Savoury toast cups

This is not a dessert or sweet dish but I wanted to share it with you as I made it for my recent afternoon tea for the first time and everyone loved it! It's so simple to make and the variations are endless. These would be perfect for breakfast/brunch or afternoon tea. They were absolutely delicious! I was really impressed that they held their shape (apart from the vegetarian ones) and I love the individual portions. One of my guests suggested baking them in ramekins which is a brilliant idea. 

I decided to make a miniature full breakfast and put bacon, mushroom, spinach, tomato and egg in a toast cup. I also made 2 tomato, mushroom and spinach at the request of my guests. You can vary the ingredients depending on what you like. I can imagine sausages, peppers, courgettes or cheese being ideal ingredients - perhaps not all at once! The trick is not to overfill which is what I did as I wanted as many ingredients as possible.

 I used bacon (cooked until just brown), mushroom, spinach, eggs and tomatoes (not shown)

 Get a large round cutter and cut out a circle of bread. 

 use a rolling pin to flatten 

 cut each circle in half and use it to line a muffin tin rounded side up. Cut a quarter of the flattened bread and use to place in the centre. Alternatively, you can use the whole circle but you'll get some ridges. 

 Brush melted butter over the bread before filling. If you are using bacon, remember to pre-cook the bacon - do not use raw bacon as it will not cook properly. Push a piece of bacon into the toast cup with the sides overhanging, then add vegetables on top 

 Finally crack an egg in each cup - I only managed this once (bottom row, middle) as the others overflowed (bottom right) The solution - crack 2 eggs in a bowl, give it a light whisk and pour a little egg mixture into each cup. Season with salt and pepper. Bake at 180C for about 20 minutes depending on how you like your eggs done. I took them out whilst the yolk was still runny but the egg whites were just set 

 the finished product - I love the crispy bacon edge!

 cross section 

Banana, blueberry and lemon yoghurt bundt cake

Have you ever made your own yoghurt? I didn't even know it was possible until I saw these EasiYo yoghurt makers in shops. I use a lot of yoghurt in baking, cooking or as a healthier dessert option.  The lovely people at EasiYo Yoghurt sent me one of their yoghurt makers to review plus 2 delicious flavours - Greek yoghurt and Sweet Forest Fruits. You can have a chance to win your own yoghurt maker plus 2 flavours of your choice at the end of this post (UK participants only). 

This is what you get in the box - Yoghurt maker, Jar and booklet (The yoghurt base and culture are sold separately). It's really simple and made perfect yoghurt that tasted just as good as the ones I usually buy. 

 Mix the contents of the yoghurt base & culture with cold drinking water in the jar up to the indicated line. 

Pour boiling water into the yoghurt maker to the line. 

 Place the jar inside. Leave for 8-12 hours or overnight. 1 sachet makes 1kg/1L of yoghurt. 

My verdict - It's really easy and simple to use. No fuss, no mess and a perfect result each time. It's probably worth investing if you consume a lot of yoghurt in your household and/or like making your own food. It tasted as good as any leading brand of yoghurt out there (for the flavours that I tested which were Greek yoghurt and sweet forest fruits) The downside for me is that 1 jar makes 1kg/1L of yoghurt which is a lot to consume if it's a small household. Plus if you buy yoghurt from the shops, you can buy a variety of flavours in small pots whereas you'd have to make 1L of each flavour at a time with this maker. 

Apart from eating the yoghurt, I also chose to bake it into a cake - no surprises there! I chose a banana, blueberry and lemon cake as that was what I had in the fridge. I made up the recipe based on previous experience so it does require a little tweaking but overall I thought the cake was moist and delicious. My colleagues certainly approved as it disappeared really quickly! 

 bananas, greek yoghurt, lemon, blueberries 

 Jar of homemade yoghurt 

 Mix wet ingredients 

 Toss the blueberries in flour to stop them sinking to the bottom 

 ready to go in the oven 

 yummy! 

