Prep Time: Less than 30 mins | Cook Time: 10 to 30 mins | Servings: 16
Nutritional Info: per 16th of the cake: 344 kcal, 36g carbs, 21g fat, 3g protein.

Ingredients:

Preheat your oven to 180’c, and grease and line two 20cm/smallish sandwich tins

cream together the butter and the sugar. The original recipe suggests you do this with a food mixer but if you’re a PROPER PERSON you’ll do with with elbow grease. It’s good exercise. Go on.

Add the eggs and beat together

then add the flour and orange zest and mix until they’re all well combined

Split the mix equally between the two sandwich tins, spread out so it’s even, and pop in the oven for 25-30 minutes

While this is happening, make the filling, for the jam, pop the rasberries, 2 tbsp of orange (don’t be tempted to add more, there’s juice in the rasberries too) and sugar into a pan and heat it really gently for 20 minutes

When the rasberries are all broken down, take it off the heat and allow it to cool. This is basically jam.

I don’t appear to have a picture of the butter icing, but pop the icing sugar and butter in a bowl, beat together and grate in the orange zest, and add juice until it loosens, but not too much. Should be nice and fresh tasting. DO NOT EAT IT ALL.

When the cake is ready (something sharp poked in it comes out clean, not with cake mix on it) take them out of the oven, leave to cool in their tins for a bit.

Turn them out and cool completely, COMPLETELY on the wire rack.

cover one with the icing, and the other with the jam, because you let them cool completely the butter icing now does not proceed to melt everywhere. Well done.

Put them together, and if you’re presenting as-is, pop some icing sugar dusting over the top. If covering with royal icing, brush the tops and sides with another bit of jam, roll out the icing, lay over the top of the cake, cover, press it all down, and cut away the excess. If decorating with colouring, leave it for a day to dry before mixing gel colours with vodka to apply pretty painting.

Pre-iced cake:

Happy birthday, Andy.

These are easy. Cookies are easy. You should make them. And find some people to help you eat them. And come and eat some of mine, tomorrow, at Performance in the Pub. Yes. Plug.

COOKIES.

Prep Time: 30 mins | Cook Time: 20 mins | Servings: Makes 16
Nutritional Info: 167 kcalories, protein 3g, carbohydrate 19g, fat 9 g, saturated fat 5g, fibre 2g, sugar 11g, salt 0.18 g

Ingredients:

Heat your oven to 180’c. Get out some baking tins, and a wire rack. grease the baking tins, line them with baking paper if you want to be slightly wasteful of paper, but conserve water by not having to wash them up. Weigh out the butter and sugar, cream together. If you just got the butter out of the fridge you can zap it for bursts of 8 seconds in a microwave until soft, but don’t melt it.

Add the mashed banana, vanilla essence, and eggs, and beat together until smoothly mixed

In a separate bowl mix together all of the remaining dry ingredients.

Add this to the wet mix, fold together until all lovely and clumpy, and then spoon onto the baking sheets well spaced apart. 1 Tbsp per cookie, and in a sort of heaped oval that’s technically called a ‘quenelle’. I don’t know why it needs a funny name, but what it does it make sure the cookie doesn’t get too flat when it cooks. GOOEY MIDDLES.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned. Leave to rest for a minute or two, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Eat all of them. Weep a little. Write a blog post with nice pictures.

Prep Time: 20 mins | Cook Time: 40 mins | Servings: Serves 8
Nutritional Info:  334 kcal, protein 5g, carbohydrate 28g, fat 23 g, saturated fat 9g, fibre 0g, sugar 28g, salt 0.28 g

Ingredients pic:

First thing, preheat your oven to 180’c, then find a 25cm-ish cake tin with one of those removable bottom things, draw a circle around the bottom onto some baking paper, cut it out. Melt the butter, put the tin back together, brush the bottom with butter, put the baking paper circle in, then brush again with butter, this time covering all the sides. Put a couple tbsp of caster sugar in and swirl it around until it’s all stuck to the butter. Tip out excess and put aside.

