Chocolate Coconut Slices

I have grown up eating these Chocolate Coconut slices, its one of the things I can always remember my Mum baking. The recipe comes from my Grandma (my Mum's Mum) who I sadly never got to meet but judging by the recipe book of hers that this came out of she knew how to make some amazing things.

Chocolate Coconut Slices

8oz coconut
6oz sugar
2 eggs (well beaten)
4oz margarine
4oz chopped cherries
5 – 8oz cooking chocolate

1. Line a swiss roll tin with greaseproof paper
2. Melt chocolate and pour into tin, leave to set (use more chocolate if you want a thicker layer)
3. Beat margarine, coconut, sugar and eggs until combined
4. Stir in cherries
5. Spread mix over chocolate
6. Bake in moderate oven, Gas mark 3/ 160c until set and golden brown. This takes roughly 30 minutes depending on the oven

7. When cool cut into slices

Top Five: Cake stands

My new stand from Tesco

Having just got myself a new cake stand (or rather after my lovely Mum bought me one) I can't stop myself looking for more. There's something charming and homely about cake stands that I just can't help but love. However until I have a place of my own or my bedroom miraculously triples in size I have no free space to store them.

So if you like this is my little wish list.

Victoria and Albert two tier cake stand

I love this, its so fancy and proper. It looks like it should only be brought out at very fancy dinner parties.

Wire Cupcake tree
Now these are amazing, I think they are great and such fun. If I had one of these I'd want it permanently on show filled with cupcakes...that actually sounds like a good life!

Time for Tea cake stand

When I chose the stand above it was a toss between that and this Time for Tea stand, I love both but the Poppy stand won.

Retro Spot stand

I love all things spotty and retro, and red just happens to be my all time favourite colour therefore this stand couldn't be any more perfect!

Vintage 3 tier basket stand

This wire basket stand is incredible, I've not seen anything like it before. The vintage charmit has would be great for a tea party.

Cheesecake Brownies

Sorry for not posting this sooner, I had planned to share this recipe at the start of the week but I’ve been quite unwell this past week.

I’ve only ever made cheesecake about 3 times in my life, despite having eaten a hell of a lot of it! The first time I made it, it tasted amazing but collapsed the second it came out of the tin. The second seemed to have great potential but just didn’t live up to it. And the third was incredible. Quite honestly one of the tastiest cheesecakes I’ve ever eaten, and I’m not just saying that because I made it! My family loved it, my Mum and I were quite disappointed when it came to an end! And the best bit about it? It’s so very simple. I’ve read recipes for cheesecakes that have had hundreds of steps, you have to do this followed by that and then a bit more of this, they can be never-ending.

I’m definitely going to be making these again, when they are so quick and easy it would be a shame not to. Though I might have to make double the recipe as an attempt to make it last longer!

Cheesecake Brownies - from The Complete Book of Cupcakes, Cheesecake and Cookies

For the brownie base:
125g butter, chopped
150g dark eating chocolate, roughly chopped
1 egg
150g caster sugar
110g plain flour
35g self raising flour

For the cheesecake topping:
250g cream cheese, softened
1tsp vanilla extract
75g caster sugar
1 egg
125ml cream

1. Preheat the oven to 180c.
2. Grease a deep 19cm square cake tin and line with baking paper.
3. Combine the butter and chocolate in a small pan, stir over a low heat until smooth. Allow to cool.
4. Beat the egg and sugar in a small bowl with electric mixer until thick and creamy.
5. Stir in chocolate mixture and sifted flours.
6. Spread mixture into pan and bake for 10 minutes.
Whilst that is cooking you can the cheesecake topping:
7. Beat the cheese, vanilla extract, sugar and egg in a small bowl until smooth. Then beat in the cream.
8. Pour the topping mix over the brownie base and return to the oven for about 15 minutes.
9. Leave in the oven to cool, with door ajar.

10. Once cool refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

They suggest serving with fresh raspberries but I didn't have any, so I served with fresh strawberries and grated dark chocolate.

Top Five: Recipe Books

I've decided to try and do a regular feature, something to keep me occupied and to give me something useful to search for on the internet. Also something to make me remember to keep updating! Therefore every other Saturday I will try and post up a Top Five list, a list of things I want, things I read or just simply things I find interesting or inspiring.

The first list today is Recipe books, personally I love them. From simply flicking through one and staring at the photographs to finding that one recipe that really tickles your taste buds. I think they are great. So here are five recipe books that I've had my eye on lately.

Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery

The Primrose Bakery has such a reputation for amazing cakes that it would hard not to want to try some. Yet since I live so far away I guess making my own is the closest I'm going to get for the time being.

How to be a Domestic Goddess

Ahh Nigella, the queen of cookery programmes and books. I've heard great things about this book, so surely Nigella can do no wrong?

Bake

Theres something about Rachel Allen that makes me watch and listen. I've watched her cookery programmes for a while now and I love the Bake series.

