Black Tea Velvet Cake

The car was vibrating, I was doing 40mph on an A road and there was this cake slash frosting tower sitting (rather unhygienically) on my passenger seat floor. I don’t think cars are supposed to shake at 40, but I’ll let mine off on the grounds of my horrific driving which has likely caused the thing a number of car-health related issues. Hannah from The Littlest Bakehouse and I are driving to Manchester from London in August for the Cake Hunter’s wedding (!!!), so this is my pre-warning to you both that we MAY not make it alive. 

Just a few fruit fell from the frankly pointless blueberry volcano I decided to fancifully pile the cake with. When I parked up, I quickly glued the bluebs back into place with icing, before the boyf jumped in and we made our way to Street Feast in Lewisham to celebrate his 24th day of birth. Suffice to say, he shortly followed with “Did you glue the blueberries on with icing by any chance?” (Face-palm). 

I never got to properly eat a slice of the cake, but he said it tasted pretty darn good, and we’ve been together since the exact birth of this blog - cue explanation as to why that is relevant…. Also I dipped syrupy offcuts into leftover icing ;)

We are that cringy ‘red velvet cake on Valentines’ couple. But last year, the Malteser chocolate malt cake I made on his birthday leaned to the left like a condensed leaning tower of Pisa performing a drag act. So I went with our valentine’s tradition but I cut out the food colouring, because the entire bottle, which is needed for a “proper” red velv, gives the cake a really noticeable sour tang. And regardless of the childish excitement a brilliant red cake instils in me to this day, I can no longer handle that tang.  

In with the tealeaves! The tea flavour is faint in this ‘tea velvet’, perhaps slightly masked by the cocoa powder, but we much prefer it to food colouring flavour. 

Black Tea Velvet Cake 

Inspired by the Pastry Affair's Black Tea Cake with Honey Buttercream

Ingredients

For the cake

• 250ml milk
• 150g high-grade tealeaves (or the leaves from 10 teabags)
• 180g unsalted butter 
• 420g caster sugar
• 3 eggs, large
• 485g plain flour
• 45g cocoa powder
• 1 tbsp lemon juice/white wine vinegar 
• 1 ½ tsp baking soda
• 1 ½ tsp white wine vinegar 

For the syrup

• 100g sugar
• 150ml water
• Handful of high-grade tealeaves

For the icing

• 100g unsalted butter, room temp
• 600g icing sugar
• 250g full fat cream cheese 
• Handful of blueberries and toasted coconut shavings to decorate

Notes: There are a few lengthy steps in this recipe, like steeping milk and letting the cakes rest in the fridge before slicing, so it's best to start making the cake layers and milk tea a day ahead. 

Notes II: I know you’re looking at that icing recipe and wondering whether it causes diabetes. The sad fact is that frostings with cream cheese aren’t sturdy enough to ice the walls of cakes/create rosettes without that much icing sugar.

Method

1. Place milk in heavy bottomed saucepan with tea leaves, let simmer on a low heat for five minutes. Remove from heat and leave to cool. Cover and refrigerate overnight to further steep the milk, then strain the milk to remove the tea leaves. 
2. Line two 6 inch cake tins with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 160 C/180 Fan. Add lemon juice to tea milk and stir, then set aside.
3. Using either a freestanding mixer or electric whisk, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, around 4 minutes. While mixing, add one egg at a time. 
4. In a bowl, sieve together cocoa and flour. On medium speed, add a third of the flour, then a third of the strained tea milk, alternating between both until everything is smoothly incorporated.  Take care not to over-mix!
5. In a small bowl, add the baking soda, then the white wine vinegar. It will immediately froth up, add it straight into the cake batter and gently fold in using a spatula. Divide among pans and bake for 35 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean and the cake is coming away from the sides of the pan. 
6. Let the cakes cool to room temperature then cover in cling film and refrigerate for a few hours/overnight. Slice both cakes horizontally with a serrated knife so that you have four equal layers. 
7. Meanwhile, to make the syrup, add all of the ingredients into a saucepan and let simmer on medium heat for 15 minutes. Take off the heat, strain the tealeaves and pour into a jug and set aside. Poke several holes into the cakes and gently pour the slightly cooled syrup into the cakes – be sparing with the syrup – over soaking causes the cakes to tear. 
8. Beat the icing sugar, butter and just a tablespoon of the cream cheese together on high speed until light, fluffy and pale - around 2/3 minutes. Add the rest of the cream cheese and beat on medium speed until smooth and thick. 
9. Fill a piping bag fitted with a closed star tip (Wilton 2D) with a third of the icing. Build the cake layers by piping rosettes around the edges of each layer. Squeeze a dollop of icing in the middle of each layer and smooth off with a spatula before adding the next layer. Finish the top layer with the same effect and sprinkle with the toasted coconut and blueberries. 
10. Cake will keep for three days if kept covered and refrigerated. 