Next, melt the butter and broken up chocolate together in a bowl, you can do this the old fashioned way, but I just stuck it in the microwave for 20 seconds at a time, stirring until the chocolate was 2/3 melted, then if you keep stirring it shouldn’t be too hot, but the chocolate melts totally. Add a tbsp of brandy, and try not to eat it all.

Then if you’ve forgotten to grind your hazelnuts, do that, I bought ready chopped ones and ground them a little further, if you’re dealing with whole roasted hazelnuts, smash them a bit first if you’ve got a delicate blender.

separate the egg white and yolks, pour the sugar into the egg yolk bowl, and whisk until well creamy

Then add the hazelnuts and cooled chocolate brandy butter and fold in. If you don’t know how to fold, it’s just using a big spoon to mix something together in as few strokes as possible – all the whisking is what gets the air into the cake when there’s no flour to help it rise, so you want to keep that. kind of scoop from all sides from left to right and actually think ‘folding’ it together. Don’t try and get the colour totally consistent, just combined.

next whisk the eggs for ages until they form what they call ‘soft white peaks’ – basically all white and foamy, and when you lift a bit of the egg out it’s stiff enough to form a ‘peak’ but one that droops down again afterward.

Then in 3 batches, fold that egg white into the chocolatey mix, three batches so you keep as much air as possible. Again do minimal folding, the image on the right is what I finished with.

Pour the mix into the sugared tin, then pop your halved peeled, topped and bottomed, and cored pears (use proper real ones, not tinned, and get ready to eat ripe ones if you can’t leave them to ripen. Makes all the difference) across the top. Bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, it’s ready when a knife or other pointy thing comes out clean, and the pears are soft and lovely.

Take it out and let it cool for 5 minutes in the tin, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool more, and dust with icing sugar. Serve warm or cold with a good dollop of creme fraiche. NOM.

Prep Time: 20 mins | Cook Time: 20-25 mins | Servings: 12
Nutritional info: (per muffin) 206 kcalories, protein 5g, carbohydrate 36g, fat 6 g, saturated fat 1g, fibre 2g, sugar 16g, salt 0.43 g

Ingredients:

So, first off, preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Sort out your muffin cases in tins. Then set aside 1 tbsp of the caster sugar, then combine the flours, baking powder, all the light sugar, the rest of the caster sugar, and the lemon zest in a large bowl. Mix. MIX!

Mash the banana. Mashed banana does not look pleasant.

beat the egg, then add and mix together with the buttermilk, rapeseed oil, banana until smooth

So this is where you try to do AS LITTLE mixing as possible – the more you mix, the flatter your muggins get; add the liquid ingredients to the dry, and mix with a large metal spoon until just combined – add the blueberries just before it’s looking combined, as they’ll be delicate.

Spoon into muffin cases and bake for 20-25 minutes.

While that happens, squeeze half the lemon into the tbsp of sugar and mix

Just after the muffins come out of the oven, brush this sticky ace-ness over the top of each muffin. Leave the muffins to cool in the tin for at least 20 minutes more.

And there you go! Mm…

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 45-60 minutes | Servings: 10-12

Nutritional Info: (based on it serving 12 – which is plenty!) 406kcals, 23g fat (6.5g saturated), 5.3g protein, 43.4g carbs, 27.8g sugar, 0.7g salt

Ingredients! (lots)

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan160°C/gas 4. Grease a 22cm round take-apart cake tin with a little butter or oil. It’s best for taking it apart if you put a nice bit of greaseproof paper on the bottom, too. Also, don’t chop into your finger whilst simultaneously also making sweet potato and butternut squash soup for your lunch. That makes the whole process a lot easier. And less bloody.

soak the raisins in a simmering pan of 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice and 3 tablespoons of sherry (medium or sweet, ideally, but I used dry and it was fine) until the liquid has pretty much totally been absorbed.