Cupcakes

Any book solely dedicated to cupcakes has to be good, right!

Cakes to Inspire and Desire

As I've mentioned before, decorating cakes has always been my weak point. Therefore cakes like these inspire me so much, I only wish I could create a cake half as good as some of the examples in this book. I could spend ages staring at this book wishing I was able to do that.

Since I probably won't be getting any of these anytime soon I will have to stick with the ones I've got and the internet for inspiration.

Oh and for a little sneak preview, the next recipe I'll be sharing is for Cheesecake Brownies!

Chocolate Fudge Brownie Cookies

The past week has been filled with baking, I don’t think I’ve ever baked so much in one week before. I started with chocolate cornflake buns on Saturday with the help of my 2 year old nephew JT, I wanted to bake but wasn’t feeling too good so needed something quick and easy, and that JT could help with. Turns out he’s not too fond of the hob so ran away to play with his train set, however he returned just in time to lick the pan clean. Something which he enjoyed quite a lot!

Then on Tuesday I made rock buns using my Mums old recipe she got from school. Rock buns, if you’ve never heard of them before, are a cross between cake and scone mix with a bit of cinnamon thrown in. They also, quite conveniently, come out of the oven looking like rocks!
Wednesday came the day I’ve been waiting for, I made warm chocolate melt in the middle cupcakes. I’ve been wanting to make these for a few weeks but as they really need to be eaten warm, I needed the whole family to be here to eat them. And so finally on Wednesday everyone was here, including JT and my Mums crazy friend C (who expects there to be fresh baked goods every time she comes round!) and I had my chance to make them. They were so so good, however in the middle of taking photos of them my camera broke. As someone who takes photo’s every single day and loves her camera to bits you can imagine how upset I am. However I do have a new camera on order, the Canon 550D, which should be here sometime in the next week. In the mean time I have to use a combination of my phone, my old Kodak compact and my mums little Panasonic, to try and get some passable pictures.
And so to finish off my baking week, I did some late night baking yesterday to try and ease my boredom. I made chocolate and vanilla marble cupcakes, which have been decorated today with a chocolate buttercream frosting and chunks of clotted cream fudge that I picked up a couple of weeks ago on my holiday to North Wales.

Onto today’s recipe, these cookies are completely delicious. I made them a couple of months back and have since handed the recipe out to quite a few people, all of whom agree that they are delicious. I’m a big fan of cookies and as far as I’m concerned the more chocolate the better. So when I came across this recipe in ‘The Complete Book of Cupcakes, Cheesecakes and Cookies’ and saw it had 3 lots of chocolate in it, I knew it had to be good. I wasn’t disappointed.
The book calls them chocolate fudge brownie and to be honest I’m really not sure where the fudge brownie part comes in, aside from the chocolate and nuts. But I don’t really care what they call them especially as they are so tasty. I’m not a fan of nuts so I just left them out which worked fine.

Chocolate Fudge Brownie Cookies

250g butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract

165g caster sugar

165g brown sugar

1 egg

300g plain flour

25g cocoa powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

45g finely chopped roasted hazelnuts

120g coarsely chopped dark eating chocolate

120g coarsely chopped milk eating chocolate

120g coarsely chopped white eating chocolate

1. Preheat oven to 180°c (160°c fan forced).

2. Grease baking trays, line with baking paper.

3. Beat butter and sugars in a small bowl, add extract and egg and beat until light and fluffy.

4. Transfer to large bowl.

5. Stir in sifted flour, cocoa and soda in two batches. Then stir in the nuts and chocolate.

6. Roll level tablespoons of dough into balls and place 5cm apart on baking trays.

7. Bake for about 12 minutes.

8. Leave to cool on trays.

They say you can make about 48 small cookies out of this mix, the first time I made them I got 25 large ones and then the second time I got about 35 medium sized ones.

A couple of tips with this recipe, firstly make sure you keep the dough balls well spaced out on your baking trays as they spread a lot. Secondly don’t be tempted to flatten your dough balls out a bit, I did this the first time I made them and because they spread out so much whilst cooking they became a bit too thin.Hope you enjoy them!

Oh and apologies for the rubbish photos, I don’t know if it was me, the camera or the cookies but I just couldn’t get a decent photograph of them. I’ll make them again once I get my new camera.

Heavenly cupcakes

Cupcakes for Bookworms, Photo courtesy of Heaven is a Cupcake

I often am in awe of anyone who can make truely amazing looking cakes, its something I can only aspire to do. Decoration has always been my weak point, so I love seeing other people's creations. One such person is Lucy of Heaven is a Cupcake, her cupcakes always look impeccable and the themes are so fun. Unfortunately I live too far away from her to sample them in person but I have been told they taste just as good as they look.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow Cupcake, photo courtesy of Heaven is a Cupcake

So when Lucy shared her recipe for Vanilla Cupcakes I just had to have a go and bake them. The first thing I have to say is that it's the easiest recipe I've ever followed for cake mix. Everything just goes in the bowl and you mix. Simple. They are incredibly tasty too. I made a mix of large and smaller cupcakes, and I think I need to be more generous with the buttercream!

