Sweet & Simple Bakes - Snow-flecked Brownies

“I haven't baked anything in AGES” I announced a couple of weekends ago.

“Okaaaaaaay” said the boyfriend, with more than a hint of trepidation.

You see I enjoy the baking. I like creating sweet things, it’s fun and then when everybody likes them you get a lovely warm glow inside that makes you feel wanted and seeing as I’m a people pleaser I’m all over it like a rash.

However.

As much as I love the baking there’s an equal part of me that hates it. Know why? It’s messy.

MESS! Argh! It drives fear in to my inner core. For some reason I don’t end up messy myself, I’ve never had to wear an apron, it’s just everywhere else gets covered! And I seem to use about 45 bowls and every single utensil we’ve got in the drawers. I put the beaters in to the mixture and for a week afterwards I’m cleaning flecks of batter off the walls and the cups on the mug tree. And god help me if the recipe calls for me to use my hands. You might as well as me to put my hands inside someone’s body, it fills me with revulsion. I honestly, honestly have to take a deep breath before I start doing it. I actually have to gear myself up. Probably why I don’t make a lot of cookies and scones. Muffins are a hands-off concoction.

Anyway.

I decided to have a go at this month’s Sweet & Simple bake, snow-flecked brownies. I’ve only tried brownies once and they were a total disaster so I was a bit nervous about attempting this one.

Everything was going swimmingly. My chocolate and butter were nicely melting in a pan, I had my eggs cracked in to my bowl with my vanilla essence and just needed to add the caster sugar.

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Have you ever knocked 350g of caster sugar ALL OVER your kitchen?

I don’t recommend it.

It. Was. Everywhere. Including the bottom of my feet which was driving me round the bend.

The boyfriend came to the rescue with the hoover (or rather I screeched at him to get the hoover, it’s a wonder he stays in the house when I’m baking) and all traces of it were cleared away. Almost. I’m sure I keep feeling it between my toes when I’m in there.

I could have given up there and then. But I am brave.

And luckily had a new bag of sugar.

It wasn’t a complete disaster although I had to massively increase the baking time. This was rather inconvenient as it cut into a very important transatlantic telephone call that I was having with of one of The Americans about the forthcoming trip to England. Cue calls to the boyfriend to go and check how they were doing.

The mixture was in for about 1 hour and 10 minutes and I still felt it was a little too gooey on the inside. The trouble was it was almost burning on the top whilst still liquid inside so I ended up covering it in tin foil and that seemed to do the job.

I have to admit I’m in the minority though. Everybody seemed to love them and especially loved the gooiness in the middle although there was general consensus that maybe 5 minutes more would be good. I’ll also halve the recipe if I did it again because I had way too much brownie goodness than I could handle!

So I still feel a little unsure where brownies are concerned but things could be getting better.

I’m definitely not speaking to the caster sugar though.

If you would like the recipe then please go here

(Apologies for the crap photos but I don't seem to be at home in the daylight these days!)

Sweet & Simple Bakes - St Clement's Drizzle Cake

After last month's disaster I was a bit wary of getting back in the kitchen again but apparently you have to get back in the saddle after you fall off so I had no choice but to get my behind back in to the kitchen again.

Someone in the office is about to go off to have an operation so that was all the excuse I needed to bake this delight and bring it in for everyone to share.

And I was in luck because everyone liked citrus flavoured cakes and absolutely loved this cake.

It was just the right amount of citrus flavour and had a lovely golden colour from the orange and lemon zest.

All in all - a success!! Unfortunately I only had time for a couple of hurried photos before it all disappeared - but I guess that's never a bad thing.

The recipe can be found here.

A big thank you to Rosie & Maria who have been a little quiet on the blog front lately - hope you're both well and know that all of us appreciate the effort you guys go to to provide us with a new challenge each month!

Sweet & Simple Bakes

Sweet & Simple Bakes - Jammy Doughnut Muffins

Aaaaaaand WHIZZ! Another month flies by and it's time for this months Sweet & Simple Bake. This month it was these jammy doughnut mufifns and I was eager to get stuck in after last month's carrot cake success.

Unfortunately this wasn't my best production for S&S. I think I had the shelf a bit too far down I think because I baked them for ages and ages and convinced myself that they were done, only to find that they weren't done.

My bad.

This was also probably why they weren't all lovely and golden brown on the top.

Oh yeah and my other clue was that they weren't cooked all the way through. Bit of a give away that one.

Luckily they weren't all a disaster - there were some that were properly baked and they were rather marvellous. I loved the jam running through the middle, a delightful surprise as you bit through the muffin.

So I didn't do amazingly well this month. But I have high hopes for the next!

