Rose and Strawberry Kisses

I'm sure you've noticed that I participate in a lot of baking/blogging challenges. Sometimes I have a recipe that I want to make that fits and other times I create a recipe specifically for the challenge. This is a creation recipe for 2 challenges - one an old favourite and another a brand new challenge.

Firstly, Tea Time Treats hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and co-hosted by Kate from What Kate Baked set a lovely FLORAL theme for May. As Karen's birthday is in May, she asked us to send in something with floral flavours and flowers. Happpy (belated) birthday Karen - I hope you enjoy these :) 

Secondly, a new challenge I discovered which is the Improv Challenge hosted by Kristen from Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker.  It's a  monthly party where everyone takes the same two assigned ingredients and lets their imaginations run wild.  This month the two ingredients are strawberries and cream.

So I got to thinking about what to make for each of these challenges and then came up with something that would fit both. The inspiration comes from these lemon meringue kisses I made for a friend's birthday last year. I decided to make Rose & Strawberry Kisses which is floral and contains strawberries and cream! 

Colour co-ordinated ingredients :) I found this lovely concentrated Rose culinary essence at an Asian grocery store - it is AMAZING!! I would highly recommend this over rose water (which is what you can buy at a supermarket).  The colour and flavour is intense and it tastes great! You can really smell and taste the rose. I'm so glad I found this (amongst other things)

 adding the rose essence to the meringue - love the pink colour

 looks slighly orange-y but I'm sure it's the lighting, I promise it's pink! 

 Pipe meringue 'kisses' 

 Chop up fresh strawberries

 Fold into freshly whipped cream

 Rose & Strawberry Kisses :) 

 I made a few large meringues so I could have a Royal Rose Eton Mess - crushed meringue with strawberries and cream, fresh strawberries topped with a 'strawberry crown' I won't lie... I ate the whole bowl myself (in 2 sittings) 

 view from the top 

For the meringue shells (I made a double recipe which yielded 76 stars or 38 kisses and 3 large meringues for my eton mess)

This is for a SINGLE recipe which makes ~40 stars or 20 kisses

2 egg whites

pinch of salt

150g caster sugar

2 teaspoons rose essence

optional : drop of pink food colouring

• Preheat oven to 90C. 
• Line 2 baking sheets with greaseproof paper. 
• Whisk egg whites in an electric mixer until foamy.
• Add salt and increase speed to medium-high.
• Slowly sprinkle in the sugar.
• Continue to beat eggs until they become thick, glossy and hold stiff peaks.
• Add the rose essence and a drop of pink food colouring.
• Spoon into piping bag.
• Pipe little stars as shown using a star tip onto the baking sheets. 
• Using the back of a spoon, flatten out half of the stars, making them as flat as possible (for the bottom) but not necessarily making them larger. 
• Bake for 2 hours until they are no longer sticky. 
• Store in an airtight container.

For the filling

• Finely chop a bowl of fresh strawberries that have been washed and hulled.
• Whip a carton of whipping cream or double cream until firm.
• Stir the strawberries into the cream.

To assemble

• Place 1 teaspoon of strawberries & cream filling on a 'flat' star and top with another similar sized star. 
• Serve immediately if possible.

Jubilee Cake Truffles

I had some leftover cake from making my hamburger cupcakes so I decided to make cake truffles again ... Jubilee style! I ended up making 2 batches of cake for my hamburger cupcakes - the first batch without cases to give the proper 'hamburger' look but even though I greased the tin with cake release spray, they refused to come out whole so I made a second batch with cases which was used.

All is not lost as I have learnt from previous experience that all you need is a tub of Cadbury Philadelphia chocolate cream cheese and you have cake truffles! I used red, white and blue candy melts to coat them and sprinkled red, white and blue decorations on top. 

 cake crumbs and chocolate cream cheese 

 mix to get this

 roll into balls 

 dip in candy melts and add sprinkles 

Jubilee Cake Truffles!

These are really quick and simple to make and would be perfect for a Jubilee street party or any party! I am submitting these to the Blogging Baking Jubilee Competition hosted by Homemade by Fleur. The competition runs until 3rd June 2012 and the winner gets £100 of Amazon vouchers, provided by Appliances Online.

Awards

I have been awarded a few blog awards recently, some quite a few weeks ago now! I sincerely apologise for the delay in publicly acknowledging them but I really do appreciate each and every one of them. So this is a big THANK YOU for the following awards:

Big thanks goes to Amelia from Amelia's De-ssert and to Caroline from Caroline Makes for the Happy Blogger Award. It really makes me feel happy especially when I've had a very bad day in the kitchen like today (cake on floor - inedible and deep cut on finger)

Big thanks to Caroline from Caroline Makes, Jo from what do you make of my cake?, Daisy from nevertoosweet and Heather from Miss Cakeaholic for the Versatile Blogger and Sunshine Award.