This recipe made a large bundt cake as shown. I'd suggest halving the recipe if you want to make a small loaf. If you prefer a firmer cake, add more flour and/or reduce the amount of yoghurt.

185g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
300g Greek yoghurt
75g caster sugar
115g honey
3 eggs
60mls vegetable oil
2 bananas, roughly mashed
zest of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons lemon juice
200g blueberries (coated in 2 teaspoons of flour)

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl.
• Add sugar and set aside.
• In a large bowl, mix together the yoghurt, honey, vegetable oil, eggs,  lemon zest and lemon juice.
• Add in the mashed bananas.
• Add in the flour mixture and mix well.
• Finally stir in the blueberries that have been coated in flour.
• Pour into a bundt tin and bake for 45--50 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Disclaimer: I was sent the yoghurt maker and yoghurt base & culture to review free of charge. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions expressed are my own. 

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Ice Cream and Donut Cake Pops

This month's AlphaBakes is hosted by Caroline from Caroline Makes. Its our monthly blogging challenge that we co-host where we randomly pick a letter each month and bake/create something using that letter as the main ingredient or name of bake. I think we've done all the easy letters and we're left with the trickier ones such as 'I' for this month. My first thoughts were ice cream cupcakes which I made a few years ago but I wanted to make something new this month so decided on ice cream cake pops. I also made some donut ones whilst I was at it! 

Each time I make cake pops, I think never again and then of course I do. They are quite fiddly and time consuming and I just can't seem to get it right. This time the cake pops fell off the stick but they looked quite nice on my new cake stand (more on that later). I made a Nigella chocolate cake and used caramel and strawberry buttons for the coating.

 chocolate cake 

 1 batch of vanilla buttercream + crumbled cake 

 mix buttercream 1 tablespoon at a time into the cake mixture until it's sticky and binds well together

 weigh out 30g of cake mixture and roll them into cone and donut shapes. Chill in the freezer until firm before proceeding to the next step. 

 melt candy melts/flavoured buttons. I had some lovely white candy melts with colours in them (right of photo) but unfortunately they didn't melt properly so I didn't use them at all [you can add some vegetable oil to thin the candy melts but I didn't want to do that in this case]

 the caramel buttons melted beautifully. have everything ready before you start - lollipop sticks, melted coating, cake pops and a stand. 

 dip cake pops into the caramel buttons

 allow to dry fully - I had difficulty keeping the donut ones on a stick

 dip the ice cream cones in melted strawberry buttons about half way. Add sprinkles and allow the cake pops to set. As you can see they fell off the stick whilst drying but all is not lost... 

 finished cake pops minus sticks served on a cake stand 

I mentioned earlier that I wanted to talk about my new cake stand which I was sent to review.  It's a slate 2 tier cake stand by Apollo Housewares.  Apollo Housewares have been specialising in kitchen & homeware products for 24 years and have a great range of baking accessories and cake related products. I served these cake pops at my afternoon tea party and some of my guest comments were that it looks classy and that it fits with any decor. 

My verdict - It's quite a sturdy cake stand which is well made and easy to assemble. I love the colour and simplicity of it. I think it made my cake pops look better especially the donut ones! 

 slate 2 tier cake stand

Disclaimer: I was sent this cake stand to review. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions expressed are my own unless otherwise stated. 

Coffee, maple and pecan cake

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend especially all the mothers out there celebrating Mother's Day.  I spent most of mine baking for an afternoon tea today.  I baked everything from scratch except for the bread. There will be multiple posts to showcase everything we had today. I'm going to start with the layer cake which is a little different from the traditional victoria sponge cake. It's a twist on a coffee and walnut cake using pecans and maple syrup. The recipe is from Ocado which I modified slightly. 

