School Coffee Morning

Hi All!

So let's talk coffee mornings. In particular the Macmillan Coffee Mornings. What a great idea because let's be honest who doesn't love cake, coffee (or tea, your preference) and a good chat with friends?! And if it's all for a good cause then why not? I mean you choose how much you want to give to this cause and then enjoy the coffee and the rest that comes with a coffee morning!

Well in our school's case we had a 'coffee morning' in which we baked/ bought in cakes for to be sold for a cake sale which in all fairness raised a lot of money for Macmillan and all enjoyed the array of cakes and fizzy drink on offer. I of course baked something to be sold as I thought a good cause like this deserved to be supported and so I made chocolate chip cupcakes. 

The cupcakes turned out a great success but to me I was super disappointed with the recipe that I used as it gave me a very thin cupcake layer and so I had pretty much too much icing to cake ratio which bothered me, obviously it did not bother anyone else as they went pretty quickly and everyone seemed satisfied with them!

As the recipe supplied a very small amount of batter I was only able to make around 6 cupcakes that were good enough to decorate and sell to people... annoying!! None the less I ploughed on with decorating them with a simple vanilla buttercream and some chocolate chips to finish off with. Even if I do say so myself, I think I have finally cracked the way to get the best vanilla buttercream that just tastes so good and is not runny, too thick or too sweet!! HALLELUJAH!!

Ok so I won't give you the recipe for the pathetic cupcakes that I followed but I will give you a simple recipe that I always refer back to when I want to experiment and add in different flavours or surprises.

Ingredients:
115g butter
115g caster sugar 
2 eggs
115g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk

Method: 
1. Preheat the oven to 180'C.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.
3. Beat the eggs in one at a time.
4. Sift the flour in and fold in.
5. Stir in the vanilla extract and milk.
6. Divide the mixture into paper cupcake cases and put in the oven for 18 minutes until risen and golden.

Now I would give you the recipe to my amazing icing but I'm not ready to share that yet so... find your own haha!! I mean you could literally do anything with this simple sponge recipe, for example I've made mini Victoria sandwiches with them, made the whole batter into one big cake for a big victoria sandwich (if you do this cook for a little longer around 20 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean, if after this time it's still not clean cook it for 2 minute blasts taking it out and checking each time) or you could decorate with simple white icing (icing sugar and water) and sprinkles or even decorate with fondant icing... the possibilities are literally endless!! 

ENJOY, HAVE FUN and BE CREATIVE!! Maybe you could even make lots of different batches of these cupcake and then hold your own coffee morning for Macmillan? Well that's all from me. Hope you enjoyed reading and let me know what you thought!! See you next time.

Thanks for reading,
Caitlin xxx

The Cake and Bake Show

Hi All,

Ok so if you're from the UK then you will know and hopefully be a big fan of The Great British Bake Off aka THE GREATEST SHOW ON THE PLANET!! Well I was lucky enough to be able to spend a day with two ex-contestants of the show, Glenn Cosby and Christine Wallace. As well as Richard Hunt from the Devon Scone Company (genuinely the nicest man ever!!) The scones and jam he showed me how to make were literally amazing... I'm salivating at the thought whilst typing away here!

So a few months ago I was able to spend a day with a travelling food show called The Cake and Bake Show, in which I was able to learn from these three bakers about the baking world, baking under pressure and baking in front of a crowd. I also learnt, during down time/prep time, the different tools and equipment that will help me in future baking life, OMG it was a lot of stuff and I honestly do think I used around 3/4 of all the things I was told about!

Working with Richard all day until around 1:00pm was great because it was just him and I working together creating scones and jam. I learnt a lot from him in this short time but it was definitely worthwhile! He was the one who showed me the proper way to make jam and how to let it cool a lot before putting it in jars because otherwise it will not set and be the jam texture you would expect. Honestly I think I would have never known this and rushed to put it in jars whilst still hot, thrown it in the fridge and hoped for the best! I also learnt the proper way to put jam and cream on a scone, by pilling it on! 

After a well deserved coffee break from the rushing around trying to prepare scones with clotted cream and jam on to serve to the audience, I was able to watch Glenn and Christine do two separate shows, baking very different things. Glenn made salted caramel and italian meringue buttercream cake and scones with lemon curd (insanely good, I've since tried the italian meringue buttercream and wholey moley it was amazing!!) Then Christine made an Eton mess and something else but it was so long ago I honestly can't remember. Anyway whatever it was, I do remember it being delicious!

Lunch came round and we all ate pizza, drank coffee and prepared for the final show where, as we were running out of time, we staged our own miniature bake off!! It was brilliant and I was able to be out front helping Glenn make another salted caramel, italian meringue buttercream cake whilst Christine made more Eton mess and Richard made drop scones with salted caramel (more like stealing Glenn's left over salted caramel...)