Love Em xx

Red Velvet Macarons

If you’ve been reading this blog since the baby years of its existence, you might be aware of my humiliating macaron attempts in the past. 

Macarons are the sweet, sweet confection that I’ve posted on here regardless of their success. I’ve even tried to educate the internet on how not to make macarons. I am that confident in my mistakes. 

This is why there is a grand total of five macarons in these pictures. The other 15 were cracked, Mr Blobby shaped and had missing limbs (no “feet"). 

The macaron ship had sailed, people.  

It gets worse. Last week, I completely forgot about how terrible I was at “macoranage.” I forgot so badly, that I agreed to try and match a boutique’s red velvet macaron! 

Macarons from L'orchidee in Westfield Stratford

Naturally, the macarons at L’orchidee were exactly what you’d expect: each told its own tale. Even though they’re made in continuous batches 3 days a week, not one was the same. Which I think is just the way it should be, none of this precision and uniformity, especially since so many of us have so much trouble making them at home. 

So here is my attempt to out-do L’orchidee’s red velvet macaron for Westfield Stratford City’s We Are Dining campaign. This month, Westfield Stratford City is showcasing their diverse array of eateries, and they're giving lots of offers to customers in this nifty little booklet which you can download here. 

I am usually disappointed by the vast selection of same-y food chains you find in shopping centres. But Australian company, Westfield, do things a little differently. They have whole sections dedicated to certain cuisines. For example, a 'World Food Court' where the busiest fast food restaurants are the ones serving up sushi, falafel and ribs, and the same goes for their 'Fast Food Court.'

Personally, I don’t think my attempt at red velvet macarons even slightly match up to L'orchidee's. But it was nice to see what else The Great Eastern Market had to offer, besides beautiful Baklava and gorgeously scented roasted nuts.

If you live in London, you're never too far away from a Westfield shopping centre. Go east for Westfield Stratford City, or west for Westfield London in Shepherds Bush. You can also pick up the offers booklet at the concierge desks in both branches! 

Gingerbread Birthday/Christmas Cake with Mascarpone Frosting

Today, I have a cross between a birthday and Christmas cake to celebrate maaah biiirthdaaaaay! 

Overnight Cinnamon Buns

I’ve posted a cinnamon bun recipe before, it was two summers ago and at that point I was a novice to yeast (still am a novice to yeast). 

I remember, as I was slicing through the longest piece of cinnamon encrusted ‘rolly polly’ I had ever seen, being so bloody proud of myself at having managed to transform dried balls of active yeast into a pillowy soft sheet of raw dough, which was just moments away from being the best thing I’d ever made. 

These buns are much, much richer than those bite sized ones. These are the sort of buns you might sink your teeth into at a certain chain bakery. Yes, these are definitely the kind of bun you would find at Cinnabon. And yes, that is definitely a good thing. Happy Thanksgiving! 

Zucchini Pistachio Spice Cake With Lime Frosting

I know what you’re thinking. Is this food blogger a bag lady in disguise? Did she scatter birdseeds all over a cake that was served to her vertebrate guests? Yes, it’s true; the Central Park Pigeon Lady from Home Alone 2 has a strong desire for baked goods.

This is a mildly spiced zucchini (and I’m only calling it that because how fugly does courgette sound/look/read next to zucchini? Plus I love Italian food, so I think this grants me access to their terminology) cake studded with chunks of pistachio and the dust that accumulated from chopping said chunks, mixed with ground almonds.

