeous ones they'd made themselves and some fab green chevron paper straws!  They bought me a beautiful cabbage bouquet as well as roses for the mums!!  They then utilised my many (still homeless - a dresser has been ordered!) platters and cake stands to display all of the amazing food and baking people brought for our lovely afternoon tea.

Mum had sneakily bought loads of individually boxed bone china dragonfly mugs to use for the tea and for people to then take away as a party favour which I thought was such a sweet idea!  She even bought me a special green one!

I used my green one for tea and switched to the other when everyone had pink fizz (I had Melonade).

Since there were only 4 guests including Bella & Gemma, it means there are loads left so it looks like I have a fab new dragonfly mug collection!  :)

As for the baking, Laura's macarons and cheese scones went down a treat and Mum's lemon drizzle cakes (one with blueberries) were also very popular as was the fancy Maison Blanc chocolate cake MIL brought (as she couldn't bake close enough to the day).

We actually tucked into all of the delicious food last after catching up, pressies and then a tour of the new house of course, including the nursery which meant they all got a special secret sneaky peek at the twins' top secret initials as they'd just arrived that morning and I couldn't wait to add them to my newly designed gallery wall!

The twins and I are extremely lucky and although I had made sure that the girls knew no presents were required nor expected (as per American style showers), everyone brought us some truly beautiful gifts and I had a lot of fun opening them!!

Laura gave us some beautiful limited edition prints she felt would 
look gorgeous in a nursery/playroom.
Plus, check out the fab chevron wrapping and cute card!

I think I love the trampolining one best but I keep changing my mind!
They'll definitely be up in the playroom (the nursery walls are full now!)

Katie gave me some lovely bump treats and the twins a super cute bunny called JoJo and some cute (& very soft) 'Born in 2014' outfits!

(I forgot to take a picture of the bump products as I already put them in the bathroom!  

The sleep mist smells lovely!)

And Bella & Gemma MADE the most gorgeous little bowl set with dragonfly designs
 and 'The little dragonfly' written in French and Spanish!

I am SO impressed with Gemma's drawings!

I even received some gifts from some of those who couldn't attend.

Linsey (aka the queen of crochet!) sent some beautifully crocheted booties and hats in
olive green & cream with the most adorable wooden dragonfly buttons!

Roz has bought us the most beautiful print (which hasn't arrived yet but she sent me an image of it) which is just perfect and made most of us misty eyed!

This will also be in the playroom :)

And the wonderful Penski sent a huge Lavender tree which smells amazing and came with such a lovely message!

It's currently on the front step so we smell it as we brush past into the house :)

Katie and Laura had to leave around 5 but Bella and Gemma were able to stay on a bit longer to take part in the baby vest decorating!  I was honestly SO impressed (watching from my chair of exhaustion as I was) with everyone's designs!  Bella made an Elmer vest, Gemma a colourful parrot and MIL a bookworm inspired by the ones in the Nursery.  Mum was in her element helping everyone with crafting ideas and using her special machines/supplies but we have loads of vests left over too so I'm sure Mum and I will have fun designing some more ourselves over the next few weeks!

And finally, I have to mention the most popular guest - Megan!  She was an absolute dream (seriously, I hope my babies are as happy, sociable and chilled out as she) and I was concerned that Katie might have a fight on her hands to get her daughter back off my Mum before the twins arrive!!

As you can see, we all had an absolute ball and I am so grateful to these amazing ladies for throwing such a special party for me and the twins!  Thank you so much!!  xx

Not such a neat bump when I sit down!!  ;)

Thanks also to Gemma for taking LOADS of photos on my camera!