meanwhile put the eggs, sugar and oil in a bowl and whisk until creamy, at least 3 minutes with an electric whisk, or 5 with an ANALOGUE one.

amass all your dry ingredients; baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon, self raising flour, shredded coconut, bashed walnuts,

then when the raisins have drunk all the sherry/orange mix, combine all of the dry ingredients, plus the carrot and raisins, with the egg/sugar/oil mix, and fold together. Put into the cake tin and level the surface. I forgot to take a picture of that bit, so here’s a picture of me hastily pulling the cake out at 3 minutes into the cooking stage. IT RISES FAST:

cook for 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out the center clean, this took much more like 65 minutes, for me, but keep checking after 45 minutes. When it’s done, take it out and cool it in the tin, then turn out and cool for the last bit on a wire rack. Should be something like this when done:

Now if you like you can try the instructions for the cream cheese icing from the original recipe, here, which is: put 50g of icing sugar, 1 tsp vanilla essence, and 300g of cream cheese in a bowl and beat together. When that fails, and you just have a really runny gloopy mess, this is how you fix it. Put about a tbsp of butter (maybe 2) into a new bowl, beat it, and then add icing sugar and beat until you have a very stiff butter icing, then add the gloopy cheese mess bit by bit with icing sugar in turn, beating, to keep a stiff consistency, and until all the cheese mess is used up. It’ll be glossier and a bit looser than regular butter icing, but still cheesy and strong enough to form well and set. Here’s what it should look like:

apply it to the cool cake with a palette knife, sprinkle with walnuts. Et voila! I promise you, this is ridiculously tasty. Make for friends to save devouring the whole thing in one sitting.

Makes 10 x 45g bars | Prep time: 15 minutes | Cook time: 25-30 minutes

Nutritional info per 45g bar; 218 kcal, 23g carbs, 13g fat, 2g protein

Ingredients:

Preheat the oven to 160’c. Mix the nuts, berries, coconut and rice crispies in a bowl together

melt the butter, honey and sugar together over a low heat

combine the ingredients, until well mixed, then press down firmly into a greased baking tin

bake for 25-30 mins until golden brown

Allow it to cool before cutting up and removing from the tin. Press together if a little fragile (they will take a while to set)

Melt the chocolate, turn the bars over to the flat side (I didn’t do this but it makes more sense), and spoon the chocolate over, leaving to set. Or do something more arty. Whatever you like, really.

Allow the chocolate to cool & set. Wrap each one in tin foil for eating on the move. Donenomnom. View of both sides:

Prep Time: 10 mins | Cook Time: 20 mins | Servings: 6 | Difficulty: Easy

Nutritional Info: 243 kcals, 5g protein, 41g carbs, 8g fat, 3g sat fat, 2g fibre, 6g sugar, 0.59g salt

Ingredients:

Directions:

Preheat oven to 200•c and pop some muffin cases in a tin. Sift the flour, baking powder into a bowl

In another bowl lightly beat the egg then stir in melted butter, soya milk, orange juice and honey

Combine egg & flour mixtures, and remaining ingredients, without overworking (lumps & gloopiness fine!) Spoon into muffin cases:

and bake for 20-25 mins until well risen & pale golden. Dust with icing sugar if you want to be fancy. I always want to be fancy.

Source: GoodFood 101 cakes & bakes, modified quite a lot.

Guest post a-hoy-hoy:

Macadamia and white chocolate Brownies.

This is a recipe from Ottolenghi the Cookbook. I can’t recommend the book enough.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.

Spread 200g Macadamia Nuts on an oven proof dish and roast them for 5 minutes. (Macadamia nuts are super expensive but it’s worth it I promise)

Put 200g unsalted butter and 300g of dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl and place over a saucepan of simmering water and melt it. Try to avoid getting the mixture too hot. Once it’s melted remove the bowl from above the water.