Extra Spicy Carrot and Walnut Birthday Cake

I am all birthday-d out. One sister. One brother in law (to be). Two days. Two birthdays. Too much cake.

For my sister, Monday marked the half-way line to 50. Least impressed was she on the age front that *hopefully* the present and cake front was a little more uplifting. To add to the Sunday-Monday celebrations, on Tuesday we met in London and rummaged through Soho to find the Tate & Lyle Edible Tasting House  followed by  a fat helping of Lobster in bread from the bustling Burger & Lobster - but more on that later…

For brother in law to be it had to be a homemade carrot cake – for two reasons. One; he expressed his love for such cake a week beforehand after enjoying a slice or two of M&S carrot cake and two; after tons of research and a whole blog post later I wanted to face my pathetic fear of cream cheese icing. We all came out of it with a pleasantly surprised BIL and icing successes.  2  peas in 1 delicious pod.

My recipe for cream cheese icing is a winner and I truly urge everyone to give it a go if they have ever come across this kind of gloop before.

This cake is overly nutty, spicy and indulgently rich and the walnuts go a bit soft on the outside when baked in cake, as if they’re fooling you into thinking: “That walnut might be a raisin, how shit would it be if it actually was.” Aaaaand then you are welcomed with the relief of a satisfying crunch.

The thing with CC is that it is such a simple recipe and a tea time favourite that as a baker/person you will find yourself baking it at some point. I’ve made it so many times now (here, and here) that I knew increasing the spice load would make a positively huge difference, an adaptation that I am going to stick to for the rest of my life – or at least until I hit the half-way line to 50.

The Recipe:

For the cake:

I dont know.

300ml sunflower oil or melted butter 

300g finely grated carrots 

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

300g plain/all purpose flour

180g dark brown, soft sugar

120g caster sugar, white

120g chopped walnuts

3 large eggs, plus 1 egg yolk 

1/4 tsp salt 

1/4 tsp nutmeg 

1/4 tsp vanilla extract 

1/2 tsp ground ginger 

3 1/2 tsp good quality ground cinnamon
For the icing:
850g icing sugar
2 tbsp cornflour
300g full fat cream cheese
1 tsp lemon juice
For the sides:
180g chopped walnuts

Special Equipment
Deep 23cm/8 inch round baking tin 

The Method:

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and grease baking tin.

Grate the carrots, chop the walnuts and set aside.

In a freestanding mixer, beat the oil/melted butter and both types of sugar on high speed until pale - about 3 minutes.

In the mean time add the dry ingredients, including the spices, into a medium bowl and stir with a spoon - set aside.

Add the eggs & egg yolk one at a time into the oil mixture and beat for a further 4 minutes until fluffy and pale/r.

On low speed, add the dry ingredients in 3 parts until just incorporated.

Take a metal spoon and fold in vanilla extract, then the carrots and lastly the walnuts.

Bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean - maximum baking time is an hour.

Rest the cake as it is for 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.

Whilst the cake is cooling, make the icing. 

In a freestanding mixer, throw in all of the ingredients except lemon juice and mix on low speed until just incorporated. Next, add the lemon juice and mixe on a higher speed until thick and smooth. Add more lemon juice to taste.

Once the cake is cooled, cut the cake straight through the middle and level the top. Add 4 heaped tbsp of icing in the middle and smooth with a spatula. Use the same spatula to cover the sides and top, do not worry about making the sides look neat if you are covering them in walnuts.

Walnut wall

Do you have a favourite carrot cake recipe?
Love Em xx

Brown Butter Buckeyes

Brown Butter Buckeyes 

I am a lazy girl. 

If you’re lazy too, peanut butter balls might just be the key confection you’ve been looking to make all your life, to fill in the gaps between waking up at 1pm and dinner – on your day off, and not the one you called in sick, of course.

I first lay my eyes on these big balls of beauty a year ago here, I luuuurvved the idea of digestives adding an extra crunch to a sweet peanut butter candy, it works especially well for anyone who is not a fan of crunchy peanut butter.