Anyway through helping Glenn I was able to learn and do a lot for myself as Glenn basically just instructed me to do things rather than teaching me, which honestly I preferred to have his guidance whilst I did it myself rather than watching someone else do it and then I have to try and re-create it. I learnt how to heat the sugar up to the correct temperature and how to add it to the whisked egg whites to create the italian meringue. It really wasn't as hard as people make it out to be (I was very impressed with myself). 

Well once our bake off drew to a close, we found that it was a draw and that no one could win as all the food was just too good!! After the show I was able to get Glenn and Christine's books and also to get them signed! I was also lucky enough to be given the remainder of the cake Glenn and I had created, after the audience had enjoyed some of it!

Right so that's that. I thoroughly enjoyed spending this day with these lovely and brilliant people! I really learnt a lot from them and had tonnes of fun whilst doing it! Thank you to The Cake and Bake Show!!
Hope you guys enjoyed reading, don't forget to let me know what you think and see you in my next post!

Thanks for reading,
Caitlin xxx

Back to it... hopefully!

Right I really hope that this time I try again and stick to it!
Im so rubbish at this whole blogging thing but I really am going to give it a great go!!
I have done baking on and off again over the past few months so I'll just catch you up on those and also I have been really looking into the whole university life for baking so I'll talk a little more about this too.

Christmas!
For my friend's christmas presents I made them a box up of a cupcake, some biscuits and a milk bottle filled with a DIY hot chocolate with hot chocolate powder, marshmallows and chocolate chips in it. This idea was a great success and was super cheap to do as the ingredients weren't too expensive all together, the only things that did come to be fairly expensive was the box that it came in and the little milk bottles (all bought from Lakeland). I made different types of biscuits; round sugar cookies and gingerbread men. I also tried out a new cupcake recipe that added in greek yoghurt which actually made the cupcakes so creamy and amazing (even if I do say so myself!!) So definitely don't be put off if a cupcake recipe uses yoghurt, I nearly was and am so glad I persevered and used the yoghurt... What a difference!! (Unfortunately I did not remember to take a photo of the little boxes of goodness.. oops but I did get a photo of the cupcakes and very christmassy cases)

Easter was the next major load of baking I did.
I made brownies with mini, mini eggs on top, my first ever attempt at hot cross buns, white chocolate eggs with Oreo's inside and finally I made the same cupcakes I did for Christmas but with a Shreddies easter nest on top. I would advise not to use Shreddies as they tasted strange once warm from the melted chocolate and also they did not mould into a nest as easily as Corn Flakes would, definitely using Corn Flakes next time as Shreddies were a huge mistake!

The Oreo cookie chocolate egg things (great name I know) were incredibly easy to make. All you need is any type of white chocolate that you prefer (two big bars should be plenty) and Oreo cookies, you could use any type of chocolate that you like but white chocolate is the nicest for these recipe. You will need a piping bag and a mould of some sort that the Oreo's fit into.
1. Melt the chocolate
2. Fill the piping bag with chocolate (its easier to use one of these later on so just start using it and trust me you won't be sorry for using it!)
3. Put enough chocolate onto the base of each mould then place into the fridge until set.
4. Take a small blob of chocolate into each of the set moulds then place an Oreo on top and then pipe the remaining chocolate around the edges (be sure to cover the edges fully as this is what will glue the whole thing together) and then over the top of the Oreo.
5. Place back into the fridge for a remaining 20-30 minutes to ensure they are completely set.
6. ENJOY!!

Notice how mine aren't completely covered on the sides? Yeah thats because I didn't put enough chocolate on them. MAKE SURE YOU DO!!

My hot cross buns were a recipe from Sorted.com, great Youtube channel for easy and delicious recipes so make sure you check them out!! I found this recipe super, super easy and I guarantee you will too!! However I didn't make as many buns as the recipes says to just because I completely mis-judged the cutting up of them into smaller pieces so some of them took longer to cook as were too big, they were misshapen and some of them were a little bit harder to toast as they were too big. On the plus side though everyone who tried them said they were lovely. I think I'm just a harsh critic on my own baking. I am 100% a perfectionist!!

So that's all on what I've done so far. This summer I will be baking a lot more as obviously I have a lot more time and I want to do a lot more just so I can build up a small portfolio for university which I apply for in a matter of months!! Oh God how has that come round so quickly? I'm 18 in a few weeks as well, like what? I was 10 not so long ago?!!?!?! Anyway see you in my next blog post and please leave a comment if you would like to see me make anything in particular and blog about it?!

Thanks for reading,
Caitlin xxx