Find the recipe here.

Sweet & Simple Bakes

Sweet & Simple Bakes - Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

How super-organised am I this month?! I've already done the Sweet & Simple Bake. I. am. a. winner.


About a year ago I decided I was going to try and bake something. I seriously had never done any baking, we didn't do home economics at school and Mum wasn't a huge baker so I had no-one to learn from. After years of the most inventive thing I've ever done being chocolate rice crispie buns, I thought that it was time to give it a whirl.


If you'd have told me then that I'd be making carrot cake I'd have laughed in your face.


BUT I JUST DID IT!!!


A colleague was leaving, taking our office down to a merry band of 3 so we thought we'd have a little leaving party. When we were talking about cakes she said that she would like me to bake something (how good did that make me feel?!) so I decided I'd give the carrot cake a whirl, especially seeing as I'm going to be away the last week in July, which is when I usually do the bakes in a last minute rush.

So being the super-organised person I am, I went for it. Only it had to be a special cake because it was a celebration so out came the edible pink glitter and after a few shakes it became a cake that was meant to party.

Find the recipe HERE

As usual it lived up to its name and was incredibly simple to do. I did leave out the walnuts, but only because I forgot to buy them!

I still can't get over the fact that I made a carrot cake!

Sweet & Simple Bakes

Sweet & Simple Bakes - Chocolate Orange Drizzle Cake

"It's easy" I said to myself.

"All you have to do is bake something each month."

It's actually harder than it sounds! I eagerly go to the Sweet & Simple Bakes page at the beginning of each month to see what I have to attempt and think to myself "Brilliant. I can do that. I'll do that next week."

Or next week....

Or the week after that....

And before you know it you're at the last day for posting and begging your boyfriend to drive you round to the Tesco Metro down the road so that you can oranges and chocolate - two kind of important ingredients for this month's bake. I really wanted to complete this month's bake after the disaster of last month's attempt at lemon curd muffins on the day now called Black Saturday.

Luckily I have a nice boyfriend who obliged and I got my baking mojo on last night in the kitchen.

Et voila! Chocolate Orange Drizzle Cake!

I was surprised how easy this bake was. I'm a little bit scared of loafs having only made one accidentally once before.

However, true to form, it was indeed very simple to make and very sweet to eat!

(Plus I got to go mad with the sprinkles which is always fun)

I was everyone's favourite person in the office today as I brought a slice in for everyone, with one of my colleagues remarking that it was the best thing she'd eaten all week. I'm a bit worried about her diet to be honest...

And they'll be loving me even more tomorrow when they discover that there's more to go around.

For the recipe, stick your cursor over.......HERE!

Looking forward to the next bake!

Sweet & Simple Bakes

From Zero to Hero

It was the best of weekends, it was the worst of weekends....

I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning, rearing to go. I had plans you see. Baking plans.

I had this month's Sweet and Simple bake to complete and had seen a gorgeous Strawberry Sponge cake on Rosie's blog that I wanted to make for a bbq we were going to later on in the day.

First up - lemon curd muffins.

"There's something strange about this recipe" I muttered to myself as I started assembling my ingredients. Then it hit me. There's no butter in it! "Muffins without butter" I said to myself (in fact I said everything to myself because the boyfriend was still in bed at this point) "how very strange. And there's oil in them instead?! What strangeness is this?!"

Still I am the novice and ahead I went. Everything went great, they came out of the oven nice and risen and looking good. A little anaemic looking which I'm putting down to the fact that I didn't use golden caster sugar but on the whole it was good. Until I bit in to one.

I don't know what I did wrong! Whether I used the wrong kind of oil or what I don't know but they really did not taste nice. So they had to go in the bin.

Bad start to the day.

Second up - Strawberry Sponge Cake.

I was feeling good about this one. Although I haven't attempted a sponge cake yet I was feeling pretty confident. Putting the disaster of the lemon curd muffins behind me, I set out on a new baking adventure.

I should have just stayed out of the kitchen.

Maybe I had the oven up too high. Maybe the shelf was too high up. Maybe it just wasn't my day. I went to check on them after 20 minutes and they were burnt. "It's ok, maybe I can just cut the nasty bits off." Yes. Maybe I could have but I would have first needed to chisel them out of the sandwich tins they were stuck to. Night. Mare.

I put the blame for this on my boyfriend, he was in charge of greasing the tins.

To be fair when I did plunge my fist in to it and pull some out it tasted really good. I just shouldn't have ignored that voice in my head that was saying "STAY OUT OF THE KITCHEN".

That Saturday will now become known as Black Saturday. It was a bad, bad day and I was in no mood for the rest of the weekend.