If you want to have a go you can find Lucy's recipe here. It's very easy to follow, so don't worry if you haven't really made any cakes before.

This is how my cakes turned out, they don't look nearly as good as Lucy's but practice makes perfect! My arms nearly dropped off mixing the food colouring into the buttercream, I added over half a bottle and they still weren't as pink as I wanted. I'm going to have to find some gel food colours.


The lovely Lucy is also holding a giveaway on her blog at the moment. Courtesy of CSN stores, you can win £40 worth of vouchers to spend on their online stores. So if you want to stock up on more baking equipment head on over to Lucy's blog and enter!

Rocky Road cupcakes

So I'm just going to admit to it straight away, I'm not a neat baker...and by that I mean I'm messy, I take up most of the work tops in the kitchen and I have been known to use every spoon in the house (like this recipe for example, we have a lot of teaspoons, and I mean a lot. But I ran out about half way through!). Just the other week when I was making buttercream I managed to cover most of the kitchen in icing sugar dust. I had to clean inside cups, around the kettle and the fronts of the cupboard doors. I know icing sugar can just erupt with dust, but never have I had to clean most of the kitchen before, everything was covered in what looked like a very fine layer of snow.

I guess the reason why I'm saying this is just to let you know, my photo's are not perfect, there will be lumps of dropped cake mix dotted around. You have been warned!
And so, back to the baking. For my birthday this year my great friend, F, bought me an amazing recipe book, its got some fantastic looking cupcakes in it and I couldn't wait to test them out. I can't actually find a link to it, but its called The Complete Book of Cupcakes, Cheesecakes and Cookies.

I must have spent hours flicking through it admiring all the photographs, reading the recipes, seeing what ingredients I have and getting hungrier and hungrier as I flicked through each page. I decided to start with the Rocky Road cupcakes (as seen in my header), firstly because they looked so incredibly delicious and secondly, well I can't really refuse anything that involves chocolate.
The cupcake itself is a marble cake of 3 layers, vanilla, chocolate and pink vanilla. When I make them again I'm going to miss out the pink layer as it didn't really show through as much as the others, and it didn't really bring another flavour.

When beating together the cake mix, it looked as if it was about to separate and curdle, but don't worry as long as it doesn't actually curdle then once it's cooked it'll be fine. I wouldn't be surprised if this only happened with me though, it wouldn't be the first time!

I must say, despite a few worries along the way, was quite scrumptious. The cake was very tasty and I was impressed at how well the marble effect showed through. The topping was by far the best bit, generally I can't eat much rocky road mix as it can be incredibly sickly but this was just the perfect amount.

They will definately be made again.

And so to the recipe, as that is what you must be waiting for.

For the marble cake

125g butter, softened

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

150g caster sugar

2 eggs

185g self raising flour

80ml milk

Pink food colouring

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

2 teaspoons milk, extra

For the topping (you can double this if you want extra!)

35g unsalted roasted peanuts (these can be left out, as I did)

100g halved red glacé cherries

50g pink and white marshmallows, roughly chopped

25g flaked or dessicated coconut, toasted

100g milk chocolate, melted

Decoration

50g Cadbury dairy milk buttons, melted

1. Preheat your oven to 180°c and line a 12 hole muffin pan with paper cases (I used smaller 'fairy' cases as I didn't have any muffin cases)

2. Beat butter, extract, sugar and eggs in a small bowl until light and fluffy

3. Stir in sifted flour and milk in two batches

4. Divide the mixture equally into 3 bowls. Tint one bowl pink. Blend the sifted cocoa with the extra milk in a cup and then add to another bowl. Leave the third bowl plain.

5. Drop alternate spoonfuls of each mixture into the cases. Then pull a skewer or toothpick back and forth through the mixtures to create the marble effect. Smooth the surface.

6. Bake for about 20 minutes, or 30 if using large cases. To check if they are ready, insert a toothpick into the cake, if it comes out clean then its ready.

7. Leave on a wire rack to cool.

8. Put all the topping ingredients into a bowl and stir to combine. For decoration purposes you may want to hold back a small amount of each of the topping ingredients so that they can be added on top, as once they go in the bowl they will get covered in chocolate!

At this point you might want to cut the tops off some of your cupcakes to create a flatter surface for the rocky road mix. Feel free to eat the cut offs as you go along, you deserve it!

9. Place spoonfuls of the topping onto each cupcake. You may need to slightly pile it on to stop if from falling off, and add some of your held back topping so that you can actually tell what's in it!

10. Lastly drizzle each cupcake with the melted chocolate buttons.

Enjoy!