After a scant bit of research I was fully ready to create my own delicious peanut butter balls (not to be mistaken for the overly sweet cake pop). The name ‘Buckeye’ comes from the Ohio buckeye tree in America and the balls are made to look like an actual buckeye which falls off the tree in the autumn/fall. If you’re having trouble placing an Ohio buckeye tree into your imagination, just think of a conker. So famous buckeyes are to this state, that they have even named a football team after it!

The traditional recipe for a buckeye calls for 6 cups of icing sugar. My recipe has a quarter of that, more cream cheese and a whole lot more of digestives.

Lastly, if you want an even richer nutty flava then it is absolutely necessary to brown that butter! It will add just 20 minutes to your assembly job (because it would be a crime to call this sort of think baking) but you won’t regret it I promise, lazy being. 

Buckeyes with brown butter

The Recipe
Makes 26 Buckeyes 

100g cream cheese
390g smooth peanut butter
145g brown butter* or plain unsalted, melted
300g icing sugar
14 digestive biscuits/350g
For the coating:
350g good quality melted chocolate of your choice

Special Equipment
Toothpicks
Vegetable oil (to thin the melted chocolate out)
Electric scales

Note* if you're gonna go ahead and brown the butter, all you need to do is put it in a saucepan on medium heat and whisk away until the frothy goodness turns a light shade of golden brown.

The method

Start with the digestives; there are two ways to get a shardy yet fine-ish crumble with these - which is exactly what you want. You can either give them a 30 second whizz in the food processer (my preferred method, do this if you're lazy and own a dishwasher), or put them all in a sturdy plastic food bag and beat them up with a rolling pin.

In the bowl freestanding mixer or a large bowl and an electric whisk, beat the peanut butter and cream cheese until the mix has lightened in colour - about half a minute.

Add all of the digestive crumbs to the peanut butter, remembering to scrape down the sides of the bowl for even distribution.

Alternately add the brown butter (it doesn't have to be cold when you add it in!) and icing sugar until you get a huge bowl of thick golden crumbly looking stuff. Set aside. The buckeye filling will last in the fridge for 3 days so you can always wrap it in cling film and come back to it when you're ready.

Next, line a fairly large baking sheet with parchment. Depending on how anal you are, grab a pair of scales and weigh out pieces of peanut butter dough at 43-45 grams each. This weight gives a big buckeye.

With each piece of buckeye, stretch out both your palms with the dough in the middle and gently roll it around until eventually, you have a round ball. Do this until you have no dough left and put in the fridge to set for at least 20 minutes.

Melt the chocolate over a ban merie. Add no more than a tablespoon vegetable oil to the melted chocolate and stir in to give a smoother consistency.

Pick up a buckeye with a toothpick and gently immerse the ball 3 quarters the way into the chocolate and roll around until you have what looks like a 'buckeye' (a bit of peanut butter showing at the top).

Put back on the baking tray and take the toothpick out.

Leave to set until the chocolate coating hardens and enjoy for 3 days!

BEFORE I FORGET! Keep your buckeyes in the fridge for ultimate freshness. Although...I highly doubt they will last long enough for that!

Love Em xx

Peggy Porschen Heavenly Double Chocolate Cupcakes

For months I’ve been meaning to try out the mother of all chocolate frostings. The one that combines an ultimate taste explosion with absolutely every single fatty component you can possibly imagine. We’re talking butter, DOUBLE cream AND cream cheese - all in one semi technical recipe that is well worth the washing.

I’ve always felt positive about the fact that I am missing half of my brain, which making this recipe pretty much confirmed for me. The original ingredient list called for glucose and for some reason (the inadequate contents of my skull) I bought glycerin, after noticing the very moment the G was going into the saucepan that I bought the wrong stuff, I took a risk and just put it in and guess what? The results were still fabulous!

The Recipe:

Adapted from Peggy Porschen's Heavenly Chocolate Cupcakes

For the sponge (makes 20 cupcakes):

8g good quality cocoa

125g dark chocolate

160ml milk

100g unsalted butter

2 large, free range eggs

Half tsp baking powder

Half tsp bicarb of soda

285g light brown sugar

180g plain flour

For the topping:

450g icing sugar

200g cream cheese

200g unsalted butter

1 tbsp glycerin/glucose 

140ml double cream

160g dark chocolate

The Method:

Start with the frosting. Heat the cream until simmering in a small saucepan. Add the chocolate and glycerin/glucose into a bowl and pour the cream over the top, stir well until nice and smooth. Let cool. 