The cake was moist and the coffee and pecan flavours really came through. I am now totally in love with Camp coffee essence.  The icing was on the sweet side but it went well with the cake. A definite winner! Leftovers were given to Yogi and his team - do let me know what you guys think! I wish I'd kept another slice for myself now :)

 pecans, coffee essence and maple syrup

 melt butter and maple syrup for the icing

 base layer

 cross section

Recipe from ocado 

I've added my changes below

For the cake

225g self raising flour

175g caster sugar

175g butter

3 eggs

2 tablespoon coffee essence

100g pecans, roughly chopped

For the icing

100g butter

4 tablespoon coffee essence

2 tablespoon maple syrup

350g icing sugar

Whole pecan nuts to decorate 

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Grease and line 2 sandwich tins.
• Beat all ingredients for cake except pecans in a mixer until smooth. 
• Stir in the pecans.
• Divide evenly into 2 tins and bake for approximately 30-35 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
• Allow to cool in the tins for 5 minutes before turning out to a wire rack to cool completely. 
• To make the icing, melt the butter and maple syrup in a pan over medium heat.
• Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl. 
• Pour the butter and syrup mixture into the icing sugar.
• Add coffee essence. 
• Beat until smooth. 
• Sandwich the cakes together with icing. Spread more icing on the top and sides.
• Decorate with whole pecans as shown or you can sprinkle crushed pecans on top. 

• 
  

Triple Citrus Cake and Clandestine Cake Club

Last weekend I attended my first ever Clandestine Cake Club (CCC). I joined 2 London clubs for a while but never made it due to other commitments. So when I moved to my new place, I decided to see if there was one near me. In fact there were 2 nearby but one was due to meet in a few weeks so I quickly signed up. The theme was "Spring Fling" and there were 12 amazing cakes on display. The cakes were Lemon cream, coconut and lime, orange and almond, springtime on Madeira, citrus layer cake with pastel sprinkles, Lavender and Lemon, Spring bunny carrot cake, orange daffodil almond cake, violet festival cake, chocolate mini egg cake, spring flowers cake, orange and lemon layer cake with limoncello frosting. It was a very enjoyable morning of tea, cake and chat. We also got to take cake home which meant I could sample all the cakes :) I can't wait for the next cake club! 

I initially wanted to make a pastel swirl cake after watching this video on sweetapolita but I ran out of time and icing so I did a simple icing instead. I'm still getting used to my new oven and managed to burn 1 of the 3 layers in the cake which I ended up re-baking the morning of the cake club! The finished cake didn't look too bad in the end and it was edible. I made a basic sponge cake which I divided into three. I added the zest of 1 fruit and 1 tablespoon of juice to each bowl (1 orange, 1 lemon and 1 lime) I also added a little food colouring appropriate to that fruit.

 triple citrus

 orange, lime and lemon

 I couldn't find all my food colours but I think you get the idea :) 

 My freshly baked layer on top of my pre-frosted cake 

 the finished product - extremely uneven layers! Will have to try harder next time! 

Smiley Face Jam Cookies

I got these super cute cookie cutters as a gift recently. I was really pleased as I'd been debating about buying them for myself. I've used them twice now and I'm sure I'll get a lot more use out of them! I used a simple sugar cookie recipe and sandwiched the cookies with jam. I thought of making a buttercream filling as well but ran out of time. 

The cookie cutters are really easy to use and make perfect smiley faces :) My tips are to chill the cooking dough before rolling and cutting then chilling them again before baking to prevent spreading of cookies when baking. I didn't chill the first round and the cookies expanded quite a bit and filled up the gaps of the face. It only needs 10-15 minutes in the fridge. 

 I had fun with the cookie cutters. I used an offset spatula to lift the cookies on to the baking tray. 

 ready to go in the oven 

 boxed and ready to go 

Sugar cookies

125g butter

125g caster sugar

1 egg

2-4 teaspoon vanilla extract

250g plain flour

• Preheat the oven to 175C.
• Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
• Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
• Add in the egg and vanilla extract.
• Finally stir in flour and mix well. 
• Knead dough until smooth, wrap in cling film and chill for about 20-30 minutes. 
• Roll out dough on a floured surface and cut using cookie cutters. 
• Place on a baking tray and chill briefly for 10-15 minutes.
• Bake for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown.
• Allow to cool completely. 
• Sandwich the cookies with jam or a filling of your choice.