Rules for both the awards are :

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this Award and link them back.
2. Say some 5 random facts about you.
3. Spread the joy by nominating other bloggers.
4. Convey the blogger about the nomination.

5 random facts about me

1. If you read my blog regularly, you will have noticed that I absolutely LOVE peanut butter. Believe it or not but I used to hate it! I'm not sure when or why my tastes changed but I'm glad it did. 

2. I never read newspapers. I hardly read or watch the news either. Please don't judge!

3. I love watching American TV shows. Current favourites are The Mentalist, Desperate Housewives, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men, 2 Broke Girls and New Girl. 

4. The most adventurous things I've done are under-sea walking in Mauritius and hot air ballooning in Bristol. 

5. I'm a very emotional person and often get told I wear my heart on my sleeve. Also makes me a bad liar which may or may not be a good thing depending on how you look at it! 

The people I'm passing these awards to are

1. Dolly Bakes

2. Lottie's World of Cakes & Bakes 

3. Nom! The Indulgent Baking Blog

4. Five Euro Food

5. Fold in the Flour

Please, please visit these blogs as they are all fantastic bakers and bloggers and I promise you won't be disappointed! 

Lemon, Lime and Basil Cookies

Time for something different from all the fancy cupcakes and Jubilee baking. Back to basics with fresh, simple ingredients. I saw these on Chasing Delicious and bookmarked them immediately. You have to click through to see the awesome pictures and read the beautiful post. I'm so pleased I finally got round to making these as they are delicious!! I love citrus and the addition of basil is inspired. You can really taste the freshness of the citrus and the smell and taste of the basil is lovely. Everyone really enjoyed this at work and I had a few requests for the recipe. 

I made very minor modifications to the recipe as it's such a good one. I decided to add in some lemon and lime juice for extra citrus zing! The batter was not too liquid but required a few extra minutes of cooking time. I also used plain flour as I didn't have bread flour as specified in the original recipe and it worked fine. 

I'm entering this to multiple challenges as I am a bakingaddict and a challenge-addict. Plus I love killing many birds with one stone (no animals were harmed in the making of these!)

First up I am going to enter this to Simple and in Season as basil is currently in season as are lemons. Simple and in Season is run by Ren from Fabulicious Food and hosted this month by Urvashi from The Botanical Baker. 

Next I am entering this to Herbs on a Saturday hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage.

As this recipe uses fresh ingredients I'm also entering it to Made with love Mondays hosted by Javelin Warrior's Cookin' w/ Luv where the idea is to make foods from scratch. 

I am also entering it to Bookmarked Recipes hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes as I've had this recipe bookmarked for ages! 

Finally I am entering it to One Ingredient Challenge where the theme is Lemons. This is a monthly family friendly cooking challenge hosted by Laura from How to Cook Good Food and Nazima from Working London Mummy.

 my lovely fresh ingredients - basil, lime and lemon

 adding chopped basil to the batter 

 lovely cookie dough

 

 How many would you like? :) 

Recipe adapted from Chasing Delicious - published with kind permission from the author

Makes approximately 24 cookies of the size shown

(My modifications are highlighted in blue)

113g butter, at room temperature
170g caster sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Zest from 1 lemon
Zest from 1 lime
2 tablespoons basil leaves, finely chopped
200g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Optional:
2 tablespoons lemon juice 

1 tablespoon lime juice 
Note - if adding juice, the cookies need to be cooked for a few minutes longer

• Preheat an oven to 190°C. 
• Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
• Cream the sugar and butter together until it is light and fluffy.
• Add the egg, vanilla, zests and basil and mix in well.
• Add in the lemon and lime juice if using.
• Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt. 
• Mix well.
• Spoon the dough onto the lined baking sheets. I used an ice-cream scoop. 
• Bake in a preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes - you may need 15 minutes with the addition of the juice. 
• Allow to cool for a couple minutes before removing from the baking sheet.

Hamburger Cupcakes

This month's AlphaBakes hosted by Caroline from Caroline Makes is the letter 'H". If you don't already know, AlphaBakes is a monthly baking blogging challenge where we bake from a random letter each month. So far we have had L, M and B. For each of these letters, I could immediately think of a few things to bake but not this month! I came up with 2 ideas but wanted to challenge myself and make something slightly different. So I present you with H for Hamburger Cupcakes! Yes they look like hamburgers but are actually made from cake! Pretty cool, huh? 

