My Recipes

Chocolate Orange Cake

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Ingredients

• 200g Self Raising Flour
• 200g Caster Sugar
• 200g Butter (softened)
• 4 eggs
• 30g cocoa powder
• Grated zest of one orange
• 2 tbsp orange juice
• Buttercream
• 100g butter
• 200g icing sugar
• Half a Chocolate Orange

Method

1. Lightly grease and line the bottom of 2 18cm sandwich tins.  Preheat the oven to Fan 160°C.
2. Put all the ingredients into a bowl  (sieve the cocoa powder) and mix until thoroughly combined.
3. Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and level the tops.  Place in the oven for approximately 20-25 minutes.  A skewer inserted into the top should come out clean.
4. Leave in the tin for 5 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool.
5. Melt half the chocolate orange and put to one side to cool slightly.  In another bowl cream together the butter and icing sugar.  Add the chocolate and mix again until fluffy.
6. Either put half the buttercream in the middle of the sponges and spread the rest on top of the cake, or spread a third of the buttercream in the middle and spread the remaining on the tops and sides of the cake.
7. Finish the cake off by using the remaining half of the chocolate orange to decorate the top.
8. For an adult version you could always try adding a bit of Cointreau to the cake mixture or buttercream!!

Malteser Trifle

Ingredients

• 1 pt raspberry jelly
• Large Madeira cake (shop bought one is fine)
• 312g can Mandarins (drained)
• 200g raspberries or other soft fruit such as blackberries (or slightly more, it’s up to you)
• tablespoons sherry (or I like to use Amaretto)
• 500g tub of fresh custard (or you can make your own)
• 300ml double cream
• 1 tablespoon icing sugar
• Pack of maltesers (the larger the better!)

Method

The first thing to do is to make up the jelly following the instructions and leave to set in the fridge.

Trim the Madeira cake and cut it into cubes about 1cm thick (eat the off-cuttings!).  Put the cake into the bottom of a large bowl and spoon the mandarins and raspberries over the cake.  Splash the sherry (or other alcohol) over the fruit, so that it soaks through the fruit into the sponge underneath.

Spoon over the custard so that it covers the fruit and then gently top it with the jelly (I usually use a knife to cut the jelly up whilst it’s still in the jug).

Lightly whip the cream with the icing sugar

Just before serving, bash up the bag of maltesers and sprinkle them over the top.until it forms soft peaks and spoon it over the top.  If you’re really careful you should be able to spread it over the whole top of the jelly.

The trifle tastes even better when you leave it for a day – that’s if there’s any left.

Enjoy!

Lemon & Poppyseed Drizzle Cupcakes

I love lemon drizzle cakes, so thought I’d see if I could come up with a recipe of my own.  I had to bake some cakes for my son’s rugby team’s Cake Sale, so thought this would be an ideal opportunity to try them out.  Here’s the recipe and I must admit I thought they were lovely and so did everybody who bought one at the Cake Sale.  You can leave them in the cases, but I slightly overfilled mine and so quite a bit of the lemon syrup ran over the top and down the sides, which left the cases very sticky!  Don’t overfill the cases with mixture to start with, make slightly more than 12 to be on the safe side!

Recipe

• 175g butter
• 250g caster sugar
• 250g self raising flour
• 3 large eggs
• 6tbsp milk
• 1 rounded tablespoon poppyseeds
• grated zest from 2 lemons
• For the lemon syrup
• Juice 2 lemons
• 100g caster sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C (Fan) and put 12 muffin cases into a muffin tin.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy and then add the eggs, one at a time.
3. Fold in the flour, grated lemon zest and poppyseeds.
4. Add the milk and mix in.
5. Turn the mixture into the muffin tins.  Don’t fill them too high, about 2/3rds full (I filled mine a little to high, it’s better to make some extra cakes instead!)
6. Put them in the oven for 12-15 minutes until they are well risen and firm to the touch.
7. Leave them in the tin.
8. Mix together the lemon juice and caster sugar.
9. Prick the cupcakes and spoon over the lemon syrup.
10. Leave until cold and then remove from the cases.
11. If you wish sprinkle with icing sugar just before serving
12. Enjoy!