Put the cream cheese in another bowl and beat for half a second, until just smooth. 

Cream the icing sugar and softened butter in the bowl of a freestanding mixer until pale. 

Slowly pour all of the cooled ganache into the buttercream and mix until combined. 

Take a third of the chocolate buttercream and gently stir into the beaten cream cheese. 

Now add the chocolate cream cheese into the chocolate buttercream and gently stir till combined. Wrap in clingfilm and let set in the fridge. 

Preheat the oven to 160 C. 

For the cupcakes, using a saucepan (perhaps the same one as earlier?!) heat the milk, half the sugar and chocolate and bring to a gentle boil. Keep the chocolate on the lowest heat whilst get onto the next bit, occasionally taking it off heat so it doesn't burn. 

In the bowl of a freestanding mixer beat the sugar and butter till very pale. Add one egg at a time and mix till frothy. 

Put all of the dry ingredients into another bowl and stir together. Mix into the egg mixture till just combined. 

Pour the chocolate mixture into the flour mixture, scraping the bowl, making sure to incorporate every little bit. 

Pour all of the mixture into a measuring jug and line 2 cupcake trays with muffin cases. 

Gently fill the cucpake liners two thirds full with batter.

Bake for 14 minutes, until they spring back to the touch. 

Let cool on a wire rack and ice with the cooled and scrummy frosting!

Love Em xx

How to learn from your mistakes: Cream Cheese Icing & not so Curly Whirly Cake

I think there’s something in the oven/Kenwood. This time round, I’m tackling something else that has gone horribly wrong…cream cheese *sulk* icing. It goes without saying that when you make one mistake, you put it under the carpet and carry on trying. But when you make a second, (cringe shields at the ready) feelings of self-doubt start to pave their way in.

I definitely thought about avoiding this post altogether, but then I thought about how many times I haven’t been satisfied with my cream cheese icing, so it was inevitable…I just had to learn from my mistakes. The icing was poured atop the all-London Curly Whirly Cake made from a Konditor & Cook recipe found here, the picture of the cake is what I aimed for…Decoration wasn’t even an option after this disaster went down! But try not to be fooled, the cake was densely satisfying!

I’ve wrote about some of the things I think will help you not to achieve this big, runny, gloopy mess. Here we go (again):

Straining

Its absolutely necessary to strain your packets of cream cheese before you add it to the mixing bowl because extra fluid will contribute to a runny mess. Get rid of all that curdled juice by dangling the packet over the sink, your cream cheese is solid at this point (and hopefully will stay that way) so you don’t have to worry about it falling out of the packet!

Above Room Temperature 

There is no baking rule that your cream cheese has to be at room temperature, do not treat it like you would butter and eggs. As long as it’s not straight out of the fridge, you won’t have a problem like I did. Let the packets rest at a room temperature for a maximum of ten minutes.

Beating 

Now, the recipe I used instructed that I melted the butter and added it to my already whipped cream cheese and icing sugar. Naturally, you’re going to assume that that’s where I went wrong, right? Wrong. The cream cheese had already loosened into a form of gloppy-ness before I added the butter! This is because I mixed the cream cheese and icing for too long at too high a speed. You can avoid over beating by whipping room temperature butter and all of the icing sugar until pale and fluffy, and then adding the cream cheese. This will give you a thick cream cheese, but one with a dominant buttery flavour which isn’t very nice, so to avoid this altogether take a look at my next pointer.

Meringue powder 

Forget for a moment that meringue powder adds a crusting quality to your icing and listen up. Adding 2 tbsp. to 1 batch works chemical wonders into your icing, it will give it pipe-able and spreadable stability. Also, the great thing about this cheesy trick is that it won't give off any bad flavours either, it will simply stop your cream cheese icing from looking like mine does, which none of you want, surely!