I made a vanilla sponge for my 'burger buns' and a chocolate sponge for my 'burger meat'. I then coloured some leftover buttercream icing (from making my Jubilee mini cakes) red to look like ketchup and coloured dessicated coconut green to resemble lettuce. You can also make cheese and mustard if you like. 

 Vanilla cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, green dessicated coconut, red buttercream icing, toasted sesame seeds. 

 Slice each vanilla cupcake in half horizontally

 Slice the chocolate cupcakes horizontally and place one piece of top of the vanilla cupcake

 Add a blob of "ketchup" (red buttercream icing)

 add your "lettuce" (green dessicated coconut)

 Top with your "burger bun" (sliced vanilla cupcake) Lightly brush the tops with water and sprinkle sesame seeds on top

 What do you think? Is it  hamburger? Is it a cake? It's a hamburger cupcake!! 

As mentioned in my previous post, Homemade by Fleur is running a Blogging Baking Jubilee Competition until 3rd June 2012.  There is an awesome prize of £100 Amazon vouchers kindly provided by Appliances Online.  I think these mini hamburger cupcakes are perfect for any party especially a Jubilee street party so I'm entering these to the competition. I couldn't resist getting my little flags out to make them look more Jubilee themed :) 

I used my favourite vanilla cupcake recipe to make the buns. I decided to use Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake for the "burger meat" as my favourite chocolate cupcake recipe involved separating the eggs and beating the whites separately. I was quite short on time and had enough washing up to do so I looked for another recipe. It's a really simple all in one recipe and as Nigella says "If you're going to get started, this is the cake you should begin with" It was a really moist and delicious chocolate cake - I'm glad I had extra to munch on :) As it's a Nigella recipe, I'm also entering this to Forever Nigella #15  as the theme this month is The Jubilee. Forever Nigella is run by Sarah from Maison Cupcake and hosted this month by Nelly's Cupcakes.

Jubilee mini cakes

Is everyone excited about the upcoming Jubilee celebrations? Who's going to a street party? How are you celebrating? I was out of the country last year during the Royal Wedding so I'm going to make up for it this year by getting stuck into some Jubilee baking (this is 1 of 3 that I've made so far) and may even get up to some Olympic baking later on! 

I was sent some lovely red, white and blue sugar strands by Just Bake which is a cool website for all your baking supplies. If you've not come across them before, do check them out as they have really nice stuff at a reasonable price. 

These cakes are really simple to make and will look impressive at a party. It's a basic vanilla sponge topped with fresh fruits, buttercream and sprinkles. I decided to make mini cakes as minis always look so much cuter! I also used my heart mould but the mini cakes looked much better! 

I'm entering these to the Blogging Baking Jubilee Competition hosted by Homemade by Fleur. The competition runs until 3rd June 2012 and the winner gets  £100 of Amazon vouchers, provided by Appliances Online. Join in the fun and get baking!

 Divide the cake batter evenly into 3 - 1 plain, 1 blue and 1 red

 Jubilee themed sprinkles from Just Bake

 Ready? Buttercream icing, 3 colours of cake, fresh blueberries, fresh raspberries, red white & blue sugar strands, Jubilee cupcake cases 

 Place one mini cake into a cupcake wrapper. Pipe a small star of buttercream on top. 

 Place fresh blueberries and raspberries on top - I used blueberries with the blue sponge an raspberries with the red sponge. 

 Add another layer of a different colour

 Pipe more buttercream on top and add a different fruit layer on top

Finish with a plain sponge topped with sprinkles

For the sponge

250g butter
250g self raising flour
250g caster sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
Red paste colouring
Blue paste colouring

For the buttercream


110g butter
250g icing sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon milk

To decorate


Fresh blueberries
Fresh raspberries
Sprinkles

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
• Add in the eggs, one at a time.
• Mix in the vanilla bean paste.
• Sift in the flour and mix well. 
• Divide the cake batter into 3 portions - I weighed them in ziplock bags.
• Add blue paste colouring to one bag, red paste colouring to another bag and leave the third bag plain.
• Pipe the batter into a mini cupcake mould and bake for approximately 10-12 minutes.
• Make the buttercream by mixing all the ingredients together in an electric mixer. 
• To assemble follow instructions that accompany the pictures above. 

Disclaimer: I was sent the sprinkles free of charge from Just Bake. I was not required to write about Just Bake or their products. All opinions expressed are my own.