In a large bowl lightly whisk 2 free range eggs, 230 g caster sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla essence. Fold in the melted chocolate mixture and then 280g of sifted flour and 1/2 teaspoon of salt

At this point the recipe says to add 2 teaspoon of instant coffee. But I am a proper coffee snob and I’m not going to buy instant coffee for a recipe so i make a really really strong espresso- then mix that in.

Now mix the macadamia nuts in to the mixture. Take 200g of white chocolate and smash it in to tiny little bits (you could use chocolate chips but I like smashing the chocolate up). Mix in the white chocolate.

Line a tin (22cm square baking tin says the recipe but i use whatever is to hand as I don’t have one of them) with baking parchment. Pour the mixture into the tin. Bake for 25 minutes. After 25 minutes place a skewer into the brownie- it should come out with a bit of goo on it, but not too wet.

It always takes a little longer than 25 minutes for me. 45 minutes this time but i check after 25.

Once it’s done allow it to cool completely. Then chop it up in to bits. I recommend small bits, brilliantly rich and decadent.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: depends on how quickly it gets to setting point 30-60mins |Servings: 1.5kg approx

Ingredients: (there’s also ingredients for apple and blackberry jam pictured, which I cooked just before the strawberry one. Sure you can work out which fruit belongs where)

First off, prep the fruit, and squeeze the lemon juice (it should be about 150ml of lemon juice)

then mash 200g of the strawberries together with 200g of the granulated sugar

Warm this mix gently

And then add the rest of the strawberries, bring this mix gently to a simmer, stirring often.

Simmer for 5 minutes to allow the fruit to just start to soften, and then add the remaining sugar and lemon juice

Bring to a rapid boil, and pop a small plate in the freezer for testing the setting point, boil rapidly for 15 minutes, then test for setting point by putting a tsp on a plate, and running your finger across the top after a minute of it cooling, if it wrinkles, it’s ready to take off the boil! Keep on trying this until it’s ready. It took well longer than 15 minutes, for me.

Meanwhile, sterilise your jars by cleaning in very hot soapy water, and drying in a low heat oven.

When the jam is at setting point, allow to cool for a bit, then transfer to jars, top with wax circles (wax side down!), tightly screw on the lids, and label!

Yummy. Based on a Pam Corbin recipe from the River Cottage book of Preserves.

Prep Time: 30 minutes | Cook Time: 1 hour cooling | Servings: 1.5kg

Nutritional Info: Per tablespoon: 42kcals, no fat (no saturated), 0.1g protein, 11.2g carbs, 11.2g sugar, trace salt

Ingredients: (there’s also ingredients for strawberry jam pictured, which I cooked just after the blackberry and apple one. Sure you can work out which fruit belongs where)

Put the blackberries and apples into a large pan with the lemon juice and 100ml water. Place over a medium heat and simmer gently for 10-15 minutes, until tender and reduced. Basically they’ll suddenly be FULL OF JUICE around 8 minutes in, you have to wait for that to happen, and then let it reduce for 5-10.

Put a plate into the freezer to chill for later, this is how you’ll test whether or not it’s at setting point. Add the jam sugar to the pan and cook, stirring to dissolve. Bring to the boil and boil rapidly for 5 minutes.

Remove from the heat. Put a teaspoonful of jam onto a chilled saucer for 1 minute. Drag your finger lightly over the jam. If it wrinkles, it has reached setting point; if it doesn’t, boil for a couple more minutes, then turn off the heat and try again with another chilled saucer. Set aside to cool for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to its lowest setting. You now have to sterilise the jars and lids that you’re going to be using, clean and upturn them – lids off – in very hot soapy water.

Put in them in the oven for at least 15 minutes – on a heat which leaves the glass just ok to handle, pretty much the lowest setting works fine.

Stir the jam, when cool-ish (I only left it about half an hour and it was fine) then ladle into each jar, place a wax circle (wax side down) on top to help seal the jam from any stray bacteria, seal tightly, and label. Ready to eat when cool!