However Sunday dawned bright and wonderful. It was a new day and everything was going to be ok because I wasn't going to be anywhere near the kitchen as I would be out at Costello Stadium, running in the Race for Life 2009. Me and a group of friends had decided to run it this year and we decided to do it with a twist - we would do it 3-legged.

The idea was borne out of the fact that there were a great mix of us in the group, ranging from people like me, who break out in a rash at the thought of exercise, to someone who does triathlons 'for fun' (no I don't understand it either). We figured that doing it 3-legged would be a bit of a leveller and would keep us all together in a team. Also it would provide us with a good angle to go at when trying to collect sponsorship money. People get these sponsorship forms all the time and I think there's a real danger of 'charity fatigue' so we hoped this might help us a little bit.

It wasn't actually as hard as we thought it was going to be. Once you get in to your stride you're sorted and we even managed to jog a few times. Unfortunately we didn't all stay together as one big group - I guess some people are going to be more interested in winning whatever situation you put them in - but 4 of us stuck together through it and we managed to finish the 5km course in 50 minutes which we didn't think was half bad - the general consensus was that it was going to take us an hour and a half.

All in all a great laugh. And all for a great cause as the 10 of us managed to raise over £700 for cancer research.

Yes, maybe I didn't run it and yes, maybe only doing 5km is not that impressive but it was to me.

And I got a medal.

So though I might have been a disaster in the kitchen this weekend, at least I can say I've achieved something.

...and then I came home and burnt the garlic bread we were going to have for tea. *sigh*

Sweet and Simple Bakes - Vanilla Cupcakes

Finally! The essay is finished and handed in. What a nightmare. Talk about making things difficult for yourself. All was going very well until Sunday when I got up and looked at what I'd written was rubbish and appalling and not even relevant and decided to start all over again. I'm an idiot. I think I was just over-thinking the whole situation and making things more difficult than they needed to be - not only have I not had to write an essay for about 3 years but the last essays I was writing were for my Masters degree and this is just a Diploma level, there's no need to panic.

Once I sat back a bit and stopped freaking out completely I realised what I needed to do and set about writing my masterpiece. Well. Maybe not masterpiece.

Either way it is now out of my hands and handed in so now it's just a case of waiting.

So what did I do to cheer myself up when I was buried under a mountain of papers and couldn't see an end in sight? Got myself in the kitchen!

The Sweet and Simple Bakes blog is something I've been following for a while but haven't plucked up the courage to try out. So this is my first go - I couldn't resist these babies!!They were absolutely brilliant and did exactly what they said on the tin - they are sweet and oh so simple!! Simply chuck all the ingredients in the bowl, give it a whisk, put in the cases and you're off! Which meant that I didn't need to feel guilty about taking time out from essay writing to make them - you are supposed to give your brain a rest after all!!

The other fantastic thing about this recipe is that I got to take a trip back to my childhood and play with food colouring and sprinkles - nothing wrong with that.

These cupcakes are soft, fluffy and light and I could happily eat a million of them. But I'm trying not to!

Vanilla Cupcakes
Makes 12

Ingredients

175g (6 oz) self-raising flour

1½ level tsp baking powder

175g (6 oz) butter, softened

175g (6 oz) caster sugar

3 large eggs

2 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Buttercream Icing

150g (5oz) butter, softened

300g (11 oz) icing sugar, sifted

1 tbsp milk

¼ tsp vanilla extract

Edible food colouring(s) of choice, optional

Sprinkle(s) for decoration of choice

You will also require 12 holed muffin tin lined with 12 paper muffin cases

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/Fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.

Sift the self-raising flour and baking powder into a large bowl, and then add the butter, caster sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla extract.

Beat together until well mixed, trying not to over mix the mixture.

Spoon the mixture equally into the prepared paper cases and bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes or until the tops spring back when lightly pressed.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter until soft. Add the icing sugar and stir until it’s just mixed in, then add the milk and vanilla and beat until light and fluffy. Divide into as many bowls as you want different colour(s) and add edible food colouring (you only require a few drops). This is purely optional should you wish to leave out the edible food colouring(s) and keep the buttercream natural. Spread the icing on thickly with a palette knife on top of each cupcake or put the icing into a piping back and make a large swirl on top of each cupcake. Decorate each cupcake with your chosen sprinkle(s).

I'm really looking forward to trying out more bakes at Sweet and Simple and at least I will now have an excuse to get in the kitchen and make things - I'm constantly having to find good reasons for going and baking things and now I'll have a perfect one - for at least once a month...

http://sweetandsimplebakes.blogspot.com/