Whipped cream 

Another great tip which I’ve yet to try yet is adding whipped cream to your cream cheese. This not only gives height, fluffiness and stability to your icing, but also, I think, would give a better flavour! Whip some double cream together and simply fold it into your icing. Also, if you don’t want to regurgitate a rainbow - remove 1 tsp vanilla extract from your recipe and replace with 1 tsp fresh lemon juice, this will also keep your icing from having an off-white look. 

Love Em xx

Best Cinnamon Buns

Blogging is now a post Sunday thing for me and subsequently, baking has also become a Sunday must-do in the Hassan household. We all like to get together,and this one was definitely a team effort. My favourite part of the team baking had to be when making the icing for the rolls. Best friend Shannon was whisking away when best mum Zehra said "that look's like something I've seen before' - I put it down to menopausal hormones. Drizzling it over the bun with a fork afterwards was literally the icing on the metaphorical bun.

More appropriately, I always dreaded the thought of baking buns or rolls or bread type balls, in my head I mentally put it in the same category as puff pastry - a place no amateur should go! But these were simple.Time consuming-ly simple! My favourite part in the baking was gently shoving my hand into the warm proved dough - a fetish I and probably loads of you out there can proudly admit!

I had two go's at the bun making, as the recipe makes approximately a life time supply of buns, I made one batch yesterday afternoon and one today. Texture wise, the refrigerated dough was more dough-y.

Now onto taste (this deserves its own little paragraph), completely and utterly irresistibly deliciously unbelievably the best homemade cinnamon roll I have EVER tasted. Don't let the fact that this was my first homemade C.Roll put you off, either. I've still tried tons of them, and I will gladly give anyone £500 who doesn't agree with me. Any genuine takers?

Shannon admiring the Cinnamon Roll icing

Recipe adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cinnamon Roll 101 

For the Dough:

1 cup caster sugar

1 pint whole milk

1 cup vegetable oil

9 cups plain flour flour 

1 heaped tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

14g active dry yeast (2 packs)

For the Filling:

1 jar of ground cinnamon (optional amount)

2 cups sugar (optional amount)

Loads of melted butter/220g (optional amount)

For the Icing:

500g icing sugar

100ml+ whole milk

1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

WARNING: makes A LOT of rolls! 

The Method:

• Start by preparing yourself for the mind blowing taste experience that's about to happen and then get a deep saucepan and fill it with milk, oil and sugar.
• Heat the saucepan on medium, until the mixture has just reached boiling point and then remove off heat and set aside until it is luke-warm. 
• Sprinkle all of the yeast on top of the lukewarm mixture and leave to do its thing for just 1 minute. 
• After that, plop in 8 cups of the flour, the bicarb, baking P and salt and mix till well incorporated. 
• Cover with a clean paper towel and leave to prove for at least 1 hour. The dough will keep for a couple of days.
• Once the dough has proved, take half of it and place on a clean surface. With flour at hand, begin to roll into a large, thin rectangular shape. Now is also the right time to preheat the oven to 204 degrees C.
• Take your melted butter and smooth all over the rolled dough till there are no surfaces left to cover. 
• Now sprinkle a cup of the sugar all over the butter (the extra cup is for the other half of the dough).
• Now sprinkle sprinkle sprinkle on that cinnamon until it looks like a brown carpet. 
• Take the long end of the dough and start to tightly roll the dough towards or away from you, roll gently until you have something that looks like an off white snake. 
• Take a sharp knife and cut each roll one inch thick. 
• Place in greased foil trays or a large greased tin and squidge the rolls closely together. 
• Bake for 16/17 minutes. Whilst baking, prepare the icing by whisking milk into the icing sugar until you reach a desired consistency, 2 tablespoons usually does the trick.
• Take the rolls out of the oven and drizzle on the icing with the end of your whisk whilst the rolls are still warm. Take a look at the photo methods below for extra inspiration!

Cinnamon Roll Method

Cinnamon Roll Method

Cinnamon Roll Method

Cinnamon Roll Method

Cinnamon Roll Method

Cinnamon Roll Method

So there you have it, one last thing - do people like the methodical photographs? They might be a permanent thing!